Funding for COLORES was provided in part by: Frederick Hammersley Fund for the Arts, Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund, and the Nellita E. Walker Fund for KNME-TV at the Albuquerque Community Foundation.

.New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts.

and Viewers Like You.

THIS TIME, ON COLORES!

A SPECIAL BEHIND THE SCENES LOOK AT THE SPECTACULAR HAPPENINGS OF THE SANTA FE ANTIQUES ROADSHOW EVENT.

PREACHER, MUSICIAN, AND VISIONARY FOLK ARTIST, ELDER ANDERSON JOHNSON'S WORK HAS TOUCHED MANY LIVES.

IT'S ALL AHEAD ON COLORES!

FINDING TREASURES, REVEALING STORIES.

[MUSIC] >>I found it in the Goodwill bins in Denver, Colorado- yeah, I call her Margaret.

[Music, Chatter] >>Marsha Bemko: This is our first time in Santa Fe and we're sitting here on museum hill.

We're going to have a couple thousand, two- three thousand of our guests here, with all our favorite friends and not every place can handle that kind of influx of [MUSIC} >>Marsha Bemko: Plus we're all spread out to do our appraising and our chasing, so it starts with where can we shoot the show.

We are based in Boston, in a perfect world without ping-ponging back and forth across the country.

How nice that you kind of got us in a great location with no matter where we're going, East or West- okay, you're a little more West.

I happen to love Santa Fe.

I am enamored with the architecture here.

This is a beautiful place, this is a really beautiful place.

>>Producers: Yeah, I can see it there.

I think I could have a single on Deb.

>>Marsha Bemko: The Marsha story, is as I was working in national programming on other series at GBH.

I came up there and my first city which I'll never forget was Austin, Texas season five, and I knew that by the end of that day, I loved this show.

I loved my job.

I still do.

What happens at Road Show is really special and it doesn't matter how many times we do it, because for the people who are coming, very often it's their first time, and that kind of experience is really special.

It's why we all keep coming back and doing it.

It's a great equalizer, Antiques Roadshow.

We all come in caring about the same things, everybody comes in curious about what they are.

It doesn't matter how old you are, what your religion is, what your gender is, what§ it doesn't matter!

It's a great equalizer.

It's a- it's the human Story of us.

>> I brought a clock that I had no idea what it was about, and it's a French clock and it's from the 1900's and it is worth 70 to 200 dollars and today's our 13th anniversary.

So this is why we're here!

>>Actually my friend Greta Garbo here, remember she said I want to be alone?

Well, I don't want to be alone.

So, I'm here with you guys and Greta!

She's an old dear friend, my uncle Jack who is an artist in New York City, had her on his mantelpiece and when he died I got her and she's just a very special part of my family.

>> I brought an original Frederick Remington that my mother owned that she received from her great aunt.

Who actually was given this by Frederick Remington after he drew it for her at her house.

And I'm here for my mom, because she's always wanted to bring it.

>>It's just- it's so much better than you can imagine, if you've never done this before, which I hadn't.

People just talk to you like they're§ they know you and they want to know what you've got and people are interested in each other.

And it's just the excitement, just keeps building.

It starts with the§ things, but it's actually an extraordinarily§ a human kind of party.

Kind of like meeting new family.

I made some new friends sitting online!

>>It was a housewarming gift from my mother, who's also from India and this is from India as well.

>>Billye Harris: What I really love about doing this is the people and being able to tell them some of the history of their objects.

It doesn't necessarily need to be something expensive, I just love them.

I love the story.

So it's§ we have a blast when we do this.

>>James Supp: One of the greatest things about appraising at Antiques Roadshow, is we have to travel to places that we sometimes have never I grew up in the southwest.

I've been to Santa Fe plenty of times, but every time I come here I meet new people and see all new things I never thought I'd experience.

>>So this is the one that came from- but I want to get out of it now, yeah I'm going to go there we gotta go there.

>>Marsha Bemko: I get really juiced when I'm meeting the people§ and my job, along with two others doing this with me, to listen to the pictures and interview the expert who's pitching it, and the owner and decide whether or not to take it.

