(Tom) This week on Arizona Illustrated, it's getting hot, so we're getting in the pool with some unlikely champions.

(Skyler) It's just really fun to all be able to swim together and just all kinds of different disabilities, pretty cool.

(Tom) Meet a Tohono O'odham artist who's honoring tradition and blazing a new path.

(Quinton) What we do is hereditary.

We must represent that through our craft.

(Tom) See how one local initiative is creating healthier food boxes.

(Holly) Having these patients get fresh produce that's also local, that's pretty amazing.

(Tom) And meet the creative team at Cream.

(Marissa) How can we form mutually beneficial partnerships in the shop or in the community?

(upbeat music) (Tom) Hello and welcome to Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara.

And we're joining you from our studios here in the basement of the Modern Languages building on the U of A campus, where another one of our programs is now being recorded.

That's Hollywood at Home with Victoria Lucas.

We've been in this space for decades and we've pretty much outgrown it in every way possible.

And we're looking forward to moving into our brand new building, the Baker Center at 36th Street and Kino come fall.

And if you'd like more information about that, go to azpm.org slash capital.

You know, the University of Arizona is home to the only collegiate para swim team in the United States where swimmers with various disabilities come together and unite, adapt, and overcome just like true champions.

♪ ROCK MUSIC (Liberty) Growing up, I wouldn't let anything stop me.

I would compete against my siblings, all the able-bodied people (Noah Thomas) The water doesn't discriminate, it doesn't care what you look like.

(Skyler Fisher) When you're swimming with able-bodied, it's like you're trying to keep up with everybody, but then with para swim it's like everyone's kind of on their own level.

♪ ROCK MUSIC FADES (Laura Utsch) We are the only para swim team at a university in our country.

Our team has 10 swimmers right now, two of them are para triathletes.

Each person on our team has different challenges themselves.

They're just like anybody else.

Skyler, she is very dedicated, and she works her tail off every practice.

She doesn't have any excuses ever.

In the past, I have made very hard sets for her, and she calls them death sets.

[ LAUGHS ] (Skyler) Wait, what?!

(Laura) 2x200, descend!

(Skyler) Laura is trying to kill me!

(Laura) Streamline!

Ready, go!

(Skyler) I guess I've always been a swimmer.

We just saw that I was like really good at it, which is kind of funny because nobody in my family can swim.

I was born with like a genetic neuromuscular condition, but we didn't know until I was like 15 and I started having like weird pain and like tingling and stuff in my legs.

Like I stopped being able to walk and then they're like you know "what the heck", like I went to like every doctor under the sun.

Then there's like literally the easiest thing, it's like you spit in the tube, you know, for genetic testing, and it was like "oh, ta-da" And it's called a Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease.

There's no like real cure but I know there is like all these like trials and stuff that they're working on.

(Laura) Each swimmer has different abilities.

Some para swimmers are slower, so they kind of get left out to getting much attention.

(Liberty) I don't really like look at the difference between like limbs and whatnot.

When I'm in the water, I feel like an able body, so it doesn't... there isn't really a difference.

It is cool when we go to swim meets and you see people that are like you.

(Laura) I call her Fearless Freeman because she, right out the gate, Whenever you meet her or whenever she meets somebody new or there's anything that's in front of her, she's just all in.

This is so awkward.

Okay, um, my name is Liberty Freeman, I swim for the U of A adaptive swim team.

So I was born with tibial hemimelia.

It's called like a floating foot.

Got that amputated and then fitted for a prosthetic at the age of three.

So I've had a prosthetic for 16 years.

So I don't know any different.

(Laura) Noah came here in 2022 and our team was very small.

(Noah) The team was super new here when I came, so it felt a little like isolating at times swimming alone.

(Laura) He had a really hard time when he was here.

His roommate was terrible.

He didn't make any friends.

(Noah) And I saw the team here grew, so I decided to take a chance and come back, and I'm so excited that I did.

