[piano intro] [Nick Bragg] Where's the makeup?

Are we painting?

I mean, are we filming?

Am I suppose we'll be talking now?

When I'm really into painting, I don't talk.

And I'm making very little motion.

It's going to be a dull movie.

No motion, no voice.

Talking to myself.

Maybe I should be analyzed.

So I'm ready.

Just re-sharpened my sharp pencil.

So, what are you expecting from this?

The whole story... Well, I'm going to start with where I was raised at 118 Military Street and see what happens.

I'm from Oxford, North Carolina.

I got kicked out of kindergarten and I've painted since the age of five.

[Teresa Radomski] Nick's an artist.

He has certain personality traits that come forth in his paintings his very joyous and overt... and extraverted expression.

[Dr. Mike Wakeford] I think as a historian, that Nick is one of the most important figures in this community's history and culture in the post-World War II period.

That is, the period Winston-Salem started to define itself as a city of arts and innovation.

[Nick Bragg] I'm just curious about where creativity comes from all my life.

I've been busy, and I've painted 24 or 25 murals,and they are all over the state.

[Dr. Rachel Williams] The thing about creating a mural is it takes a kind of courage.

You're saying, I'm going to put this up.

Hundreds of people are going to see this probably every day.

This is going to be a fixture.

You know, it will sear into their minds whether they're in communities where you say "that building with the mural," it becomes sort of a touchstone.

And I think murals do that.

[Nick] You're too kind; but did you get that on film?

[laughs] [bell rings] [Nick Bragg] I think about death a lot.

It's on anybody's mind who's over ten.

Seriously, when you get to be - I'm 87, you know.

Screw it.

If I drop over here in my tracks.

Okay.

I'm ready.

If you want to see where I'm going to be buried.

My name is already up in granite down at the Salem cemetery with my birth date, but no end date.

Don't get excited until you see the end date.

And then you say, whew, that's over.

Then all those paintings will be worth so much more.

Yeah well... [laughter] [Kim Shufran] Nick has given, given, given, given so much of himself to others.

And all of his murals have been other oriented.

[Nick Bragg] When I came in here the other night,I sat til midnight painting because it had me.

And that's what really makes me happy.

The fact that I don't know what I'm doing or how this is going to turn out has got my attention.

Canvas goes on stretchers, we're going to glue 'em.

We're trying to get right angles.

So when the picture is done, it will be a square and we can get a good framing.

He does so much research and discovery and exploration to put a mural together.

The process of reflecting on his own life.

This process of "making sense backwards" took him to places that I think he he wouldn't necessarily have gone.

[Nick Bragg] Turn the light on here, there we go.

Well, here you have it.

We didn't have any teachers this pretty.

I was not a good student.

I'm dyslexic and A.D.D., and I didn't know it.

They thought I was a problem.

I was a problem.

You know what I'm painting now?

This is a key story to the whole thing.

This is the walk that I had to go down to go to the first grade.

It was a trauma.

My mother stopped in front of this school, and I didn't want to get out of the car.

And no amount of reasoning was working.

She saw chief of police, who she had taught in the eighth grade, said, "Would you mind walking Nick up to the door?"

[laughs] So he led me across a four lane street up the front steps, and everybody looking like, "What's his problem?"

I didn't do that again.

Very embarrassing.

I didn't want to go to school.

Period.

Never did.

Never did.

Going to school is like going to a job that you're not good at.

And you have to go.

You have to go.

And every day people tell you you're not good at this job, but you have to show up the next day.

And when you have a learning disability, that's kind of what school feels like.

[Nick Bragg] Because I couldn't add and subtract, I just couldn't.

I still can't.

I couldn't stand that teacher.

She was mean too.

And she thought I was imbecile.

And so I did something.

And that's where the typewriter came in.

I took it apart and dropped it out the window two floors down.

I did it to irritate her.

And it sure did.

And they finally took me to Chapel Hill to have an IQ test, and they wouldn't tell me what my IQ was but it was high.

But they couldn't explain why I didn't sit still.

I've always had a hard time in church and school, and this class in particular was boring.

So anyway, I thought it was justified by the boring part.

Well, I like literature, I loved art, I love history, and I love music.

That's two-thirds of the curriculum.

I just didn't like math.

I didn't dislike it.

I hated it because I couldn't do it.

I don't like anything I can't do.

