- [Announcer] This is a production of WEDU PBS, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota.

- [Dalia] Funding for WEDU Arts Plus is provided by The Community Foundation Tampa Bay.

In this edition of WEDU Arts Plus, on location at the Dr. Carter G. Woodson African-American Museum, preserving history and culture in St. Petersburg.

- [Terri] We currently have on display the works of Dr. Gary Lemons, and we are excited to host this fabulous array of work.

- [Dalia] Designing an artificial fly.

- We as close as we can imitate the natural insect that lives in the river.

- [Dalia] Colorful textile creations.

- [Cynthia] What's always in my work is the attitude of hope and joy and unlimited possibilities of being able to be free and to be yourself.

- [Dalia] And terrariums with an artistic twist.

- [Amber] Being able to bring a part of nature into your home and interact with it is really magical.

- It's all coming up next on WEDU Arts Plus.

(exciting music) Hello, I'm Dalia Colon, and this is WEDU Arts Plus.

Dr. Carter G. Woodson is known as the father of Black History Month.

Here at the museum of his namesake, visitors can learn the history of African Americans in St. Petersburg and beyond.

This space also showcases current members of the community.

USF Professor Dr. Gary Lemons shares his abstract paintings in an exhibition called Touch in the Spirit of Love.

(catchy music) - The Woodson African American museum is housed in what was once Jordan Park Community Center.

Residents of Jordan Park decided late in the 1990s that they would forgo their community center so that we might have a space in the city of St. Petersburg that we're calling an African American museum.

(catchy music) - What can we go to celebrate the great scholar.

- Dr. Carter G. Woodson, a native of Virginia, was the second African American to graduate from Harvard University.

He was a historian whose passion drove him to preserve African American history.

In 1926, he started what was Negro History Week, and it wasn't until 1976 that we began celebrating Black History Month.

- He was a profound revolutionary educator, and he was one of those Black educators who was willing to stand up for the belief of social justice within an educational arena, to teach for liberation, and that's exactly what he did within an academic context.

I admire him so much to where the whole idea of naming a museum after him was about an archival representation.

Hold on to those Black folks who have changed your life and educated you to believe in African American Black history.

(gentle music) - There's so many talented African American artists who have very few places to showcase their extraordinary works.

We currently have on display the works of Dr. Gary Lemons, and we are excited to host this fabulous array of work.

(gentle music) - As an undergraduate student many, many years ago, I was a studio art and English major, so I combined my study of literature with my practice of art.

And even though I was trained as a realist, I started to think about painting from a graphic design standpoint and my connection to African ancestry.

And from an abstractionist standpoint, I use patterns of African designs and colors and intermingle those together in the representation of whatever the thematics are that I want to focus on in my paintings.

- A body of work created by Dr. Lemons that he introduced me to, I found extraordinary.

The missing element of the human touch during the time of COVID, and he came up with this body of work where we are reaching out and we're touching, but more importantly in his works of art, they're mirrors so that we see ourselves and become a reflection of that spirit of love and the need and the desire to touch.

- It came to my mind, even though we have to be supportive of each other health-wise in the pandemic separated, but what about in a spiritually rich context of love where these hands could be still reaching to touch each other in the spirit of love?

- This magnificent moment.

Since 2016, the city of St. Petersburg has rose a flag in honor of Dr. Carter Jean Woodson, celebrating Black History Month in a way that it's not celebrated anywhere else in the country.

City Hall for the entire month of February.

(audience applauding) - Okay, we'll raise the flag now.

(upbeat music) - The Carter G. Woodson Museum is a center place for gathering not only the Black community, but the entire community of St. Petersburg as we seek to uplift the history and learn from it so that we can go and do better and create a beloved community.

- This is an inclusive city.

We are St. Pete, so that acknowledgement is important on an ongoing basis.

- African American museums are locations that represent more than spaces where art is displayed.

They become hubs for community and sharing the stories and passion of the voiceless so often.

We continue to embrace our space and elevating Black history and its culture 365 days out of the year.

