art,

education,
and the
culture of
resistance
di
rna
EDUCATION / ART I MEDIA
1M
ARNLNO: WILD GARDEN IS NQT ABOUT GARDENING.
It is, rather, a wild and woolly book about the
cultivation of learning, base-d on author and artist
dian marino's lifelong experiences in education, It is about
the roots of teaching, the nurturing and production of knowledge, and challenges to
"basic assumptions" and "common sense."
The book is also about making mistakes and learning from them. It is about
opening up new spaces for resistance and disrupting the habits of oppression, about
how writingand art can spark subversive thoughts and creative action. And the final
chapter, 'White Flowers and a GrizzJy Bear," is a moving reflection on the lessons of
dian marino's own terminal illness and her <;:ommitment to larger struggles ..
Wild Garden combines dian marino's writings and personal reflections. art and
graphic images. and teaching tools to convey a dynamic approach to partidpatory
learning. With over fifty pieces of art. this beautifully produced book will delight,
confront, and occasionally perplex (it is a wild garden, after all) readers who question
received ideas about living, learning, and growing together.
-Dian marino categorically r e ~ the disciplining of the disciplines.
She challenges us to reject binaries, engage with paradox, and cross boundaries.
Her pedagogical insights are both visionary and in the moment -
Unda Briskin, Women's Studies, York University
"This is a bmrthtaking offering of ideas and images that e ~ r y mucator
will cherish and use. -
Budd L Hall, chair, Adult Education and Community Dtvelopment,
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE)
D
ian marino, a visual artist, actiVISt. educator, and storyteller extraordinaire, was
a professor in the Faculty of Environmental Studies. York University, Toronto.
She died in January 1993.
r ---";;;;;;;;;; ., - - , ~ -
; ISBN 1-89 63S7-13-X
between=thedines
Retail Price .l!. .. J...i.r...r.:r.. ..
Review Copy ................. .
Complimentary ;:'opy ........... .
Desk COP'l ...... . ......
E"am ( Or)y
wild garden
~
~ d ian and I grew a vegetable garden once. It was in a meadow on top of a
~
f .:J6 hill. We planted a small area with all sorts of things and carried the
. water up the hill in buckets. Within a very short time we had all sorts of things
. sprouting uP. and just as qUickly as things sprouted the rabbits would eat
.' them. We developed a wonderful solution to this problem. Since we had planted
on the land that was used by the rabbits in the first place. and since the rabbits obviously
needed the food, we decided to plant twice as much so that there would be enough for
all of us.
dian and I were really pleased with our approach, and when things sprouted up
again we found that the rabbits were also quite pleased-twice as pleased We ended up
with no vegetables, but with a lot of time together, laughter, and a good story.
- Chuck Marino
Contents
Preface and Ackno-wledgernents ..... xiii
Introduction ........................... 1
Robert Clarke and Chris Cavanagh, with Ferne Cristall
An opening glimpse of the life, work, and influence of dian
marino-of what she called the "rain forest of moveable relations"
that made up her personal history-considering the background
and the nature of her work as educator, artist , and community
activist.
L Landscape for an Easily Influenced
Mind: Reflections on My Experience
as an Artist and Educator .............. 19
Dian considers her own formation as an artist and educator working for
social change and challenges her audience to reflect on the patterns of their
own social construction. Wi th a little help from Antonio Gramsci and the
idea of "cracks in consent," combined with a purposefully misquoted Bertolt
Brecht and Nicaraguan poetry, she explores the intimate connections
between critical thinking, creativity, and art. From a paper delivered in July
1989 to an Adult Education and Art Conference, Oxford University.
2.Thoughts on Teac h i ng and
Learning ... ........ . .. . . . .... . .. 4 3
Emphasizing a feminist perspective, di an argues t hat teachers
must be open to challenging themsel ves if they i ntend to
challenge their students. She considers the teachi ng val ue of
making mi stakes, the importance of uncovering hidden
connections t hat serve those in power. and the inspi rat ion of
collective and partici patory dreaming. Based on excerpts from
an intervi ew by Annemarie Gallaugher, 1987.
3.Willovvdal e Worldvievv:
From old Mold to a
Winter Poem ... . ... .. . . . . 5 7
A visual explorati on of everyday domestic life iust
outside of Toronto, loosely mixed with dian's
refl ections on art, teaching, and living in thi s world.
Dian produced these silk-screens of such t hings as
old mould, a bird on a colander. a stove top,
flowers with an ashtray, and a window frame in the
late 1 960s and earl y 1970s: a femi ni st honouri ng of
the ordinary, an arti st playing with space and the
spaces in between.
Drawing f r o m Action for A ction:
Drawing and DiscuSSion as a Popular
Researc h Tool .. . . . .......... . . ... .. .. . ... ... . ... 61
Dian offers provocative and practical exercises on how to assess and use
drawing as a tool for cri t ical reflection and action. Starting from a theoretical
framework influenced by Brazi li an educator Paulo Freire, she considers the role
and function of participatory research and critiques individually based research.
The discussion ranges from exploring a McDonald's restaurant "participatory"
advertiSing campaign to looking for ways of demystifying the production of art.
Ori ginally published as "Worki ng Paper No.6" by the Participatory Research
Group, Toronto, 1981.
9 . Obstac les to Speaking Out .. . 89
~
....
.. ....
"';. ...
When dian presented this paper she was in t he process of
taking a closer look at participatory research workshops that
had resulted in the producti on of alternati ve educational
materials. The work had led her into media st udy and an
analysi s of t he all-pervasive corporate control of adverti sing,
which brought her back to McDonald's and the company's
myst ique of participation. Originally presented to the
International Investigative Forum of Participatory Research,
Ljubljana, Yugoslavia, April 12-22, 1980.
6. Re:fram.ing: H e gem.ony and Adul t
Education Pract i ces . ... ... .. .... . .. 103
As a follow-up to "Obstacles to Speaking Out. " dian begi ns by asking, "How do we
know i f we' re engaged in producing trul y emancipatory materials, or if we' re only
reproducing coloni zed patterns?" Adult educators (herself included) are often i n a
precarious position: working to avoid messi ness and flatten conflict in order to
workable results. Her focus becomes "re:framing" as she reject s the
metaphor of the discovery of knowledge in favour of t he construction of knowledge, with
students and teachers worki ng together Origi nally presented to the Conference on
University Teaching and Research in t he Education of Adults, fifteenth annual
conference, University of Leeds, England, 1984.
7. Reveal i ng Assum.ptions:
Teachi n g Participatory
Res e a rc hers .. . ... . ... .... 119
Dian discusses her fi rmly held belief that participatory researchers
must learn to become mutual teachers/learners and leaders/partic-
ipants. She describes her own discomfort with the idea of herself, as
teacher, lurking behind a bush and jumping out when someone "gets
it right" and with the paradox of offering a course on "resistance" and
then being expected to work at managing, cont rolling, that same
resistance in the classroom Based on an interview done by Joanne
Nonnekes, Toronto, 1990.
colour insert fol/owing p.12S
Drealn Horse, MooSe Balls, and An
arth Blanket
A selection of dian's silk-screen, watercolour, and paper collage art
that spans over three decades, with intermingling quotations from
the text.
~ ~ " '. ~ ~ .. ,
".' ... , . ~ " .:
8. White Flowers and a Grizzly Bear:
Living with Cancer ................ . . 14S
Dian wrote this article not long after she had learned that her breast cancer had
spread to her bones. She describes the sense of loss of control and the
disempowering effects of trying to reflect on and then write about the disease,
given the prevailing social attitudes-and militaristic metaphors-and the varied
responses she received from those around her. Nami ng the pain was key; only after
dian was able to name her pain could her almost irrepressible humour return
Originally published in Tlie New Internationalist , August 1989.
Notes .. .............................. .... ......... ISS
The Contri utors ....... ...... . ...... ..... 160
Introduction
Robert Cl arke and Chris Cavanagh,
wit h Ferne Crist a ll
D
ian marino loved a wild garden. In the spring of 1992, a few
months before she went into t he hospital for the last time. dian
told us a story about her backyard and her dog, Bear. You have to know
that in the last few years dian's postage-stamp-size backyard on Clinton
Street in downtown Toronto had become her heali ng cent re, her meeting
place, a workplace, and a place of meditation. Her small wooden deck
just off the back of the house was covered with century-old grapevines
and plants, but sti ll had plenty of room for Sitting and relaxing in t he
shade. The small area beyond the deck was cluttered (purposefully) with
whirring and tinkling mobiles and gizmos. There was a wild garden off to
one side-leaving just enough space for dian to stand and chat with a
neighbour-and a stone path with grass on either side leading to a
back-lane garage.
Dian's cancer had taken a turn for the worse in the spring of
1992, and she told us about a problem she was having with Bear. She felt
too weak to take the dog for regular walks, and Bear had started digging
holes in t he backyard lawn and garden. spraying up soil everywhere. as a
dog left on his own is wont to do-especially in stressful times. The yard
was getting t o be a mess, and dian didn't have the energy to fill the
holes and patch up the grass. But she found an elegant, easy solution:
she bought a bunch of new plants and plopped them down into the dog
hol es.
