By Kristy Edenfield
CLARA WOODS AND FIONA SCHLENDER are 18-year-old adult women who graduated from Savannah Arts Academy last month.
The censorship of their “FUCK ICE” painting by SCCPSS has garnered national attention – including the Southern Poverty Law Center, who think that the students and their teacher might have a case for damages.
In February their collaborative painting submitted for the Panhandle Slim and Painting II, III art show was censored by SAA school administration.
In May, four months after the show, the students found out that their art teacher, Magen Peiglebeck, was suspended for five days without pay for allowing the students to complete the artwork.
The piece of art originally said “FUCK ICE.” But SAA principal, Dr. Anna Belue, forced them to censor the painting and paint over the word "fuck."
Arguably, Woods and Schleder learned the greatest lesson of their high school career because of the censorship of their painting: How to stand up to authority.
The Savannahian spent over an hour listening to the women.
Because their voices have not been heard by Savannah Chatham County Public School System administration or elected school board representatives, this article will be nearly a verbatim documentation of our conversation with Clara Woods and Fiona Schlender.
Their artwork was censored by SCCPSS, and we at The Savannahian do not feel comfortable censoring their voices too.
While this article is long, we hope that you will read and listen to the perspective and facts from these two students. Neither woman was listened to or called in to meet with administrative staff conducting the investigation of their teacher – who was suspended for five days without pay for “Students were allowed to complete artwork that contained profanity and explicitly inflammatory language.”
These women are old enough to vote, serve our country in war, and serve on a jury – yet were censored for using the work fuck in their art.
Many other students were interviewed and have corroborated the facts that Woods and Schlender have presented, including Harmon Shinall who spoke at the SCCPSS board meeting last week.
(minute 2:45 - https://www.youtube.com/live/2L9DDXS1uNw)
Fiona: So it started with last year, actually, because we've had the Panhandle Slim show for only 2 years. It's a relatively recent thing.
Last year, I created a painting that also had the F word in it. And it was a quote from an artist - it was not very political. It was more just for fun, you know, I guess.
The piece was up for 2 months and had no issues, no nothing. I got nothing but compliments on it.
So when Clara and I were making the piece this year, we thought that it would be a good idea to maybe use our voice to bring up something that had been affecting the community, so we thought that we would tackle the huge issue of ICE in our community, and in our country in general.
And it was pretty inspired by the murdering of the SCCPSS teacher, Dr. Linda Davis, because it had just happened when we were creating the design and we were like, OK, have a chance to share our voice and it might make a difference in our community because we know that Panhandle is a political artist. He makes political pieces.
The day that we were having the show, we went downstairs to place all the paintings up and everything. We went back up to get labels, when we came back down, our paintings were missing off the wall.
Ms. Pegelbeck came to us and was like, ‘OK, they stole your paintings off the wall.’ I don't know how to get them back because they won't, they aren't really telling me why they can't have them up right now.’ Since it was at the end of the day, we just had to go home and let that be.
The next day we asked to have an interview with Dr. Belue, our principal, and she accepted us and we had a brief meeting, and she told us that it was really inappropriate to have profanity like that in a school setting.
I brought up that I had it last year and she said, ‘well, I just didn't catch it last year,’ which was not satisfactory to us, but we had to move on.
We said that we could cover it up if that would help us get our piece back in the show because we had worked for four months on it. I mean we were hoping to have our piece in the show.
She agreed to that. She said, ‘OK, sure, if you cover it up and you censor it, then you can have it in the show.’ We did fight her a bit on it and point out the inconsistencies with other pieces in the show also having the F word on them. She said, ‘well, I just didn't see those.’
So we thought that that would be the end of it. We went upstairs to repaint over our design.
Fiona: When we came back downstairs because she wanted us to show us the artwork after we had painted over it because she didn't want it to be something like, ‘oh, we take it upstairs, we keep it, we don't show her, and then we just put our regular piece in the show.’ So, we bring it back down after we've painted over it and censored it.
And another student, Sophie, she also had her piece taken down, and this time Ms. P (Magen Piegelbeck) was not notified about that. It was just stolen completely off the wall. Nobody told her anything.
