(upbeat music) - Next on "You Oughta Know."

We head to Frenchtown New Jersey to explore Art Yard, a non-profit contemporary art space, and see how art is helping to transform social change in Camden.

And we'll talk with a local filmmaker about her documentary on a hidden historical site in Israel.

(upbeat music) Welcome to "You Oughta Know," I'm Shirley Min.

We are here in Frenchtown a gem of a town in New Jersey, up the Delaware River.

We're here to explore Art Yard, a center dedicated to presenting transformative artwork, fostering collaboration, and incubating original new work.

(upbeat music) - Art Yard is an art exhibition space, artist residency and theater.

So we invite artists to come here and incubate new theater work, sometimes dance.

And we wanted to build a theater where we could do a wide range of things and hire an architect and set about building this building.

But it happened that COVID intervened and so we had to open in the midst of COVID.

- How were you able to accomplish all of that?

- I found this woman on Instagram who makes beautiful portraits of people and I commissioned her to make something that we call the artist ancestors, which are 40 figures of deceased cultural pioneers who could sit in the seats and enforce social distancing.

And they're with us here today.

- [Shirley] So we have an audience.

- [Jill] We do, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Chopin, Tolstoy and Susan Sontag among many others.

- Jill, tell me about this building that opened in 2021.

- Well, we're sitting on the site of an old egg hatchery that burned down and was flooded and then was replaced with a rotting cinder block hulk and it became available.

I thought it would be a wonderful site because of both where it is in the town and that also our yard is equidistant from New York and Philly, about an hour and 10 minutes.

And I also love that the metaphor of hatching.

- Tell me about the residency program here.

Artists live on the property.

- We have two buildings.

One is a five bedroom house with the yard that is the yard of art yard where we sometimes do installations.

And then the other one is a five apartment building right in the center of town.

So if artists come to perform here, they stay here.

If they come to incubate new work, they stay for a period of weeks.

So it's anywhere from one week to a year.

- In addition to a multi-use theater, Art Yard also has three galleries and shows rotate seasonally.

- What is this?

- So this is part of our immersive storytelling experience Where There's Smoke.

Put this on like a sash.

Hold the flashlight.

First, you're gonna go in the onboarding room take a piece of paper and a pen.

- [Lance] Welcome to Where There's Smoke.

- Lance will have you think of an object and you'll be explaining why it is meaningful to you.

- [Lance] When you're ready, make your way inside.

- Lance Weiler the artist, his father was a firefighter and an amateur fire photographer.

And in Lance's life his family experienced two traumatic fires, one in his home and one when his van burst into flames.

After his father is diagnosed with colon cancer, he begins to interview him and look back at the memories as an adult.

He begins to ask questions, including did my father set those fires?

As visitors, we get to listen to the interviews and decide for ourselves whether this was the case.

The stories are triggered by the flashlight that you're holding in your hands.

They developed some technology for people to be able to move in the space freely and to have a totally unique experience based on what caught people's interest.

- This red room is where people have drawn pictures of objects they would save if they were in a house fire.

I mean, assuming their loved ones are safe.

It's really powerful being in this room, the color, seeing all the papers and then there's also some music that goes with it.

It gives you goosebumps.

- A lot of what we do here is both to create some really challenging, unusual programming but to do it in a way that is not off-putting and that makes space for people wherever they are.

So we have things like tiny galleries that are hidden inside the walls so that if you were a child as I was dragged through many museums, there's little hatches you can open and things to discover and it might be something, you know a little bit challenging but the process makes it pleasurable.

- Now we'll take a closeup look at evidence, an exhibition of photography, sculpture and video by Natalie de Segonzac.

She incorporates her life's journey into her artwork in remarkable ways.

(upbeat music) - I was pretty young when I started making art.

My dad always had a camera with him.

I was intrigued and would steal it from him.

I had a photography class starting in middle school in the dark room, which was amazing and that was really the first time I ever felt like oh well this is the only thing I wanna do.

The first piece I ever made was the distortion image black and white.

I was around 21.

