(soft music) >> At least once a week, we see something on the news talking about Black death by police hands.

What I hope to do with poetry is to be an emotional historian where the news tells the story, and I try to tell the story of how we feel when it's happening so we don't lose our humanity in it.

>> Muntu is from the Bantu language.

The word actually means, man that's what it literally means.

But when you look at what the essence of a man is, it's about humanity, the inner joys and pains, and all of the things that make up a human being.

>> Jeanette Pasin Sloan style, realistic doesn't even quite do it, I would say almost hyper realistic.

Making the familiar extremely unfamiliar, but at the same time doing it in such a way that it looks completely convincing and it's just played uncanny.

>> I think everyone wants a little bit of magic and mystery in their lives.

You may understand the science of light refraction but your brain just sees it and says, wow.

It's something that has a magical feel.

>> Doing as much as you can, as quickly as you can, is important to me.

Life is short, and the earlier we get started helping our community, the better off our community will be.

>> I have a very strong connection to other students.

Everyone makes an effort to help each other.

I'll remember the feeling of being here, the feeling that I was a part of a family.

>> Support for programming at Lakeshore PBS comes in part from a generous bequest of the Estate of Marjorie A.

Mills whose remarkable contribution help us keep viewers like you informed, inspired and entertained for years to come.

(soft music) >> Eye on the Arts is made possible in part by South Shore Arts.

The Indiana Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.

Additional support from Lakeshore PBS and Eye on the Arts is provided by viewers like you.

Thank you.

>> When black boys are born, we mothers kiss their faces, twirl our fingers in their curls put them in carriers on our chest.

Show them to the world, our tiny black princes.

And when they start school, as early as three we mothers place huge backpacks on their backs.

And we slowly fill them with bricks, etched with tools, tattooed with troops, hoping to save them.

Don't talk back, don't get angry.

Say yes Ma'am, say no sir.

Don't fight even if they hit you first, especially if they are white do your best better than best.

Be still, work hardest, brick.

They get a little older and we add more.

Keep your hands out of your pockets.

Don't look them in the eye.

Don't challenge.

Don't put your manhood before your life.

Just get home safe.

Don't walk alone, don't walk with too many boys.

Don't walk towards police, don't walk away from police.

Don't buy candy or ice tea.

Don't put your hood up.

I'll drive out, I'll pick you up.

You can't be free, don't go wandering.

Come home to me.

Brick.

They get a little older and we add more.

Understand you are a threat standing still, breathing.

Your degrees are not a shield, your job is not a shield.

Your salary makes you a target.

Your car makes you a target.

Your nice house in a nice neighborhood makes you a target.

Don't put your ego before your safety.

Don't talk back.

Don't look them in the eye, get home to your wife, your son, brick.

They weigh them down.

This knowing of having to carry the load of their blackness.

The world hasn't changed.

The straps just dig deeper into their skin, their backs ache, but their souls don't break our beautiful black men.

When you say to me all lives matter, I simply ask will your son die with a knee on his neck?

Mine have.

(soft music) Backpacks was a poem I did in the summer of 2016.

We as a nation, we're seeing in real time so much police brutality that black and brown communities are really familiar with but that was the first time we were seeing it on social media outlets and it was happening over and over again.

And I felt like I was writing something almost every day.

And I don't know the exact person I had a conversation with but we were talking about the talk, the talk that black and brown mothers give our sons, that start so early about how to try and maneuver in a world that wasn't created to love you, respect you or protect you.

It's painful to have to take away their innocence like that but sometimes that's the only tool we have is to educate them as much as possible and pray that that's enough.

It was my second poem that went viral and on social media and it was the first one where I had lots of white mothers in particular reaching out and saying, I didn't know this is what you had to do, I didn't know that this is what it felt like.

Usually that's the poem that if I'm doing a book reading that's the one I get tears from in the audience.

It's typically the one that I struggle sometimes reading without crying myself.

And as we know it's continued.

I think at least once a week, we see something on the news talking about black death by police hands.

And what I hope to do with poetry is to be an emotional historian where the the news tells the story and I try to tell the story of how we feel when it's happening.

So we don't lose our humanity in it, so we don't become so numb that we forget that they're people, these hashtags, these names that run across the ticker tape at the bottom of the news, the people who are often then you know, posthumously dragged through the mud, they're people who lived, they were someone's son, someone's brother, lover, friend, confidant, teacher, coworker.

They lived and I want us to remember that they're people and I want us to feel what that agony is, what a community feels when we lose yet another person and have lost hope on getting justice especially when it's done at the hands of the police.

So people understand why we're angry, why it's heavy, why it's unfair.

And so I hope that's what that poem does and other poems that I write that are about similar topics.

I think often we're taught that emotion is illogical and it is not.

A lot of the problems that we have now, we are taught that we shouldn't feel, that we're not allowed to feel, that feeling makes us weak.

And it's our intuition that sometimes saves our lives, that connects us to people who change our lives.

Our emotions to feel, to empathize, to see beyond ourselves, the power in that we have so many people who are leaders to see them void of emotions is illogical.

How do you make decisions without truly feeling about the people you're supposed to be serving?

Because we forget, like we just do we move on to the next thing and we forget how crumbling a moment was.

And I like to hold that mirror up.

I think about when Sandy hook happened and I just was a mess.

My kids were around the same age.

I couldn't get off the sofa, just the thought of sending my first grader to school in a safe beautiful neighborhood and them never coming home.

And them having golf ball size, bullet holes in them.

And I think about the young teachers hiding them in a closet and standing in front of it.

And the fact that we still don't have gun control after that happened, I will post that poem every year on the anniversary.

I will hope I break somebody's heart every time they read it.

we cannot forget to feel, it is our doom if we do.

(soft music) (drum beats) >> Muntu Dance Theater is an organization that was created to preserve as well as to show the beauty of African culture through dance and through storytelling.

And we've been in existence since 1972.

The organization started out of a period of time where it was struggle for African Americans to relate to who they are as a people and Muntu was used as a way of connecting us back to our home in Africa.

>> So to piggyback off of that, we're a dance theater.

So our main focus is dances of the African diaspora, but we we perform all sorts of different dances or different genres.

There's west African, there's Caribbean, traditional dances of Jamaica, Trinidad.

So there are a lot of lanes that we focus on, but our main, what I would call our Jewish is west African dance.

>> Muntu is from the Bantu language.

The word actually means, man.

That's what it literally means.

But when you look at what the essence of a man is, it's about humanity.

The inner joys and pains and all of the things that make up a human being.

And with our presentations, and with the learning that we do with all of the dances from the African diaspora, we make sure that we exude those great essence that we were born with.

And the essence of humanity is about us working together, coming together, being, you know, loving one another, sharing with each other, even though, you know she has a different way, I do things different, but we share with each other that's the essence of humanity.

(drum beats) >> You know, we say usually each performance we strive to celebrate our similarities instead of focusing on our differences.

So when we speak of humanity, we speak of all humanity.

You know, when the sun shines, it shines on us all.

So that's literally the theme of each and every single solitary performance.

Each dance that's done has a meaning and has a purpose.

So they experience the emotions that come along with seeing a dance that might be done for the birth of a baby, or they will hear a rhythm that's for celebrating the initiation of a young woman or a young man coming into adulthood.

>> What I think we pride ourselves on, is that within the arts and the presentations that we share, we wanna make sure for one that people understand that Africa is very important to the world no matter who you are on the planet and the resources that have been given to the world from Africa are important.

So a lot of times in our presentations that's what you're seeing like Regina was sharing is that you are experiencing a ceremony a lot of times.

So when you see our choreography or the choreography that she's put together on particular pieces, the choreography is set around a scene, is set around an occasion, which is very important.

And that gives the visual that you're seeing much more importance because it's not just a flat stage show.

You're actually seeing what will actually happen in a village during this occasion.

>> A lot of the times our concerts or performances are interactive.

So, you know, we don't do all the work.

We want people to get up and move and experience and learn steps, so we have an agitainment component.

I affectionately call it agitainment because we want everyone to walk away with understanding what they just saw, learning songs and experiencing a different language and such things like that.

So we always wanna make sure that everyone is informed when they walk away from our performances.

I think that sometimes we are not even fully aware of the impact of how people feel when they've come into the space and then they leave, because it's second nature to us.

And usually we get like, you know like thank you.

And it's been so many times where people thank us, like thank you for doing this because it feeds people on another level.

You know, it, it feeds the spirit, it feeds the spirit.

So we're not a religious organization by any stretch of the imagination but when people walk away spiritually fed or, you know mentally fed or you rebuild the person through music, art and dance, it is necessary.

Dance and music is the universal language.

So I would think that that's one of the most awesome ways to tie into humanity and to get a connector where someone will say, you know, I understand you because when I move right to left or when I clap you clap, we just communicated.

Even though we may not speak the same language, I always like to think that the drum and the dance no matter what sparks something of a connector in that universal language of the groove, you know, I like that.

One nation under a groove.

>> Now, Jeanette Pasin Sloan's style is that she is an artist that is working with realistic still life subjects.

Realistic doesn't even quite do it, I would say almost hyper realistic.

Now Jeanette Pasin Sloan got her MFA from University of Chicago.

In other words, a trained artist.

And she was at home and married with a family and I think she'd kind of gotten out of art, family life can do that to you.

And so Jeanette in her home with children and thinking about art and saying, I gotta get back into art.

So then she starts working on what's available to her, for example, a high chair or an air conditioner, and starts working with those subjects and gets remarkable results.

Results that gain attention right off the bat.

She's able to work with Chrome in a way that she can render it completely convincingly but at the same time, not just use silver paint.

When you really look at it carefully, it's reflections of specific colors.

So breaking down chrome reflective surfaces so that they look completely real making the familiar extremely unfamiliar, but at the same time doing it in such a way that it looks completely convincing and it's just plain uncanny.

And so many of Jeanette Pain-Sloan subjects would be the chrome objects on a patterned cloth where you'd see the pattern and the painting as well as the pattern reflected into the silver object.

I mean any vantage point that you take is gonna have all kinds of odd distortions in it and each of those distorted passages becomes a world.

So silver objects are stacked in this precarious sort of way, I mean, everything might fall the pieces at any point.

In the reflections of the silver, for example she's got her light set up and you can sometimes see a little vestige of her, you know like a self portrait within the painting.

And you realize that the balancing act too is her wife being an artist and being a mother and being, you know companion and being a human being with obligations and, life is a balancing act.

I like the level of detail that she brings to things and the level of attention.

The other thing that I really like about Jeanette Pasin Sloan's work, although she's a still life artist they always seem like they're about more than that.

So for example, she did a beautiful color with a graph is titled the Roswell.

And it's kind of a pan because it's a silver saucer and it's on a native American pattern blanket.

Roswell, New Mexico, Roswell flying saucer, but then also Roswell in terms of Jeanette Pasin Sloan with the reflective object on patterned fabric.

So you look at it for a second, you say, that's Jeanette Pasin Sloan's work.

Everybody that comes in and looks at it says, is that a striking painting?

Now what is it?

That's just cups outta cloth?

But it's a lot more than, it's also about color and pattern and reflection and foiling your expectations, I mean, you're maybe used to a camera frame rectangle like this, well now she makes a configuration long strip.

What do you think of that?

You just kind of let the picture work on you a little bit and it becomes much more complex than just an arrangement of objects on a fabric.

She's developed a body of interest for herself.

The characteristics of chrome and still life, the compositional opportunities, I'm sure those are all very exciting for her to the point where she wants to keep on coming back to it again and again.

But then also I think for her she thinks about the nature of perception itself.

I think that's kind of a subtext of her art.

So when she does a still life composition on a polka dot background, I think she's interested not only in the fabric, which she probably really likes very much and the objects themselves but also the way the outside reflects the surroundings to the point where you get drawn into the vessel, even though you're being drawn into the outside of the thing.

She would give you the raw material and it's digestible because you know what this thing is.

But once you start to parse this stuff out you realize that this is a very complex picture.

There's a lot to it.

It's breaking down the familiar in a way that yields many rewards, I guess you could say.

(soft music) >> I've always been an artist.

I mean, my dad was an artist and that was what I wanted to be when I grow up.

I was always into whatever I could get myself into.

And I was in girl Scouts.

My best friend's mother was the troop leader.

And she was very crafty and I was very lucky to be brought into a stain glass studio at a very young age.

My best friend and I were able to make some pieces in the stain glass.

That was my first experience with stain glass.

My father did some stained glass when he was young.

He was an artist.

He ended up being very accomplished wood craftsman and furniture craftsman.

And the way he got started doing that was he apprentice at a stain glass studio and had to make frames and cabinetry to hold the stain glass.

My dad means a lot to me.

He died when I was a junior in college.

As I got older, I was starting to have this great relationship with this inspiring artist who is also my dad.

I don't know, maybe that had something to do with it that history of him having learned it and it was something I didn't know and I wanna know everything.

I am a constant art class taker.

I teach but I also constantly want to learn.

I'm constantly looking for a new technique to learn and I had done stain glass in the past.

I knew that I couldn't do it at the present without taking a class.

So I Googled stain glass studios, Northwest Indiana and came up with the cracked glass.

So within three months of taking my first class here I had been interested in owning the business.

So that's what happened.

And that's how I ended up teaching stain glass.

Yeah, I just took to it really quickly and learning about stain glass and the different properties of glass came really easily to me.

Once I decided to buy into the business, I was thrust into teaching.

I realized that I love teaching, I think that's so important and I feel like building confidence in students is so much more important than telling them what they're doing wrong.

So I like people to leave here feeling their self esteem is raised and that they're part of a family.

And this place to me has become my family.

All of these students are my cousins hanging out and making awesome stuff.

Few years ago, the Humane Society of Indiana, which is now known as Humane Indiana had a project called Owl You Need Is Love.

They had a sculptor designed about four foot tall fiberglass owls.

To raise money, they sold them and let people go crazy and decorate this owl however they wanted to.

We decided to do a mosaic because it's the glass studio.

So our pieces titled wing it.

Students would volunteer to come in and fill in these areas with, you know, chips of glass.

They also sometimes would wanna contribute their own little design into it.

So we have a few piece signs and hearts and little things like that that are attached to it that just came from the minds of those students.

I think everyone wants a little bit of magic and mystery in their lives.

You may understand the science of light refraction but your brain just sees it and says, wow it's something that has a magical feel.

There's so much you can do with imagery.

With stained glass, you can memorialize a loved one, a pet, celebrate a person and do it in a way that is really eye catching and unique.

(soft music) >> Doing as much as you can, as quickly as you can, is important to me.

Life is short and the earlier we get started helping our community the better off our community will be.

>> Almost every single professor I've had, I'm on a first name basis.

By building that relationship with faculty, I was able to get involved with research.

It's one thing to read about an idea in a book versus physically doing it and seeing the results.

>> Support for programming Lakeshore PBS comes in part from a generous bequest of the Estate of Marjorie, A.Mills whose remarkable contribution will help us keep viewers like you informed inspired, and entertained for years to come.

>> Eye in the Arts is made possible in part by South Shore Arts, the Indiana Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.

Additional support for Lakeshore PBS and Eye on the Arts is provided by viewers like you.

Thank you.

>> Did you know that you can find all of your favorite Lakeshore PBS shows online, visit video.LakeshorePBS.org.

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(upbeat music)