Telling the Truth A conversation about art and activism with Rob Shetterly BY ALEX IRVINE

Brooksville artist Rob Shetterly is best known as an illustrator of children’s books (and the Maine Times), but for the past three years or so, he’s been doing a series of portraits under the rubric "American Who Tell the Truth." Originally intended, he says, as a way to "channel my anger and grief" at the way the American government has used the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, as an excuse for an aggressive militarist foreign policy, the project has now grown into a touring exhibit, and he’s painting more portraits all the time. At first, Shetterly intended to paint 50 or so; he’s now well over that number, and doesn’t have a clear idea of when he’ll stop. "I couldn’t figure out how to get the feelings that I had into my art in a way that wasn’t just burning myself up and communicating with no one," he says, but with this series he’s doing exactly that, and it’s succeeding in a way he never anticipated.

Since the first public showing of the portraits in February 2003, both the exhibit and Shetterly have traveled around the country, and he finds himself overbooked with speaking engagements coinciding with the exhibit’s dates in such locations as New York City; Springfield, Missouri; and Meadville, Pennsylvania. There’s also a Black History Month-themed exhibit on display at Portland City Hall through February 28, and upcoming shows in Los Angeles and Providence.

"The greatness of our country is being tested and will be measured not by its military might but by its restraint, compassion, and wisdom," Shetterly writes on the project Web site, www.americanswhotellthetruth.org. His subjects include both the living (Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Rosa Parks) and the dead (Emma Goldman, Dwight Eisenhower, Rachel Carson); what they have in common is courage and a progressive bent.

The Phoenix caught up with Shetterly at his Brooksville studio, where he was putting the finishing touches on the Utah Phillips portrait seen accompanying this piece.

Phoenix: Why don’t you background me a little bit on what you’ve been doing with antiwar demonstrations?

Shetterly: The first one was actually the day that the war started. I was involved with a group from the Blue Hill and Deer Isle area peace and justice people. We never got to Collins’s office. We were just in the lobby of the federal building. But we sat in and got arrested as a protest against the war, but equally as much against Senator Collins for her going along with it. There was another demonstration in Snowe’s office, for allowing herself to be "misled" and then never recanting, or never taking responsibility for what that means in a democracy where the consent of the people is based on a series of lies.

Recently, we’ve changed our tactics. Instead of trying to do that kind of civil disobedience, we’re much more interested in making a series of continuous visits, to go in frequently and discuss issues with her staff and try to point out inconsistencies in their positions and how they’re also inconsistent with a sustainable future.

Q: Have you been doing that yourself?

A: Yeah, we did one a few weeks ago. You know, I guess I’d put it this way: It’s very hard to figure out how to get any purchase against these policies. Protesting in the streets is very important, but you know you’re being ignored both by the people in the offices and also by the media. So we feel better when we go in and talk to real people and try to engage them in conversation, so at least they’re hearing — instead of a shouted slogan — a reasoned argument. That’s important.

Q: You’ve been talking to Snowe, or Collins?

A: Last visit, we went into three offices: Snowe’s, Collins’s, and Michaud’s. In all offices, we were received extremely politely. Notes were taken of everything we said, we were assured that everything we said was being sent on to Washington. I wouldn’t say it was really a discussion as much as polite listening. Obviously they’ve been trained to do that. For the long haul, what’s important for this period is that these great communities of like-minded people are being formed, and there’s a lot of opportunity for teaching history and instructing people, and coalitions are being built. People are waking up out of the lethargy of the ’90s and realizing that these kinds of policies can’t go on if we’re going to survive in the world.

Q: What do you consider to be your particular role in this as an artist? Do you find yourself doing more political art than you ordinarily would?

A: Certainly much more than I ever did, but with a completely different twist to it. For years I did the editorial drawings for the Maine Times. A lot of them I still would stand by, but it generally took the kind of stance that is a little bit smartass, a little bit cynical. Angry and cynical. The anger I think is very important. It’s the fuel that drives a lot of the social-justice movement. But if it’s cynical, it removes you from being effective, and it can sap your own strength. I am trying to do political art now that is positive, that opens conversations, that tries to teach American history the way I think is real history. That may sound presumptuous and arrogant, but I think it’s true. The side that Howard Zinn wrote about in People’s History. It’s given me an interesting in. I would never in my life, because of drawing clever, somewhat abstruse cartoons for the Maine Times, be invited to go to campuses all over the country and talk about American history. That’s what’s happening now.

It’s changed my life completely. I’m on the road all the time, I go into grade schools; I love talking to young kids. And it’s mostly through the focus of the people I’m painting and the stories I tell about what they did in American history, what they stood for, why it had to be done that way, why freedom unfortunately almost always has to be won through dissent. They’re American icons, a lot of them, but people are rarely aware of what they really stood for. When I go in the school, a lot of the kids don’t know who Rachel Carson was.

Q: I guess that doesn’t happen every day, that you find yourself recharged this way.

A: No! And so many of the people I’m painting — the living people — I’m meeting, and that’s also extremely exciting. Right across from me is a portrait of Daniel Ellsberg. I went down to Washington last year and met him at a political demonstration. Nader, Molly Ivins, Amy Goodman, Lewis Lapham from Harper’s. It’s really interesting to talk to them and get their often wildly different views about where we are and what’s going to happen, and the difference between their public personae and what they say when they’re just talking to one person about how hopeful or pessimistic they may be.

Q: Do they often come across differently?

A: Yeah. Molly Ivins was in Maine last year giving talks about hope and organizing, and standing up to the Bush administration, et cetera, and then you talk to her personally, and she’s teetering on the edge of despair. I think everybody who’s working hard on progressive/peace-and-justice/environmental issues — well, I shouldn’t say everybody — I just feel that a lot of people know they don’t have any choice but to fight a lot harder than they ever did before, but there’s also this frightened underside that says things have gone too far.