(Tom) This week on Arizona Illustrated Yume Japanese Garden celebrates ten years in Tucson.

(Woman) Flower arrangements are very similar to the structure of Japanese gardens.

You have a lot of elements in it that are very natural.

A preview of the upcoming two spirit powwow in Phoenix.

(Woman) We knew as indigenous people there's more than a man and a woman.

There's there's a third gender, there's fourth gender in some tribes.

I'm Navajo.

And in the Navajo way, LGBT people had a place in our tribe.

Artist and author Chris Rush talks about his book The Light Years.

(Chris Rush) When I started the book saying to myself, ‘Well, someone else has written this book.

I realized no one did.

Being a queer kid from New Jersey, born in 1956 who really like drugs, your survival chances are a little shaky.

(upbeat guitar music) Hello and welcome to Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara, and we're coming to you this beautiful spring day from Yume Japanese Gardens in midtown on Alvernon.

You know, the gardens have been in the Old Pueblo for ten years now.

In fact, here's a story from 2017, and we'll be right back to update you on what's happened here since with the creator, Patricia Deridder.

(Reporter) In our modern world of traffic congestion, busy schedules and stress over money or relationships.

Many people are craving a bit of peace and relaxation, solitude and reflection.

It may seem difficult to achieve, but sometimes there's refuge right around the corner, literally.

(Calming music with strings) (Patricia)A few years ago, I decided to create a Japanese garden for the city of Tucson.

It's open to the public because I felt that the Japanese culture was such a beautiful thing that it was to be shared.

(Paul) I heard about it going in a few years ago, being connected to the Japanese community in Tucson.

And so when I finally made it over here, I was stunned at how beautiful it was.

My wife and I lived in Japan in Nagoya for a year and we loved the gardens and visited a lot.

(pensive music) To have something like this on Alvernon was stunning.

(Patricia) Japanese gardens are very peaceful and they are meant to be in their own way, healing gardens.

I hope that people can come here and find peace.

(Pensive flute and strings) (Paul playing shakuhachi) (Paul) The the instrument I'm playing is called a shakuhachi.

It has a very long relationship to Zen Buddhism in Japan and it's used not as a musical instrument generally, but as a meditation tool.

Shakuhachi, the Japanese flute, it really fits this setting, and to play here is very different than playing in my living room or playing anywhere else.

And so the fact that this is here helps the meditation of the instrument and helps my understanding of what it means.

There's a relationship between this setting and certain states of mind, certain arts, which is why it's great to have this here.

(Paul playing shakuhachi) (Patricia) This is a typical Japanese house that you will find in the countryside.

It's not a tea house.

It doesn't have the right elements.

And anybody who comes to the garden can come in without shoes.

They are made of clay and wood and paper and you sit on Tatami which is old fashioned.

They always have an alcove of flower arrangement and artwork.

(pensive flute and strings) Today we're going to start with a single flower arrangement that are usually done for tea ceremony.

You can just play with the colors of the leaves.

One flower, that's fine, one leaf that's fine.

A different material.

Flower arrangements are very similar to the structure of Japanese gardens.

You have a lot of elements in it that are very natural.

You use branches and flowers.

Never just flowers.

If you can help it.

I teach the most ancient school that is 550 years old.

It is called Ikenob.

And there's about 2500 schools in Japan.

I want this to be three dimensional, not totally flat.

(Drinda) It's very meditational.

It's a creative outlet, you create beauty.

It's a wonderful contribution to the community and an awareness of the Japanese culture.

In the back, somewhere.

Sort of a bit taller than a little taller, Yes.

(Reporter) Patricia Deridders connection to Japan and its culture has been developing for decades, taking root and intensifying over a lifetime.

Deridder was born in Belgium and suffered from polio as a little girl.

Her parents were relentlessly committed to Deridder and her brother with frequent trips to the countryside to enjoy nature and to exercise.

Deridder grew strong and independent, and by the time she was 18 years old, she was allowed to pursue a lifelong dream, move to Japan by herself to learn the language and delve into the culture.

(Patricia) I knew from early on that I wanted to discover Japan, and I went there to study Japanese and stayed 15 years (Reporter) After moving to Wisconsin with her American husband and raising two children She decided to explore her options in sunny Arizona.

