Frederick Hammersley Foundation... New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund at the Albuquerque Community Foundation ...and Viewers Like You.

THIS TIME, ON COLORES!

PASÓ POR AQUÍ...

PASSED BY HERE.

...RETRACING THE EXTRAORDINARY FRAY DOMÍNGUEZ AND ESCALANTE EXPEDITION OF 1776 IN THE SOUTHWEST.

MARIO MOORE'S THOUGHT-PROVOKING EXHIBIT, "RECOVERY" REFLECTS ON HOW AFRICAN AMERICAN MEN REST, RELAX, AND RECOVER IN OUR SOCIETY.

EXUDING JOY, BEAUTY, AND SPONTANEITY NEW YORK FLORIST LEWIS MILLER COLORS CITY STREETS WITH THRILLING "FLOWER FLASHES".

USING ILLUSION, ROBERT SHEFMAN DELVES INTO THE WORLD OF IT'S ALL AHEAD ON COLORES!

FOLLOWING FOOTSTEPS FROM OVER 200 YEARS AGO.

>>Greg MacGregor: This expedition is an exciting read.

The diaries are well written.

The Spanish are amazing writers in those years.

This is true about this journals.

The journals are filled with descriptions of people, places, it's like a story.

You don't know if it's going to end successfully or not.

It has a beginning.

It has an end.

It has adventure.

It's got danger.

They're starving, they're lost, their instruments don't work.

>>Greg MacGregor: The photographs in this project are driven by the text, always.

I would read the diaries and find out - where are they?

And what amazed them?

The picture of the San Juan river was a special photograph because they were lost in the mountains between Dulce and that river.

When they bust out onto that river, it's a sign of delight.

They kind of know where they are.

It's times like that that I also stop and look at this river.

And it's easier for me to imagine the story.

Hence you make pictures in those kinds of places, special places.

>>Greg MacGregor: At the Grand Mesa Encounter with the 80 Utes and all their teepees and wives and kids, a significant thing happens with them.

They finally have a guide.

Up to this point there's nobody guiding them anywhere.

This expedition was the first exploration of the Northern Territories of the Spanish empire.

Expedition failed in more ways than it succeeded, for instance, they were supposed to discover why the Indians at Utah Lake had beards.

The myth was it was a lost tribe of Spanish soldiers, but of course, that didn't work out.

>>Greg MacGregor: One of the primary goals of this expedition is to Christianize the Indians and look for future Spanish settlements.

The expedition spends two days, two precious days talking to the natives, which they call the fish eaters.

They talk about the fish, wildlife, the rivers that dump into it.

It has four major streams, each of them bigger than the Rio Grande dumping into this thing.

Somewhere in the month of October they realized they've got to make a decision whether to continue west or not.

It was starting to snow.

Bernardo Miera, who was the cartographer and the most senior member of the expedition, tells them that it's only five days march to California.

He was totally wrong.

They decide to make a decision by drawing lots and the deal is, if they decide to go west to California, Miera is going to be the boss.

It's almost like a mutiny.

No one knows how they do the lots, but it turns out the decision was to come back to Santa Fe.

It's a good thing they didn't because there's like, five mountain ranges in Nevada, in the Sierra Nevada mountains in California which are 400 miles long full of snow at that time of the year.

We would never have heard of these guys if they had lost that decision.

>>Greg MacGregor: The expedition is approximately two-thirds of the way home at this point.

The obstacle in the way now is the Colorado River and how to get across it.

It was a known river at the time.

What was not known, was the great that they had the Grand Canyon in the middle of it.

>>Greg MacGregor: At Horseshoe Bend, they're still looking for a crossing site.

Traveling along the cliffs, trying to get down, up and across the river and back up the other side.

During that time, it's going to take them 12 days to find that crossing site where they go down, can't get across the river, cancel it.

Go back up, try it another time.

The only problem was getting the horses down and make that work you had the chop holes in the sandstone cliffs where they put the horse's hoofs.

Along this route they're going to carve their initials in a wall.

Past here in the year 1776, which stands now today as the only hard evidence of where they were at a given time.

The Spanish government wasn't able to settle any of these wonderful areas that they discovered for potential settlements because they didn't have any money.