As usual. dian told this story with a laughing voice: laughing at
her dog, at herself, and at the world in general-a world that she knew
didn't particul arly care for the idea of ani mals di gging hol es in "cultured"
backyards. In many ways the story is typical. It is about finding a way of
coping, of seeing problems as creating new possibilities It shows a
~ . \,
2
woman finding creat ivity in t he ordinary and deli ght in breaking rules-
in this case rules about gardens. about animal behaviour. and about how
people should "normally" respond t o both health and dog probl ems It
shows dian's ability to stand outside of herself and laugh at herself-a
special gift. i ndeed.
Like wind-borne polien. dian marino drifted across natural and
constructed boundaries. She was-and i s-hard t o pin down. categori ze.
encapsulate. She was not only daughter. wife. mother. and friend. but
also arti st. storyteller. and "internat ionally known" educator (as t he press
reports put it)--criticai educator. popular educat or. adult educat or She was
university professor, popular culture worker, sociali st, feminist, environ-
mentalist. community activist. academic theorist ... Stop! The "ist's" are
taking over here as identi fi ers. And. really. it all seems much t oo seri ous.
Because dian was also a humorist. even during t he time when she had
become "a woman living wi th cancer."
In fall 1992 in her Sunnybrook Hospital room. when some
friends came t o visit and lined up neatly at t he foot of her bed. dian got
a burst of deli ght from their appearance "What beautiful colours! Did
you guys co-ordi nate your clot hes for thi s visi t ? Did you organize t his?"
she asked. Then came t he educator in her: "You've got to t ake care of the
small things. because the big things are really all fucked up."
In her many roles and in her art. lectures. conversations, and
storytelling dian operated within what she called a "rain forest of
moveable relations." And as there is more in a rain forest t han can be
humanly known, so too there is more to dian. She would critique
capitalist relations of production but spend Saturday mornings on mad
shopping sprees in a suburban lkea emporium. She would write sharpl y
about the culture and corporate piracy of McDonald's but was always
going into t he chain's outlet s and coming out with t he latest Speci al
Offer plastic toy of the week. which she'd then give away to a friend's kid.
You got the feeling she went to McDonal d's not to study it or even t o eat
burgers-though she would half-guiltily admit to enjoying the odd Big
Mac-but to get the toys. She also sai d they could be relied on for their
clean bathrooms.
In her life and work dian was the sort of person that Italian
Marxist and activist Antonio Gramsci-one of her favourite theorists-
Wild Garden
referred to as an "organic intellectual. " British t heorist Terry Eagleton has
described a type of "organic intellectual " who, like dian, goes against the
grain of society "Such a figure is less a contemplative thinker, in the old
idealist style of the intell igentsia, than an organizer, constructor,
'permanent persuader', who actively participates in social life and helps
bring to t heoretical art iculati on those positive poli tical currents already
contained within it. '" Thi s organi c intell ectual is on the front-lines of the
struggle against whatever makes up the prevailing "hegemony" (another
Gramscian term that, as we shall see, was a key concept for dian) In her
case she would work at trying t o make visible, in unique and wonderful
ways, what she called the "hidden cracks in our consent " to oppression
and at forging the often difficult but so necessary "transition from
consent t o resi stance."
Dian marino's formation as an artist and educator owed much to the
activism of the 1960s She was born Dian Coblentz in 1941 and raised in
Milwaukee. Later on she recalled
I grew up with the noti on of myself as an artist. and I also felt I
had strong social obli gations. 1 worked my art, to the degree that
I could, into my social realities. Yet as 1 became more involved
with participator! research and became more expl icit about
looking at poli tics and economic realities as part of the cultural
context , I think I began to understand what I was doing
intuitively and to recognize that it was a resistance, a very
important kind of resistance.
A part of my personal family background has been
working class, but it was a mixed family, because educationally
my mother went to university and my father didn' t-so it both
was and wasn't a working-class family 1 think there was a lot of
experiential and lived family hist ory that had me feeling li ke 1
wasn't like everyone else, and left me feeling a little bit ill at
ease-whi ch may seem funny when people see the way 1 dress. It
seems hard for them to believe that I reall y want t o be accepted.
or be part of the norm. But 1 do--l think it's about coherence. I
want to have a sense of rootedness, of history, of knowing where
I'm goi ng.
2
Introduction
3
4
For most of her life dian worked simultaneously as a teacher and a
student. In the early 1960s she took art , art history, and English courses,
and discovered radical politics, at Immaculate Heart College in
California. One of her teachers there was Corita Kent , an artist with her
own inspiring, gift ed wildness. Kent became one of dian's major artistic
and educational influences! During dian's time at the college she met
Chuck Marino, and they married in 1964 (eventually having two
daughters, Sara and Jenny).
Over the next thirty years dian taught in institutions at almost
every level. from primary school through high school to university
postgraduate studies. But she also taught outside instit uti ons Her
students included factory workers in Finland; Villagers in France; slum
dwellers and scavengers in fndonesia; Native Americans and university
professors in the United States; community workers in Venezuela; adult
educators in Chile and Thailand; and corporate execut ives, civil servants,
union leaders, underground immigrant workers, and homeless women in
Canada. The list could go on and on.
After a stint teaching at an experimental school in inner-city Los
Angeles (1964-65) she and Chuck spent a few years teaching and learning
in Edinburgh, Scotland, where dian taught at the very real school that
Muriel Spark's fictitious Miss Jean Brodi e had served so well in her
prime. In Edinburgh Chuck got notice that he was being drafted into the
U.S army-which meant. of course, the distinct possibility of fighting in
the escalating Vietnam War. They refused the invitation and moved to
Canada. Chuck got a teaching job at a relatively new institution, York
University (founded in 1959 as a small affiliate of the Uni versity of
Toronto, it got its independence in 1965). Dian also began working at
York, first as a tutor in 1971, then as a teaching assistant. part-time
lecturer. and later as course director in the Department of Psychology at
York's Atkinson College
She also worked on postgraduate degrees in environmental
studies at York University (1974) adult education at the University of
Toronto's O.I.S.E. (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, 1977, 1984)
"My Ph.D. committee warned me that one of my problems was I wanted
to learn:' she said in an interview' She also wanted to transform the
nature of learning. She once altered the environment of Envi ronmental
Studies by creating giant "tubes" made of clear plastic sheets with all
sorts of stuff-artwork, messages, declarations, celebrations, critiques,
greetings-stuck onto the inside of them and hanging down all over.
Wild Garden
Students, professors, and staff had to walk through t he tube-lined halls
to get t o offices and cl assrooms.
By 1984 she had become a professor in York University's Faculty
of Environmental Studies-though it was never easy for her worki ng in
the belly of the beast, as she said: "I think most of the education that
happens in uni versities is domesticating and maintains current political
relations It's not really aimed at changing very much. That's not my goal
In fact I would like to change things quite deeply and dramatically'"
At the very same ti me, and perhaps most essentially, she had
become deepl y involved, outside the university setting, in the adult
educati on movement (including literacy and participatory research),
internati onal solidarity, anti-psychiatry/mental health organizing, and
environmental education. She was a founder. with Budd Hall and Ted
Jackson, of the Partici patory Research Group IPRG), an organization
linked to the International Council on Adult Educati on and springing
from a criti que of the domi nant research met hods of the day The PRG
supported activist research by
women garment workers, Nat ive
band councils, immigrant youth
groups, and trade union health and
safety committees. As a result. for
instance, in 1978-80 dian was
teaching English t o new immigrant
workers in Toronto workplaces in a
collaboration between labour unions
and plant management. boards of
education and community organi-
zations. The classes were held in
factory cafet erias.
She also, always, did her
art-provocative, colourful work, a
rich and playful blend of socially
committed and personal expression
The art-sometimes produced collec-
tivel y and sometimes on her own One flower holding it all together
-challenges traditional relationships between people, nature, and
media. "To create means to relate," her teacher Cori ta Kent wrote. "The
root meaning of the word art is to fit together and we all do this every day.
Not all of us are painters but we are all artist s. Each ti me we fit thi ngs
Introduction
6
;
together we are creati ng-whether it is to make a loaf of bread. a child. a
day. "" As a teacher and an artist dian al ways seemed to find ways of
breaki ng down establi shed ways of seeing things in order to find
divergent angles. to open up new spaces for resistance-translated into
art. for instance. as "the spaces between."
The articl es in this book were written. or spoken (two of t hem are based
on interviews, and a couple more delivered at conferences), in a span of
intense activity between 1980 and 1990. They are both autobiographical
and about autobiography. They are about teachi ng in university and
community settings, about methodology and technique. They are about
using art for education and action, taking risks and problem-solvi ng,
shi fting "frames," and recognizing and reorganizing the structures
that govern our everyday lives. They are about rethinking, or
re:framing, everyday life and the rol es of working and
teaching; about integrati ng creati vity, intui tion, and
ideology in art, learning, and action.
