The American Mural Project In Winsted, Conn. To Hold A Tribute To The American Worker
A virtual event for the world's largest indoor collaborative art will spotlight the role and importance of work in our lives.
In 1999, when her kids were young, artist Ellen Griesedieck realized her children where “pretty clueless” about how things were made, where there food and products came from, and whose hands constructed the world around them.
To honor the nobility of all work and workers, she began the American Mural Project (AMP), which is now the largest indoor collaborative artwork in the world —a three-dimensional mural 120-feet long and five stories high. Today, more than 15,000 children and adults have helped create pieces for the mural, which is being assembled in one of two former mill buildings on the AMP campus on Whiting Street in Winsted, Connecticut.
“We’ve done something bigger together than I could have ever done on my own,” says Griesedieck, now titled AMP Founder and Artistic Director. “I hate to say it but the disconnect [that she saw in her own children] has grown worse. There’s a greater divide than ever because we are not thinking about how we all work together. Here, we’ve done something bigger, together.”
While the COVID pandemic has increased awareness and respect for formerly overlooked workers like grocery store employees, it has also deprived public access to AMP’s tribute to them. However, on April 28, AMP will host A Tribute to American Workers, a virtual event featuring actor and educator Geoffrey Owens (The Cosby Show and Tyler Perry’s The Haves and the Have Nots) and award-winning radio journalist John Dankosky in conversation with Griesedieck. It will include a never-before-seen drone tour of AMP’s sprawling mural, a special musical performance by world-renowned singer Theresa Thomason, and a few additional surprises.
In 2018, Geoffrey Owens was bagging groceries at his job at Trader Joe’s. A customer snapped his photo and sent it to the New York Daily News. Owens, a recognized actor, the founder and artistic director of The Brooklyn Shakespeare Company, and a Yale graduate, was making ends meet. Owens was able to turn the resulting news coverage and social media frenzy into a positive conversation around the toxicity of job shaming. It also created an opportunity for Owens to spotlight the role and importance of work of all types on his Instagram show, Shift Happens.
“Covid has made people’s awareness and appreciation of the work others do for them change. We just have to make sure that doesn’t change after the masks come off,” Griesedieck says. “Geoffrey is immensely talented and it must have taken so much strength to turn his experience into something good.”
John Dankosky is a journalist and radio host who has worked in nonprofit journalism for more than 30 years. Griesedieck said Dankosky is a master of his own craft and his ability to enliven public conversations is sure to make for an enlightening and enjoyable watch. The event will be capped off with a performance by Theresa Thomason, a renowned gospel singer who has performed her work around the world.
Access to the one-hour streaming event is open to all, with a suggested donation of $20 (all proceeds will benefit the American Mural Project and its education programs). Tickets can be secured at AmericanMuralProject.org.
The American Mural Project offers a number of programs for youth throughout a normal year. While the pandemic limited offerings last year, Griesediek says everyone is eager to get back to inspiring and "challenging" young people through school year and summer programs, internships and artist education programs. AMP’s mission is twofold: to honor workers and work in America, as well as to challenge those who see the mural to make their own contributions through their own work. The programing surrounding this "challenge" provides firsthand experiences with art that serve to inspire students’ wider education, equipping them with transferable skills for future artistic pursuits and careers.
Griesedieck says one of the most rewarding aspects of creating this giant, crazy mural is that it requires the help of skilled laborers to install. As an art piece honoring work, it necessitates by its immensity the inclusion of the very people it depicts. At AMP the art of work is enshrined as a work of art.
