THE CETA ARTS REVOLUTION: What Can Today's Activist Artists & Organizers Learn from It?

Bill Cleveland: 00:00:01

Say, did you know that the United States of America once launched a massive jobs program for artists and then forgot it ever happened?

From the center for the Study of Art and Community, this is Change the Story, Change the World, a chronicle of art and community transformation where activist artists and cultural organizers learn the skills and strategies they need to thrive as agents of of social change. My name is Bill Cleveland.

y of the SETA arts program, a: 1970

So if you've ever wondered what happens when government funding meets creative purpose, this story reveals a powerful blueprint for art as public service.

In it, we'll hear how a run of the mill federal jobs program opened the door for thousands of artists to life changing careers rooted in community building and justice. We'll also discover the hidden legacy of CEDA in neighborhoods, cultural institutions and forgotten archives across the country.

And we'll learn why collaboration, adaptability and purpose driven creativity matter more than ever for artists today. Once upon a time. Yeah, I guess that's how all good stories begin. And, well, bad ones too.

yway, once upon a time in the: 1970

This happened when, as I said before, an unremarkable federal jobs initiative collided with a perfect storm sweet spot in America's political, social and cultural landscape.

ecession, the remnants of the: 1960

That program, known by its friends and enemies as ceta, stirred up hot filled with a lot of unemployed artists, an explosion of artist run arts organizations, and a bunch of newly minted local arts agencies sparking an unprecedented explosion of American creativity. And as they say, the rest is history. Or at least it should be.

billion in $: 2025

That's because our guests for this episode and the next have decided to uncover that history and spread the thousands of inspiring stories they've encountered along the way. It's a great story, so have a listen. Virginia and Blaise, welcome to the show. Why don't you introduce yourselves?

Virginia Maksymowicz: 00:03:31

I am Virginia Maksymowicz and I am.

Blaise Tobia: 00:03:35

Blaise Tobia, and we happen to be married and we happen to be partners both on our studio art and on this legacy project that we are running.

Virginia Maksymowicz: 00:03:44

And we are in Philadelphia, which is traditionally Lenape, and we're originally from Brooklyn, but Philly's a good place.

Bill Cleveland: 00:03:53

When you're sitting across the table from folks that you've just met for the first time and they don't have any idea of what your history is, how do you describe what you do in the world?

Virginia Maksymowicz: 00:04:08

Well, we actually do two things, though.

In terms of my own art, I tend to describe myself as the Caryatted lady, because I've been doing all this work with architectural forms and women's bodies in architecture, and. Yeah, I'm a Caryatted lady.

Bill Cleveland: 00:04:29

And that's your street name, right?

Virginia Maksymowicz: 00:04:31

Essentially, it's my street name.

Bill Cleveland: 00:04:33

Okay. Okay, Blaze.

Blaise Tobia: 00:04:35

Well, Bill, my little elevator pitch is I am a photographer and a documenter of world or global material culture.

And that can range from large scale urban scapes to tiny little details of things that people make and display to cultural manifestations like Mardi Gras parades.

Virginia Maksymowicz: 00:04:55

But the second part is both of us see ourselves as accidental art historians, and we've really liked that term because we didn't plan on becoming art historians. But essentially that's what we've been doing, thanks to the research on ceda.

Bill Cleveland: 00:05:15

So why don't you just talk about how this accident occurred?

Blaise Tobia: 00:05:22

wonderful project back in the: 1970

Bill Cleveland: 00:05:38

Now, that wonderful project you're talking about was called ceta. What is that thing?

Virginia Maksymowicz: 00:05:46

ning act was a program in the: 1970

If it was an odd number, you went on another day. So in a way, it was like a mini wpa.

Blaise Tobia: 00:06:18

Oh, yeah, the program was pretty big. It did, over its roughly eight year history, train and or employ a million people. Right.

er done for artists since the: 1930

And we've always thought that it was worth being known to the wider world. And as part of that, we kept waiting for something to happen that would recognize it.

We were waiting for a 10 year anniversary, we were waiting for a 20 and a 25 year anniversary. We were waiting for a 40 year anniversary to happen so that we could get some media attention and we can get people to know about it.

And we could make it almost as widely known as all the great projects that happened during the New Deal. But that never came about.