In some ways t he art icles reflect changes in the
educational thought of the time; in how to do poli tical
education. They reveal a process of changing
methodology in the practice of criti cal or political
education. In doing t his they refl ect changes within the
wider radical education movement: the shift in the
1970s away from teachers and acti vists (consciously or
unconsci ously) thinking they had the answers to how the
world works. and that they had only to work at finding the best
way of leading students or participants towards those answers; and
moving towards an integrat ed stance of seeing learning-and
resistance-as a jointly negotiated process on the part of teacher and
learner. Dian marino saw femi nist and postmodern thought as friendly
aids to her critique of the tidier facilitation methods she had bought into
with a certain amount of discomfort. This particular pedagogy involved
messiness and disruption- "disruptively connected," dian called it-but
could ultimately lead to more fruitful learning, and possibly to new
directions for both teacher and student. Still, she also loved to give a
good lecture, one of the most traditional pedagogical techniques.
although the lectures were distinctly conversational in tone.
Wild Garden
Problem-solving in imaginative or creative ways is a constant
theme of this work But the problem-solving did not happen in isolation
from a social setting. It was not something t hat was mystical or "new
age" or that relied sol ely on logical analysis Much of it focused on
metaphor and "The language of t ransformati on and imaginati on is
extremely important to me," she says "As art ist I feel I've committed
a lot of my life to working to have people imagine and express
alternative visions. As we're going through a process of decolonizing,
we're also expressing transformative visions, alternati ves, trying to make
our worlds and our contexts healthier, better places to be"
The changes in dian's visual art run hand-in-hand with her
practice of educati on and activism. Some pieces (like "Songs of struggle
and celebration') were collective productions; some were done for
political projects, meet i ngs, events. Some were si mpl y the work of a
political ly engaged arti st sifting through the complexities and contra-
dictions (and the funny side) of life. Although she drew, illustrated, and
painted extensively, di an worked primarily i n silk-screening (serigraphy)'
a print-maki ng process using a fine-mesh silk-screen through which
paint is forced onto paper (see "Landscape for an Easily Influenced
Mind") Screen-printi ng, one of t he newest of t he graphic arts-dating
back only t o the beginning of the century-caught on particularly with
artists and activist s from the 1960s on They rea li zed it was an
inexpensive and way of making multicolour prints on paper and
cloth, and it required a minimum of equipment and machinery. (Today
you can find beginners' si lk-screening kits i n t he children's sections of
stationary and art supply stores.)
Dian used silk-screening to deal with issues of politics, power,
gender, the environment. or simply to exalt, disparage, celebrate, or
complain about the structures of "everyday life"-Iooking for the
aesthetic in the everyday the "everyday spectacl es." While some popul ar
art was playi ng with pi eces of daily life, such as soup cans (in a
decidedly framework), dian was t he place of stove
tops and TVs-the "Willowdale worldview"-and wondering how these
things fit into her own life, the lives of women, and the relationships of
power and oppression Whether dian was working with community
organizations or on a personal piece, she often proved to be a scavenger,
"collect ing and connecting seemingly unrelated material, events, ideas,
and occurrences""
IntroduCtion 7

The production and critical reflection included a focus on the
very act of producing art , the nature of individual and collective creation.
Dian would name individual prints from one production differently, and
she would number pri nts mi sleadingly. Inst ead of numbering a set of
prints consecutively from one t o ten, for example, she might give five or
six of them the number one. While she made a choice to stay root ed in
activism and education rather than enter the mainstream art world, she
was clearly part of an emerging practice of art-a
practice that challenges the constructi on of t he arti st as lone producer
and instead locates art inside a constellation of relati onships and
interests and discussions: re:framing what we see as art. She was
interested in demystifying the producti on processes of art and in using
drawing, painting, collaging. photography. and role play
as ways of communicating. ways of learning.
Her art pervaded her life. In t he hospital a few days before she
died. with all three members of her immediate family sitting on the bed.
dian asked if they could see the bird perched on her knee. She qui ckly
noticed the puzzled response. deduced that she was hallucinating. and
then, with a smil e, suggested, 'Sara. get a pen and I'll tell you how to
draw it" The result was a bird much like the one portrayed in her
"Bird on the edge about t o ... "
}( Bird on the edge about to ... (1975)
8 Wild Garden
The art (like the teaching) was often wild and flamboyant , but t hen too
so was dian marino. One day you might see her wearing a ring of silver
hearts on her head. Another day it would be neon pink plastic stars. Dian
wrote her name self-consciously in lower-case letters, not just out of a
sense of arti stic playfulness but more seri ously to foreground questions
of authority and power In 1960 a teacher who hadn't qui te got her intent
noted at the end of an essay, "Your principle of capitalization seems
obscure"
In her work and everyday life she was a champion of resistance,
especially resistance to received notions of "artist" and "educator " She
was consistently concerned wi th relations of power, of all types, and the
resulting need not just for resistance t o power but al so for strategies of
empowerment , of all types; although later on she began to have doubts
about the much-used word "empower. " In "Reveali ng Assumptions, " she
says, "You can't empower people ... I think that is a real consumer use of
the word empower"
As a teacher di an was engrossed in the critical examinati on of
the theories and practice of learning. In her classes she discussed crit ical
education, creat ivity, storytelling, and the theories of Gramsci. As a
critical educat or she combined a number of different methods: lectures,
small group discussions, drama, popul ar education t echniques, and
visual expression, among others. Her st orytelli ng strategy worked to form
meaning out of experience. She resisted the academic understanding of
knowl edge as totally scientific, exact, exacti ng, handed down. For her
students and others the challenge would always be there to rethink
assumptions and reflect on t he notion that each of us is a knowledge
producer; each of us has an important personal voice. "A l ot of what
critical education is about is t aking ourselves seriously as producers of
knowledge," she told students'"
No discussion of dian's work can ignore it s theoreti cal
grounding. She embraced theoretical discourse and loved to develop her
understanding of complex ideas; t o communicate those ideas in ways
tailored to her audience and the moment; and, perhaps most
importantly, to stimulate and encourage their modifi cat ion, adaptation,
and application to current circumstances. Three theoretical notions were
particularly important to her conjunctural meaning, hegemony, and
re:framing.
Introduction
9
10
people in passing' what's heard and no heard
Wal ing down Bloor 5 ree lhis summer, not far from where I live-I
wear th se hea -shaped sun glasses, and you can tell when people
hit your ey The rest of my clothes ar quite au rage-ous, but people
can avoid that. can control themsel , either looking down or off in
another direction.
But wha I found with my heart-shaped glasses IS that the
people will work heir way up, and wh n they gel to th glasses
they'll laugh, or they'll smite. or they'll giggle, or th y'll want to know
wh re I got hem. I 's all just too funny 0 be- taken seriously. I hink
part a wha happens with people and my clothes sometimes is they
get nervous about me. Maybe it's important. You know, that it's a
s dous kind of hing, and When they get to he heart-shaped glasses
they move to ana her level. Somehow or other, h y can't restrain
themselv .. they smil
I deHghts mohave encounters wi h people I don't know,
will never know again, and to have that passing mom n of contact
that is memorable, I rememb r the faces of people (fS hey go
by, as they smile. And I'm sure they remember the momen 00.
One time I was walking along Bloor Street with my husband
Chuck and the kids, just east of Brunswick Avenue. They were ahead
of me and had just crossed the stree to go 0 our car, which was
parked a Ii Ie way down a sid 51r et. I was wal ing along, and this
guy was about fifteen ee away from me. He spreads ou his arms
and yells out, "YOU LOO FANTASTIC!" He was very heatric:al about
it, and I miled bad<, Then he cam ov rome and said. in a voice
that only I could hear-"butabitostenta
H turned around and walked away ... and I'm glowtng with
laugh ert because everyo e nearby hard the very loud Irst part, no
th second. Then, fi een eet behind me now, he said, as loudly as he
could, And make sure you wear the sam thlO9 tomorrow!"
Wild Garden
I th,ink for me humour and playfulness have to be so many layers.
There is an element of th absurd, or paradoxical or contradictory,
tha just makes my playfulness come to the forefront. Uke one time
in an art class an artist was holding forth on abstract painting. He
said something abou an ~ a b s t r a c t priest," and I fell off my chair
laughing. I couldn't contain myself. This very serious talk had gone
too far. "Abstract priest' was 5uch a contradiction, and at the same
time it was accurate. I mean, priests are real people. They aren'
abstract, and they also act right out of it. At one fell swoop this
artist had described about six aspects of a reality.
As an inveterate storyteller dian was always givi ng out accounts
of herself as situated in specifi c "conjunctures," relating stories and
ti mes i n which she had made decisions t hat changed her as an arti st and
educat or. She reflected on the ci rcumstances that shaped her. Wit h
distinct pleasure and pride in her mother' S idi osyncratic ingenuity, she
would t race her own creativi ty back t o her mother'S uni que use of
conventi onal househol d items.