I was intrigued by other artists that used the body as a form of sculpture.

The next body of work I made was the cubes and those cubes were a lot about how our mind feels almost trapped in our body as we have the ability to kind of go outside of our bodies with our minds and yet we're anchored to our physical form.

I started using my own body as the subject just out of curiosity as to what could come out of that relationship between the camera and the subject as both the artists and object, I guess in that case.

I never really felt like they were self-portraits until much later.

The next pieces I made were out of college.

The ones in the show was called rope.

It was again about a container for the body.

I crocheted it around myself.

I guess I just saw it as building a cocoon and coming out at the other end, still myself but perhaps in a new environment The butterfly.

So after I made the rope piece I had an injury a few months later, I was 25 and that changed the trajectory of things and yet, I'm still maybe on the same path.

I just didn't know it at the time.

So I call this room 2028, because that was the room number of my hospital bed.

I was in rehab for about 10 weeks after the ICU and this is a bit of the dreams that kind of happened during that time period.

The balloons I created after receiving a bunch of balloons as a gift.

One morning I woke up and said, "You gotta tie them to me.

I think it would make a good photograph."

The balloons being a dark color seem a little ominous and yet they're filled with air.

So at any point I could take off, be free.

That's me and my mom.

She was lying in bed with me and I asked my dad to capture the moment.

It felt important and special.

It's not just about sorrow.

I think the most important thing is it's about coming together and family and love and the joy that can come out of being thrown together even in horrible circumstances.

It was still pretty new to my injury and I was experiencing what it felt like to be seen but ignored at the same time.

Most of my work, I try to incorporate a little bit of humor and to me, being just a giant veiled ghost seemed more in your face or obvious at least I've become a larger object.

And yet are you seeing me or are you seeing the wheelchair?

Well, I spent many years in rehab and only lived and breathed exercise.

It was a determination to heal, but it was actually when I started to accept my disability, that gave me a lot of freedom so I could start making work again.

I think there's a misconception about what being disabled really looks like.

Just because I use a chair doesn't mean I'm not mobile in other ways or have different abilities or different problem solving skills because of my situation.

This water footage was taken prior to my disability, so I have not been back to the water.

I have found that it represented exactly how I felt that day even though it was ultimately where my life changed I still have many memories that are positive.

- A lot of the pieces that were created for this exhibition had to be done in collaboration as a group.

One of my favorite is the piece that has different portraits of the helpers that supported Natalie through how this process, volunteers from the community came to sew by hand these panels.

So Natalie had the vision and they made it happen.

It shows you the importance of collaboration which is a, is big at Art Yard.

- After I was injured I had a lot of people rally around me who were either friends, family or people in the healthcare industry and I wanted to give something back to them.

So the ramp has hands cast of all the people I just mentioned, I liked the idea that being a ramp as that is the navigation that many people who use chairs have to deal with.

I was really interested in having living plants at the top of the ramp because I felt that if the hands were coming down it was as if they're the root system.

All these people may not know each other, but together, they're creating a system that is working together.

I think a lot of artists might say that their art is coming out of expressing some type of pain, whether it's existential or otherwise.

For me it gave me something to do, and it gave me joy and hope that there was a future.

- Evidence is a must see, the creativity is incredible.

Well, staying in New Jersey we introduce you now to Camden Fireworks.

The nonprofit art gallery and co-working space uses a multi-pronged approach to support area artists while fostering social change.

(upbeat music) - Cultural sustainability really is to look at the ways that we can all be human.

Whether that's looking at music, art forms, performance art, how are people resilient?

I could be myself as a quilter, I could support other artists but I also can use my practice of cultural anthropology, cultural sustainability to help to not only shine a light on what's happening in the community but uplift the ways that we are able to sustain our work.

So what happens here at Camden Fireworks is that we have art exhibitions, we have community workshops.

We feature everything from cultural events to yoga, vegan cooking classes.

- To me, art really like brings people together and I think especially a city like Camden, this is well needed.

With most of my pieces, I like to make sure that confidence is on the forefront.

So I always wanna make sure that they are staring directly at you.

