- In this edition of Artistic Horizons, - Infusing Art with Pop Culture, what I do in my work is I look for something humorous, and then I also look for something that's like outta the ordinary - Cookbooks throughout history.

- Do you wanna write down our favorite recipes?

Let's do it.

The exhibit was really an opportunity to share this great resource and make it more widely known and available, - Spreading joy through artistic expression, - Making people happy through entertainment.

That's really it, really.

When it gets down to it, I just want the world to be a better place.

- It's all ahead on this edition of Artistic Horizons.

Hello, I'm Mark Ro, and this is Artistic Horizons.

In New Mexico, we meet Neil Ambrose Smith, a contemporary Native American painter, sculptor, print maker, and professor imbued with pop culture references and contemporary themes.

His artwork has struck a chord with audiences both at home and abroad.

Let's take a look.

- What themes are important for you to explore in your work?

- I tend to use a lot of pop and like cartoons and TV shows from the seventies, stuff that I grew up with.

Comics, mad Magazine is a big one for me.

Star Trek, science fiction is a big thing.

It was a great escape from some of the ordinary, the mundane thinking about outer space.

Plus you don't get singled out because of your skin tone and you don't get ostracized or you know, that kind of thing.

In outer space.

In outer space, we're supposed to all get along, you know, that kind of thing.

I'll throw in, well like, you know, I've got a headdress, you know, or I'll say powwow or something like that.

- Yeah, - That's kind of cheeky sometimes.

In fact, in a lot of my work, there's a lot more identity things in there, but most people aren't aware of it unless you're from the community.

I remember somebody spoke up and said, you know, this is really good work, but how is it native?

How is it, you know, Indian?

And I thought that was really interesting, you know, because in this day and age, it's still happening when people have this stereotype or expectation that if you don't have feathers in your work, then it's not native, you know?

Or if there's not pain and suffering, or if there's not an Indian that's crying or something, you know, it's that native kind of thing.

So sometimes I'll throw a headdress in just for that reason.

I'll just stick a headdress on whoever.

I'll put a headdress on Alfredy Newman, I'll stick it on Captain Kirk.

I'll everybody, headdress for everybody.

We're all Indians here, you know, nobody's left out.

You're all part of the powwow kind of thing.

- You use a lot of text in your, in your work, actually.

How do you decide what text goes into it?

- Well, it's, it has to be funny.

That's, that's the first measure.

Like, I mean, if it hits me, you know, like, like a funny bone sideways.

I, I grew up with coyote stories and there's something cheeky about coyote, you know, there's something funny, and most of us are familiar with Coyote and Roadrunner and coyotes always falling down and getting banged up or something.

And it's funny vaudevillian in a way.

So I think that's kind of what I do in my work, is I look for something humorous, and then I also look for something that's like outta the ordinary, like to talk about politics or the environment or education or you know what, whatever.

There's a lot of great things to talk about and that people get really bent outta shape about, you know?

And, you know, it's like my way or the highway, and I love to throw a wrench into the conversation, you know, to stirred up, because we're not gonna get anywhere if we're constantly fighting over something that's ridiculous.

We need to coalesce and, and move forward.

So I use a lot of humor that way.

It's reservation medicine.

We laugh about everything, you know, we, if you can't laugh about it, that you're just gonna poison yourself, you know?

- So tell me about this painting, and the name of it is Sam, small Feathers and his Cape at the Fancy Shawl.

- So Batman is a character that is already in identity crisis.

So I thought this was great talking about a person that is in between two worlds or doesn't know where they're supposed to belong, because you know, you're on the reservation and reservation life is a certain way and, and you're largely within matriarchal society.

And then you step out of that and you're bombarded with white male dominated society, you know, which is incredible.

And it's two distinctly different worlds.

And so, you know, we struggle with that, you know, a lot native people.

And so I thought this was a really good character for that.

- I also noticed that you use a lot of Alice in Wonderland and like the white rabbit references.

Can you tell me why you choose to put that in your - Work?

