(light melodic music) >> Oh, you're just writing about this stuff.

You don't really do it.

No, this is my literal career.

I wake up every morning and go to work with people who are trying to strategize on how to make this city more equitable, more sustainable, more respectful of culture, more resilient.

>> We've lost like 70% of the bird species in the world since the '70s.

So I take that to heart.

I mean, that impacts me, you know, on a personal and spiritual level, and as it impacts, you know, the whole world.

>> Christine: I won't notice if I'm hungry or if I'm cold or you know, if I'm over hot.

I won't notice any of that until I'm done and then all of a sudden, I'll be like, "Oh."

Or you know, if it's getting late, I won't really notice.

>> Ryan: Technology is nothing new in the art world, but how it's being used today is dramatically different than how it has been traditionally.

We believe that digital art is a fundamental part of the artistic world going forward.

>> 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.

>> Host: Support for programming at 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.

>> Narrator: "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 for Lakeshore PBS and "Eye on the Arts" is provided by viewers like you.

Thank you.

>> Host: Did you know that you can find all of your favorite Lakeshore PBS shows online?

Visit video.LakeshorePBS.org.

You can stream a large selection of shows, including "Eye on the Arts", "In Studio", and "Friends and Neighbors".

Missed the last night's episode?

No problem.

Lakeshore PBS has got you covered.

Search for your show and find your episode ready to watch at any time.

Visit video.LakeshorePBS.org to stream your favorite local shows.

>> This city of broad shoulders and bold hearts.

This windy city that blows into the sails of your souls.

Sending you soaring on dreams and hawk wings if you let it.

This city of emerald necklaces and great lakes, juxtaposing nature and skyscraper.

This city brutal and beautiful.

This city of 16 shots and coverups.

This city that waters asphalt with blood.

This sanctuary city, this segregated city, this rainbow colored, rainbow connected blue lines in blue color, red lines cutting through redlining legacies.

This brown and green, pink and purple.

You can travel the world on an elevator train in this city.

Mexico and China, Italy and Lithuania, the descendants of slaves.

Great migrations, native land, Black free man founded.

This city with two tales that we love as fiercely as its winters are harsh.

Let us dedicate today to this city, to using our voices for those who are silenced.

To using our privilege to open doors, build bridges, shatter ceilings.

And with outstretched hand, welcome in the denied.

Let us do the work that is more than the trending words of equity and inclusion.

This is heavy, but it is our brother, our sister, our humanity.

Let us not be weary as we labor.

Let us always remember why we fight, why we carry with us into every space, this message of hope.

If we can better link this city, if we can irrigate funding and equity into barren lands of food deserts and school closures.

If we condemn the tsunamis of gentrification, slow the erosion of immigrant families who built beauty with bare hands, only to be outbid and their culture commodified.

If we can ensure that a train ride from 95th and the Dan Ryan to the Loop to Evanston, only has the backdrop of changing cultures and not the hideous demarcation of disinvestment.

If we can be better stewards of this city, then we can create better stewards of the world.

Because a train ride in Chicago is more than transportation to and from school and work.

It's a passport to the globe.

With open minds, with intention and purpose, let us work, broad shoulder to shoulder.

Hope may be a thing with wings, but sometimes, it glides on elevated tracks.

Let us deal hope today and let us start with this city.

(solemn music fades) Especially kids who are disenfranchised, brown and Black kids, poor kids, kids who are typically othered.

Sometimes, the first time they have real agency is when they do art.

It's the first place that they can do what they want and no one can tell them it's wrong 'cause it's their creation.

You know the power in that?

The power in having a place that you are allowed to do, say, paint, dance, sing, whatever the heck you want.

And no one can tell you you're wrong.

They can give you techniques to be better.

They can point you to other artists that you can read about or study and look at and influence you, but what your mind creates is fully right.

That, that is the power of the art.

And to see the first time someone does it, regardless if they're young or old, the first time someone creates something.

It doesn't make a difference if anyone ever buys it or shares it on Facebook or plays it on the radio, you've made something out of your mind that's just you.

It's such an epiphany.

Oh, you're just writing about this stuff.

You don't really do it.

No, this is my literal career.

I wake up every morning and go to work with people who are trying to strategize on how to make this city more equitable, more sustainable, more respectful of culture, more resilient.

And not that I'm an expert on it, but I take pride in being in spaces where no one like me is there.

I'm typically on panels, especially in areas of development with urban planners.

I'm the only one there who is not an urban planner, who doesn't have a master's degree, who is literally talking about the lived experiences of people that they're theorizing on how to make solutions for.

And I like being in that space.

I like when people ask me, "Oh, what panel are you here to see?"

I'm presenting.

I'm a very open book.

I talk as much as I can about being a survivor of domestic violence, about being a single mother, about living in what I call proximity to poverty.

I have had my house foreclosed.

I have been evicted.

I have lost my job.

I have been unemployed.

I have been on food steps.

I have been in the spaces that typically, people who look like me or sound like me or have been educated the way I am, don't talk about having lived, too.

And I hope that I can remind people that our concept of what poverty looks like, about what domestic violence looks like, is not what we've been taught.

And the reason why I have been able to manage my way out of it is 'cause I had access to resources, because I was educated.

And I hope that in all of my careers, all of my career portfolio, that I always strive to make that accessibility available to people who would otherwise be denied.

To help push that along, if I can do it through the arts, if I can do it through a poem, if I can do it through reminding people that you see me on this side, but I was once on another side of it, desperately needing that help.

So I'm gonna talk about it.

If you bring it up or if you don't, you will never be able to use it to pierce me.

I've already put it out there for you and hope to work on the solution so someone else doesn't have to experience it, too.

(gentle music fading) (light guitar music) >> Well, I've always been an artist and I came from a family of artists.

I just always have made art.

And when I went to college, I majored in art in anthropology.

I've always sewed.

I mean I've sewed since I was, oh my gosh, probably five or six.

I started sewing, even though I was frustrated 'cause I couldn't do it very well.

But I always have loved sewing.

You know, so I started getting those into juried shows and they were framed in fairly large frames for the size of the piece 'cause the pieces are, you know, average around 4" by 6".

And it cost me like $100 to send one of these.

But the other thing I went, well, if I wanted to make bigger stuff and ship it, I could make quilts.

So I started making art quilts.

Some of the quilts that I make are actually made from vintage quilts that I've bought online.

And then I embroider imagery on top of those.

I also do make some pieced quilts, you know, where I'm actually cutting apart small pieces of fabric and restitching them together.

Love fabric my whole life and to make my own is just really, really exciting.

And you know, it sort of offers a whole different realm of possibilities when I'm putting these quilts together.

Most all the work I do starts in my sketchbooks.

And I'm really, I mean, that's a really important part of what I do, I think, is the drawing.

I mean, and a lot of my quilts, you know, there are drawings on there.

I mean, you know, the embroidery I'm doing is really like doing a pen and ink drawing in slow motion 'cause I'm embroidering it.

But it has, you know, I'm bringing that kind of pen and ink drawing in the fibers.

It started when I was teaching and I'd have to sit through all these meetings and I'd start to doodle.

And I thought, well, what if you just kind of really pushed it and let those doodles go.

You know, just keep going with it.

So I did that.

And so I would come home and I'd take those doodles and I'd put them in my sketchbook and develop them.

And eventually, I started seeing, you know, I had these characters I was developing.

These sort of whole worlds.

They're basically aliens and different planets and robots.

And so those, I just kept expanding.

And I think the importance of the doodling was I told myself I wasn't gonna judge what I was drawing.

And that just freed me up incredibly.

Now I just like, I have so many ideas I can't stop myself.

(light music) The main work I've been doing on my quilts is about endangered animals.

