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00:00that manufactures artificial flowers.
00:03The company was started by my great-uncles.
00:06They were immigrants looking to provide for their family,
00:09and so they picked a craft. Why not flowers?
00:14I am working on a series of quilted portraits
00:18using these glittery African fabrics.
00:22I want black people to see something that speaks to them
00:26about where they came from.
00:29I consider silver the most beautiful matter,
00:32much more beautiful than gold.
00:34As you walk around an object,
00:36you see all the reflections change.
00:38In my work, I try to make silver dance with lights.
00:44I learned how to make my own pop-up books,
00:47and then I incorporated pop-up mechanisms with my photographs.
00:52It just seems like magic.
00:56When I'm weaving, I forget everything else.
01:01It's a great pleasure.
01:02It's what I've always wanted to do,
01:04so I've never, ever thought I would do anything else.
01:08The work I do is primarily representing the community that I come from.
01:13My first introduction to art was graffiti,
01:16and so I started to draw and paint.
01:18I told myself that I was going to have a career in the arts at all costs.
01:22You walk New York City, the Garvin District in particular,
01:51and you look up at these buildings,
01:54and you have no idea what's going on inside of them.
02:01At M&S Schmalberg, we're a fourth-generation family business
02:05that manufactures artificial flowers.
02:07We are the last factory in the country doing this.
02:14What's up?
02:19You grow up when your dad is a plumber, an electrician, a flower man.
02:26I never really processed that he was the only flower man.
02:31Hello, ladies. Lucia, Miriam.
02:35I'm retired, but I worked at M&S Schmalberg almost 50 years.
02:40Look at you. How are you?
02:42Hi.
02:43Sometimes I'll come back just to help them out,
02:46because it is a family here.
02:48Beautiful. Very nice.
02:51What we do here is we take fabric of any type
02:54and create artificial flowers and leaves and petals,
02:59still making them by hand as we have for 109 years at this point.
03:04The company was started back in 1916 by my great-great-uncles Morris and Sam Schmalberg.
03:14They were immigrants looking to provide for their families,
03:17and so they picked a craft, and why not flowers?
03:22In those days, there were probably 30, 40 flower companies in Manhattan alone,
03:27and some of those shops had as many as 100 people working for them.
03:32What's up?
03:36How you doing, buddy?
03:37I'm good, you?
03:38I'm good.
03:39What's up, gentlemen?
03:40Good morning, Warren.
03:44All right.
03:45Senor?
03:46Mr. Warren.
03:47Está bien?
03:48Yeah, very good.
03:49Father and son team here.
03:54Right after the war, my dad came to America.
03:57He was a Holocaust survivor.
03:59He was in his teens when he was sent to a concentration camp.
04:04His mom and dad and his two brothers and his sister perished.
04:10After surviving the camps, he was in the Nazi death marches.
04:14But one morning, he was woken up by an American soldier who said, you know,
04:20hey, here's some water.
04:22You know, it's over.
04:23You're going to be okay.
04:25And he said to my dad, you know, who's left?
04:28Who can we contact?
04:29And my father said, I don't have anybody.
04:31But in New York, in America, Schmalberg, Flowers, and this American soldier contacted Morris and Sam.
04:40And they got that on a boat.
04:42They stayed in their attic.
04:44And he would come to work and learn the business.
04:47When Morris and Sam passed on, my father boarded from their spouses.
04:51In those days, it was a thriving garment center.
04:56These streets were lined with factories.
04:59We were the flower guys for the dress industry.
05:02And there were other flower guys for theater, other flower guys for hats.
05:06And they all just couldn't make it.
05:08The first thing we do when we get any material is we cut into panels about 50 inches square.
05:22And there's a few different starches that we use to give it extra body.
05:27You wring it out as best you can.
05:29Then you stretch it on the frames to dry.
05:32Once the fabric is starched and dry, we make layers out of it.
05:38We then take our vintage dyes and cut out the flat petals.
05:47You're cookie cutting just whatever shape the dye might have.
05:52And we have hundreds of different dyes.
05:54Most of them are flowers, but there's leaves, there's butterflies.
05:59It started out like these with the hand-held dyes.
06:04And they're beautiful.
06:06Like this is a four-leaf clover, a four-paw we call it.