I was the one who saw that it was off of the wall and went and asked Ms. P about it and was like, ‘hey, they took down Sophie's piece. What happened?’ And she said, ‘I have no idea.’
So we told Sophie and Sophie was upset, rightly so. So she went to the office with us and Dr. Belue told us that ‘it's a public school, we cannot have profanity on the walls.’
We complied and everybody censored their art piece, including Panhandle. He painted over his design that had taped over. He didn't have to paint over it because he's a grown adult.
We thought it would end there since we complied with everything that she (Dr. Belue) asked for, but we did do a small protest kind of after that, that probably made Dr. Belue a little bit upset. We decided that in solidarity with all of the pieces that got chosen to be covered up, we would tape over all of the other pieces as well.
And we called the show “censored by admin” and made a sign. So. Dr. Belue thought that Ms. P did that behind her back because Dr. Belue had a rule that she did not want any changes being made after she had left the building at 3:30 pm.
The next day after the show had concluded and everything happened already, when Dr. Belue came into school the next day and saw the entire pieces still being up with the tape over them, she was not happy.
So she called Ms. P down to her office and scolded her and said ‘that she did it behind her back and that Ms. P should be ashamed.’ Ms. P told her that she did not do it.
We did it within the time that she (Dr. Belue) told us, all of the changes and all the tape that was like added to the pieces was done in the time frame that Dr. Belue asked for. So we were completely compliant the entire time, we did everything that she asked before she left the building at 3:30.
So it is difficult to think she couldn't have just seen it on her own. Everything that we added, we did before 3:30. We were very much compliant with everything that they asked for and she still got angry.
I think it's also important to note that no member of admin showed up to the show at all. Nobody came to the show. Nobody commented on it, no one came to the show. So there were no issues there.
After all of that went down, Ms. P kind of got a slap on the wrist and was like, ‘hey, don't do this ever again.’ And Dr. Balue made it very clear that we were not going to have the show again next year.
So my friend Clara saw Dr. Belue in a class days after that happened, after the show. And, she said, ‘hey, would you mind us having a meeting with you, maybe try and get the show back for next year? I don't want it to be ruined. And Dr. Belue cut her off and said, ‘oh, we're never having the show again.’
We did not get any chance to fight for the show. And it was kind of disrespectful. But after that, we just let it go for two months.
And now, it just randomly comes up again that Ms. P is now suspended for five days.
Ms. P shared with us that it was also a surprise to her. She was not expecting it because she was very much compliant with everything that Dr. Belue asked. We were not expecting any of this to be blown out of proportion.
We were kind of just expecting it to calm out, and us to just all move on. Then Dr. Belue suspended her for five days.
Clara: It's embarrassing that we invited this artist to our school, this famous artist from Savannah. He's a political artist and the fact that the school accepted that the first year, all his pieces got to be up and then the second the show gets a little too political suddenly, the second there's an opinion that's not fully positive. It just doesn't really make sense.
Regarding SAA school walkout after SCCPSS beloved teacher Dr. Linda Davis, Renée Good, and Alex Pritti were killed by ICE that was organized by students:
Clara: That was before (the art show), we actually brought that up during our meeting with Dr. Belue because it felt like a school sanctioned event. It was planned by the students, the school practically okayed it, but in the email, I did read through the email sent to parents from the school and it said, ‘this is not a school sponsored event.’
But there were teachers everywhere. It felt like it was a school sponsored event, so it was a really weird turnaround to suddenly have our piece taken down because, the thing is, it wasn't taken down for profanity – we know – we know why it was taken down.
Fiona: Freshman year I was called into her (Dr. Belue’s) office, and in the back, the way her office is set up, there's a desk in front and then it makes an L and then there's also a desk along the back.
And on the back, there was a white mug that said “liberal tears” on it, and it had a teardrop.
From everything that happened, it's quite hard to believe that it was not taken down because of the political message. It's really hard to believe that it wasn't taken down because of the political messaging because last year there were cuss words in it, and nobody batted an eye. It's really difficult to not think that.
Dr. Belue told us that she got complaints from two teachers about it and that's why she had to take it down. It's hard to pinpoint if it's just because of her political views or if it's because of other people's.
