- Welcome to Kalamazoo Lively Arts.

The show that takes you inside Kalamazoo's vibrant creative community and explores its people who breathe life into the arts.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Support for Kalamazoo Lively Arts is provided by the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation, helping to build and enrich the cultural life of Greater Kalamazoo.

- I'm Shelley Irwin here at Miller Auditorium.

On today's show, we meet Brenda Murphy, author and artist in Kalamazoo, Sonya Bernard-Hollins, of the Merze Tate Explorers, and Jun-Ching Lin, concert master with the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra.

This season looks a little different as we work to showcase the arts in safe and creative ways.

We're introducing a new artist-in-residence.

It's a series where we will dive deeper into an organization for three continuous weeks, lifting the curtain on the creative process as we go.

We're checking back in with the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra.

Take a look!

(orchestral music) - Well today my conversation is with Concertmaster Jun-Ching Lin, and he's the concertmaster for the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra.

And see what I knew I was going to talk to you.

I actually looked up the definition and I read that a concertmaster is the most skilled and the most knowledgeable violinist in the orchestra.

- I hesitate to say "most skill," because I, that, that seems so arrogant.

(laughter) The concertmaster is the first, first violinist.

With that chair comes expectation that you play your instrument really, really well.

If the composer writes solo In that part, you'’re supposed Be able to suddenly play a solo by yourself.

It's usually my responsibility to make sure that the communications from the conductor are understood by, mostly by the string players, but there are some kind of musical considerations that the winds and brass need to understand, and hopefully I can help facilitate that understanding.

(opera singing, orchestral music) - Now, I know you have your violin there with you.

So, I was hoping you could tell me a little bit about your violin.

How old is it?

Where did you get it?

And does it, does it make a difference if you're playing this violin or another violin?

- Well, okay, so this is my violin.

I've had it for, for about 30 years.

It was made, the label says 1690, the label can lie, but its definitely by the maker that made it.

but its certainly from around that period.

So, if you think about it, that's 330 years old, right?

And so, you know, I, I think of it as, like, I'm, I'm taking care of it for the next person.

You know, obviously no one player has had a violin for 300 years, so, it's amazing what works of art came out.

And that's I don't know if the viewers know certain violins sell in the tens of millions of dollars.

And that's because they are objects of art.

And certain violins by certain makers are the Picassos or the Renoirs of violins.

So, they go in those many millions.

This is not quite in that millions of dollars range, but it was made in the same small little city in Italy at the same time by those makers.

And this is from a very well-known maker.

His name is Francesco Rugeri He was probably better known for cellos, but I've had this violin for, like I said, 30 years.

I got it from a shop in Philadelphia.

(loud orchestral music and opera singing) - And what do you think violins bring to an orchestra, as both a player and as a concertmaster?

- The violin part, the first violin part I play, the concertmaster plays, and the first violin section, is usually kind of the melody or the main line that the audience will hear.

If you ask what we bring, beyond our enormous good looks, I think that it's usually the, the line that you go from.

(loud opera singing and orchestral music) - How does it create sound?

- The very basics of, of how a violin makes sound have to do with the four strings and, and this thing which is called a bow.

And there's this, this white strip that you see here is actually horsehair.

- Oh!

- It's the tail of a horse.

And it, and it gets covered in tree sap, rosin, essentially.

And that creates some friction (violin playing) with the strings (violin playing) and pulls a certain sound out of it.

So those, that's the kind of basics of how a violin produces sound.

There's all this things about the bridge and sound boxes and it's hollow inside and all that kind of stuff.

Probably a little too technical, but a lot of the what I do in classical music is very specific indications that the composer has written.

So the composer will write if I have to play short notes.

So if they (fast violin playing) if they want a lot of notes that are short they'll write a certain indication.

If they don't want me to use my bow, (plucking strings) you know, a plot, that's called pizzicato.

- Now I saw you, on YouTube, playing two violins.

- I was playing, it was, it's called a Canonic Duo.

And Georg Philipp Telemann wrote a Duo for Violin.

It's essentially like "Row Row Row Your Boat."

Someone starts on the next stanza.

And so I recorded the first part.

And then I had to wait for my video self to come and play two measures, and then I came in again.

And just to change it up a little bit, I decided to change the angle, so I wasn't in the same direction.

I took off my glasses, so I wasn't wearing glasses.

And so that it would be two different me's playing.

