American Mural Project

We spoke with Ellen Griesedieck, President and Founder of the American Mural Project, about the 5-story, 120 foot long, multi-demensional mural in Connecticut that has a record as the largest indoor collaborative work of art in the Guiness Book of World Records.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good morning, Thank you for listening to Community Access. I'm
Alison de Murz. My guest this morning is Ellen Grisadick.
She is president and founder of the American Mural Projects.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Good morning, Good morning Allison.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
So let's talk about how this amazing project came about.
For those who don't know, what is the American Mural Project.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
This started twenty five years ago. I had this idea
that I needed to do something before being president or founder.
I'm an artist and it occurred to me that our
kids were growing up and they were totally clueless about
what was going on around them, the work that was
being done on their behalf. And I had been painting

(00:43):
pretty large paintings of people working in every field, and
fascinated by that, I thought, why don't I just take
all the places I've been and put them together into
one giant mural. And of course nobody thought this was
a good idea except for me, but it You know,

(01:06):
artists are crazy, they do crazy things, and sometimes they
work out, sometimes they don't, and in this case, I
just sort of pulled all these different you know, one
of the wonderful things about working on this project is
I know all the people that are in the mural.
I have been to the West Side Highway and worked
with the iron workers there. I have done all these jobs,
so I really feel I know what I'm doing when

(01:29):
I start to paint any of these guys. But anyway,
what happened was I felt it was important at that time.
And you've got to remember this was before nine to eleven,
this was before all these things, and our kids are young,
and I'm thinking I'm going to create something that's so
big you can't miss it, which is insane, but this
is what I did, or what I started to do,
and years later looking for a place to fit it,

(01:52):
because you know, now you have a giant mural that's
coming together, and where do we put this? So there
are all sorts of steps along the way to what
you see today as the American Mural Project in Winstead,
which started with scratching my head and going, hmmm, I
guess I'll go ahead, have to go ask for the
governor for some help, you know. So it's just insane

(02:14):
artist stuff. You know, it's worked out so far. I mean,
I'm not saying anything about where we're going next except
that it's all very exciting.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
So for those who don't know. It's this five story,
one hundred and twenty foot long multidimensional mural. It's in
Winstead and you could go online to American Mural Project
dot org and see it, but it would never do
it justice. You need to see this in person. There's
so many activities and things that you also do there
as well. What is the mural a tribute to? Because

(02:44):
you said you painted about people that you met and
the work.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
It's a tribute to people who work in this country basically,
and that means it's a tribute to you. It's a
tribute to every artist that's ever picked up a brush
or danced or composed music or perform music. It's about
farmers and steel workers, firemen, policemen, everyone in public service.
I mean, you name it. I hope that if you

(03:10):
come to the American Mural Project, you're going to find
yourself somewhere, whether you're still working, you're retired, you're thinking
of what you're going to do in your work. We're
very interested in giving kids incentive because after all, this
started with my desire to open up this world for
John and Judy. I think the most important thing for

(03:30):
us today is to do that for kids all over.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
So you have family days with scavenger hunts and I
spy games. Tell me more about that, because you were
mentioning how important it is for the children.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
Yes, there are all sorts of activities that are happening
at AMP, and you need only go to our website
to see what's on the schedule. But one every once
a month we have family days and they go all
day long, but they're not What you're supposed to do

(04:02):
is find your spot in there. If you have young kids,
maybe you want to come for story hour. If you
have older kids and they're interested in actually creating things,
there are all kinds of projects that are going on.
It's wonderful to see all these different generations in the
in the mural building at once. And we love that
we have events that happen in the evening called you

(04:23):
know that we call them Live at AMP. But these
range from great bands that we have coerced into coming
and God, I love every one of them. They all
want to come back. It's wonderful. And the music in there.
We have a wonderful sound guy who comes in and
because of the way we've placed these panels, which are

(04:45):
not flat, this is not a flat mural. These things
are all three dimensional. You get the sound bouncing off
of all these things like you know, like a very
sophisticated sound room, so we have the benefit of that.
We also have AMP talks where some of the people
who are pictured in the mural come to talk to us,

(05:05):
whether it's Melissa Bennett who's a firefighter in Brooklyn. We
usually give plenty of notice ahead of time so that
people who are interested in any given subject they're going
to be able to come and meet. Melissa again, most
interested in kids. She wants to talk to kids about
being firefighters. And so you've got this huge range. But

(05:29):
the one wonderful thing about this, Alison, is this mural
includes all of us. It's about everyone, and what makes
it great is there's no limit. If you want to
go here, you go here. If you want to talk
about space studies, we're going over here and we're going
to talk to Steven Squire's who's our scientist and advisor

(05:51):
on the mural. We have this wonderful source of people
who've also come on to help me, advise me, lend
their writing because I admire them and I was just
talking this past week with Colonel Alton Whitley was the
first guy to fly to Stealth. He commanded a desert storm.
He and his wife Anne are coming. I hope this

(06:13):
spring or summer we're going to have a huge event
with that. And so the variety is great.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
And you have programming for the schools as well.

Speaker 2 (06:22):
Yes, after school programming during the school year, and we
have a program called it's called Champs and they come
in after school several days a week. And in the
summer we have five or six different programs that are
going on simultaneously. Again, what do I love. I love
the idea that there's kids out in We have great

(06:45):
acreage and kids are learning how to build. If you're
going to inspire kids, you're going to get them excited.
Let's get working people in there as our teachers. So
a lot of our teaching artists are skilled carpenters or musicians.
We have music programs, we have art programs. So the

(07:06):
variety is great. It's really what you need to do
is go in and say what does my kid love
to do. We'll find a place for them. It am.

Speaker 1 (07:15):
I'm speaking with Ellen Griza Dik. She is president and
founder of the American Mural project. It is a five story,
one hundred and twenty foot long, multi dimensional mural. It
celebrates the role of work in our lives, and it
holds the Guinness Book of World Records for largest indoor
collaborative work of art. It's a hidden gem there in Winstead.

(07:35):
If you'd like to find out more about it and
all the activities offered to families and children, go to
Americanmuralproject dot org. Ellen, thank you so much for being
here today and for serving the community.

Speaker 2 (07:47):
Thank you so much, Alison. It was really fun to
talk and you got to come visit