>> JARED BOWEN: I'm Jared Bowen, coming up on Open Studio: how artist Napoleon Jones-Henderson literally weaves history into his tapestries.

Then, Boston's man of murals talks about his latest.

And for sculptor Alison Croney Moses, there's no such thing as dead wood.

>> Even though a tree is cut down, it still feels like it's living.

So it adjusts to the climate.

It swells and, and releases that moisture, and all of that is happening every cut you make.

>> BOWEN: Plus, the storybook career of artist and activist Ekua Holmes.

It's all now on Open Studio.

♪ ♪ We're bringing you a special edition of the show with a focus on local color-- the artists who not only call Boston their home, but have made Boston a more vibrant, expansive, and enduring home for the arts.

First up, you'd be hard-pressed to encounter a man with more unflagging spirit or artistic prowess than Napoleon Jones-Henderson.

We caught up with him last year when 50 years of his work was on view at the I.C.A.

We'll go there in a moment, but first I met Jones-Henderson at his Roxbury residence.

Because, for him, home is where the art is.

>> I've got surely 6,000 or 7,000 books throughout my library here.

>> BOWEN: If ever there was a home built on passion and fueled by art, this is it.

Napoleon Jones-Henderson has lived here for 47 years.

It's a living sculpture housing a lifetime of his, not to mention all other manner of artwork.

Do you have different working spaces?

>> No... Well, yes.

Each room is a different working space.

And I would call it an aesthetic and intellectual resource; that's what this house is for me.

>> BOWEN: And the spirits run deep here.

Jones-Henderson's Greek Revival home is known as the Edward Everett Hale House.

Hale was an abolitionist who advocated for the education of freed enslaved people.

>> I'm sure, as an abolitionist and all of the activity that he was engaged in, people such as Tubman and Douglass, they've all tiptoed through this house.

So in a way of speaking, I see it as responsibility of mine to continue that, uh, that kind of energy.

>> BOWEN: It looks like you are not somebody who separates your work from life.

>> Oh, no, it's all one thing.

My work is my life.

>> BOWEN: And has been for half a century.

In 1968, Jones-Henderson was one of the founders of the Chicago artists' collective AfriCOBRA, or the African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists.

And now at Boston's I.C.A., the decades of work in textiles he produced according to AfriCOBRA's aesthetic principles fills this retrospective.

>> And that manifesto which drove our work is the elevation of the humanity of African people and to project, if you will, always positive images and works that reflect the beauty and the majesty of African people.

>> They asked themselves a question, "What is the role of the visual artist as part of the civil rights movement?"

>> BOWEN: Jeffrey DeBlois is the show's curator, and says Jones-Henderson's work has always been in dialogue with the community, reflecting the culture in language and music.

>> AfriCOBRA outlined that they would use language in a particular way.

As you see in Napoleon's work, often things that come from the community, sayings, you know, to be free, or lyrics drawn from Black music, like from a Stevie Wonder song.

>> ♪ You haven't done nothin' ♪ >> At other times, an individual work that's dedicated to a body of work by a musician, like Duke Ellington's Sacred Concerts.

(playing jazz tune) So it has various iterations in his work, but there is a sense of rhythm and musicality throughout.

>> BOWEN: And it's woven in.

Jones-Henderson studied textile weaving at the Art Institute of Chicago.

But well before that, it was family practice.

>> It really starts out with my grandparents and my aunts and all the women in my family, because quilting and patching the holes in your pants after they wore out, and tucking up a coat sleeve because it was a little bit too big for you when they got passed down.

>> BOWEN: Over decades, he scooped up roll after roll of fabric from New England's once-thriving textile mills.

And in 1974, he came across a room full of reflective yarn once used for flapper dresses, which he still uses.

>> The element of the AfriCOBRA aesthetic and philosophy of Shine became fully available to me.

The aspects that one can find in medieval tapestries and so forth, where they have the gold and silver threads in there, it's the very same thing.

>> BOWEN: And the Shine accents a palette of what Jones deliciously calls Kool-Aid colors.

>> In the late '60s and early '70s, I know in Chicago in particular, you saw brothers walking around the neighborhood in the street with these wonderful Kool-Aid color outfits on-- lime green, the purple, the strawberry, you know, the red.

And so that style is what we saw as an important element to depict in our visual work.