To see meani ngs as "conjunct ural" is to suggest that what are
normally descri bed as "objecti ve truths" are better understood as events
or moments in whi ch we are looking at or experiencing a unique comi ng
together of particul ar forces, of rel ations and their history, and of space-
ti me frames- and that all of these elements can vary according t o how
we adj ust our lens
9
We may want to examine a conjunct ure wi t hin the
frame of a decade, a year, or a day; or withi n a nati on, a ci ty, a
neighbourhood, a famil y, or a backyard
Introduction 11
not quite according to the manufacturer's
instructions
While visiting my childhood home in Milwaukee, I came across
my mother washin ome dishes at the kitchen sink. A not
llnfamiliar sight. I looked around the ki chen and everything Was
idy, in order. Too much order. It se med like something was
amiss.
"Isn't it pickling timer I a ked.
e5, i s that ime of year," my mo her answered.
"Then wher are he gherkins?"
Hln the bas ment."
Oh, of course, t he basem nt. I thought, and headed
downstairs to view the harvest as if aI/ was right and proper.
Half- way down I wond red, "Why on earth would the gherkins be
n the basementr Then, as I looked around e basement the
gh rkins were still not in evid nce. "Where are they?" I shouted
UP he staI rs. "In the washing machine," my mother called back,
qUite nonchalantly and totally unexp ctedly. I wal ed over to the
washer and opened the lid 0 see dozens of baby cucumbers
being rliC Iy tossed around in the watery cycle of the Maytag.
"Not wha he salesmen had in mind," I laughed to
myself. As I returned upstairs, inspired by my mo h r's ingenuity,
J laughed harder and harder as I pictured washing machines the
neighbou hood over- all Illed wi h Ii Ie green gherkins gently
bathing in cool bas ments in lhe hot a emoon.
Dian oft en described the hard work of critical educati on in the
context of social st ruggle, often in coalitions of interest s, as being about
"keeping difficult company" She said, '" always try t o keep some difficul t
company." Another t i me she put this less delicat ely as needing to have
"at least two asshoIes around." And yet another time:
Wild Garden
When I worked at Parti cipatory Research I found we had a lot of
homogenei ty about our values, and i felt if I didn't get myself
into diverse situations I woul d slip into great arrogance I would
start to think the whole world ran like our little bit. and if it
didn't it ought to or we're in deep and serious sh it What I had to
do to keep myself open (I would it humble) i s t o loiter with
other kinds of folks.'O
This need for "diffi cult company" can be seen as both a pragmatic and an
ideali stic vent ure pragmaticall y it recogn that those involved in
emancipatory education have differences that can cause creative
tensions; idealistically, it implies the need to embrace and negotiate
difference in order to evolve collectively The significance of conjunctural
meaning lies in its potential for helping us t o embrace and include bot h
objective and subjective (constructionist. intuitive) ways of knowing.
Donna Haraway, a professor in the History of Consciousness program at
the University of California, Santa Cruz, points, for instance, to the
danger for feminists of narrowing this search, of analysing everything
from the point of vi ew of radical constructi vism.
11
According to Haraway,
a rejection of "obj ectivity" as having any legitimate meaning will almost
certainly exclude the constructivist from t he terrain of scient ific inquiry,
all owi ng patri archal science to proceed without any accountability to
femini st criticism.
"Hegemony" is a cent ral theoretical construct in dian marino's work t hat
names a process of social-pol iti cal control persuasion of the mass of
society by a coalition of ruling-class interests, involving the consent of
the masses themselves (persuasion from above, and consent from
below) As media analyst Todd Gitlin explai ns the concept of hegemony:
"Those who rule t he dominant institutions secure their power in large
measure directly and indirectly, by impressing their definitions of the
situation upon those t hey ruie and, if not usurping the whole of
ideological space, still Significantly limiting what is thought throughout
the society""
What was once achieved by brute force-and still is today in
some s o c i e t i e s ~ i s now more often achieved through the promotion and
In t rod uction 13
14
legitimation of ideologies passed off as "common sense." The mass
media, education systems, entertai nment and publicity industries,
popul ar culture instit utions, and institutional ized religions all playa
major role in conveying ideology as simple, unassail able reality
Hegemony depends in good measure on both the obscuring (or mystifi-
cation) of power relations and the threat of coercion As di an puts it in
"Landscape for an Easily Influenced Mind," which opens this collection:
"[ like the relational aspect of a concept like Ihegemony! as it resonates
with my experience and my art. I al so li ke the flexibility the concept gives
me to move between the individual and the social; it tells me that
consent can be both personal and socia!. "
Another Gramscian term, "counterhegemony," signifies the
oppositional struggl e for a new hegemony. If we see hegemony as a
system t hat organizes consent, we have the choi ce of reorganizing or
disorganizing that consent. If hegemony is a frame, we can chall enge
that frame and work to "re:frame" what ever it is that is caught wi thin our
sights. One of Corita Kent's art-class exercises had a life-long impact on
dian Kent would ask her students to glue Popsicle sticks together in
some sort of frame-square, rectangl e, triangle, or whatever-and t hen
to go outdoors and throw their frames into the air as far as they could.
She asked the students to study what was "framed" wherever the st icks
landed, and to notice how the frame interacted with what was framed,
the "subject " In her thesis "Re:framing: A Critical Interpretation of the
Collective production of Popular Education Materials," dian concludes
that reframing "is most likely to happen when a group i n the process of
producing something concrete (as in popular educational materials)
expresses and confronts the context of current everyday problems."13
A reJraming that disorganizes while reorganizing consent has
the potent ial to be a powerful anti-hegemonic t ool. Dian argues that
consent is never one hundred per cent, that an individual 's or a group's
consent to the hegemonic routine is never compl ete-it is always in
process-being established and re-established daily There are always a
few ledges, a few cracks, in the seemingly "monolithic" wall of consent.
When people work collecti vely, opport unities arise in which
communicati on and negotiation are necessary in order to proceed with
the work at hand. These are opportunities to convey different
experi ences of creativity, co-operation, and leadership. They allow for the
posing of cri tical questions t hat can serve as frames for dialogue and
collective learning. As understandings of different experiences are
Wild Garden
negotiated, opportuni t ies to experience and refl ect on cracks in consent
proliferate. The dialogues that happen in group situations are fil led with
chances to examine, even widen, cracks in consent
In this process of re:framing dian used a pedagogical tool that
she called the "st ructured criticism," which involved a student identifyi ng
two or three connecti ons made in a class-from a reading, an event , or
perhaps the class dynamic itself Students were encouraged to do the
exercise quickly, to use whimsical or personal headlines to title their
thoughts, and to challenge their own thinking
Dian told the following story to new students of the Faculty of
Environmental Studies:
There was once a general of war who was t ired of
fighting. He had spent his whole life perfecting his skill in all the
arts of war, save archery, but now he was weary and wanted to
end his career as a fighter. He decided to spend the rest of his
days studying archery, and he began to search far and wide for a
master who would teach him.
After much j ourneying he found a monastery where they
taught archery, so he went in and asked if he could live there
and study. He stayed ten years, practising and perfecting his skill
as an archer. One day the abbot of the monastery came to him
and told him he had to leave. The general of war protested,
saying t hat his life in t he world outside the monastery was over
and that all he wished was to spend the rest of his days there.
But the abbot insisted, saying the general was now a great
archer and he must leave and go into the world and teach what
he had learned.
The general did as he was told, and having nowhere else
to go he decided to return to the village of his birth. After a long
journey he was finally nearing the village when he noticed a
bull's-eye drawn on a tree, with an arrow dead-centre in the
Introduction
16
target H was surprised by thi , and even more surprised as he
walked on to find other rees wi h bull's-ey drawn on them, with
arrows in the centre of every one. As h kept walking he saw, on
he barns and the buildings of the own, dozens, hundreds, of
bull's-eyes, all with arrows stuck in the cent e.
The peace he had attained in all hears 0 monas it life
and training left him, and he approa hed the Id rs of the town,
indignan that after te years of d voted s udy h should return to
his own home and find an afcher more skilled than he was. H
demanded hat the elders g t this master archer 0 meet him by an
old mill at the edge 0 town in one hour.
WaJ lng by the mill, the gen ral saw no one coming to
mee hfm, hough he noticed a young girl plaYIng by the river.
Ev ntually he girl came over, looked up at him, and asked, -Are you
wai ing for someone)"
"Go away," he said,
"No, no," said the girl, you look like you're wat ing for
someone, and I was tol d a come and n eet someone her .
The general looked unbelievingly at the little girl and sold,
"I'm waiting for the ma ter archer re ponsible or he hundreds of
perfect shots I see around h re."
"That' me," aid the girl.
The general, even mo sceptical now, said, "If you're
telling the truth, explaIn to me. how you can get a perfect sho
every single' tim you shoot our arrow."