(upbeat music) - To learn more, visit woodsonmuseum.org.

When anglers are tying flies, they aren't just completing a task.

They're also making a work of art.

We travel to Nevada to see how these artificial flies are designed.

(pleasant music) - For most anglers, fly fishing is an escape.

Being on the river, forgetting about work, forgetting about bills and being able to encounter some amazing fish while being in a beautiful place surrounded by great settings is one of the draws for fly fishing.

(pleasant music) Flies are imitations of insects that are actually waterborne.

That's the fish's main food source, are insects.

What we do is we use natural and synthetic materials like hare's ear or sometimes even rubber or plastic, and we as close as we can imitate the natural insect that lives in the river.

(pleasant music) When we go into tying a specific fly, the first thing I'm gonna do is think about its size, its shape, what I'm actually imitating when it comes to the natural insect.

My process would start by selecting the hook, selecting whether it needs to be heavy or if it needs to float.

I would take the corresponding hook to the size of the insect I'm trying to imitate and I would clamp that into my vice, which is just a contraption that holds the hook steady for you.

Once the hook is in the vice, I would grab thread.

Typically I would match the thread color to the insect color.

I'd start my thread down the shank of the fly, which is the top part of the hook.

I would start by then stacking materials, creating a tail and then the thorax of the bug.

If it's a subsurface fly, if it's what we call a nymph, I would put some type of weight on it.

If it's a dry fly or a fly that sits on the surface of the water, I would typically use some type of deer hair or something that has some floatability to it.

and then finishing with the head of the fly.

Typically what we would do on a normal day when we come down to the river is we would take a small knit meshed net and we would siphon the water, and that would show us what's actually present in the water, and then our flies would correspond to the size and shape of whatever insect is predominantly in the water.

(pleasant music) When you're tying flies, one of the best feelings that you can get is to tie just a fly and then catch a fish on it.

It's seriously so cool.

You feel like you're sustainable.

The zombie apocalypse could come by and you'd be fine, you could catch fish, and that is even amplified when it's a fly pattern that you create of your own.

You go out, you see a bug and you start throwing materials together, and then you take that out and it works.

That's one of the coolest feelings for fly fishing and fly tying.

(pleasant music) Woo!

It's something that you can truly master.

It's something that you can really dive into deep detail of the certain bug, the certain time of year, the certain hatch, and you really feel like you can almost predict where the fish are gonna be, what they're going to eat, when they're going to eat.

(pleasant music) I think fly fishermen tying their own flies is a trend that we see growing.

It's something that more and more people are getting into because there are certain aspects to tying flies, especially the weight of the fly or the silhouette of the fly that when you buy it commercially may not be appropriate for what we use on the Truckee River.

(pleasant music) When you're looking for materials to tie with, your local fly shop is your best bet to find those materials, because the nice thing about having a local fly shop is you have the local knowledge of the river, so you have the materials that best suit the Truckee River, Pyramid Lake and all of our surrounding area fisheries.

(pleasant music) The culture of the fly fisherman is dynamic.

It ranges from the guy who will show you his spots, tell you everything, what fly, to the guy who's a little more guarded.

He's not gonna tell you where he was fishing, what spot he had, but more often than not, fly fishermen are very open and willing to share where they were, what fly they were using, what they were catching.

One thing that's really nice about the community that we have here in Reno is that it's a very fun atmosphere.

A lot of people are just here to have a good time, be outside, encounter some of the amazing fish that we have on the Truckee River.

Woo!

So it really is like a family.

You really do have a lot in common with people through fly fishing, through the community.

(pleasant music) - Go to renoflyshop.com to learn more.

In her quilts, artist Cynthia Lockhart tells a story.

Through layering, painting, silkscreen, embellishment and more, she creates images full of power and hope.

(cheerful music) - Ellen and Anne from the Taft called me up one day and said, "We'd be interested in coming over to look at your artwork.

The Taft is interested in you."

So I prepared the visit for them.

