Funding for COLORES was provided in part by: Frederick Hammersley Fund, 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.

THIS TIME, ON COLORES!

DID YOU KNOW THAT THERE ARE OVER 1,000 SPECIES OF  BEES IN NEW MEXICO AND NOT ALL OF THEM STING?!

OLIVIA CARRIL SHARES HER DISCOVERIES ABOUT THE  AMAZING BEES OF NEW MEXICO.

FOLDING, CUTTING, SCORING -PROFESSOR HIROSHI  HAYAKAWA TRANSFORMS PAPER INTO PLAYFUL ANIMAL  SCULPTURES AND STRIKING MASKS.

DRAWING INSPIRATION FROM HER TRAVELS AROUND THE  WORLD, BETH HIMSWORTH INFUSES HER STUNNING  MOSAICS WITH THE RHYTHMS  AND PATTERNS OF DIVERSE CULTURES.

IT’S ALL AHEAD ON COLORES!

TO   BE…A BEE >>Faith Perez: We got a lot of drawers here.

>>Olivia Carril: We've got a few.

So, um, okay, so these are, I'll show you some of these.

I've got bumblebees here.

>>Faith Perez: Mm-hmm.

>>Olivia Carril: Is it okay if I  put that there?

>>Faith Perez: Yeah, go for it.

>>Olivia Carril: These ones are different.

Bumblebees.

They're cute.

>>Faith Perez: They're so cute!

>>Olivia Carril: Aren't they?

>>Faith Perez: What are  those?

They're so little.

>>Olivia Carril: These ones  are.. >>Faith Perez: Those are  bees?!

>>Olivia Carril: They're bees,  yeah.

<laugh>, they're bees and they nest in, um, wood  like twigs.

>>Faith Perez: Oh my!

>>Olivia Carril: You find them nesting in twigs.

>>Olivia Carril: My first job out collecting bees.

It seemed  like I came home every day with more questions than I  went out with and that was kind of a good way to get up  the next morning cuz there was more to learn.

And the  questions I have, have more to do with how can we make  sure that when a bee is in decline we might be able to,  to know that, to be able to  see it before a bee is declined to the point that it's hard to  help it recover.

The first discovery I had when I started  studying bees was that in North America, that's about  4,000 different kinds of these bees just in this country,  maybe 20 or 30,000 around the world.

And here in New  Mexico about a thousand different species.

So when  you start thinking about that many different kinds of bees,  there's a lot to be discovered in terms of each of the species  and the stories that they all have to tell.

>>Faith Perez: Could you tell me about this one?

Oh, I, I see  this guy here.

>>Olivia Carril: Definitely I  can tell you about that one.

So this one's called a wool  carter bee and what's great about it is the females collect, um, the, the fuzzy hairs that are on a lot of plants that you  find and make little cotton  balls and take that bit of cotton in those beautiful  mandibles that you see there.

Look, face scissors is what I  call 'em <laugh> and the face scissors.

And they take, they  take the ball of cotton back to their nest and use it to pad  the little nest cells where their babies will be.

>>Faith Perez: What are Cuckoo bees?

>>Olivia Carril: You find cuckoo bees scattered  throughout the bee, the bee  family tree if you will.

Um, and cuckoo bees wait till the  mother bee has left her nest.

And I've watched this happen.

They literally will sort of like hide behind a rock.

So all you  can see is the top of their head and they're kinda like  watching and as soon as they see the host bee who's built  this nest leave, they fly in really quick.

They sneak into  the nest, they go to find a nest cell that has a little bit of  pollen in it and an egg that the normal mother has laid  and they lay a teeny tiny little egg somewhere, maybe in the  back and then she leaves before the mom gets back.

And that little egg unbeknownst to everybody  but her eventually hatches and the little tiny larva, little grub, it looks like a caterpillar but tinier, um, that comes out  has these big mandibles and it chops the other bee baby in  half.

<laugh> doesn't eat it.

Usually there's a couple that  do mostly doesn't eat it and eats the pollen that was left in the nest by this mom for her own baby instead.

My god.

So  it's similar to the cuckoo bird, but the cuckoo be instead.

>>Faith Perez: What's your process for catching and  identifying a bee?

>>Olivia Carril: Um, stare at flowers for long periods of  time.

<laugh> step one, get a net, step two, stare at a  flower <laugh>, eventually a bee will come.

My girls even  have started collecting bees with me.

They're seven and  nine years old and they've gotten pretty good at  swinging at, at flowers and grabbing bees off of them.

