Diane Therese Pinchot interview, 09 August 2016

Abstract

Sister Diane Therese Pinchot is an Ursuline Sister and Head of the Art Department at Ursuline College. A Cleveland native, Sister Diane decided to join the Ursuline community prior to going to high school. She designed and built the altar dedicated to the four churchwomen murdered in El Salvador on 2 December 1980. In this interview, she discusses her decision to enter the religious community, the love and support she found within the Ursuline Sisterhood, and the power of art as a tool to promote advocacy for social justice issues. In 2009, she served 60 days in federal prison for crossing the line at a protest against the Western Hemisphere Institute of Security Cooperation, also known as the School of the Americas. Throughout her life in the Ursuline Community she has advocated for the needs and rights of others, and discusses those issues, along with her own unique outlook on ministry throughout this interview.

Interviewee

Pinchot, Diane Therese (interviewee)

Interviewer

Randt, Naomi A. (interviewer)

Project

Protest Voices

Date

8-9-2016

Document Type

Oral History

Duration

63 minutes

Recommended Citation

"Diane Therese Pinchot interview, 09 August 2016" (2016). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 750012.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/773

Related Resources

Protest Voices @ Cleveland Voices

Transcript

Naomi A. Randt [00:00:01] My name is [Naomi A. Randt]. It’s the 9th of August 2016. I am with Sister Diane Therese Pinchot at Ursuline College. Would you please state your name for the record?

Sister Diane Therese Pinchot [00:00:11] Diane Terese Pinchot.

Naomi A. Randt [00:00:13] And do you mind spelling that for me?

Sister Diane Therese Pinchot [00:00:14] P-I-N-C-H-O-T. Diane. D-I-A-N-E. T-H-E-R-E-S-E.

Naomi A. Randt [00:00:23] Thank you.

Sister Diane Therese Pinchot [00:00:24] You’re welcome.

Naomi A. Randt [00:00:25] And where and when were you born?

Sister Diane Therese Pinchot [00:00:27] 1945. September…, in Euclid, Ohio. So I’ve lived in Cleveland my whole life.

Naomi A. Randt [00:00:35] Did you have any siblings?

Sister Diane Therese Pinchot [00:00:37] There were six of us all together, two boys and the rest girls.

Naomi A. Randt [00:00:45] What was growing up in Euclid like for you?

Sister Diane Therese Pinchot [00:00:49] It was simple, beautiful. It was after a time of the war, so it was prosperous. And we lived in the projects on Briardale, so it was very simple and small community living. And I went to school at the public school, and then I went to the high school in Villa Angela, which is now Villa Angela St. Joseph. So life was pretty simple. And I lived in the same little area that Dorothy Kazel lived in, too. She was right from St. Robert’s, where I was also from, and eventually went to school there after going to public school for a little while, and then went to St. Robert’s when they had that, because it was new when I first got there, and she taught there. And so my life seemed to have been very much closely related to when she was going to do things. I ended up being at the same place, same time. I was just in grade school, but she was a cadet teaching at St. Robert’s at the time, and I remember her with Sister Helen Marie and Sister Anna Margaret in their classroom.

Naomi A. Randt [00:02:03] What was that experience like at St. Robert?

Sister Diane Therese Pinchot [00:02:08] I don’t have very many large memories about it. It was just trying to get through school and trying to learn. It was way different than going to public school. I really liked public school. I didn’t care too much for Catholic school. [laughs] So it was harder. It was a little bit more rigorous, and I had a harder time at the Catholic school system. But it was good. It was fine. And I learned quite a bit. And then I went to high school at VA, and it was lovely, too. The nuns were wonderful in high school, and I think that’s where I really found out how much they loved us and got so involved in art there. And I had always been involved in art everywhere I went. So in grade school, I loved art. And in high school, the art teacher took me under her wing, and I learned so much. And because of that kind of influence, I thought, gee, I’d like to be just like these ladies because they look and act and love so happily that I wanted to be a part of it. So I entered the religious community right after high school.

Naomi A. Randt [00:03:21] How did your parents react to that?

Sister Diane Therese Pinchot [00:03:23] My sister is also a religious sister, and she’s also at Ursuline. So they weren’t too happy. They didn’t want me to enter. They wanted me to get married and have children. My sister didn’t date quite as much as I did, but I dated quite a bit. So they expected that I was just going to continue moving in that direction. But I never was really interested in getting married. I think I was too young to think about it. And I always had wanted to be just like my sister because she was older, and you know how you revere your sister. So I wanted to be just like her. And that was- That didn’t go down too well with my family. And so my friends gave me three days. You’ll last three days, and then you’ll be out. That’s what they said to me. And that might have been the case except for people that were so kind and loving all along the way.

Naomi A. Randt [00:04:20] What did your parents do?

Sister Diane Therese Pinchot [00:04:22] My dad was a crane operator. He was also, before that, mined in coal. Coal miner in Pennsylvania before he came to Cleveland. And before that, he was in the army and the navy both. And then my mother was a homemaker. She stayed home with us. Before then, of course, before she got married. She had all kinds of jobs.

Naomi A. Randt [00:05:01] Could you talk a little bit more about that period when you entered the community?