" T h a t ' ~ easy," said the girl "I take my arrow and I draw I
ba k in the bow and pOint j' ve'ry, very waigh Then' let i go and
whf:rever it lands I draw a buJl' -eye. ~
Wild Garden
A folk-t al e like the story of
the general and bull's-eyes, a story
that dian would tell her students
at the beginning of a course,
would become a way of disarming
listeners, dealing wi th the
inevitable nervousness of
beginning and communicating a
sense of care and fun This is a
radica lly subjective story to
introduce to new students coming
into the uni versity to be
"instructed." The truly radical
teaching here is communicated
metaphorically define your own
frame. The story enlarges one of the
"cracks" in dian's consent: as an
academic authority she is
authorizing students to define
their own terms, and she is doing
this not in a didactic way but in
the form of a narrative that allows
for mUltiple interpretati ons. For
dian there are always contra-
dictions and disruptions (a
favourite word)-and the "contra-
dictions" and "di srupti ve
participation" aren't just in the
capitalist mainstream of
controlling institutions, but in her
own work, thought, feelings There
International Conference on Participatory Research,
Venezuela, 1979, with Budd Hall
are al ways "mul tiple answers to problems," t here is always
'unexpected." The term "creative misinterpretation" is hers; according to
friends and colleagues Leesa Fawcett and Ray Rogers, "She used it to
describe the way someone would !deliberately or otherwise I misinterpret
a question or piece of information so as to respond in such a way that
created a different perspective on 'what we already know' and shed new
light on it. "''
Introduction
~ ! !
' v ~ '
~ -
.:f f
17
18
Through this pract ice of re:framing, learning becomes not simply
a cognitive but also an emotional undertaking. As one of her students
put it, "The entire class would be howling wi th laught er, and then we
would stop and we'd realize-hey!- l've never thought about that
before."ls
"Always be passionately aware that you could be completely wrong." This
sobering aphorism acts as an excellent gatekeeper to the portals of
critical thought. Dian mari no taught many of us t o open ourselves to
unasked for and unpredict able learni ngs.
Indeed, the articles and art collected here show t hat dian hersel f
was ever changi ng, shifting in her positions and point of view. She was
.always exploring where she had gone in her classrooms and in her
relations with people. looking at what had gone right and, just as often,
what had gone wrong or, more importantly, gone missing-what had
been silenced-what were the limitations of her methodology or
approach.
Linda Briskin, a friend and c o ~ w o r k e r at York University,
remarked on how dian shared her craft with people around her, the way
"she went boldl y to the truth of t hings when many of us hesit ated ... the
way she surrounded herself with colour and light, hearts and stars,
invigorating every room she was in. dian's joy, her sense of the possible,
and her outrageousness inspired new ways of seeing and being with the
ordinary." 16
Had she lived there i s no way of telli ng where she would have
been now, in the closing years of the 1 990s, or what she would have
thought about the content of these articles or the reproducti on of her
art. But we are certain that she would have gone on deconstructing,
reconstructing, taking risks, "embracing the mess"-Iearning by mistakes,
affirming mistakes, and bounci ng wild and wonderful ideas around in a
constant effort to subvert authori ty and shift the location of power and
what she calls "the chunks of lived process."
Wild Garden
EI'4
1. Landscape for an I
EaSi ly Influenced MindV
Reflec ti ons on My Experience as
an Artist and Educ ator /
M
ine is not an unrelenting story of resistance. I see myself as very
much embedded in my community, with all the complexities that
accompany a sense of place. The story of my education is like other
stories, very untidy, cluttered with moments clarity and simplicity as
19
well as with curiously unfinished or incomplet e thought s. There is a
wildness in me and the world I am part of. which I have to respect, and
at the same time I know I have undergone a process of soci al
construction as an artist and educator
My personal-and selective-history is not, then, a dichot omous
development but rather a rain forest of moveable relations. It is closer t o
a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel than a ministry of education report . In
any case, I like to think that at least some of the materials I've produced
as "artist" over the years illustrate this proposition: that critical thinking
and production can have creativity as an intimate constituent. These
tools help to explain some of the questi ons/confusions from my past
experiences and have also enhanced my practice as an art ist and teacher.
Some of the tools-like the term hegemony--can seem heavy, perhaps,
but 1 like the relational aspect of a concept like that as it resonates wit h
my experience and my art. I also like the flexibility the concept gives me
to move between the individual and the social; it tells me t hat consent
can be both personal and social.
he g e:rn 0 n y Writer Phil ip Slater tells a story:
Wf
20
Once there was a man who lost his legs and was bli nded in an accident. To
compensate for his losses, he developed great strength and agilit y in his hands
and arms, and great acuity in hearing. He composed magnificent music and
performed amazing feats. Others were so impressed with his achievements
that they had tflemselves bli nded and their legs amputated I
This parable shocks us. "Certainly none of us would be so stupid as to
blind or maim ourselves, " we respond. Yet, frequently, to interpret our
experience we have been persuaded t o use categories (names) that are
or distracting. When I was thirty I was still using the
category "girl " t o organize how I thought about myself No one had to
come and point a gun at my head and say, "dian, don't take yourself
seriously" The attitude came with the name (category) that I was using
to think about myself. Where did! learn to interpret myself in this less
than empowering way? All those everyday spots-the family, school,
media, work, even play-persuaded me to see the world from someone
else's point of view, without questioning how it might work differently for
me.
Wild Garden
This sort of persuasion is not always i ntenti onal. The peopl e in
power are socialized too, and I think it is not so useful to think of
persuasion only in a conspiratorial framework
2
IGramsci 'sj concept of hegemony embodied a hypothesis that
wi thin a social order, there must be a substratum of
agreement so powerful that it can counteract the division and
disruptive forces arising from conflicting interests .. The masses,
Gramsci seems to be saying, are confi ned withi n the boundaries
of the dominant worldview, a divergent, loosely adjusted
patchwork of ideas and outlooks, which despite heterogeneity,
unambiguously serves the interest of the powerful. by mystifying
power relations. by justifying various forms of sacrifi ce and
deprivation, by inducing fatalism and passivity, and by narrowing
mental horizons .... The reigning ideology molds desires, values
and expectati ons in a way that st abilizes an inegalitarian
system.'
wild gardens
Environment is really important. I have to look at organic matter in
order 0 be creative. I find built environmen interesting and
oppressive. Because I use' everything that is within two and a half
feet of me I have to take care that everything within two and a half
feet of me is beautiful.
I'll grant you that my de mition of wild g-ardens may not be
everyone's definition of Some people take tranquillizers to
survive. I need a wild garden. If I cannot see or go among trees and
plants I feel myself shrivelling up. I absolu ely need that kind of wild
beauty, j nurtures m .
I also need at least "'10 assholes around. I I'm only around
people I love, I search out asshol . I wan people to challenge me.
Landscape for an Influenced Mind 21
W,
22
Consent-the other side of persuasion- is complicat ed and
never comes without some resistance. When we consent to something
we take on a position that is not necessari ly in our best interests. The
languages of resistance are the ways in which we reveal to ourselves and
others that we are questioning the story I use the phrase "cracks in
consent" to construct from our personal narrat ives a hi story of resist ance
and even transformation. This shift to a more explicitly political
orientati on can lead to empowerment, but it is not easy or automat ic
There are also lots of examples of incomplete or sabotaged resistance.
Collective silk-screen with YWCA Committee on Violence
Against Women Internationally (1984)
V,/ild Garden

hands on
Identifying Cracks in Consent
Use this tool when you want to clarify how we might be unintentionally
reproducing hegemonic patterns in our own lives and work, and to
consi der how we might develop alternatives.
Everyone has a history of resistance, but we might not remember this history as
being about resistance because it is often coded in the language of the persuader.
The resistance might have been seen, for instance, as bad behaviour, inappropriate
actions, wrong attitudes, breaking the rules, or something calling for punishment.
These histories of resistance have an impact on our efforts to develop a sense of
control over our learning.
This tool is meant as a way for us to recover and become sensitive to the
various voices of hegemony in our day-to-day lives. I've divided these voices into
four groups:
a) phrases of persuasion. These are expressions used by people in power to persuade
us that it is in our best interests to support their practices and polici es. For
instance, "We have no other choices, it's inevitable," or "The tide of t echnology
and economics can't be reversed," or "The marketplace has to decide."
b) phrases of consent. When we try to make sense of our difficulties of making ends
meet, we can sometimes hear ourselves uttering consent phrases: '" can't seem to
get ahead, but we're all more or less in the same boat, so what can you do?" or
"This is a very complex problem, so let the experts [those in power] figure it out,"
or "It's just the way things are."
c) phrases of resi stance. There are times when we actively resist or say no to
something: "No to lead poisoning," or "No to the de-indexing of pensions," or "No
to more hospital cutbacks," or "No to nuclear weapons."
d) phrases of transformati on. These tend to describe a sense of well-being or of
power to change something, not just individually but structurally or socially. Such
phrases need to be used to celebrate and remember a particular moment or
situation from the point of view of those who now feel more empowered. In a
Landscape for Influenced Mind 23
24
hands on
language of persuasion, people take individual blame for problems; in a language
of transformati on they begin to look at the systemic relat ions that create and
maintain the problems.
The phrases can often represent small and scarcely noticeable shifts. For
example, a group of people who were evaluating a project obj ected to the
heading "What we did wrong" and changed it t o "What we could do better,"
which they felt both affirmed thei r efforts and allowed them to be tough-minded
critics at the same time.