When I'm pitched an item, and the expert§ let's pretend it's a watch; the expert will pull me aside and say condition on the face is amazing, it's very rare.

It's a unique model and then I'll ask that person What are you going to put on it for money?

>>The value is three to five thousand but the more important§ >>Marsha Bemko: And then we also ask them to corroborate that with one of their table mates.

>>Billye Harris: I'm in the center of all of the world's best experts, so we consult with each other.

We can look on the internet if it's like, we just can't exactly remember the date or a little something.

If it's something completely out of my range, then I'm going to transfer that item to another expert.

>>My father gave this to me when I was a baby.

It's a 1921 Buddy-L. >>Marsha: 1921.

How do you know it's 21?

I then go ask again, what'd you bring, what do you got?

I ask them how they got it, what did they pay if they bought it.

Like I ask the kind of nosy questions you couldn't ask at a polite dinner table, you know?

and like really, really like anything to sort of get at§ really the story.

You let anybody ride it anymore?

>>Anybody who wanted to.

>>Marsha: So can I sit on it now?

>>Yes, you may.

But I think that you§ >>Marsha: So I think that would look ridiculous so I won't.

So when I say yes to somebody, it's a matter of deciding which kind of camera crew am I going to send them to.

Are they going to have a multicam crew?

A single cam crew?

And if I learned something during that interview, to pass that information along to the director so that they make sure they too get that information that I thought was so great and maybe§ made the decision for§ why to tape it.

Here's the hard thing about doing the picks, is that the appraisers, most of them have been with Roadshow for a while.

A long time.

We add new ones every year, but most have been for a long time.

Everything they pitch is camera-worthy, we just don't have enough camera time to do it all.

So, you need to be discriminating, you need to be discerning about it.

>> James Supp: Today has been an absolutely spectacular day for me!

It's a beautiful piece and one I've never seen before.

>>Wow!

>>James:So is it a souvenir piece?

Is it actually Napoleon's hair?

Lockss of Napoleon's hair have been sold in Saint Helena >>Wow.

>>James: So it's pretty awesome.

>>Marsha Bemko: It's very energizing.

I've been doing this for a lot of years.

It's addictive, it really is addictive.

>>James Supp: I've seen a lock of Napoleon's hair.

I've gotten to see some great aviation trophies, um§ just wonderful memorabilia from the nuclear bomb project, things like that.

Some great pieces of history showing up here.

I'm in a very special place in Antiques Roadshow, I get to do all the weird complex problems, all the strange items that no one else knows how to appraise or wants to appraise.

So, pieces will come to me and I've got to dig in really deep into my weird obscure areas of knowledge and think of well, a lock of Napoleon's hair.

Have these sold before?

Are they souvenir pieces?

How much interest is there in the and I take all this information from all these different areas, I put it all together just try to come up with the value and a justification for that value.

>>Okay well, the kids want to go to college.

>>James: -and that's one of the coolest parts of my job, is taking information from everywhere, to put it together, and telling a great story.

>>Marsha Bemko: Well, Hall of Fame moments for me are really about the people I meet.

Those interactions for me are so special, so I could tell you about something that happened in Boise last week while we were there.

I met a woman who was a Japanese- American woman, who brought in a pin that her uncle had made in§ while he was in the internment camps.

This is a very painful thing for the owner, to look back on that history and what§ the experience of her family.

And that has stayed with me since I've left Boise.

I cried with that woman, okay, that's what happens that you don't see on TV.

These are people who come in with really personal stories, and they share them with me, and then they share them with you.

[MUSIC] >>Marsha: Antiques Roadshow is truly the public, in public television.

>>We have two lines going here ladies.

Do you need a wristband?

>>Marsha: We will work with 100 volunteers that New Mexico PBS has recruited for us.

Without the 100 volunteers, we couldn't do the show.

The appraisers are all volunteers.

>>James Supp: I got a lovely guest where they had a lock of >>Who?

>>James: Napoleon!

>>Oh, Napoleon!

>>James: Bonaparte not Dynamite.

>>Marsha Bemko: We are truly a show where the public is helping to make this show.

