>> JARED BOWEN: I'm Jared Bowen.

Coming up on Open Studio, is it a motorcycle or is it art?

At Madhouse Motors, it's both.

Then, Iranian artist Arghavan Khosravi frames freedom in her paintings.

Plus, we mark Black History Month with a look at another monument on Boston Common.

And how visual artist Malaika Favorite weaves the personal and political into her work.

It's all now on Open Studio.

♪ ♪ First up, the mad geniuses of Madhouse Motors, which is also a coffee house and an art house.

It's where mechanics work wonders on motorcycles, which are both machines and masterpieces in motion.

It's a rumbling repository for motorcycles.

But also a coffee shop with Middle Eastern flair.

And, to bike aficionados, it's Eden.

How do you describe this place?

>> The coolest place I've ever been?

>> BOWEN: Nick Timney is the manager of Madhouse Motors in Boston.

It's a place for tune-ups and repairs, but also much more than that.

A place where antique bikes live, where they take on new personas, and where people like Timney, who grew up riding dirt bikes on West Virginia trails, are drawn to test their mettle.

>> I would come to the shop at, like, 8:00 in the morning, and I would work until 5:00, when I had to go to my bar job, and I would work until 4:00 in the morning.

Something like two years of that.

And I think I kind of proved myself to her.

Then I became a mechanic at Madhouse.

>> BOWEN: She is J. Shia, owner of Madhouse Motors and sculptor of motorcycles.

>> Yeah, so there's a lot of parts on both these bikes that are abnormal, everything from, like, where you put your feet on these to the tail lights.

You know, tail light on this is an egg slicer.

It functions, it has a purpose, instead of it just being there for aesthetic appeal.

>> BOWEN: Picasso did that a lot.

>> He did, but people don't talk as much about his, his sculpture work.

>> BOWEN: Shia and her team run the creative arm of Madhouse Motors like an artists' workshop: a place of design, discussion, and experimentation with every bike.

>> We want it to be composed properly, and be aesthetically beautiful, and be able to carry a storyline.

Yeah, we view it like making a kinetic sculpture, and if someone calls that art, I think we're all ecstatic about it.

>> BOWEN: How much does the bike tell you what it should be?

>> Oh, the whole time.

It's like, I'm really not in as much control as I would like to be.

>> BOWEN: Motorcycles are in her blood, an interest Shia inherited from her enthusiast father, and before that, her grandmother, seen here in Lebanon.

It's also an interest influenced by her photography studies at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

>> I hated working on bikes, I'd show up to school dirty, and smell like gas and oil.

And I didn't enjoy it.

When I got older, I realized that I trained my brain to look at a machine, or look at a motorcycle, or look at a custom build, and say, "All right, this, this color palette's off," or, "This shape is wrong," or, "What's the point of this?"

The same way that in art class we would dissect and digest a piece of work.

>> BOWEN: 13 years ago, she named the shop after her family home-- a "madhouse," as she describes it.

>> The community watering hole.

And so people from all over the world, all different walks of life, would go there, and have meals, and decompress and sleep there.

>> If the soil is fertile, things will grow, and this place is very fertile.

>> BOWEN: Rami Al Bishara is the shop's newest member.

He arrived from Beirut, where both he and his own bike shop fell victim to the Port of Beirut explosion in 2020.

>> The roof of my house caved in.

My shop was destroyed.

It was a very testing time.

I've lived in a lot of places where there's war and conflict, and this probably was one of the worst things that I've experienced.

>> BOWEN: He rebuilt, but with Lebanon's economic collapse, and after a chance meeting with Shia, he moved to the U.S.

In his new Madhouse Motors job, he's losing himself in a wonderland of motorcycles he's never encountered.

Museum pieces, he says, like this 1972 Honda CB500.

>> When this hit the market, nothing was going as smooth, as reliable, and as fast.

I know it doesn't look like it, but it is, it's just poetry in motion.

