- Coming up next on "Curate."

(upbeat music) - [Wil] I realized that creating art was something I could do and it was valuable not just to me, but other people.

- [Ariannah] For me, clay is my way to dissect my emotions.

- [Niki] The idea is to attract a younger crowd via street art.

- [Deborah] One minute we were theater makers in Brooklyn and then the next day we were at the Oscars.

It was almost overnight.

(paintbrush rustling) - I'm Jason Kyrpos.

- And I'm Heather Mazzoni.

In this episode of "Curate," we meet Wil Swink, an artist whose work serves as a bridge between the past and the present.

- His deeply personal creations are inspired by his family's history, transforming loss and legacy into impactful works of art.

- Wil's latest pieces offer a poignant look at the healing power of creativity.

(paintbrush rustling) (gentle music) - One year for Father's Day, I did like a helicopter and there was a cloud above the helicopter and lightning bolts hitting the helicopter, and my mom framed it and gave it to my dad.

That was this moment where I realized that creating art was something I could do and it was valuable not just to me, but other people.

(mellow music) God only knows what that is, but it looks dangerous.

I was, I guess, a doodler my entire life.

I mean, just constantly drawing.

Right brain shoe.

'93, so that would mean I was 12.

I took AP art in high school and it really was to just have another AP class on my resume.

Art was not a focus at that point for me.

Prehistoric creatures.

Various objects that I was probably forced to draw.

Me and a good friend took a trip to South America and we walked by this art gallery every day.

There was this beautiful painting, just really resonated with me, and went into the gallery, asked the guy how much it was, he said 250 bucks.

I was like, "Wrap it up."

So I started collecting.

It was an evolution of going from buying art, appreciating that product, and then eventually got to like, "Oh, I can just do this."

(mellow music continues) I was the only child, so all this stuff was a testament to how loved I was in a lot of ways.

(mellow music continues) The circumstances that brought me back to Williamsburg were not ideal, obviously, but I think it is the kind of silver lining.

(bright music) Before my mother passed, she'd been battling dementia for about 10 years.

My dad was her primary caretaker.

In 2021, she fell down some stairs and got a call from the hospital.

It was the doctor who was caring for my dad.

So I called back and she told me that my dad had a heart attack in the waiting room and died.

The crazy thing is his dad at the same age had a heart attack going to see his wife, and so this thing had repeated itself.

(bright music continues) My mom's care was then a priority, so we moved back.

Grief and loss is a difficult thing to manage when you're talking about your parents, but I think in some ways it's helped being here.

We have so many pictures and heirlooms that came with the house.

I knew my parents well, but it's like putting a puzzle together.

Pretty interesting getting to know them after their death.

(gentle music) I gotta find the piece she did, but it's a picture of her painting this piece that I really like, and I found it the other day.

I was like, "Oh, that is the source photo."

(mellow music) My mom would always take art seminars and classes in the neighborhood.

I can definitely see the influence she had in the work I do now.

Here it is.

She was very shy about her work.

Never really showed it, never had any shows, but it was soulful.

This is a piece I found.

I'm looking at it now and seeing things that I hadn't seen before.

This is my favorite one of hers.

This cow looks just amazing.

It's beautiful.

(mellow music continues) I started working on this right after she passed.

She had the most amazing handwriting.

This is a letter talking about how bad I was at school and how I was not listening and misbehaving.

This is a picture of her when she met my dad, who was on R&R during Vietnam.

They met in Hawaii.

I wanted to capture her and her essence.

Absolutely love it.

(mellow music) This was my interpretation of dementia, Alzheimer's, what it does to you.

But as horrible as it is and was, it doesn't define her.

I wanted to make sure that she knew that and she was remembered for the beautiful person she was.

(mellow music continues) "P.S.

I LOVE YOU", name of the piece, her initials, P.S., Patty Swink.

"The past, present, and future are all right here: 'I love you most in the world, and Daddy too,'" And that's something that, every night, going to bed, she would say to me, "I love you most in the world, and Daddy too."

(mellow music) My dad was a lieutenant in the army.

He did one tour in Vietnam.

He told me this story that always stuck with me.

One night, a guy from their own company threw a grenade into their tent and killed the other lieutenant.

If it was the next night or the night before, my dad would've been dead, and I would not be here.

(mellow music continues) I just started working on a mural-type piece of my dad.

He had these green duffle bags.

Then I cut it apart, deconstructed it, and it says J.M.

Cannon.

Jim Cannon was his older brother.

My uncle Jim took this bag to Vietnam, got back, and then my dad took it to Vietnam, so it's got a lot of history to it, to say at least.

(mellow music continues) It has value to me, but does it have value to anybody else?

Probably not.

So some of the places I've gone artistically is to take that stuff and make it valuable to a more universal audience.

When you lose somebody, there's a lot of regret.