(Laura) They definitely have become a family.

There's a bond that happens when you train together, that doesn't happen anywhere else.

(Skyler) I guess when it's a whole team of para athletes, we're all just kind of used to like someone getting out and hopping across with one leg.

Whereas like abled-bodied people that are on a team are it's kind of like "Oh, I've never seen that before."

Libby and I, we are pretty good friends, and we always joke around with each other.

(Libby) Bro, I can't feel my leg!

It's just really fun to all be able to swim together and just all kinds of different disabilities, it's pretty cool.

(Liberty) So Noah's here, um... Any 50 that we are doing, and Im just like, trying to keep up with him.

(Producer) Oh, is he always beating you?

Uh...

Most of the time.

(Noah) Yeah she's been great, showing me around Tucson.

Just making me feel welcomed and then competing with me in the pool.

There's definitely been times when I feel like I've plateaued and I haven't gotten faster in a little bit.

And that makes it tough, but just keep showing up every day with a good mindset and everything's gonna work out.

(Laura) It's a sport.

It helps us be a better person in the rest of our, our life.

And hopefully we're building a community here, where we help each other.

Um, so it's not just about swimming, obviously, it has to be about more.

♪ INDIE ROCK MUSIC ♪ (Tom) Tune in next week and we'll introduce you to the inspiring members of the University of Arizona's Adaptive Golf Team.

(Amanda) Adaptive golf is one of those things that anyone with any disability can be a part of.

Any adaptive sport in general, but adaptive golf especially, because it's so diverse.

There are people of all ages, all disabilities that are playing in our tournaments.

(Jim) I bet you didn't couldn't believe that a young man with one leg could shoot par and another lady who was legally blind could also shoot par.

These students are amazing.

(Man) Very good.

That was a good putt.

(Tom) Next, we visit the studios of Quinton Antone, a multimedia artist of Tohono O'odham and Kiowa heritage.

Now what sets Quinton apart is his ability to respectfully adapt ceremonial elements into secular art, thus making spiritual themes more accessible to a broader audience.

♪ SOFT MUSIC [ TOHONO O'ODHAM LANGUAGE ] Good evening, my name's Quinton Antone and I am from the village of San Miguel, which is in the district of Chukut Kuk.

I did not know that I wanted to be a jeweler.

Kind of struggled on what I wanted to do.

I had an aunt who was married to an artist whose name was Duke Sine.

You need to have some kind of lubricant.

So this is how I'm using a wax, just from a candle.

I saw him create so many pieces of art.

A lot of local artists, they used to come over.

I remember them showing jewelry they made and I was just so fascinated.

It's like, oh man, how did you do this?

I was thinking about something Rick Manuel had told me.

What we do is hereditary.

It's like in our genes.

We're O'odham people, and we were O'odham before we even were born.

We must represent that through our craft.

I am doing a basket design.

It's actually a water design, and they symbolize the wave.

I am part Kiowa, but occasionally we'll do something related in the Kiowa part, which is in the Oklahoma Southern Plains tribe.

I stick to more of the natural elements of this region.

I always liked doing art, but I never thought as me, you know, pursuing it because I thought that I didn't need somebody to teach me how to do art.

I thought that I could, I thought I knew it all be kind of arrogant.

I took some jewelry classes, took some sculpture classes.

Once I chose art as my major, things just took off from there.

A lot of my work has designs, imagery of O'odham culture.

It's a way to bring awareness about the O'odham people.

I do a few techniques.

One is overlay, and that's One is overlay, and that's what Rick and James Fendenheim do.

They have a sheet metal, and then they cut out a design, solder it to another piece.

I like to incorporate stones, turquoise, different types of seashells.

Every piece that I make has a little bit of a good thought, a prayer that I put into it.

Whoever shall possess it, whoever shall use it, you know, but have a good heart, you know, good thoughts, you know, a good way, protect them.

Fine silver is really malleable.

So it's made out of fine silver.

