- [Jason] Next on "Curate."

- [Gordon] I became fascinated with these Barrier Islands that line the Virginia coastline.

Everyday I get to fly is a great day.

- [Jackson] We got so lucky because there's so many talented dancers who don't have a place to go right now.

- It was nice to be rehearsing after months of not doing anything.

- [Man] It becomes about the wonder of the journey, rather than the destination.

- [Heather] This is Curate!

- Welcome!

I'm Jason Kypros.

- And I'm Heather Mazzoni.

Thanks for joing us!

Virginia's eastern shore is as scenic a place as you'll ever see.

The winding creeks, the Barrier Islands, the sun rising over the Atlantic ocean.

- And for photogrpahers, it's hard to imagine a better place to get amazing shots.

And Gordon Campbell captures that idyllic place but with a different perspective than you might expect.

- [Heather] This week's 757 featured artist has an amazing eye and the perspective he brings, comes with a healthy dose of altitude.

(uplifting music) - I love a soft light.

I love when there's a little texture in the sky.

I fly typically at about 40 miles per hour when I'm out photographing.

Very low noise profile, so when I'm flying down low along the marsh grasses and things like that, you're really not bothering anything.

Even birds.

Just sit there and look at me.

Most of the time I probably fly, I don't get any photos worth printing, but who cares?

I'll get the next image, the next day.

Every day I get to fly is a great day.

So I started in high school, became fascinated by developing the negatives, printing in a dark room, things like that.

But to do that, you had to take photos.

So I did a bit of both, and I took photographs all throughout high school and then college as well.

And then after college, it just snowballed into one thing after the next, but I did not start flying until after college.

And when I was working just outside of Manhattan in New York city area, flying was a weekend escape for me, allowed me to jump in a plane after a week of working and go fly places.

I try to find those areas that are, you know, unknown to other people.

And I sort of liked the uniqueness of the Eastern shore.

We're surrounded by water, it's rural and there was this airfield for sale.

Used to be called Kellam field airport, just a fantastic place, 150 acres, total property size.

Late 2002, I came down here.

I looked at the property.

I had an offer in on it the next day.

Fast forward a couple of years, in 2005, we decided to just make the transition and move on down here.

There's just something to fall in love with for everybody on the Eastern shore.

I became fascinated with these Barrier Islands, that line the Virginia coastline, they are all preserved and none of them have been built on and they're just left to nature.

And I started photographing them back in 2006.

I thought it was just amazing.

And I just wanted to document every square inch of these islands.

I can fly over any island and tell you exactly which island that is just by its shape, its form, how it looks.

And so they all have a unique nature to them.

Sure enough, I saw these photographs.

I said, wow, these are beautiful.

And as I kept doing it, I had a great retail space down in Cape Charles that I was renovating.

I said, this would really make a great gallery.

And I said, I think my aerial photography might be good enough, but I'll make a beautiful gallery.

And if people want to come in and look at my aerial photographs, then so be it.

If they want to buy something, then that's even better.

A year prior to that, I bought the aircraft that I'm still flying, which is called a Dragonfly.

It's designed as the perfect aerial photography platform, very maneuverable, very efficient aircraft.

And that's when everything came together, the building, the gallery, the aircraft, the camera equipment, and I was able to present something to the customer right out of the gallery that's ready to put right up on your wall.

I literally just took a gamble.

- When we went down to the gallery and saw his incredible photographs, we knew that his images would be such an enhancement to the bear Island history and the stories that we try to tell here, - [Gordon] The Barrier Islands Center Museum is a fantastic supporter of mine.

And they were the first outfit that did a big installation of my imagery to show people, this is what the Barrier Islands look like right now.

- [Sally] We use Gordon's imagery to educate and inspire.

- I've covered from new England down to Georgia in this small plane here, Barrier Islands that are built up, just don't have the same charm.

And they're just not photogenic the way these Barrier Islands are.

It's just wonderful that they're protected.

They're always evolving, always migrating.

And then there's always some erosion as well.

And so photographing them as a new experience every year.

Not everybody's in love with your job, but fortunately I've found something that I'm in love with doing, and people have embraced it and people enjoy coming in my gallery.

It's purely a hundred percent passion.

And I think, you know, in most careers you have to have some passion in what you're doing or you're not gonna meet success.

- [Jason] Be sure to visit our website to find more on Gordon and all our 757 featured artists.

It's WHRO.org/curate.

- There you'll find an archive of episodes stretching back five years.

But now back to this year, and what a year it's been, with COVID making life, and definitely art, a challenge unlike anything we've ever experienced.

- And for Ballet Virginia, it's been trying to say the least, both for the organization, and for the members of the company and academy.

- With lockdowns, productions postponed, and new protocols for training and rehearsing, the Ballet Company has made it through and now looks forward to getting back to some kind of routine.

(pensive music) - Apparently, I was asking my mom and dad, like begging them to start dance classes.

So they took me here.

And then I started when I was two and a half, but of course it's not real dancing.

It's like, you know, just jumping over the rubber ducky and stuff like that, running around, listening to music, playing with the scarves.

But I guess I just really liked it and never stopped.

- My parents just put me in dance before I was too young to say no.

And instead of getting like a bouquet of flowers after the recital, my dad would get me like a new Game Boy game and say like, "Hey, is this something that you think you want to do next?"

And I'm like, "Heck yes."

If it means I'm getting a new video game.

Yeah, for sure.

I've been doing a lot of other stuff, a lot of contemporary, a lot of modern, I was introduced to a lot of other stuff in college, but ballet is where I really want to continue to grow as an artist.

- Ballet Virginia had started a professional company.

I saw that they were having auditions.

So I came down here and took an audition class, actually like the week before COVID shut everybody down.

And they said that they had a place for me.

So I was super excited about that.

I never thought that I would be doing anything else.

Even in high school, I was like, yep, I'm gonna be a professional ballerina.

(gentle piano music) - Every time you step into a studio, I think it's like really meditative and therapeutic, because it's just like, it's time that you spent on yourself.

You're constantly building and building and going for something.

That's like never going to be it with ballet, it's things have to be done in a certain way.

So your body is able to just be able to do everything.

I was always told from my teacher, if you're dancing with a lady and the attention's on you, you're doing something wrong because it's not about you.

It's really about her.

You are presenting her.

There is something that being there with her every day and like, it was nice.

And eventually, we started dating.

- Every single day, Jackson would stand opposite me of the bar.

So when I was facing one direction, I'd be able to see his face, the other direction.

And you know, in between combinations, you kinda, you know, maybe joke with the person next to you.

But he was always there, you know, I knew he was a funny guy.

We ended up going on a date and you know, now we've been together for over three years and I wouldn't do it any other way, - We moved into the Winona neighborhood in July,.

W were super lucky, but we came here to audition, right before everything went down and we heard back immediately.

We got so lucky because there's so many talented dancers, you just don't have a place to go right now.

The whole like job field is basically like, we're done.

You got nothing.

- We were both taking classes like on Zoom in our kitchen slash living room situation.

We definitely kept each other's spirits up and encouraging the other one to, you know, take class even though, you know, circumstances were not ideal.

- [Jackson] Sometimes you don't have the drive for that day.

- [Haley-Ann] And then that's when you just take the class and you're just doing it for your body to remember how it works.

- I would just say that we're so lucky to even be able to have shows that we're looking forward to and like able to rehearse for.

- Ballet Virginia has some pretty big studios.

So they're able to socially distance in there pretty well.

So they were actually able to do some of their summer program.

But it was nice to be rehearsing for something after months of not doing anything.

And just like trying to stay in shape by yourself, there's at least something to look forward to.

Jackson and I, we hadn't actually been partners on stage until this year when we did our "Home for the Holidays" virtual show.

We did a excerpt from "The Nutcracker," the Snow Pas De Deux.

It was really fun.

It was just a new experience.

- It can be a little stressful because I do want her to look good and we have a little different opinion sometimes.

But like I said, it's not about me.

It's about her and how she can be presented.

The circumstances are what they are.

But yeah, I was gonna dance with my best friend again, and that was just so rewarding in itself.

- You're looking at works on display at TCC's Perry Glass Wheel Art Center in the Neon District in Norfolk.

They've been generous to provide us a backdrop for our shows all season long.

The idea that the journey is often just as important as the destination is an idea explored by multimedia artist, Ghiora Aharoni.

His amazing installation, recently on display at the Rubin Museum in New York, shows religious pilgrimages from a different prospective.

(light music) - One of the notions that I'm looking to challenge in my work, is the idea of linear time, and a pilgrimage in particular allows us to experience time in a different way.

We're participating in a ritual, which so many have done before us and so many will do after us.

And at that moment, linear time collapses.

The past, the present and the future all exist equally.

And your shift into an alternative realm of time.

The Road to Sanchi is an installation of 12 sculptures where I've taken obsolete taxi meters from India and transformed them with video screens on both sides.

So each becomes an oculus that documents rickshaw rides I made to for sacred sites in India for Buddhist, Jews, Muslims and Hindus.

Sanchi, where part of the Buddha's ashes were buried in third century, BC, Mattancherry, which has the oldest continuously operating synagogue in India, the Paradesi synagogue, which was built in the 1500s, Nizamuddin, the dargah of the 13th century, Sufi Saint in Delhi, and Varanasi also known as Banaras, one of India's oldest and most Holy cities, where the Hindu ritual of Aarti is performed on the banks of the Ganges every morning and evening.

And each of the sites possesses an energy that you feel and to which you can connect.

I've been documenting these pilgrimages for over a decade now.

During one of my rides that utilitarian function of the rickshaw meter, which was to measure time and distance of a journey, took on a new meaning.

It became an object inscribed with the metaphorical energy of thousands of journeys.

And now that the analog meters have been outlawed and replaced with digital versions, I wanted to transform it, to bring it back to life in a non-conventional way, to shift its perception in the eyes of the viewer.

So I replaced the numerical dials that represented the time, distance and cost of reaching your destination with videos of my rides, to the pilgrimage sites where you only see the road to, never the actual pilgrimage site.

So it becomes about the wonder of the journey rather than the destination.

I wanted to animate this inanimate obsolete object and activate the energy it contains as an artifact and then create a new context for it under a glass dome, that is a blur between a time capsule and the silhouette of the stupa.

The installation itself is designed as an invitation to the viewer to move through the space to circumambulate the sculptures almost to create a ritual connection the work.

My practice includes both art and design, and I'm interested in how a shift in context can allow us to question our perspective or reconsider its significance.

The golden rickshaw meter entitled When all Roads are One is merging the films of individual pilgrimage rides to Sanchi, Nizamuddin, Varnasi and Mattancherry into one vivid, progressive journey, where cross-cultural pilgrimage paths become one, and the destination remains unseen.

Converting these films from color to black and white blurs the boundaries between day and night, the urban and rural, past and present.

By incasing the utilitarian meter in gold, it is transformed into a modern day reliquary, but instead of a sacred relic inside, there is a panorama of pilgrimages that cross cultures.

This enduring cultural plurality is inspiring to me, especially now when exclusion is movements are gaining traction around the world.

The Road to Sanchi invites us to reconsider our notions about time, to think about time as fluid rather than linear.

It's also a meditation on coexistence and the universal threads that unite cultures.

(bells ringing) - [Jason] Graphic novels and comic books haven't always been associated with museum quality, but an exhibit on display at the Boca Raton Museum of Art is showing how these mediums have influenced contemporary artists who incorporate these styles and go beyond the cape.

- They have an urgency about them, there's something very topical.

So the exhibition "Beyond the Cape" is really looking at those artists who are inspired by comics but in different ways.

They are about the environment, politics, race relations.

There are many artists like Lichtenstein and Warhol who are influenced by comics, by pop culture.

But in this you'll find our artists who really are telling a story that's sometimes quite deep, quite dark.

Kerry James Marshall is looking at the streets of Chicago.

William Wiley's tapestry that is looking at the shooting of a man who the police thought he was pulling out a gun, but in fact he was pulling out his wallet.

- I'm finding right now in this moment, just kind of seeing my work against these other artists' work, is that they actually are speaking clearly without holding back about what is actually important to them and what's actually happening in their period of time that they are living.

My name is Mark Thomas Gibson.

I'm originally from Miami, Florida.

I am an artist.

I'm also an assistant professor at Temple University, Tyler School of Art.

I kind of play with pop culture, I play with comics, I play with history, I play with like a little bit of everything.

This book had a lot to do with this idea of utopia.

Once I actually start engaging with the practice of drawing, then I'm starting to formulate whatever my actual answer is about that subject.

In this case, this one was utopia and so by the end of it I actually come to an answer for myself and I don't think I could actually find that type of answer any other way.

Every page is an individual drawing, 350 of them that tell the narrative of my main character.

I use as my protagonist a werewolf character, which is the idea of someone who has been traumatized but then becomes a traumatizer.

I think about that a lot in America, how we have a lot of that kind of continuously, it seems to happen where people become traumatized by either being economically oppressed or seeing a loved one murdered or seeing culture act and respond to them as an "other" when they are actually a part of the fabric of this country.

And then that gets passed on like to your kid, it gets passed on to the community.

Some of them become paintings, some of them do not.

Most of them do not.

But in this case, this would later become "Library One and Two."

I wanted to kind of show an area that had been lived in and kind of overgrown in thought.

My main character in this narrative that this comes from, don't really know even what time period it is that he's in.

So you have a sword and kind of a hilt, a kind of a spear.

You have like books that are kind of contemporary.

So there's "Utopia" of course.

And then there's "Beloved" you know, by the great Tony Morrison.

I think about books that I've read growing up that told me something or made me think about relationships around slavery, relationships about American expansionism, all of these things that we kind of think about when we're talking around America as these kinds of cannons of like who are we?

What are we?

Part of what I figured out in the whole utopian thing was that it really kind of comes down to communication, so you have to actually work with each other to actually navigate what it is that we want.

- This exhibition I think is yet another good example of what we have been pretty good at here and that is to break the boundaries between these silos of art forms where you have the graphic novel, the comic, and you have fine art.

Well here you have this sort of blending of the two.

- And it was kind of hard because when you would have that kind of influence in your life and you'd go to an art school per se, they say, oh, that's not art.

And they would throw that aside or kind of demean it or demote it.

Many people throughout history actually worked within illustration, worked within political art, worked within caricature.

It's really kind of embedded in art practice.

And if you go all the way back to Lascaux and look at those like caves, I mean there's some caricature kind of going on in that as well.

So that way in which we kind of think through narrative and sequential art, it's always been present.

- [Heather] You can find curate on the web, visit us WHRO.org/curate.

- We're on social media too, including Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.

We always love a like.

Thanks for joining us.

I'm Jason Kypros.

- And I'm Heather Mazzoni.

We'll see you next time on "Curate."

(soft airy music)