Puppets at the Milwaukee Art Build (2016) | Joe Brusky
A large heron flew over the shore of Lake Michigan at dusk, with cardboard wings spanning sixteen feet—the width of the four activists who held up the puppet’s structural rods. Its wings flapped up and down in the wind. In 2016, demonstrators carried the heron as they marched to celebrate the return of the native bird after years of fighting against oil trains that threatened the Great Lakes. It was just one of many artistic projects at the front lines of social justice movements Susan Simensky Bietila spearheaded over her storied 50-year career, from her early work as an illustrator for underground newspapers to her celebrated protest puppets. In her new book Front Lines: A Lifetime of Drawing Resistance (PM Press, 2026), Simensky Bietila assembles a collection of stories from her fight for the environment and social justice through her artwork. Simensky Bietila spoke to Public Seminar’s Julie Allan about the collection and making art in the service of struggle. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Julie Allan: Could you tell me about the initiative of writing this book and how you decided on the format of a timeline with a hybrid approach to art and text?
Susan Simensky Bietila: I had been thinking about doing a book for a while. I started it during COVID, assembling things more seriously; originally, I went to the library at the Labadie Collection at the University of Michigan and took photographs of my artwork from the underground—from RAT Subterranean News and The Guardian [The National Guardian, a leftist independent newspaper circulating from 1948 to 1992]. I still have drawings on paper from the RAT, but the other work from the last 25 years, I have the [digital] files. And so, it was just a matter of grouping things into a sequence and adding descriptions for some of the political movements. For that, I had to do some research to verify that what I was saying was real.
Allan: The book, as you said, has a lot of your previous work that involves text, photography, puppets, and prints—there is so much mixed media there. What would you say is your preferred medium, the one you feel is best received by your audience?
Simensky Bietila: There is no favorite. Generally, one good thing leads to another good thing, and different situations require different media. I photograph when I go and do political projects, and my favorite thing is working with groups of people and seeing the work out in the streets. So, there will be particular things that will inspire me to want to be part of a project.
The puppets, of course, are very, very popular. I’m invited to bring them to different events and have taught numerous classes and gatherings to do art builds and make puppets with people of all ages. And as you know from the book, what I decide to do has nothing to do with money. I’m not doing things because I’m getting paid. I’m doing them because I feel, in the moment, that it’s important to have this artwork. This puppet or this poster will help move things along, bring people together, or inform people about a particular situation.
For example, the World War 3 Illustrated is a collective I’ll be co-editing. Nobody gets paid. We do it because it’s a calling to tell these stories. And we do it because we really care about each other and enjoy coming together with all of these really wonderful political artists. We don’t all agree on everything, but we come together to produce a publication on the issues of the day. So the one for 2027 is going to be about immigration and education. It’s unfortunately the issue today: immigration and how it impacts children and schools.
Allan: You mentioned you work a lot in collaboration. How do these collaborative efforts come about? And what does this process look like?
Simensky Bietila: I was invited into the World War 3 Illustrated collective 25 to 30 years ago by people who had seen my artwork from RAT and The Guardian. I went to an art show of Seth Tobocman’s and a few of the artists from World War III were there. We started talking, and they remembered my artwork from the past.
I had been majoring in printmaking and intermedia. Long story short, I didn’t get an MFA because I was working and had children, and they demanded that you go to school full-time at UW-Milwaukee—which definitely discriminated against many women. So, I left after the MA and was very successful in having my art in shows and getting some projects reviewed. And it felt empty. It didn’t feel right for me, and it was very limiting. I was essentially creating a product. And when I got invited to work with World War 3, I was still politically active in many different movements. I was active in my community. My everyday life is [about] coming together with people, trying to change things, and seeking justice.
The stories are all pretty much autobiographical, and the decision to draw the stories is brought about by parallel situations happening at the moment. I’ve had recent college graduates tell me, after reading the book Toppling Tyrants, saying, This is exactly what happened to me when I tried to organize on campus. So, looking at a situation and knowing the trajectory of things in the present moment of repression brings me back to fighting the same kind of repression [we fought] in the past.