When I started work, using that character was the explosive me too movement at the beginning of it.

And, and I used that as a, a way for myself to process some of that information because I myself grew up in a matriarchal family, and I have a very strong mother, and it's really important to me.

And this stuff that's happening to women explosively coming out is so unbelievable, you know?

And I, and I just, I, you know, I'm, I'm trying to process it, you know, and then hearing about all these important people, these politicians and, and stuff and, and all the, their shenanigans.

And it's just like, really?

No.

Like where are the parents?

- This one is called no matter which way You Go Powwow, right?

Yeah.

- Oh, I think the, the gun situation is serious.

And so every which way you go pow wow, don't matter where you go, you should pow wow, you know, kind of thing.

And a powwow is a great place to go, to get along and to see other people and to dance, you know, if we could just dance together, a lot of problems would be solved.

You know, when I was a kid, when I was this little kid watching my mom in the garage make her drawings, and she would take that charcoal and drag it on the paper, and I can remember hearing that sound of the charcoal, like hitting the tooth of the paper and coming down that scratchy grindy, and then it would like flake off and, and like, make powder.

You know, I, I remember that vividly.

And I would go, I want to know how to do that.

I wanna learn how to do that, make those marks.

I'm just an artist.

That's all I am.

- And now for the artist quote of the week.

Up next, we take a trip to the Ohio State University libraries in Columbus to get an inside look at the exhibition, essential Ingredients cookbooks is history, recognizing the wonders of the culinary arts and the historical and cultural record that recipes contain.

The exhibit celebrates over 200 years of American cookbooks.

Take a look.

- We're here in the Thompson Gallery, located within the Thompson Library at the Ohio State University.

With me is Jolie Braun, co-curator of this incredible exhibit.

Hi Jolie.

Hi Kate.

Thanks for having us.

Well, tell me about this collection and how it came to be.

- Yes, thank - You.

- So, essential ingredients, cookbooks as history was really inspired by the fantastic collection of cookbooks we have here at the Ohio State University Libraries.

I'm a curator in the rare books and manuscripts library, which is the special collections unit that houses more than 9,600 volumes of cookbooks.

So the exhibit was really an opportunity to share this great resource and make it more widely known and available to, to folks who would wanna come in and see it.

I should also mention that essential Ingredients, the name was inspired by a quote from Julia Child.

So we have this really lovely quote that you'll see when you walk into the gallery, where she talks about the importance of historical cookbooks and preserving and studying them.

And so this was a great opportunity to welcome attendees in and let them know kind of what we were thinking about cookbooks as more than just a collection of recipes, but thinking about them as historical objects.

That's - Wonderful.

I love - That whole message.

- So tell me a little bit about what we'll see today.

- So the exhibit is arranged thematically, and each case has a different topic.

The first few cases are really thinking very nationally or internationally about how cookbooks respond to or reflect major events throughout the country or throughout the world.

So we have a case on social movements that has a cookbook about temperance and another one about the suffrage movement.

There's a case about global crises that has cookbooks about World War I and two, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

As you move through the gallery, the focus shifts a little bit and gets more specific, and we think about cookbooks and the personal stories they can tell.

So there are cookbooks that tell you about local histories, such as community cookbooks from various towns in Ohio.

And then there's also cookbooks that have been personalized in some way, whether it's by the author who has written a cookbook as memoir, or someone who owned the cookbook and made it sort of a unique object through their margin and notes.

- That's amazing.

Just so many stories to be told with cookbooks at the center.

I see some familiar cookbooks in this case.

Can you tell me about what's in here?

- Yes.

So this is our iconic cookbooks case, and as you noticed, there are some familiar beloved titles that have gone through many additions over the years, such as The Joy of Cooking Yeah.

And Betty Crocker.

But there are also some, maybe lesser known cookbooks, but are really significant to the history of the genre.

So one example is this book right here called American Cookery by Amelia Simmons.

It was first published in 1796.

Our edition is from 1815.

And one of the reasons it's significant is because it's considered the First American cookbook.