So we got together with a bunch of alumni from our project and some of the former administrators, and we began to talk and plan and do research and go to archives and posted a Wikipedia article and eventually developed this name for ourselves, the Cedar Arts Legacy Project. And at first we mostly based it on this great New York City project that we worked for.

Then we realized a whole lot more had happened around the country. So we began to do research. And Virginia especially is a terrific detective.

Virginia Maksymowicz: 00:07:50

We definitely saw an overlap between that and our artwork. In both of our cases, our art practices see our work as opening up people's eyes to the world around them.

And that could be physical, social, political, or historical. So it's a nice overlap.

One little connection that Blaise and I have talked about is the way we approach being art historians, since we weren't trained as art historians, is a lot the way Alan Lomax conducted himself in terms of being a collector. And what we've been doing with the Cedar stuff is we're really good collectors.

We are finding stuff all over the place, and we're really good connectors. We're connecting people. So we're not doing art historical interpretation. We're hoping somebody else will do that.

Bill Cleveland: 00:08:47

Speaking of connectors, way back then you both somehow got caught up and employed by one of the biggest Cedar projects taking place in New York City. Could you just describe how that occurred and briefly why it stuck with you for so long?

Virginia Maksymowicz: 00:09:10

Well, I'm going to start because I had the Irish in my background, so I'm the storyteller. Okay. Yeah. We both grew up in working class families in Brooklyn, and we were both first generation college grads.

The two years I was in Cedar,: 1978

Blaze and I had just finished grad school in San Diego and we had moved back to Brooklyn without any job prospects, and we were camping out in Blaze's old bedroom in his parents house in Canarsie.

And then one Saturday afternoon we went over to Bay Ridge where my mom house was, and my uncle was visiting and he was sitting in the recliner in the living room reading the New York Daily News. And he yells at hey, Ginny, Ginny. Jobs for artists. And Blaze and I, Recent graduates, recent MFAs, of course, we thought we knew everything.

And I say, oh, Uncle Henry, there's no such thing. And he said, no, come over here and look. And we looked and here was this ad calling Jobs for Artists.

And I specifically remember it was a Saturday because it said the applications would be available on Wednesday and go down the Brooklyn Borough Hall. So bright and early, Blaze and I were at Brooklyn Borough Hall.

NY Mayor Abe Beame: 00:10:50

We still have an unemployment rate of.

Virginia Maksymowicz: 00:10:53

Very close to 10%. 9.7 or 8 or thereabouts are very close to it. And these jobs are certainly going to be helpful in that regard.

t. Sec. of Labor Ernie Greene: 00:11:04

The administration is very glad to be able to begin the title 2 and 6 Public Service Employment program here in New York. This represents 725,000 jobs throughout the country as a whole.

Bill Cleveland: 00:11:24

d to New York City in June of: 1977

Virginia Maksymowicz: 00:11:39

So we qualified for that immediately. All right. Then we had to pass some other hurdles, all right, the application. We had to have our portfolio resume.

We had to go up before a panel of artists and arts administrators to pass professionally, and Blaze passed right away. I was a top alternate, so I was hired about a week late, but I made it.

And the thing is, There were only 300 positions and there were between three and 4,000 artists that applied to them in New York. So without the dumb luck of my uncle visiting and seeing that in the paper and then the timing of our situation, we wouldn't have made it.

Blaise Tobia: 00:12:31

And Bill, both Virginia and I see our participation in this project, funded by the federal government as one in a continuing series of ways both federal and state and even municipal government supported people, supported us as students, as artists, as citizens in that period of time. We went to free schools at the grammar school and middle school and high school levels that were excellent.

We went to the City University of New York when it was totally free and was excellent. We went to the University of California in San Diego, essentially tuition free.

All of this we will say, because people paid their taxes and didn't complain so much about it. Our country could afford to put a person on the moon, could afford, unfortunately, to fight a war in Vietnam.

And could keep excellent educational systems going at the same time because the funding was available for all of that and we benefited from it. We're totally grateful for that.

Virginia Maksymowicz: 00:13:34

And in return, the country benefited not only from our service when we were Cedar artists, but from our teaching all these years, other service. And we pay taxes now.

Bill Cleveland: 00:13:48

Yep.

Virginia Maksymowicz: 00:13:48

So now we're paying for somebody else.

