Frederick Hammersley Foundation... New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund at the Albuquerque Community Foundation ...New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts.

...and Viewers Like You.

THIS TIME, ON COLORES!

SURVIVAL, RESILIANCE, PRIDE - PHOTOGRAPHER AND FILMMAKER FRANK BLAZQUEZ FOCUSES ON THE COUNTERNARRATIVE.

ROLLER SKATERS IN TAMPA BAY HAVE FOUND THEIR HAPPY PLACE.

FOUNDED IN 1968 "AFRICOBRA" CREATED A REVOLUTIONARY VISUAL AESTHETIC THAT IS A SOURCE OF INSPIRATION TO THIS DAY.

CANCER SURVIVOR AND POP-SURREALIST PAINTER ARABELLA PROFFER PREPARES FOR THE WORST AND HOPES FOR THE BEST.

IT'S ALL AHEAD ON COLORES!

MAKING THE INVISIBLE VISIBLE.

>>Frank Blazquez: I try my best to capture everything in its most authentic way possible.

>>Blazquez: Things that deal with with my culture, being Chicano, someone that identifies as Mexican.

Capturing portraits of people that look like me.

My generation.

We like a lot of body art.

Tattoos.

Things like that.

Things that I think that are really important that explain the symbols of where we are.

What connects people and place, right?

What connects us to New Mexico?

And what I discovered is something really interesting that a lot of my subjects they, when I tried to dig a little bit deeper to see where they come from and who they are, one of the first things they tell me is "I'm New Mexican."

>>Ebony Isis Booth: What compels you into making these portraits?

>>Blazquez: When I find someone that I think has a really interesting look.

I think that's one of the main things too, right, is being able to look into someone's eyes and seeing something that just really strikes you right away.

I think there's a philosopher that says that there's almost, it's almost kind of like a pin prick or like a needle prick.

Something that just kind of hits you, like right away, and you just know it.

Those are the feelings that I tried to follow.

And I usually get that within a few seconds of seeing someone.

>>The first time I ever went to a bar I had a fake ID.

I went with my homegirls.

I went with a couple females, and I was just there to have some drinks.

I was supposed to go to Denver the next day.

One thing led to another and I got into some gang-related stuff there and got into a fight and got stabbed.

I remember I was just bleeding out and asking the paramedics "yeah, you think I'm gonna make it?"

And they're like "we don't know."

It was just a crazy feeling.

It was just an unsure, uneasy feeling.

I thought maybe I might make it, maybe I might not.

I said a little prayer.

Whatever's gonna happen is gonna happen.

It's up to my higher power and like, whatever it's gonna be is gonna be.

That's all pretty much I'll say about that.

>>Booth: When you meet a subject, what lets you know that you would like to continue with interviewing them, or getting to know more about them?

What, like, for instance, you know, what is her story?

>>Blazquez: This is Miranda.

I met Miranda on Central Avenue in 2018.

It was just another one of my nights where I was just driving up and down Central Avenue, uh, just getting some food and just driving around and seeing different spots.

Different buildings that I thought were very interesting that I wanted to capture.

And I saw Miranda on the street.

She said that she was a sex worker.

I asked her "is it okay if we take some of your portraits?"

And she said "sure."

>>Booth: Why did you want to take her picture?

>>Blazquez: I saw this look in her eyes and it really pierced And it like stopped me in my tracks as that's something that I should follow.

>>Booth: How do you get people to share their stories with you?

>>Blazquez: When I first started, it was me contacting people that I used to use with.

People that I've met on the streets and different neighborhoods in Albuquerque's "war-zone", off of Central Avenue.

I wanted to see how they were doing first off to see if everything's okay in their life.

But I also wanted to see if they wanted to partake in this new project that I wanted to do where I wanted to kind of catalog and inventory some of the experiences visually that I've endured when I was using drugs, when I was trying to get clean.

I felt that there was a responsibility for me to kind of go back to this space, go back to these places, and use my camera to...To capture some of the feelings and the emotions and things that I didn't really deal with head-on.

>>I was always trying to figure out what I needed to do because my dad wasn't always there.

There wasn't always someone there to mentally keep my It's more me trying to just figure it out.

And you know, at the end of the day, me trying to figure it out was hurting someone else.

>>Booth: What happened when you engaged Carlos around taking his portrait?

>>Blazquez: I saw Carlos at UNM, on the UNM campus.

He was just driving around.

And I saw he had two different colored eyes.

He actually said no at first.

But he gave me his contact info.

So I was just going back and forth with him over, like, several months.

And then he finally said yes.