And be perfectly honest, Kool-Aid is very close to watercolor.

>> BOWEN: The artist's most recent pieces, and a project he's been working on for the last 20 years, is a series of sculptures titled Requiem for Our Ancestors.

They are shrines to house spirits, and began with his desire to honor the four girls killed when white supremacists bombed Alabama's 16th Street Baptist Church in 1963.

>> Looking at those four little girls and many other Africans who have died or were killed, murdered, and otherwise terrorized, whose passing, their spirits were not able to be honored and held sacred by the people who they were a part of.

>> BOWEN: And the bottom of each shrine, he says, is meant to catch the wind, as derived from a Nigerian tradition.

>> So the stirring of the air is the stirring of the spirits.

And so these structures are spaces for those spirits that have been still uneasy out here since 1619.

Coming forward, they have a place to be.

>> BOWEN: From a museum to a home where the spirits always move Napoleon Jones-Henderson.

♪ ♪ Next, Boston's Rose Kennedy Greenway offers one of the region's largest canvases: a giant wall given over to one artist each year.

The latest is a Boston native.

He is Rob "ProBlak" Gibbs and the mural is called Breathe Life Together.

It builds on a series he's been developing-- epic works that are now city landmarks.

We caught up with him last summer when he was still painting his mural.

Rob "ProBlak" Gibbs, welcome back to the show.

>> Hey.

Glad to be back.

>> BOWEN: And congratulations on the mural.

So take me through what you've created here.

>> Whew, what I've created was a moment to say something loud.

And given the chance and the opportunity, I just wanted to showcase to the city that we've been here for a long time and holds the same type of weight and caliber, the artwork that currently or previously existed in the space.

You know, showing that we got taste, and the ability to hang.

(both laugh) >> BOWEN: Where does the boombox come into play?

Something if you're of a particular generation, and I think we're very close in age, then you really identify with.

>> Right.

It's just like there's a lot of people that ask like, "Where does the CD go?

What is that thing?"

(Jared laughs) In a very unique way, it's like a family heirloom.

The boombox was in our grandmother's house for years, and that was like the stereo for the house.

And my cousin and I used to take it out and try to like, you know, live our hip hop dream through having this boombox outside of the house.

It's kind of cool because now that I'm painting the boombox, I'm understanding the significance of how important that, that machine is to amplify.

>> BOWEN: What does it represent?

Because it's...

I mean, there are some images from the 1980s that are just so...

I mean, that's it, it takes you there immediately.

So what is it about the boombox and what does it represent?

>> I would say the boombox was the way to get your news.

It was the... it was the total way to escape.

You know, people would dial in to the radio station, or they would just kind of have you listening to what's going on.

It was, it was the word of mouth before the internet.

And I feel like as a machine it had so much importance because it's like anywhere you're playing music you just disappearing into what the song does.

I feel like it's an important machine that just evolved into what's now on your phone, you know?

>> BOWEN: Well, and speaking of music, when I last saw you at Madison Park, you were playing music as you were working.

(music playing) What's the role that music has when you're working?

>> Music just takes you to a place that you can get lost in time.

And there's a lot of artists out there that I listen to who like help kind of get my thoughts together as I'm creating.

So it's energy.

It's a flow.

>> BOWEN: What would happen if you didn't have music?

>> I'd probably be singing a song in my head.

That's, that's what would happen.

Like, you know, if the battery died or I didn't have electricity at that time, I'll find some way to make it happen.

>> BOWEN: So what is it like for you?

You have, is it four now major murals around this city?

I mean, this... you're, you're authoring this city.

>> Oh, man.

(stammering): That's a huge... (both laughing) That's, that's a huge role.

You know, it's four big ones.

But there's a whole lot of work that I've been putting in over the years where, like, on a smaller scale or in the neighborhoods we've been changing certain blocks or like, you know, corner stores, and so public art affairs, we're normalizing having fine art at your fingertips through our voices, through our reflections, and things of that nature.

So to go on a larger scale is the natural evolution of it.

But to have the four that like a lot of people are talking about it, it's, it's new to me to have everybody kind of connect and relate.

But I also know that when you have a gift, you also earn a responsibility to make sure that, like, you are pushing your limits and boundaries to think on a, on a bigger platform.

>> BOWEN: Is there a different significance to have this one on the Greenway?

>> There is.

The difference is location and just the challenge to, like, show that wall that demands a certain composition what you got, you know, there's always a challenge in texture or like surface, and you want to know that what you do works.

So the Greenway is just visibly different.

The actual surface is a challenge because it goes from one type of surface to another.

The ins and outs of the building, you want to create an image that just seems seamless.

It doesn't matter what angle you're looking at it from.

And then it's carefully framed by the architecture and other buildings that are around it.

So what you see from the ground up, or if you're in a lift looking at it at eye level, you also get to see these towering skyscrapers next to it that frame it real nice, you know.

>> BOWEN: I know I've asked you this before, but it's because I can't even grasp how you do this to have the perception up close as you're working as the same that you might have if you're however many thousands of feet you need to be away to also conceive of what you're doing on a large scale.

>> Mm-hmm.

That's a, um... Again, it comes from just years of doing it.

But the larger you go, the larger you have to think.

So you do get caught up in, like, the little minute details.

Then when you get down and back up, it was like you did nothing at all.

It was a little speck.

So when you think larger, you get to maximize the ability of what the can is able to do.

And a lot of people bug out because it's a spray can that's actually producing this work.

So I think to showcase the dexterity of the medium and just to let people know it's a lot more complicated than painting a cabinet or a bike.

(laughs) >> BOWEN: And they're getting to meet your daughter, who's now four.

(laughs) Yeah, they're meeting, they're meeting Bobby in a larger capacity.

My daughter is known as, you know, Daddy's little helper.

The message I want to relate to the younger generation, she's helping Daddy tell the younger ones and everybody around the world that, you know, this city is yours and we can do this together.

>> BOWEN: Where does that optimism come from?

You remain so optimistic, so hopeful.

>> It's that challenge to try to equalize the playing field.

You know, we can sit back in... from the mural series that you highlighted.

To breathe life into a situation, how do you do that?

And I'm not just going to keep repeating it.

I'mma show you better than I can tell you.

And if there's a way to always do it visually, people are always like taken in a certain way.

And the goal half of the time is just to help people feel what they can feel when they are looking at something because you never forget how you feel.

To know that in our culture through hip hop that we have stories to tell, we have babies that we're raising, we're highly educated, and educating people through the medium.

So why not have them feel great on top of that?

You know what I mean?

Help them escape from what you can just see on the news all the time.

It's why when we approach a wall, and we put that first coat of paint on there, we're opening up a whole portal to what's possible.

You know, depending on how and what composition comes out of it, it's a real... it's a real expression from the inside that I haven't developed the word for it yet, and I know it exists out there, but I know how it feels.

So I would just love to share that feeling.

>> BOWEN (chuckling): Here's to that.

It is always such a pleasure to speak with you.

Thank you so much.

>> Thank you.

(laughs) ♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: At the MassArt Art Museum you'll find you'll find the exhibition Designing Motherhood, looking back at 150 years of design centered around reproduction.

It was an exhibition, by the way, planned before the Dobbs decision this summer.

We're about to meet one of the artists featured in the show.

She is woodworker Alison Croney Moses.

Alison Croney Moses, thank you so much for being with us.

>> Thanks for coming to my studio.

>> BOWEN (laughing): I was going to say being with us, but we're the ones who invaded your studio here.

Well, tell me about this space and what, what happens here, what it represents to you.

>> I think it's just a space that I actually can focus on making and kind of block out everything else.

And there's not many of those spaces in my life.

>> BOWEN: What happens here?

Do you go into a zone?

Do you know what you're going to do when you walk in already?

>> I think both.

It depends on what I'm working on.

If I'm commissioned for a piece, like the Designing Motherhood piece, there's a piece back in my studio now that I was working on, but it was really pushing my artistic practice a bit, challenging myself, doing different things, evolving some.

And so that's really a process of I have an idea, I have sketches, and I come in and I am in a zone.

I'm often listening to music, or podcasts, and I'm kind of experimenting as I go within a reason because you got deadlines.

(chuckling) Got to make a decision.

>> BOWEN: In your relationship with wood, is there a conversation that happens?

Is there a relationship?

Am I being too ethereal about it?

Well, listen, because I'm thinking ceramicists, they can mold, they can work with glass.

Sort of the same thing.

>> Yeah.

>> BOWEN: I don't think you can do that with wood, can you?

