NARRATOR: Up next on Artico, a children's book and a video installation celebrate diversity.

Two local filmmakers on telling black stories and the hottest eyewear designs.

So, keep an eye out.

The best art show in the DMV starts right now.

(African drum music) June Mines knows how to catch someone's eye.

And she does it by curating some of the most unique and funky designer eyewear around.

June's been in the eyeglass business for more than four decades and started her own company These Eyes of Mines 25 years ago.

And I started in the lab first grinding lenses, filling prescriptions, things like that.

Maybe about three years later I started working for chains in Atlanta large chains like Lens Crafters, Pearl's, America's best.

And that's when I got all of the other sides, contact lens, sales.

So I've been known it a very long time.

One of the things that I didn't like because most of the chains they sell by the thousands, one style by the thousands.

And I had to kind of lie to people because we were working on commission.

And it made me feel bad because I would come home thinking that frame look horrible on that person.

(laughs) And why would I sit there and tell them that the frame looked good on them is why I have a unique business and that's why I do one of a kind frames from all over the world because I believe that there's enough to go around.

We all deserve to have our own one of a kind unique look and no two people in the world are the same.

So why have 10 of one style when I can have one of each style.

So that's what I do, I travel, I find frames from all over the world, very unique, very different and I fit to that frame, I marry that frame to your face based on your style and personality, and that's how I'm able to get my clients is all through word of mouth.

So we have four conferences every year, there's one in New York, there is one in Silmo, it's called Silmo, but it's in Paris.

There's one in Milan, and then there's one in Vegas.

You know and these people are traveling from all over the world.

So we're all coming together under one roof to exchange ideas and to find the most unique frames.

So a lot of them are handmade in little small towns in Italy and so you get to meet the actual designer and the actual manufacturers.

So everyone's there under one umbrella and that's how I end up finding frames is going to these different conferences.

There's always trends and then there always frames that are timeless.

We should say, just like the cat eye, the cat eyes are timeless.

People always gonna, they're always gonna be cat eyes.

A lot of people come in and they want to tortoise shells.

So you have the trendies and then you have the timeless.

Yeah.

I think that women are wearing you know, bold, you know, funky, rectangular frames which men wear mostly rectangular and round now is a pretty prominent shape that a lot of people are getting into is the round frame so now when you go places pretty much 90% of the frames are unisex.

So I typically find frames that are timeless because people are coming in and they're spending money and they want something that's gonna be with them for a while and it's never gonna go out of style.

So typically that's what I usually push.

So I have expanded nationally.

I'm in a lot of other cities but DC is my base.

I started in DC.

I started out in in my car believe it or not, you know, over 25 years ago I was going to people's homes with my eyeglass cases to homes and pulling out and spending hours in someone's home to find that perfect frame for their face and working out of my home and then I picked up many other cities.

So I'm in Atlanta, I'm in Chicago, I'm in New York, I'm in New Orleans, I'm pretty much everywhere and that came through conventions.

I started doing shows with the Deltas, I do the Black Theater Festival, I do Caucus.

So once you start doing the shows, the conventions that's how you pick up your clientele in different cities.

And once you build the, you know, a certain clientele in those cities, then that demand you to go to that city you know, every three months, every six months, to see more and more people, because each, you know, person that get glasses they you know, that's referrals and so that's how you end up building a strong clientele in each city.

NARRATOR: She must be doing something right to keep them coming back.

Special thanks to our eyeglass model.

June's longtime friend and realtor Rukiyat Gilbert.

To find out more about June's jazzy eyeglass collection, visit theseeyesofmines.com.

Art in the time of COVID has forced organizations to be more innovative than ever before.

Many have risen to the challenge, like Cultural DC with their new two-part video installation "Subversions".

So Cultural DC is a nonprofit visual and performing arts organization.

We have been in the district for over 20 years.

We own the Source Theater here at 14th and T street.

We've owned the theater here since about 2007.

This is our home base but we also have three resident performing arts organizations that use this theater as their primary performing space.

I think because of COVID the theater has been closed since March, like many theaters.

