This is a production of WEDU PBS, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota.

[music] In this edition of WEDU Arts Plus, captivating kimono, Some of the kimono that I love the best are the ones that I associate with a Japanese term, "Mono no aware."

A traditional Ukrainian art form, and they've always had a meaning of renewal and and rebirth.

And I guess hope could be included in that painting.

The human figure.

Since a lot of my work is so humanistic, it's important to me to try to communicate certain things through color.

And the language of Flamenco.

Flamenco, first of all, comes from Spain.

It comes from the southernmost region of Spain, where there was a really interesting mix of cultures over the last several thousand years.

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

[music] Hello, I'm Gabe Ortiz and this is WEDU Arts Plus.

Since ancient times, one clothing item has come to symbolize Japan the kimono.

Sometimes practical, sometimes luxurious, and sometimes carrying covert messages.

In recent years, the garment has made a comeback.

An exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg celebrates the history and splendor of the kimono.

[music] The exhibition that we're in right now is called, "Kimono the Triumph of Japanese Dress."

It is put together with three private lenders, two of them from the Tampa Bay area.

[music] The exhibition covers about 200 years, but they were worn long before that in different variations.

Kimono is an all encompassing word.

It just means something to wear.

So it is a very generic term, and kimono is also the plural.

It's singular and plural.

[music] I think most people in the United States hear the word kimono and they think geisha.

These professional hostesses and geisha certainly do wear kimono.

They wear very specialized types.

Most of the objects in the exhibition, however, are from everyday people.

They're wearing it for special occasions weddings, funerals, festivals, just to go to the grocery store.

[music] Until after World War II.

This was primarily what people would wear.

[music] Some of the kimono that I loved the best are the ones that I associate with a Japanese term mono.

No aware.

And that is a term that describes the appreciation for the fleeting beauty of something ephemeral, something that's going to pass away and change.

And there are several kimono that clearly are associated with this that show falling autumn leaves that show camellias blooming in the winter or that show cherry blossoms.

And for me, those are just incredibly poignant.

[music] All kimono are made from one long piece of silk that's about 30ft long, and then it's cut into specific pieces that's then put together.

What will make it expensive is the type of processes that are used to make it, to design it or to decorate it, including, gold embroidery, silver leaf.

Gold leaf Shibori, which is a tie dye technique.

[music] A designer would come to your house, especially if you were wealthy.

You could look through design books like we have a few on view, and you could choose what you wanted out of the book and then customize that to fit your personality.

We have another kimono in the front gallery worn by a younger woman before she was married, and there's embroidery all over it that shows books and art supplies.

So she's really advertising.

I'm literate, I'm artistic, and that's what she was wearing in order to find a husband.

So the man would see that and they would understand who this woman was.

[music] Most brides will wear a wedding kimono.

We have one on view here that was worn in a wedding in about 1910.

Typically, a woman nowadays would wear an all white kimono.

Kind of looking back to the Western idea of all white, the kimono that we have on view is actually darker colors.

There's always been a strict code on what people can wear.

So if you're a younger woman, you're going to wear flashier pieces.

As you get older, you start really wearing more muted colors, but they will do little design decorations.

So there's one on view where if you look at the kimono, it's completely all in gray.

But the bottom corner, when she walks, it flips out and it has a little decoration at the bottom so it can catch your eye just a little bit.

It's this whole idea of the importance of understated elegance.

For an older woman.

Kimono is something that we tend to think of as being a very specific garment associated with women, but it's actually a much broader term than that and encompasses not just clothing for women, but for men, for boys and girls.

The men are not as flashy as the women.

They usually dress in black, brown, blue, maybe an olive color, but once they take off their outer kimono, you'll see highly decorative pieces underneath it.

And the only people that would see that would be their family, their wife.

And the men's decorations are different than women's because they show power.

So you'll see tigers, you'll see sumo wrestlers, you'll see ninjas, everything.

That's a symbol of power to show that that man is powerful.