Or the phrases might represent a more dramatic shift in approach to a
problem. Someone in a factory, for instance, might be heard saying, "That
machine almost took my hand off. I should have known better-everyone knows
that you have to be careful on that machine." But a phrase of transformation
would be something like: "The company has known about the problems with that
machine for ages. They should do something about it-or we/ve got to get them to
do something about it."
What we want to do is
1. Identify key phrases that are a part of ei ther the persuasi on or consent aspect of
hegemony.
2. Recover our own histories of resi stance.
3. Identify how we might express our resistance and identify possible means of
transformation.
Here's how t o do it
1. Ask participants to break into groups based on their everyday work situations.
2. Then ask each person in the group to say four or five sentences about key charac-
teristics of their work situations.
3. Ask participants to brainstorm phrases of persuasion-phrases used by peopl e in
positions of power-that have pressured them to do something that from past
experience or through reflection they can now see was not in their best interests.
These phrases of persuasion can come from a wide range of voices: from
politicians-local, national, or international-to workplace "managers" or the
mainstream media.
Wild Garden
hands on
4. Ask participants to brainstorm phrases of consent-expressions they've used
themselves, or that they've heard others saying- t hat tend to push them or the
others to agree to do something that may not be in their best interests.
5. Next, brainstorm a list of phrases of resistance-words that participants remember
saying themselves at certain times, or that they've witnessed in their own lives.
6. Ask participants to generate a list of phrases of transformation-things they say
when they feel that some significant change has taken place.
7. Report back: the phrases that the group comes up with in the various steps can
be reported back in a plenary session. Or they can be used as raw material for
producing a group mural or a soci o- drama, or used in some other creative way to
carry the learnings experienced in the small group out to the large group.
Languages of transformation are often compl icated. because they
propose an alternative and try not to reproduce relations of power over
people or places or ot her species. This is somet imes referred to as
counternegemony, but I find that often we use parall el constructions so that
too frequently counterhegemony comes to mean persuading and
obtaining a different consent and thus reproducing relations of
domination and subordination. The language of consent can dull our
imaginations in one sense, in that we become so used to thinking about
teaching, for example, as in "J am persuading and I have a position and
am not obiective"- and feel that we are therefore imposing ourselves-
or we hide our position and present an "objective account"-thus trying
not to impose our position. The notion that we can communicate and
articulate our positions, engaging with people but not overpowering
them, seems uni magi nable
from consent
to disruption
When we consent we use phrases that support the language of
persuasion. We police ourselves by continually repeating ideas like "This
is too complex," or "I'm not an expert." or "It's just the way things are and
who am I to tell the president he's naked?" We learn these phrases
throughout our life-long education. The persuasion of the dominant
powers establishes a powerful socializing of our imaginations that leads
us too often to making choices contrary to our own interests.
Landscape for an Influenced Mind
25
26
Recently I visited my parents' home, and many of the drawings
and paintings that I had made during high school were up on the wall s.
was struck by their stat ic quali ties. They were often of obj ects and about
objects rather than relationships For me this was an example of my
consenting to a passive interpretation of my subjectivity as well as of my
role in representing the subjectivi t y of the world. StilL the works were
about whatever was right under my nose The subject-matter was seldom
the exotic but usually an exploration of an everyday thing. I think there
are cracks in our consent, and we resist where we can.
There seem to be acts of resist ance throughout our individual
and social histories. Many of these actions of resistance, while
courageous and creative, appear to be appropriated by the mainstream.
We can all probably remember moments in our own personal histories
where we said, "No, that's not fair," or "No, you' re not doing what you
said you would." We stand up to authority, whether it is at home, schooL
with an employer, or in the community, and yet gradually we come to
understand that our clarity and wisdom are used to rationali ze the
benevolence and tolerance of liberalism. We are reduced to being
i ndi vi duals, and many different methods are used to isolate and manage
our acts so that we can sometimes be left with the feeling t hat we are
not "team players" or that we are "THE PROBLEM." There is another ki nd
of resistance, which is more social, and yet too frequently this resistance
ends up imprisoning us, not emancipating us in any long-term or
significant way. Paul Willis documents this kind of resistance in his book
about rebell ious working-class "l ads" who had a kind of organized
resistance but st ill ended up, in their own way, in maintaining existing
relations of domination and subordination, both at the macro level and
with t heir families:
Looking for the aesthetic in the everyday, in the ordi nary, is a
small gesture of advocacy. We hardly ever consent one hundred per cent
to our own invisibility, to our own subordination. Watching television, we
can all laugh at how dumb some commercial s are. Al most every day we
make critical observations or interpretations, yet somehow, until we
breach the silence and send out an active "no!" we are not able to
organize that resi stance, or take it seriously.
I now understand an incident from a high-school art class as one
of those disempowering engagements. The art teacher told me I was
"speCi al " and should work in a room by myself so I wouldn't intimidate
the rest of the class. The problem from the teacher's point of view was
Wild Garden
-
that I tended to only listen to part of her directions for the assignment s.
When I was asked t o produce one mosaic, I'd make ten. Not all of these
producti ons worked, but some of them turned out fine-original yet
connective. My peers tended to foll ow the instructi ons more carefully,
oft en sabotaging t heir own creativi ty in the process They recei ved B's
and C's, while I got !\s. But then after we were placed in separate rooms
we lost our opportuni ty to compare and talk about the work and marks.
So I was persuaded of and consented to the interpretation that as an
"artist" I was special, different. privileged, and that [ could intimidate my
peers and should stay away from t hem. I didn't wholly bel ieve this, and [
would sneak back in whenever possible and visit with them, though not
with any seri ous intentions; it was more an act of resist ing t he isolation.
! can only now imagine how disruptive it woul d have been t o
start discussing who got what grades whi le we were making mosaics-
and then to begin analysing procedures and the detai ls of where these
different marks might have come from. ! now know that creati vity is
greatly enhanced by the act of produci ng many versions of what would
ot herwise seem to be the same thing, and that the process of making art
is not such a magical or exceptional pattern it can be learned. But the
myth of artistic creat ivity haunted me t hroughout my educati on as an
arti st and was one of the most diffi cul t t o resi st and t ransform when I
wanted to work as an art ist withi n soci al st ruggles
These reflections suggest that there were procedures and
practices t hat domesti cated me as an arti st. But [ al so think there was a
wildness that came from my intuitive self and a curi ous and j ustice-
ori ented part of me that wanted hurt and pai n to be heal ed and not
denied When the concept ion of change is beyond the limits of the
possibl e, t here are no words t o art iculate di scontent, so it is sometimes
held not to exist. This mi staken belief arises because we can on ly grasp
sil ence in the moment in which it is breaking. The sound of breaking
silence makes us understand what we could not hear before. But t he fact
that we could not hear doesn't prove that no pain existed.'
Landscape for an Easily Influenced Mind 27
Jenny's gone fishing (1980)
8 . White Flowers and a
Gri Z l y Bear
Li ving w ith Can cer
W
hen I woke up in the recovery room in November 1978, my
doctor was waiting to tell me the results of the biopsy. It
couldn't happen to me; I was just thirty-seven years old. But it had-l
had breast cancer. My feelings ricocheted all over the place. I was afraid,
angry, grateful, and sad all at the same ti me. I remember thinking: 'Tve
145
146
been a caring person, how coul d thi s happen to me? It's not fair, it's so
arbitrary " I cried, wailed, and curled up into a ball, but I also continued
to work-it seemed like my sanity depended on returning to "normal" as
quickly as possible. A month of radiation treatment s began a long series
of checkups, more biopsies, and finally surgeries My last surgery was i n
1983-a lymphectomy; afterwards I was put on a hormone blocker. Last
summer, the summer of 1988, I was nearing the famous "five-year"
marker. which meant that statistically I had a much better chance of
surviving. Then I had a bone-scan and they discovered bone cancer in
two pl aces. I was put on another hormone blocker and given more
radiation. I had the summer to put my life into a new framework: "The
best we can do is slow it down," they said.
Writing this is difficult. It brings up complex and contradictory memories.
But it does add both a clarity and simplicity that wasn't there at the
time. Perhaps this article should be written by
my husband and daughters, who know what
happens when someone you love gets cancer.
Or by my friends, who've shared my fears,
anger, frustrati on. and even the small
moments of beauty that have come from
trying t o make sense of cancer.
I have resisted putting words on paper
for fear of getti ng back on an emot ional roller
coaster. Also because what has helped me to
understand and live more calmly with cancer
may not work as a "prescription" for others.
The sense of loss of control is so great with
this illness, that it is a time to be very careful
about issues of power and controL While
waiting i n clinics and hospital corri dors I have
found that many people are not as
enthusiastic as me about getting knowledge about their illnesses and for
playing an active role in their health care. Deat h is such a responsibility
that I hesitate to project my keenness to be clearer, to understand better.
onto others who share my illness. I write not to prescribe but to describe
and wonder aloud about some difficult times.