Would I have changed something or done something differently?

Probably.

Yeah.

So it's a way for me to continue that experience with them.

(mellow music continues) I guess it's part of my complex healing process.

(bright music) Living in the house that I grew up in where my parents lived is like the ultimate way to pay homage to them and their life, and I think they probably wouldn't want it any other way.

I could never see myself selling the house.

It's a part of me, it's part of my family, and it's part of my parents' legacy, so it's important that I cherish it and make it fulfill its potential.

I've thought about getting to this point for a long time, being able to have the work I want in my house, what that would be like, and I feel so lucky that I'm able to do that.

That makes me proud, and I know it'd make my parents proud, 100%.

(bright music continues) (bright music continues) - [Heather] Listen to "Sinnett in Session" Monday through Thursday, 9:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m., and Sundays 1 to 5:00 p.m. on 89.5 WHRV, as well as online at whro.org/sinnettinsession.

(bright music continues) (paintbrush rustling) - Last season, we featured Ariannah Chaochang on "Curate U," a collaboration with Old Dominion University's film department, where our production team teaches their students the art of documentary filmmaking.

- Since then, Ariannah has been doing amazing things.

- From hosting workshops to developing new pieces.

Her trademark ceramics have been seen all over Hampton Roads.

- Even taking home a couple major accolades in the process.

(paintbrush rustling) (discordant music) (bright music) - I've been doing pottery for a few years now.

I started, I would say, around the pandemic time.

For me, clay is really healing and it was my way to dissect my emotions and really work through a lot of difficult feelings.

(bright music continues) Prior to this, I had your typical career and being an artist is something that has always been a thought in my mind.

I wasn't presented that opportunity until we became a military family and relocated to Virginia.

Once I took my first pottery class, I instantly fell in love and knew that this is what I was called to do.

(bright music) I've always been a creative person, so no matter what career field I chose, it just never really settled within my soul until I touched clay.

(bright music continues) I get to be my authentic self and really be open about what I'm going through on my own personal journey.

It's really helped me connect with other people.

And so it's been really healing and wholesome in that manner in like a full circle kind of moment.

(bright music continues) I am still fairly new to participating in art shows as an artist, so the fact that I was able to win Best in Show at both the Stockley Gardens and the MOCA Boardwalk Art Show in the same year is still quite a huge shock to me.

It's just been happening so quickly, but I am extremely thankful and grateful.

It's a good feeling, but a very foreign feeling.

Very reassuring as an artist.

I didn't realize there was a shirt.

I plan to do this long term.

It's been sitting right within me and I feel it's my calling.

(bright music continues) (paintbrush rustling) - The mission of Support Portsmouth Public Arts is to engage citizens to participate in the process of creating and enjoying creativity in the community.

- And with the inaugural Portsmouth Mural Festival, they did just that.

- The event helped turn the city's alleyways into dynamic destinations by blending art and community in the heart of the Innovation District.

(paintbrush rustling) (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - So the Wall Street Mural Festival was the brainchild of John Joyce, Matt Diggs, Linda Jaglowski, and I.

You know, the idea is to kind of attract a younger crowd via street art.

Street art appeals to a lot of young people, and we wanted to beautify this alley with, an example of a place making, you know?

The idea is to beautify this space in the Innovation District and make it like a stickier place where people come out, creating a tourist destination.

- We have an incredible lineup of artists.

When we put the artist callout, we had 50 artists apply from all across the world, and we had to narrow it down to 10.

And it's so cool.

Each artist has some sort of connection with Virginia.

Either they're from here or they live here now.

Whatever the case may be, they all have a story with Virginia.

And so the rubric that we used was we wanted a diverse group of people, a diverse selection of styles.

And so once we were able to figure that out and we got our 10 artists and they've been just incredible.

You'll see all the walls that we have here now.

It's amazing.

- I think street art is important mainly because it is kind of different from regular art.

You know, when you go to a gallery or an art show or a museum, you're kind of like going with the intention to look at art.

And street art kind of, you interact with it in your normal life, so it hits you in a different spot and it's really powerful in that way because, you know, you could be having a bad day or, like, stuck behind a train and you end up looking at something that maybe makes you think about it a little differently.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - In high school, I started breakdancing in high school.

I learned about the different elements of hip hop, so like MCing, the graffiti, of course, breakdancing, DJing.

And we really just wanted to incorporate all that into one festival.

And so skateboard culture is a huge part of that.

So we got the skateboarders out here, we have some breakdancing going on, and then, of course, the murals and the street art.

It just brings all the elements together under one roof.

- Murals and public art, street art, if you will, are all great ways to help empower a community, breed some new life into it, and take a place that might've been forgotten and make it somewhere that's on the top of the list now, you know?

- I like to see art everywhere, just everywhere in public places.

You know, we're all about promoting public art.