(Patricia) When I moved, had to recreate myself, basically because I didn't have the jobs that I had up north and my parents passed away and left me an estate, which I sold.

And eventually I decided I was going to do what I always wanted to do.

My whole life is to create a Japanese garden and a museum.

It is constant work and commitment, but Deridder is trying to persevere.

It took me about a year, a year and a half to build it because it was just there was nothing here.

And we opened in 2013.

(Patricia and Hidenobu speaking Japanese) Hidenobu Oki is attending Pima Community College temporarily, but he's originally from Japan.

He was looking for something to do in his spare time and was amazed by this discovery.

Last August I came here and I have no classes, so yeah, I just borrowing every day.

So I look for some volunteers through the internet and I look for Japanese gardens here?

So yeah, I came here.

(Reporter) It does seem surprising and unusual for some people, a Japanese garden in Arizonas Sonoran Desert, established and run by a woman from Belgium.

But it's all part of Deridders transcontinental path, her journey from Europe to Asia to North America, where she found a place to call home in a garden that she desired.

(Patricia) Well, that's the story of my life.

That's a summary of the life that I've had.

It's it's really the yeah, the summary of what I've lived for.

(pensive flute and strings) Actually, the name of the garden is dream, in Japanese, Yume means dream.

And I always had hope to share what I had learned.

And I had a mentor when I was in Japan who said at a certain age, you have to return what you have received.

And it's my way of returning.

And I was lucky, lucky to be able to do it.

(Paul playing shakuhachi) (Tom) Now, that story is more than five years old.

So here to bring us up to speed on Yume Japanese Garden is its creator, Patricia Deridder Patricia, you've done a wonderful job.

Something special right smack in the middle of Tucson.

Now you're.

You're hosting visitors.

You're hosting events.

What's been happening here since we saw you last?

(Patricia) Well, quite a lot of things.

Yeah.

When I first started the gardens, it was meant to be providing a peaceful place in the center of Tucson.

A place where people could come and regenerate.

And it was started with a very specific wellness program in mind, which was mainly journaling and something that had been developed in other Japanese gardens.

And but that was not enough to make the garden survive on its own.

So we started the museum and now we have a small museum, and that includes also 400 pieces of Japanese Ikebana arrangements.

And we are planning to extend the museum actually in the next 5 to 10 years.

We would like to become the largest Japanese museum in not the United States, but at least in the Southwest.

(Tom) And here in the gardens you're hosting, you're hosting visitors, you're hosting events, you even host film crews, once in a while.

(Patricia) We host all kinds of people (laughs)... We have tea ceremonies, we have musicians, we have concerts, we have festivals of all sorts, flower arrangements.

You name it.

We cover most of the Japanese culture, really.

(Tom) Traditionally, powwow categories are listed with the gender binary men and women.

However, many Native American tribes recognize more than two genders in an effort to create an inclusive environment where all people are respected.

Native PFlag organized the two Spirit powwow, where all reference to gender was eliminated from all categories.

- [Announcer] Dancers come on out, and dance.

(drum music) (singing in native language) - A Powwow is basically a social gathering.

We come and dance, show our regalia, show our beauty, and dance to wonderful music, that has meaning, has spiritual meaning.

(drum music) Almost like a blessing.

(singing in native language) I feel that there's this big old bubble of spiritual energy, just surrounding us.

And of course we have our ancestors here, that are pretty much dancing alongside us.

(singing in native language) - Today, we are having our second annual Two Spirit Powwow.

Last year we had her first.

We got a grant from the Pride Organization for Phoenix.

- Last year we had about 24 dancers, and this year we have 64.

- Traditionally, Powwow is something that is very gender like bias.

So we kind of wanted to erase gender, and we kind of wanted to create a safe space for, two spirit individuals.

- [Announcer] Thank you standing horse dancers.

- [Iann] Good afternoon everyone, my name is Iann Austin.

I am Mr. Southwest Two Spirit.

I'm also part of the Powwow Committee.

I really wanted to say something specifically, to the Two Spirit community that is here with us today.

I wanted to let you know that this was created for you, a safe space for you.

A place that you can go and you can feel welcomed, and you could feel safe, and you're free to be who you want to be.