And so, you know, Cultural DC we've been trying to find creative ways to still be able to offer artists a platform.

And so, since we can't use the inside of the theater we have found a way to use the outside of the theater during this to present a video installation.

So we're really excited to work with curator Terry Henderson.

Terry is an African-American curator based in Baltimore, and she works for B-More Art and helps to curate the Connect and Collect Gallery in Baltimore, and she has selected Miguel Braceli to be the artist featured in this first part of the series.

Miguel is a Venezuelan born artist but he is based in Baltimore.

He teaches, and a lot of his work really deals with public space and these interactions of people and cultures in different public space.

We're very excited to be able to have this installation.

So for viewers that are walking down the street and cars that are driving by can see this installation and participate in art.

So I think if when you look at the video you'll see that it's a wide range of people, participants from various backgrounds, genders, races and it's really about, I mean, it's about politics but it's about bringing this country together.

It's about finding unity again.

And you'll see that the game, it's a game they're playing with red and blue balls and obviously we know what that means, but you know, and it's about keeping the game in play right, and keeping the balls up off the ground.

And so you have all of these participants passing these balls around, and it's really about finding unity.

And I think right now we can all agree that there is a lot of divisiveness in our country.

And I think that artists have a lot to say, and we really wanna be able to give artists that platform whether it's here at Source, inside the theater, outside the theater, in our mobile art gallery, you know that's always our mission, is to provide them that platform and that voice.

So when we were out here Friday night there were a lot of people stopping by.

You know, I think now with COVID being what it is, we've got QR codes so somebody walking by can scan the QR code and get more information about the artists, the curator, and about Cultural DC.

But it's been really fascinating to watch people kind of stop and experience it.

I think that's, people are so they're craving this cultural experience again.

And I think any way you can get it.

And so I think we're seeing that.

NARRATOR: Subversions runs nightly through November 30th from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM.

And look out for the second half of the installation scheduled to start running in early spring.

Two DC area filmmakers are creating quite a stir with their new films.

First seasoned cameraman and photographer, Darnley Hodge, Jr. Fed up with the news coverage of police killings of black men, he decided to make his own film on this issue and on racism in general.

His documentary is called "The American Lows."

I knew that there was a lot more to the story.

I'm a person who read the ISIS papers at a young age, read Carter G Woodson's Miseducation of the Negro and these kinds of things, and my understanding of racism, white supremacy, had a lot more depth and breadth than I felt was being reflected in the mainstream conversation.

So rather than try to take on the mainstream media machine and change them doing what they do, I decided to be able to use my skillset, my equipment, et cetera and create a documentary film that would fill in a lot of the gaps that I felt were present in the mainstream coverage.

To that just growing up as a black man in America there are certain truths and realities that we understand our entire lives.

And as someone who works in the media as well I'm seeing how other people are interpreting our experience and it's not through our voice often The time when I started this documentary I was fortunate to be working at a TV network that had guests like Joe Madison, who was a frequent guest on the Al Sharpton show, Michael Steele, Jared Bernstein, so these are some of the first people who I had tapped into to be some of my interview subjects for this film.

Basic fear is white genetic annihilation.

Many of the pathways into the middle and upper class for people are more blocked.

An important aspect of the American legacy of white supremacy film is that it doesn't concentrate too specifically on any of the symptoms of white supremacy.

It focuses on the big picture culture of white supremacy and it identifies these various activities such as police brutality, or neglect of children in the classroom, or health discrepancies, disparagement between black and white as symptoms of an overall larger problem.

Slavery itself for example, was a symptom of the mentality of white supremacy.

And therefore, when I created this film I wanted to keep my camera focused squarely on that.

We have organizations such as National Geographic for example, who will take their cameras all over the world pointing them at people of color saying this is how they live, this is their value system, this is what they eat, this is how they bury their dead, and they'll examine these cultures through their lens.

I took my lens and pointed it at white culture and did the same thing.

I said, this is their value system, this is how they built their civilization, this is how their value system has developed, and this is how it's affecting us.

That's why this film was important.

It's important to help us to better understand what we're dealing with and therefore, and as well as help us come up with deliberate responses to it as opposed to knee jerk reactions.