They came by, they looked at my artwork in the house, visited my studio, and then probably about a month later I get a call with an invitation to do a show.

Obviously the title of the show and the design and depicting of the show was up to me to come up with, and so that journey to be associated with the Taft started.

Journey to Freedom is a quilt that I did years ago, but it's really at the heart of a story that I believe in.

I believe in a story of people who were slaves, of people who were brought to this country unbeknownst to what would happen to them, left their history, came here, and over a series of 400 years became a vibrant and exciting part of this America.

Within my work, I build a story.

I research the project, I read up on, I will look up the history of it and read several adaptations, books and what have you, maybe even look at a movie, and then I start putting that together in terms of sketching.

And so I come up with the images that resonate in me that are strong, that are powerful, and I get a nudge and it's like, okay, this is what you do, this is what you put together.

I begin to put the colors together for the mood that I'm creating within the artwork.

I will either make the fabric.

I've done something called fabrication where I'm literally putting tiny little pieces, bits and pieces like a collage, to create a very dynamic look.

Or I will dye the fabric or I'll do symbols and I'll silkscreen as well.

(drill buzzing) I am so impressed with the story that the Taft has with Robert Duncanson.

I'm very proud of the history of the Taft of being able to embrace an African American artist and also being involved in abolitionist movement, and the integrity of the Taft to still continue to have a program in place that will support the African American community with their Duncanson.

Again, I had to research the Duncanson murals, and you have to select a piece of art in the Taft, and I looked vigorously for many things, and I was attracted to many things, but you had to narrow it down.

So in looking at Duncanson's work, he does a phenomenal depiction of this environment that just looks like a place that you want to be, that you could just walk into this place.

And so that's critical for an artist, that the viewer actually can feel that.

And then he did something very whimsical, was to put a trompe l'oeil frame around the artwork.

I thought, that resonated with me.

That's sort of playing tricks with things.

I can be a trickster with my artwork, so I said with that whimsy and with those beautiful color, muted tones that he used, I could work with that.

So what I decided when I started sketching was that in Duncanson's murals, I found an area where I felt a slave could have passed through one of his murals.

Therefore, I decided to have a runaway slave passing through the image of the inspiration of the Duncanson.

♪ Swing low ♪ ♪ Sweet chariot ♪ - The title of it is Runaway: Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, which is an African American hymn which depicts and guides the travelers to freedom.

It was a song that was invented to give them instructions of where they would go to seek freedom.

And so with that, then I said okay, now I have to come up with some type of whimsy and some type of flight, and I did that by using a figure that almost was like a camouflage figure that is escaping through the fields.

And again, above him there are the three faces that are singing Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.

I also created some orbs.

The orb structures are just the round circles that you see in the work, are representative of travelers, representative of people who are no longer with us, but it's a way to remember them, the circles.

Inside the circle is always a prayer.

It's always an aspiration, and so the orbs surround the slave as the slave runs towards freedom.

What's always in my work is the attitude of hope and joy and unlimited possibilities of being able to be free and to be yourself.

Freedom is a very precious thing, and as a part of the show, I said whoa, I took on a big task.

This is my perspective about freedom, journey to freedom depicted through my ancestors.

What does everybody else feel about freedom?

Lots of writing, talking about freedom, lots of writing.

And then it dawned on me that what do people think about freedom?

It's a huge subject.

It's one of the most important subjects that we have, our individual rights as human beings to be free, to be treated free and equally.

♪ Swing low sweet chariot ♪ ♪ Comin' for to carry me home ♪ - See more at taftmuseum.org.

The Terrorium Shop is a unique place that explores the artistry of nature and all its curiosities.

See the beauty of these natural creations in Denver, Colorado.

(gentle music) (bottle squirting) (drill buzzing) - [Amber] The decay and the regrowth, this is the process of these living creatures taken by the earth and then new life sprouting from it.

I just love that cycle, and the cool thing about the terrariums that made me get into them was the fact that you become part of that process.

The decay and regrowth is facilitated by you taking care of your peace, and I just thought it was really magical to think of yourself in such a bigger concept.