Sister Diane Therese Pinchot [00:05:11] So I think there was a time when I was dating the men at John Carroll University. And at that time, I realized that people were interested in dating me. And I did not feel any kind of passion around any of that. I think I was just too naive. And I really wanted to do artwork. I really loved the nuns. And I really loved what my sister was doing. And it was a mystery. And I wasn’t interested in some of the things that my friends were interested in. They were really dating and thinking about marriage. And I was not. I could tell I didn’t feel the same way. I don’t want to call it a call. I don’t think I had a call. I know a lot of people talk about that. I think that I was- I think the spirit of God was with me in the ways that the spirit works. But I didn’t feel it quite the same way as all my friends felt it. They had a special relationship with Jesus. I didn’t have any of that. I did go to mass daily because I was searching for what I wanted to do. The people that loved me, I followed them, and that’s how I got to be where I was. I always seemed to follow where love is, and that’s where I went. So I know my boyfriends love me. And one even asked me to marry him, and he didn’t believe that I wanted to go into the religious life. But when I said, I’m really leaving, then I could tell finally he really got the fact that that was true. And I never dated people that were my own age. They seemed to be a little bit more immature. So I always dated people that were a little older than me. I was tall, too, so it just seemed the boys were always a little shorter in grade school, and I was always headed foot over their height, so it never interested me, they seem to be so immature. But the older guys, the guys that were in college, I really did enjoy talking to them, being with them. Two particularly, I really enjoyed. But I had no interest in marriage. I only had interest in friendship. And when I look back now, I think I probably just didn’t have an understanding about the whole picture, you know? So I was more interested in the mystery of what was moving forward in my life, the mystery of what that love was and the mystery of these women that were a part of this life, religious life. And what they did in the classroom was spectacular, you know, in the art, particularly in the art department. And I wanted to be just like them.

Naomi A. Randt [00:08:04] What was that classroom experience?

Sister Diane Therese Pinchot [00:08:06] That was my art class. So I was always good in art, and I became better and better at it with the nurturing that I received. And without any kind of effort, I could create and make and move into that direction. And I could see things in a way that people couldn’t see quite the same way and had their persistence to be able to draw in a way that other people couldn’t do. And so I nurtured that with the help of my teachers. And that’s how it was so exciting in the classroom. It was because they really helped me nurture that. And so this life of art was birthed in me in a way that had never been birthed before. Although I must say, my mother was my first teacher in that. She’s the one that really got me involved in art, brought me to the public library and to the Museum of Art and took classes. And so it wasn’t just that I discovered this in high school. It was that my mother, who had so much foresight and intuition about where things would be, she’s the one that saw this.

Naomi A. Randt [00:09:11] Was there a particular type of art that was your favorite?

Sister Diane Therese Pinchot [00:09:16] I love to draw and to look and to see detail and to feel it, and by looking at it in a way that you wouldn’t be able to do otherwise, you really got to know something very intimately when you began to draw it, and it became lifelike. And the idea of something that comes to life in front of you is just very appealing to an artist.

Naomi A. Randt [00:09:49] How did you get involved in the other kinds of art? Was that just through-?

Sister Diane Therese Pinchot [00:09:54] So when I came into the college, the two years I spent academically almost killed me, and I struggled through that whole thing in the last two years of college. Then they decided that they gave you what you were going to do. So thank God they saw that I had this artistic appeal and a gift, and they put me in art classes right away at the college. Then my last two years, and that’s when the college moved here to this property. And it was through that time of going to classes that I had another professor, Sister Killian, who became almost like my mentor and my second mother. And she then nurtured everything in me. And what we have to do as studio artists, you have to take it all. So, of course, I was drawn to the parts that I didn’t understand, and so I was drawn into sculpture and metal and three-dimensional work, and I could draw really easily so there was no challenge to me. But the challenge was to do all these other things that I had no idea. And again, the mystery, the love of trying to make something come alive out of this piece of nothing and then creating something, it was just a beautiful experience. And so my teacher, Sister Killian, nurtured that I wanted to be just like her. And the same thing happened. The graces that I got from her were endurance and patience and a way to teach and not a way to demand or to force something down somebody’s throat, but to lead and to nurture and to lead to, and to open up somebody’s experience into something new. And that’s what she did to us. She was fantastic. She’s the one that is, who really helped the architect Peter Van Dyck. I can still remember serving them chicken at our art room table, the two, an architect who created the chapel and also created the first part of the college. And to this day, the two of them have been, like this major influence in my life as far as art goes.

Naomi A. Randt [00:12:19] How did you come to this idea that you could use art to raise awareness?