>> BOWEN: Like Shia, Al Bishara also has a formal arts background, designing fonts before bikes beckoned full-time.

>> A typeface that works is the one that you can't notice.

If you're reading a headline in a newspaper, it's the headline that matters, not the typeface.

>> BOWEN: So then how do you apply that to motorcycles?

>> They got to run.

(chuckles) They got to work and they have a look and feel.

>> BOWEN: Feeling, he says, may be the greatest measure of success.

>> A motorcycle is a collection of parts until you get on it, and you start it, and the engine becomes alive, and then it becomes an experience.

It's now, you are ingrained deep into the function of the motorcycle and what feeling it will instill in you.

>> BOWEN: So it's here in this madhouse that ideas rev to fruition.

Where a saxophone can play the exhaust.

And where new beginnings are had for man and machine.

♪ ♪ Next, as a young woman in Iran, as an immigrant to this country, artist Arghavan Khosravi has been subjected to the restrictions women face.

But on the canvas, she renders it all through fanciful and magical layers.

And now her art is taking on more urgency amid the protests and unrest in Iran.

Khosravi has just been named an artist-in-residence at the Rose Art Museum, where she'll also have an exhibition this summer.

So, once again, a conversation I had with her last year when her work was on view at the Currier Museum of Art.

>> I like this idea of having these, like, whimsical gardens, and then having some other things, a little bit disturbing.

>> BOWEN: In her paintings, as in her own life, Iranian artist Arghavan Khosravi sees two Irans.

First, there's the one she found inside her family home.

>> We had a lot of freedom.

I was lucky that I was born and raised in a family that we are culturally educated, and gave me the space to, to do whatever I want.

>> BOWEN: And then there is the public Iran, where life is heavily restricted, especially for women.

>> When we go to school, we had to wear hijab, and there are things that you must do to comply with those rules.

>> BOWEN: You couldn't be yourself.

>> I think that's too, too extreme to say, that you couldn't be yourself; I could.

But just the modified version, or more contained.

>> BOWEN: So in this, her first museum exhibition, we find flowering trees, sumptuous textiles, and birds with widespread wings.

But we also find women diminished, faces obscured, sometimes forcibly restrained.

The work, Khosravi says, all comes from memory.

They're usually, mostly, not very positive, so for me, reacting to those memories in, in the paintings is somehow a way, also, to cope with those traumatic, often traumatic experiences, yeah.

>> BOWEN: And none of these women are ever you?

>> No, I never, intend to have these women as self-portraits, but I have some of the characteristics in common with me, like the hair color, eye color, to some extent the skin tone.

I want to refer to my own race.

>> BOWEN: Khosravi left Iran seven years ago to attend art school in the United States.

And as an immigrant, she's no longer free to travel home.

But on the canvas, she dwells in a magical realm, says Samantha Cataldo, the show's curator.

>> There's a real element of, like, a dream space, or, like, a moment frozen in time, but it's rendered in really sharp detail.

And so you kind of have that push-pull of reality and surreality in it.

>> BOWEN: In her latest work, Khosravi's paintings enter our space, taking on sculptural qualities as they protrude from the wall, their weight literally suspended before us.

>> You're confronted with the work, but not, of course, in a bad way; it's brought to you, and it kind of beckons you and invites you to investigate all of its layers.

>> BOWEN: In a visual language Khosravi has steadily cultivated.

Look closely and you'll find her paint often sparkles, a nod to the precious, like Middle Eastern oil, she says, that comes at the expense of democracy.

The classical sculpture represented throughout her work speaks to both patriarchy and notions of human perfection given over to decay.

>> So to put that very loaded imagery into a work that also includes things like more Eastern traditions, like contemporary fashion photography, it sets up this interesting contrast and contradiction of ideals.

>> BOWEN: Khosravi also returns time and again to historic Persian miniature painting.

They're images she was raised on, but in her versions, she moves men to the side.