[music] Country clothing is a really important aspect of kimono wearing.

These are everyday clothes, and at least before World War two, many of these objects were made from materials that were actually grown on farms in rural areas.

So that would be cotton.

Most importantly, and even though they're simpler objects, they still have incredible sophistication in their design.

It was important to put in the country and the worker section, because that's what really everyday people are going to be wearing.

What you mostly see in this exhibition are going to be for the wealthier classes.

[music] As soon as the West was associated with Japan.

As soon as the United States had opened the ports, it was flooded with all sorts of outside influence.

There were people from all over Europe coming to trade with the Japanese, and the Japanese were very clever in what they were doing, and they realized that there was a market for kimono in the West.

And so what they almost immediately did was change the style of the kimono and the cut of the kimono, so they fit Western needs.

[music] Kimono today in Japan are still worn, but the influence of the West, and particularly the United States, has really taken a toll upon traditional garments.

So if you're Japanese, you probably wouldn't wear kimono except for really special occasions.

Because kimonos are so expensive.

One of the things that I learned recently is especially for weddings and for formal occasions for festivals, there's a whole rental market now for kimono.

So you see a lot of shops that cater to rental pieces.

And we have a few pieces that you can tell that they're rental pieces, because on the interior there may be a number.

So, you know, I want number 316 for this formal occasion.

Today also, however, you will see people in Japan wearing kimono more informally.

And this is true around the world.

I think people have really come to appreciate them as simply exquisite garments.

So I think that the idea that somehow or another, there's cultural appropriation associated with wearing kimono or any of the related types of clothing, I don't think that really is true.

And instead, what we understand to be the case is the Japanese themselves see this as an appreciation of their culture and appreciation of these objects as art, which is what they are.

[music] To see more, visit mfastpete.org.

Up next, learn about the art of the Ukrainian Easter egg known as Pysanka.

Artists transform an egg into a canvas full of colorful, complex designs.

[music] The eggs are folk art.

They're not just centuries old, millennia old.

They go back to pagan times, when people sheltered during the winter and looked forward to when spring would come.

Ukraine became a Christian nation in 988, so those concepts kind of fit kind of neatly into a Christian Easter concept of resurrection and light conquering darkness and life conquering death.

And so the decorations reflect that.

The tears of Mary across, but also still reflect some of the ancient pagan.

So you have various animals, you have shafts of wheat.

And it's something that we at the museum have been highlighting for the last 25 plus years.

[music] The Ukrainian Museum Archives in Cleveland was founded in 1952 by a displaced scholar who went through the DP camps after World War two, during a time when Stalin was still in power, and during a time when the Soviet Union was deliberately destroying Ukrainian culture and the culture of other peoples.

They knew that their culture was being destroyed, and they felt a very strong responsibility here to preserve these, these traditions.

So my parents made me go to Ukrainian school on Saturdays, and that's where I learned how to make a pysanka.

The first time.

[music] The completed egg is called a pysanka, and that comes from the verb which means to write.

[music] Everybody comes up to me at the shows and say, oh, you painted all of those eggs?

And I said, no, I don't paint.

I said, I write, and I'm actually writing a design with beeswax.

So I have a tool to write with.

Um, this is a tool called a Kiska.

It's basically a metal funnel attached to a wooden or plastic handle, and you scrape wax into the wide end of the funnel, you heat it by by a candle, and as the wax melts, it comes out of the the narrow end of the funnel.

And and that's what you draw onto the egg.

And if you notice, I'm moving the egg and I'm steadying my hand by putting my baby finger on the egg.

So my right so I'm the egg is what's moving so that I can draw straight lines.

You're creating the design in reverse.

So you're you start with a clean white egg and you cover the parts of the egg that you want to stay white.

The wax seals off that part of the egg and the dye can't can't get in.

And so then you use the lightest color dye that you, you plan on using, usually yellow.

What I want to do next is in the center of the star.