- [Ian] Entropy and regrowth.

It happens to everyone and everything.

It feels right to make pieces that try to reflect that.

The Terrorium Shop is a story of a taxidermist and a gardener who met and fell in love.

While the word terrorium is an amalgamation of the words terror and terrarium, we bring kind of a spooky twist to terrariums.

- He likes to say it's spooky, but I don't really think it's spooky.

I think it's beautiful because it really encompasses the processes of decay and growth in our products.

- I think a plant inside the mouth would look pretty cool, especially because this guy happens to be missing his teeth.

I grew up in Colorado hunting and fishing in the mountains.

When I found out that I could start giving Amber bones and skulls instead of bouquets of flowers.

- You would bring me so many bones and you'd say, "I just found this for you."

And I'm like, yes!

- I think that's really how I won her heart.

- Dead things.

- Through the dead things.

- [Amber] When I first started doing this, I started doing it when I was little.

I used to go to the greenhouse with my mom all the time and she would let me pick up all the flowers that I found on the floor.

I remember I was walking and I saw this half deer face, and I was walking and it had plants coming out of it, and that's when I started incorporating the live plants.

This is amazing.

It's just so cool to see this creature being taken by the earth again and new life sprouting out of it.

That's where the whole idea of plants and bones came in.

I've been making these little mini scenes or mini world terrariums for a really long time, and I had met Ian.

- [Ian] Yeah, it was about three years ago.

- [Amber] It was our first holiday together and I had gifted him one of my creations, and that's where it all took off.

He was like, "These are really cool."

- And back then it was simple.

A muskrat skull that she had found situated amongst some cacti and some rocks.

It was very simple, but I found it to be clean and beautiful and really represented rebirth from death.

I'm almost thinking the possum might be the right size for that one.

- [Amber] When we got in the studio together, him and I, our brains just kind of took off.

- [Ian] It was like these weird synapses would fire.

Some of I think our best ideas have come up definitely just working together in the studio.

- [Amber] Yeah, definitely.

- [Ian] And it used to be all at our house, but now we have this great shop, and now we get to expand on that even more.

- Ian does the processing, he does the dead things.

I do the live things.

We always joke about that.

- We have a little roadkill kit that contains gloves and plastic and things so if I do come across something that has met an ignominious end that I can take care of it in a sanitary fashion.

The goal is to get something like this free of all this, all these little stringy bits.

It's not glamorous, it's not glamorous.

I can't stress that enough.

- [Amber] Ian props the skulls open and I bring them to the space, and that's where I kind of make the creations here.

All my pieces symbolize an experience I've had.

I try to think of moments in time and recreate those, like it's become a 3D memory for me.

When I'm thinking about that, I'm thinking about experiences in nature, but also textures, colors.

The way that they'll grow over time to fill the piece is really important.

- I think about all the functional aspects of things too, like adequate drainage.

I take the time to go ahead and bore holes through the bottoms of all the glass.

Just being in this space makes me so happy.

- [Amber] Feels so good.

- [Ian] It does.

I love seeing all the life that also is happy in here, too.

- I will always be a little bit grumpy in the mornings (laughing).

I need a pot of coffee.

In the mornings, I love coming in here.

It's just so much fun to have a space to decorate that.

- [Ian] We're also kind of hoarders too with cool, old stuff, so we've been able to take a lot of the stuff out of our house and be like, look.

- I guess we just get to create every day, which is like being able to bring a part of nature into your home and interact with it is really magical.

Not everyone has accessibility to it nowadays.

Not everyone has the time to get out into nature, so being able to have a piece of that in your house, I think it's really amazing.

- Beautifully put.

- To check out more, go to theterroriumshop.co.

And that wraps it up for this edition of WEDU Arts Plus.

For more arts and culture, visit wedu.org/artsplus.

Until next time, I'm Dalia Colon.

Thanks for watching.

(exciting music) Funding for WEDU Arts Plus is provided by The Community Foundation Tampa Bay.

(gentle tones)