[Rodney] In this edition of The Art Show: Art quilts tell a story.

(upbeat music) Sharing folklore through illustration.

A mural project with a mission.

And embracing graffiti on a college campus.

It's all ahead on this edition of The Art Show.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music ends) Hi, I'm Rodney Veal and welcome to The Art Show, where each week we provide access to local, regional and national artists and arts organizations.

Columbus fiber artist Renee Wormack-Keels creates art quilts that are rich with meaning.

Using her own hand-dyed fabrics, along with African prints, batiks, and commercial fabrics, she's able to let her imagination run wild.

Here's her story.

My motto is there are no mistakes in quilting.

There are only design opportunities.

(gentle music) When I was a child, I learned to sew, those were the days of home economics.

And I made the little apron and the little blouse that you make, so I fell in love with sewing.

As time went on, I think, when I was in high school, senior high school, I made a lot of my clothes.

And then when my children came along, I started making my children's clothes.

Over the years, I kind of got away from it.

And then someone I was on a panel with, we were talking about the things that we like to do, and this person was telling me she was a quilter.

And I said: "Well, I've always been a sewer and when I retire in 25 years or so, I am going to learn to quilt."

And she said: "Oh Renee, don't wait until you retire.

Let me teach you now."

So I spent about two weeks with her, learning how to make what is called a log cabin quilt.

I wanted to learn the process.

I wanted to learn the skills, because I wanted to learn how to make art quilts.

There are the traditional quilts that you would put on your bed, versus the kind of thing I make now that goes on your wall.

There's something deeply spiritual about creating something.

It's the playfulness.

It's the letting your imagination run wild.

There are, quote unquote, "rules" in quilting and while I do try to make sure that my seams are straight, my sewing is straight, my points don't always match up.

My colors may not necessarily be analogous.

I have put orange and purple together.

I just love the idea of putting different pieces of fabric together and watching how they play together.

(gentle music) I consider myself to be a narrative storyteller-quilter.

That is, my quilts tell a story.

And typically, they will tell stories about women's lives.

What I want people to come away from is not only to be inspired, but to learn about the unsung heroes, "sheroes," I guess I should say.

The women whose stories are not told.

(gentle music) "Wild Women Don't Have the Blues" is the first of a series of three quilts.

I got interested in blues singers of the '20s, '30s and '40s.

Alberta Hunter, Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and I said I'd like to tell the story of these singers in a quilt.

Because sometimes people will never pick up a book and read it, but they might be willing to at least read a quilt that goes on your wall.

The second quilt is called "Café au Lait and Brown Sugar Divas".

Because in the entertainment industry, African American women were sometimes segregated according to skin color.

In that quilt is a little different fabric.

It's yellow tones, it's light brown tones, because I wanted it to sort of mirror the images of the women and their skin tones.

"Cocoa and Hot Chocolate Divas" is the quilt that I created for darker skinned women.

Hattie McDaniel, Beah Richards are in there.

So that's how that series of quilts came into being.

(sewing machine whirring) Maybe about 10-12 years ago, going through some really deep emotional turmoil, and quilting became very therapeutic for me.

(gentle music) (sewing machine whirring) There's a quilt that I do once a year, and that quilt is for my son who is incarcerated.

(gentle music) One of the things that I could not do last year was to go see him.

So one of my pieces is called "Your Blues Ain't Like Mine."

And its blue fabric, blue hearts, because I haven't been able to visit him during the pandemic.

That made it pretty difficult and painful for me.

(gentle music) (sewing machine whirring) And as you can tell, this heart is not completely reconnected.

And that's on purpose.

That heart is reconnected, but this heart is not.

[Speaker 1] Is there a point where you think you won't need to make one?

I am hoping so, yes.

I'm hoping so.

(gentle music) As I quilt, I'm thinking, you're leaving your own legacy of your own stories, and people may not know all of my story, but they will know some of my story, and hopefully that will encourage them to think about their own stories as well.

(gentle music) If you'd like to learn more about this, or any other story on today's show, visit us online at cetconnect.org or thinktv.org.

Born in Uzbekistan, artist Dinara Mirtalipova finds inspiration for her illustrations through her culture and life experiences.

Let's step inside her Sagamore Hills, Ohio studio to see how she brings her intricate drawings to life.

(gentle music) I call it folk art, because "folk art" means "art of the people."

(gentle music) [Speaker 2] Dinara Mirtalipova paints from her heart.

She draws influence from what's familiar, whether it's old, scary fairy tales or the flowered patterns her grandmother wore.

I grew up in a culture that had lots of those mixed cultures.

Uzbekistan is the place where I was born.

It's like a crossroad of so many different cultures.