I don't understand why it had to be taken down in the first place because there was no issue last year about the profanity.
The students say that the art was hanging for 5 to 15 minutes before it was removed from the wall by administration.
Fiona: During our first meeting with Dr. Belue when we tried to talk with her about censoring our piece to get it back in the show, we asked if we could change the first word to “abolish ICE,” and she said no.
Clara: When we first started talking, she was like, ‘you can't put this up because it talks specifically about a government agency,’ which I feel is very incorrect for students. We have rights around that, I'm pretty sure.
It's just the teachers that can't talk about politics, so there should have been no issue if it said “abolish ICE,” but she (Dr. Belue) was claiming that there was, which does lead us to the idea that she could have taken it down for her personal beliefs.
Fiona: She also brought up that she got many emails and angry phone calls after the anti-ICE walkout. She was trying to say that she just was trying to avoid that again. Which felt a little guilt trippy to me if I'm being honest, because you're a principal, you get things like that every day, that's just part of your job. People are gonna be angry.
While we were in there, she tried to make it seem like the original problem was the political messaging. And so when we asked if we could change it to “abolish ICE,” she said ‘absolutely not,’ and that our parents would have to come pick up the piece instead.
Clara: While our piece was being taken down, she said that the reason was that she had to ‘stop the political argument.’ Dr. Belue was bringing up that it was ‘too current, someone could hurt the school.’
We pointed out that there were other political things happening, then suddenly it was all about the profanity and then the other pieces got removed.
(Regarding their teacher, Magen Peigelbeck, being suspended for five days without pay.)
Fiona: I think it's really disappointing because I feel like the punishment doesn't fit the crime or situation because there was recently a teacher at Jenkins who was having sexual relations with a student and she's not even fired; she's still being paid right now.
It just feels a little bit inconsistent because Ms. P complied with everything Dr. Belue asked her to do, and then she was still punished in the end, which really doesn’t make sense to me.
It makes me really disappointed because she's always been really active in the community, and she brings in artists, local artists, like she brought in SCAD professors to try and help us learn painting techniques that we might not be introduced to in a regular learning environment or art class.
She goes to Forsyth Park every weekend to sell her art and she honestly just inspires me a lot, and it's really disappointing that she would be punished for something as small as trying to encourage us to use our voice.
I feel like in an art school, no matter if we're a public school or not, I feel like we are different from the other public schools in Savannah Chatham County. We're an art school, so to police any art student's work feels a little bit, not art school.
I think it's pretty bare bones to assume that if a teacher who's just widely known as very kind and creative as Ms. P gets severely punished just for encouraging her students to use their voice politically in art, which is what you're supposed to do in a political art show.
I feel like that definitely does have some detrimental effects on other classes and other teachers on thinking that they might not be able to use their voice as much. I'm sure that it’s just teaching the teachers at our school to not use their voice anymore and be less creative. I think it has a pretty detrimental impact.
It was my idea to do the little protest (students put black electrical tape over the mouths of the people in their paintings).
After Sophie's piece was taken down she decided that she would just black out every single word and she was super upset about it, so she was like, ‘they don't get to see any of my piece if they don't want to see all of it,’ which I thought was really inspiring.
I thought if she (Dr. Belue) wants us to censor our pieces, let's just censor the whole show since that's what she clearly wants.
I went around the school, all before 3:30 by the way, to ask every single painting student, and I got every single painting student to agree and say yes, that I could put (black electrical) tape over the mouth of every single piece.
My friend Zoe quickly made a sign that said “censored by admin” to place in front of the school to call the show that now because we wanted to raise hell, because we were quite angry about it and so we just wanted to make the show about that now.
Later when Panhandle showed up, he also had to put tape over the cuss words. He joined in solidarity.
I don't know if this really says anything about our community, but, last year for the Panhandle Slim show basically nobody showed up. So we were hoping to have a bigger turnout this year and since what happened happened, we had a lot more people.
It's a little bittersweet, and everyone was very excited to have a bit of a protest going on. I made a shirt that said ‘I survived being censored by admin’. We were pretty upset, so we did a lot of things.
Clara: I would just like to add that Ms. P had NOTHING to do with the protest except for her allowing us to put a piece of tape over her Willy Wonka skate.