So this has like more silver than that actually does.

I'm also want somebody who's gonna use it and appreciate it and also know the meaning behind the symbols and the stones.

For us, O'odham and our ancestors to Hohokam, one of the first to do like inlay thousands of years ago.

As a descendant of them, I tried to bring that back.

And I really at one point want to do a whole inlay piece of O'odham, you know, symbolism, design.

I'm gonna cut a little bit more off of it.

I also want to teach my niece, my daughter, people that want to learn, you know, so that they can continue the craft and be able to not only sustain themselves, you know, financially, but also as a way to continue to represent our culture in this way.

I would say to the upcoming jewelers or artists that are coming, don't give up.

There's been many times where, you know, my stuff didn't match up to, you know, the status quo, I guess.

And now with social media platforms, a lot of people, they look at, you know, other people and they see that, oh, they're doing this, they're doing that, oh, they're better than me.

They lose confidence in themselves to do that.

That's what I was doing to myself.

So I had to take myself off of, you know, social media or Instagram and stop looking at those and start just kind of really creating from my heart and try to bring that to life.

Sometimes I won't have silver, I'll have scraps, but I'll look at the scraps and I'll look at it, I'm like, oh yeah, I can, this kind of looks like a lizard.

And it kind of like speaks to me in a way.

And so I'll kind of try to bring that out, you know, even whether it be a stone, whether it be a shell, whether it be the silver, I kind of like have that relationship with these elements.

Those who are upcoming, you know, I would just like to tell them, trust the process.

And if you really have passion for something you love to do, you know, then the universe is gonna make a path for you in that way.

(Tom) We've dropped into the marketing department here at AZPM.

These are the people charged with providing fresh ideas to keep us going.

And there's another FRESH on campus.

It's an innovative program managed by the School of Nutritional Sciences and Wellness.

And what they do is provide medically tailored food boxes and educational support to food insecure individuals who have or are at risk of developing diet related diseases.

♪ PEACEFUL AMBIENT MUSIC (Erik) So today's Friday, but on Wednesday, about 15 different farms visited our warehouse and brought products varying from collard greens and cabbages to grapefruits, mandarin oranges, limes, fennel.

The lettuce heads that we put in the bag the week are grown four miles to the east of here at a place called Westover Farm.

All the mandarin oranges and citrus came from the Phoenix Valley.

The fennel was from a farm on the west side of town.

All this food doesn't travel very far from where it's seeded, watered, harvested, and we spend the next two days sorting them into what size packages they need to be in and ultimately getting them prepared to show up Friday morning here at the door of El Rio.

The Fresh Program helps with individuals that are experiencing food insecurity.

So they don't have access to food regularly or maybe very much food, not enough food.

So what we've done is partnered with the Community Food Bank and partnered with Pivot Produce and the University of Arizona to bring food into the clinic.

You know having these patients get fresh produce that's also local and having exposure and learning about the local food system and what kinds of things Arizona can grow and does grow, I think that's pretty amazing.

(Melanie) FRESH stands for Food and Resources Expanded to Support Health.

So it is food based, it is food focused, and our idea is that providing, simply providing more of the right kind of things to eat will help people better manage their diet sensitive condition.

A lot of complications can be prevented by better nutrition and maybe half of all of chronic conditions are diet related.

And so the food part is really important.

And the food that has been chosen is high fiber food, food that and some protein seasonings, cooking oil, vegetables, canned beans, lentils.

So really things that can really help regulate blood sugar, provide a lot of nutrition, help them feel full for a long time and have a really well rounded meal.

Hi Travis, how are you?

Good morning.

Good morning.

They also have the opportunity to meet with the registered dietician.

So about once a month or more, we bring one of our registered dieticians to the pickup site so that they can meet with a registered dietician while they're picking up their food.

They can look at the food together, see what's in the bag.

They can go through recipes, answer any questions that they have.

(Travis) It helps out a lot that you understand what you're eating, what's good for you.

My blood sugar was around 11 a year ago and now I got it down to 6.7.

So, you know I just cut out the sugars, You know and took care of myself more vegetables, watched what I ate, I've lost about 40 pounds.

So it's been really good for me.

It's a good program.

Alright guys thank you very much.

- Take care bye.

- Thanks.

(Melanie) FRESH 2 is designed as a waitlisted, controlled randomized trial, which means that half of the participants we recruit come in and they wait six months before they participate in the intervention.

The other half come in and they start participating right away.

Everybody is measured every three months because we wanna understand how does the control, the people who are waiting, compare with the intervention, the people who get it right away, in order to see if there's an impact of the intervention.

Everybody gets followed for a whole year.

We're still understanding the cost benefit, that's a very important piece of this because we think that it will actually, in the long run, be less cost to the people themselves with the condition and also to society and to health payers if people are able to manage their condition, utilizing food first in addition to medication.

This is part of healthcare, that this is an aspect that should be included in with medication and with primary care visits.

This is one thing that can make as much of a difference in those health outcomes that we're kinda all looking at with patients.

The top three reasons why people eat what they eat is it tastes good, it's convenient, and it doesn't cost too much.

And health is way down that list.

So how can we move that up farther?

And I think FRESH helps make that a little bit easier for some people.

(Holly) Anything that helps individuals improve their nutrition as a registered dietician, of course I'm on board and I love that and it makes me really excited.

So, it's really great to see this project come to its fruition.

(Erik) To be able to bring incredibly healthy, incredibly fresh and incredibly important ingredients to those individuals that need it the most, it's why we do this work.

[ BAG CRINKLING ] (Tom) Cream is a Tucson business that designs and prints some of the most iconic and memorable logos and t-shirts in town.

Think Eegee's, EXO Coffee, or how about the Protect the Sonoran Desert Toad t-shirt.

Well next you'll meet the Cream team and find out how this unique business got started.

♪ LOW RYTHMIC MUSIC (Patrick) I started screen printing in high school for friends bands, very DIY, and started my own clothing brand called Carne and Queso.

People liked the designs I was printing and would keep asking me, like, "Hey, couldn't you print my stuff?"

And I'd always say, "No, no I don't wanna do this as like a job."

This is just my hobby.

And I met this lovely lady, Marissa, who was able to help form that into an actual business.

(Marissa) I don't know anything about business.

I've actually had no interest in business my whole life.

I always thought it was really boring.

And then I was like, oh, actually, I think it's kind of just solving problems, like creative problem solving.

That started to feel really exciting for me.

So I thought, I'll help you for a few months.

And then it just kind of snowballed into the next few years.

(Patrick) I've always been a lifelong fan of the Wu-Tang Clan.

"C.R.E.A.M - Cash Rules Everything Around Me" I thought that was like the perfect name for a business endeavor.

I already had a tattoo that was C.R.E.A.M., so I could just say I got a tattoo of my business name.

So here's my old C.R.E.A.M.

tattoo.

It's old enough that it's starting to fade.

I think now it just says Ream.

I need to get it touched up or get a new cream tattoo.

My dad's favorite band is Cream He thinks that Cream is in reference to his favorite band.

I never corrected him.

Some of those beginning clients, we were able to bring on a lot of cool coffee shops.

But I think when The Loft put in an order, we were like, "Oh, this is real and we've made it."

They've been one of our sustaining clients over the last eight years.

We help clients bring their merch ideas to life.

Eegee's.

Exo.

Seis.

Decibel coffee.

Pidgin Palace.

Moca.

Transit cycles.

A wooden tooth.

How sweet it was.

Pivot Produce.

Southern Arizona AIDS Foundation.

Some people come to us just for design.

Some people come with us just to make merch.

Some people come to us to collaborate because they like the CREAM brand itself.

Our own designs and pop-up can be a little bit more edgy and culturally relevant.

