- Today on Extra Credit, a behind the scenes look at the making of a giant puppet.

Plus, a peak into the life of Frida Kahlo.

Stay tuned.

(upbeat music) Welcome to Extra Credit, where we meet interesting people, explore new ideas, and discover fun places together.

I'm your host, Yash.

Today's show focuses on the history, heritage, and cultural contributions of Hispanic and Latino Americans.

First let's meet Gabriela Riveros, an artist who is inspired by her Paraguayan heritage.

(upbeat music) (orchestral music) - I am Gabriela Riveros, and I grew up on the West-side of Milwaukee, born and raised.

And my parents are from Asuncion Paraguay.

(orchestral music) So growing up I've always kinda been into drawing, and then I happened to go, or be like enough to go to schools that specialize in art.

So amounting to my college career, I thought illustration was the best fit because my drawings always told a story of some sort.

(marimba music) So my designs I like to focus on like history, and culture.

I'm really into heritage.

Especially Latino heritage.

So I try to integrate as much like history, and kind of like lineage.

And I research a lot of tradition, and kind of like retranslate that into something that people can relate to modern day.

Recently my biggest inspiration is like Latino literature.

So I really draw my inspirations from like the past.

For my audience though I'm really inspired by people like me who want to know more about their identity, and kind of like connect more with that.

Cause I think a lot of times people kind of lose their like cultural roots.

I first started getting really into it when I actually went back to Paraguay.

And then I've been just taking notes and like creating art while I was there.

And soaking up just like the own traditions that I would normally kind of like look past and just do.

And then doing, on my own time, researching like Paraguayan history and art, and understanding where everything comes from, that we have presence in our culture.

Like all the indigenous roots, and the like Spanish roots, and how all of those combine.

I think I really love kind of like the mythology.

Cause Paraguayans are like, well they're like the ultimate mestizo for the most part.

But like the indigenous is Guarani.

And the Guarani traditions and like culture is very present with us.

So one of my favorite things I take away from that is all the old tales, and I love all the art along with it.

They do a lot of traditional weavings, and they have these really special delicate weavings that I incorporate a lot into my work as like an inspiration.

(spanish guitar music) So the ones that I've done that have been most important to me would probably be some pieces from my undergrad work.

There was one that I made that was very conceptual.

It was about day of the dead.

And it was this young girl that was reconnecting with her roots.

And she had a bunch of like Jose Posada skeletons dancing around her.

And after that it was like oh, I really like the way this looks.

So I guess that was one of my most important pieces that kind of launched the series of my current work.

I have worked with Colectivo Coffee, Cafe Corazon, I recently just worked with this non-profit called Noxtin, out of California.

Waukee Film Festival this year, they wanna do something crazy, colorful, and detailed.

So they were trying to look for an artist that fit that bill.

So I had a professor that recommended me.

So we linked up and they said, 'Oh your work's perfect for this.'

The theme of it was the wild side of Milwaukee.

So my main inspiration for that piece was medieval art.

So the main layout is based off Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, the center panel, where it's kind of like this heavenly landscape.

If you know your history well, you'll notice like medieval beasts that I've kind of reinterpreted as Milwaukee citizens.

And then I was also inspired by drolleries.

They were like really weird medieval doodles in the margins of illuminated manuscripts.

So I usually start my drawings on paper and then I scan them in the computer, and then with the computer I basically draw and paint digitally.

I start out with research, that's always my base.

I have a subject I'm kind of interested in knowing more about, so I research it, and then I do a lot of drawing.

And I collect a lot of images, and I just keep drawing til I find the composition I like, and then I transform it into like an illustration.

I always encourage younger people to kind of just don't be afraid to experiment and try out new things.

Cause you never know what could push your work in a whole new direction.

(upbeat music) I'm torn between the actual researching part, and then like the final piece.

Cause it feels really good when I just see it all finished and pristine.

It's really cool seeing more of the audience come out and relate and connect with my work.

I love it when other Latinos come up to me and are saying like 'Oh I love this.'

'I identify with it.'

And I'm like awesome, that's my goal.

(upbeat music) - Shaping the way we think about our nation's history and culture is the task of the Smithsonian Institution.

Within the past decade, Latino historians have been hired to rewrite that American history to include Latinx individuals.

Judith Escalona met two Latina art historians who are making quite an impact.

- [Woman] We are in a really transformative moment at the Smithsonian, in thinking about Latino culture and history not as a sort of side bar, you know, to American history and culture, but really as an integral part of it.