When you've been a victim of a kidnapping, mass rape, miseducation, disinformation, the first thing you need to do is get to know who you are.

You need to get back in touch with your authentic self.

And that's a main focal point of this film is showing us, showing black people how we've been taken away from who we are, and also emphasizing the idea that getting back to who we really were before all of this happened, before this myopia, this Mid Atlantic slave trade, et cetera perverted us and distorted us and turned us into a people that we were not originally and that we are not meant to be today.

NARRATOR: The American Lows film is available exclusively at the AmericanLows.com and will also be available in 2021 on several streaming platforms.

Merawi Gerima's film "Residue," tells the emotional and complex story of a changing city.

The film is distributed by Ava DuVernay's company Array and can be seen on Netflix.

You don't remember me?

So Residue is about a young man named Jay and he's basically a young screenwriter who returns home to his neighborhood in DC after many years away trying to write a film about how he grew up, but of course when he gets back, you know he could barely recognize the neighborhood and the folks he grew up with are no longer there, or you know, those few who are, you know, are, you know going through various things that he's trying to understand you know, how his life could have turned out so different.

I remember when y'all left though.

What you remember?

I remember we all rode our bikes to your new house.

For real?

Yeah nigga, you don't remember that?

Not really.

I think that the fact that he comes home expecting everything to be just as it was, you know all those years ago is part of the problem.

The crazy thing about being black in America is that like at any time the question of, you know, is somebody you know, or is this person, you know this other person that you're meeting, like, are they a cop?

You know what I mean?

Like, are they in some way, you know, can they be trusted?

You know, it's a real fact of life.

You know, especially somebody who's been away for a while.

You know, I think kind of our existence is so subject to you know, to so much hostility.

You know every relationship is, you know, has to be, you know everybody has to be filtered in a certain way.

And that's why Delonte's character is so important.

You know, a friend who, you know of course there's love between them you can tell, but at the same time, you know he's really calibrating him to the new realities of the city.

It's happening all over the world.

I think we were in Venice, Italy last month for Venice International Film Festival and Venetians there were talking about how they're getting gentrified, you know by other people, you know, from around the world.

Yeah.

The hashtag for the film should be "where is Demetrius?"

And everybody wants to know what happened to the city.

You know, what happened to all of our friends you know, both who you were with, you know, what happened to, you know kind of like DC as we knew it, you know which was kind of snapped out right up under our noses.

You know, we've had a whole range of responses but overwhelmingly positive.

You know, I think a lot of people from DC were happy to see a film period about DC you know what I mean?

About black DC.

You know Hollywood had you thinking DC is a white city, you know, but, you know I think that like people are excited to see chocolate city represented on the screen.

Almost every character in the film kind of comes out of my life in one way or another.

Personally, the most impactful part for me is the last moment of the film when the two boys on the porch, as he's running away he's remembering when he was on the porch with his young homie Demetrius.

And that last conversation where Demetrius asked him, you know I heard you were moving.

That was like a memory I couldn't even remember if I had, you know with my friends, you know the Demetrius person in my own life.

You know, when I was moving, did I tell you?

You know what I mean?

Like that's the type of conversation I would have liked to have, you know, with him.

You know, I grew up watching my parents really struggle to self distribute their films when they could find no regular means of business distribution with, you know, distributors in the States, even though their films did incredibly well you know, in festivals around the world.

And so Ava has kind of come in to extend the work of, you know, my parents' generation of filmmakers, you know them and their contemporaries, to really push, you know like a spearhead into the black film distribution industry, you know, to create opportunities for filmmakers like me.

Ava DuVernay and her company Array, her distribution company, is very historic, you know, and it's really the key to this whole puzzle.

I think relatively speaking, it's easy to make a film but it's hard to distribute.

It's highly possible, you know that we would not be distributed if it wasn't for her.

So I wanna help my parents complete the projects that they're working on.

You know, they're constantly writing scripts you know, editing films, you know.

So like for me like I see my work completely tied up with theirs, you know?