Sister Diane Therese Pinchot [00:12:27] When I entered the community, one of my boyfriends died in Vietnam, and I didn’t know that he was sick. He came home, had Agent Orange. He was going in the seminary. And so the last time I saw him, I can still see him at Babbitt Road in Briardale, where I lived and we were saying goodbye to each other. He was a camper like I was. I loved the woods, and we both were camp counselors before we entered. And I remember saying goodbye to him, and he was going to be a priest, and I was going to be a nun. We were in all kinds of places together and had a wonderful time, and we never had any love interest with each other, but he was going to be a seminarian, and I was going to be a nun. And he got kicked out of the seminary because he had brought girls and beer up into his dorm room. And I thought, oh, it sounds just like him. And I laughed and laughed and laughed. But then he ended up going to Vietnam. And I’m not sure of all the details of what had happened, but when he came home, he got sick and his kidneys failed. And I think it might have been Agent Orange, but I don’t really know. But he ended up working at the plant where my dad worked. And at those days, you didn’t see each other very much, the parents, your family, because you only saw them once a month. And so I didn’t hear about the news. And his sister went to the college, and I can remember, I can still see where she told me that he was dying, and he was 26. And I remember feeling so desperately upset about that whole thing and how he didn’t want to die. And psychologically, it was really hard for him, and I just couldn’t believe it. And so I started doing all kinds of artwork around the Vietnamese war and all this art, and it was the Glenville riots at the time. And so all this- And I’m getting chills right now just talking about it. The Glenville riots were there, and we were taking CETA kids in the class here in the summertime. They told me they spent the whole night under the tables when the guns were shooting, and that was 50 years ago. They were under the tables in their kitchen because there were shots. And I thought, Holy Mother, how to live this way. And then friends were dying in Vietnam, and the five, four people that were from my high school, St. Joseph, were killed. And it was just unbelievable that we were doing this. And so I did this Christmas card that the community asked me to do, and they rejected it because it was an icon, and they wanted something cute and beautiful and Mary and Jesus and I was not into Mary and Jesus right then and there. I was into an icon that would say it because it was more abstract. And so they said, no, don’t do this. Just do some lettering for us. So I took that Madonna and Jesus, and I blew it up into this huge, big twelve-foot painting and put the ghosts of Vietnam in it and the skeletons of the remains of the men that died. And within Mary’s halo, I put the feeling of the war, and I entered it into the- My teacher Sister Killian said, enter this into the Helen Ann Show, which was one of the second biggest shows in Cleveland at the time. And it won first place. It was Vietnam. It struck a chord. And then the second one was about Vietnam again. It was about taking the bones down from the cross. And I put all, again, all the skeletons in it. And it was worse, 1969, it was even worse. So then it was just black and white. And again, it was like a twelve-foot piece. And second year in a row, I won it again. And I thought, oh, wow, this is really good. Really get this message out and maybe somebody will pay attention. I was doing this while I was teaching in ’68 and ’69, I was teaching at St. Ann’s. And so every weekend I’d come back here and do artwork because I didn’t know what else to do with myself, with all that I was taking in from the pain that was happening with the people. And at that time, we were pretty cloistered, so you couldn’t- I couldn’t go to football games without getting permission. And usually we couldn’t go. So I would spend time in the basement or here just doing artwork to try to figure out a way to deal with the feelings that I had of the people that I knew that were dying and getting killed. And it just continued. From there on, it just kept continuing. And then I got involved in sacred art. What does it mean to do sacred art? That was in my graduate work in 1999, ’90, and then right after 1990. So I had been moved then to Lake Catholic, and my job was to spend time to set up a new school. So it took a lot of time, and I didn’t get back to the art here. So I ended up trying to figure out a way to stay with the art. So I would go to the Institute of Art in the summers, and I did a cross that was 30 pieces of bone fragments in silver. And I remember doing that in relationship to, again, all the bones that were the 30 pieces of silver that were being used to sell down people in the United States, to have people in the military and being killed in economic situations in which the military became very economically strong for other countries, particularly for Latin America and Central America. We were trying to get the economic stability down there so that apparently when it started in ’45, it was really about keeping the area strong so that the communists wouldn’t take over that area and that we would be strong down there in case anything would happen. So I just kept thinking, these are like silver. This is like pieces of silver, selling ourselves down. So I spent two years working on that little piece, and we ended up giving it to the bishop of Cleveland. It was called 30 Pieces of Silver. And that’s how I started really getting involved in metalsmithing. And I would do that in the summertime. So one thing led to the other, and to the other and to the other. Most of this stuff was done very quietly. I never really protested anything except through the art.

Naomi A. Randt [00:19:07] Was that supported by the community?

Sister Diane Therese Pinchot [00:19:09] As I said, the community is amazing. There at one particular point, we had eight artists that were in the community, and nowhere in anybody’s communities do you ever have eight artists. So we were kind of left to do what we did. So on that end, it was very supported. Did they understand my artwork? They didn’t have a clue, you know, still don’t understand totally everything unless I do a beautiful, clean ceramic pot. That’s understood. But some of the other things, it’s very hard for people that haven’t been educated and contemporary art to know what this is about or how to look at it in relationship to what you’re saying. So, yes, they are very much supportive, even though they don’t really understand it. But I can teach it, and my students get it and they do it, and it continues. So 50 years from now, people will understand it, because usually 50 years it takes for people to catch up with whatever the art is. And so now, of course, we appreciate Picasso and Monet. And, you know, Andy Goldsworthy is not so much appreciated. He’s the one that does earth art, or David Nash, who does the arbor art or things that of that nature. So that’s not quite understood yet.

Naomi A. Randt [00:20:48] Could you talk a little bit about the altar and what you designed for women in El Salvador?