- [Judith] E. Carmen Ramos is one of two Latinas at the Smithsonian Institution who are transforming the way Americans think about their culture and history.

The other is Taina Caragol, curator of painting and sculpture of Latino art and history at the National Portrait Gallery.

- My position was established in 2013, precisely out of the realization that Latinos were direly underrepresented.

- [Judith] That's meant adding more portraits of distinguished Latinos to the collection.

- This is a portrait of Antonia Pantoja.

I love about it that it's a mosaic portrait, and it's the only mosaic piece in our collection of 22,000 plus objects.

- [Judith] But Ramos is quick to point out that she and Caragol aren't simply trying to include Latinos in the national conversation.

Their aim is to redefine the history of American art and portraiture.

The portrait of Governor Luis Munoz Marin, who was instrumental in formulating Puerto Rico's relationship to the US as the free associated state, arrived in Washington, DC on loan from Puerto Rico.

- I was very eager to bring that painting here, in order to provide a broader context for our growing collection of portraits of the Puerto Rican diaspora.

It's practically impossible to talk about the Puerto Rican diaspora without talking about Luis Munoz Marin.

- [Judith] Down These Mean Streets, Community and Place in Urban Photography is another exhibit that is reshaping the public's mind.

The national urban crisis of the 1970s is re-experienced through the lens of 10 Latino photographers.

- These are works by Perla De Leon, whose a New York based photographer who was an early member of En Foco.

Which was a group of Puerto Rican photographers that was very interested in supporting each other's work, and documenting Puerto Rican life.

It's a big task to represent a community that hasn't always been presented as American.

I see in the future, in the coming years, exciting programs that are really integrating Latino art into how we define America art and culture in the 21st century.

- In addition to hiring more Latinos like Ramos and Caragol, The Smithsonian will open it's first gallery devoted to the US Latino experience at it's Museum of American History in 2021.

I'm Judith Escalona for Latinas.

(upbeat music) - [Woman] We have been asked to create a giant walking puppet of the artist Diego Rivera as part of the big retrospective on the Rivera murals at the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Really looking at that pivotal moment in both Diego and Frida Kahlo's life.

When they came here to Detroit, it was probably the peak of Diego Rivera's work as a muralist.

Diego Rivera himself is gonna be an interesting character to build.

He was quite a big man, quite a heavy man.

This puppet is gonna be made in residence, largely, at the Institute of Arts.

So people will be able to come by and watch us, and talk to us.

There will be moments where people will be able to participate.

What we're doing is building archival quality papier mache head.

There'll have to be seven layers of paper.

We'll do a thin layer out of cotton bond, and then we'll do a heavy layer out of some sort of archival quality print-making paper, and then repeat that process.

We will also receive a mock-up of the head in clay done at a small scale that Azucena Morena is going to do.

And that'll allow us to really kind of look at the features of Diego.

You wanna capture the right look in the puppet because it's fixed.

And one thing we know about Diego Rivera is he has really really remarkable eyes.

He's got big, big eyes, and he's got big jowls, and big, wide mouth.

Everything about him is kind of oversized.

So getting that quality without veering into caricature or too far into parody is gonna be a trick.

Maryann Angelini is going to be sculpting the hands.

One of which will be grasping, I think, a paint brush, and the other one will probably be open, and conceivably dealing with a palette.

- The hands for the other puppets are always just kind of like their fingers are sticking out and they didn't really have a lot of life to them, you know.

There was one particular mold that we always used, so it was hard to distinguish.

The hands don't mean so much to some of those characters, but for Diego, the hands I thought, needed to be more distinct.

I needed to find an armature that was light enough and bendable enough.

Basically what I did was I carved the styrofoam to look like the palm of the hand.

And then I stuck the wires inside where the fingers were gonna go, and then I bent them, and then I added the clay on top of that.

That's how I started making it was using the styrofoam and wire, and then I'm gonna with that one, I will be building both of them.

This is recycled paper.

Mix it with a little bit of water, and a little bit of this cellulose glue that we use for our papier mache.

And it makes like a little bit of clay and you just put it on to the armature.

- [Woman] Over here, at this station, we'll start putting together the costume, which is also known as the body.

Because Diego is kind of a round body we're gonna be building in some circles, like hoop skirt circles to make him have a round belly, on the frame.

So when we go to make the costume, the costume will rest over these circles.

