This week on Arizona illustrated Alana, you know, as a kid growing up, I didn't see a lot of black artists in museums or hanging on gallery walls, Footprints from the past.

You look at these tracks, you're looking at where somebody literally just walked across the landscape.

23,000 years ago.

in the art of Adobe, plants and animals live and thrive in this landscape, but also how the landscape has been weaponized to make it uninhabitable for people that are migrating through it.

Welcome to Arizona illustrated, I'm Tom McNamara, and we're here a trail does tell a longtime Tucson attraction, with stores and restaurants and museums all offering a trip back to the Old West.

It was built in 1961 and it's famous no ties allowed.

Pinnacle Peak restaurant opened their doors a year later.

This year marks its 60th anniversary.

The town is a great place for children.

I certainly brought my girls here when they were young, has a ferris wheel, carousel and even old time photo studio.

You know, our first story is about a photographer.

At the age of 47, Alana Airitam decided to become an artist.

She gave up a successful career in advertising to pursue photography full time.

Her photographs depict black subjects and regal and dignified poses and settings, and her goal is to create work.

She didn't see represented growing up and to share her truth with the world as she sees it.

...and I'm looking towards?

It's become sort of therapeutic in a way for me.

Twist towards the camera or a way to sort of escape the madness of the world is to just go in the studio and make photos.

You know, it like cures my depression.

It does all of that.

So all you have to do is, you say, hit it and I'll be all over.

You know what I'm saying?

You're good right there.

I like that.

Like, Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like that.

Normally, I don't do pictures.

Beautiful.

I love that.

I think I want to make a couple of small adjustments to the light.

Alanna likes taking photographs of black people.

And it might be a little difficult here in Tucson to.

Find the medium she chooses to work in.

Don't go backwards or forwards beyond that mark.

I'll try.

I got all, I got all this.

I got all this swag.

Sometimes It can get out of control and can Contain it and do this when.

I felt that I should participate as much as I can so that she could do the quality work She truly desire.

I had the great pleasure of photographing Mr. Will Bonner.

You're not bragging, are you?

I mean, I'm only bragging as much as you brag.

I just have a real deep love for his work and who he is as a person.

If I'm just going to do a portrait of someone and it's not really attached to any type of project, then I try to make it loose and fun.

You can do one of those, you know, whatever you want to do.

one of these you...

Creating that space allows for their personality to really come out.

I do look handsome.

You always look handsome.

You don't like that one?

No, I like all of them.

It's me, it is you.

OK. We are currently in the Bernal Gallery at Pima West.

I'm here today to photograph and sort of document the exhibition before it comes down, like I've always dabbled.

In art even as a kid, but to do this as a career to like, leave my 20 year advertising career for this, that didn't start until I was like 47 years old because I just didn't see enough of this in my life.

You know, as a kid growing up, I didn't see a lot of black artist in museums or hanging on gallery walls.

And I, you know, they certainly didn't look like this if there was art made by black people.

The American Renaissance exhibition is me and Wayne Martin Belger.

It's an interesting conversation to have with his work with the second Amendment project.

We see the results of gun violence, and as a black person in this country, I feel like a lot of that sort of aggression is is pointed in this direction, right?

And so it is interesting to have this work sort of side by side together or even across from each other.

This is the white privilege triptych, I did this right after George Floyd's death in 2020 and I was as pretty angry.

Called up a friend who lives him in Amado and out in the desert and asked him if I could let this pig's head rot in his backyard for a little while He was like, Sure, this breaking down and this decay that happens over time doesn't seem to be affecting him, but affects everything around him.

I want people to really fully experience what it is like to be the external.

That has to experience this all the time.

You should really do some, some deep soul-searching and look in the mirror and see how the privileges affect other people.

This is a crossroads series.

This work really speaks to this sort of turning away, turning my back or turning our backs on ways that we have been mistreated.

But I wanted them to feel empowered and like, I'm just not having that anymore.

I'm going to look over here.

I'm looking towards something new, something different.

I welded these metal frames sort of like boxes that they go inside of and then they're covered with a resin and they're really heavy.

I try in all of my work to take the narrative from the beginning all the way to the end.

The finishing of the pieces means a lot to me.

This is an.

Archival pigment print.

It is mounted on a metal substrate called dye bond.

I work with the sitter's to create the portrait and then it just kind of it's on a digital card.

Once I get the print out, then I get to actually put the signature on it, which is the varnish.

It's all hand done, so each piece I touch before it.

Ever gets seen or shown anywhere.

It is nerve wracking because you can blow a bunch of money in a very, very quick moment.

All you need is one dog hair to fly into it and you're done.

This print, along with two others, are going to the Center for Creative Photography for their permanent collection.

Alanna and I saw each other across the room and it was virtually instantaneous.

And by time we had a conversation.

It was a done deal.

I bought my first original piece of art when I was in college.

Almost every piece of art I have, I know the artist.