I changed shirts too, so I wouldn't have the same shirt on while I was playing.

And what was really funny was when I first got the link after it was produced, and I put it on my computer and my wife walked by and she looked at it and she said, "Who you playing with?"

She didn't know who the other violinist was.

And it was her husband of 32 years.

- Can you play a little bit for me?

- Sure.

Here's a little bit of Bach.

Hopefully you can see.

(playing a Bach piece for violin) - Oh my gosh, that's so beautiful, that's so beautiful!

Thank you so much for talking with me here today.

That's so beautiful.

- Was my pleasure, and I look forward to talking to you again.

(violin playing) - Brenda Fettig Murphy, author of the book "Squiggling Through COVID-19: How This Artist Kept From Going Nuts During the Pandemic."

Well, Brenda, you know, while people were, you know, cooking and cleaning and reading and over-stuffing themselves, you were doing something a little different during COVID, weren't you?

- I was.

I got tired of watching "Morning Joe," listening to Mika and Joe rant, and Netflix and Acorn TV, and so forth.

So I took a pencil and I actually went down into my studio and just started to draw some different things.

And one day I just sort of, I picked up a pencil and started squiggling around.

And what I made was something that looked like this.

And then I made another line with it that looked like this.

And then I sort of took some markers and things and and I filled it in and it was like, "Oh, what's that?

Interesting looking."

And so every day I would put one, put it up on Facebook, and say, "Well, what would you, what would you title this?

What do you see in this?"

And I really got some unusual things.

Let me show you.

This one, this one shows you the initial sketch and then - Wow.

- [Brenda] In process.

And then this was what it ended up as.

And people saw some really funny things in this.

Somebody saw a turkey, a cowboy in a white hat, Bloody Mary toppings, a Mad Hatter.

I mean, it was just, it was really funny what they thought.

- Okay, Brenda, you're going to show me how to squiggle.

This is the interactive part of the, of the show.

It's always the most nerve wracking for me because I too want everything to be perfect, but (laughter) - Okay.

It's going to be great.

Okay.

So you have your pencil, you have your paper.

Okay?

- I do.

- All right.

Okay.

So you have to close your eyes, put the pencil on the paper, which is what I'm going to do right now.

And then just move the hand around, move your hand around with the pencil and just let it make shapes and whatever.

- I did it.

- Okay.

Oh goodness.

Okay.

Okay.

I did one too.

Draw more lines on it.

When you do it, like - Can I add onto it or should I just do a whole new one?

- No.

You know what?

You can add on to it.

Just put the pencil down on the paper, close your eyes and just go, try to go out to the edges of the paper more, and just really move your hand around freely.

Like (Brenda makes deep breathing noises) Oh my gosh, look at that!

Oh, that's incredible!

That's really interesting!

Wow!

Oh my goodness, we're going to have - You're not going to read these and tell me I'm crazy or anything, right?

(laughter) - No, I'm not.

- What was the strangest thing that you were ever told that you saw in one of your drawings.

- I must tell you the one that I got the most reaction for.

I had, I had one day where the day wasn't going well at all.

In fact, my husband and I had had a disagreement and I went out and I drove around and it got dark and I came home and it was terrible.

So I did this.

- Oh!

Darkness!

- Well, and it's captioned as "I had a really bad day."

(laughter) And what's really funny is like, when I've showed people the book, when they look through it or they bought it, so many of them have commented on that particular one.

It was like, that's the one I could really relate to.

I had a really bad day.

And I think that's what happened was, I mean, we a lot of people had really bad days and some of them, people are still having really bad days.

All right.

Pull it up again.

Let me see it again.

- Okay.

This is just the beginning.

Okay?

This is just the beginning.

- Oh!

Oh that's cute!

- Can you try to interpret that for me?

- Hmm.

I don't know.

Sort of looks like a, could be a lobster.

And a cell phone.

Is that a little cell phone or something?

A little, what is that over on the side?

- I don't know.

I just got inspired to just do like polka dots there.

- Okay.

Hmm.

See, I mean, you can put blinds, like checkerboards or stripes or whatever you want to do.

- Yeah.

I think I'm going to do the checkerboard all through here.

Maybe I need to add something here, all that space, eh?

What does creating art do for you?

So, when you sit down and you get in that space, what does that do to you for you as a person, I guess?

- Well, it just, it just feels good to do that.

I love working with the colors.