And the reason for that is it was the first published by an American for an American audience, and it features indigenous ingredients such as cornmeal, pumpkin, cranberries, things like that.

- That's amazing.

What a great piece of history that kind of came from a cookbook.

That's fascinating.

Yes.

Well, I'm so excited to see more, what, what's next for us?

- I would love to turn you over to my co-curator, Beth, who's going to tell you a little bit more about some of the other items in this exhibit.

Wonderful.

I can't wait.

Thanks, Julie.

- Hi, Beth.

Hi, Kate.

Thanks for showing me more of the exhibit.

Why don't you tell me the theme of - This case?

This case is called Cookbooks in Global Food Ways, and it's really dedicated to showcase the ways in which American cooking and cookbooks have always been made up of foods and recipes from around the globe, from indigenous American foods, from immigrants diabo, people from Europe, from Asia, from Africa, from other parts of the Americas.

- It's wonderful.

I love that so many people are represented these.

- Exactly.

Do you have any - Favorites in here?

- I really love all the cookbooks in this case.

Hard to pick one goodie is hard to pick one.

Some of, some of the ones that I particularly like are this one at Bette's Cookbooks, which is really the first cookbook that was dedicated to Jewish foods.

It's published in Cincinnati in 1886, and it's clearly marketed towards Jewish Americans, but it's also very assimilationist.

We know that it's associated with the, the beginnings of the reform movement.

And it, it's just, it's, it's a fascinating book.

- I bet - Another one of my favorites is the beautiful one over there, Chinese Japanese cookbook, which is understood as being one of the first both Chinese and Japanese cookbooks published in the United States.

The authors are two sisters.

Oh, wow.

They, and another, the third sister are understood as being the three of the most important Chinese American authors in the United States.

That's incredible.

Yeah.

Look at that gorgeous cover.

I know.

I also love the cover.

That's - Stunning.

- Yeah, it's beautiful.

- Wow.

- But probably the one that I'm most, I've spent the most time leafing through is this, the National Cookery book, which is actually created by Ben Franklin's great-granddaughter.

- Oh, you're kidding.

- In, in 1876, and she was organizing the women's pavilion for the centennial exhibition and created this cookbook, which was, as is the whole case designed to showcase how American cooking comes from all sorts of different cultures.

So there are recipes for, for gel, for doma, for sauerkraut, for risotto from all over the world.

And there's a, a special section of it dedicated to indigenous American cooking where there are recipes for baked bear boiled mud turtle Wow.

And many recipes for Indian corn.

- That's incredible.

Yeah.

That's really neat book.

I would imagine with an American cookbook like that, there might be a recipe for apple pie.

- Oh, yes, there is.

And in fact, actually, speaking of apple pies, we have a, a whole wall dedicated to apple pies.

- I can't wait to see - It.

So when Jolie and I were planning the exhibit, one of the things we really wanted to do was to showcase the evolution of recipes from the 18th century to the 21st century.

And we decided that the best way to do this was the apple pie.

And so this wall has examples from apple pie recipes from as early as 1815 to the last one, which is 1989.

And that one right there is from the cookbook that Julie was talking about at the very beginning.

- Wow.

- And this is the National Cookery book apple pie recipe.

- That is fascinating just to see the way the one simple recipe has changed over the years.

Exactly.

- Yeah.

We like the fact that it changed, but also there were obvious continuities as well.

So it's, it's - The essence of apple pie Yeah.

Remains the same.

- Yeah, exactly.

- That's amazing.

I love the pie wall.

I see you might have an interactive station over here.

Can you tell me about that?

- One of the parts about cookbooks that I so interesting to us is that it's deeply personal.

And so we wanted to have a place where visitors could come and, and provide their own personal recipes, cookbooks that they wanted to recommend or that they loved, recipes that had had been handed down from generations.

So it's a place to write this down and then, and then put it on our corkboard so that we can have it for posterity.

- I love that.

Let's check it out.

- Okay.

Jolie's already there.

- This is great.

Well, Beth and Jolie, thank you so much for showing me around this exhibit.

It makes me wanna go home and bake an apple pie.

- Do you wanna write down our favorite recipes?

- Let's do it.

- Now here's a look at this month's fun fact.

In this segment, we travel to Virginia to meet Cobana Black, a creative in every sense of the word, from music to theater, to fashion, black looks to bring people together and spread love and joy.

Here's the story.

People wanted to, - For me growing up was very hard.

I thought I was worthless because was talked about so bad for being too black, for being too skinny for the feminine mannerisms.

And I remember the first song that I sung that people were crying and they were praising God.

And I was so in awe that something I did did something for them that I was like, I gotta repeat this.

That's what drew me into entertaining This first row.

Come right here, y'all gonna walk down, clap.

And the, the second row follow them.

So the first row would be here, and then the second row would be behind them.

So the play is a where, where is my Christmas tree?

This is his third year.

It is a cross between Annie meets the screws.

Well, church.

So you make you have control.

So you're gonna be like, I wrote it because of my situation with my mother.

She passed right after Christmas.

And it was a way for me to maybe, hopefully get the feeling back.

And who are we talking about Sha Some people be like, you're doing too much.

Why don't you just focus on this one thing and conquer this one thing.

So it would bug me because I felt, you know, guilty for one, it started feeling like, well, maybe I should slow down a little bit.

Maybe I should focus on one thing.

And then one day I woke up, I said, wait a minute.

My singing, my photography, my fashion, my writing, my creative directing, my hosting, my modeling, all those things are me, and I need to use my gifts.

And that's when I realized I'm here to create.

I am a creative, Well, we're at Downing Groves cultural art center.

And you know, Anderson Johnson, born in 1915 was a blue singer, a pastor and an artist.

And he made his home a sanctuary, not just for the word, but for his music and for his art.

And he took things and he painted chairs and the front part of the doors, the houses, the frame, anything that could be painted.

I think it's just really cool that they would take his whole house, break it up, and put it in a way that people can come and enjoy it.

I really related to him the energy of the room, his purpose.

It is almost like therapy.

Maybe this was his way of making him feel so good.

You know, you go through things in life and sometimes when you create something, it makes the smile.

That's how I feel about my music.

That's how I feel about writing.

That's how I feel about doing plays.

That's how I feel about when I model.

This feels like me inside out.

Like it seems like he just completely, if he went in, he took it all out, said Kabana.

And I think it's really amazing for me, like in my house, there's vinyl all over the wall.

Like there's vinyl everywhere because I love music and I try to surround myself with encouragement.

- We gotta let, - We - Gotta let, we gotta let our colors, we gotta let, we gotta let - Our colors be.

That's it.

Oh God.

That's it.

That's it.

Keana is, he's consistent, but it's not like I have to stay in this box.

And I respect that a lot because a lot of artists aren't, aren't really interested in doing that.

- The song is about not letting your color fade.

And, but this is for everyone.

It's not just for me.

If I was Puerto Rican, if I was Indian, if I was white, it's basically saying don't let who you are culturally fade.

The things that each culture has to bring to the table that makes us America.

It really bothers me to the core that people don't like you because of your color.

It makes me super emotional because I feel like where does it come from?

You know, why does that exist?

Like why do we do that?

And for me, Michael Jackson and, and Prince and Tina Turner and Janice Joplin and The Beatles, all these people embody the awareness, how to expand your mind, how to be more global.

And I just want to do my part.

Never get caught up in yourself, realize that this play, the purpose is to give love over hate.

And the goal is to get Mr. Lee Hart back to love and to forget about hate making people happy through entertainment.

That's really it, really, when it gets down to it, I just want the world to be a better place.

I know it's south corny, but I really, really do.

I really do.

- But I realize that love is the key and I, I think it's time for a change.

With that being said now, - And now here's a look at a few notable dates in art history, and that wraps it up for this edition of Artistic Horizons.

For more arts and culture, visit wpbs tv.org.

Until next time, I'm Mark s. Thanks for watching.