>> I see that women have a secondary role, or not very important roles in those scenes, and in my own work, I want to subvert that idea and give women more presence than what we have seen throughout art history.

>> BOWEN: History is literally woven into Khosravi's work as she paints around, over, and through handmade textiles her father has sent from Iran.

You come in and you really are having a conversation with the artist who came before.

>> Yeah, yeah, it's, because I, like, I decided this color palette, because of the color palette that the textile had.

Yeah, it's an interesting dialogue.

>> BOWEN: And choice, which Arghavan Khosravi, now a long way from home, will never take for granted.

You have what you talk about in these paintings, you have freedom, full freedom.

>> Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And in contrast with what I'm saying in the paintings, I have freedom to say whatever I want to say.

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: On Boston Common, the Embrace monument is a truly larger-than-life tribute to the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Coretta Scott King.

Directly across the park is another tribute to sacrifice, bravery, and justice.

That's the Robert Gould Shaw and Massachusetts 54th Regiment Memorial, commemorating one of the first Black regiments of the Civil War.

To mark Black History Month, we revisit our story from 2021 about the efforts to restore it.

For nearly 125 years, the Shaw Memorial has stood across from the Massachusetts State House.

It depicts Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and the soldiers of the 54th Regiment-- one of the first groups of Black troops formed during the Civil War-- as they march off to battle.

>> I see men who are determined to have their freedom and the freedom of those who are coming after them and their families.

So for me, it is a, a walk to triumph.

>> BOWEN: L'Merchie Frazier, director of education for the Museum of African American History, is a consultant on the monument's current restoration.

For the moment, bronze has been replaced by photographic brawn.

Do you still make discoveries when you look at the pictures?

>> Oh, absolutely.

There's a reveal that happens almost every time.

That, you know, you find the mastery of the angel and components of the flight that she's taken to guard the men and to protect.

>> BOWEN: Right now, the real thing is taking the winter lying down.

Since August, the monument been at Skylight Studios, a wonderland of sculpture.

Here, statuary abounds, from a horse approaching the size of a Trojan one to the gold eagle normally perched atop Boston's Old State House.

But the pièce de résistance, of course, is the monument which Robert Shure and his team have been conserving for months.

>> We totally, um, stripped all the previous coatings that were on it, and refinished it, repatinated it.

>> BOWEN: This is a $3 million effort sponsored by the National Park Service, Friends of Boston's Public Garden, the City of Boston, and the Museum of African American History.

At Skylight, conservators take the project piece by piece, shoring up the seams of the monument's some 20 different parts.

>> A couple of nuts and bolts missing, but it was in structurally great condition for a piece that was over 100 years old.

>> BOWEN: The monument is the creation of sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, who originally intended to depict the colonel astride his horse.

But after Shaw's family of abolitionists asked the artist to also depict the men who elevated Shaw's fame, Saint-Gaudens turned the project into a 14-year endeavor, laboring over details, some which can never even be seen when the memorial is upright.

It's a monument to perfection, says Shure, who is also a sculptor.

What do you see when you get this close, especially further up in the statue?

>> Just the faces, really, of the infantrymen.

The way the sculptor rendered them with such emotion.

You could see in their faces fear, you could see the determination, you could see the dedication.

>> BOWEN: In July of 1863, under the cover of darkness, the 54th stormed Fort Wagner in South Carolina.

The regiment was defeated, with nearly half of the troops killed or wounded, including Shaw.

But that moment, the regiment's ferocious battle for liberty, would be memorialized-- in remembrances, testimonials, and even in Hollywood, in the 1989 film Glory.

>> Come on!

(guns firing) >> (screaming) >> BOWEN: Some 20 years after the battle, Saint-Gaudens began work on the memorial.

We first reported on the monument in 2014, when the National Gallery of Art and the Massachusetts Historical Society presented Tell It With Pride, an exhibition that told the stories behind the monument.