Bill Cleveland: 00:13:53

Part two in service to the community.

So you talk about the service that was a primary rationale for the CETA program, which was you're unemployed now you're going to be employed and what you do is going to be of service to the community. Could you talk a bit about how that manifested?

Virginia Maksymowicz: 00:14:13

Well, I was part of what I'll call the general artist pool for our Cedar project.

Blaise Tobia: 00:14:20

We should also specify it was a cross genre project. So there were musicians, there were dancers, there were poets, there were video artists, there were theater people. Right. We were in the visual pool.

Virginia Maksymowicz: 00:14:33

Right. And how it worked was community groups would request an artist from the Cetus sponsor, which was the Cultural Council Foundation.

I've often described it as almost like a secretarial temp agency, but for artists. All right. So that they said we need someone to help us do a mural. And they would call the Cultural Council foundation and they would send us us out.

If the match didn't work, they sent somebody else out. So the administrators did a great job. So anyway, as part of the general pool, I was sent everywhere, all over the city.

And this is another part of the life changing aspects of CETA for me.

I'm being sent to schools, senior centers, community groups, and in some cases nonprofit organizations, museum like organizations like the New York Botanical Gardens. So it was a real range.

But I was sent to neighborhoods that, growing up female, in a mostly white neighborhood, Bay Ridge, I was told not to go in those neighborhoods. They were dangerous. And that usually meant black or Puerto Rican. Don't go in those neighborhoods. Well, that's exactly where I was.

And one of the things that I was able to learn was how to fine tune my vision and understand what a neighborhood might be like. For example, on the far end of the scary scale, I had a placement up at a Lutheran school in Mothaven in the South Bronx.

Back then that neighborhood was called there was the movie made about it and I think 80 or 81.

I would get off at the 138th street subway station and literally run to the school because all the buildings were burned out, they were boarded up, but of course they were ripped open because the junkies would be in there shooting Up. And I kept thinking, someone's going to drag me into one of these buildings. I'd never be found. All right.

But then I had another South Bronx assignment on Tremont Avenue. Totally different. Yes, a neighborhood that had financial stress.

It was poor to working class, but it had a lively street scene, and it was all families. And when I walked from the trains, and I wasn't afraid because there's kids everywhere, there's stuff going on.

So to me, that was a really important lesson I learned from Sita, that there were, yes, there were different types of neighborhoods, but what makes a neighborhood undesirable or scary? It's not the people who live there. The problem at 138th street is nobody was living there.

Bill Cleveland: 00:17:38

Yeah, yeah. Let me get a little more detail here. You named a number of places that you were embedded in, and many of them had nothing to do with the arts.

They were a senior center or a school or whatever.

Could you talk about some of the very specific kinds of things that you did, how you translated your creative skill to the needs, the opportunities that existed in the places where you were sent?

Virginia Maksymowicz: 00:18:09

Yeah, well, as I said, Bill, the community groups asked for us, all right? And actually, they were required to provide the materials you needed. They just didn't have to pay us. So usually it was very specific.

So, for example, that placement on Tremont Avenue, which was one of my favorite ones, they had an after school program. And there was a great woman in charge of the after school program.

I still remember her name, Rosita Enrique, who basically said, look, we have these kids, and thing is, there's not much art in the school, so let's see what you can do with them. And then she linked me up with. As part of the school district, they had a tiny museum about the Taino Indians of Puerto Rico.

And I arranged with them that I could bring the kids over and we would draw things in the museum, and they would let us handle things and touch things. And then it wound up expanding even more because there was a new gallery up there called Enfoco, which is still going.

And its founder, Charles Rivera, somehow found out about what I was doing, and he came over and said, can my photographer show with your kids? And the family showed up, cooked an unbelievable amount of food. We had the artwork hung up everywhere.

All these professional photographers were there, and all these kids ranging in age from maybe third grade to freshman sophomore in high school. It was a real mix.

But what was great about Rosita and this community center was want to do something that makes up for the lack of art in the school, because we know art can change people's lives, and they were open to almost everything. Some of the other schools were a little trickier because our program had to be careful not to invade a school who maybe was short of art teachers.

So you didn't want to displace a teacher.

Bill Cleveland: 00:20:25

Yeah. Which would have ruined your relationship with the school.

