Remembering Muneer and John

There were two significant losses in our world recently: John Dietz and Muneer Bahauddeen.

At first glance they could scarcely have been more different. Muneer was an artist and priest in a religion that grew from Yoruba traditions in West Africa, moved through Cuba into the Southeastern U.S. and up to the Great Lakes. John was a letter carrier and an Elder in the local ELCA Church.

Both embodied their faith fully, sincerely and explicitly. They were both members of active, profound faith communities that informed their behavior, and had a significant impact on the world around them. Especially us.

John was a farmboy from when Libertyville, IL was mostly farmland. He and Wessie moved to Reedsburg from California with two boys in the 80's. He worked for the USPS his whole professional life, but his real project was his family. The two boys went into the cabinetry business with a level of fine-building that Johnny Too Tight taught his sons. They were both excellent craftsmen, good husbands and devoted fathers, and are still good friends of ours. John came by the shop every day after completing his route to help the boys out. Wessie kept the books and until recently, ran the office.

Donna ended up working for them shortly after we arrived here from Chicago, unchurched, and clueless but eager to learn. That led to a 30+ year relationship with the entire Dietz clan. Wessie was Wormfarm’s volunteer bookkeeper for many years with John’s targeted help with nonprofit accounting, learned through his church experience. John became my farm mentor when in 1994, plowed the piece of neglected pasture that became the ground upon which I learned, with his input, to grow food. All these years later, I’m still scratching away at those same garden beds that have yielded, not just multiple tons of market produce (and not insignificant income), but have also been the fertile ground upon which Resident Artists engage in their rural immersion.

The connection to the Dietz family has been critical to our continued tenure here, and John and Wessie were there for us during the darkest time of our lives, as well as some of the happiest.

We met Muneer in 2006 during the years I lived and worked in Milwaukee for Will Allen’s Growing Power. James Godsil made sure I had a smooth landing in the city and took me to Amaranth Cafe to meet the owners, Dave and Stephanie Boucher, who became my landlords and I lived around the corner from the Cafe in the old mansion they renovated as part of their thoughtful, personal community redevelopment. Muneer’s studio and home was across the street from the cafe, so he was a regular presence there. I was working 60-70 hours-a-week, helping to build food systems in Milwaukee and around the country, so didn’t often linger in the there, but when I did, I’d often sit with Muneer and the most astonishing collection of humans would join us, or at least acknowledge him, as people came in looking for strong coffee, a tasty sandwich or the best baked goods in the Central Time Zone.

Muneer was a skilled ceramicist creating a range of hand-built, wall-mounted works revealing West African influences, which were occasionally on display in the cafe. But he was the epitome of a Community-Based Artist, and his signature project Peace Posts, made in conjunction with many hands in public workshops, appeared (and still do) in clusters all around the city. Our first collaboration occurred when, in 2010, his design for a Roadside Culture Stand, a breakthrough project for Wormfarm, was selected by a jury to be commissioned.

Over the years, that Culture Stand has moved regularly between Sauk and Milwaukee Counties to support the Farm/Art DTour, and became the literal vehicle through which the Rural Urban FLOW was first realized—an initiative active to this day.

In 2018 we commissioned Muneer to create Peace Posts for Reedsburg’s City Park. Instead of using clean-milled cedar 6x6”s as usual, we chose incredibly durable, rot-resistant, rough-sawn Black Locust. (There’s a lovely story about Muneer and Amos, the Amish sawyer who custom-milled the logs for us.) The wooden posts, while beautiful and unique, are as hard as steel, and when chiseling out the channel to hold the ceramic tiles, we learned why cedar may be preferable and why these particular Posts would be a one-off.

It was shortly afterwards that I had the good fortune to introduce Muneer to Melanie Tallmadge Sainz, a Ho-chunk culture bearer, ceramicist, and fellow community artist. They soon embarked on a remarkable multi-year collaboration that resulted in the creation of several iconic ceramic murals installed throughout our cultureshed, and a friendship that transcended the creative collaboration.

As these collaborations played out, Muneer often stayed with us here at Wormfarm and his tranquil yet powerful presence was always welcome in the mix of artists that pass through here each growing season. We are lucky to have shared many meals and an occasional adult beverage with him.

Most recently, Muneer began creating large mixed-media works on paper. We have always been fans of his work, but found this last series to be stunning—carefully composed, sensitively layered, confident mark-making informed by a bold mashup of Dogon iconography, African history, and Black American cultural touchstones.

Chronically overlooked among the city’s cultural establishment, Muneer finally got a high profile show at the MOWA DTN Gallery in downtown Milwaukee last fall, and seemed poised to finally get the attention his work deserved.

Muneer passed away suddenly in late April. We had just spoken the week before and were looking at potential dates for a farm visit. In his 70s, he still radiated the quiet energy he always had.

John’s decline unfolded gradually over years. He recognized the slippage and retired from public life, so we didn’t see him much over the last few years. The last conversation we had, when his mind was partly cloudy, was about farming and tractors, and these subjects offered grips when all else was becoming slippery. His struggles were difficult to watch for those of us who knew him as the hyper-rational, clear-thinking, tight tolerance builder.

As we ourselves continue our inexorable march to oblivion, we acknowledge that we are better people for having had John and Muneer in our lives.