For Saint-Gaudens, an internationally known artist, the sculpture was a labor of love, said curator Anne Bentley.

Do we know why he was so obsessive about this?

>> That was just the way he worked.

After the monument was unveiled, he wasn't terribly happy with it.

He continued to tinker for several years.

>> BOWEN: It is a piece rich in detail, featuring 23 men marching off to battle, guns hoisted, packs tugging, and fabric folding.

But they are not the real soldiers.

Long after the war's end, Saint-Gaudens hired some 40 models for inspiration.

The exhibition introduced us to many of the regiment's real men-- well represented in photographs they themselves commissioned, said the society's librarian, Peter Drummey.

>> It's wonderful to see people who were proud of their uniforms and the accoutrements of their ranks as non-commissioned officers, their instruments as musicians.

Often, they paid to have the photograph hand-colored to bring out the, um, gold of their buttons or their belt buckle, or the different colors of parts of their uniform.

>> BOWEN: All so that they could remember their days.

But today, it's posterity and a monument that remember them.

And during this time of racial reckoning, L'Merchie Frazier says their valor can be even more deeply understood.

>> How would they have reacted to their names being, um, engraved in a monument in a permanent way in American history?

So, I think that we have a grand opportunity once this is restored to expand the narrative of American history.

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: Finally now, artist Malaika Favorite paints people of all colors to spark conversations about identity and race.

>> I did the series Where Do We Come From?

based on the concept of who are we, who are the people in my family, and all the different people I know, where do they come from?

I applied for a grant with the Puffin Foundation, which is located in New Jersey, and their focus is to encourage discussion and debate.

Usually, when you enter a museum, the first thing you see is a whole room full of White people.

(chuckling): And I thought, "Where are the Black people?"

You know, weren't there any Black people in history?

And I would look at the people and I'd think, "Well, maybe I'm related to some of these people."

And I thought, "Well, maybe I could do a series using these people as possible ancestors."

So that kind of started my thinking, and when I did my proposal for the grant, that's what I talked about.

And I then started working on that concept.

Painting number one, this was not about ancestry in terms of DNA, but ancestry in terms of culture.

What is my cultural heritage?

That's when I started borrowing from art history to look at possible cultural heritage.

I looked at drawings I did of different people, Black and White, and I incorporated some of those in the painting.

So on one side, it's the White ancestry side, and the other side is the girl who's thinking about, "Who are my people?"

And the background on her side is much brighter.

The other side is subtle and quieter.

And there's only a little bit of the blue from her side creeping into the more, like, flesh tone of the other side.

And that's an indication that we can never really escape who we are related to, it's always there.

The Future Will Be Tan, I wanted to talk about how society is changing so much.

When I went to school, I integrated the school in my community, Dutchtown High School.

I was the only Black student there.

And there was a lot of racism and prejudice going on.

And I was taunted, name calling, people throwing things at me.

And nobody wanted to sit with me.

Some people were friendly to me, but most people avoided me, or they talked about me or they laughed at me.

Now, when I look at my nieces and nephews, a lot of them are dating White people, and so you have a lot of interracial relationships, and then you have a lot of children who are interracial.

And I said, "Well, with all the Latino people in the community, "with the Blacks and the Whites, "and eventually, there will be no Black and White.

"It will be Tan people.

Everybody will have a tan."

(chuckles) And I wanted to discuss this by having the black and white stripes.

Black and white stripes represent, during that time, everything was black and white.

It was, like, either one thing or the other.

Gradually it begins to change, and the woman is unaccepting, like, "This is the way it should be, but it is changing."

And so, then gradually, it moves to an assortment of colors.

And that one is The Secret, and that one is about my father.

My father never knew who his father was, and his mother died young.

We knew that his father was a White man, but we didn't know who the White man was.

And I created the painting with that thought in mind, that this is the secret, was his mother involved with this person or was she raped or what?

If you look closely, there's writing within her features, and the writing represents her secret thoughts, because we don't know what they are.