He's like, "You know what?

Just come over my house.

We'll take some photos."

And I was like "Thank you so much.

Thanks for letting me do this."

And this was at Carlos's house here in Albuquerque that I took this portrait.

>>Booth: What attracts you to that thing, or what is that thing?

>>Blazquez: It's almost like a fire that starts inside of someone that, you know, that can get a little bit bigger.

You might be able to control it in a certain way and then hone it and to make it useful.

>>Booth: What impact do you have on that fire for them?

>>Blazquez: I feel like it's in between us.

Between their face and the camera.

Between their perspective and looking in the camera.

There's this space in between the subject and the photographer.

>>Booth: What's an example of that?

>>Blazquez: I get that feeling that this person, like Carlos, or like the twins, that they've been here forever.

And I get that from their looks.

Just, it like, it comes off of them.

That feeling.

And I want to capture that visually.

>>Booth: Why is that important?

>>Blazquez: A lot of people forget that, that people have a strong connection to a place.

>>Booth: This place?

>>Blazquez: To New Mexico.

To different parts of New Mexico.

Even though they might be moving around.

Or they don't, they don't own land.

Or they don't own the state.

They don't control the state.

There's something that, that anchors them.

There's something, um, that's deep within them.

There's roots.

>>Booth: What do you think that means, "I am New Mexican?"

>>Blazquez: As an outsider, someone that wasn't born here, I feel that it's, it's something deeper than what I can understand.

That speak a lot to family here in New Mexico >>Booth: How do you relate to it personally?

>>Blazquez: I relate to it by being able to identify it right away.

It's something that I haven't seen before.

A lot of my subjects have a lot of black and gray tattoos that they've received in the prison system.

Things that I haven't seen anywhere else.

But there's a lot of pride in being from New Mexico.

There's always that past that travels with you, that has brought you up to that point.

So I think there's a lot of respect that you have to have >Booth: Yeah.

Absolutely.

Much respect to you for the triumph of healing.

Thank you so much, Frank.

>>Blazquez: Thanks a lot.

IT'S ALL ABOUT ROLLER SKATING.

Skating was my first love before my wife, like, before I got married and had kids, skating was my first love.

I started skating actually downtown at Central Park.

After that I've been skating at United skates for over 30 years.

So, skating is my happy place.

I think it's so corny to say, but skating saved me.

There is a lot of things that I've gone through in my life, just personally, that I had no outlet for.

And I really didn't know how to express myself any other way.

But when I started skating, it was just freeing for me.

Like not only the music, not only just being able to but finding people that were just so positive, so caring and just ready to help.

I never experienced that in my life before outside of my Skating makes me feel alive.

Like when I hit the floor, it's like just me on the floor and the music, everything else inside your reality just melts away.

Skating puts me on cloud nine.

It's my release on life.

It's my break.

It's my love.

I think roller skating really isn't art because everything we do, it's just seen in our movement.

Like, there's no talking involved.

I could see a skater rolling around the floor and I can just feel their energy.

And I feel like when you watch someone who's skating, no matter what style it is, you can interpret everything that person is bringing to the floor, at that point.

With roller skating you put your own twist and flavor to it.

Once you're comfortable on your skates, I just feel like it's endless what you can do.

The skating community in Tampa is, is changing as far as like, there's a lot of different people from a lot of different places.

So we get people from Virginia, people from Chicago, New York, DC.

So it was just starting to be a melting pot of different skaters in Tampa.

Usually you go out of state to see different skaters.

So it's just getting to be where you can see a little bit of everything in the house.

The styles of skating: I'll give you a rundown of them.

Fast backwards is from Philly.

They skate fast, backwards, all the time for some reason, no matter what the song is.

Fast Backwards.

You have JB, which is out of Chicago, James Brown music.

A lot of the music that they have, they take samples from James Brown's music and put that in there.

They do remixes and they take the original and mix it also.

My main style would be the fast backwards and JB.

I loved it ever since I got introduced to it.

The style of that skate is New York, New Jersey style, which is to me, my favorite.

They do a lot of pivots and turns and spins and stuff like Trains and trios is a part of New York New Jersey style.

That's when normally trio is three, holding hands would have a movement altogether.

Unison one-on-one trains is, could be from four to 15 people, even 20 to 30 people.

Then you have sliders, which you have two different kinds of sliders.

You have Chicago slides, where they're doing more of a split like they'll come from halfway off the floor.

And then they'll go into it, get down low on one leg, and then they'll go into a split.

And then you have a slider that comes from Detroit, where they have four wheels on the ground, and they'll be turning sideways and sliding across the floor either with the train of people.

