The Canadian Environment Awards Citation of Lifetime Achievement
Remarks by Sheila Watt-Cloutier
Vancouver, BC
Canada
Today was the 100 year commemoration of the towering Pilgram's monument in Provincetown. A granite tower which is the tallest in America of similar substance, was built in 1907 by Theodore Roosevelt's administration and he himself dedicated it then, to acknowledge the Pilgram's first landing here in Provincetown. Today it was rededicated with musket blasts and dour black cloaked Masons and Shriners in parade. Almost no women or pilgrims were present to the strange display of patriotic fanfare. Startling in their absence, were the original people, the Native Americans.
warming. Erected in their public park is a thermometer which measures
This is what a Provincetown mural looks like. Across the street from this mural literally, I am painting about the decendents of the native peoples who today move back and forth across the border to put food on the tables of America still. Back at home, Ice raids conducted by Homeland Security are happening all over Los Angeles to deport undocumented workers who fuel our economy from their workplaces. The New York Times announced the new Homeland Policy to tighten up on agricultural workers despite the failure of the immigration bill. Agricultural workers will be taken out of the fields. Often in the raids, the real consequences are that mothers and fathers are deported and untended children are left at home.
I have set up the paintings I must complete here in the tiny little basement. I am hoping that it will work for 3x5 pieces I am painting for the Cesar Chavez Monument now in the building stages at San Jose State University in California. I am working on a portrait of the UFW leader Dolores Huerta who will be one of the pillars of the Chavez Mayan Corbelled Arch I described in a previous entry. She is beautiful but not weak. She must be feminine but not in the traditional notion of emaciated models with vacuous looks. She has the power of an earth mother. When Dolores would nogotiate contracts for the United Farmworkers, the growers would say, "do anything but, don't send Dolores". I want all that in the portrait. These images once painted will become digital tiles for installation on the front and back of the arch. Chavez not a showman or arrogant will be on the interior and spiritually portrayed. Those images are evolving on the table.
