Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, August 10, 1993 TAG: 9308100347
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: WES SMITH CHICAGO TRIBUNE
DATELINE: OGLESBY, ILL. LENGTH: Medium
His art foe, Aloysius Piecha, sees "a coupla butts, no big deal."
And so goes the postal-porn war in Oglesby, about 130 miles southwest of Chicago, where the custodian's cries of obscenity have resulted in the cover-up of a 51-year-old post office mural.
The cover-up, in turn, has stirred righteous indignation among local art lovers and others in this La Salle County town of 3,500.
"People are upset that something is going to happen to art everywhere if this is allowed to happen here," said Piecha, 63, a former city commissioner. "This guy would have a field day in Rome."
The roots of this brouhaha date back to the Depression, when thousands of unemployed artists were put to work by a government plan to provide jobs and create public art. It was known as the Federal Art Project. Schools, museums, zoos, libraries, courthouses and city halls were decorated with paintings, murals, sculptures and carvings.
"This has to be protected for future generations," Piecha said of his town's postal art. "It's like the American flag."
On Feb. 28, 1941, Chicago artist Fay Davis, then 25, was granted a $700 commission to do the 13-by-7-foot Oglesby mural. Local lore has it that the artist made several trips to Starved Rock State Park a few miles outside town in search of inspiration for the mural, titled "Illini and Potawatomies Struggle at Starved Rock."
Rendered in earth tones, the painting depicts 14 Indians in pitched battle. Some are on horseback. Some are on foot. Most are either buck naked or scantily clad in leafy G-strings.
The mural was unveiled in 1942 and remained unveiled until just a few weeks ago, when it was covered because of the custodian's complaint that its "pornographic" depiction of Indians constituted sexual harassment and violated his civil rights to mop up without being mooned.
Before Swartz's complaint, there is no record or recent memory of anyone being offended by the mural, said Oglesby Postmaster Roger Mahnich, who noted, "Most people didn't even realize it was up there."
Until an $8,000 renovation was done in 1988, the painting had faded so badly that the mural was hardly visible, gaining less attention than the FBI's most-wanted posters nearby.
But the 40-year-old Swartz, who has been post office custodian for nine years, came to view the mural in a new light after the renovation.
A divorced man with no children, Swartz served an eight-year hitch in the Navy and worked in cable installation and lawn care. He is earnest, soft-spoken and thoughtful, and apparently spends a great deal of time contemplating society's "false idol worship of the body" as well as general moral decay in and around La Salle County.
As a man tuned to "a lessening of the sensitivity of people to nakedness due to pornography," Swartz "specifically object[s] to the bare buttocks and . . . leaves that adhere or give the impression of adherence to the genitalia of the male Indians," he said.
"It is a large painting, people walk in the building and these things become obscene, especially for young women and children in the lobby with their mothers," he maintained during a break from lawn mowing recently.
On Jan. 12 he filed a complaint under the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, citing a section that prohibits sexual harassment in the work place. In his complaint, Swartz asked only that the alleged bare body parts be painted over with appropriate Indian clothing.
When Mahnich, his supervisor, rejected his initial complaint, Swartz appealed to higher authority. At first, higher authority appeared unimpressed, but one day an order came down from Washington to cover the painting.
So Mahnich ordered Swartz to put a double set of white blinds over the mural. A few days later, the blinds were ordered raised from somewhere in the bureaucracy. But then ordered lowered again.
Current Oglesby policy is to keep the blinds down unless a postal patron requests a peep, which is happening with increasing frequency, Mahnich said.
In the meantime, Oglesby residents who had paid little attention to the mural are riled up about the cover-up. Piecha has gathered 1,300 signatures on a petition calling for it to be bared for all time.
by CNB