06:09And you see the detail on that as opposed to this one, totally different.
06:17In the old days, there was no machine like Alex is cutting.
06:20And everything was cut with a mallet and a boom.
06:27So imagine cutting a dye like this, this heavy dye.
06:32It's probably 10, 12 pounds.
06:35Cutting this through fabric by hand.
06:37The next step is the embossing.
06:42The molds date back some of them to the late 1800s.
06:48And they resemble the waffle iron.
06:50You take your flat petal, put it between the molds.
06:55And with pressure, heat and the starching from before, you're embossing the petals.
07:01Now they've been cut, they've been pressed.
07:04And then finally they go to assembly where we put them together to make the flowers.
07:09We're not horticulturally on the money here because it's not nature, but we do some beautiful things close to nature.
07:23The whole business is a combination of tools that are irreplaceable and people and skills that are irreplaceable.
07:41Hey, Al, when you're done with that, I have two orders for Catherine.
07:45Alex has been with the company since I was a kid, almost 40 years.
07:50All right, no problem.
07:51Thanks, Al.
07:53Miriam worked with my grandpa Harold.
07:55She's a master flower maker, master artisan.
07:59What if we did something with wired pores and then you can make a center? What do you think?
08:05We don't have a, um, a petal.
08:08I defer to them. I respect the experience that they have.
08:12What if we take one of the poinsettia petals? That make sense?
08:16We have to create the flowers.
08:18Okay. All right.
08:19When I'm creating the new flowers, sometimes my mind comes a flash and I, I stop and I create something.
08:30If they like it, I love it.
08:32Nowadays, sadly, there's no garment district. You don't see trucks in the morning. You don't see push carts on the streets.
08:47Artificial flowers are coming from offshore. Copies of our flowers.
08:54But today there's enough domestic things between theater and fashion and operas and TV shows that keeps us okay.
09:01And then there's the Met Gala, where all the couture designers dress the stars of the world.
09:11If it's a season where flowers are in, our stuff is on the red carpet for the event.
09:17One of Vera Wang's senior designers asked if we can make a parrot tulip.
09:27So I went on Google. I looked up pictures of a parrot tulip.
09:30We've been making that flower. It's about 14 inches.
09:33It's been worn by Emily Ratajkowski.
09:36And then they asked if we can make even larger ones.
09:38They sent us 50 yards of this chartreuse fabric. It was worn by Gwen Stefani.
09:45Big flowers. A lot of work to make these things.
09:55Each generation brings something different to the table.
09:59Now there's social media. There's online platforms.
10:03These have become a big part of our business.
10:05Every day somebody comes in here, tells me they found us on Instagram.
10:09And can I buy a flower? To which the answer is always yes.
10:16Could you imagine what they would think?
10:19That we were still here. That I'm sharing Instagram videos.
10:23Selling flowers on Etsy.
10:26In 2025.
10:28We're very lucky. We're very lucky.
10:31You got Grandpop there keeping an eye on both of us.
10:33Yeah.
10:34You know, my dad was that Holocaust survivor.
10:39And I think his skills and his thinking were inherited to me and to Adam.
10:45He set a path for us, you know, to keep it going.
10:50And we love this. We love making flowers.
10:51We love making flowers.
10:52We love making flowers.
10:53And we're trying to believe in that combination of CDU.
10:54And, and the balance is flowing in time every day.
10:59Because everything works for us, you know.