Wild Garden
For me there is irony in the act of reflecting on cancer, because
I'm the kind of person who might easily have left these thoughts until
five minutes before death. I too frequently gallop into new projects
without sufficient time for contemplati on But in trying to make sense of
cancer I think it is important to speak out in a straightforward manner.
The knowledgegained from coming to terms with this disease too easily
remains in the hands of medical professionals So I stumble for words to
speak of problems, responses, speculation, small rearrangements
As a visual artist and teacher I use many kinds of language For me the
meaning of words changes with time and place. How we use words
indicates our val ues and priorities. I have found most writing about
cancer disempowers those of us who have the disease. One example is
the use of militaristic or war-like metaphors Words and phrases like
"fight," "beat." and "win the war" are commonplace But if I get into a
"war" with my cancer, I can only interpret myself winning if my cancer
"loses" or is "defeated. " This of ei ther/or thi nking reduces all
experience to winning or losing. A person like myself wi th a "terminal"
cancer has automatically lost.
We do need a language of resistance in our struggles with
chronic illness, but it needs to a language free of militarism. I found it
wonderfully heal ing to spend quiet time in nature-a form of resistance
perhaps, but hardly a battle Even supposedly alternative language can
be infuriating. The "new age" philosophy of illness is a good example. At
first. I would go out and buy t he latest sel f-help books. only to fi nd the
basic message was "You made yourself sick. so you can heal yourself" So
simple but so damaging. It fits ail too well with mass media messages
that bombard us daily: problems are individual. not social. We're kept
disorganized with a Simplistic presentati on of blame and responsibility.
I began to think about how I got cancer. I read and asked around.
There were many possible explanations-heredity (my grandmother died
very young from breast cancer), occupational hazards (for the previous
twenty years I had made silk-screen prints using highly toxic paints and
clean-up solutions). poor diet, lack of exerci se, too much stress, birth-
control pills. and many more. Often I read that one or another of these
factors was the primary cause. I found this completely immobilizing, so
gradually I developed a map, a kind of ecology of possible causes. This
White Flowers and a Grizzly Bear
...
~ f ~ : ; ~ ~ .
147
allowed me to deal wi th those dimensions that I had some control over. I
didn't feel like I needed to have a "scient ific map," but could elaborate
my own open map so that as my experience grew I could alter it.
By the t ime cancer was diagnosed I had an excellent relationship
with my doctor. He trusted me as an expert on my aches, pains, and
feelings; I trusted him because he was able to tell me what he didn't
know as well as what he did. He also knew how to cry. Most doctors see
surgery as a response to unhealth, he told me. So advice from a surgeon
must be seen from this critical vantage point. He was open to my
exploring alternat ive health supports (li ke massage therapy) and would
ask me whether they were having any effect. It was important to me to
understand the limits of medical knowledge and to recognize the
intuitive as a legitimate part of making decisions.
In the first five years I had four surgeries. Whenever I asked the
experts about the odds of survival for different cancers, at first they
would answer ambiguousl y. When I persisted they would get more
precise. Later I learned this was ca ll ed "stagi ng," a way of finding out
what patients really want to know. Some doctors withhold information
based on whether or not they think you can handle it. I would say you
should lose those characters fast. If they can't trust you, how can you
ever t rust t hem?
I need to know as much as possible so I can get the most out of
the time I have left. It doesn't mean that I wasn' t overwhelmed and
angui shed when I heard cancer had returned. But knowledge and
understanding helped liberate me from fear, anger, and
sadness. These feelings are always close by. But now I have learned to
treat them as reminders of my current agenda- to figure my way as
creatively and peacefull y as possi ble through the last part of my life.
Wild Garden
epitaph
You had to writ hos hmgs In high school-wha do you want -saId
about you-what do you call it? That speech at the end: EPITAPH. I said
I would lik it to be known tha I wen hrough the world and caus d
eopl to be happier, to laugh more. At tI e tim I considered myself a
Mr. Blue. So I thought that was a gr at goal in lif
I was he aides in my family, my sister was eigh een months
younger than I was. and one of my cons ant recollections of being a kid
was my younger SIS er telling me to grow up and stop laughing. I saw
hings as quite funny for a long ime.
Through he middle part of my life, especially during the
seventies, I f It mar obligated, more pressure, as a woman I guess, to
be more discreet about seeing hings as fu ny all the time. I felt
White Flowers and Grizzly Bear
149
I
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I
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i
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perhaps I was laughmg and enJoYing myself too much. Maybe I had a
fear of su 55- maybe that's why I would tend to laugh instead of
being serious. Bu at hat Ime my sense was that to ge ahead-and I
am very compe it ive, a high- need achiever- weJl, I thought. maybe "m
avoiding some hing by laughing. It was also a very humanistic,
Introspective period when a lot of my frIends were trying to get rid of
their blocks. I kept holding out for keeping a few. I said, you know,
something tha '5 been a(ound for 0 long seems like you should keep
wo of hem. j ust in case, kind of like Noah's ark. And I was really
nervous about divesting myself of all kinds of blocks in those little T-
group sessions.
I use my humour 0 undermin authority, I remember a gestalt
war hop where I couldn't believe the contradictions about everyone
being free and open and equal, and the leader was obscuring the fact
tha he was totally in control of he group-he got to name" everything
that was going on, like projections, contact, unfinished business, and so
on. $0 I went after him. playfully. At the midpoint of a morning session
he calfed for a break and told people they could do whatever they
wan ed for h n t half hour. One woman went over to a corner of the
room and stood on her head. The leader remarked, "That's called
showing off." I shoLlt d out, "That's called interpretation." I was trying 0
tell him that despite wna he was teaching he was always one up on the
re of us. I would hay been comfortable if he had own d up 0 tha
but he wouldn't, He r lIy wan ed to keep i as if we wer all equal.
Wild Garden
r
192
connect are far better than never responding for fear of doing "the wrong
thing" A few people told me about their friends' ills (back pains, for
example) as a way of connecting, As much as I appreciated their concern,
I always to say, "Hey, wait a minute, this disease is life-
threatening I'm afraid I'm going to die too soon." Even now friends I
see every years will call to say hello and find out the latest
news, In moments of crisis I find it healing to know my friends are not
denying my most recent of cancer.
I'm afraid. I fear my cancer will isolate me socially, People with
intentions will treat me as incompetent and exclude me, I fear
will sorry for me and patronize me-clenying the energy and
I bring to current phase of my life. Recently a person I
considered a close friend did just that He told me he was close to me
he felt sorry for me and that I was naive to think otherwise. I felt
angry to in such a cold and clinical fashion. It is
one thing to feel sad. But if you feel sorry for me you distance yourself
from my pain in a way that denies my status as an actor in my own life.
Friends like this are toxic and I will resist being anyone's social work
project or charity case.
Last summer, during my test 1 could tell by the way the
that something had shown up. He went out of the
room and when he reappeared he said, "You look a lot younger than you
are. Do you have any children?" I "You checked my file." To which he
"Yes." I was sure that had identified some cancer.
That same day I went to my massage therapist I decided this
was a unique moment in my life when I could look into my psyche. When
I am very frightened I sometimes have the courage to face or to see the
was a
as my friend did his work [ decided to let go and see what
The first image was very surprising to me. There
carrot (white flowers composed of many smaller white
trees. Strolling through field was a
confident, and curious as he moved
he stopped and
Garden
So long it's been good to know you
laugh and I flew back into the ground except for one small white flower,
which landed on his shoul der. Together we stroll ed away.
The next day the doctors confirmed bone cancer. My husband
Chuck and J have been separated for four years, but are sti ll fi ne friends,
and almost immediately we began to look for a cottage or a place for me
t o be still. I sometimes feel my cells vibrating from too much work or not
enough sleep, and I imagine that 1 can see them all jangled and in
motion. I told Chuck that I had a recurring dream that I needed to spend
t he last part of my life on a lake surrounded by t rees with a beach. Thi s
became a guide for us We found an island we liked called Cranberry
Island, and Chuck had a cottage built
The day after we bought the property we went to look at it again,
and much to my delight in t he middle of the cranberry bog was a large
patch of white flowers The lake is called Kahshe, which I later found out
means "healing waters." I am keeping my eye out for the grizzly
White Flowers and a Grizzly Bear
IS3
So long it's been good to know you
laugh and I fl ew back i nto t he ground except for one small white flower,
which landed on hi s shoulder. Together we strolled away
The next day the doctors confirmed bone cancer. My husband
Chuck and I have been separated for four years, but are still fine friends,
and al most immediately we began to look for a cottage or a place for me
to be stilL I sometimes feel my cells vibrating from too much work or not
enough sleep, and I i magine that I can see them all jangled and in
motion, I told Chuck that I had a recurring dream t hat I needed to spend
t he last part of my on a lake surrounded t rees with a beach, This
became a guide for us. We found an island we li ked called Cranberry
Island, and Chuck had a cottage built.