It's just, like last week I was working on something and it was, it was a really, really great day.

And so I came down into my studio and I was working on this piece and I, I just took an enormous tube of bright red acrylic paint.

And I painted a background on something.

And this is actually what I came up with.

- Oh wow.

- But it just, like the red paint.

It was just, it was so bright and it was just the idea was a textured medium and a big brush.

So I just painted away.

And then you feel better.

- I'll you what was confusing to me, because I researched you a little bit, and you have an MA in Math, from Columbia, and you love drawing squiggles.

So how do those two go together?

- I guess the way, I haven't lost my inner child.

That's basically what it comes down to.

Well, you know, you can, if you if you want to break the space up, you can do that too.

Just draw, just draw straight lines through it anywhere you like and break the space up into several different pieces, because that'll give you more of a chance to, to put different colors in.

- Broken up.

- Oh, there you go!

Okay.

All right.

- I create flowing lines.

Do you notice that, like I don't have sharp angles in mine.

- No, you don't.

Yours is this going to look great.

I want to see it when it's done.

- Art is fun!

Art is supposed to be fun and it is fun!

It's therapeutic too.

Brenda, it's been so much fun talking with you today.

It really has.

Thank you so much for your time.

- Thank you for, for talking with me.

I've enjoyed watching you squiggle away your day here.

(laughter) - Well today my conversation is with Sonya Hollins, who is an award-winning journalist, activist, author, and teacher.

Thank you so much for talking with me here today.

- Thank you for having me.

This is amazing - So you know, in researching you and reading about you, you seemed like a really curious kid.

So tell me about what your childhood was like growing up.

- Oh my gosh.

So at my grandmother's house, that was the gathering place for all of us kids.

And she would get like Ebony and Jet Magazines that would come in the mail.

And I remember us always looking at those, getting together at the table to see who was inside the magazine, the famous people, the athletes.

And I remember my cousins always saying I want to be like that.

I want to be famous.

And I was always the one who wanted to interview those people.

Like how cool would that be to actually meet all these people and share their stories for people to read?

So that inspired me when I was a kid and I didn't even know the word "journalism," really.

I just knew I wanted to interview people and travel and share these stories of amazing people.

That that was what my passion was.

And so my grandmother gave me a typewriter when I was in fourth grade and I learned how to type and, you know, I was always the class journalist or I was in the yearbook committee and the newspaper committee at school and editor in college and you know, all that type of thing in my school newspaper.

So journalism became a part of me.

And my way to say, I can tell these stories.

I can share adventures in people's worlds through media.

- And I remember reading about you, I think it was 2008 that you founded the Merze Tate Explorers, right?

And I have been fascinated.

Like I started reading about Merze Tate, how are we not, how have we not heard about Merze Tate, right?

- Right, right.

Amazing woman.

I learned about her when I was a reporter at the Kalamazoo Gazette.

And because I love telling people's stories and I love history, I did a story on the first African-Americans of Western Michigan University.

And Merze Tate was the first African-American woman to receive an honorary alumni award.

And I thought about, who is this woman?

And why did she receive this honor?

And I learned that she not only graduated from Western in 1927 with the highest academic record in the school's history, but she was the first black graduate of Oxford University in England.

A Fulbright scholar in India, traveled the world twice, was a bridge champion, and an inventor, left over a million dollars to Western.

She was an international political writer.

I'm like, whoa!

And this is a Michigan woman, you know?

So I was just fascinated with her story and her, her scrapbooks of her world travels.

And one picture that really stood out to me was a picture of her with some kids, like in 1931, 1932, they were going to Washington, DC on Easter Sunday.

And they had this banner that said "Travel Club."

And because she was a history teacher, her goal was to teach these African-American students at Crispus Attucks High School about the world they were learning through in the history books.

And so that picture of these kids stuck with me and I said, "How cool would that be to have a travel club?"

You know, where you taught kids different stuff, different places in geography.

And they met interesting people along the way.

And that's how the Travel Club began.

- In your Explorers Club, tell me some of the places that you've taken, taken the kids.

- Well, it's funny because when we first started in 2008, I had this article in the Gazette, I say if a girl wants to travel the world, you go as a travel writer and join this club.

And we had these girls show up, it was 12 girls who showed up.

Back then it was East Hall, was where we were, we met in the Archives there, in this old dingy East hall.

And, you know, they were thinking we're going to travel all over the world.

But basically we traveled around our community first.

We went to Ladies Library, we did ice skating, you know, we went to Detroit to the Motown Museum.

So we kind of started off in little increments, but we always had travel gains and geography and learned about landmarks around the world.

And so today we've actually gone to, to Japan, we've gone to Europe, Italy, Hawaii, a lot of the places that Merze Tate has gone and written books about.

So we were following in her footsteps in a way.

- Sonya, can you tell me how art and storytelling kind of work together?

- You know, that's funny, because when we talked about my passion earlier through the Ebony and Jet Magazines, that's media.

You know, media is the story.

And so as travel writers, that's what these girls are.

They're writing about the places they go and the people that they meet, and they're creating their own magazines to tell their stories.

So that's where media comes in.

They're taking photographs, you know, the places that they're traveling to, you know, when they're going to Washington, DC and they're, you know, making videos based on the places that they're going.

I mean, they met Ruth Carter, the first African-American to get an Oscar for Costume Design for her work in "Black Panther."

You know?

So that's art.

You're meeting all these amazing people who are you know, you know, using art and creating art and not only are they creating magazines, but they're creating video, you know to share with their peers and with their communities.

You know?

So that's media, that's art.

And for our organization to be an educational organization, it also is heavy, heavily relies on media and arts to tell stories.

- What do you think about like when you have someone like Merze Tate, Benjamin Losford, Albert White, Enoch and Deborah Harris, the Phillips Brothers, what is it that they had that allowed them to press through?

What was it?

- You know, I think it was: what is your choice?

What is your alternative?

If you don't succeed, what will happen, and not only to yourself, but to your people?

And I think when they were doing things it was more than just about themselves.

They were looking at how do I keep my, my generation behind, the generation behind me inspired?

And, you know, someone else said before if you climb the glass ceiling, you're going to get hair glass in your hair, you know, they weren't afraid to break those glass ceilings for us, for us to be able to stand on their shoulders.

And I think they were very brave back in those days to, to go off on uncharted waters, so to speak, and do things that had never been accomplished by African-Americans.

I mean, so many things that have been accomplished by us was during slavery and we didn't get any credit for that.

So after slavery, it was just boldness.

They have that boldness, like, "This is our time.

We can prove that we are educated.

We are smart.

We can do amazing things."

- I love this quote.

I kind of, I have a book as well.

I love this quote.

"Once a mind has been expanded, it's hard to go back to where it was."

- Yeah.

That's Oliver Wendell Holmes, you know?

- Okay, okay.

I saw that quote and it's true, right?

There's so many stories to be told now.

- Yes.

So, so many stories.

And you know, when we take our girls to places like Whirlpool and then reading with the women vice presidents, you can't not take that back.

You cannot tell a woman she can't be a vice president when you see her in a room full of women vice presidents at one of the major corporations in the world, you know, when you're expanding the minds to the possibilities and that's our tagline: exploring possibilities.

You cannot go back to saying, "I can't do that.

Or how can."

You say either I'm going to do it or I'm going to be the first to do it, you know, because you had these other strong role models that you're learning about and seeing along the way.

- And you know, when I was going to introduce you, I was gonna, you know, sing all your accolades, but it would have taken the whole show.

So we'll talk about the most recent one.

You're, you're getting an award from the arts council coming up here, right?

- Yes.

That was amazing.

And I was supposed to be presented it last fall, but with COVID they wanted to have some kind of ceremony.

So I still don't know who nominated me for this award.

They won't tell me, but the event, it comes up in April and they will recognize me for the work I've done with youth in the community.

- Well, Sonya, it's been so much fun talking with you today.

Thank you so much for giving me some of your time.

I know you're a busy lady, so I appreciate it.

- Hey, well, thank you for having me.

Always happy to share about Merze Tate and then how these girls are doing amazing things.

We've had our own girls have been Fulbright scholars, you know, so they're learning and learning from Merze Tate's legacy and making their own paths as well.

So I'll just thank you for allowing me to share the story.

- Thank you for joining us on this week's episode of Kalamazoo Lively Arts.

Check out today's show and other content at wgvu.org.

We leave you tonight with a performance by Jun-Ching Lin and the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra.

I'm Shelley Irwin.

Have a great night.

(orchestral music) - [Announcer] Support for Kalamazoo Lively Arts is provided by the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation, helping to build and enrich the cultural life of Greater Kalamazoo.

(upbeat music)