They were busy fighting and joining the Revolutionary War on the East Coast and they didn't have enough priests to supply these missions.

>>Greg MacGregor: Part of this project is to comment on the legacy of exploration, you know, I'm photographing, making images of junkyards and cities and that's part of it, is to look at the legacy of what happened as a consequence of these exploration trips.

AN AFRICAN AMERICAN RECOVERY.

(elegant rock music) I'm interested in like creating the stage that the audience can kind of come into.

(elegant rock music) Art to me has always been involved in my life.

I grew up around the DIA, I used to go visit the museum when I was a kid, I would walk through the galleries.

But as far as like inspiration, that came from my mom, Sabrina Nelson, because I would see her do these large paintings.

Just the idea to look at a canvas that's blank or a piece of paper and her just make something, was always interesting to me.

The way that I begin my work is usually through sketches and ideas.

It is usually that I have a thought and I have a process.

And I sketch out or I think about that thought and I say what is the best way to portray this thought or to talk about this idea?

So that can go to sculpture, that can go to drawing, that can go to video, that can go to painting, but the majority of the time I'm interested in a massive narrative.

We're in the David Klein Gallery and the show is called Recovery.

And the show is about considering how black men rest and relax and take time for themselves.

What happened was I was working on a body of work where I was thinking about myself personally and how I move my body through the world and how the world considers me as a black man.

And then I had brain surgery.

I had brain surgery and literally I was forced to rest.

So that made me think about things historically, like how did historic black men that we know and the world knows, like a Martin Luther King or a Malcolm X or a W.E.B Du Bois, and when we look up their names, they're always speaking really loud, they're on the podium, they're always active.

In times of turmoil, like what we're dealing with today as far as everything politically and socioeconomically, how do I rest?

'cause we're kind of in a similar state and in some ways, in some senses as far as education and other things like that, it's worse, it's gone backwards instead of forwards.

So, but at the same time we're human.

So these men took vacations, they took time with their family, they took naps.

So I started to think about that and the work presents a question, because I don't have the answer.

So how do black men rest, how do they relax, and what does that look like?

It has to do with just the history of America in that black men and black people just in general, we're in the process of constantly having to stay ahead just to catch up economically.

Since we got to the country or the Americas, we were slaves.

It was things that the country were built on the labor that we put in.

So that is passed down as far as trying to catch up, you have to work extremely hard.

So the idea of resting and relaxing is not a part of the process when you're always thinking about what do I need to do next?

Silverpoint is a technique that was used in the 16th and 15th century.

And it's literally a piece of silver and drawing with a piece of silver.

Most of the silverpoint drawings that have the historical, like the larger ones that have the historical figures in the background, it's a concept and idea is that can a black man look relaxed and calm and present himself in that way, but also at the same time be powerful?

Like I'm letting the background, the historical figures do all the work for me, while I relax.

And I think that's part of the importance and a part of the process.

I like the amount of texture and detail that went into the silverpoint, but there's a limited number of values that you can reach.

So no matter what I draw, no matter how hard the subject matter is, there's always gonna be this softness to it and I really like that.

The other thing I really like about silverpoint is that you can't erase.

So it's almost like drawing with a pen, whatever you put down is permanent.

So everything that goes into that drawing, you're gonna have to deal with it, right?

It's there to exist forever.

Another thing I like is that in dealing with silverpoint, you're literally leaving behind silver on paper.

So you're creating something that has initial value.

And with the work that I was working on, I'm dealing with a subject matter that people don't see as valuable, America often sees as unvalued as far as black men and also this idea of rest and this idea of relaxing.

So I think that material has worked for me really well, and thinking about these ideas and concepts.

There's one piece in particular in the show.

I read this book called Medical Apartheid, it has to do with the experimentation on black people from slavery to contemporary times.

And I also got this huge photography book called Stiffs, Skulls and Skeletons.

Through that book, you can see how they experimented and practiced on cadavers.

And most of the cadavers you will see are black or African-American cadavers.

And the way that that happened is they were like, well, we don't really care about this community, so we can dig up these graves and use these bodies.

So those bodies became objects, they weren't even people anymore.

So it was like, well, the thing that just happened to me with my brain surgery, what would that look like back in these times?

And I wanted to show opposition to that that shine the light on me as a person, as a human being instead of an object, and kind of mute the light on the figures that are above me.

The American bulldog, for me it's a literal representation of the history of America and I use it as a symbol for America itself.

And often you'll find the dog is sleeping or relaxing as it's ignoring really big issues that are happening right above it.

I include history in my work because as far as social issues, we kind of roll around all the time back to similar issues over and over again.

So I look at the past and I consider it, and I'm saying well, what was happening then kinda looks like What did they do then, what can we do now, what can we do to change it and what does that look like?

I think there's a ton of stuff to take away from this show.

I think about a lot of different narratives that go into one piece, but there's a lot of stuff that I don't think about.

And I think those are the important things that people that come and see the show that they can pull out for themselves.

I think it's important for the people to answer.

Well these are the things that I noticed, these are some ideas that I'm thinking about, this is a question that I have, and I think it becomes more participatory that the people that come and see the show, they provide the answers.

I think hearing their perspective and hearing their ideas about resting and what that looked like for them was extremely important.

I think hearing my dad talk about how he's worked since he was 16 years old and talking about his perspective was important.

But I think the most important thing that happened after the show was I went into the barbershop and one of the barbers that was in there, he told me after seeing my show he literally took a week off of work.

And then also hearing that several men after seeing the show were going outside and crying, which is like they honestly never thought in this way.

So I think those were probably the most important things that happened.

(soft lively music) MOMENTS OF BEAUTY.

Lewis Miller: Flowers were always part of my DNA.

I come from a family of gardeners, but I went from landscape and horticulture to the flower world and here I am.

The flower flash was something that was kind of bopping around my brain for a while.

It didn't have a name.

It was sort of more this vague idea of how to take flowers and fuse them in an urban city environment.

So it finally got to the point a couple years ago where I was very satisfied with business things going super well and kind of needing to feel creatively energized again, but also feeling the need in my own way to give back.

I'm clearly surrounded by flowers on a daily basis, as are my clients, and we tend to get immune to how beautiful they are and what an expression of joy they are to people.

And it's really about taking that which is so beautiful and ephemeral and kind of merging it with the texture and the grit of our urban city life and creating something that's very spontaneous, very fleeting, and sort of abstract.

We spend a great deal of time, you know, really finding locations that feel New York first.

So that combined with the season, what's looking good and also, the flower flashes are an accumulation of old flowers in the flower market, stuff that's left over from the studio, and stuff that's left over from events, so we have to work with that as well.

These flashes happen very quickly.

We plan it to a certain extent then we just do it and see what happens.

There's a little anxious energy, you know, it's usually dark.

A lot of times it's cold.

The flowers are for New Yorkers.

They are for the people, and I want people to take them and interact with them.

Obviously, take a picture, but take a blossom, take some home.

New York is New York.

All these people piled on top of each other.

To me, you know, the two biggest luxuries in the city are nature and space, so the more that we can have these kind of soft moments of just beauty and joy for no other reason, even if it's for an hour or ten minutes, its job is done.

OPENING UP TO A SECRET WORLD.

(soft piano music) - The most important thing you can do is invest yourself in the work and be willing to take and use what is most appropriate, in terms of the skill, to get your idea across.

Since I was a kid, I always loved art.

But I also liked medicine as well.

So, actually, when I was in high school, I had an internship down at Receiving Hospital doing autopsies.

That experience gave me a different perspective on the human body, about being us.

And eventually, that found its way into my work.

What you see in terms of my paintings and my sculptures is no the way I was trained.

Back in the '70s, you were pretty much discouraged from doing anything that was illusionist like I paint.

You were also discouraged from doing anything with the figure.

But I finally went in that direction and it seemed like endless possibilities, as opposed to a dead end.

So, I went there.

I'm making an illusion, it's just a magic trick.

I wanna see where I can take and use illusion to make metaphor, to use symbol to relate to different issues.

The inspiration can come from any place.

You take an idea and you run with it, and you develop it 1,000 different ways and explore wherever it will take you.

If you have the guts to go to places that were quote forbidden, fine.

It's not about starting in any specific way.

So sometimes I might see something that sparks an idea and it goes in my sketchbook.