And then [came the] puppets. I worked with a group focused on the oil trains coming through the middle of Milwaukee. That’s the story in the book as well. I figured that doing puppets and having a flotilla on the rivers was the right way to go. We were a small group, maybe eight people, but everybody was very happy and willing to take things in the performance direction. To this day, they are delighted that they got to do that and saw it as a good way to do a public spectacle. The eight of us were able to really create a wave in Milwaukee, and then join other people who had oil train dangers in their communities.
Allan: I loved all the artworks in the book, but the sturgeon [puppet] was probably my favorite. It was just so beautiful. The way the sturgeons came back as the river healed—it was wonderful. I think one of the main things that stuck with me when reading the book was that you show not only the artwork and the process, but also the aftermath, what happens after all that action. Out of the many causes highlighted in your book, which would you say most informed your work, or most marked you?
Simensky Bietila: They all do. Of course, you are not alone in loving the sturgeon. The next issue of World War 3 is all about animals. My contribution to it is photos of the sturgeon in action. With that, I’m going to update where we are at this point with shutting down [crude oil pipeline] Enbridge Line 5.
I am in the process of collecting more materials, like the inner wiring of soccer goals and round crawl tubes. I think that there will be a big black snake sometime soon. I’ve been working on how the snake will have a jaw that moves up and down, and a tongue that shoots out.
I’ll be traveling up to the shores of Lake Superior several times this summer and building more puppets with people. There are so many things at this terrible point in history: protecting immigrants here in Milwaukee, on my block, in my neighborhood, in my city; and protecting the Great Lakes, together with the community, the communities all along the pipeline.
Allan: You mentioned that you started your book during the pandemic, and you had been active in activism for quite a few years before that, working in social justice as well as healthcare. The pandemic had a big presence in the story—as it has had in the world. How have you noticed the activist landscape change over time, especially in the post-COVID world?
Simensky Bietila: I just had more time alone during COVID. I missed being out among people, and I had a chance to work on sequencing things. I continued doing artwork during that period, but it was just very lonely. At first, of course, like everybody, I was really—with a public health background—horrified. And then the politicization of the vaccine also is just horrific.
But in activism, a lot of things went online. We know that. And I find that very alienating. Although, you know, the internet has definitely taken my artwork to so many places I’ve never been and never will go. But if I did things that just went into the ether, I’d be a very depressed person.
I think the COVID period drove people to communicate more online. The actual movements themselves are still there in the streets.
We have the confrontations over universities cracking down, like they did during the McCarthy period, against pro-Palestine organizations, which is beyond horrible and so wrong. We’re in a period where there’s so much the US itself is doing and so many terrible things that more people than ever are coming to their first demonstration. There is a political upsurge at this point like there was in the 1960s. I feel like, despite the fact that things are so awful and every gain that we’ve made over the last hundred years is being demolished, people are stepping outside of their comfort zone in a good way, in a way of coming together with other people and looking for people and places where they feel like they’re supported.
But at this moment, I think that the creativity, bravery, and mutual aid shown by people in Minneapolis has taught us all about coming together in a crisis. And being a human being in this time requires a whole other set of skills and ways of thinking than we’ve been required to have in this country. I think that in other parts of the world, different forms of mutual aid are a daily necessity. Taking your child to school, getting your groceries, being in the street, and being safe if you’re a person who isn’t a “white” person. My Native American friends, many of them, limit how much they’re out and about in different cities because of the danger of just being picked up because of having darker skin and Indigenous features. I mean, the horror of that. And it’s person after person telling me this in cities that aren’t like Minneapolis—and the wider Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area has 35,000, 45,000 Indigenous people living there—but it’s the terrorism of the government and of ICE that exists even in small towns up in the north and in the upper Midwest, along the Great Lakes. And so, making artwork must include what we have to say about this.