You know, there's a place for art and galleries, but we wanna see it on almost any surface imaginable.

And this creates more pedestrian traffic, more tourist traffic, creates safer communities ultimately, and that's one thing that we're really after here.

You know, most people wouldn't think twice about walking down this alley, you know, maybe a month ago.

But we're changing that and this is going to be a tourist destination.

(upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) - And special thanks to our friends with the City's marketing and communications department for documenting such an important weekend.

Great job, fellas.

- Welcome to "Curate Presents."

I am here with Deborah Wallace.

How are you, Deborah?

- I'm good, thank you, Kayda.

- What got you into filmmaking in the first place?

- It was kind of an accident actually.

Essentially, I was working as a theater artist in New York City and I was working with a company that made large-scale, very cinematic, epic pieces that were very politically motivated for the stage.

So in 2008, we were working in upstate New York, which was where the artistic director of the company lived.

And while we were there, his family received a letter in the mail and it was a letter from a natural gas company.

And that letter was basically asking the resident and the surrounding residents in the area to lease their land for this new technology, which at the time was really kind of unknown to people, but it was called fracking, or hydraulic fracturing.

So we thought, "Well, maybe this would be a good opportunity for us to explore the documentary form."

So the director of the film, Josh Fox, decided to do that.

He was gonna make a 10-minute informational video to begin with.

This was something that would educate the families in the surrounding area 'cause everybody was getting this letter in the mail telling them they were gonna make millions of dollars and that it wasn't going to affect their land or their water, which, of course, is something that we know now to not be true.

The story just kept evolving, getting bigger and bigger and more sinister in lots of ways.

And we were just unearthing so much information and so much was coming out.

That film ended up becoming a feature film that earned a lot of accolades and was nominated for the Academy Award for Documentary Feature as well.

So that's kind of how it started.

A total accident.

One minute we were theater makers in Brooklyn and then the next day we were at the Oscars.

It was almost overnight in a weird way.

- Wow.

- Changed our lives instantaneously.

- Since "Gasland," what other projects have you worked on?

- Well, after "Gasland," we were commissioned by HBO to make a sequel 'cause we knew the story wasn't over there.

And then subsequently, there was a film called "Blood on the Mountain," which is the last 150 years of history in West Virginia through the prism of the coal industry.

And then after that, next film was "Brave Girls," which I served just as an executive producer on.

But that is a film about three young women in the northern part of India.

You know, they only had a fifth grade education and they wanted to go to high school.

And so this was the journey of these three young women as they went back to school and to the agency and get an education, all of that.

- It sounds like all the things you work on are heavy.

- Yeah, I mean, certainly, yeah.

Well, you know, life can be heavy for some, you know?

- Yeah, definitely.

It just makes me wonder what made you equipped to deal with this and take all of this on?

- I don't know.

I don't know that anybody's really equipped.

I just think that, this might sound silly, but specifically while I was working as a producer on "Blood on the Mountain" in particular, there's a time when, sometimes you feel called to something.

I don't mean to sound overtly spiritual about that, but it felt like I had purpose.

Having meaning and purpose will make anything bearable.

- Okay, so tell us about what you have going on with ODU?

- At Old Dominion University, I teach Introduction to Filmmaking.

I also teach Documentary Production I and II, and I also teach Social Justice Documentary, which we look at prior filmmakers who have made films on the spectrum of social justice, whether that's economic justice, political justice, gender, race, environmental.

The fight for social justice in any realm is always ongoing, but the fight is always worth it regardless of the outcome.

- Okay, let's talk about Viewpoints.

- I came to direct one of my own plays at Old Dominion.

And while I was here, that's when I was asked to come and teach a class and that obviously evolved into more classes.

But part of my rehearsal process is a form called Viewpoints, which was originated by a choreographer in New York named Mary Overlie and it was promoted and sort of enlarged by a director named Anne Bogart.

It's a practice that is a movement practice originally for dancers that expanded to the theater and now we feel like it shouldn't just be isolated to people who are practitioners in dance or theater, but that everybody should have the opportunity to be in their body and to feel as though they can move beautifully and to feel as though they are connected to something physical that is outside of themselves.

On the second Sunday of every month, the Barry hosts an open Viewpoint session where anyone can come in and check it out and even just start to get moving even in small ways.

There's something beautiful about it in the way that it's an improvisational form.

It starts with a very particular palette of vocabulary, but from that vocabulary, actors and performers, dancers, and just regular folks can create and improvise together.

- All right, so Deborah, thank you so, so much for stopping by and talking with us.

- Thank you, Kaydo.

It's a pleasure.

- Definitely.

- Well, what do you think, Heather?

We should go to the next Viewpoint session.

- Absolutely.

I'll pick you up.

- I love it.

Let's do it.

And on that note, we will see you next time on "Curate."

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues)