WLIW Arts Beat

WLIW Arts Beat - June 1, 2020
In this edition of WLIW Arts Beat, an organic farm embraces fresh ingredients and local cuisine; an arts organization's positive impact on the community; an artist's lifelong commitment to equality and justice; painting images of life in Afghanistan.
TRANSCRIPT
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>> In this edition of
"WLIW Arts Beat," bringing
the taste of New Mexico cuisine
to life...
>> My whole thing
is to be connected.
That's the whole thing.
If it's through an individual
relationship, either with
a person or with a food product,
they're the same.
>> ...the transformation
of a community through art.
>> Project Row Houses has led --
has been a leader in changing
the perceptions of what art is
and what it can do in terms
of not only community
development, historic
and cultural preservation,
empowering people to see
themselves in a different way.
>> ...one artist's journey of
art and activism.
>> All art is political,
whether you know it or not --
what the artist knows it or not.
>> ...and homeland memories
captured on canvas.
It's all ahead on this edition
of "WLIW Arts Beat."
Funding for "WLIW Arts Beat"
was made possible by
viewers like you.
Thank you.
Welcome to "WLIW Arts Beat."
I'm Diane Masciale.
First up, we meet
the executive chef
at Los Poblanos Historic Inn
and Organic Farm in New Mexico.
He uses fresh, seasonal
ingredients that embrace
the art of local cuisine.
Here's his story.
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>> Rio Grande Valley cuisine
tastes like...New Mexico.
It's the sky, it's the air,
it's everything
that encompasses this state
and that river and this culture
that resides here.
That's my main thing.
I mean, I'm from here,
so that's important to me.
I just believe in what I do,
and I believe in the nutrition
that it provides.
I believe in knowing that,
if you eat seasonal,
you tend to be more healthy
because everything is
at an optimal peak in nutrition
and taste and everything.
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The story of the food starts
from the people that produce it.
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I'm just the guy that gets
to play with it.
[ Laughs ]
To be honest with you.
And I get to carry that story
on.
I get to enhance what they do.
So I'm like part of their story.
And then, the people
that really get the full story
are the guests.
So, I'm just a facet
of the process of the story.
>> Behind.
>> And my whole thing
is to be connected.
That's the whole thing.
If it's through
an individual relationship,
either with a person
or with a food product,
they're the same.
They deserve the same attention,
and they deserve the same level
of respect.
The challenge of local food
is that you have to be ready
to change.
We have to be willing
to change as people.
This will be nice for the mole.
Because if you can't change
as an individual, it's gonna be
really hard to change
when you get a curveball
because your eggplants
didn't manifest the way
you wanted them to.
So what are you gonna you do?
Are you gonna be upset?
No, you're gonna make
adjustments.
Or, if we have a huge bumper
crop, what are we gonna do?
So all of a sudden, the creative
juices just start flowing,
and you're thinking,
"I can do this, I can do this,
I can do this, I can do this,"
and you've got one thing,
and you're coming up with
half-a-dozen, a dozen different
things that you can start
creating out of this one thing.
I do think it's important
to hold on to traditional foods,
because those are the things
that make a space special.
Because you can't get it
anywhere else.
If you want the true essence
of it...
You can only get the green chile
here.
You can only get the red chile
here.
You can get it other places,
but in different forms.
We -- We started thinking about
moles for this restaurant,
for this menu quite a while ago,
orI did.
And then it kind of just
evolved, and so we're running
like two moles every six months.
So we'll have a vegetarian
version and a meat version.
With the yellow mole,
it was really about showcasing
these vegetables that are in
abundance right now.
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So, potatoes and onions
and garlic and the eggplant
and the Aji Cristal peppers,
and the jujubes are gonna be on
there, and the pomegranates.
So, this whole dish,
this vegetarian mole, was --
the sauce was created
to showcase these harvests.
So as we move into winter,
all those vegetables
that are on the dish now
are gonna change because
the seasons have changed.
But the sauce will be the same,
so it's kind of like the mother.
It carries them, you know,
and some things
will be stewed in the sauce,
and then some of those items
will ornate the dish
so that you have some
visual textures,
and maybe we'll create
some height with it.
It evolves as the seasons
evolve, and that's what I like
about the moles.
They can -- they can adapt.
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I think that the dishes
pretty much evolve themselves.
I just have to make sure
that I'm aware enough
when to change them.
That's the hard part.
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Because the way the seasons
work, the way the harvest works,
you just don't know from one
year to the next to the next
to the next to the next.
And you have to have
that flexibility about yourself
in this industry.
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The things I love about food
and what inspires me about it
is always being surprised,
because you just never know
until you apply yourself,
either if you're a diner
and experiencing something
you've never had before,
or if you're a cook and you're
being presented something
you've never worked with before
and you have to work through it.
Those are the surprises.
Those are the things
I look forward to,
because there are always...
There's always -- it's always
rewarding, no matter what.
I just invest myself into the --
into the product,
and I hope that when people
order these dishes that me
and my team create,
that they're as invested in
eating it as we are prepping it
and creating it.
That completes a cycle to me.
And to feed people well, I think
that that's -- that's huge.
'Cause you're interacting
with somebody
that you don't even know,
and you're interacting with them
on kind of an intimate level.
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>> Find out more
at lospoblanos.com.
And now here's
the Artist Quote of the Week.
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Since its inception,
Project Row Houses in Houston,
Texas, has had a positive impact
on the lives of the people
in the city's Third Ward.
The arts organization has
transformed and celebrated
the neighborhood's
African-American culture
through the exhibition of
contemporary installation art.
Here's a look.
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>> 25 years ago, you couldn't
even walk down this street,
if you didn't live in the
neighborhood, without some
threat of physical violence.
It was considered one of
the most dangerous neighborhoods
in the city of Houston.
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What the city saw as poverty,
blight, crime and all the social
ills that come along with that,
the artists saw as an
opportunity to showcase their
work and use their work in a way
to enrich the community.
Project Row Houses is
a 25-year-old arts and culture
organization based in Houston's
Northern Third Ward.
We're located approximately
three blocks from
Emancipation Park,
a 10-acre park bought by
freed slaves to celebrate their
freedom.
We walk on the grounds of
freed slaves here every day,
and that's not lost on us.
When our most well-known
founder, Rick Lowe,
stumbled upon these houses
and he discovered this site,
he saw it and the other founders
saw it as this unique
opportunity, right?
So they were able to acquire
what was 22 shotgun-style row
houses.
They were able to acquire
this site and really work
with the community, renovate,
and bring some life
back into these houses.
And that is how the concept
of Project Row Houses started.
We foster the creation
and exhibition of art
in several ways.
One's through our artist rounds
that we have in the fall and
spring of each year.
What the rounds do
is they address whether it's
a social, political, economic --
whatever issue,
it's curated to address a theme
or issue that's happening
in the neighborhood.
We had, a couple of rounds ago,
black women artists
from Black Lives Matter.
A round before that dealt with
the fact that art could be used
as a way to address prison
reform.
Most importantly, we use
the resources that we have
to ensure that the history
and culture of this community
is not erased.
We were one of the first
organizations to look at,
holistically, what can we do
to use our resources
to enrich the community?
Not just beautify the space,
but actually bring some
much-needed services --
to bring affordable housing
into the community,
a place for young mothers
to provide a sustainable,
supportive living environment
for themselves and their
children so they can reach their
professional and personal goals.
Project Row Houses has led --
has been a leader in changing
the perceptions of what art is
and what it can do in terms
of not only community
development, historic
and cultural preservation,
empowering people to see
themselves in a different way.
We get people from all over
the country that come in
and just want to sit and learn.
And this is not
some cookie-cutter,
"Here's a tool kit, go take this
into your community,"
but really explaining to them
what it has taken over the
25 years for us to get here.
Now it's an institution.
It is deeply rooted.
It's not justin the Third Ward,
it isof the Third Ward.
It was this conceptual idea
that has transformed
into what many consider
to be one of the greatest
social sculptures in the world,
and it just came out of this
idea that art could transform
and enrich a community.
>> To find out more,
go to projectrowhouses.org.
Now here's a look
at this month's Fun Fact.
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At the height of
the Black Power Movement
in the mid-'60s,
some spoke out for social
and political change
not on city streets,
but in plays, homes,
and visual art.
Among those was Jeff Donaldson.
Here's more about his work.
>> He was really interested
in creating images
of black people that could be
appreciated by a black audience.
Jeff Donaldson is originally
from Pine Bluff, Arkansas.
He studied art at
the University of Arkansas,
Pine Bluff, and then moved
to Chicago, where he earned
both a master's degree in art
and also a PhD in African and
African-American art history
at Northwestern University.
He's a practicing artist,
and also -- or hewas.
I'm sorry.
He passed away in 2004.
And was also a founding member
of AfriCOBRA.
AfriCOBRA started in 1968.
>> AfriCOBRA is
the African Commune of
Bad Relevant Artists.
And "bad" being very overt and
kind of, I think,
maybe antagonistic
to what defines "good."
So, it was a way to bring people
together to kind of define
a unifying aesthetic
and then to help those artists
kind of present their work
in different ways.
Being in Chicago in the '60s,
he was very active
in the political scene,
and he was very conscious
of social issues at the time.
He studied -- He was very close
with the Harlem Renaissance
and worked with
kind of WPA muralists.
So, the connection
between art and activism
was -- has always run through
Donaldson's life and work.
He was using art as a vehicle,
kind of using art as
a message machine to talk about
race relations in America.
Kool-Aid colors was one of
the kind of unifying principles.
For AfriCOBRA, it was kind of
about beauty in action,
so it was about artwork that was
meant to be legible and readable
and accessible to people.
They're very interested
in kind of mass-producing images
so that they were kind of easily
understood and that they were
kind of acting as art
and propaganda at the same time,
so kind of an agitprop
kind of philosophy.
>> He outlined a lot
of the principles that kind of
aesthetically grouped
these artists together.
Those include a number of things
like expressive awesomeness,
this idea of shine,
and Jeff Donaldson meant that
literally in the sense of shine.
If you look at his work,
he has quite a bit of
metallic paint and surfaces,
but he also means it in a sense
of shine and attractiveness
and well-polished things
and well-put-together things.
He's also interested in rhythm.
He's interested in repetition.
He's interested in bright,
Kool-Aid colors.
And those are just a few of
the things that he outlines
in this essay.
They all were interested
in finding a shared aesthetic
that they could use
to promote their message
and to create work that appealed
to African-Americans
and also told their story
and was something that
could be appreciated
just by looking at it
for its pure aesthetic quality.
And you didn't have to have a
PhD in art history,
like Donaldson did, in order to
appreciate the work.
They thought of themselves as
a family.
They thought of themselves
as a united group.
But they also had their own
individual identities and
their own individual practices.
Jeff Donaldson in particular,
when he talks about this,
he talks about the art that was
being made by black artists
around the time of -- before
the formation of AfriCOBRA
not having the same kind
of aesthetic rigor
that AfriCOBRA members wanted
to put into their work,
and that was really important
to him, that all the members
have a certain quality.
They held themselves to certain
standards aesthetically.
>> It is really kind of heady
material, but it plays out
in the realm of everyday,
and his grassroots activism
laid the foundation for that.
So, he's a very smart man,
but he also understood what it
meant to communicate to the
masses, to communicate to people
who weren't as well-educated
as he was.
So, as he was looking at kind of
the influence of Western art
on the development
of American art,
he was also trying to insert
kind a Pan-African aesthetic
into the work at the same time.
He was trying to say --
trying to really develop
a more encompassing iconography
of American art,
and his work was definitely
with the intent that it would be
for a populist audience --
art for the people.
Art for the masses is kind of,
you know, one of -- kind of
Donaldson's mantras, you know,
and all art is political,
whether you know it or not.
"Whether the artist knows it or
not," I think is the quote
that Donaldson said.
So even if you're not intending
the message to be political,
it's political.
And so, that was one of kind of
Donaldson's central tenets.
>> And here's a look at
this week's Arts History.
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In this segment,
we meet a refugee artist
who is newly resettled
in Dayton, Ohio,
and paints images of his
Afghan homeland from memory.
Take a look.
>> Imagine being uprooted
from your home during a time
of war or civil unrest.
This is the reality
for many refugees
coming to the United States
in search of a better life --
one free of violence
and persecution.
Dayton has been a welcoming city
for many years, accepting
immigrants and refugees with
open arms -- refugees like
artist Mohammed Esmaty
and his wife and children.
After receiving
his bachelor's degree
from Kabul University,
Mohammed traveled to Russia
to further his education
in the arts, focusing
primarily on portraiture.
After returning to Kabul,
he worked in a studio painting
and teaching for many years.
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>> That wraps it up for this
edition of "WLIW Arts Beat."
We'd like to hear what you
think, so like us on Facebook,
join the conversation on
Twitter, and visit our web page
for features and to watch
episodes of the show.
We hope to see you next time.
I'm Diane Masciale.
Thank you for watching
"WLIW Arts Beat."
Funding for "WLIW Arts Beat"
was made possible by
viewers like you.
Thank you.
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