The other thing we have to do is build the arms.

The arms are tubes with wood, and with another ring eye at the end.

And those are connected by another clip, which go out to form the lower arm, and then the hands are attached to that lower arm.

See normally you'd have to be able to detach the top from the bottom, so this is why I'm trying to think about these tubes.

The sculpting is moving along, we're starting to see the face of Diego emerge from the clay.

One of the things we've discovered is that this stuff it does have the cellulose in it, but adding the extra cellulose has made it stronger, and easier to work with, wouldn't you say?

It smooths it and it makes it adhere more.

- This clay is not as easy to work with as that clay.

But I do like the idea of not having to take it off of a mold and trying to piece it back together again.

Especially with all these shapes going on.

- It was funny to watch people like be so like impressed with what we were doing, you know?

Because we had been doing it for years without anybody really seeing what we were doing.

(upbeat spanish guitar) - You can imagine that head, that big head's gonna be here.

Right, and so the person is wearing this backpack.

And this is just a regular boy scout backpack.

So their head will be right about here.

Maryann's hands will go on the end of these, and then there'll be sticks that come down here.

To be supported there.

One of the things that we need to do this morning, is add this bottom spacer.

And that's slightly more skill, it requires power tools.

Maryann over here needs somebody, or two somebodies to help with celluclay preparation.

She will instruct you on how to make it, and then hand her clay as she needs.

So it's kind of like working as an artist's assistant.

- Okay so that's enough then.

So mix it up and then you can add some more of this stuff if you need to.

- I know for certain that I'm going to put him in those overalls that he wore consistently while he was painting the Rivera Frescoes.

The thing that I'm really intrigued at was how often he would wear a white shirt and tie underneath his coveralls, so I'm pretty certain I'm gonna put him in a white shirt and tie.

That also was really interesting to watch, because there's huge pieces of fabric that you're working with.

And it's funny to see, you know, you make these trousers that are 40 inches around and fit up on suspenders over the bearer's shoulders.

I'm making the big overalls right now.

That'll go around that big ring.

And then this bib is what I'm working on now.

And the bib will go on the front of the pants like this.

And then I'm gonna cut out a piece out of here and put it like a pocket that you can see through.

The costume is actually where the body is.

One of the things that was a little bit difficult and challenging was doing all the off-site sewing.

We had to take the whole sewing shop up there, and had two machines going, and building the pants, the huge pants, the huge shirt, the huge coat.

And really you're sewing massive pieces of fabric.

There was another point where we'd had a cutting error.

And so we didn't have enough fabric.

So we had to go back and buy more fabric.

(mellow music) One of the most important parts of holding a puppet together, and holding the puppet up is a cross piece that goes at the top of the uprights.

And that cross piece has to fit exactly across the center of the head.

Basically going from behind the ear, behind the ear with a bolt attached right there.

So what's happening is the head is actually sitting on the uprights.

So the head has got some mobility, but it needs to be structurally sound, and bolted behind the ears.

After you've got it all back together, then you gesso it, and the gesso is a hard plastic coating.

And that should hide where the seams are, and create an almost impermeable surface of the head and the hand for the puppet.

Then the next step is to begin to do the painting.

And there's a lot of fine detail painting that occurs, that will be interesting to watch.

And that really where the artistry of both Maryann Angelini and Azucena will come out in creating all the little details of hands, eyes, nose, face, all the coloring.

So this is where it starts to merge into painting, as an art form.

- Those pieces all have to come together.

All those individual pieces.

So making them come together you really do have to work together.

You really have to listen to each other and try to be patient, and try to listen to everybody's ideas.

That's what the beauty of working with a team is.

That you learn a lot from other people.

There were some trying times, but in the end it all worked out.

And we pulled it together.

And I think we really made a good impression for a lot of people.

- [Woman] There's stories with Diego Rivera where he had put up huge swaths of the wall in plaster, and something went wrong, it dried too quick, and he had to tear the whole thing down and start again.

And that is the way of art.

That is the way of art.

(mellow music) (upbeat music) - [Woman Presenter] In many ways, Meg Medina, does not need an introduction.

She has written picture books, middle grade books, and YA fiction for nearly two decades.

In 2016 she won the Pura Belpre Honor Award for Abuela and Me.

And in 2019 her middle grade book Merci Suarez Changing Gears won her the Newbery Medal.

She is the daughter of Cuban immigrants, grew up in Queens, New York, now lives in Richmond Virginia.