Well, I love the social part of school and music was that.

[organ music] My grandfather and my grandmother prayed at bedtime, but my parents didn't.

I like to call myself a cultural Christian.

I mean, you couldn't live in this town and know all these people and do the things that we did here without going to church and going to picnics.

[organ music] When I have my family together I say peace.

That's all we say.

So everybody's different.

[organ music] That's a nice sound, that's a two-foot flute.

We call these stops.

You hear "pull out all the stops?"

Comes from the organ.

You heard that?

You know dogs have a 100 degree temperature, you know that?

You know what a larvorium is?

Have you ever seen a molding gauge?

You know what a fanlight is?

You know what a box camera is?

Did you know that Israel is only twice the size of Manhattan?

You ever heard that?

Have you read the book Penny Niven wrote about Frank Horton?

Have you ever read any of his stuff?

That's the reason I switched from the piano to the organ - to get some sound!

This is a command center.

This is like being at the world's best computer.

[Teresa Radomski] His gesture as a creator is a big gesture.

And organ is about as big as you can get as single- handedly as a musician.

That's about as much sound you're going to get out of any instrument is an organ.

And his paintings, his murals, are huge expressions; and they're symphonic, you know, they're enormous.

And all these different colors, all these different events in them, you know, they're Wagnerian.

This isn't enough but I have another roll.

Well it is enough.

When you stretch: one, two, three, four.

And then you move out.

It's hard work.

[off camera] It's very difficult.

I've never stretched a canvas in my life that I didn't break a sweat.

Ever!

Not even a small one!

[Nick playing harmonica] [Nick Bragg] I grew up in the circle, and it was a pretty tight circle.

The support system was always there.

I inherited a way of life.

It was segregated.

It was chauvinistic.

It was misogynistic.

It was all the negatives we think in culture.

Oxford is half Black and half White.

They tried, but it's racist.

And this is true in this country all around.

It's not just Oxford.

But I'm not interested in proving that the Braggs were outstanding.

Actually, what little I know of the Braggs, you know, they were racist southern citizens.

And one was a governor of North Carolina.

And one was Braxton Bragg, for whom Fort Bragg was named.

And now it's Fort Liberty or something like that.

I'm so glad they took his name off the fort.

But I know people who just that's all they think about.

And that's fine.

Some people are interested in golf.

There it is.

That's the blank page.

Feel that surface: it's wonderful.

Brushes will go over it: smooth as an eggshell.

It's intimidating.

But not for long.

We'll start right away.

[light music] [sound of sketching on canvas] Buildings symbolize everything.

I'm looking out here at this little house next door to me.

And it's the country knock off of Frank Lloyd Wright.

And so who is Frank Lloyd Wright?

And then you try to trace him back.

You know, if you hit a note on piano, and Clifton's here - he's a concert pianist.

It brings up a whole world of music.

Going to be in the key of C. What does that mean?

Well, I paint in the key of buildings.

You can look at this as limbs on the tree.

And it's kind of the tree of life.

Well, it's a structure on which to hang all the pieces of the puzzle which we're trying to tell here.

And it gives me a place to put things.

Nancy... why am I calling you Nancy?

So I met Nancy on May 10th, let me see - May the 10th, 1957.

This is Nancy, when she was a senior at Salem.

The woman I fell in love with.

We parked right up the street.

They had a parking place for courting couples.

Salem said, "If you're going to make out, go to the parking lot up across from the church."

And we had a lot of fun.

Everything we did was fun.

And we had four children within ten years.

That was stretching and I learned a lot about myself.

I went to counseling for 44 years.

Nancy and I went to couples counseling.

She understood people who had challenges of any kind and that was very appealing to me.

She was a good poet.

She wrote some really good stuff.

She liked to go to the beach, she liked to dance, and she always took her shoes off.

She could really dance.

She loved parties.

She loved entertaining.

And we got married, we had dinner parties and more dinner parties.

I've been in this town 62 years.

And I was lucky to come along in my profession in the 60s, which was an era that was more turbulent then today, if you can believe it.

In times of Segregation and all the ills that Martin Luther King put the spotlight on.

Pullen Church was a Baptist Church on Hillsborough Street, it was the most liberal church in the country.

And it was an amazing eye-opener.

I mean, they were integrating.

They were having Black people in their church.

They were going to Black churches.