So you can't really read it.

And then in the middle, there's a sketch of a young White man, and whoever he is, that's him.

And then on the opposite side would be his mother, who is denying, and wants nothing to do with the whole scene.

Each painting is a different story that I'm telling.

The Sisters is a group of women.

And they're three White women and one Tan woman.

And the White women are ignoring the Tan sister because they don't really want to acknowledge her as a part of the family.

And so, she's sort of in the background, there but not there.

My hope is to show it in different areas of Louisiana or wherever else I can find to show it.

It's to generate discussion, and that's the whole idea.

I had a wonderful experience at the opening.

Some young ladies came in and they were asking questions.

And she was biracial, and she was saying, "Oh, this is so my family."

Her daughter looks almost White.

She looks kind of more Tan.

And so you can see the progression, and so we were both amazed that the painting related to her as a person and her family.

So that's the kind of discussion I want.

So the discussion really showed me that this is something people need to talk about and want to talk about.

Lessons From My Mother, I struggle with that painting.

First of all, it's in oil, oil is very demanding.

Some colors dry faster than others.

Red will take months to dry.

If you make a mistake, it's very difficult to correct it.

I started off wanting to do my mother as she is now.

My mother is 89.

And for some reason, it just didn't work.

It didn't look like her, and so gradually I decided, well, I'm just going to let it be somebody.

It does look like her at a younger age.

And I was thinking about the different things she taught me.

And she was always telling me stories about the people she grew up with, and what it was like in the community when she was growing up, and, you know, what the people were like.

And she taught me embroidery.

And so all of that is a part of the lessons she gave me.

And so it's kind of a, a memorial for her, the inheritance I received from her in terms of learning about the past.

I'm collaging in different pieces, and each piece is, like, in our community, all the different things that's happening in the community, or that happened in the community, how we lived, what we did.

And so it was, like, millions of stories.

I'm only capturing a few of the stories.

I find collage items and I say, "This looks like a person bending over," so I just turned it into a person bending over.

Or, "This looks like Mommy washing her clothes."

Or, like, in one piece I have her hanging up clothes on the line, 'cause she did that when we were growing up.

And we would help, you know, with the hanging of the clothes, and those were our, like, memory scenes.

I did that series called Down on the Farm.

I wanted to honor that part of my culture.

When I was growing up, we had a lot of hogs.

I mean, lots of hogs.

(chuckling): The yard was one big mud puddle, and the hogs would escape, and we would chase them, and run them back home, but everybody in the neighborhood had pigs, and, you know, were raising hogs.

Because hogs are the cheapest form of livestock.

You give them anything and they eat it.

(chuckling); That's good.

The pig block that's in the show was a chopping block.

And I carved the images on the chopping block on both sides, so that each side of the chopping block is a different part of the story.

And then I printed it and used a part of it as a collage in the painting.

And from that, I outlined the pig so the pig is in each piece.

The whole discussion is about what life was like growing up in that community where everybody had a farm and everybody had pigs.

I work in different mediums mostly because one thing doesn't work as well in the other medium.

Like, oil may work well for one subject, but then when I have a show, and the show needs to be up by a certain date, acrylic works better, because then it dries really fast and I don't have to struggle with it.

So it depends on what I'm doing.

I love oil, but I know that oil takes months to dry, so I respect the nature of each form.

And then the block prints or the monoprints and all that, I just, like, in between working on the paintings, I'll just work on one of those.

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: And that is all for this edition of Open Studio.

Next week, we talk to artist Lyle Ashton Harris, whose work confronts taboos about race, gender, and love.

You can always visit us online at GBH.org/OpenStudio.

And you can see us first on youtube.com/GBHNews.

And remember to follow us on Instagram and Twitter, @OpenStudioGBH.

I'm @TheJaredBowen.

We hope to see you here next week.

Until then, I'm Jared Bowen.

Thanks for joining us.

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