- [Kim] Welcome to "Kalamazoo Lively Arts," the show that takes you inside Kalamazoo's vibrant, creative community and explores the 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.

- On this episode of "Kalamazoo Lively Arts," Martha Rosenfeld looks back on her career with her solo exhibit "Three: Decades/Places/Media."

Selkie, trio of dynamic Celtic musicians, talk about how positive relationships influence their music.

And Kandace Lavender of Read and Write Kalamazoo speaks to the power of supporting youth by giving them a voice to express themselves.

Well, today I'm talking to Kandace Lavender, executive director of Read and Write Kalamazoo.

But you know, Kandace, you're so much more than that.

I was trying to figure out how to describe you.

So how would you describe you?

- I would probably say community engager, artist, youth advocate, student, teacher, many things for sure.

- And being the executive director of Read and Write Kalamazoo, how do those two things go together?

- Wow.

I think the beautiful part about the work at Read and Write Kalamazoo or RAWK, we kind of move outside of the academic lens of reading and writing.

So when we think of reading and writing, we probably, most of us go back to school and think of the books and the text and not not being really enthusiastic about it.

And so the beautiful relationship that Read and Write Kalamazoo looks to do is to find creative ways to engage youth in reading and writing.

Going outside of you have to read to fall in love with reading, fall in love with writing.

And so when I saw the opening for an ED, for an organization that was seeking to celebrate and amplify youth voices through reading and writing, I knew that was definitely a place that I could call home.

- Oh, for sure.

And have you ever had like a light bulb moment at RAWK where a kid comes in and like, "I don't know how to write, I don't know what to say."

- Oh yeah, that actually just happened.

I had a project at the juvenile home.

I always tell people though, in this field of education that I've been in for probably about 15 years now, I don't know why I love to connect with the youth that don't wanna read or write or that don't want to do the work, or the ones that folks often label a behavioral issue or whatever.

Those are the ones I always strive to connect with.

And so I had the opportunity of going to the juvenile home and walking in, I was already met with, oh, we about to write, we're gonna read.

And then I spit a hot 16 rap verse and I get their attention and it flows after that.

- Tell me about that project, 'cause I was going to ask you about that.

- "Life Sentences" is an anthology of stories from six youth that were at the time incarcerated at the juvenile home.

And that's exactly what it is.

It's just their life in sentences.

But I think one of the most impactful moments and I actually, when I delivered the books to the young men, I just left the space crying just because of feeling their emotions all in one was very challenging for me.

The passion that keeps you in this work, some of that ebb and flow is really feeling hopeless.

Feeling like, how can we help everyone?

How can we support everyone?

How can we make sure everyone has what they need?

And sometimes it feels impossible.

It can feel like a life sentence that no matter how hard we try, no matter how much love we give, no matter how, there's still these moments, these wounds that seem to be uncurable.

And so I think the greatest gift that I can give is this space to write it down.

Like, at the very least, you will be able to know what it feels like to tell someone your story and feel empowered.

When I came back and I said, yo, I shared this on my Facebook and look how much love y'all got, you know, look how much love is out there for you.

"Life Sentences" was transformative for me in recognizing the ways that Read and Write Kalamazoo can show up for young people.

- It must be pretty cool too, 'cause you're also a mom, for your son to have like a hip hop mom.

(laughs) - Yeah, so my partner, her biological children, but definitely my loves for sure.

So one is a DJ and that has definitely been such a joy to see him evolve because it started again as just an interest.

But as I tell parents, community members, when a youth comes to you with an interest, I feel it's our duty to pour into them because they don't know that this interest could be a career, could be an opportunity to change the community, the world, you know what I mean?

And so many doors have been open for him just from that one passion and being able to be a part of this stage of his life is no different than what I've done for the last 20 years with youth.

There's many youth in the community that call me mom, that have always found safety, I guess, with me.

And I think it's just out of my desire to have had that when I was their age, being what we wish we had when we were children.

♪ This time we are in time ♪ We must remind of the divine ♪ 'Cause eventually it'll only be memories inside our minds ♪ ♪ So let us hold on ♪ Until we're gone, gone, gone - You're gonna be performing at Art on the Mall.

You've done it before, but what's that like, like looking out from the stage, doing your thing up there and seeing people responding to it?

- Yeah, I think the most beautiful part about being an artist in Kalamazoo is the community that supports the artistry.

And so there's nothing like being on stage and seeing your people walk by and stop and I'm a firm believer of the exchange of energy in any performance.

And so it really just allows the performance to be that more intimate, but also hopefully explosive to the listener and to myself when there is that exchange of energy outside.

- So what's next for you, Kandace?

- Well, I still feel like I'm riding the wave of relaxation after completing a doctorate degree.

So I think I'm set for a while, but you know, you can catch me on a stage in Kalamazoo.

We have a couple gigs in Chicago coming up and definitely, absolutely always connecting and building up youth in Kalamazoo for sure.

- Kandace Lavender, woman extraordinaire and executive director of Read and Write Kalamazoo.

Thank you so much for talking with me again here today.

- Thank you.

(upbeat music) - Martha Rosenfeld's artistic endeavors have spanned decades and many different mediums.

Let's learn about her and her creations.

Well, today I'm talking with Martha Rosenfeld, who's the president of Signature Artists in Kalamazoo.

They've been an active part of the Kalamazoo visual arts landscape for over 40 years, and Martha is a visual artist.

Thank you so much for talking with me here today.

- Thank you for inviting me.

- So you have a solo exhibit.

It's gonna be happening at the Carnegie Center for Arts in Three Rivers, I mean, wow.

It's entitled "Three: Decades/Places/Media."

Tell me a little bit about this.

- It's a partial retrospective, but showcasing a bunch of my current work, which hasn't been exhibited yet.

So I'm currently a fiber artist.

I design and make hooked rugs, which is kind of an old 19th century craft technique, but I'm doing contemporary things with it.

But before that, I was a potter and sculptor for a really long time, and that was the main part of my career.

And I also did some mixed media work on paper.

- And tell me about the history of rug hooking.

- The history is a little obscure, but I don't think it dates back very far.

It's mainly from the 19th century and it was a thrifty craft using burlap feed sacks as a foundation and basically mill ends and scraps and clothing.

So kind of like quilting.

It was a way to do a lot with a little, and for people who couldn't afford Persian carpets, it was a way to create warm floor coverings for their homes with the materials they had on hand.

- You know, yours are beautiful.

I mean, I've never seen rugs like yours or they're really, I mean, wall hangings.

I could never imagine stepping on them, but like, do you dye your own yarn?

- I have some props here.

Here are some examples of some of the wool that I use.

So you can see this has sort of a light plaid to it.

This is a boulder plaid.

So yeah, so what happens is you cut them up.

So this is a pale yellow that's been cut up into little quarter inch strips.

And so what happens with a plaid when you cut it up, it breaks up the plaid and you get a more random assortment of the colors that are within the fabric.

And then we have a tool, this is my favorite hook.

They come with different gauges of hook and different shapes and sizes of handles, but I like this one.

And we're basically pulling up loops of the fabric through a foundation cloth.

Made with 100% wool and a linen foundation, these rugs can actually stand up to foot traffic for decades.

They'll outlast me for sure.

- What does creating, like, what does art do for you?

- I love doing things with my hands.

I love making something.

And I think so many of us live in our heads so much of the time, we're reading, we're thinking, we're working with our brains.

Making something, creating something with my hands gives me a way to connect my head to my body, to my heart in a way, it sort of integrates everything where you're not just working with your head, you're not just doing something mindless, it's a way to pull everything together.

I don't know what my life would be like without thinking around with some little creative project at all times.

- And you teach, you say, at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts.

What do those classes look like?

Like what does the student walk away with?

- So those are fun.

So for beginning students, we basically provide all the materials with the course fee.

So we have loaner equipment, we have beginner patterns.

They're about 12 or 14 inches square, and it may take them 10 whole weeks to finish that pattern.

We learn some color theory along with the actual hooking technique.

And then for returning students, the focus is on helping them to design their own rug.

So it's kind of like a one room classroom with people working at different levels.

But it's great because the beginners can learn from watching the returning students work on their projects.

And the best classes are the ones where everybody's talking to each other and I can walk out of the room and they don't even notice I'm gone.

I think art, it's an essential part of being human.

I mean, if you look at cave art from 40,000 years ago, our ancestors way back then were making marks with stuff.

They were drawing pictures.

Drawing pictures is kind of, it's hardwired into us and kids love to draw and somehow somewhere along the line they learn that they're not good at it and then they get interested in other stuff and then they become the many adults I meet who sheepishly confess that they only know how to draw stick figures and they're embarrassed that they can't draw.

But I think it's something that's available to us.

And I think it's just a darn shame so many people are afraid of it.

- Yeah, it's the learning curve, right?

It's the learning curve that scares people.

Like they wanna be like an expert and you start at it, it's not, it's oh rip it apart again.

How many rugs have you had to, do you take things apart once you put 'em together?

- Oh yeah, actually that's one of the nice things about rug hooking, it's very forgiving.

Basically, if you find that the choice you made about to put this color here and you thought it was gonna look good, and then you realize it's not looking so good, you can tear stuff out and make substitutions.

It's very forgiving.

You're gonna make some mistakes with your first hooked rug.

I tell my beginning students, this is the one you're gonna make all your mistakes on.

You know, you're supposed to, how else are you gonna learn?

So you have to let yourself be incompetent for a while.

- And just do art for art's sake, not for any purpose, just to express, right.

whatever's inside of you to come out.

Martha Rosenfeld, thank you so much for talking with me here today.

It was so much fun learning all about you and your art and your exhibit coming up, so I appreciate your time.

- Thank you very much for inviting me.

It's been a pleasure to be on the show.

(upbeat music) (singing in foreign language) - Selkie weaves the sounds of flute, fiddle, harp, guitar, and more to create traditional and original Celtic music.

(singing in foreign language) Well, today I'm talking with Cara Lieurance, along with Michele Venegas and Jim Spalink, members of the Celtic trio Selkie.

Thank you so much for talking with me here today.

- Thank you.

- So let's start with your name.

Where does the name come from?

What does it mean?

Where does it originate?

- Selkie is a mythological creature from the Celtic Isles.

It's a seal, but it occasionally will come ashore and shed its skin and go for a swim.

It'll hide the skin in the rocks.

The Irish believed that the dark-haired, dark eyed Irish people are descendants of the Selkie.

- Oh, what a great story.

I love that.

And in seeing your band perform, because you were recently at The Clover Room, I mean, you take like multi-instrumentalists to a whole other level.

How did this all originate?

How did you all come together and with this massive amount of talent?

- We've all sort of been were swirling around each other.

You know, it's a very small, the Celtic music community in West Michigan is quite small, but we had played together, well Cara and I played in a group, it was an all women group called the Merry Sisters of Fate.

And that's how we met probably about 15 years ago.

And then Jim was in Puck Fair for years.

And so our bands would always play.

And then we started playing as a group and then it kind of morphed and yada, yada, yada.

Here we are, Cara's with us and we are now Selkie.

But I think because of our relationship with each other, the non-musical relationship, like we're really our favorite people, that translates musically.

(bright Celtic music) - And you all play so many instruments.

I want you to go down the line and tell me what you play.

- Anything with strings is what I play, but I perform with Selkie primarily fiddle and banjo.

- Celtic harp, bouzouki, and mandolin.

You know, the cittern-shaped instruments, I guess.

- My first instrument was flute.

My father taught me when I was nine.

Picked up the button accordion, a BC, two row button accordion.

- I know recently you played at The Clover Room, which is a very small venue.

You know, I've seen other performances where you're in front of large groups of people.

What was that like playing at The Clover Room?

It seemed like a very intimate setting.

- That's our favorite.

Playing for big groups of people is really fun too, but there's something so nice about that intimate setting where you kind of feel like, you know, you're in somebody's living room and we can just chat and play and have really more of the tradition of the music is that small little places, not a ton of people, very intimate, and squished together.

- And recently you did some studio work too.

- That was an incredible experience and this setting was just really cool.

It's just- - [Kim] It was warm, it was intimate, it was just beautiful.

The lighting, everything.

- [Michele] All of that, all of that.

It was great.

Like we would like to do that again and come in and do maybe another handful of tunes 'cause it was just a great, great experience.

- You know, I had the revelation recently for myself.

I mean, I've always loved music, but music for me, it was the glue that like held my whole life together.

It got me through things when I was a kid.

It gets me through things now.

And so I was kind of wondering like, what does music mean to you?

- Music is my religion.

It has the whole gamut of spirituality, community, celebration.

I couldn't imagine being without it.

- They say that music is the skin that holds your emotions.

And so this is why you hear music from your childhood or music moves you in the way that it does.

And you know, and people at the end of their life who may not remember their family, but they'll remember songs that they sang when they were kids.

- It's one of the few places where everything makes sense.

It's an absolute, it's always gonna be there and it's always gonna be consistent.

(singing in foreign language) If you are enjoying yourself and having fun and the people listening do.

And I think the goal is just to relax and have fun and then vicariously people will join you.

- One is if you see people dancing and what's always so great is when little kids are there because children don't have this filter that grownups do.

And they hear the music and it goes straight to their heart and straight to their feet and they don't care.

You know, the grownups are like dances if nobody's watching.

Well kids really do that 'cause they don't have that yet.

So it's beautiful.

So I always love it when kids are there.

- So let me ask you like, what sets Selkie apart from all the others?

- I think that some of our playlists would cross over with other traditional groups who love the same tunes that go on for hundreds of years.

But then we have Jim Spalink here who just writes some really beautiful tunes, usually while he is sitting on a beach or in a forest somewhere.

And to me they really, I feel honored to play them.

And also I feel connected to our beautiful state when I play them too.

- [Speaker] Yeah!

(audience applauding) (light Celtic music) (light Celtic music continues) (light Celtic music continues) (light Celtic music continues) (light Celtic music ends) - [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)