It was magical.

And also frightening and also exciting as all of that.

Nancy and I were finally free from minute by minute parentals.

She was pregnant with the first baby and we were getting going.

And that's when my life turned a corner again.

I was hired to be the executive director at Reynolda House Museum of American Art and I was here 29 years.

The responsibility is to make Reynolda House a learning center, a place, a museum where something is really happening.

[Barbara Millhouse] We don't want to have a "do not touch" kind of situation here.

We want to allow people in the house to do whatever they really want to do.

That's the beauty at Reynolda House.

[Phil Archer] What he balanced and I think what Barbara Millhouse balanced was building a museum of extraordinary quality, but also openness.

[Barbara Millhouse] And what we've tried to do is to bring the whole community in now.

Anybody who wants to come, who was attracted to this place, to have the doors open.

The fields open.

Everything open to them.

It's so beautiful.

They come in and they really appreciate everything that's here.

[Nick Bragg] And it had a magical effect.

It's just beautiful.

[Phil Archer] Nick was definitely the right person to develop a museum as a kind of commons.

As a place for meeting.

For sharing ideas.

[Nick Bragg] In my 30 years here, we had 280 some odd "swells" I call them.

Swells: important or "would be" important people who came here.

They were the world's leaders in these fields.

Like Steve Martin came and spent the day with me.

Remember him?

I think he's still living.

If anybody's been living that I could meet, I try to meet em'.

I went to a lot of trouble.

And it's fun.

Well, I met Steve Reich.

I met Philip Glass.

Sidney Poitier was just as sweet and kind and intelligent as he comes across in his movies.

And Colin Powell, he's dead, isn't he?

Ain't Colin Powell dead?

I think he's dead, isn't he?

Anyway, he was here.

[laughter] What are you laughing at?

In the early days of the museum when the collecting was very, very active, a lot of the artists who were acquired for the collection came to Reynolda.

And I said: "I got $500, and I'm inviting you "to come to this museum and the town of Winston-Salem.

"I'll put you up in the house with art and Krispy Kreme donuts for breakfast."

People would say: "I've never been there and I've always wanted to come there.

"Of course I'll come."

And the money's fine I mean, we rode on that.

I don't invite the swells here and take them off somewhere and not let you meet them.

I saved my best for everybody.

[Phil Archer] It's quite incredible that Romare Bearden and Jacob Lawrence and Janet Fish were coming through the museum.

Sometimes sleeping overnight in one of the bedrooms and bowling, you know, the middle of the night in the basement.

And so I when I met these people, I would ask to come see them in New York.

And since we had been so hospitable and giving them Krispy Kreme donuts and staying in a house with 25 bathrooms, you know that they kind of remember you.

"Oh yeah, of course."

And they'd say, "Come see me."

And then I'd go to their apartments or their places of business, or their museums or their galleries or their studios.

I'd be at a cocktail party in New York and they'd said, "Where are you from?

"You're obviously from the South."

Which was kind of a kick in the head.

And I said, "North Carolina."

"Oh, Jesse Helms."

[Jesse Helms] That is the front page of a publication and it is a blown up picture of a vagina.

But I've never seen such rottenness as is being supported by the National Endowment for the Arts.

[Nick Bragg] He did so much damage, so much serious damage.

But people get over that when they come down here.

One of the many reasons for inviting people is so they can see another side of life.

[Phil Archer] This is something you can't really develop.

I think you were born with it or not - an ability to be okay with with uncertainty and not having final answers.

He's just got a real great capacity to be okay in a state of not knowing the final answer to things.

And that's that's a very inviting approach to realms of knowledge that can be intimidating, like history and art.

That was sort of the basis of his "American Foundations."

[Teresa Radomski] That was an amazing program; summer study that involved correlation of music, history, and art.

A group of students of all ages stayed overnight at the house and I was very lucky to teach one of those summers.

[Heather Gould Smith] He loves to put things in a chronology.

He wanted you to say, "Okay, this painting was painted in this decade.

At the same time so-and-so was writing this piece of music and so-and-so was writing this piece of literature."

And it gave you the big picture and the context for the painting.

[Nick Bragg] When children come - fifth graders, third graders, 10th graders - and they are bored instantly with everything.

So the ask before you tell idea that I came up with later was the answer to that boredom.

And so instead of saying: "This is a shoe."