And so that's kind of the path forward for me is it's really like what are the Gerima's doing next?

You know kind of a thing rather than really what am I doing next?

So that's my greatest excitement.

You know it's kind of working with them.

NARRATOR: If you're looking for fun things to do Signature Theater presents a sizzling online tribute to the golden age of the turntable, it's called Signature Vinyl and features the hits of artists like Stevie Wonder, The Beatles, Carol King, Marvin Gaye and more.

19 of Signature's favorite performers put on a cinematic concert filmed at several outdoor locations across the DC area.

Concerts run through May 6, 2021.

Donations are requested to access the on-demand stream.

Writer Tricia Elam Walker grew up in Roxbury, at the time a segregated neighborhood in Boston.

She always loved writing, but after undergrad couldn't figure out how to turn her passion into a career.

Inspired by her father a judge and her uncle a lawyer, she decided to go to law school.

Though it took a while, she finally got back to her first love.

I started writing my novel "Breathing Room," when I went back to school to get my master's in creative writing.

I met another writer who wanted to see what I was working on, she showed it to her agent, her agent loved it and "Breathing Room" was born.

"Breathing Room" was a dream come true for me.

So once I started doing that I thought Oprah was gonna call me and I'll be able to be home writing be rich and famous one of these days but I'm still waiting on Oprah.

But in any case in the mean time I decided to start teaching writing.

I see so many students who say they just need a break.

They just needed to breathe for a minute.

They needed to stop having to be, you know, speak for the entire race when they're in these various programs and so they came to Howard, you know as a way to just take a moment and really get to learn themselves because being black is not a monolith.

My mother was a children's librarian.

She loved children's books.

She read them all the time.

She read them as if they were adult literature.

She loved them.

And she felt like they could solve the problems of the world, just because of the topics that they deal with, the way that they convey lessons to children and so I just always really wanted to do one.

So I happen to be a Buddhist and I just was chanting about it.

Like, what am I gonna write about I have to kind of come up with something?

And I was at a friend's house and he had these African masks beside his altar.

And I remember, it sounds a little bit hokey but I remember chanting and I felt like the African masks were sort of giving me the story.

so I wrote a children's book called "Nana Akua Goes to School.

And it's about a little girl who loves her grandmother dearly.

Her grandmother is her favorite person in the world but her grandmother is from Ghana and does have tribal markings on her face and the little girl had noticed, that sometimes when they were out in the world people would stare at her grandmother or make faces, or she could tell they were talking about her.

So she's worried about bringing her grandmother for like a show and tell like grandparents day.

She wants to bring her but she doesn't want anyone to be mean to her grandmother.

And I really wanted it to be a story about appreciating difference, learning about difference and learning about why it's important to be celebrated.

"Nana Akua squeezes Zora's shoulder and start talking, "Hello children.

"I'm sure you noticed the marks on my face "has anyone seen anything like them before?

"No, say all the children.

"Well, these marks were gifts "from my parents who were happy and proud that I was born "she continues.

"I am likewise proud to wear them.

"Most Ghanaian parents don't celebrate in this way anymore "but it was once an important tradition.

"Zora watches, her eyes wide as cups "as Nana Akua walks slowly around the circle "so everyone can see her face up close.

"It's interesting she says that in this country "I often noticed people who put tattoos on their body "to have special meaning.

"Yours are way better than tattoos."

The response has been great.

It's been very tricky because of the pandemic.

So all my book signings and school visits have been virtual.

I also have heard from some Ghanaian parents who are just very happy that it's out there in the world cause they don't often see themselves or their culture reflected so I feel good about that and I feel good about the research that I did to make sure it was authentic and I was representing them well.

NARRATOR: "Nana Akua Goes to School" was illustrated by April Harrison.

Collectors of her artwork includes, Whoopi Goldberg, Jesse L. Martin and the honorable Andrew Young.

(upbeat music) Hope you enjoyed this edition of Artico.

Thanks for watching, and until next time, always remember to follow your art.

(upbeat music) ANNOUNCER: This program was produced by WHUT Howard University Television and made possible by contributions from viewers like you.

Thank you.