Welcome Meg, we're so very excited to have you here today!

- Oh hola Heather, I'm thrilled to be here too.

And welcome to my writing space.

- Well we are so glad to have you, and to hear a little bit more about your book that was released in 2021.

Your first book, Merci Suarez Changing Gears, was, as we said, a Newbery Award winning book.

But I know, or at least I believe that, Merci first debuted in Sol Painting as part of a middle grade anthology, Flying Lessons and Other Stories.

Did you when you included her, hope to write a series?

And did you know it would have a middle school-aged heroine?

- Oh, no I had no idea.

(laughs) When I wrote the story, I had just been asked to submit a story to an anthology that ended up being really successful, Flying Lessons and Other Stories, and in it was Sol Painting.

The only requirement of the story was to have a heroine from a marginalized background, and obviously I was going to write a Latina girl.

And it was then that I started to give voice to this really plucky girl named Mercedes, Merci.

Whose dad owns a painting company, and in that story they spend the day painting the school gym in exchange for a tuition break, at her new Tony school.

And it's a snapshot the way that stories are, about culture, about economics, about that moment when kids become aware, maybe of the sacrifices that their parents are making for them, even if they don't really understand them.

So I finished that story, and I just could not stop thinking about Merci.

And both the editor Phoebe Yae, the editor who edited the anthology, and my editor at Candlewick said 'You know the problem is that Merci's a character who's too big for just a story.'

'Think about it, you know, is there more to tell?'

And so I was thinking, you know, she was in the sixth grade.

And I don't know Heather think back to when you were in the sixth grade, the seventh grade, and the eighth grade, it's like a metamorphosis, right?

You emerge this completely different person than how you began.

And so I thought I'd really like to write that first part.

The first story.

And so I wrote Merci Suarez Changes Gears, and when I finished I realized that I wanted to continue with the metamorphosis.

So that's how Merci Suarez Can't Dance happened, which is Merci in the seventh grade.

And I just turned in the manuscript, it went into copy editing yesterday, for the last book, which comes out next year.

And it's called Merci Suarez Plays it Cool.

And that will be the last year, and we'll see Merci in all forms, what happened to her in middle school.

Most people shudder at the thought of their middle school years.

(laughs) I don't know if it was that way for you, but it was for sure that way for me - It totally was that way for me.

I think that it's, you know, I once spoke with an author who said that the middle school years are called the ugly years.

And it's really amazing how hard it is to go through middle school.

You know one of the things we are here to discuss, Merci Suarez Can't Dance, and what I would love is for you to share a little bit about the story.

The premise of the story, and what happens.

Without spoiling anything.

- Yes No spoilers allowed, no spoilers allowed.

Okay, so in this book, when we left Merci, at the end of Merci Suarez Changes Gears, It was the end of sixth grade.

She had come to realize that her grandfather Lolo is suffering with Alzheimer's, and what that would likely mean for her.

And she had tangled with the most annoying young woman in her same grade, Edna Santos, right?

And had come out on the other side of it somehow.

So in the seventh grade Merci is roped into being the co-manager of the school store, the Ram Depot, which formerly just sold pencils to forgetful children.

But, because she is a business dynamo, Miss McDaniels our friendly school secretary, gets her to be co-manager with a young man named Wilson Bellevue.

Which means that she is going to be sharing a very small space all year with a boy in the seventh grade.

So this is a little awkward for her.

She's not sure what she thinks about this.

So I would say that this novel is about Merci figuring out relationships.

She ends up in a big problem with her friends, big, big fallout there.

She ends up watching her aunt sort of fall in love, Tia Inez.

She's thinking about feelings with Wilson, herself.

It's about all kinds of love, like love with your friends, love that you see between your grandparents, the icky kind of love you see when your parents are holding hands, Ah!

The secret love, right?

Like you remember your first crush, right?

Sometimes they're on make-believe people.

You know on posters, on people in the movies, and so on.

All of that, all of that soup is there.

What happens to her in the seventh grade.

And, of course, the through line is also that Lolo continues to get more impacted by Alzheimer's, and Merci has to adapt to that change.

- What a great show!

I loved watching the giant Diego Rivera puppet come to life.

Hey, if you could build a giant puppet of someone, who would it be?

Be sure to visit our website, for lots of great resources related to the show.

See you next time!

- [Female Announcer] This program is made possible in part by Michigan Department of Education, the State of Michigan, and by viewers like you!

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