You say to somebody: "How do you think this shoe was made?"

And then you'd hand them the shoe and let him tell his classmates what he thinks he sees and then let them get involved.

It was an inductive way of learning.

It came out of the fact that the traditional education didn't work for me.

Most people are capable of learning if you give them something interesting to learn and empower them to make it theirs, and then can't help but share it.

And that was the thing about "American Foundations" is that I don't have to worry about exposing any ignorance.

You know, faculty, students - we're all here together.

We're all doing this for fun.

That's a great atmosphere to learn.

To give people permission to be creative, to take a risk, to say something that you might otherwise be too introverted to say.

If you thought, "oh, this might not be correct."

That is a tremendous gift to create that environment for self-expression.

[Susan Bragg Foster] He appreciates community.

Being dyslexic and A.D.D.

there wasn't always spaces created for the way he learned, and I think he got a lot of joy out of making sure that those happen for other people.

Whether it be his role as a museum director, through his American Foundations, through his murals.

And he has committed himself to making spaces for other people.

That's the whole point of growth and life is to continue to refocus.

To agitate and then proceed.

And there's always the "black dog" growling around.

The "black dog" chases the muse.

When the "black dog" comes, the muse has to leave.

They don't - they don't get along.

Winston Churchill popularized this saying, I don't know who came up with it.

"Black dog" is depression.

Everybody has depression and some worse than others and some longer and others.

But it seems that they're saying now that it's part of the human condition.

But I'm in the process with this piece that I go through in everything that I paint.

This is doubt time.

And so last night I was lying in bed trying to go to sleep.

And you say, this looks like... it's just... ...higgledy piggledy.

It's not holding together.

What's the problem?

And then a little bit long about 38%, I say, to hell with it.

I'm going to cut it off the stretcher and start over... or not do it.

Paint something else.

And and so you come through that "black dog" valley and you get on up to about 50%, and then you see a little hope and how the clarity here is coming through.

But then it's kind of spare.

It's just like life.

And the same thing when it begins to flow in painting it just flows.

And when the "black dog" is here, you know, in those times I pushed him over there in the carport, [phone rings] I can see him with his gallow eyes, and he'll be back.

[phone rings] That may be him calling now.

Hey, Fun.

Hey!

Fun!

You've never heard of a dog named Fun have you?

Me either.

And she is fun.

She has a beautiful butt.

Look at her butt.

I never noticed it.

Look at that style.

She could be a show dog.

We're at Crepe Myrtle Circle.

I've always walked 2 to 4 times a day around the circle.

Four times around is four miles.

Well, this is my neighbor - Hold it, Charlene!

[Charlene] Passing through!

Don't clown.

This is a serious movie going to get an Academy Award.

[Charlene] Hello!

[Nick Bragg] Anyway, Charlene keeps everything immaculate.

We appreciate that on the circle.

And Nick... is.. - Say something nice.

- I'm going to!

We call him mayor of Crepe Myrtle Circle.

- Oh, that's right.

- But he's way more than just the mayor of Crepe Myrtle Circle.

He is a dear, dear friend and can even be kind of fun.

Thus the name of the dog!

So I have a list in my head of all the things the neighbors aren't doing.

Like, "put the lawnmower away."

"We don't need that rake leaning up against the tree."

I'm so willing to do it.

But you can't do that.

It's called trespassing.

I'm an OCD list maker.

I love to keep a list of the books I've read.

I made that infamous list of beds I've lain on.

That was fun.

Here I list all of the preachers I've known.

"Flounder, Caesar salad, apple sauce, stewed apples, chewed."

What is art?

What is great art?

Where can we discover great art?

What strikes you most and why?

I have a list of the greatly gifted people who didn't make it to 40.

Gershwin didn't make it to 40.

Chopin didn't make it to 40.

I made a list of all of all the words that I despise that people are stuck on.

"Ostensibly" was on the list.

These are my hats.

Some of them.

I have 100 hats.

But this hat for instance is 50 years old.

Ain't that a killer?

And I have a touch of my mother's mink coat on it that I think adds a nice wild beast touch.

And I have about ten berets.

This I got in Zurich.

And they're very warm because they're wool and it keeps the heat in.

Heat goes out through your head, you know.

A friend of mine made this.

Isn't that cool?