Sister Diane Therese Pinchot [00:20:58] So after my MFA, I worked, I did my MFA- In order to be able to teach at the college, you have to have a terminal degree. And I only had a master’s of art in liberal studies, metalsmithing from Wesleyan University, that I got in 1980. So little by little, they asked me to come here, and I know if I needed to work here because they didn’t have a ceramic artist or a metal artist. So I would come in part time, but I knew if they wanted to keep me, which they did, then I would have to get a terminal degree. So in 1990, I got a sculpture ceramic degree at Wesleyan University and then MFA, which is the terminal degree for teaching in studio art. At that time, I started to do these large sculpture pieces around altars, and I had some really good, again, very, very good teachers. At every point of my life, I’ve had really good teachers that have come forth and mentored me and saw what was good in me and then nurtured that piece. So none of this I did by myself. They opened me up to a great deal of understanding of how to look at art in advocacy. So when I started to do the altar pieces that were sacred, I said, I’d like to do something sacred. And so I began to do these large, contemporary altars. And they kept saying to me, when I did my first big test, they said, well, how are these altars as, like, how are these altars different than bar tables? I said, oh, that’s a really good question. So then I started researching, what does it mean to do something sacred? So I stopped doing the altars. I made about seven of them, but it gave me a lot of expertise on the technique of building altars, but I stopped doing it. So I have one that’s left in my studio if you want to see it later. And I began to think about, what is it that makes something sacred? What makes it sacred? So I did a huge thesis in my art history classes to see what the difference is between contemporary art that’s sacred and past art, particularly in the northern Renaissance with Claus Sluter. What makes that sacred as compared to what makes this sacred? So that was a really good question for me because that then became theme of my whole life, what makes something sacred? So when I got out, the mission team knew I was building altars, and they just said, oh, let’s get her in here to help the craftspeople here. So I was designing back and forth through faxes with Adalberto Ramos, the building- He was a master builder in El Salvador, and I was this supposedly master builder in Cleveland, Ohio. Little did I know, I knew nothing. And our bricks were a different size. So he would adjust the bricks, and then I would adjust the bricks. And our bricks to build are a little different than his size because they build their own bricks there. And so we were building with bricks and with the tiles and the conacaste wood. When I got there, I realized what was sacred. So I traveled during Christmas Eve, going down to Salvador, and it was the month before the civil war ended, after the civil war ended. So my dad was really upset because the civil war was going on while I was still being asked to do this, and he didn’t want me to go. And people thought I was crazy, but I had no clue, except for the fact that I knew when Dorothy came home from Beaumont, because that’s where I was when she would come home, I was teaching at Beaumont, and she left from Beaumont, and I just happened to be able to be around always the witness when she was anywhere. My life seemed to follow her everywhere. So even in grade school, I was there when she was a cadet, when she took her final vows. I was here helping Sister Killian in the summertime, and we go up into the backwoods, do sunbathing and get poison ivy together or go canoeing when she came home from Beaumont. So I was always this witness wherever she was. And late at night, she’d be talking about this stuff. Then I had no idea what she and Sheila were talking about at Beaumont. And there were maybe four of us around the table at midnight talking about these things, and all I was doing was really just listening because I had no clue. As soon as I got off that airplane, I started getting the clue. I started realizing what she had been through. The fear. I mean, the fear that just goes up the back of your spine. And I was- It was a month now, and the civil war had ended, and yet the airport was completely empty, and only men with guns on their backs were strapped on their arms and walking the airport, and I was the only one in there. And they were going through all my packages and all my little tiles that were wrapped up in paper, and they started taking everything apart. And I was scared to death because the missionaries couldn’t come into the airport, and they gave me just a little thing to say to them. Thank God I brought chocolate with me. So I gave them the chocolate, and they left me alone, and they stopped going through everything. And then the missionaries always wanted chocolate because they never get enough of it there. They don’t get any of it actually. So I think I gave all my chocolate away to those soldiers. And then Sheila met me outside the airport. And that first day, it was such an eye opener. I was just so, like, shocked about what I saw. And the first day was a young boy and a girl. He had killed his girlfriend. He was 15 years old. He was in the army. And the army, it was over with, so he was out of the army, didn’t have anything to do. Got in a fight that night, Christmas Eve, with his girlfriend, shot her and then killed himself. And the mother was burying both of them in the wake was that day. So Sheila took me to the wake. The same day we were picking somebody else that had a liver operation in a warehouse somewhere. So that day, they picked me up, it was this thing that happened immediately, one thing after the other after the other. Just couldn’t believe it. Every moment was packed like that during my break, during the time I was building this altar in El Salvador. So that’s how I came there to Salvador. And then when I got there, my plans changed. Everything changed, because when I saw the conacaste wood, I knew I had to change the designs because the wood was so beautiful. So I moved it and changed the designs and everything that happened. I kept saying to Alberto, but let’s do this, and let’s do that, and he would say, okay. And then he wouldn’t let me do a thing because I was a woman. So I kept saying, I can do some of this stuff, too. So finally, they let me dig into the ground, because in the El Salvador, the earthquakes are there, and you don’t build up before you build down. So we were digging down into the earth, and that’s when this magnificent thing happened to me. I just burst into tears. I just knew something very special was happening, because it was the spot where the women were found, and the earth and the blood was mingled with the people. And it hit me, it was ten years, and it hit me just then what had happened. I think part of it is because we never saw her body. She just always felt she was gonna walk in the door. And I don’t know if Sheila remembers it, but right while I was digging, this is the area we were digging. You could see how it’s down below. And right where we were digging was the spot where they found the bodies right on the edge. And she came through. Here’s the hole that I was digging. She came through, and I had collected from Martha her little St. Angela medal that’s down there. And I found in the port the catechism book that she was teaching for baptism. It was just so simple, little book, you know, and I wanted to put something of her stuff in the altar base. And then Sheila came through and had some women with her, and they started singing, and I just could feel the mingling of the earth and the blood in a way that went right through my body. And I thought, what the heck is this all about? What’s going on here? It was an experience that I’ve only been able to read lately about called spiritual emergence. And that’s what I started realizing that that was very special. So I felt very honored to be able to be there doing this work and realized that it wasn’t about me making a design, and it was about what sacred really was, you know, mingling of a life with the earth in a way that is for the whole community. It’s not about what size the brick is going to be or what design you have in your head. It’s about the meaning behind it. It’s very much like the icon of the Vietnamese death. It comes from a place that’s inspired by something greater than yourself. That’s what’s sacred. This is what was sacred. And I thought, oh, I finally graduated from my MFA. I don’t have the answers, but I could feel it. This is what was sacred. And so every time I do advocacy work around the art, it’s the same piece over and over again, feeling this. And so I know that this is the right thing to do. So this is the picture of a building. We used such simple, primitive tools. So at one particular point, Adalberto says to me, go find some twigs. They became our plumb lines. Let’s scrape off the ceramic tile and he would make a tool, you know. So when I got there, I had no idea. I thought, when I get there, I’ll get some power tools. I’m not going to bring them on the plane. No water, no electricity. We made this beautiful piece without any of that. So that’s where that is.