>> You can... you know, you can, but it will... like it has a limit.

I tend to try to push those limits.

You can bend a piece of wood or a veneer to a certain amount and then it will crack.

It will break.

And so that's part of that, that relationship or that process that, that is interesting to me.

It also, like, even though a tree is cut down, it still feels like it's living.

So it adjusts to the climate.

It swells and releases that moisture.

And all of that's happening every cut you make.

So that's when I about the relationship with the wood and if it's speaking to me, there is a relationship.

>> BOWEN: The living nature of it that you experience, how, how do you then see it at the end when you're looking at the final piece?

Is it still alive?

>> It still mimics life.

>> BOWEN: Looking at your pieces, where does your love of the curve come in?

>> When I was in school, you learn all the machines, and they want you to make a box, they want you to make a table, really angular pieces.

And I kept being drawn to a curved form and I've kind of found my place.

I think it, again, mimics life and it mimics the mother figure.

You know, all these things, now that I have kids, I'm like, "Yeah, it, it does reflect who I am a bit more."

>> BOWEN: I was wondering about how motherhood has affected your work and, and being pregnant and having children and, again, going back to that form.

>> I have thought a lot about my shifting identity as a woman, as a Black woman, as going from a young person to an adult, going from, you know, a single person to married to then now having kids and your identity shifts.

As I'm making these pieces and I think about the material, and where it came from, and its connection to, like, past generations, to future generations, and life cycles.

I can't quite put words to it, but I feel more of a connection to those forms, even ones that I made when I was much younger without kids connecting it to the life cycle and the, the role that motherhood plays in that.

That the growing of, of human life, or life in general, and just that, like, space for love, and, and nurturing and caring and, and like, what role does that play in our society?

>> BOWEN: Well it makes me wonder how... how much of a different artist you are now than prior to all of those things.

>> Back in college, I purposely would say, "I'm not making work about identity."

I'm not doing that because I wanted to be treated like a woodworker.

I wanted to be treated like a craftsperson that could stand on my own, and people would look, and critique, and put me in the level with everybody else.

And, so now fast forward, realizing that I had been kind of dabbling with identity in my work beforehand and I couldn't dabble anymore.

It had to be about who I am.

Whether that's just a vessel.

When I say just a vessel, vessels are like amazing, you know, creations of things that hold, and nurture, and all the things.

So it's not separate from my identity.

>> BOWEN: Going back to Designing Motherhood, It is such an interesting time.

I know it wasn't by design.

The world changed around it for this exhibition and the story that it tells.

When you look at your work in that exhibition, and the stories of women, and what women have endured, and how they've been ignored, and how technology had to evolve for them, what do you see in this moment?

>> You know, so much of motherhood, of raising children, so much of that is hidden away by society and not, not talked about, not discussed, not visually represented, which makes it hard to go through the experiences.

And so part of the intention of being in that space, and creating this work, is to say this is the reality.

It's like that piece that's there now, it's this belly.

Each stave or, you know, piece of wood is glued together, but you see those cracks.

And the reality of it is everything about motherhood is beautiful, and amazing, and painful, and scary.

It's both.

We all hold both of those things.

I recently, since then, had surgery to correct... All of that stretching you saw in that sculpture, it really stretched apart muscles in my body, as it does most women who grow babies in their bellies.

So that's part of producing the work is also part of me thinking about my physical identity, which is not about what other people see.

It's about my strength, and, and my ability to live in this world as long as I can, and be healthy and whole.

And what are the steps I can do to like pull that back together, which is also part of motherhood and the story we should be telling.

>> BOWEN: Well, thank you so much for welcoming us in here today.

We're so grateful.

>> I'm glad that you came.

So thank you.

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: Artist, illustrator, and activist Ekua Holmes is a lifelong resident of Roxbury, Massachusetts.

Her bold, colorful work reflects the vibrancy of the African American experience.

I caught up with Holmes when her bold and boundary-pushing works were on view in an exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts.

These are depictions of joy, of history, of family.

It's the work of artist Ekua Holmes, whose children's book illustrations are the focus of the new exhibition Paper Stories, Layered Dreams at the Museum of Fine Arts.

>> Children's books-- that's where I saw my first art.

That was my first gallery, going through those books and looking at the different styles of illustrators.