[Heather Gould Smith] He was wonderful and also infuriating at times as a boss.

[Nick Bragg] This is for costume parties.

[Heather Gould Smith] And I think a lot of the other folks that worked with him in more creative capacities didn't see that.

But I was the person trying to get a budget together.

[Nick Bragg] What?

[Heather Gould Smith] I said accountants have a hard time sometimes with people like you because you... [Nick Bragg] Did you get that on film?

[laughter] He asked me very early on in my tenure there if I would help him balance his checkbook every month and we just got into a habit of doing that every month since 1992.

That has just led to this great friendship.

He's one of my dearest friends.

So when Nick sells a painting, I keep track of all of that.

And he has several repeat customers, and especially people who maybe purchase a painting and then maybe want a mural done later for their office or a building they own.

It's a wide range of folks, I think.

[Nick Bragg] Very wide.

[Heather Gould Smith] And also over the years you've given a lot of paintings to like the Arts Based School or Senior Services.

[Nick Bragg] All the charities.

[Nick Bragg] I suppose I've given away 20% of my paintings.

[Heather Gould Smith] You have works in two auction houses now, don't you?

[Nick Bragg] Leland Little says he can sell anything with my name on it, that's what he said.

[Heather Gould Smith] There was quite a demand for your work at those auctions.

People want a "Nick Bragg."

I always try to tell people when I'm going to see them, that I'm coming so they can put the paintings back on wall.

You know, just for the occasion.

Be sure to hang my painting.

I'm coming to see you the next week.

[music] [Nick Bragg] I retired because my wife was not well.

I just continued to take care of her until she died.

It was just the time to move on.

So he retired.

Had more time for painting, and really went from just painting 3x3 paintings and he just hit the ground running with murals.

Loved doing murals.

And it gave him a bigger canvas to have more ideas.

I think the murals have been the best medium for him because it does allow him to tell a story in a really grand scale but also have really specific details in it.

[Nick Bragg] I love lining things.

I think it comes from childhood comic books.

I don't know where it comes from.

I feel more comfortable if I'm containing what I'm doing.

I get into an anxious phase.

Well, I stay anxious.

I'm an anxious person because all artists are thinking a thousand miles a minute.

That's what makes art is a combination I feel like I want to do this.

I feel it.

And then think, think, think, think, think, rethink.

Stay up nights thinking.

[Dr. Mike Wakeford] Nick's paintings aren't like the work of the Italian masters who used geometry and math to dictate where the viewer was going to look.

Nick's paintings say: "Let me throw a lot of things at you "and you find the story.

"You tell me what's interesting and I'll tell you more about that."

[Nick Bragg] Everything in my learning is connected.

Everything in my reading is connected.

Everything relates.

I can start a mural by looking at something out of my head.

Well, the lines are sloppy in this.

I've done neater lines.

And look at this.

This is really loosening up and I like it.

Well, I'm looser.

I'm falling apart.

Getting older.

I see it in a more relaxed way and it's not quite so rigid.

There is nothing that anybody paints that's original.

It's all coming through the filter.

And the question is: What's your filter?

I've enjoyed my filter.

Well, I'm telling the story in a mural.

That's the world.

That's me.

That's the way I see the world.

So filtered through all of this is my awareness finally of the bomb.

And pollution and Black Lives Matter and all the issues of our times.

And now we have this goddamn global warming.

Its brought me back to a reconsideration, which I've been working hard on I haven't said much about my faith.

My faith is upon reflection.

And I'm taking some strength from that.

Correlating the elements of my life, rejuvenate my faith.

Not necessarily in God, for God's sake.

But in the transcendence of life.

The more I write it, the more I paint it, the more I reveal to myself.

Some things I've known about but things I missed completely or forgot.

I can't retain it all.

And you forget if you're doing a mural, I'm trying to tell a story here of my life.

And so the more I dig around, the more comes out.

I've been stretching and I'm still stretching.

When I stop stretching, I stop.

End of life.

I love to tell stories.

Life to me is a story.

All of life is a story.

And so what's the story?

Follow what you can do.

You can cook, cook!

If you paint, paint!

And if you like music, play!

And don't say, "Well, I used to paint."

Well, try it again.

That's the point.

Stay busy.

Keep moving.

It's like reading a book.

You don't plan to cry here or laugh there.

You just turn the pages.

[organ music] ♪ ♪