The day after we bought the property we went to look at it again,
and much to my delight in the middle of the cranberry bog was a large
patch of white flowers The lake is called Kahshe, which I later found out
means "healing waters," [ am keeping my eye out for the grizzly
White Flowers and Bear 153
I
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This year some things wild
194 Wild Garden
Notes
Introduction
I. Terry Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction (New York: Verso, 199 I), p 119.
2. Lani e Melamed, i ntervi ew with dian marino, Toronto, September 1982.
3 See Corita Kent and Jan Steward, Learning blJ Heart (New York: Bantam
Books, 1992).
4. Annemari e Gallaugher., interview wi th dian marino, 987
5. "Criti cal Education for Social Change," York University course, videotape,
Ian 20, 1987.
6. Kent and Steward, Learning by Heart, p.4.
7. Kevin T Corbett , student, in Alumni Newsletter, Faculty of Environmental
Studies, Winter 1993, pA.
8. "Critical Education for Social Change," York Universi ty course, vi deotape,
Jan. 20, 1987.
9. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks , ed. Quintin Hoare and
Geoffrey Nowell -Smith (London Lawrence and Wishart , 1971), p353
10. "Critical Education for Social Change," York University course, videotape,
Jan. 20, 1987.
11. Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women The Reinvention of Nature (New
York Routledge, 1991), pp.186-87
12. Todd Gitlin, The Whole World Is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and
Unmaking of the New Left (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980),
p.IO.
13. dian marino, "Re:framing: A Critical Interpret ation of the Collective
Production of Popular Education Materials," phD. thesis, University of
Toronto, 1984, 165.
14. Introductory book proposal, by Leesa Fawcett and Ray Rogers, for
"Creative Misinterpretations Essays on Popular Education, Nature, and
Soci al Relations," mimeo, York University, undated.
15. A student's comment, in "In Celebration of dian," memorial notebook,
Toronto, Jan. 5, 1993.
16. Linda Bri skin, "I Think of You and I Am Happy," Newsletter, The York Centre
for Feminist Research, February 1993.
I. Landscape for an Easily Influenced Mind: Reflections on
My Experience as an Artist and Educator
1. Philip Slater. Earthwalk (New York: Anchor/ Doubleday, 1974), p.7.
2. E. Sull ivan, A Critical Psychology: Interpretation of the Personal World (New York
Plenum, 1984)
Notes ISS
lS6
3. J Fermia, Gramsci's Political Thought: Hegemony, Consciousness and the
Revolutionary Process (Oxford: Cl arendon Press, 1987), pp.30-45.
4. Paul Willis, Learning to Labor: How Working Class Kids Get Worki ng Class lobs
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1977)
5. Sheila Rowbotham, Woman's ConSCiousness , Man's World (Harmondsworth,
England: Penguin Books, 1973), pp.29-30.
4. Drawing from Action for Action: Drawing and Discussion
as a Popular Research Tool
I. Laurence Kubie, "Some Unresolved Problems of the Scientific Career,"
American Scientist 41,4 (1953) .
2. Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964)
3. Budd Hall , "Creating Knowledge: Breaking the Monopoly, " Working Paper
no I , Participatory Research Project , Toronto, 1977; Ross Kidd and Martin
Byram, "Popular Theatre, " Working Paper no.5, Parti ci patory Research
Project, Toronto, 1978.
4. See, for instance, Paul o Freire, LADOC Key Hole Series : Paulo Freire
(Washington, D.C: Division for Latin America, USCC, 1974).
5. Budd Hall, Practical Issues in the Democratisation of Research in Non-Formal
Education in the Commonwealth (New Del hi , India: Commonwealth
Secretariat Conference on Non-Formal Education for Development,
1979) See esp. p6.
6. Freire, LADOC Key Hole Series , p.5.
7. John Berger, Ways of Seei ng (London: BBC and Pengui n Books, 1972), p.33.
8. See, for instance, Deborah Barndt , "People Connecting with Structures: A
Photographic and Contextual Exploration of t he Conscientization
Process in a Peruvian Literacy Program." Ph.D. di ssertation, Michigan
State University, 1978; Deborah Barndt , Themes and Tools for ESL (Toronto:
Ministry of Culture and Recreation) ; P O' Gorman. "Conscientizat ion:
Whose Initiative Should It Be?" Convergence 11,1 (1978) ; and Kidd and
Byram, "Popular Theatre," p.3.
9. Rose Goldsen. The Show and Tell Machine (New York: Delta Del Publishing
Co., 1978); Stuart Ewen. Captai ns of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social
Roots of the Consumer Culture (Toronto: McGraw-Hili . 1976); Raymond
Williams, Communications (New York: Penguin Books, 1976) .
10 Klaus Mueller, The Politics of Communication (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1973).
1 L Berger, Ways of Seei ng, p.7.
12. Mike Samuels and Nancy Samuels, Seeing with the Mind's Eye: The History,
Techniques and Uses of Visualization (New York: Random House/ Bookworks
Book, 1975), pp.13, 17.
Wild Garden
13. Rudolf Arnheim, Visual Thinking (Berkeley University of California Press.
1969), pv.
14. Samuels and Samuels, Seeing with the Mind's Eye, p66
15. Meredith Tax, "Introductory: Culture Is Not Neutral. Whom Does It
Serve?" in Radical Perspectives on the Arts, ed Lee Baxandall (Baltimore
Penguin 1972), pp.23, 24.
16. Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart, How to Read Donald Duck, trans
David Kunzl e (New York International General Editions, 1975)
17. Eva Cockcroft, John Weber. and lames Weber, Toward a People's Art (New
York E.P Dutton and Co, 1977)
18, Tax, "Introductory:' p28
19, Gracie Lyons, Constructive Criticism: A Handbook (Berkeley, Cal: Issues in
Radical Therapy, 1976); Dian Marino, "Community Self-Portraits," Ideas
and Action (United Nations, Food and Agricultural Organization L nO. 124
( 1978)
20, Robert McKi m, Experiences in Visual
1972), pAO
21, Goldsen, Show and Tell Machine,
5. Obstacles to Speaking Out
(Monterey, CaL Brooks/Cole.
I, Wallace Clement, The Canadian Corporate Elite: An Analysis of Economic POlilCr
(Toronto McClelland and Stewart, 1975 L p 298
2. Ewen, Captains of Consciousness, p.29.
3. Ibid, p80
4, Judith Wi lliamson, Decoding Advertising and Meaning in Advertising
(London and Bost on Marion Boyars, 1978), pp 13, 170,
5, Hans Magnus Enzensberger. The Consciousness Industry: On Literaturi!, Politics
and the Media (New York: Seabury Press, 1974), p95
6, Ibid.
7, Armand Mattelart, Multinational Corporations and the Control of Culture: The
Ideological Apparatus of Imperialism, trans. Michael Chanam (New York
Humanities Press, 1979); lames Monaco, Media Culture (New York Del l
Publishing, 1
8, Mattelart, Mel/finational Corporations and t{le COIltral of Culture, p, 131
9, Ibid, pIli
10, Max Boas and Steve Chain, Big Mac The Unauthorized Story of McDonald s
(New York Mentor Books, 1977), p 103.
11. Ibid, P 106
12, Enzensberger, Consciousness Industry, p 113
13.lbid, p114.
14. Terry Eagleton, Marxism and Literary Criticism (London: Methuen, 19761.
p62
Notes 157
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IS8
6. Re:framing: Hegemony and Adult Education Practices
I. Ariel Dorfman, Tlie Empire's Old Clothes: What the Lone Ranger, Sabar. and Other
Innocent Heroes Do to Our Minds (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982) , p59.
2. For the literature on hegemony, see R. Simon, Gramsd's Political Thought
(London: Lawrence and Wishart. 1982).
3. Gramsci, Selections the Prison Notebooks, pA19
4. Gitlin, Whole World Is Watching, p.253
5. Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (London: Oxford University
Press, 1977). p.112
6. E. Sullivan, "Mass Media and Political Integration: Thematizing Three
Major Dailies in a Canadian City," paper presented at Annenberg
Communication Conference, Philadelphia, 1983, p.2.
7. Tony Wilden, The Imaginary Canadian: An Examination for Discovery
(Vancouver: Pulp Press, 1977), p.80.
8. See, for instance, Whole World Is Watching.
9. Sullivan, Critical PSfjcflOlogy.
10. Sullivan, Critical Psychology; Z. Bauman, Hermeneutics and Social Science (New
York Columbia University Press, 1978).
I!. Sullivan, Critical Psychology, pl21.
12. Deborah Barndt. Ferne Cristal!. and dian marino, Getting There Producing
Photostories with immigrant Women (Toronto: Between the Lines, 1982).
13. /. Akiwenzie, Halloween from Beginning to End (Toronto The Fri endship
Centre, 1979).
7. Revealing Assumptions: Teaching Participatory Research
I. Rowbotham, Woman's Consciousness, Man's World.
2. Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982)
3. R. Modlich, "Women Plan Toronto Shared Experiences and Dreams,"
Toronto, 1985; London Planning Advisory Service. 1987, "Planning for
Women: An Evaluation of Consultation in Three London Boroughs,"
London, England
Wild Garden
Notes to yourself
Notes 139