We're not paying our guests of course, we're giving them appraisals, we're taping some.

But, most of the people are here by choice and are unpaid.

So, I think that makes us really special.

You're not going to find that anywhere else, that's only on PBS.

A VISIONARY LIFE.

[MUSIC] draw about 12 to 15 pictures a night when I get in the spirit.

[MUSIC] >>The Johnson gallery was the crown jewel of the Downing- Johnson lived now- it was only blocks away from where his original faith mission was.

And, it was just an important story to share, not only with the community of Newport News, but with the world.

The intention was to try as accurately as possible to recreate his house.

Also, to imbue it with the sense and the vision of Elder Johnson.

[MUSIC] >>I was born right here in Lunenburg County of Virginia of I've been in church all my life.

I started preaching at eight and before that, I'd hear my mother praying down on her knees praying and I'd start right behind her.

>>He was working in the cornfield and the thunderstorm came up and he was struck by lightning.

And all of a sudden he saw a black cloud with two angels in the cloud and they came down and they showed the book of life to him.

>>And they said, Anderson Johnson, There's nothing bad written about you in this book and you are going to be >>So I started preaching at eight.

And, the people heard that I was preaching, and then they'd call me from house to house.

Ministers then began to cheer me on at different churches.

And at 12 then I become known as the 12- year-old boy preacher in the bleachers and then they call me.

We moved here to Newport News after I started preaching and I was, I used to shine shoes on Huntington avenue.

>>My grandmother met this preacher who was preaching from a tent.

His name was Grace.

He was just starting the United House of Prayer for All People and Daddy Grace took on Uncle Anderson under his wing.

He honed his skills as a preacher.

He taught him how to conduct services.

Then Daddy Grace started sending Uncle Anderson to establish missions.

And Uncle Anderson was hard to get along with under his rules.

He was off and on with Daddy Grace because he'd get mad and go back on the streets.

>>But I had this know, the Lord told me, go in the hedges and I did that for, I don't know how many years.

See, I mostly would want to travel.

I get a program at a church and then maybe they give me a place to stay.

Now, Reverend Revival, He won't say the buildings where I could move.

'Cause he wouldn't give me enough money from the church to move.

But I would go out on the streets preaching.

>>When he was traveling preaching one night, he said he just had an urge to draw.

And he went out and bought wallpaper and crayons, and stayed up all night long drawing.

That's when we started drawing.

>>He came back home and he told my grandmother he said, "Mama, you going to spend that money on some more papers so I can draw pictures on the wall better than that."

He would draw like peacocks and other kind of wildlife.

And we told my grandmother, "We can't even have company because it's embarrassing.

Look at him, all birds and stuff."

He would go down to a beach down here, used to call it "bay shore".

And, these people who used to work the beaches, they taught him how to do trick drawing.

>>He learned to draw with either hand and with his teeth and his feet.

And that was a part of his performance to draw a crowd.

And he always said, once he drew a crowd, he would edge in the word of God.

>>Eleven chapter, Hebrews in sixth verse, But without faith, it is impossible to please Him.

For he who cometh to God must believe that He is.

And that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.

>>After preaching and traveling for 40 years, he was living in Los Angeles at the time.

>>Lord showed me the vision, my mother had passed and she was sick, I come here in '57.

And I didn't do more traveling then after that.

>>Where they were living was the family home place.

His brother had built that home and that's where his two other brothers and his mother were living.

>>So my father told my mother and both agreed to sign the Ivy Avenue house over to Uncle Anderson so it would still be a home place.

>>He decided that he wanted to teach others to live by faith like he had.

And that's how he decided to start the "Faith Mission".

>>It was never a typical house.

He remodeled his home to be a church or what he called his "Faith Mission".

>>So I had started preaching in the living room and then decided, a few more people come in and then I say, well, then we decided to tear the kitchen out.

>>Then he started painting the house all over with murals and individual painting like this.

>>They want to broaden the mission.

People admired one from the other.

I just kept drawing.

Every time I draw one, new one would be come in at Sunday and say that's a nice picture.