So they do more of the old-school artistic style but I mean, they're very smooth with it.

I don't have a specific style that I do.

I like a little bit of everything.

I just feel like, you know, I want to be diverse and be able to go to Chicago and do a little bit of JB, go to New York and still be able to get on a train.

I just try to stay diverse.

I don't want to just do one style.

Skating inspired me to, I guess just become the man and the husband and the father that I am today, I mean, I met my wife at the skating rink.

My kids are into skating and I want to have a legacy where people from the Tampa Bay area, remember me say, oh, I don't remember a Big Al yeah.

he used to skate at United Skates, or, you know, he used to host a skate party or someone that loves skating and you know, want it to continue in the next generation and the next generation.

I just think it's a real experience in the energy that you get at the skating rink.

You wouldn't see it nowhere else, but at the skating ring.

You wouldn't see it at a hockey event, you don't see it at a ice skating rink.

It's just roller skating just has a different energy.

It just feels like you can light up the whole neighborhood just with the energy that's in the rink.

I don't know.

It makes me smile.

Just thinking about it.

The Tampa Bay skate community is very much a family.

I've never experienced anything like it.

I feel like we all have the same passion.

We share the same values and it all just shines through skating.

So it's something that we just can do together to forget about everything else.

I mean, people are always friendly when you come to skate and because you're, you're here doing the same thing that this other person enjoys, whether they're old, young, you know, intermediate skater, beginner skater, it's just for the love of skating, you know, we're always welcoming anybody that wants to come and try it out and just, you know, enjoy yourself.

And I don't think I would never stop.

Even if I get an older age, I think I'm going to continue to keep skating.

It's a way of life.

MESSAGES OF UNITY (CLANK OF KEYRING) Cleveland artists Wadsworth and Jae Jarrell have spent their lives creating images of black power and beauty.

The Jarrells work as individual artists and as members of AfriCOBRA, a collective established in 1968 to create art addressing issues of equality and civil rights.

Wadsworth's new book AfriCOBRA documents the group's history, origins, and its mission.

Art brought Jae and Wadsworth together in the 1960s, they both studied at the art Institute of Chicago and began dating.

Jae studying Fashion Design and Wadsworth Painting.

She was designing fashion when I met her.

So and she had a business, painted at night and on the And Chicago was very important in this movement in our art.

Art had in the past, all been basically created especially in movements, not in a city like Chicago, it was New York City and things like that.

So what we ended up doing was making Chicago a major city where art came out of.

>>David: The '60s were a tumultuous time in US history, the beginning of the Black Power Movement and the call for civil rights.

Inspired by the movement, in 1965, black poets, musicians, writers, and artists in the New York, Newark area, started the Black Arts Movement, to create black art for black people.

It soon spread to major cities around the country.

In Chicago, Wadsworth and other African-American artists collaborated on a large outdoor mural called The Wall of Respect.

It was the first of its kind in the country.

The first thing happened in Chicago was the Wall of Respect that went viral, not just nationally but internationally.

And this was the first visual art during the Black Power Movement, New York opened up the black repertory theater without any visual arts.

So what I'm saying is Chicago was the first one to put digitalized during the Black Power Movement that went viral was the Wall of respect.

>>David: With the success of the Wall of Respect in 1968, Wadsworth and Jae Jarrell, and three other Chicago artists launched AfriCOBRA, the African commune of bad relevant artists.

As visual artists, they were at the forefront of the Black Arts Movement.

We formed a collective that we named COBRA in the beginning, we added some Afri to it to make it AfriCOBRA, African Cobra was that it was five founding members.

Who was Jeff Donaldson, Jae Jarrell, Wadsworth Jarrell, Barbara Jones-Hogu and Gerald Williams.

>>David: Themes within the art included African designs and positive messages of unity.

The group embraced the use of lettering, straight lines and bright vivid colors known as Kool-Aid colors to create a black aesthetic.

Kool-Aid colors of variegation of bright, intense colors with a sense of building harmony.

Kool-Aid color was representative of what black people was wearing, clothing they was wearing in the '60s, real bright colored clothing.

So we chose that as one, that was the first principle we chose.

And we had frontal images, which is inspired by African sculpture, which is always a frontal view never three quarter view, which represents strength and directness.

And we wanted to use positive images.

That's another principle >>David: AfriCOBRA held its first major exhibit Ten in Search of a Nation, at the studio museum in Harlem in 1970.

Its purpose was to educate the public and empower the black community.

Wadsworth remained a member of AfriCOBRA until 1998 eventually finding his way to Cleveland his wife Jae's hometown.