There's a story.

There were periods that it was sufficient to just be surrounded by beauty But I'm finding that now I am more attracted to what's being said.

When I saw her work, I initially had a hard time even choosing.

I just loved it in general.

The images themselves were beautiful.

I thought what she was saying in terms of who we as black people are and how we have been left out of so much of the history in combining those messages in her work was just just so on point.

We are so lucky in Tucson to have Alanna and a number of other artists.

I sometimes get concerned that they'll move on and go other places because they're not recognized for the gems that they are.

And that's why I want to be supportive, and I try to encourage other people to be supportive and view their work and buy their work.

I want to keep them here.

Sort of a.... promise that I made to myself that like when it when I see these types of images put out about us or this narrative that so often gets told about us that I'll create something that is the truth, like my truth.

Like this is this is my truth.

We can't be what we don't see.

I just don't.

Want this happening to another black kid growing up or any kid growing up that doesn't really see themselves represented.

You know, we should all we should all be represented in some way.

We all have a voice.

We're all here.

I see beauty in the work of an artist.

Thank you.

You know.

Thank you.

Thanks Will.

I mean, some people, lie to people, but....

I appreciate you.

All right.

We got good shots.

A selection of Alana's work will be on display at the University of Arizona's Center for Creative Photography starting April 16th.

While we may be surrounded by depictions from our past, the Old West is a short time ago when compared to the history in our next story, this one takes us back 23,000 years.

White Sands National Park is a majestic, windswept landscape about a five hour drive from Tucson.

It's also where archeologists, including U Of A researchers, recently uncovered ancient human footprints from perhaps the first ever to walk across the Americas.

I really, really enjoy working in the southwest and working in the white sands area in particular has been quite a remarkable experience for a variety of reasons.

Just traveling out there, it's a beautiful area.

Crossing the dunes to me always remind me of a sea of whipped cream, and particularly in the mornings you could see the mountains off to the to the West, lit up by the morning sun and the white dunes.

It's a real, it's a pleasure.

It's quite an honor to be allowed to to work out there.

Ever since I can remember, I've always had an interest in the past in some way shape or form, and my particular interest is the archeology , the archeological record of the earliest people in the Americas, but also the geologic context.

And we'd already been doing some work right in the area that that turned out to be this archeological site.

And so when the tracks were discovered, that was some of the first evidence of the age and context of these tracks.

Yeah, Vance, I think the tracks are probably in this area here.

Yeah, I think you're right, the stratigraphy is almost identical.

The tracks were found in stream deposits, this this area.

Most of the area was an old lake but on the on the east side of the basin, there were freshwater streams coming in off the mountain.

Every time the stream would flood, it would bury some tracks and then the people would come back later and make some more tracks.

And then there would be another flood cycle.

So a couple of there were a couple of ways of approaching this one was to document the tracks that were already exposed, mapping them in considerable detail, excavating them.

What you tend to see is a discoloration because the the sediment filling the track well will often be a slightly different color.

Seeing the footprints, it was the most amazing thing I think I have ever seen in my life.

Putting together the idea that people had been there 6 to 8,000 years earlier than had been documented previously.

And this isn't just a stray tool, a broken piece of rock, something that might be questionable.

This is actual people's footprints and footprints from mammoths, giant ground sloths.

Saber tooth cats, direwolves, human beings were there when all of these humongous animals were walking this landscape.

My moment of connection was when I was able to put my barefoot next to one of the footprints.

And with permission, then I put my foot on the footprint itself, which fit pretty well.

So about a woman's size eight shoe or a 39 or 38 in European size?

An interesting thing about this, in my experience in archeology, is that what you're dealing with are literally moments in time.

If you think about how long it takes to make a trackway, say across my office a couple of seconds so you can look at these tracks and you know, you're looking at where somebody literally just walked across the landscape 23,000 years ago in the space of a couple of seconds, and it's it's it's quite remarkable when we first saw those.

The peopling of the Americas is the last great migration in human history.

The dating that we have right now suggests that these footprints span time from about 23,000 years ago to about 21,000 years ago, and that's 10,000 years older than the oldest well-documented occupation human occupation of North America, the Clovis people named after a site well-known site near Clovis, New Mexico.

So it's it's a huge leap in many ways, a leap in time, a leap of imagination that we have people living in the Americas 10,000 years earlier than Clovis.

It causes archeologists to stop and think about what has been the primary paradigm.

The idea that Clovis were the first people here in North America.

As both an American Indian and an archeologist, what I've been doing over most of my career has been acting as a liaison between the two schools and really trying to bring more American Indian issues, concerns and voices into the practice of archeology and to the interpretation of the archeological record.

Whether or not this will impact American Indian ideas about the history on the continent, it remains to be seen.

Scientifically, this is further proof that the time depth, the deep time of American Indian occupation of North America is there.

This area where the footprints, where the tracks were found The discovery was made due to wind erosion.