Clara: It was all done before 3:00, and she (Dr. Belue) said everything needed to be done before 3:30. She (Dr. Belue) could check the security cameras and see that we had done it all before 3:30.
The only thing that was done after 3:30, once the show started, I brought in a long piece of cardboard. It had all the names of the people killed by ICE on it, just because I didn't want the original meaning of our piece to be erased with all this controversy.
I felt like it was important for the attention to be brought back a little to what terrible things ICE has done over the past year, and years before that.
She (Ms. P) did NOT instruct us to do any of that. She was obviously upset about it, but she was like, ‘OK, this is my boss, this is how it has to be.’
It was all us, that was our little protest.
We thought it was over months ago.
I forgot to add this: Earlier, when I had my tiny talk with Dr. Belue about the show next year, she had brought up the fact that she was upset about the press coverage. She was very upset about that.
Fiona: One thing that Dr. Belue does not like is bad press. She has made it clear in the past, when we had the meeting with her originally, when she was talking about how many bad emails she got and how she got threatened in the emails about the whole ICE walkout.
After the whole debacle, literally after everything had happened, after everything had cooled down a little bit, she (Clara) just politely asked if she could have a meeting and try and sort things out to have the show back next year, because she felt bad that we kind of ruined it this year.
Dr. Belue said ‘absolutely not, we're not having that,’ and said specifically that she was upset about the Instagram posts that had been shared, because after we made posts on Instagram, on our personal Instagrams that said, ‘hey, this is happening, it's really upsetting.’
A lot of people reposted it, it got around the school, it got many people angry. I would make the bold assumption to say that almost everyone at our school was angry about it, even some of the other teachers.
I don't know if that would get them in trouble if I said that, but I know every student was very upset by it because it's really disheartening to think that you cannot say what you want to say.
That's what she (Dr. Belue) was mainly upset about. She was just upset that it had gotten out, which is just really weird to say to us.
Bby the way, I have to emphasize that literally NONE of this is Ms. P. Ms. P wouldn't hurt a fly if I'm being honest.
She, the entire time, kept saying, ‘let's just not let it get to us. There are some hills, some battles that are worth dying for, I don't know if this is one of them.’
And even though I could tell she did not want us to do anything else, she stayed calm and told us that she would like us to do what we wanted, because she is a supportive teacher that will support us no matter what we choose.
She wanted us to use our voice however we wanted to. And if that's placing electrical tape over all of the art, she's gonna let us do it. But in NO way did she tell us to, or encourage that. That was really all of my idea. That was NONE of her.
A very basic complaint, actually from a lot of people at our school when we tell them about this, is that it's sort of immature to punish us this harshly just for a cuss word, if that's what it really is about.
Because that really just leads us to believe that the real issue here is that she (Dr. Belue) does not like the political message that we were spreading. Then I don't really think that we're the immature ones.
We're at a high school, the youngest person there is 14 or 15. We are not new to the F word, OK?
It's just really disheartening and disappointing that she (Dr. Belue) would belittle us so much to think that none of us in the school are mature enough to see the F word on display. It's very hurtful, I guess.
Both women will be going to college in the fall.
Fiona will be attending SAIC, Chicago Art Institute for a Studio Art degree, painting and drawing.
Claira will be attending Georgia College and State University for Environmental Science.
Fiona: The original title of the piece was a ‘Public Consensus.’ That's what it was supposed to be called. It was supposed to be about how it feels very hopeless for a community, such as Savannah, to just watch this massacre (of Dr. Linda Davis) happen, and not be able to do anything about it.
We wanted our art to be a public consensus, with two girls from Savannah high-fiving, and saying “FUCK ICE” because I feel it is a public consensus, I feel like most people think that, and it feels really disheartening that we can't do anything about it but make art, and then to have our art that we made taken down feels even more disheartening and disappointing.
I was originally going to make a piece just by myself, and quote a recent Emmy winner (Hannah Einbinder), who used the words ‘fuck ICE’ in her speech. And I thought, OK, I can say this by using it as her quote.
So I was originally going to do that, but then I thought, OK, what if we say it instead because we're part of the community, we're just as important as them, we should say it. And that was when we thought our voice actually was able to be heard in the community.