And so a lot of that starts with research.

I decided to work with birds primarily.

One of the things I was coming across when I was studying endangered animals was that a lot of invertebrates that we don't necessarily think are cute and fuzzy and worth saving is like spiders, beetles, parasites, snails.

I mean, there's even like one-celled animals that are endangered and we let these things go extinct and in peril because they're, you know, a lot of them are at the bottom of the food chain, but they're really important.

That animal has a part to play in the ecosystem.

We've lost like 70% of the bird species in the world since the '70s.

So I take that to heart.

I mean, that impacts me, you know, on a personal and spiritual level and as it impacts the whole world.

So you know, the idea of my quilts is putting that message out there, that a lot of animals are critically endangered.

I don't know if my audience necessarily, you know, I'm probably preaching to the choir there, but to me, it's almost like a prayer when I'm working on these things.

It's like putting that energy into changing hearts and minds about how we treat this planet.

(gentle music) >> The impressionist definitely have impact on my style.

I enjoy seeing the brush strokes and I like to see, you know, the freeness of their work.

Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Monet, Manet, I just love all their work.

The freedom in the paintings, the expression, there's more emotion.

I really just enjoy that and that is where I get my inspiration from.

It's an adventure, definitely.

It takes me away from the regular world and I get to see new places.

And you kind of have an excuse to peek around more than you probably could if you're just walking around.

When I'm there, you pick up the sounds and the feeling of the location.

You're using all your senses to pick up what you want to portray.

You also have more depth when you're looking at the scene live.

I like to paint fast.

If I'm painting fast, I do capture more brushstrokes.

If I, you know, go slow, I have a tendency to put in too much detail.

When I start to paint, I try to relax and get an impression of how I feel.

How do I feel right now?

You know, and part of that is hearing.

If I'm hearing birds or traffic, people talking, I try to take in, you know, everything with all my senses.

Even the wind, if you're feeling the wind or the sun on you, you know, I try to bring all that into the painting.

And it's actually easier to paint from a photo, but what you're missing is the depth and the level of colors when you're actually looking at it.

And the light doesn't transfer properly in a photo.

Cameras today alter colors when you're taking with your phone or you know, amateur camera.

I'm trying to capture the emotion of the setting.

Whether I'm successful or not, you know, I don't know, sometimes.

But yeah, definitely, I'm trying to capture the emotion.

I try to keep a memory of how I felt at that moment.

So yes, I am looking at light.

I am looking at colors.

I don't always use the exact colors that are there.

You know, I might enhance them or cool something down so it moves back into the background further.

For my center of interest, I wanna get more color into that area as well as larger value difference.

So that draws your eye into it.

It's a good experience to develop your art.

Whether it's something you wanna do regularly or not because if you wanna paint landscapes or outdoor, even portraits, it's good to be outdoors where you've really seen the colors.

You're experiencing more.

When you're in your studio, it's kind of stagnant.

You're not able to develop the speed that sometimes brings a lot of freshness to a piece of work.

Some people are very purist and they wanna believe the whole painting must be done outdoors.

And other artists will just do a study and bring it back to the studio.

Most of the time when I paint, I do the majority of the work in the field.

And then I will bring it back and just put in a few details, you know, maybe clean up anything I don't like within the painting.

So I'm not a purist.

There are other times where the weather's just not good to be outdoors.

So I will try to get some photos.

I'll do some sketches, but I do try to keep a memory of how I felt at that moment.

It's very freeing because you completely lose track of what else is going on in your life.

Right now, I have a really nice life, but you know, there's still stresses of other areas and that's all gone.

When you paint, you don't think about anything but what you're painting and you become relaxed.

When I'm out painting, I won't notice if I'm hungry or if I'm cold, or you know, if I'm over hot.

I won't notice any of that until I'm done.

And then all of a sudden, I'll be like, "Oh."

Or you know, if it's getting late, I won't really notice.

I guess I just hope it brings people a little added joy to their lives.

And I know certain things, you look at it and it changes your attitude.

And I hope it brings them when they're, you know, that maybe they capture what I was looking at emotionally when they look at my painting.

But for the most part, I just hope that it brings a little joy to their lives.

(upbeat music) >> Technology is nothing new in the art world, but how it's being used today is dramatically different than how it has been traditionally.

We believe that digital art is a fundamental part of the artistic world going forward.

And so I think that ultimately, that's what makes this space so special, is that it's not the traditional static imagery that we've become accustomed to.

But instead, it is dynamic, it's changing, it's interactive, and it also allows us to showcase the next generation of artists that are using these tools and platforms in a new and different way.

(upbeat music) WNDR was conceived in 2018.

And originally, the thought was it'd just be a pop-up experience.

But then based off the response of our guests and the artist community here in Chicago, we quickly realized that we wanted WNDR to be a permanent institution and a perpetual home for artists and technologists for the indefinite future.

(upbeat music) Our foundation is about the evolution of art in society and what started as a huge innovation, adding graphite to a piece of wood to create the first pencil, now we see art evolving.

And so many of the installations and art forms that we see today are created with the binary system.

And so our work consists of all different forms ranging from digital installations to traditional mediums.

But I think most importantly, all of our installations consist of three things.

They require traditional art as well as the integration of technology and they're incomplete without you, the guests.

And so all of our installations are intended for the guests to come play, interact, and explore.

And ultimately, no two guests have the same experience.

The WNDR Museum consists of 30 different exhibits.

Those exhibits are intended to challenge and ignite all of the senses, but they're all designed to be visually compelling.

And the various installations are comprised of works from different artists, technologists, poets, makers.

And ultimately, we see some non-traditional forms of art come together in really unique ways.

(upbeat music) We feature works from a variety of artists.

We have pieces from iconic artists like Keith Haring and Yayoi Kusama.

Then we also have interactive compelling pieces from emerging artists and new age artists as well.

One of my personal favorites is a piece by Andy Arkley, where guests can actually activate different lights and sounds that are projected on the wall and you can create, essentially, your own experience with the piece during every visit.

In addition to being the traditional gallery ticketed experience that one may think of, we have partnerships with Chicago public schools.

And bringing children who may not be able to have access to art in other ways is fundamentally what we're about.

Being a community space for artists, technologists, poets is what WNDR's all about.

(upbeat music) We exist to challenge the status quo and the norms.

The art world has traditionally been inaccessible.

It's been hands off.

It's only represented people from certain backgrounds.

And ultimately, we want to be a place that demonstrates that we're all artists and we wanna showcase people from all different walks of life and backgrounds.

Ultimately, we fundamentally believe that we are all artists.

And what that art looks like, feels like, what that experience is, is dramatically different, but that's the foundation of who we are.

>> 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 and a book versus physically doing it and seeing the results.

>> Host: Support for programming at 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.

>> Narrator: "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 for Lakeshore PBS and "Eye on the Arts" is provided by viewers like you.

Thank you.

>> Host: Did you know that you can find all of your favorite Lakeshore PBS shows online?

By visiting video.LakeshorePBS.org, you can stream a large selection of shows, including "Eye on the Arts", "In Studio", and "Friends and Neighbors".

Lakeshore PBS has taken great care to bring you the best in local content.

Not sure how to find local content?

Click on Shows and sort by Only Lakeshore PBS Shows.

Not only will you find local content on Lakeshore PBS, but you can also stream live TV right to your computer.

Click on Live TV and get instant access to Lakeshore PBS live wherever you are.

Lakeshore PBS is full of wonderful content created just for you.

Missed last night's episode?

No problem.

Lakeshore PBS has got you covered.

Search for your show and find your episode ready to watch anytime.

Visit video.LakeshorePBS.org to stream your favorite local shows.

(light melodic music)