And I guess, on the flip side, I know that the CETA infusion actually became an impetus for establishing new cultural institutions in some of the those communities. Weren't you involved in some projects like that?

Virginia Maksymowicz: 00:20:46

Well, a group of us. What was there?

10 of us, CETA artists, we got assigned to the Brooklyn Arts and Cultural association, again headed by this amazing powerhouse of a woman named Charlene Victor, who had somehow talked the old Catholic parish of St. Boniface, whose public school wasn't operating anymore. They were just doing rummage sales in the school, nothing else.

Talk them into letting her turn it into a cultural center. So all of us artists, we descend on this building, Somewhat dilapidated, structurally sound, but dirty and plaster falling everywhere.

And we scrubbed, we painted, we patched walls, we built a stage. Then we did artworks, we did murals, both outside and inside.

And that eventually became what was called Baca downtown, which was in operation until maybe about five years ago or so, when the property was sold and people like Spike Lee and Susan Laurie Parks, I think even Danny DeVito did stuff there. It became this incredible art center that was both professional and community based.

Bill Cleveland: 00:22:00

Wow.

Virginia Maksymowicz: 00:22:02

And it wouldn't have happened without a bunch of us artists saying, yeah, we could do that. Yeah, let's put the stage over there. How do we build a stage?

And then the priest from the parish was great because he would find money and say, I can get you wood. And he'd get us wood, and we built a stage.

Blaise Tobia: 00:22:18

My experience, Bill, was a little different because my role in the project was as a documentor and in particular, a photographer.

So I spent one entire year as a dedicated documenter of the project, along with two other photographers and three writers and kind of a manager of the project, who got sent all over the place to go to artist studios and document them at work, to go to performances of our orchestra, our jazz band, our dance ensembles, to go to exhibitions that we created and put up.

So I had a very much of a bird's eye view of the project, Much more so than Most of the 300 artists, which really gave me a very special kind of, I think, appreciation for the nature, the scope of the project, the diversity of the Project, which, as Virginia is alluding to that this was the most diverse thing we had ever experienced.

It was diverse well ahead of the use of that word, partly because it had to meet not just artistic standards, but it had to meet Department of Labor standards. Right. So it was racially diverse, it was ethnically diverse, it was gender diverse, it was age diverse.

Virginia Maksymowicz: 00:23:28

Handicapped people.

Blaise Tobia: 00:23:29

There were people from every corner of the city. So, like Virginia, I discovered corners of New York City I had never even known about after 20 years of living there.

And then the next year, I documented community activities by requesting again.

So I was requested by the Richmond Hill Historical Society, That's a neighborhood in Queens that has a lot of Victorian houses and wanted a thorough photo documentation of those Victorian houses, which I did for them at no cost to them. I was sent to a nature preserve, believe it or not, New York City has a nature preserve in Staten island called High Rock Conservation Center.

And I went to that on a regular basis over six months and.

And documented both the beauty of the park and the nature of the programs they were offering and gave them the materials to use in their publicity, in their publications and so forth. I was sent to a kind of reform school and documented what the students were like and what their experiences were.

Bill Cleveland: 00:24:32

Part three. So what happened? So in many ways, Blaise, you were telling the story of this multifaceted, multi layered, multi community cultural experiment.

And so the question I would ask is, just imagine this, a gigantic aircraft hangar filled with every photograph that you took beautifully mounted, and you walked around and you looked at them. What's the story that you would see in those pictures?

Blaise Tobia: 00:25:10

Well, I think pretty evident in those pictures is the kind of diversity of the project that I'm talking about.

You can put that in writing, but when you see it, when you see the two older guys in our project who had been in the WPA art projects and were then in our project, that kind of underlined something about the continuing need for the arts in our society to receive some sort of support. You would see musical performances all over the city. You'd see some in parks in the Bronx. You'd see one in the Port Authority Terminal.

You'd see one in the sculpture garden of the Museum of Modern Art. You would understand the scope and the variety of the things that were happening under this project.

Bill Cleveland: 00:25:56

You're hearing Papalaje Camara Ejembe Fula or Ejembe Master from Guinea, was one of many venerated culture bearers who became part of the creative community made possible through New York's Cedar Arts program.

Virginia Maksymowicz: 00:26:12

I think, too. Your photographs show Cedar artists working with other SETA artists across discipline. All right, which is unusual. Or in some cases.