Naomi A. Randt [00:32:31] Do you have any pictures of the finished-?

Sister Diane Therese Pinchot [00:32:34] Yeah, this is Adalberto.

Naomi A. Randt [00:32:41] How do you spell his name?

Sister Diane Therese Pinchot [00:32:44] You know, I don’t want to spell it wrong, so I’ll have to send it to you. Adalberto Ramos. R-A-M-O-S for sure. Adalberto, I’ll have to find Sheila Marie Tobbe. I think I have an article with him in it. These are the pictures that, when I did this, they did an article about this in Liturgical Magazine. And I have the article someplace too, but these are the articles, pictures they gave back and I’ll go look it up.

Naomi A. Randt [00:33:14] Are these the type of the tiles that you brought?

Sister Diane Therese Pinchot [00:33:17] From Cleveland, mm hm.

Naomi A. Randt [00:33:20] Was there any significance to those tiles?

Sister Diane Therese Pinchot [00:33:22] No, no. And in the end you don’t see that altar at all. I designed an altar, an ambo, and a chair. And really you don’t see any of that because it’s all covered with layers of pictures and it’s so typical Salvadoran, you know, cloth over everything. So you don’t see one iota of the things I brought or made or any of it. But, you know, the spirit of that is there. So it’s so totally turned around of what I know to be true, you know. So slaving over a design was not what needed to be done, but just listening and paying attention. But they loved it that I brought tiles because it was from, you know, the gringo had the tiles, and it’s special, and it’s true, because they don’t have a kiln that is strong enough to hold up for glazing. So they have these smoked kilns that are on the side. And there were about four of them as we were going on. So they were just all smoked tiles. So much so that you could see how we would take a knife and just cut them down. And here you just see the smoke that held them very carefully together. But you’d see that this is all built that same way. So what they would do is they would have the shellac painted over to hold that. So they took that from the trees. And so they would wait for the cement to dry. And in about half a year, then they would shellac that, and then that would fall apart. So everything is unstable. And so that’s what they did several months after. This is, you could see it’s fresh. It’s not shellacked yet. So when they got these tiles, it was strong because they’re high fire, you know? And so they loved it. But you don’t see them, but they loved it. You can see how very close the wall here is, where the oxen goes on the other side of this. And so it’s definitely right smack dab where they found them, right on the side of the road is where they painted this altar.

Naomi A. Randt [00:35:44] And that’s on the road towards Santiago Nonualco?

Sister Diane Therese Pinchot [00:35:49] Yes, yes.

Naomi A. Randt [00:35:59] Was there any other art or anything you did while you were down there?

Sister Diane Therese Pinchot [00:36:03] No. Every day we worked on this for a month, a little at a time. And most of the time I was sitting on the side. I don’t know. There’s a picture here of me sitting on the side of the whole thing. Oftentimes I just sit by the side because they wouldn’t let me do anything. I was the woman. I had to beg to- This is what it looks like. There was a little volcano there. And there was another volcano that had blown up, too. Was very primitive. It doesn’t look like that anymore. Nor does it look like this anymore either. Bobby Goble, who was a missionary with Martha, and people went back and they planted a tree there, and it just became really, really big. So none of that looks the same anymore.

Naomi A. Randt [00:36:58] Have you been back there since then?

Sister Diane Therese Pinchot [00:37:02] Mm hm. Mm hm. Yeah, I went back on a pilgrimage with the Maryknoll sisters and the Ursuline sisters and the 20th anniversary. And basically that’s when I started realizing what I needed to do about advocacy and literally do something and speak out something with more protest than the art.

Naomi A. Randt [00:37:23] Is that when you got involved in the protests against the School of the Americas?

Sister Diane Therese Pinchot [00:37:28] No, actually, I got involved with that after our sister died here in the woods in 1995. I heard that there was a sister in New Rochelle in New York who we weren’t connected to, but we were connected to, and foundress. And I met her. She was, I think she was 82, and she ended up going to prison for school, at the School of the Americas. And I thought, whoa. And she said she went because of Dorothy. And I’m thinking, whoa, I probably should really pay attention to this. It was right after I got back from this. So I was trying to figure out ways to really get more involved in social justice because of what had happened to me there. So I began to be a member of IRTF. I paid more attention to what Sheila was talking about. I never was an insider as far as a friend like Martha who has the story, but I knew that something had happened to me, so I knew that I needed to do something quietly. So, never thinking that it would become this big news media thing, I started lobbying in Washington with IRTF. I went a couple times, and I felt really bad because La Tourette was so good and he just died. He was such a good guy. I thought if anybody would help, it would be him. And he did. He was one of the ones that really understood. We would go to his office and he totally got it. He would see us even in the middle of having a virus cold. He was such a nice guy, and he was a Republican. I couldn’t believe it. On the other hand, we had a few other visits that were not so great, and I don’t want to say who they were. We had some other people that were pretty harsh, and they were involved in other things. And Salvador was their last thing because they thought it was old news. But at that time, I knew that the officers, the actual generals who gave the order to kill them were still in our country. And that’s what my job was, I thought, to work to get them out and to work to at least see that we covered it up and brought them over. To at least have some kind of information to really call the light, to come to the truth, to come to light, because you can’t have any kind of peace unless there’s reconciliation and forgiveness. And if you don’t even know the whole story and there are people that are still saying that they didn’t do anything, then what good is that? So that’s how I started getting involved. And slowly, over time, I got more and more involved. Deanna Ortiz, in ’89, came back from Guatemala, and she had been tortured and raped and went to Washington and got arrested in Washington. That was the very first time I got arrested in 1970- 1996 is when I first got started, started getting arrested, and then I got arrested in School of the Americas. And then I knew I was barred and banned and couldn’t come back for five years. So I would come back, but I wouldn’t cross their line. And then I knew that if I didn’t keep doing this, that, you know, I would, I would have to face myself. So on the 25th anniversary, after being here, on the 20th anniversary, on the 25th anniversary, I asked for permission. And I kind of knew on the 20th anniversary, then I would probably have to get arrested again. And I said to the superiors at the time, and both the superiors said to me, I don’t think it’s the right time. And so I left her office feeling so relieved, thinking, oh, thank God, I don’t have to do it, you know, thinking, okay, that’s good. Well, I thought it was over with and I wouldn’t have to do it. And so it just kept coming back to me in dreams and kept coming back to me in just every moment. So in 2007, I couldn’t sleep. I knew something was happening. So finally I went to them again, the leadership. And this time I was in a research, very much like what you’re doing, involved with a woman who was doing her Ph.D. work around activism artists and was still teaching in the classroom. And she knew me from teaching here because she was a teacher here and she knew my students, so she didn’t know me really personally, but she knew my students who were talking about me, about the art, and she wanted me to be in her group for her Ph.D. work for her qualitative work, not quantitative. And it was a research around how our classroom experience changed when we were doing art advocacy work, teaching, and coming together to talk about it, because we really had no support. And that’s when I brought it up and I had just finished doing- My mother had just died, and I had just finished building this piece called The Shallow Grave. And I thought I was building it around the environment. And when I realized it was the figures of Dorothy Kazel were coming up. And at that particular time, I didn’t have time in my studio when my mother was dying, because we were taking care of her, to really spend time intuitively in my studio. I was just spending time doing projects that I would come up with and then do quickly. And then every five minutes, I could be able to go there and then work without really intuitively working, but instead just having a plan and working. I knew that wasn’t the way to go, but that was the only way I had and the only time I had. So when my mom died, it was 2007, I said, okay, I’m just going to spend time doing this work in the studio. I know it’s trying to come out of me. I know what I’m feeling. So it started coming up. Well, sure enough, it was Dorothy. And then when- When Ida Ford showed up, her arm was up like this, and it was how she came out of the grave, the shallow grave. It was the picture in the New York, in the- There was one magazine, it was the Newsweek magazine. And when it came out on the front cover, that image was in my head, and it came out in my work. Then I knew that I had to do something, because this is coming up everywhere. And until I did something, I wasn’t going to have any peace at all. And I kept saying, Dorothy, why do you want me to keep doing this? Because why me? You know? I’m an introvert. This is not who I am. But it felt like this is what was supposed to happen. So I brought it up at our meeting with one of the teachers who was doing her Ph.D. work and the person who saw the piece, because it just came back from the New York. It was a New York show in the Cleveland. The ceramic was a ceramic gathering. Every year they have- And it got adjured into the show, and it came back. They wanted to show it in the gallery, and that’s where we had our meeting. And when this one person saw it, who was in my group, he just began to weep. Just shudder and weep. And I was so taken aback by that. This is that Chris Reynolds that we had talked, that you had emailed me about that. I was so taken aback, even more so, I was taken aback because he said to me, after he was stopped crying, he said, for all the masculine in the world that have done these things, I want to offer my sorrow, and I want to say I’m sorry. I want to say that the men in the world did not mean to rape and torture them. And if they did, I am so sorry for this. Nobody, nobody had ever said they were sorry, ever, to the Ursuline community, ever. We’re sorry for your loss. We’re sorry for this. Nobody had ever said that. It shook me, and I started feeling the same way that I felt when I had been at the grave. So I knew that there was something really special that he had, that he understood that he would have to know. Well, I found out that he’s connected in a way to the earth that is very special. And I know it seems very strange, and I can’t speak to many people about this, but you were interested in this piece, and this is how it became what it was. And so I said, you know, this is really shaking me. And I’m thinking that I’m trying to get this last piece, and I’m not sure how to do it, but I think I’m supposed to get arrested. But I know if I get arrested this time, I’ll have to spend some time in prison. He said, well, I think you’re saying the truth, but I don’t think you should go that far. So then right away I thought, oh, nobody wants me to do this, not even people that really understand. So I thought, okay, I’ve got to pay attention to this. So I think I lobbied again that year and wrote again and tried to figure out other ways and tried to figure out another way, and there was no other way. So finally I said to the group that were my closest friends, and this is what Chris said to me. He said, all right, if you think there’s no other way, I want you to do one thing for me. He said, I want you to pull seven people that are your closest friends, that are your intimates, and pull them around you. And let’s see what happens. Let’s see what they say when you’re saying the truth to them. So it was early one morning in 2007, or 8, I think it was 2007, and it was like 8:30 in the morning. We met under the picnic benches over there. And it was hard because we were just trying to wake up, and we had a circle, and they said, one by one, each of them said, we think this is what you’re supposed to do, and we’ll support you. No matter what happens, we’ll support you. As soon as that happened, I felt peace, and I knew I was supposed to do it, and I never worried about it after. Never feared prison. Never feared a thing. Never feared what would happen. I just went straight ahead, and that’s how it all happened. So it came out of the artwork again, The Shallow Grave.

Naomi A. Randt [00:49:03] I read an article where you talked about your experience in prison and even the process of getting arrested outside the School of the Americas. Would you mind talking just a little bit about both of those?

Sister Diane Therese Pinchot [00:49:21] So what I started realizing about Dorothy was that it wasn’t about me. So I had to keep changing that focus because everybody wanted to know how you personally were feeling. And I kept thinking, this isn’t about me. I’m like the instrument, and I have to keep saying, Dorothy, the men that are responsible for this are still not brought to justice. I had to keep switching it around, and then I had to keep saying, and this was in 2008, 1980, but in 2008, it’s still happening. So then I was- I had to keep saying to the people that were dying right now. And even today, if I’m saying School of the Americas, look at who’s in the detention centers now. Look why they’re there. Look who’s guarding them. Look who they’re being trained by. So even today, the school is still not working and still doing things that are not good. They’re still keeping people poor. So for me, when I got arrested, I tried to keep saying, it’s about what’s happening to people today. For me, feeling what I was feeling. I wasn’t feeling pain or I wasn’t feeling fear or I was feeling kind of happy, actually, that I could finally get this over with. And the people that were arresting me could have been my grandchildren. And one of them was from Ohio, who was so young, and he’s the one that put the handcuffs on me. And the sisters that came with me, they had just been watching the Navy and Army game. And then there was also a Notre Dame and something else game, and I’m not into football, but they, in their hotel room, they were watching it, and I saw the very end of it. So I said, hey, what about that game, you know, the other night, to this young kid that was putting the handcuffs on because he was from Ohio, and it was Ohio something else. And he immediately, he switched around and became like a person. And he looked at me as a person. So then I could do my work and I could say, do you know why I’m doing this? Do you know why this is happening? You know, so it wasn’t just a job putting handcuffs on and treat me like the enemy, and I’m treating him like the enemy, but it became relational. So as soon as we could look at each other as individuals, I can say what was happening, but if I would keep looking at everybody as the enemy, I can’t do it. So it had to be all in relationship, relationship to what was happening to Dorothy, what was happening to people today. So that’s basically my feeling through the whole thing, trying to keep that attitude in the picture and that always in the foreground, because right away, people want to talk about you. And no matter what I tried to do, it was about me. I couldn’t keep the attention around somebody else about what was really the thing. And so then I realized, yes, it’s gonna be about me, but I’m going to be the instrument. And if they see just a normal human being, an everyday person, then they’ll see, okay, if an ordinary, everyday person can do this, then there’s got to be something in it. When I came into the mail room, I’ll never forget it, they strip searched me and prison. When it finally happened, I was so relieved to get in there and so relieved to do it. And she said, I’ve never seen anybody happy to be strip searched before. I’ve never seen anybody that’s taken a better picture on their inmate ticket before. And she said, why are you so happy? I said, I’m just so happy to get this done with and to do this work. And so we ended up having this wonderful bond. And she kept my clothes in a place where I could see them every time I would visit her, so that she could see that my civilian clothes were there and that it wasn’t gonna be too far away and that I would have this time. And she was always a link and a friend because of the relationship that we had built the moment I came in, and it was really pretty powerful. Getting through it, I met all these Native women, and for some reason, they picked up on me knowing stuff, and they knew. The moment I sat in their presence, they knew. And so they asked me to pray with them, and they asked me to pour their lodges for them, and they asked me what tribe I belonged to, and I said, Cedar Lavender, because that’s how they prayed with me when I left, before I left, the people that were my seven friends, and Chris smothered me in lavender and cedar because they wanted me to smell that, to remember that smell, so that anytime I had a hard time, I would go back to that smell, and I would feel that love and protection that they had given me. And I used that memory and image a hundred million times while I was in there when there was violence or when there was a difficult time. It was not hard times sometimes, and sometimes it was really hard time, but I felt very loved by people that were in there. The inmates particularly, were very, very much looking out for me all the time. A lot of people had my back in there and you could really get into trouble, but I always had somebody to push me in the right direction because my naivete really caused me to get into trouble sometimes or not be in the right place at the right time, and you could really get into trouble. And I really did cause trouble that I didn’t realize I was causing for the guards. And so then they would give me a change in a place and they would put me on the top bunk and they would just make my life a little bit miserable, you know? So, but I didn’t realize it. So I needed to stand there a little longer to really get the ropes. Only two months is not enough to really get the ropes, and then you leave and your heart’s still there with the people. So the hardest part was leaving there because all my friends were there that I had learned to love.