So between the time they first exposed until they're pretty much gone, it's just a few years.

So this is this is a whole nother issue out there is how to preserve them, how to interpret them.

We know that there are more discoveries to be found.

Every time we look, we find something new.

I went into archeology to try to understand about people to try to understand about who they were, about where they came from.

And looking at these footprints Wander off into the distance took me to that place in a way that no other discovery has ever made.

White sands has given me the opportunity to begin to look really deeply into origins of Native Americans and Native American histories.

The idea that we've added another 8000 years to that deep history is it makes me smile and think about it.

This is going to be one of those stories that people will be continuing to discuss.

Hopefully, my name, the names of my fellow researchers, all of us involved in white sands will continue to be a part of the footnote of history.

And Arizona's hot and arid climate, Adobe is an ideal material for building homes and other structures.

Rafa Esparza is an L.A. based artist who learned how to make Adobe from his father, who was a bricklayer in Mexico in collaboration with other artists featuring their work at MOCA Tucson.

His work is a commentary on the use of environmental materials, border surveillance and labor.

[Light music] [Rafa] We're going to just start from scratch.

There are plenty of rocks here, but there also like solidified clay.

We could use like those chunks of clay.

They'll soften up once they get wet.

My name is Rafa Esparza and I'm a visual artist based in Los Angeles.

And it's usually you make like a longer kind of like tube with it.

But if you hold it up and it hold its shape and it doesn't like crumble, then you know it has clay in it.

I've been working predominantly with adobe and collaborating with a group of students from U of A to build these trapezoid shaped bricks that will be used to build like a Adobe Rotunda that'll be used like a solar observation room here at MOCA Tucson.

The recipe that my father taught me is one that people still use, like people still build with adobe in his hometown.

The way that I go about making adobe is how I learned it from my father, who was a brick maker in Mexico, in Durango, Mexico, where he made bricks before he came up to the states in the seventies.

It's still like a viable building material, so people still build their homes out of the material, and it's dirt that has between 25 to like 30% clay content, naturally already in the soil.

They add horse dung, hay or some kind of like grass, fiber and water.

But so all of this is like locally sourced and then we'll shovel, we'll do like maybe four wheelbarrows to create like a crater.

It's a lot like baking.

So you mix a lot of the ingredients while they're dry before you add the eggs or the water.

And then we'll put some rubber boots on, stomp all of the material and mix it with our feet before we add the hay.

One, two, three.

There you go.

Beautiful.

[Music] A lot of the artists have been having conversations about, just like the inherent life of the Sonoran Desert.

Thinking about how plants and animals live and thrive in this landscape, but also how the landscape has been weaponized to make it uninhabitable for people that are migrating through it.

I wanted to kind of think about how we could also as people that are surveilled, people that are criminalized, creating an intimate space that could be a place of refuge, a place of respite to be able to gaze back at the sun without being harmed by its heat or blinded by its light.

So this brown rotunda is being composed of all of the bricks that I've been building with the students that I've been working with over the last several weeks.

As well as folks that showed up for the community adobe brick making day.

What's interesting about bringing adobe into a brutalist building like this is... not only like this sort of material differences.

When you're in an adobe dwelling, you're literally like surrounded by earth and walls.

It's interesting to bring in this material because I think it also brings a conflict of cultures that uphold these kinds of like architectures and cultures that have been displaced in these landscapes.

And I'm interested in that.

I'm interested in this conflict.

[Music] I hope that it could also inform how people relate to the natural landscape here in Tucson and beyond.

Rufus Adobe house will be on display at MOCA Tucson until March 13.

And now our final story of performance by SHE-PHI, an all girls step group from Holiday Magnet Elementary School in Tucson.

- S is for sophistication.

- The H is for humanity.

- The E for our education.

- And the PHI is willing to go above and beyond all walks of life to be successful.

- This is why I chose SHE, PHI!

(stomps) - [Female Student] All right, girl!

(students cheer) (hand slaps) (clapping and stomping) (clapping and stomping) (clapping and stomping) - We are.

(hand slaps) - [All] S!

(clapping and stomping) H!

- Hey, woo!

(clapping and stomping) - [All] E!

(clapping and stomping) - [Female Student] Woo!

- [All] SHE!

(clapping and stomping) SHE PHI!

- I am my sister's keeper!

- [All] Woo!

(clapping and stomping) (clapping and stomping) - It was up in the spring in 2018 when SHE PHI got to clappin', start a steppin' machine.

(students cheer) Y'all had it good, what we could do so we had to go to step and give you some proof.

SHE PHI!

(students cheer) (hand slaps) - [All] It was up in the spring in 2018 when SHE PHI got to clappin', start a steppin' machine.

Y'all had it good, show what we could do, so we had to go to step and give you some proof.

SHE PHI!

(students cheer) Like what you see on Arizona illustrated.

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Thank you for joining us here on Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara and we'll see you next time.