For example, we had a tap dancing team, all right, which was comprised of Jane Goldberg, who's still alive and is running a non profit tap dance foundation.

Blaise Tobia: 00:26:36

A young Jewish woman in her late 20s, and Cookie Charles Cook, builder, black tap dancer. And they formed an unbelievable couple that would perform together.

Virginia Maksymowicz: 00:26:45

And pictures of them together tell a story as well.

Bill Cleveland: 00:26:50

Here is Cookie Charles Cook, first talking about how he came to be a Cedar artist and then sharing a little tap.

Charles Cookie Cook: 00:26:59

Well, I was on the radio and I heard about it, and one of my copacetic brothers called me and said, cookie, why don't you apply for that? Cookie, you, you could really could use this because you, you know, your money don't come into this kind of thing. And you were teaching.

Sometimes I teach the kids and don't even take the money from. Cause they don't pay, you know, they don't have it, you know, So I went down. I was just like a, like a, a kid thing. I really wasn't looking for it.

Interviewer: 00:27:21

And you.

Interviewer: 00:27:21

And did you, did you apply as.

Virginia Maksymowicz: 00:27:23

A dancer or a musician?

Charles Cookie Cook: 00:27:24

I went down as a dancer. That's my craft.

Bill Cleveland: 00:27:27

And did you audition in front of the whole dancer?

Charles Cookie Cook: 00:27:30

I understand. I got all these. This is called the BS course now. It don't stand for Bachelor of Science. It means just what it says.

The BS course back in the Cotton Club thing, long time ago, was up to cab and they had to have the 32 bars. You know, what you gonna do? What you gonna do? So they had to make us up in 32 bars. So they had the dancers, when they go fighting out there, come on.

For the BS scores. So this is. But the BS score, 32 bars. If I can do it, I'm.

Virginia Maksymowicz: 00:28:27

That was something else, I think, in terms of the idea of creating community. Yes, we artists were working with neighborhood communities, but we also formed our own community.

We had this thing on our project where every other week we had to show up for our paycheck. All right? And it was like high school assembly. So we'd all be in an auditorium.

So the dancers might be dancing, the poets might read, the artists might be showing slides. And not only do we get to know each other, but we could also propose projects to the Cultural Council Foundation.

So for example, Ellsworth Osby worked with some of the seated dancers and the musicians to do a project. And his sculpture was part of the performance. But he initiated that project he initiated.

Blaise Tobia: 00:29:26

It and sold it to the administrators who went along with it and gave him access to six really talented dancers and six really talented jazz musicians. Something that just would not have happened without that sort of facilitation.

Bill Cleveland: 00:29:41

So if you think about the literally hundreds and hundreds of New York community members who encountered you in so many different ways, what happened in the community as a result of the invasion of the artists, what happened in the moment and what do you think the legacy is in those communities where those things occurred?

Blaise Tobia: 00:30:10

Well, Bill, something we often have to explain as the Cedar Arts Legacy project is the Cedar Arts projects were very different than the New Deal arts projects, right? Not that there was an overlap, but for the most part, the New Deal arts projects were about making artworks, very often public artworks.

Murals, as we just saw together in San Francisco. Fabulous murals in public buildings, on public display in post offices all over the country.

So your average American citizen in the 30s got to know that this thing called in the WPAR projects existed. Theater, on the other hand, was very much not about making art objects or even murals, although we made some.

It was more about that interaction at the level of the workshop, the level of the performance, the level of being in a senior center, whatever. So historically it has been much less visible. And that's part of the challenge to us to try to make it visible.

Virginia Maksymowicz: 00:31:15

Well, in terms of like long lasting effects, a lot of times people have forgotten Sita had something to do with it. All right, so Baca downtown, nobody knew it had anything to do with our group of 10 Cedar artists.

Bill Cleveland: 00:31:31

All right.

Virginia Maksymowicz: 00:31:32

On the other hand, we don't know what happened to individuals. I actually still think about some of those students. Like I. I had this kid in East New York whose name was Tyrone Cool Tie Jones.

And this kid tried to have one of these attitudes of being a tough street kid. But he made the most amazing clay sculptures and he really got into it. And I have pictures of him posing with this stuff. You could see the joy.