But  um, yeah, you get it in your net and then you have to take  a sample of the bees and then you can put them on little pins  like this.

All of them get a  label that tells you where you collected it from the date and  then the flower that you founded on.

Cuz those bee  plant relationships are so important.

>>Faith Perez: When you're out there studying the bees.

Have you ever been stung?

>>Olivia Carril: Oh, all the time.

>>Faith Perez: <laugh>.

Okay.

>>Olivia Carril: It's really not that big a deal.

I mean if you  get stung by a honey bee, you're gonna remember it the  rest of your life.

But, um, being stung by one of these  guys, it feels more like, like, um, a powerful mosquito, you  know?

Mm-hmm.

<affirmative> it, it just for a  minute afterwards and then it's gone and it's not that big a  deal.

It's truly not.

>>Faith Perez: Oh, cause they don't leave the sting… >>Olivia Carril: They don't leave the sting behind, they  don't inject any little venom.

They don't have little venom  sacks on 'em or anything.

It's just a poke.

Only female bees  can sting.

Male bees don't even possess a sting on their  body, so they can't, but generally speaking they,  they're, they're docile, they,  they're not out there to like drill and sting you.

>>Faith Perez: How drastically have bee populations been  reduced or how have they been affected?

>>Olivia Carril: That's a great question.

I wish I had like a  perfect answer for you.

But so much of the answer is that we  don't know.

We don't know as much as we wish we did.

We  know that when we do things like put in a new parking lot,  any ground nesting bee that that might have been there  before has lost habitat.

Anytime we planned corn or  soybeans across all of the Midwest, we've removed  prairie wildflower habitat where some of those bees  could have been.

So on the big scale we can say we've  probably done things that are hard on our bees, but in terms  of like exactly how much  decline has happened, um, we, we don't know.

We don't  know yet.

<laugh>.

Okay.

Still good.

We're trying to collect  that baseline data now so that in 20 years we can say this  group really needs some help and this group is doing fine.

Bees pollinate pretty much all the colorful stuff in our life.

They, they're the tomatoes  and the cucumbers and the, the eggplants.

So if those bees  decline went down, we would eat a lot more spaghetti.

We  would eat more rice, we would eat more wheat bread,  grass, wind pollinated things.

But we'd eat a lot less of the  colorful, delicious stuff that we like.

>>Faith Perez: What can we do to help the bees?

>>Olivia Carril: We're in a pretty unique situation here in  New Mexico because we have more bee species in Arizona  and New Mexico than like all of the states east of the  Mississippi River combined.

It's because our agriculture  tends here not to be around the corn and the soy and  some of that stuff that really disturbs the land, um, for our  native bees.

And so I think we can better coexist with them  here in New Mexico than in other states.

And because  we're a really arid state, anytime we water the area  around our house and plant some wild flowers, we've  created habitat for bees in a place where we know that  flowering resources are the limiting factor.

>>Faith Perez: Do you have a lot of bees in your own like  yard?

>>Olivia Carril: Oh man.

Yes.

I  like to think of it as an Airbnb.

All the bees need truly is like bed and breakfast.

So you have to provide them a  place to live.

Either something in the ground or maybe a little  bee house or whatever it is.

Yeah.

And then some food.

Right.

Bed and breakfast, that's all they need.

Those are  the only two things.

>>Faith Perez: And they get to stay for free.

>>Olivia Carril: And they stay  for free.

Yeah, that's, yeah.

I benefit from getting to watch  them cuz they're so cool and uh, hopefully they benefit too.

PAPER COMES ALIVE The paper craft project, I  started doing this mid-'90s when the CCAD had a head  librarian, Ms.

Vu.

she used to have this Chinese New Year's  party every year.

And she asked me one day to make an  animal from the Chinese zodiac out of paper, so she  could decorate her dinner party tables and then  gradually the number of animals expanded, published  four books and they're all small tabletop-sized animals.

This was the very first book I made start with the  instruction, then start with a simpler, easier project.as you  go through the pages, that level gets higher and higher,  more advanced and then, the very end of the book has  these templates.so, you can take this book to a copy store  and make your own templates turn them into an animal I  used cardstock paper, which is the best material to use for  this kind of craft and then in order to make projects sort of  more colorful, I started to paint.

These paper animal  nightlights are more recent project.it is   technically a combination of paper folding  and then paper cutting, both all the projects are  constructed out of two sheets of paper and the reason is so  that the light will go through in between those two layers  that create interesting patterns, like a radiating from  the center the other reason is it's easier to design that way  this is a template for giant panda.so, I’m gonna start with  scoring the lines and the reason why I’m doing that is  that way when these are turning to three-dimensional  structures, I will have a nicer, neater folding line.so, I’m  gonna go over all the folding lines with this tool.

I’m just adding the light pressure.

I’m not really following the  truthful representation of animals, but they're more  stylized versions of it.so, I do have some source material to  look, like online or books then once you've got that sort of  essence of the animal down, then I can use my artistic  liberty to, you know, manipulate the shape a little  bit.

The next step is cutting the template out.so, I will use  this craft knife.

Or you can use any knife, like an x-acto knife.

So, I’m gonna start with the eyes.

Cut the eyeball out.

Then I will take this rolled up sandpaper to smooth out the opening.

The simplicity and  complexity, I try to target somewhere in between.

The  shapes are simple enough for the people to cut out.

But the  way those papers are folded and constructed together is  more complex.so that is sort of a brain teaser.

These two  templates, front-side and back-side are cut out.so, now I  can turn this into three- dimensional object.

Okay, the front side is finished.so, now  I’m gonna open the back template, which is just one  folding around the ears.

Like this.

And like that.

Now, I can put these two templates  together.

Insert this tab into this cut I made earlier.

I'll  apply a little glue to the end of the Q-tip.

Okay.

Then I’m going to work on these two  joints next.

I’m gonna insert this tab into this cut right  here.

And this tab into this one.

Then again, I’m gonna glue these two tabs to the  front template.

Let's use -- now these two tabs are glued  to the back.

And now this giant panda is complete.

I did a couple of workshops.

I remember one participant said she enjoyed it so much  because it's really calming.

So, I think there is an, you know,  element of this kind of a paper craft that puts people  into the mood of sort of a contemplative, meditative.

You know, because, you know, you work with hands so  that is --kind of stimulates the brain.

Put people into sort of a zone.

I'd like to continue working on animal nightlights.

Then, hopefully, trying to find sort of a distribution network,  so people can make their own animals.

SEEING THROUGH THE GLASS As I was living in South America for a long time, I would come home on different visits and my mother  was making stained glass.

And she kept telling me, oh, this is so much fun.

And, you should do this!

And she made windows and lamps and -- I just kept saying, mom, No -- I don't follow patterns, I don't measure anything.

There's nothing about stained glass that attracts me.

My husband and I, when we moved back here -- we went  on a double date with some friends.

And we went to a place that did glass mosaic -- which was  really fun except that it was with those little tiles.

And I made a tray and I took it and I showed it to my mom,  and I said, here, look.

And she goes, it would look a  lot better if you made it out of glass.

I was like, oh, you know – it would!

And so -- she gave me a box of glass, and I went down to my  basement with a glass cutter and started beating things up,  And started making mosaic out of it.

And, it was just really fun.

I just became fascinated by the colors.

The different, different kinds of translucents.

And the incredible possibilities that glass has.

And then, eventually I thought, well, I kind of -- I really like the mosaic.

I like working with glass, but  I'd like to have it be a little more painterly.

I wanted colors to kind of blend together better.

And, I didn't know how to do that with glass.

So, I started getting interested in fused glass, and with fused glass I was able to overlap and interplay in ways that I hadn't been able to do before.

But, it still wasn't quite what I wanted.

I kept experimenting and  experimenting and then, just by chance -- I heard about a class by a guy who made the world’s largest stained glass window at 4,000 square feet.

Tim Carey.

And he is an amazing instructor, and he shows you how to make your own sheets of glass.

And how to get the colors to kind of meld together.

So, I could add, you know, five, six, eight colors, if I want -- of glass into a sheet.

And as it melts together, then -- with frit, and all kinds of little pieces of glass, it turns into something completely different.

And so, this whole body of work that we're looking at today has been made with that technique.

When I try to explain to people that fused glass is warm glass, it's kind of hard to figure out.

All will say, did you blow this?

And so, what's very important about glass is that this is cold glass.

It is worked cold.

It's put together cold.

And it always stays flat like this.

This is the piece that my mother made years ago.

And then, hot glass is the typical thing you think of as being in a kiln.

You know, with the blown glass and that kind of thing.

And it -- it's really, really hot.

It's around 2,000-2,200 degrees.

So, what I do with fused glass is called warm glass, because my kiln only goes up to 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit.

And so, at warm, glass is able to -- It doesn't -- it melts in terms of being like a really think molasses type of texture.

And so, it can bend and move, but it doesn't actually become an actual liquid that you can blow, as in hot glass.