It has a very interesting history, all the way from Genghis Khan to being under the Soviet influence for such a long period of time.

[Speaker 2] Living in the U.S. as an adult, Mirtalipova turned to art, from sketching to painting.

So I work mostly in gouache, and gouache is a water-based paint.

My scale is very small, and with gouache it's possible to get those tiny details with a tiny brush.

But sometimes when I paint larger, I go with acrylics, because acrylics is more water-resistant and it stays longer.

(gentle music) [Speaker 2] For years, she's been sharing her art online, initially through blogging and more recently through Instagram.

Her online posts have led to all sorts of collaborations.

I've been mostly sharing my work and my personal work, and to my surprise, I started receiving some requests to illustrate a book, to everything, from little projects, like stationery, to wallpapers and murals.

[Speaker 2] For her latest children's book due out in 2023, "Woven of the World," she's illustrating familiar Uzbek customs, such as how her grandmother wore clothes with multiple patterns.

Everything mismatched and it was totally okay by her.

She liked to just wear things that are colorful and she didn't really care if this color goes well with this color and I kind of find that cute now.

[Speaker 2] In "Woven of the World," she's illustrating the craft of weaving through a variety of cultural traditions.

So it's not just about weaving as the craft.

It's about how we are all woven one culture into another.

[Speaker 2] Mirtalipova is also currently working on a book project, with her own young daughter writing the poems.

It's a book about the North Pole Village.

Like, what is happening in the North Pole?

It involves characters like Mr. Claus, polar bear, and his little helpers mice, who do all the charming work of wrapping up gifts and preparing and creating and painting toys.

[Speaker 2] Mirtalipova says making art is like yoga for her fingers, providing relaxation and a way to separate from the stresses of life.

Self-taught in her practice, she encourages others to create too.

If the process brings you peace and you enjoy it, you call yourself artist and anyone can become one.

So, art should make you feel happy or I would say, provoke a reaction.

Sometimes the reaction may be that you have to wake up and realize what's going on in the world, but sometimes it has just to bring you peace.

And I guess it just depends on the person.

What is it that you are seeking in life?

What is it that's missing?

And if you find art that somehow communicates that, that's awesome.

(gentle music) (no audio) Did you miss an episode of The Art Show?

No problem!

You can watch it on demand at cetconnect.org and thinktv.org.

You'll find all the previous episodes, as well as current episodes, and links to the artists we feature.

Now, let's check out a mural project with a mission.

The Audubon Mural Project is an ambitious public art initiative to bring awareness to the many species of birds threatened by climate change.

With the help of talented local artists, images of these at-risk birds are appearing in neighborhoods uptown in New York City.

And like any bird-watching excursion, you never know what birds you'll see when you visit.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) I had opened the gallery and wanted to bring some attention to the gallery, so I asked the one fine artist I knew who also did "street art" to paint a mural on the adjacent gates to this art gallery.

And he's from Florida and he said to me: "I'm gonna paint a flamingo for you because I'm from Florida, bring some Florida flavor."

And I made the connection: John James Audubon, birds, and that's how the project really got started.

I said: "Wow, this is a great idea.

Get the word out about the threatened birds, beautify the neighborhood."

But let's be a little more ambitious, and let's not do just a dozen birds.

Let's do all 314 threatened birds.

Do murals of all of them on gates and walls all over this neighborhood.

And Avi, crazily, said: "Sure, let's do it."

And we've been chasing our 314 number ever since.

So it's really nice to sort of publicize one of the great Americans and really one of the most interesting Americans to people who are familiar with the name but unfamiliar with the actual person.

[Mark] John James Audubon was possibly America's greatest bird and natural world artist and an extraordinary pioneering ornithologist.

He spent the last 10 years of his life here in Washington Heights.

The center of the project really has shifted to what was once the Audubon estate, between 155th and 156th Street and Broadway.

And it's appropriate because John James Audubon's final resting place is in Trinity Cemetery on 155th.

We made the decision to paint from approximately 135th Street West to 193rd Street which is the end of Audubon Avenue.

And there's no great logic to it, but we sort of thought it would be nice to keep the project Uptown.

Picking the locations is a bit of a challenge, but one of the things we decided from the beginning was we weren't just going to paint anywhere, we're looking to beautify.

So we're seeking out spaces that are in need of some sort of fix, some sort of improvement.

So, the big walls that we've painted all had crumbling paint and really were in a state of disrepair.

We've worked with landlords to secure spaces, like empty alcoves that are boarded up, and we can work with studio artists who are painting panels that we then install into the building.

We're mostly working with artists who are from the neighborhood or from the greater New York area.

We work with them to choose a bird.

We try not to paint the same birds twice.