I like to focus on the gaze.

- We have nine artist studios that we rent.

We are the only independent art gallery in the city.

It's very important to have deep relationships within the community and those avenues allow us to do that.

What I hope to see happen is that we can move this neighborhood waterfront south to being a beacon of what you can do when you really use art and are intentionally focused on uplifting the community.

- The art that I create inspires social change because it's inspiring younger artists to learn about their purpose, their identity and just creating in general.

I feel like having this space here where we can come and create, build community, it teaches the kids that I'm tutoring and mentoring that they can make it they can be in the art world.

- Pottery especially is a little bit hard to access because it requires wheels and kilns and a lot of supplies.

And so I'm excited to be able to have a studio here where people can come and have all the equipment needed to make with clay.

- The arts is very important in Camden because it shows the beauty that we have to offer.

There are many artists from painters to poets to dancers that are really highlighting the joy and the artist system of this city.

- My overall vision for this space is that we will continue to provoke, to illuminate and to bring together people from various backgrounds.

Our mission is to use art to create social change.

And change doesn't happen without provocation.

And provocation doesn't happen unless we are reaching across the aisles to talk to other people.

We use art to do that.

- What I heard that my father-in-law was part of that they would take guns and break them down and store them at the farm and then they could ship them as agricultural products.

- All I know it went to a port in Hoboken or New York and then off to Palestine, it went.

- In order to get it out of Hoboken, you had to talk to Meyer Lansky who controlled the waterfront.

- I think there was a belief that as long as they were marked agricultural products, nobody was gonna look.

They came from, you know, Springtown, Pennsylvania, who lives in Springtown, Pennsylvania?

I think that there was the sense that they needed to stand up for the Jewish people.

- [Announcer] These 45 teens had a choice, submit or fight for freedom.

They chose freedom.

(upbeat music) - You just saw the trailer for the upcoming documentary code name "I Alone" that'll be shown on WHYY TV 12 next month.

It's about a secret bullet factory in Israel produced by former journalist and marketing and PR firm owner, Laurel Fairworth.

Laurel, thank you so much for being here.

- Thank you.

- Before we get into the film, how did you hear about this bullet factory?

- Well actually I went to Israel on a trip in memory of my mother and there were 250 people on this trip and only 30 people.

So one bus went to the bullet factory.

So I didn't choose it, I didn't know anything about it and I got there and I thought the place was magical.

- So in the film we hear from some of the people who actually worked in the bullet factory.

How were you able to find them and what did they say about working there?

- Well, I was lucky.

Through media friends of mine, we were able to locate the last 10 people who actually worked at the bullet factory.

There were only 45 to begin with so here it was 65 years later.

So what are the chances of finding them?

But we got lucky.

They were still in Israel and we found the last 10 of them and we interviewed them.

They were unbelievable.

And they basically said not only at the time, but in retrospect, 'cause now it had been all these, you know six plus decades later, that they realized that what they did was really important and made a big difference.

You know, initially they were scared, they didn't think they were gonna be successful but sometimes the most important things in life is when you do it against the odds and now they realize, looking back that what they did saved the infant state of Israel.

- So do you think they had that foresight in knowing that in spite of their fear, that's why they agreed to do it?

- No, you know, honestly.

(both laugh) No, I think initially they just, that was their part.

They were doing their bit for to, you know, initially it was Palestine, so Israel was just being created.

So I'm calling it Israel, but you were on the cusp.

But anyway, they knew that each person had to do their part and this was theirs to help make the Israel that they wanted a reality.

- This was a big secret.

They couldn't tell anyone.

- Yes.

- No family, friends sometimes they kept this factory secret from their spouses.

How were they able to do that?

- Well, what happened is during the day they would pretend that they were working in the fields, in the citrus fields and they'd take hose and you know, other equipment and they'd go out there and they would double back and there was a button that you pushed and this huge washing machine pivoted over to the right and in a minute or two they were down the chute and hidden.

And they actually had a sunlamp down there because if you were working out in the fields and you went to lunch, you would be pale, right?