11:13all of us understand fabric from the moment you're born they wrap you in a blanket they
11:23put that little hat on your head your whole lives you're surrounded by fabric
11:30and i think it becomes a deeper understanding of what is being communicated in my portraits
11:37because nobody has to sit you down and explain to you the rules of this
11:43this is fabric it's touching you at all times
11:57bisa butler is known for these visually eloquent quilts that really speak to african and african
12:04american past a kind of diasporic story her work is based on photographs of black people
12:13she's going back into history looking at archives looking at thousands of photographs to find
12:19just the right ones to show us something that we've never seen before
12:25i'm drawn to black and white photos i'm wondering who are these people and what was the circumstances
12:32of their life
12:36i'm sketching on top of the blow up of the photograph i'm looking at what's the lightest light the
12:41darkest dark the black and white allows me to imagine how can i use color and fabric to tell
12:50this story about this person if i'm using a lot of blues and greens i'm using that cool color palette
12:58to say that this person had a more calm demeanor but if i'm creating a portrait of somebody who i
13:07really want to express is very powerful you might see me use a lot of colors that look like fire
13:12i really like african fabric this is nigerian wax resist originally these patterns were done
13:27as a part of a secret society and a secret language that was only understood by a few
13:36so this is known as speed bird in the congo it meant that for them money is easy come easy go
13:44it's once you have it in your hand it speeds right out i use this fabric in so many of my
13:50pieces in different colors it was originally called la cour de cheval but in ghana the women called it i
14:00run faster than my enemies a lot of my portraits i'm trying to embellish them with messages taken
14:10from the patterns to reinforce the story visa and i met in college at howard university and i was a dj then
14:27i'm a dj now she was an artist a visual artist so i'm an audio artist so that's what made us connect
14:36i'm playing for all of visa's exhibits for her openings i share a studio space with my husband john
14:46he's playing music while i'm working
14:56it really helps to have another creative person's perspective to think outside of my own box
15:06so after i graduated from howard i thought well i want to be an artist so i should paint
15:16but it didn't mean that painting really spoke to me
15:20i wanted to make a portrait of my grandmother we all knew that she wouldn't be with us that much longer
15:29i used my grandmother's fabric remnants
15:31and that made the portrait that much richer because it was made from her life
15:37that was the first portrait that i created
15:42i decided to go to grad school and my master's degree was in teaching art and so i was an art teacher
15:50but after about 12 years of that i went to being an artist full-time
15:54she elevated from just a person who could sell some pieces to then saying now i can really take this
16:03to another level visa can create a face that you would actually think is someone looking at you but
16:08it's all fabric it's pinpoint precision that's where visa is with it
16:13we are in a time where people are very separated so i'm looking for images of people who are intimate and tender
16:27the piece that i'm working on right now is of a young couple taken in the 1970s
16:35i'm drawn to their gaze they look so proud to be a couple and i remember that feeling in high school like
16:42your boyfriend and girlfriend so the fabrics for their clothing i want to reflect yes these are
16:49children of african descent but they're very much american children and they're very much in the 1970s
16:58so i'm using the african cloth and then i'm also layering that with colored vinyl on top of it
17:05all of these glittery fabrics emulate the light that i feel is shining from these people
17:22i'm looking forward to my show at the smithsonian american art museum
17:27the smithsonian american art museum is incredibly fortunate to have visa butler's largest really
17:41the largest quilt that she's made i spent so much time with these guys the quilt is called don't tread
17:51on me goddamn let's go harlem hell fighters
17:54in world war one france needed boots on the ground in the united states said we can loan you these black
18:03soldiers the harlem hell fighters were a segregated unit they suffered the largest number of casualties
18:13out of any other units in the u.s army at that time
18:18they fought fiercely for their country and they're fighting for their own dignity
18:23and they're fighting to stay alive and the photo that i'm drawn to
18:27is the soldiers on the boat before they land at new york harbor they're getting ready to be greeted by a ticker
18:35tape parade they marched right down fifth avenue you could feel the thundering of their boots as they
18:43came and for the first time black soldiers were being cheered on by an interracial audience
18:50it's a monumental quilt
19:01you get in close and see the intricate stitching to create this illusion of three dimension and layers
19:09to make this piece come alive
19:13this fabric the blue and the pink is nigerian wax resist
19:19you see the circular symbols within the cloth yeah that represents the idea when you drop a pebble
19:25in water in the rings how your small input affects the whole world wow wow yeah