Then one night the Lord told me sitting here, you're drawing all inside, he said but take your pictures and put them on the front porch.

And I went outside and I said, it's a winter's day What I'm going to do?

So I said, well, the Lord told me to put them on the porch.

I covered the windows up and just kept painting the pictures and putting them on the front porch.

>>And the more he put out there, the more people came and I was one of them.

So I went down to Ivy avenue.

And if you had have been in his house, it was just mind boggling, the amount of artwork he had 'em three and four deep on the wall sometimes.

>>And then it was ceiling to floor, wall to wall coverage.

>>His signature or his landmark was the round face of the women.

And the large almond shaped eyes and Anderson Johnson often said that he loved to paint women.

With the women he could dress her and put jewelry on her and he could use his paintbrush and it was just like combing her hair.

>>This picture, when I first saw it, I thought it looked like me.

And I noticed that Vernon picked it up right away.

So I figured he thought it looked like me also.

I had a green leather coat with a shawl collar and that's that coat.

>>And I particularly liked these two paintings.

They're like companion pieces to me.

>>Most of the faces that you see here is what I'm seeing in imagination or sometimes somebody I know.

And as I draw one picture, there's another one that somebody else appears on the next one.

And I guess that.

>>He didn't have any way to get around.

And he needed paint, he needed things to paint on.

He liked to paint on wood, especially furniture.

He would pick up anything he could off the side of the road.

If he could get out.

This is a table I found on the side of the road.

He loved to paint on stuff like this.

>>I learned to make something out of everything, not to throw away nothing, anything, old can anything I can take it with some paint.

>>He felt that by painting on it he can improve it.

He painted on beach bottles, chairs, boards, tin, glass, mirrors, styrofoam.

Anderson Johnson was very humble and he had a quiet spirit.

But once the Holy Spirit hit him, you saw a whole different character.

>>You can work two jobs, five jobs, Hey man, you can do this.

Some people working, some of them have almost fell dead.

Amen, and still ain't got nothing.

But we don't want something from you because you won't obey God.

No one will call out your sins.

>>His music has been compared to Little Richard, the zeal that he plays and sings.

[MUSIC] >>You know, a lot of people say they believe in God, but Anderson Johnson actually believed God.

And he really knew who God was.

And that's what really impressed me.

>>These are the things that you see me trying to build in people because don't care who it is, what nationality or what race, praise God.

If he build this, he can get somewhere with God.

>>Anderson Johnson treated people with dignity.

And I had several times in my life when I had some traumatic things happen to me.

And I went right down there and talked to him.

He could explain a way with the scripture and he could help people and he helped me.

[MUSIC] >>The city had an urban renewal project in the Southeast community to build something called the "Achievable Dream Campus".

There were 14 properties going to be torn down, but his was of chief concern to folk art collectors throughout not only Newport News and the state, but nationally.

Debra McCloud, a local curator then had a lot of contacts and they all coalesced to create an organization to save the faith mission.

They were able to acquire grant funding to allow certain elements of the house to be saved in particular, the very important murals.

>>The vice mayor of NewPort News, He came and got Uncle Anderson and carried Uncle Anderson to where the murals were stored and Uncle Anderson went around and just touched some of them up.

And I think he gave him a few hundred dollars or something like that.

He came back, he said "That boy alright?"

He said, "I ain't never made that much money with a paintbrush in such a short time."

It's the only time he had ever gone to an exhibit of his, this him and I down at Hampton University.

This was about a year or so before he died.

He said, "You had to be ashamed of yourself, I'm a preacher.

Lord, don't want me going to these shows" and stuff like that.

But he did go.

He would always dress.

He was a dressing guy.

>>Preaching is an important thing.

If I was to stop me from preaching, that I couldn't preach, that's the end of me.

I'd go home to the Lord.

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UNTIL NEXT WEEK, THANK YOU FOR WATCHING.

Funding for COLORES was provided in part by: Frederick Hammersley Fund for the Arts, New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund, and the Nellita E. Walker Fund for KNME-TV at the Albuquerque Community Foundation.

.New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts.

and Viewers Like You.