>> BOWEN: We met with Holmes at her studio in Roxbury, where she works in a space filled floor to ceiling with paper, sculpture, and paintbrushes-- stitching together collages from a lifetime of collected material.

>> When I started out, I was using a lot of found material, ephemera, magazines, newspapers, and things like that.

As I've moved on, I'm doing more of making my own papers and building collages from that.

>> BOWEN: Holmes has built her life and career in Boston-- finding inspiration in childhood from educators like Elma Lewis and local artists of color, including Gary Rickson and Dana Chandler.

Their large-scale murals throughout her neighborhood spurred a young, impressionable Holmes to delve into art as a teenager.

>> They have inspired generations of artists through their work, people who maybe if they hadn't seen those murals, maybe they would have done something different, but when they saw that imagery, so large and so colorful and so proud, they said, "I want to do that.

I want to speak to my community in this way."

>> BOWEN: Her collages often begin with a photograph, one she's taken herself or found, and they are often deeply personal.

Two of the works on view at the MFA depict members of her own family-- an aunt and her grandfather, inspired by a box of old photographs he handed down to her.

>> Those altarpieces were from photographs in that box.

If you'd given me a million dollars, it wouldn't have meant as much to me as that box of photographs.

>> Her works are very rich and layered.

And the more you look, the more you see.

Each one tells a story of its own.

>> BOWEN: MFA curator Meghan Melvin says through Holmes' illustrations in award-winning children's books, the artist paints a vibrant portrait of Black history, with scenes of familial love, joy, and resilience.

In Saving American Beach, published this year, she depicts the history and restoration of a beach designed in Jacksonville, Florida, for Black Americans during the Jim Crow era.

>> So here it's depicted in its heyday.

And what's wonderful for this exhibition is to see these illustrations and to see how large some of them are, because when you're looking at a book, and you see the scale, but here you see it's almost twice the size, and that's a way that you can get all that wonderful detail.

>> BOWEN: Even though these are ostensibly children's books, Holmes doesn't pull punches in pictures.

As in this work depicting an enslaved family working in a field.

>> We want to be truthful, but we don't want to traumatize.

Truth is always the right way to go.

Now, how you express that, how you talk to children about that, I think, is the, um, the secret sauce.

>> BOWEN: The art can shed light on painful histories.

Some elements are ripped right from the headlines of the day, as in this illustration for the book Black Is a Rainbow Color.

>> So you see this image of people walking, and you see also that there are children walking with them, but in the collage are embedded snippets of contemporary journalism, and so it takes you deeper and makes you realize that this is not just an interesting picture, there is real history behind this.

As an artist inspired by children's literature at a young age, Holmes says she's cognizant of the impact she's having on the next generation.

>> For me, thinking of today's children, maybe looking at a book that I've illustrated and engaging with art that way, it seems really important now, you know, that I understand that that's, that was my gateway.

That I'm part of creating a gateway for the next generation.

>> BOWEN: And it's that sense of responsibility that informs everything Ekua Holmes does for her Boston community.

Just outside the MFA, Holmes has planted a garden of sunflowers as part of her Roxbury Sunflower Project, in which she has called on people to plant sunflowers all over Boston-- another effort to bring joy to the city she calls home.

>> I would like for you to know that you are a sunflower, and that what you do, how you live your life, is planting seeds.

Your life itself is a seed that's going to feed the next generation.

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: As always, you can visit us online at GBH.org/OpenStudio.

And you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter @OpenStudioGBH.

I'm @TheJaredBowen.

Well, every Friday Boston Public Radio hosts live music at GBH's studio at the Boston Public Library.

So we leave you now with Boston-based R&B singer-songwriter Miranda Rae.

>> ♪ Where's the love when the love's gone?

♪ ♪ Not so broke it can't be repaired ♪ ♪ We gave up before tomorrow ♪ ♪ But if we just lay low ♪ ♪ Come on, come on, come on, come on ♪ ♪ Well maybe it'll save us ♪ ♪ Come on, come on ♪ ♪ Oh oh oh oh oh ♪ ♪ What happened to our bed of roses?

♪ ♪ They'll keep calling, we keep coming ♪ ♪ We arrived to where the road ends ♪ ♪ You know I had to go through the dust to see the sun ♪ >> ♪ Sun is shining ♪ >> ♪ Falling in love with you was the best thing... ♪