I might work that and develop an idea.

Then again, it might take five years before that idea, which I see in that sketchbook over and over and over, kinda coalesces with other things that I see.

And suddenly wow, these things go together and they make a different thing than I wanted to say before, but it's unique.

Ideally, what I like to do when working in series, is take an idea and I'm exploring different things that are relative to that.

And trying to explore as many as I can and develop images from them.

So they're all gonna be different.

The series that I'm working on now, which is the Secrets.

So I solicited secrets across the internet.

And people sent me personal secrets.

Everyone's secret is not unique.

In fact, I had very few unique secrets.

By using that secret, not as an illustration of what they sent, but talking about more internal feelings, and developing an image based on that idea.

Some of the secrets were more personal, less political.

Some were more political, less personal.

Some of the secrets were legal issues.

(laughing) But it was enlightening.

The biggest secret that Americans keep right now seems to be suffering from depression, and everything that goes with that.

And so, because of that, it became the largest painting that I was gonna do in the series.

And I wanted to take on that being otherworldly and right in this world at the same time, because that is what we do.

Depression is something you are right in this world, yet you can't take a point of view that keeps you in this world.

There's another painting in the show that is someone who was in love with their best friend and couldn't tell them.

And it was about sexuality, and about choice, and about also the hiding.

And that internal struggle is what I tried to get on the canvas.

And then there was a lot of people who are hiding sexual orientation, drugs and addictions to either food or different drugs and alcohol.

There was lots of, lots of stuff for me to explore.

Some of the people actually wrote again to tell me how cathartic it was, that they've been holding this secret for 45 years and never told anyone.

And that the experience of putting it down and sending it out released them in a way.

The Carbon series started with a trip to the Middle East.

And I was most impressed by this intersection of politics and religion and the carbon.

The carbon was a part of all the decisions.

In religion, dust to dust, ashes to ashes.

Us, as human beings, we are carbon.

In the Middle East, so much of what was going on was not just about religion, but the religions controlling other carbon issues, resource carbon issues, political carbon issues.

And this intersection where all of this was coming together gave me a notion about this carbon series and then a series of paintings called Politics and Religion.

And the two are integrated.

So the Carbon series was drawings and everything I did was made out of carbon, about carbon.

And the paintings were more about the political and the religious aspects of this carbon system.

My process has always been starting from a blank sheet When you start with a drawing that has no direction, everything is possible.

And I'll use the drawing, and I will make hundreds of drawings until one strikes me as making that agenda hit as much as possible, being as direct to what I want to say.

And then when I start painting, it's still a moving target.

And things are gonna change when I start painting.

And, either for visual reasons or for content reasons, this is illusion.

It's not real.

It's just pixels on a page.

And if you think about the pixilation of an image, this is how painters have always worked.

Only instead of digital pixels, it's a brush stroke.

So every brush stroke is a different color.

And how illusionist you want this work to be is how often you change the pixels.

I'm changing the pixels as much as I can.

That experience, that illusion, is important to me.

It's not the focus, but it's how I want to get the idea across.

And so if I want to paint a hand or an arm, it'll probably be 15 different colors.

And I will start with those and then intermix and change those, depending on how it goes.

My paintings are not about paint, it was about what I wanted to say.

You take an idea and you make an image.

And I've been fortunate enough to have moved enough people that they will give me a platform, meaning shows.

Whether it's galleries or museums when you get the work out there, people come and see the work.

I'll get letters back saying, oh, this affected me, that affected me.

I think that's the communication factor.

That's that image transferring information from one person to another.

You're trying to affect someone.

You could go in a closet and make all your work, and burn the closet down.

You fulfilled only half of the issue of the arts.

The arts is communication.

Without the audience, you have not fulfilled all the mission.

(soft piano music) TO VIEW THIS AND OTHER COLORES PROGRAMS GO TO: New Mexico PBS dot org and look for COLORES under What We Do and Local Productions.

Also, LOOK FOR US ON FACEBOOK AND INSTAGRAM.

"UNTIL NEXT WEEK, THANK YOU FOR WATCHING."

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 ...and Viewers Like You.

(CLOSED CAPTIONING BY KNME-TV)