My involvement in the Pillsbury project (originally published on 2024-04-07 @ Medium)

It all started by shit-posting on Facebook.

But first, some background. The old Pillsbury Mill in my city (Springfield, IL) had an amazing art show that came out of street artists breaking into the site and those in charge having a vision for something great rather than calling 911. The show got national coverage and was really well-attended, but I was saddened by the lack of local artists being involved. Also, as someone who had participated in art shows locally, I was frustrated to see that outsiders were able to draw in more attendance than our local art events ever did.

Then came some news about changes with one of the trash-hauling companies in the area transfering their customer to another national chain. In response, there were a lot of people pointing out how great the locally-owned trash collection outfit was and as one of their customers, I completely agreed! However, it got me thinking about why was it that people in my town were eager to “support local” when it came to businesses, but not when it came to local artists. Out of this came my venting on Facebook.

From that post came a lot of discussion about the local art community, what support really looks like, and what opportunities were there for artists to participate in projects like the one at Pillsbury. Robert Mazrim (the curator of the art shows collectively referred to as Pillsburied) commented that the project had been seeking local artists and that I was welcome to schedule a visit to see what was possible.

Going in, I had a few ideas, but it was definitely a case of “I didn’t know, what I didn’t know” and I still haven’t seen the whole site. One of the ideas I had was creating a memorial wall of the employees who had worked there, my grandpa being one of them. He (Walter Santarelli) had started there in 1941 and retired from Pillsbury with a full pension and benefits. My grandpa and other former employees all spoke fondly of the place and it sounds like the company treated their employees with dignity and respect, much unlike my own career in the tech industry.

Between Chris Richmond (president of Moving Pillsbury Forward, the organization working toward the eventual demolition of the site) and Robert, I was able to get access to the site starting in mid-March of 2024. Because of the cold weather, I was really only able to work for about 2 hours at a time and had a list of nearly 1200 names to get written before the public tours on April 6th and 13th. I was able to get everyone on the list that I was provided on the wall in time, but we suspected that the information came from old union lists and didn’t include non-union workers.

I haven’t gotten a lot of media coverage for art projects in the past, but due to this being a project for the community, I took a chance and reached out to 2 local papers, a TV news station, and a reporter who had covered the Pillsbury site for the AP News wire. I lucked out with the TV station and despite not feeling super comfortable on camera, did a spot with them about the project and asking the community for help in adding more names. It worked far better than I expected and I’m still combing through e-mail submissions as of this writing.

–

When approaching this project, I had a few things to consider. First, it didn’t need to last forever — just until demolition. Before I began, I did a bunch of tests with paint markers and found that the oil-based ones by Sharpie worked the best. When it came to what order to put the names in, I decided to place them randomly because I suspected there would be additions later. Due to the sheer number of names, there was no way for me to spell check all of them and with the time constraints involved, I also didn’t have time to group people together like a wedding reception seating chart.

I noticed that there were some possible misspellings on the list, so I decided to put them down as-written, as well as what I thought was correct just in case that needed to cover multiple people. My own grandfather was one such case, with there being an additional listing for “Walter Santerilla” and I included that too. I would rather there be too many names listed, than to assume I knew best and have someone get left out.

I was able to be on-hand for the tours on April 6th and my suspicion about multiple spellings was confirmed by a woman who told me that in their own family they didn’t even always spell their last name the same way. I was really touched to hear stories by former employees and their relatives, both during the event and in the messages I received after the TV news coverage. Eventually, the local weekly newspaper mentioned the project as well.

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to attend the tours on April 13th, but will be revisiting the site to add more names in the week leading up to that date. The list of the names I’ve added so far is available online and I can be reached at info@jensantarelli.com if you have any additions. If you are in the area, tours are open to the public and don’t require a reservation. They will be at 12pm and 2pm and will be held at 1525 E Phillips Ave., Springfield, IL, 62702.

The April 13th tours are likely going to be the last of the ones open to the public if you want to see the memorial wall in-person, but I plan to keep adding names for as long as I have access to the site. Once I quit getting submissions or site access, I plan to take a lot of photos of the project to post online for anyone to view later. My mailing list, social media, and website is where I will be making updates about those if you are interested. I may work on other art pieces related to Pillsbury as well, so those are also the best places to keep up up-to-date about information on those.

Questions and press inquiries can be sent to info@jensantarelli.com and I will continue to update this page with other pertinant information about the project. Thanks to everyone for their enthusiasm and support so far!

(Right-click on the images below and open in a new tab to see the full-sized versions.)