These are self-portraits because we're two girls in the Savannah community and we care. We decided to pull in the American flag motifs as well, because we wanted to make it less about us, but more about the country as well.
There is not much that Clara and I can do before we leave this town to fix what has happened. It has felt like almost everything that we've done to attempt to raise awareness, get it out, do something about it has really ended up backfiring on us, or backfiring on Ms. P, which makes us feel even worse.
So I think what we really want everyone to focus on is helping Ms. P recover because it is quite a detrimental pay loss for a teacher to have that much money lost. I think it is incredibly important for people to go and support her more than focus on us right now.
Clara: I just really want to hammer down on how she (Ms. P) goes to every single (SAA) event. On her Instagram, she posts every single thing that happens at our school. She is constantly there, she is always reaching out to the community (promoting SAA).
Me and Fiona, we've never had any art teacher, or teacher in general, reach out the way that she has, and get engrossed with the community as she has. I feel like I've met and made connections in her class, with SCAD professors and people all around Savannah. I had never met Panhandle before, and now I've met him twice just from her.
Everything she does is so incredible, and it's so sad to see this happen to her, especially because she's been teaching for so long.
Fiona: She started at Savannah Arts when we were freshmen, and we've had her class every single year. We've gotten very close with her and she is just the kind of person that you love, you can't really not like her.
She's very kind to everybody. She always encourages me to do whatever I want. I've not had a very supportive community on going to art school. But she has encouraged me to pursue what I want to do and not listen to other people.
When she (Ms. P) brings in these people, especially Panhandle Slim, who is a famous artist, nationally known guy; he comes in, he talks to us, he tells us how he started from basically nothing. He paints on found objects, he's not spending crazy cash. He doesn't come from a rich family. He still paints on his roof sometimes.
It is really, really inspiring to see these people who are just like me, or I guess I will be like them, who are still able to have a meaningful career and put food on their table every day for their families, for everyone who's around them, and still be making art as their career.
Panhandle plays a documentary whenever he comes in for every class. He likes to point out how he's met so many different people, and even though he's met famous people in New York and in LA and how he's traveled all around, seeing people, selling his art, making million-dollar paintings, making $1 paintings, he still appreciates watching that documentary because it reminds him of where he came from, and how even though he's a rich, famous guy now, he can still appreciate that he was once small like us.
It's just really inspiring to see people that are not telling me that it's never gonna happen, that I'm never gonna make a living, that I'm going to be a starving artist on the street.
I feel like we shouldn't be telling our kids and our future artists that they're gonna be starving artists. I feel that's a pretty offensive term.
I feel incredibly bad for the kids next year who won't get to meet Panhandle Slim because he truly is very inspiring in the work that he does and just the person who he is. He's very chill, he's very nice, and I think it's incredibly important for them to meet him.
Clara: Dr. Watts being told that she (Ms. P) did not comply with everything, and that she was the one that started the protest, which is all incorrect, so I feel like there's definitely some lies being spread. I believe that is definitely Dr. Belue’s personal opinions that are getting in the way.
Fiona: If we're putting it just blankly out in the open, she's (Dr. Belue) probably butt hurt that we embarrassed her. And I think that's why this has become as big as it is, because it really shouldn't be this big. It is insane how much this has escalated.
The fact I'm talking to journalists right now about this is crazy, when this could have just been, ‘oh hey, don't do that again’ and move on.
Honestly I think damage has been done, but I think it would have been effective to look at all the actual facts instead of just listening to Dr. Belue.
Clara: I feel because they (SCCPSS) did skip over a lot of steps with suspending Ms. P. She has not had any type of suspension or trouble in the past with the school district, and a five day suspension without pay is a giant leap, from the little things that she should get beforehand.
We just really don't want to hurt her (Ms. P) any more than she's already been hurt.
Fiona: It kind of feels like the more that we push and push, and that just could be just because we are students and Dr. Belue is the principal, so there's a bit of a power dynamic there. But it feels like the more we push and push to try and get Ms P some sort of justice, it feels like it just keeps backfiring and hurting Ms. P.
Clara and Fiona : Thank you so much. Thank you for hearing us.