Over the decades, he began to see a retelling, a revision of the history of AfriCOBRA and sought to set the record straight.

I wrote the book basically to correct all of the improper information was out, was online and everything.

Everything put out about it in writing basically was not right.

Even a member of the group, the guy that was basically the spokesman for the group, he started writing false things about the group, like, you know, dropping two members, adding a member that did not exist, did not join the group.

So that's why I wrote the book.

>>David: Some 60 years later, the work of AfriCOBRA artists is being recognized.

In 2017, The Cleveland Museum of Art purchased a painting by Wadsworth Jarrell for more than $97,000.

In addition, the history ideas and paintings found between the pages of the book AfriCOBRA are being taught in art classes around the country.

Thus AfriCOBRA is far more about than just making art.

You will read that, you know, we had a political slant with an aesthetic that's about politics, life, it's our art history book.

Arts initiative, not just African-American art history, it's art history period.

LIVING ON THE EDGE.

There's a glow to Arabella Proffer's smile as she adjusts the camera on her end of the call.

Like I was so excited today because I got to like actually get dressed.

I put on makeup and stuff, you know.

I've just been lying in bed, watching Real Housewives and like barely eating 'cause food sounds disgusting to me.

Proffer was diagnosed last summer with inoperable cancer.

When she announced it on her webpage, she wrote "I don't know what that will mean for my future.

It is months, not years."

Her artistic journey started years ago.

My mom named me after an English romance novel like Regency romance novel.

It was either that or Venetia or Nicola.

(laughs) I think Aubrey Beardsley was like the first like when I was really into drawing like he was kind of like, "Oh, I really dig this guy."

And then as I got more into my teen years Tamara de Lempicka was kind of my queen.

I had a big poster, you know, next to my Depeche Mode and my U2 and Jane's Addiction posters.

As a teenager, Proffer developed an interest in portraiture with a twist.

I really loved aristocratic like portraiture that you see in museums and stuff like that.

And sometimes people would have them in their homes in Europe, you know, instead of like the family photo album they would have that ancestor which I always thought was really cool.

So I kind of got this idea of having hair dye and Mohawks and spike colors and the leather jacket and all that stuff.

If this was the 1500s that stuff would've cost a lot of money.

So if you were an aristocrat or royalty you probably would do something outrageous like that just to show off essentially.

But a little over 10 years ago Proffer's work began to change.

Well, I don't know.

It was just one day just sick of painting people.

I love standing by the water And just knowing what it's for Recognizable faces and bodies disappeared, replaced by surrealistic landscapes of floating blobs with drips and organic tendrils weaving menacing webs.

The change happened about the same time that she was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer in her leg.

And it was kind of strange because I had done these shapes and stuff like four months before I even knew I had cancer.

And then when they show me MRIs and scans it actually looked exactly like what I've been painting.

So that was a little strange.

But she kept at it, especially after these abstract images started selling.

My mom doesn't like it, she thinks that they're what's making me sick, that I'm like doing these paintings and like, it's like somehow psychically making me sick in some way, but I don't feel that way.

I don't sketch ahead of time.

I don't really plan them ahead of time.

I get like a loose idea in my head.

And sometimes if I've bought a new tube of paint that I really want to crack open, I'm like, okay I guess everything's pink today.

I start from a place of abstraction and then I just let it go wild from there.

After I was first diagnosed 10 years ago and I did a painting series about the history of medicine, I guess it was a way for me to deal with like at least I live in today's world and not 200 years ago when everything was a lot more barbaric.

After a series of operations, it seemed like she was over the worst of it.

But then came the diagnosis that the cancer had come roaring She's now been through radiation, chemo and clinical trials, but despite all she's been through, she pushes forward with her life and keeps that smile as much as she can.

She's currently working on a book of her portraits.

She also has some advice to share from one of her blog If 2020 has taught us anything, your time is not guaranteed.

Go to that gig, that lecture, that exhibition, dinner, party and go on that date.

Don't be a [bleep] and stay home watching TV because you're too lazy and tired from a job you don't like much anyway.

I don't care if you're an introvert.

Are you going to really say in your life, Oh boy, I'm glad I stayed home scrolling through my phone when you could have actually experienced something.

Once this virus has gone, leave the damn house, leave the house.

That's what I have to say.

Some tips about life coming from someone living on the edge of it.

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Funding for COLORES was provided in part by: Frederick Hammersley Foundation... New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund at the Albuquerque Community Foundation ...New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts.

...and Viewers Like You.

(CLOSED CAPTIONING BY KNME-TV)