19:35her work is really a lesson in empathy in a way of helping us understand and commune with a
19:41past that has often been forgotten overshadowed or deliberately buried
19:45i do want my work to make people feel good when they see it but when black people look at the artwork
19:57they should see something that speaks to them about where they came from
20:01they should see something that they come from
20:05to feel the emotional resonance of the artwork
20:13i am silversmith and goldsmith i'm a worker
20:30an alchemist art historian all these things put together because i like life
20:50and i like to explore things so maybe i can say i'm an explorer
20:58silver has been an extremely important matter since antiquity
21:06and i consider silver the most beautiful matter much more beautiful than gold
21:10i find gold a little vulgar
21:19but silver is beautiful because it reflects lights
21:24as you walk around an object you see all the reflection change
21:28so in my work i try to control those reflections to make silver dance with lights
21:41the soup to win with the fish and everything was created with the reflections in mind
21:47by all the movement at the moment of a boat
21:50it's just an undulating calm sea that is the one the fisherman prefers
22:04my family in rome we're four generation silver smiths and goldsmiths
22:10my great-grandfather his name was rubaldo like me he opened his shop and then my grandfather had his
22:16own workshop by the time he was 24. the family concept was that the moment you reach a certain age
22:27you will go on your own and open your own workshop
22:32yeah that's fine that's it this is good this is good
22:40but to be a silver smith the training is no you don't just to work the metal
22:44the training is to study art art history and design so i was sent to the academy of fine art and sculpture in rome
22:57i was a great admirer of pope john the 23rd and i create for him in my father worship a gold
23:05inkstand and depend it was given to him as a gift i was 17
23:14the american girl that i met at the academy
23:22and that was the reason why i came to america september 27 1967
23:30a few months later we got married i worked in new york for nine months
23:35then i opened my own place and i got commission from tiffany
23:39and then steuben glass cartier i was very fortunate
23:52most silvers bit use the repoussé method that means being chased from both sides
23:59this is actually an impression from a 17th century german basin
24:08once i make the drawings these drawings will be put on a piece of metal that is embedded in pitch
24:17and we trace the drawings down into the metal then we start sinking the masses
24:25once you have totally sunk the figure from the back then we remove from the pitch
24:34and we turn it around and that's what we have the relief from this on now you have to finish the front
24:41you're putting all the details on and the sharpness of the figure
24:52before the goldsmith silversmith metal worker the hammers are the most important tool
24:58and to use my favorite line from michelangelo poem no armor can be made without a hammer
25:09so we're the forge we can make our own
25:15each one of them has their own use and you can see they're all different
25:20this is a planishing hammer you do not strike it you just caress it
25:30so that you are smoothing down the silver
25:35this is my favorite
25:39i've used this probably 10 times more than any other
25:42my family constantly restore objects both for museums and private collections
26:04sometimes there were religious objects
26:06like judaica i restored several torah crowns they were in terrible condition you can imagine they
26:13were buried during the war we restored the original beauty but i will not touch it until i research
26:21the history of the object you want to transpose yourself into the person created it's almost like
26:30the artist that made it telling you that's what i meant make sure you respect me
26:38when i was a teenager maybe 18 i went to see an exhibition on the american revolution
26:46one of the things that caught my eye as a silver smith was the liberty ball it was made by paul river
26:53a lot of paul river silver is fairly regular and some is quite spectacular after the revolutionary war
27:04he's doing fluted teapots which are really the hallmark of his ability they're really quite remarkable
27:12his father the paulus revoir was french he came to boston at the age of 13 learned the trade he opened
27:20a shop brought his son paul into the shop to apprentice paul does eventually take on his father's shop
27:28paul reverie carves out his niche as being a silversmith that can make whatever you need
27:35paul reverie is not only doing this himself he has a team of apprentices and journeymen who are
27:40working in his shop so he's already starting to think pretty early about how he can expand his business
27:50paul rear house which was built around 1680 is the oldest surviving building in original boston
27:59the time the revere finally moves in in 1770 it's a little bit of a fixer-upper but his silversmith shop
28:06is going to be located a few blocks away so location's perfect
28:11the build-up to the revolution is not military action it's community activists
28:17the liberty bowl is actually commissioned by the sons of liberty this rebellious group that's stirring
28:23up troubles here in the colony their ideas are that we are being taxed without representation the
28:29idea that we will separate from the united kingdom on this bowl paul has engraved the names of those
28:36sons of liberty members this is a kind of revolutionary act that he is doing to be affiliated with this act
28:42supervillian next to it in the exhibition was for reverie's engraving of the boston massacre with the
28:51name of the patriots that died the movement tremendously that the silversmith made these objects
29:02so he's the person who's chosen for the midnight ride one if by land and two if by sea it turns out
29:09the british troops are going by water and so revere is rode by two friends across to charlestown
29:16he borrows a horse and rides off he gets to lexington he has alerted people along the way
29:22the british troops are coming and so he becomes our favorite patriot and silversmith paul revere
29:31after i moved to america i restored more than 12 objects of for forever i remember the first one was a
29:47simple teapot and i says it probably like looking at an old friend like say you know i met you in rome
29:54you don't remember me but here i am
30:07when i'm weaving i forget everything else
30:27it's a great pleasure because the wool is wonderful to touch
30:31and i'm totally absorbed
30:39it's what i've always wanted to do so i've never ever thought i would do anything else
30:46helena hernmark is an absolutely masterful tapestry artist
30:51she combines skill with incredible design talent weaving tapestries on a truly monumental scale
31:03for architectural settings throughout the country she has woven many of these pieces at her own studio
31:09on her large 11-foot looms many of them are also woven at her kind of partner sister studio in sweden
31:14i grew up in the old town in stockholm which is very charming island my father was head of decorative
31:23arts at the national museum when i was 17 he took me to visit alice lund who had a weaving workshop
31:32and my father said do you want to be a textile designer and that decided my fate
31:37after four years in art school i married a danish fellow and it was with him i moved to canada
31:48we were there just in time for expo
31:53and people at the national film board commissioned me to make a tapestry for the lobby of the labyrinth
32:00their building at expo and the design i made was a snake that was like a labyrinth and lit from behind
32:09like a stained glass window i felt that if you want to make an impact in the lobby you do something big
32:16that was really the market that i would seek would be lobbies
32:20this is like watching grass grow it's all very slow now it's more like embroidery than weaving
32:36when i got the commission from the warehouser company i was told fly to seattle stay in the
32:44tall hotel go up on the roof and wait for the helicopter to pick you up so there i am 29 years
32:51old like james bond on top of the roof they flew me to walk around in the rainforest and in those days
33:00i hadn't done much photography so i decided to work from a picture they had and then i went back to
33:08montreal and wove the rainforest tapestry and that was my breakthrough
33:15helena has evolved this historic tapestry medium to reflect photographic vision
33:24and so weaving with this incredible sensitivity to color and focus is something that she has innovated
33:30in 72 i had by then married an englishman we then moved to london but the next big commissioner goes
33:43was for best lamb steel three tapestries i was just given the photograph so i said well that's great i
33:51can do it like that
33:52you have fire lights coming in one direction and the daylight is coming in another direction
34:02i like that mix of light
34:07in 75 i moved to new york america was where i could enlarge on my career i couldn't do that in england
34:16particularly or sweden i then married the industrial designer nils different he grew up in mississippi
34:25and he turned out to be very clever going to cranbrook having a fulbright and then focusing on
34:32ergonomics and the human body and he developed the human scale chairs which was really totally unique
34:40nils designed this room for me walk into the studio and the first thing you see is the wall of wool this
34:52is more than 2 000 colors and arranged according to the spectrum
34:59i've got all these colors but they're never exactly what i need so i combine them
35:04i have a sample of what i'm looking for and then i lay them out so it's in fact five different yarns
35:14so then i go up and find each one that's one then this is
35:23this one that one and then we have the green over there and then we have a light one like that
35:31okay so in effect i'm making one color out of five colors
35:43and then i can tie on to here then it will continue
35:49in 2013 nils got cancer
35:55for eight months i stopped my work to take care of him
35:58but i felt that i could allow myself one hour a day to do something that i would enjoy and that's
36:07what these are i made probably 200 of them before he passed away
36:13what you see here is an overview of my tapestries if i look around it's almost every state
36:28has a piece this is atlanta that's the biggest one we made is 400 square feet
36:34and these are oklahoma the history of oklahoma and then the history of money and the future of
36:41banking so banks are involved and this was for pitney bows originally these tall abstract works and
36:50they've now belonged to the minneapolis institute of art and this is in texas it hadn't occurred to me
36:58until then that you could weave in focus and out of focus that was the first time i did that
37:09the hudson yards commission was an incredibly ambitious project
37:14they wanted two tapestries for the elevator lobby
37:17and the client said i wanted to go up the wall and along the ceiling
37:22of course we've never done anything like that but you always say yes never say no
37:29for the better part of four years there were two weavers in sweden weaving both the wall
37:34tapestries and then the ceiling tapestries and then simultaneously here at helena's studio
37:39we wove various ceiling hanging solutions we needed to keep the ceiling tapestry exactly flat
37:46so at every inch there had to be a carbon fiber tube this backing would allow it to be suspended flat
37:53across the ceiling
38:15i'm trying to get what i want but it's a particularly tricky piece of weaving right now
38:46pop-up books are this flat object and then all of a sudden you open it and this scene emerges
38:55it just seems like magic
39:00and that's what intrigued me
39:03i was born about an hour from downtown philadelphia my north
39:22my parents immigrated from mainland china they both came in the 1950s and it was a pretty happy childhood
39:30back then parents just wanted you to assimilate they didn't want you to learn their native language
39:38when i became a teenager i wanted to hide that i was chinese i used to peroxide my hair
39:45and i wouldn't eat chinese food
39:49my father was an engineer i think he always wanted me to become an engineer
39:54but that's the one thing i didn't want to be because he wanted me to be that
39:58then after college my mom found a tour for me to china
40:05the tour visited yunnan province
40:10quenming is the capital and it's where my mom was born
40:16yunnan has almost half of the 55 ethnic minority groups of china
40:21when we visited the university for ethnic minority groups the dean asked me if i wanted
40:29to teach english there i was offered that job because my great-grandfather long yun was governor
40:37of yunnan province and general of the army and he had this nickname the king of yunnan
40:43for them it was like an honor to have a descendant of long yun at the school
40:51so i taught english and i also started traveling
41:00i learned during my first trip to china that my mother was from an ethnic minority group called the
41:05nosu yi so i wanted to explore the cultures of the different minority groups
41:14i stayed for three years taking pictures of things i'm seeing and experiencing
41:24and then i went back to the states to get my mfa in photography
41:27but being a photographer is really competitive and so i thought how can i make my photographs more
41:34interesting i just went and did some like research in the bookstore like what what can i do now i
41:42used to go there to to think and in the children's section i saw for the first time pop-up books
41:49i took them apart and analyzed them there were parallel lines and angles a lot of mathematical
42:01relationships also a whole story could be told without words
42:11so i learned how to make my own pop-up books
42:14and then i incorporated pop-up mechanisms with my photographs
42:21three years later i went back to yunnan province
42:24to create a series of pop-up books called we are tiger dragon people
42:36the most difficult part is actually not the mechanics it's the story
42:44i wanted to have a reason why it's three-dimensional
42:49festivals or celebrations are good because people want to be photographed
43:04the mechanics of a pop-up are a series of simple basic structures combined together
43:18to create something more complex and then adding photographs makes the viewer look at it with surprise
43:26this series has three eggs with images from my trip to see the meow people
43:42the meow are very well known for their festivals and for their paper cutting
43:47i went to this cave where a family has been making paper for 19 generations inside
43:59the meow believe that their originator was called butterfly mother and butterfly mother gave birth to 12
44:07eggs and these eggs are the origin of all living things including the meow people
44:23this sculpture is called noodle mountain
44:25i wanted to understand the history of chinese laborers coming to the u.s during the 19th century
44:40the chinese helped build the transcontinental railroad
44:44and chinese laborers were working in the salmon canning industry
44:50but the locals wanted them out because they claimed that they were replacing
44:54american workers so the chinese were targeted with massacres hangings
45:03the red sauce represents blood and fire represents the many chinatowns that were burned down
45:12in 1875 the page act was the first legislative act that targeted immigrants
45:19and it mainly banned asian women from the country and then in 1882 the chinese exclusion act excluded all chinese men
45:30from coming to the u.s but there was a loophole that allowed merchant visas for businesses and one of those
45:39was restaurants leading to an exponential growth of chinese restaurants
45:50the crank reminds me of when i was little and my father would use a manual pasta maker
45:59he always wanted me to become an engineer but he was just happy that i had found something that i liked
46:05and then the irony is that i am an engineer now a paper engineer
46:25i come from kensington in philadelphia
46:27another name for kensington is the badlands it's where a lot of impoverished people live
46:39that's how people look at it from the exterior but from the inside i see that it's a community of
46:45resourceful people and there's a lot of creativity that happens in this place
46:58i am a potter poet an artist the work i do is primarily representing the community that i come from
47:07my parents are both from puerto rico they did immigrate here they come from less means than i did
47:36in school we didn't have art classes that wasn't really a thing i would say my first introduction
47:42to art was graffiti i had some big cousins and i just wanted to be just like them we all did graffiti
47:49together when i would tag a wall with my name made me feel like my life mattered and so i started to draw
47:57and paint
48:00years later i took a community college art class and the teacher just happened to be a potter
48:06that was why i initially pursued ceramics it was the first time really where people started to
48:13tell me that i was good at something
48:17i told myself that i was going to have a career in the arts
48:21and i was going to do it at all costs
48:23my practice became defined when i started to acknowledge where it is that i'm from
48:39it was telling the stories of kensington but also paying homage to all the people that paved the way for
48:46me to be here in this piece i wanted to make something based off of nina simone and i wanted
48:54it to be the era of the 70s
48:59i do design directly on the work but a lot of it is just back and forth between me and the pop
49:06roberto lugo is really important to this neighborhood and to really the whole ceramic
49:14community nationally and internationally
49:20we have his beautiful mural that's on the side of our building
49:23and he wants to make sure that young people from his community have a chance to do ceramics which is
49:29really empowering and gives kids agency in a world where they often feel powerless
49:41roberto loves to go out into parks and throw on the wheel
49:45it's a surprise for people seeing someone doing this thing that they really have never seen before
49:51so make your fingers like this yep you're gonna put it right in the pot oh isn't that cool yeah
49:57you want to try to make some pottery since i winded up being somebody who has a career in art
50:04it becomes more important for me to share that perfect you're doing so good mia look at that
50:13yeah so what would you eat out of this cereal cereal yep good job
50:22just recently i got to teach people who live in kensington about pottery patterns
50:26and how they're made and they got to make their own patterns
50:33we use those patterns to paint three public sculptures
50:37so the public sculptures are not only in this neighborhood where people don't think public
50:42sculptures belong but if they're created by people from this community as well
50:57i'm inspired by ancient greek pottery and those potters are working in the same exact way that i'm
51:03working today except they did it several thousand years ago just to be a part of that lineage for me is
51:10really exciting
51:17in this exhibition we have incorporated ancient objects together with roberto's work to show
51:23how ceramic vessels tell stories both in antiquity and today how that medium really enables these
51:30stories to be told and shared among a community if we look at ancient greece the pieces are telling the
51:37stories of gods and incredible parties and heroes but you don't really see the poor people or the enslaved
51:47people and for me it's so important to tell their stories we have his work called same boy different
51:55breakfast where on one side of that vessel you see a teenager sitting in his room at his desk
52:01in the back of the piece it has the very same boy but in a prison cell it tells my experience of growing
52:09up with young men who are innocent but they wind up somehow in prison in this particular piece i was
52:15thinking a bit about when somebody passes away and they create these street shrines sometimes people
52:21will pour out some beer for the departed it reminds me of a type of scene that you see on greek funerary
52:28art where the living and the dead are shown holding hands like this and that's really what what you
52:34see here with these individuals reaching out to each other in the face of death it's just very powerful
52:49one of my works is at the smithsonian american art museum
52:52it's actually a life casting of my body broken up into all the different parts of my dna
53:03and it was part of a exhibition directly named in the presidential order to remove the idea of
53:10race from art institutions
53:14i feel like people fear because they feel like their lives or stories don't matter
53:19but all of our stories matter and we should celebrate them all
53:27so when you cut the arts baby you cut the heart strings off the body that freedom rings if you cut
53:33the arts to fund war what are we fighting for they tell us to paint houses but not to paint a canvas
53:40you'd rather see us in encampments than exceeding on a campus without art how you gonna dance when you ace
53:45that math test who's gonna sing your praises when you get that high mark without art we're quick to
53:51draw guns apt to sing war cries dance around the issues you want to stop violins pick us some violins
53:59you see because those who draw good are the last to draw blood and those who throw pots were the last
54:04the last to throw shots so so when you cut the arts baby you cut the heart strings off the body that freedom rings
54:20of all the way that you can't warn them to make the most beautiful and beautiful and beautiful and beautiful
54:29stream more craftin america on the pbs app
54:37craftin america is available on amazon prime video
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