So they had the first sun lamp imported from America down there and they would take turns under it.

So then when they reappeared, they would look like they had actually been working.

- Do you think they understood fully the danger they were putting themselves in?

I mean, one, the factory could have exploded, but two, if they were caught, they would be executed.

- Yes, they did.

They fully understood the consequences and I wouldn't say embrace them, but acknowledged it and said, "This is too important, we're doing it anyway."

And actually I think the likelihood was greater that that the British would find them and execute them or that they would blow themselves up than that they would actually succeed.

- Why did you wanna tell this story?

- I just thought in this day and age, like to show that a few people can truly change the world and make a difference is important and here was a story that exemplified it and so I just felt if I could bring this to public attention, that maybe someone would see it and say, hmm, I wanna stand for something.

Or there's something that I, a right that I need to wrong or something that I feel that I must do to make the world a better place.

- Laurel Fairworth, thank you so much for being here.

You can watch code name "I Alone" on WHYY TV 12 on October 5th at 9:00 PM.

The documentary will premiere here on WHYY and then can be seen around the country.

Laurel, thanks again.

- Thank you.

- The life and work of the influential fashion designer, Ann Lowe is now on display at Winter Tour in Delaware.

Long unrecognized, the Black Couturier, who's often referred to as society's best kept secret, is finally getting the visibility she deserves.

Anne Lowe designed couture gowns for some of society's biggest names, including Jacqueline Kennedy.

Lowe designed the iconic wedding gown, the Future Mrs. Kennedy warp in 1953, the culmination of her life's work.

But when asked who designed the gown, Kennedy referred to Lowe only as a colored dress maker.

- There are layers upon layers of injustice when it comes to Ann Lowe.

- [Shirley] Katya Roelse teaches fashion design at the University of Delaware.

The folks at the Winter Tour Museum asked her to make a replica of Kennedy's wedding gown for an upcoming exhibition dedicated to Ann Lowe's contributions and her legacy.

- I didn't know who Ann Lowe was before I was contacted about this and I wasn't taught that in fashion design school.

- [Shirley] All the more reason Katya wanted the black fashion designer to have her long overdue moment in the sun.

So she traveled up to Boston to take measurements and look at the original gown, which is far too delicate to display.

- I spent three days at the JFK library in Boston.

I measured, I took pictures, I sketched.

It's a typical Anne Lowe dress because it has so many moments of her details.

There are the rosettes that are on the 10 panels.

There are these little wax flowers of orange blossoms that are sitting inside the rosettes and then there are all the swags that are hand sewn on the hemp.

I knew that I wasn't going to be able to complete this but I also wanted to share this because it was such a unique techniques to learn and there's history and there's also a large part of social justice that I think is a part of this.

- [Shirley] So last summer in this very workroom on UD's campus Katya and three of her students worked till their fingertips went numb, literally.

- First we started with sewing the swags on the bottom of the dress.

It was very labor intensive.

It was about, I think 10 tiers going around the whole entire dress, you know, all that fabric and just hand sewing every little piece on, it's just very, a lot of work, really hurt your hands.

- It was an interesting experience because like the hand sewing was just so intricate and yeah there was a bunch of mishaps and it made me wonder, did she have to go through the same thing like when she was sewing the rosettes, did she pick her fingers too?

- [Shirley] Katya estimates it took at least 300 hours to make the dress from start to finish.

- I thought about her a lot when I was making the dress and and how she must have felt and if she had these moments of panic.

But then I also liked to think about, you know, did she listen to music while she was making this?

- It makes me feel kind of sad for her because she deserved all the credit for this dress especially how much work she put into it.

And it was kind of sad to see that she doesn't really get enough recognition.

Especially like if you look in a lot of books.

Her name isn't even mentioned in them either.

It really made me feel special to be a part of this project and give her the credit that she always deserved.

- You can see Ann Lowe American Couturier at Winter Tour through January 7th tickets at wintertour.org.

Okay, that is our show.

Thank you so much for watching and we will see you here next week.

Goodnight.

(upbeat music)