Naomi A. Randt [00:56:09] Is that sort of those connections you’ve made informed how else you get involved?

Sister Diane Therese Pinchot [00:56:16] It made me exhausted and it made me realize I don’t have very much energy left to do the things I would like to do. And I have to really pay attention to where my energies can get involved now. So I have to pick and choose carefully. So, for instance, I just said to somebody, I think I have about ten more good years to get involved in something, and I need to really pay attention how I’m going to put those energies and where I’m going to put them. But definitely reformation of prison system is one, and right away, restorative justice needs to be put in place and not retributive. And I think Obama is starting to do that by letting the people that have these horrendous drug sentences in for many, many years, pardoning them. Just the 200 that he pardoned the other day, he’s getting it. He understands it. And if you’re there, you know, the first week, that’s all you need. That first week, you get it. You know, and you’ll never do it again. You get it. It’s that bad. And you don’t need twenty years of that or ten years of that. You get it. The first ten minutes you’re in there. So he’s absolutely right. Restorative justice was what we need and not retributive. So because of that, I’m much, much more aware of that and write as much as I possibly can to my friends that are in prison. Many of them are out now. We still are in contact, particularly my Native American friends, the elders there.

Naomi A. Randt [00:58:09] What are some of the other ways you’ve gotten involved?

Sister Diane Therese Pinchot [00:58:13] So probably the biggest way is the sustainable practices for conservation in the earth. And because of the ways I ended up praying, I started to end up realizing what was happening with the earth and the cosmos and particularly the connection that I have with it. So I began to start working on our own property. And the superior at the time said to me, how can we let you come home? How can we welcome you home in a better way? And this was in 2009. I had served in 2009. I got arrested in 2008. And I said, I would like to really make a lodge in the back and pray that way, the way the Native women were praying while I was in prison. Oh, sure. She said, oh, sure, you’re going to let me do this? She said, oh, sure. So I was so surprised. And so I had a group of people and we were praying about building it, because you don’t do this just by doing it. You just don’t decide to do it one day. You really have to have connection to the Native peoples because it’s something that’s very sacred. So for seven days, I began to dream about it and I asked for permission to do this. And the dreams that I had were very significant. And it was very clear to me, very much like the stuff I was feeling earlier, that this is the way I was supposed to do this. And in praying this way with the earth and all of creator and all of the relations of all the earth, that this is the piece of the environment that I need to really get involved with all the creation. So I began to do, well, about 2000, I started to do audits. I’ve always been wanting to do work around the earth. So this is one of them. School of the Americas was always the other. But this earth piece was always something that I wanted to do. And I started that in 1995. And by 2000 I had gotten permission to do audits on the property to see how we can better make the property more sustainable, and then continued to do that. And in 2000, I asked if we could probably put in some type of land easement and began to work with all the other sisters in their communities doing the same thing. And we created this group called Coral Ecology. And just recently the group has stopped because we’re all trying to do the work on our own properties. And in about a year ago, our community decided we wanted to do some kind of easement finally. So after 20 years of wanting to do this, it’s finally going to happen. And we’re going to put in some of the woods into a conservation easement with the Western Reserve Land Conservancy. So Sister Sue Durkin put me in charge of it with our little green team, and we’re thinking of how we’re going to do that with all the stuff that we’re doing on the property right now. We’re going to probably sell part of the property, put a little house up someplace where we can have the rest of the nuns living, and then put the rest of it in a conservation easement. So I’m working on that piece. And then the other piece I’m working on is School of the Americas is still going on. But this time we’re taking our demonstration to the border. And the same person that got me involved in that Ph.D. workshop asked me to come to the border two years ago and asked me to start giving workshops in art on the border around the refugee system and migration of the people coming across the border. So it’s in Nagales, Mexico and Arizona. And lo and behold, where does School of the Americas decide they’re going to do their protest next? Right there. So synchronicity abounds. And so this year, that’s where we’re going to be doing it. And so this last year, I gave the workshop around the idea of the medicine wheel and praying with the earth there. And we stopped at the detention centers on our way down to Georgia and prayed at the detention centers, and many of them got arrested. I almost crossed the line and thought, I better not do that without telling my community that I’m doing it. So I didn’t. I’m trying to be responsible, but I could see myself ending up in prison my last years. I can see that. You know? I don’t think I want to, but I can see that happening. Nobody ever wants to do that.

Naomi A. Randt [01:03:08] I think that about covers all of my questions. If there’s anything else you want to add-

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