I'm going to do teardrops, and the teardrops symbolize the Blessed Virgin Mary's tears.

I do designs that can take me anywhere from 3 to 5 hours to 8 hours to 14 hours on a simple chicken egg.

It relaxes me.

The lines there's no beginning and there's no end symbolize eternity.

Now I'm going to do a few feather lines.

I'll just show this.

Okay.

I'm going to do the feather lines here on these lines.

And this is going to be done on all of them.

It then goes into the red.

Okay.

Red dyes right over the orange.

Okay.

And you can see white lines, yellow teardrops, orange feather lines.

And now we're going to cover the entire star with wax.

It can be a little messy here.

So this star will be completely covered in wax.

And then it's ready to go into the final color, which is black.

And voila!

This is what it looks like when it's done.

Okay.

It looks like really nothing there.

Okay.

You hold the egg close to the flame.

When melting the wax off all those pencil lines that I had before, I'll come off with the wax.

There you go.

There's the white lines.

The yellow teardrops.

I don't have the green dots, but there's the orange feather lines and the red star.

[music] This egg has a periwinkle pattern to it.

Periwinkle has a special place in Ukrainian folklore.

Because the the green vine of the periwinkle stays green for such a long time, even after the first snow.

You can see how green the periwinkle vine is, and for that reason it's developed a significance of perseverance and persistence, which is kind of a lovely, a lovely thought.

It's something that I grew up with.

You know, we had them around the house.

We have them at home.

It's part of tradition.

It's part of who we are as a as a people.

They have have really become to be very strongly associated with Ukraine itself.

And they've always had a meaning of renewal and, and rebirth, and I guess hope could be included in that.

Let's pray for peace in Ukraine.

It's all we can do right now.

[music] Find out more about the culture of Ukraine by visiting umacleveland.org.

In Reno, Nevada, artist Tracey Turner embraces color and finds inspiration in the human figure and human experience with her multicolored paintings.

She expresses emotion and builds connections with her viewer.

[music] My artwork is humanistic.

It's colorful.

I almost exclusively work in oil.

I do frequently bring in metallic elements to my work, like gold leaf and origami paper to add an extra color or texture element.

I like the expressive qualities of color since a lot of my work is so humanistic.

It's important to me to try to communicate certain things through color.

I think it was the portraiture aspect that attracted me to it, because it seemed like infinite possibilities.

Because everyone looks different, different lineages, different colors to pull from different expressions.

That really hit home for me.

[music] The focus on internet memes was kind of an accident, to be honest.

I was at a point where I had been struggling with art making for a few years, and I was uninspired, and I wanted to pivot my work towards doing more portraits.

I think that's more my wheelhouse.

And I saw memes as a way to practice doing portraits and expressions without being bogged down by too much meaning.

Plus, I just thought the memes were funny.

I just thought it'd be funny to do.

And then when I thought about it further, I thought it was a worthy topic.

Because memes have become this way of people, of connecting people relating to each other as ridiculous as they are.

They have casually become this new form of communication.

And that is fascinating to me, especially when we think about how many of the more popular means feature black faces.

It's important for us to document memes in general, and then also to look into which pictures we decide to use.

It makes a point in the conversation of how Black Americans participate in and continue to define things in our culture, and memes are a huge part of that.

[music] I'm inspired by the human figure and the human experience.

I will try to, in words, articulate what that idea is coming from, why I want to paint something like that, or make a series for my personal work.

I won't really paint something if I can't explain why I'm doing it to somebody.

That's really important to me.

I don't like the whole oh, I did it because I felt like it.

Well, why do you feel like it?

That's really important for me to be able to explain to somebody.

[music] It's never just a painting of a skull or a heart.

I know my work is very straightforward and the narrative can be a little bit more hidden, but there is always a certain reason why I'm reexamining a certain subject to the point of exhaustion.

It's just there's just something about it that's really interesting.

And normally it boils down to connectivity or expressing a deeply personal emotion.

[music] I really enjoy connecting with people.