We've worked well together because I am like, "Oh, it would be so amazing to just shock people with this weird, disgusting thing."

Marissa is very good about like providing some context to how that might negatively affect the image of the company and maybe how to alter that in such a way that it doesn't push certain buttons, but it does others.

Even conservative companies want to go a little bit out there sometimes, do something different.

We have three people here that all do design work for clients.

And I'm one of those people and there's Spencer and Karina.

I was just like, "Man, someday I gotta work there."

So it just like, it really was like a dream come true.

This place is definitely a very unique place to work.

I feel like we get a lot of like collaborating with everybody on the team.

I would say it's a pretty like equal feeling.

We also get a lot of leadership kind of in all of our roles too.

(Marissa) Rose was one of the first like employees we hired on to do administrative work.

Yeah, and Rose is still here with us now, so.

She's on maternity leave currently.

- Maternity leave.

- Yeah.

- Congratulations, Rose.

- Yeah.

She's actually here, so she's gonna do a interview.

Oh, okay.

(Rose) When I first moved to Tucson, I had a little stint delivering mail for USPS.

But it was such a bureaucracy, and not to mention it was 110 degrees in the mail van.

So, as soon as I found my place at CREAM, I felt more comfortable here.

The most challenging part has definitely been just to maintain the volume of business that we need to thrive.

I think it kind of started with the pandemic, and then a lot of small businesses are still trying to bounce back from that.

I'm able to use the resources here to create prints, t-shirts for my own brand.

I make basically just cat art.

I feel like it's such a creative base shop.

I feel like a lot of print shops don't encourage artistic vision as much.

Manual printing, it's like the old school way of printing.

It's how I learned how to screen print.

Whereas the auto, you're mainly lining up and registering the screen.

And then the auto does all the printing for you.

So you can do a lot more shirts on the auto.

The manual is definitely more tedious.

Has more of an artistic background in it.

There's definitely a lot with screen printing that could go wrong.

Like my first day of screen printing, my boss told me, and I'm not allowed to cuss, but he told me, "You're gonna f*** it up."

Learn from it.

It's an art medium, art doesn't always go right.

I printed an order.

I printed it all upside down.

And I started a fire.

(Patrick) Yeah, a lot of the projects we do are local artists, collaborations.

Like an example is the Mount Lemmon tee which people have really liked that CREAM put out.

It's very tongue in cheek.

Everything on it is wrong.

Tucson spelled wrong.

Mount Lemmon spelled wrong.

It's not Mount Lemon.

It's A mountain.

So it's very like Tucson local humor.

Dimitri Manos is a musician and artist.

And that was something that we worked with him to create the Mount Lemon design.

And he also made one that's for the biodome, kind of making fun of the biosphere.

One, I think, big project that really utilized all aspects of CREAM, things that we were good at, was the awareness campaign for the Sonoran Desert Toad, people using it to harvest its psychedelic secretions and how that is negatively affecting the toad population.

We worked with Robert to come up with imagery and also Hamilton Morris, who had a show that kind of talked about those things and were able to figure out how to reproduce a pamphlet from the 70s that talked about it.

There's probably a few thousand of those shirts out there and a portion of each, proceeds of each shirt goes to the Tucson Herpetological Society.

Yeah, there's a lot of good marketing, a lot of good design, building relationships with different people and utilizing that to also have proceeds go to actually trying to affect the problem that we were talking about.

I think it was us kind of running on all cylinders and we've kind of been able to do that with other projects as well.

Use that as a blueprint.

It's really unsustainable to treat people with disrespect.

They're not going to stick around as employees, as clients, as collaborators.

So I think for me, just thinking, how can we form these like mutually beneficial partnerships with people, whether those are partnerships with people we work with, You know, in the shop or in the community I think prioritizing the profit is just short sighted.

And I think we're here for the long haul, so.

Cut to the train.

♪ RYTHMIC BEAT MUSIC FADES (Tom) Thank you for joining us here on Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara.

We'll see you again next week.