(drum music) The phrase Two Spirit that was coined back in 1990.

So it's a relatively new term.

And it was from elders within the community, that were at a Powwow, and their Powwow didn't have a dance for them.

- It's someone who was able to help wherever needed, in a village or community.

So, but they're also someone who just feel, that they are both men and women together.

- Good evening ladies and gentlemen, my name is Te Titla.

I'm your current reigning Miss Supreme Pride 2020, and your current reigning Miss Apache Diva forever.

It really depends on where you hear it, and who tells you about it.

I heard the traditional term from my tribe, my grandpa used to call me when I was younger.

It's not derogatory, but I didn't know what it was growing up.

I got to know that he knew that I wasn't gonna be, the average child.

My tribe, the Two Spirit roles they had, were taking items and information from the man to the woman.

So he would say go tell this to that.

- We knew as indigenous people, there's more than a man and a woman.

There's the third gender, there's fourth gender in some tribes.

- I'm Navajo, and in the Navajo wave, LGBT people had a place in our tribes.

And because of colonization and religion, unfortunately, we lost those teachings.

So, my organization Native PFLAG, we're bringing back those traditional teachings.

- (in native language) Good afternoon, my name is Vanessa Losey, I am the currently waiting Miss International Two-Spirit.

I just want to say that the first time I held it, I won a title.

I was in boarding school, I was 14 years old.

And things were so different back then.

We used to have to lock ourselves in a room and hide, and perform our pageant before the dorm attendants came in to check rooms.

And so it's really something to see all of this happening, and to be able to be here.

- I came from a really small town, we made fun of it, and it was bad.

That was like the education that I got.

Back in the 80s and 90s, we didn't come out.

- If the Two Spirit Powwow was here, and there was any type of visibility for anybody, two spirit, transgender or gay, it would have made my life so much easier growing up.

- I found out my daughter was dating a girl, and I talked to her about it.

I wasn't prepared for that discussion at all.

That day that I found out, it ended in both of us crying, I didn't understand.

That same day I asked my son, and at first he denied it.

And then later he said, "Yeah mom, I'm gay, too."

And that was the beginning of my education.

My daughter said some things to me, I'll never forget.

She says, "Mom, why would I do this, when I know society's gonna be against me."

She also said she wasn't gonna tell me, until she got to college, 'cause she didn't want to be a disappointment.

And that's really hard for me, to even think about that to the day because she's amazing.

And I realized, I hadn't made a safe space in my own family, my own home, for her to be who she is.

And so when I started learning more about the community, and all the challenges, and all the things that are cancer in community, I say gotta do something.

I have to do something.

Two spirit people were healers.

They were medicine people, they were mediators, they were part of our culture.

They have been for years and years.

We have to bring that back, 'cause there should be no shame in being LGBT for two spirit.

There should be no shame in that.

In the Navajo culture, we say that it's a blessing to have extra special blessing to have a child who is LGBT, and I could totally, totally agree with that, 'cause I've gotten so many blessings for my children.

(melancholic drumbeat music) (Tom) After a hiatus because of the pandemic, the event is returning the third annual two Spirit powwow will be held at South Mountain Community College, April 15th, 2023, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.. Tucson Author and artist Chris Rush published his first book, a memoir called The Light Years Back in 2019.

Now, the book follows Rush across the country to Tucson and tells a beautiful but often violent story about drug trafficking, gay youth and homelessness.

I was a kid incredibly in love with my life, in love with nature, in love with my sister.

(upbeat organ music) In love with God.

There was plenty to love.

I was a total bouncing love bunny.

I also had a lot of things go wrong.

It never occurred to me to be defeated.

I was a kid!

Okay that's a good one, who am I?

Hmm, my name is Chris Rush, you want that kind of answer?

I've been a painter here for decades and about 10 years ago I realized that somehow I was writing a book.

I bounced back and forth between here and New Jersey.

I spent a long period of time as a backpacker in the Catalina's and that was my code word for homeless.

I survived by selling weed, I shopped at the food co-op, I was a skinny vegetarian.

But up in the mountains something happened.

I thought I was Jesus in the desert.

I was fasting, I was trying to figure out the old questions.

This is one of my favorite Narc photographs.

This is a US Agent who has busted a cactus.