We really ask them to do what they want, within reason.

(upbeat music) Some of the murals contain more than one bird, so we've painted about 70 birds so far.

There are challenges to painting outside, but there are also benefits of painting outside.

So there are people who come while an artist paints and they're engaging the artists and it's a little bit distracting.

But the positive is that they're engaging the artists and they're learning about the project, and they're learning not just about global warming, they're learning about art.

I'm from the neighborhood originally and I wanted people Uptown to be able to see the sort of art that you would normally have to go to Chelsea, or the Lower East Side, or maybe parts of Brooklyn for.

(upbeat music) One of the things I love about coming up here to look at and for the murals is that you can't be sure on any given visit, which ones you're going to see, or you're going to see them all.

In that way, it's sort of like going out for a birding expedition.

You can't know which birds you're going to see.

When you're talking about half of all North American birds being threatened, you're gonna see some birds there that you wouldn't expect to see.

They will shift, they will move.

The Baltimore Oriole is projected to no longer be able to be seen in Baltimore.

The Common Loon, which is the state bird of Minnesota, is projected not to be able to be found in Minnesota.

I think that sort of seeing these murals of birds in this urban environment, in a particularly urban sort of art form, is something that gets people's attention.

And I hope that they will sort of investigate and see like, what is this, why are these murals all here?

And really learn about this threat to the birds that we are used to seeing around us, even in an urban environment.

I hope that it inspires people to think about that, and to kind of be inspired to do something about it.

On 163rd we have one of my favorite murals.

It's by the artist Cruz, who is a New York-based artist, and it's a painting of three Tricolored Herons.

In the mural, the polar ice caps have melted and sea levels are rising and the three herons are sort of fighting for the last food, in this case a snake.

There's so many things I'd love for people to take away from the murals: An understanding of the threats that the environment faces, more neighborhood pride for Uptown Manhattan, a sense that art is accessible.

[Mark] I strongly encourage people to get up here because it's really an extraordinary experience.

(gentle music) (upbeat music) The Art Show is going to be traveling around Southwest Ohio.

You might see this logo in your neighborhood.

Follow the travels of The Art Show on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram @thinktv and cetconnect.

And check out The Art Show hashtag.

Our last story takes us West.

On the campus of the University of Nevada, Reno, there's a three-story stairwell covered entirely in graffiti.

For more than a decade, this "Graffiti Stairwell" has provided a place for students to communicate ideas and express themselves through art.

Let's watch.

(gentle music) The Graffiti Stairwell is this fabulous place in the corner of the Church Fine Arts Building on campus at the University of Nevada, Reno.

The Graffiti Stairwell came about pretty organically.

It's my recollection that it started with the painting professor's invitation to his students to use the stairwell as an alternative canvas during a small, more intimately scaled summer class.

And it sort of took off from there.

Every square inch of that space is covered and it has been done and redone and redone.

It's just, I mean, it's been more than a decade's worth of people painting on those walls.

It's got a lot of history and a lot of layer.

There are times when, just by the nature of what it is, it can get pretty messy and because people that are painting and participating are not necessarily art students or trained artists, the craftsmanship or the aesthetic quality of things are not always really visually appealing.

But that's okay, I mean, I think that it doesn't have to always look beautiful.

The juxtaposition of the really beautifully executed artworks with a lot of the other kind of just present things is just part of what it is.

Graffiti by its very nature comes out of a history of being a kind of guerrilla activist activity, and the stairwell is really no exception to that.

Most of the time, the works are not attributed.

People are not taking credit for them.

And my understanding of it is that even some of the nicest works that have ended up in there are not art students per se, there's rumor that there's an engineering student that's been doing some really great graffiti in there and former students that have come back and have done some things, and so, we don't have an actual way of knowing who's doing the work.

Art in and of itself is a tool for communicating ideas and it's often trying to get at those ideas that are beyond what we can readily apply language to.

The Graffiti Stairwell is just the epitome of what that kind of expression is.

And it's important to protect that.

Sometimes that means that things get said that are difficult or challenging, and maybe even hurtful.

It's not the intention of the stairwell or our desire to protect that stairwell to protect those kinds of ideals, but rather to protect ideas of using art as a tool for expression.

If there is anything about this stairwell is it's always evolving, it's ever-changing.

And so that means if there are difficult things in the hallway that somebody has placed there, chances are somebody else is coming right back in over the top of that with another level of expression.

(upbeat music) If you want to see more from The Art Show, connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

You'll find us @thinktv and cetconnect.

And don't forget to check out The Art Show channel on YouTube.

And that wraps it up for this edition of The Art Show.

Until next time, I'm Rodney Veal.

Thanks for watching.

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