I love posting things online and talking with people about my work.

It does feel awkward sometimes to share, but I do feel relief when I can finish something and put it out there and share it with people, and they can take it in and speak with me about it.

It just feels really life affirming.

[music] Discover more at tracilturner.com.

Meet Alice Blumenfeld, the artistic director of the award winning flamenco music and dance company, Abre Paso, founded in 2016.

The company presents vibrant, creative works to audiences in Ohio.

Flamenco is expressive, it's percussive, and it's powerful both for the audience and the performer.

One of the things that I think makes it so empowering and powerful and intense is the rhythms.

And in just the posture itself, the chest is always lifted.

There's a sense of tension in the way, in the sort of the way we use our hands.

There's always this sense of resistance, and then it's very much grounded into the earth, the way that we hit our feet on the floor.

The dancing fuzes with music often singing and guitar.

Performing here in Northeast Ohio, Blumenfeld says she's introducing many people to what it's all about.

Flamenco, first of all, comes from Spain.

It comes from the southernmost region of Spain, where there was a really interesting mix of cultures over the last several thousand years.

Flamenco itself is a very young art form, so its roots are very old, but it's very young.

She was drawn to flamenco in her youth, growing up in New Mexico, where there's an annual flamenco festival and a national institute dedicated to the art form.

Blumenfeld ended up trading in her ballet slippers for flamenco heels.

And I just became enraptured in the rhythm and had what in flamenco we call an experience of of duende, sort of an out of body experience.

And I just knew in that moment that this was it.

This is what I would dedicate my life to.

She went on to tour with national companies and even studied flamenco in Spain for a little while.

But as time went on, she says she realized she wanted to find a way to tell her own stories through flamenco.

I felt a lot of flamenco outside of Spain was just perpetuating the stereotype of the woman in a red dress, and it's an image that sells.

It sells tickets to shows, and there wasn't really a company that had space for the American artists to tell their stories.

So a lot of companies bring in artists from Spain to set repertory.

And I was.

I was just like, there's so many artists here that have so much to say.

Why isn't there a company that's emphasizing that?

And then it was like, well, duh, I can I can be the one to start that company.

She started a small pre-professional company called Abre Paso, which means, "Opening a pathway."

Abre Paso dancers performed flamenco recently at Cleveland Public Theater's annual community arts event, Station Hope.

An explosion.

Flash.

So the beginning and end of the piece is movement to a poem that I wrote as part of a project called The Solar Project.

So solar is a flamenco form that comes from the word for solitude or loneliness in Spanish.

Push me aside.

Dignity takes my hand and leads.

This performance mixed poetry and choreography centered around dignity.

I walk with dignity.

So I was thinking about that word and the way that flamenco allows for dignity and sort of re empowers the individual to find dignity if they have been dehumanized in some way.

The language of flamenco has helped Blumenfeld since she was first introduced back in middle school.

I think every middle schooler is going through a lot and trying to figure out who they are and, um, you know, being inundated by society with lots of ideas and just trying to search for oneself.

And so flamenco really helped me in that moment of my life and has helped me in other challenging moments in my life to find an outlet and also to have community as well.

So one of the really cool things about flamenco is it it attracts people from all different walks of life, different economic backgrounds, different ethnic backgrounds.

And I think that's because flamenco is a hybrid form to begin with.

It drew from many different cultures and histories, so it still welcomes people from just so many different backgrounds and experiences.

And so I just want to give people the opportunity to, when they need that expressive outlet, that flamenco is here for them.

[music] While some people in Northeast Ohio may just be learning about flamenco for the first time, Blumenfeld says she finds this to be a great arts community.

It takes a community of people to have flamenco, so that act of witnessing, when you're expressing something very personal, I think is so important to healing and to building community.

[music] Learn more at abrepaso.org.

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

To view more, visit.

Plus or follow us on social.

Until next time, I'm Gabe Ortiz.

Thanks for watching.

[music]