And he didn't know he could do this. I wonder if he continued doing it. But it'll forever be invisible. We don't know.

Something that has happened not only in New York, but around the country, a lot of non profit art spaces are still going that got their start because they had Cedar artists there and or Cedar grant writers, people who could help them. And that's also somewhat invisible because people have forgotten.

Blaise Tobia: 00:32:37

Well, here in Philadelphia, part of our job as unintentional art historians led us after we moved here to Philadelphia to learn about what had gone on in Philadelphia, thanks to Ceda, and we discovered some of the key nonprofits here at Painted Bright Arts Center.

Bill Cleveland: 00:32:54

Yes. Very well known in the early 70s.

Blaise Tobia: 00:32:57

It's a great venue for dance and music and for.

Eventually for the visual arts was changed from a small, iffy storefront operation with one volunteer director into a viable arts nonprofit with a staff of five that learned how to then write through grants and continue its existence after Cedar.

Virginia Maksymowicz: 00:33:19

Right.

Blaise Tobia: 00:33:20

And they're still here and they're still going.

Bill Cleveland: 00:33:22

Yep. And I believe Brandywine, the Brandywine Print.

Blaise Tobia: 00:33:25

Center, a couple of dance companies, People's Light and Peeler, People's Light and Peel, all of them enlarged and stabilized by injections of cedar money.

Bill Cleveland: 00:33:33

And so one of the things I think that also people aren't aware of is that you think about Brandywine, Painted Bride.

They were established in communities and responsive to communities in a way, so that what happened in them was very much formed and determined by the desires, the enthusiasms, and the creative capacity of the community in which they were born. And you think about Brandywine.

Brandywine operated as an atelier in a very formal way, so that dozens and dozens of young people became introduced to the highly demanding work of a formal print studio. And I just so happened to have documented their work.

And in the long run, what you have there is kids who became attached and committed to a way of working that stayed with them whether they became artists or not, in a community where schools, in some cases, were failing them. And I'm assuming that in your own workshops that you brought not only the joy and the celebration of your work, but also the rigor.

Blaise Tobia: 00:34:51

Now you're getting into an aspect of our lives which lasted much longer than the Cedar Project, which is the fact that we've both been arts educators for most of our lives. And what you're talking about is transferable skills. And that's one of the ways we try to defend and promote the arts at every level of education.

They are very much transferable skills. The disciplines you learn, the concentration that you get.

Virginia Maksymowicz: 00:35:16

Interesting, Bill, that, like at my college, I was the one in my department who got tagged to do the defense of why studio arts belonged in a liberal arts college. And it was just what Blaze is saying.

It's this thing with transferable skills, but also a different kind of problem solving and an antidote to the attention deficit that all students seem to have right now. One of my colleagues, Jun Chen Luke, did a. A Chinese painting class.

And literally, the students would be sitting for three solid hours holding a brush like this, making Chinese characters. The class was always filled with a waiting list.

Bill Cleveland: 00:35:58

Yep.

Virginia Maksymowicz: 00:35:59

And my colleagues in the sciences would say, well, what good is this? This isn't going to help them get a job. Maybe it will because they'll be able to focus on something.

Bill Cleveland: 00:36:08

Yeah, sadly, you know, Virginia, it seems that one of the big challenges of the digitally dominated 21st century is marshaling and protecting that focus. Specifically the attention. We need to have some semblance of agency in our relationship with the world around us.

I believe one antidote to the attention pirates out there is of course, bringing our imaginative muscles to bear as makers and problem solvers, just like you and Blaise and your CETA compatriots did back in the day.

And as we bring this episode to a close, I want to draw our listeners attention to the fact that we will be continuing our cedar journey together next week as we explore the relevance of what happened way back then to the gigantic challenges in our communities today.

So thank you all for listening and I'd like to leave you also with a reminder that over the next three weeks, this show Change the Story, Change the World is itself going to be going through its own changes. The most obvious manifestation of our metamorphosis will be a name change and a different logo.

Starting on May 28, the show will be called Art is Change.

There will be other changes as well, but we just wanted to let you know the new name so you won't lose us among the 800,000 other podcasts that are out there. Change the Story, Change the World is a production of the center for the Study of Art and Community.

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So until next time, stay well, do good and spread the good word. And once again, please know that this episode has been 100% human.