No slave depicted in mural, artist says
Gloria DePietro said she was devastated to learn a mural that she and fellow artist Andres San Millan painted 24 years ago was considered racist and that, in the midst of the controversy, the owner of the village building on which the mural was displayed had it painted over.
But after an online meeting Tuesday with village Mayor Ed Blundell, building owner Todd Baright and others, DePietro hopes the controversy can help the community address what she said are longstanding concerns about racism and bullying, not only in Red Hook but across the country.
“Rather than divide people, we want to find a solution to bring people together,” DePietro said. “We want to come together. We want to take an opportunity to heal and not divide.
“Let this be a catalyst for growth,” she said.
The mural, on the side of the building at 7496 S. Broadway (U.S. Route 9) in the village of Red Hook, depicted a barefoot, darkskinned woman pushing a wheelbarrow filled with apples. The mural sparked controversy in the days following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis as some in the community said it celebrated racism by depicting what they said was a slave working in the fields.
Baright had it covered with light blue paint on Sunday.
Casey Shea, a Red Hook High School graduate who was among the first to raise concerns about the mural, said in a Facebook post that the work was “one of several [to] depict harmful imagery that negatively affects the people of color in our community on a daily basis.”
DePietro, though, said the detractors were incorrect in their assumptions. The mural, she said, was intended to show a Dutch woman and represent the historical transition from a grain-producing region to one that produced apples.
The woman in the foreground, she said, was painted by San Millan, who emigrated from the Basque Country, an autonomous community in northern Spain. “The face of that woman was his mother,” DePietro said. “The Basque people are like the indigenous people of Spain, and that was the image that came to him.”
She said the paint darkened over time, leading some to believe the woman was a Black slave.
“Maybe she has every right in the world to be triggered,” DePietro said of Shea. “Who am I to say she isn’t? I didn’t walk in her shoes.
“As the artist, I’m not there to tell them what it’s about, although there was a plaque on the wall,” she said. “They projected what they wanted to see.”
DePietro said she and San Millan agreed to “freshen up the mural” and lighten the woman’s skin tone, but now that it’s been painted over, she hopes the community can come together to address issues of racism and bullying.
DePietro also said she would like there to be future meetings with those who objected to the mural as well as school officials and others so concerns about racism and bullying in the community can be understood.
“Maybe we can look at it as an opportunity, that the mural was a catalyst for change,” she said.