And so, in order to make things that have -- that have these kinds of characteristics with texture, I have to make a clay mold.

And with the clay mold then, I can lay this on, melt it together, and then I can make things out of it that I want to make.

And so, I was talking before about this idea that I wanted to get more texture, and more overlap into my glass.

This is sort of an early attempt at that with fused glass.

Trying to get things on top of each other, and things to mold together.

And it's so much easier now with the class that I've taken.

But, this was my first attempt to try and figure out how to make glass a little more interactive with and overlapping with the different colors.

So, this is warm glass, hot glass, and cold glass.

Well, at the Studios on High gallery, we are the only artists  owned and operated gallery in the Short North (Columbus, Ohio) And, every month we have a different show in the front of  our gallery.

So, I happen to be the member who’s doing a show in September.

It's called, “From the Earth.” And the reason it is called, “From the Earth” is because I had to pick a title a year ago, and I had no idea what I was going to do.

So, I knew I wanted to experiment with some new things, But I didn't know how it was gonna go.

So, I thought that was generic enough to encompass what I really like to do, which is nature subjects.

And leaves, and bamboo, and things like that.

Having spent 18 years living in the tropics, I just love nature.

It's like, when you live in a place where it's all around you, it becomes so much more a part of your life.

So, living in Ohio, I happen to live in a good neighborhood that has lots of trees -- but it's still not the same.

And, I'm always like, trying to recreate pieces that have that kind of jungle-y feel to it.

With this, I am hoping is gonna be my favorite piece when it gets done.

I really, really love monstera leaves.

So, this is sort of, like inspired by the first project that I made with two leaves, and I’m trying to see if I can get it to work okay with five.

Now, glass, when you put it in a kiln -- and it melts, it wants to level out.

Glass only wants to be this thick.

And unfortunately, when – so when you pile up glass.

It will just flow all over the place and drip off the sides.

So, the dams -- so this, these walls that I can structure around the piece, and I line it so that they won't stick to the dams.

These walls will help the glass continue to stay in the same framework.

In order to keep this leaf -- this part of the leaf floating into that part of the leaf, you have to put a spacer in it of the clear glass.

So I have to put in a whole lot of different pieces in order to, to make the shape that I am looking for.

And then, there are all these gaps.

So how are these gaps going to fill in?

Some of them will fill in okay just by melting, but I want to make sure that especially in gaps from one leaf to another, that there's enough of a line there that you can tell which leaf is on top, and so on.

So basically, what I need to do is to take the glass frit that I made in my grinder, and then I have to like, brush it into the cracks.

So, as I brush it into the cracks then, it kinda fills in, in places where I want it to blend.

It looks obvious now that I have this filled into the blocks, but once it's all melted together, you don't really see it that much.

So, I have to check it one last time, make sure there is  nothing more that I need to do.

And then, just close it.

And we'll find out in about 30 hours, if it came out the way we wanted it to.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, so far, so good.

Well, it all came together pretty well.

Now I just need a piece of glass as a scraper to help get some of this paper off.

[scraping noise] And then, the next step is it's going in my sink to get a bath, And to get the rest of this off.

And then we'll see how it turned out.

It's kinda heavy.

Now, you can't see the top very well because it's in the shadows.

It will be a little bit brighter than that.

And this is a piece that's intended to be front lit.

So, it -- under a spotlight, I think it will pop out pretty well.

I see people standing and just kinda staring and they – they look at how the pieces come together.

And they look at the negative space and the positive space, and sometimes, I’ve had art -- glass artists come in and they'll look at a really long, slender piece of glass, and they'll be like, how did you cut that?

I don't know how --?

You know, and it's because I practice with a different kind of technique than they're probably using.

And part of it, for me is not being a classically or academically trained artist.

I don't have the limitations of this is how it's supposed to be.

And this is what you can't do, and this is what you can do.

So, I’m always experimenting and playing around, and then, hopefully, I can come up with some things that are kind of unique in that way.

I hope that it encourages them somehow.

I hope that they look at it.

I hope that they feel a sense of, oh yeah, this is cool!

This is like, life.

And this is something that, that kind of makes my day feel a little bit better.

I really feel like it's a part of our humanity to be engaged with nature.

It's part of who we are.

And when we live these busy, urban lives we get disconnected from that.

So, I really feel that through art, we can get a little bit better connected.

And begin to just appreciate a little more, the world that we live in.

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“UNTIL NEXT WEEK, THANK YOU FOR WATCHING.”  Funding for COLORES was provided in part by: Frederick Hammersley Fund, 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.