It's a peyote cactus and it needed to be taken in.

And they always, the Narcs always photograph pot with guns even though there usually were no guns involved, they had to make sure we understood the dangers.

When I look at these photos I've collected I can say it really did look like that.

This is exactly what was happening.

And I look back on the picture and say, we really were weird, and happy, strange.

I wrote this book, or I started the book saying to myself, well someone else has written this book.

It's obvious.

I wasn't alone during those wild years.

Someone else certainly has gotten to it before me.

And I realized that no one did.

There's a lot of reasons for that.

You know, being a queer kid from New Jersey born in 1956 who really liked drugs, your survival chances are a little shaky.

My father was wearing flowered ties and drinking J and B.

He didn't want to miss out, he was still young.

He was probably in his mid 40s when his children started to freak out, and I think it's all really interesting.

You know there's a lot you simply can't explain.

Why that outfit?

I don't know.

I don't know at all.

Oh God.

When I first came out here, was in 1971.

I had been on a truly harrowing road trip to get here.

By the time I got to Tucson, I had just gotten out of the hospital.

I had had some problems hitch-hiking.

I was a mess but I got here, and I still had a wallet full of money.

And I was here to score weed.

I was 15.

In spite of all the ups and downs, of being a drug dealer, trying to fall in and out of love a hundred times, I found ultimately that I kept thinking of Tucson.

I kept thinking of the light here.

I kept thinking of something I saw here that was truer than anything else I've ever seen.

I was originally thinking of great distance, and I was thinking of UFO's and the cities of the universe, but then I thought I was very much in Tucson, in the desert, it was all a very light driven existence.

It was incredibly sunny and unreal.

And then, I also thought, and I was a backpacker.

Everything I owned was on my back.

And I was traveling very light.

I had learned as a painter that the image must transact, it must satisfy, it must have an effect.

And the artist has his bag of tricks.

I have bright colors, and contrast, and shapely forms, and I have subjects I know that intrigue.

And as the writer, it was the same thing.

I had to write in a colorful, bold, fashion because it's what I require to be interested.

Once I became a true, autonomous adult and moved far away from my family, I did consider my past but for very different reasons because I was sickened and enraged.

Some of it got into my art, but mostly I annoyed my friends and was really bad company.

By the time I started to write, it was a very different relationship because I was not writing out of a sense of anger or revenge.

I had no scores to settle.

I can see clearly all the things that had happened and was looking at them because they were fascinating and peculiar.

And even when my villains came back around, I rather loved them.

Two hitch hikers, probably Germany.

That was very much, that was Me that's what it looked like.

Mom and Dad.

I wonder if he took drugs?

The hippies really did predict the future.

And I was one of the experimental babies who was given LSD at 12.

You know, and I was told it was a brain vitamin.

Perhaps it was.

You can see Chris Rush's imaginative and detailed paintings and drawing in his new show called Again with The Real and Etherton Gallery in Barrio Viejo, on display until April 15th, 2023 My name's Terry Etherton, I'm the owner of Etherton Gallery.

We've been in Tucson in business since the summer of 1981, so we're in our 42nd year now.

Moved here almost two years ago, so we're still fairly new in this location.

We've had probably eight or ten shows with Chris over the years.

He walked into my gallery probably in 88 or early 89, and he introduced himself and said, ‘I'm Chris Rush and I'm a really good artist.

And I said, okay, I... nobody ever said that to me.

But he was absolutely right about that.

And part of what I like about Chris is that he's very self-confident person about his work.

And we've had, like I said, probably eight or ten shows.

No two shows have been anything alike.

Chris is one of the few artists that we do not try to ask him what he's going to do for the next show.

I just let him do it and then I want to be surprised and this is this is what you get right?

You get a show that's unlike the last show or the show before that.

And it's incredible.

I mean, this is a kind of a tour de force of skills and ideas.

You know, I mean, Chris is a kind of a deep thinking guy with a wicked sense of humor and crazy skills.

I mean, you can see he can draw, he can paint.

And he's a great writer as you probably know.

Thank you for joining us from beautiful Yume Japanese Gardens in midtown.

I'm Tom McNamara.

We'll see you next week for Arizona Illustrated.

(Calm guitar music)