Susan Simensky Bietila

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Lily Shea

A close-up of Susan Simensky Bietila.

Susan Simensky Bietila

Susan Simensky Bietila is described by PM Press as a “movement artist, agitator and cultural conspirator;” all three of those characteristics are on bold display in the Milwaukeean’s new memoir, Front Lines: A Lifetime of Drawing Resistance. In it, she chronicles six decades as an activist and an artist; her political posters, comics, protest banners, masks and giant puppets have helped fuel plenty of good trouble. This stirring narrative is accompanied by more than 100 images and 11 comics — making for a fittingly unconventional read.

media release: A Room of One's Own is thrilled to welcome Susan Simensky Bietila for an author talk on her new book Front Lines: A Lifetime of Drawing Resistance. 

This is an in-person event at A Room of One's Own Bookstore. 

Art can be more dangerous than words—especially when it marches, masks up, and takes to the streets.

Front Lines: A Lifetime of Drawing Resistance is a vivid, image-rich memoir and archive chronicling six decades of Susan Simensky Bietila’s life as a movement artist, agitator, and cultural conspirator. From underground newspapers of the 1960s to Indigenous-led water protection actions and puppet-filled protest marches of today, Bietila has never stopped making trouble—or making art.

Rejecting the elitist, male-dominated art world, Bietila came of age in the McCarthy era. She embraced feminist, collaborative, and radically democratic forms of creativity. Her political posters, comics, protest banners, masks, and giant puppets have armed countless front lines of struggle. Her art has appeared in the pages of World War 3 Illustrated and RAT Subterranean News and is wheat-pasted worldwide in the streets.

With over one hundred images, eleven comics, and a deeply insightful narrative context, Front Lines is both a blueprint for artists who want to fuel social movements and a testament to the enduring power of art made in, with, and for resistance.

Susan Simensky Bietila is based in Wisconsin and works with Indigenous water protectors and allies to stop toxic mines and oil pipelines by organizing art builds and creating banners, puppets, and masks. She works with social justice movements including Voces de la Frontera, Jewish Voice for Peace, Communities United by Water, and many others. She was a coeditor and collective member of RAT—the pioneering second-wave feminist newspaper—and later joined the World War 3 Illustrated collective, where she continues to create graphic nonfiction rooted in her activist experience. Her work has appeared in the streets and halls of power to galleries and magazines, including Fifth Estate, The Nation, and In These Times, and in books, including Anarchy and Art: From the Paris Commune to the Fall of the Berlin Wall; Wobblies: A Graphic History of the Industrial Workers of the World; and World War 3 Illustrated: 1979–2014.