(soft dramatic music) - [Greta] I wanted this piece to tell a story.

- [Announcer] This week on "Expressions," we visit Golden Artist Colors to learn about their Our Votes, Our Stories art exhibition.

- When I was going to high school, you didn't really hear anyone saying, "When I grow up I want to be a photographer."

But I was always interested in storytelling.

- All of the people of the diaspora who also make up this democracy.

That's us all.

- [Announcer] Our Votes, Our Stories, next on "Expressions."

(gentle guitar music) Funding for this program is provided in part by viewers like you.

Thank you.

(gentle guitar music) - Hello and welcome to "Expressions."

I'm your host, Adara Alston.

In October of 2023, Golden Artist Colors, in partnership with the Cooperstown Graduate Program of SUNY Oneonta, presented an art exhibition looking at the history and future of voting rights in America.

Our Votes, Our Stories featured eight artists from across all visual mediums using the power of their art to spur dialogue on this important issue.

We spoke with Gretchen Sorin, the director of the Cooperstown Graduate Program, about the origins of this exhibit.

- Mark Golden and I were chatting about this gallery space, and we were talking about possible ways of collaborating.

And Golden Artist Colors is an incredible resource within our community.

And I suggested at one point, "Perhaps my students could work on an exhibition in your gallery."

And he said, "Hmm, I need to think about that, because that's not something that they've ever done before."

And he called me back and he said, "You know, I think that's a great idea."

And that's how the collaboration started.

We talked about a possible topic for the exhibition and we both agreed that voting was something that we both cared passionately about and that we thought was a perfect topic for this time in American history.

(beeping) - [News Anchor] Heightened tensions.

- [Interviewee] You just have to choose a side.

You automatically have to hate the other side.

- [News Anchor] Deep divisions.

- [Interviewee] It does get heated.

We have big fights.

- [News Anchor] And a stark choice.

- [D. Trump] We will make America great again.

- [K. Harris] We are not going back.

(beeping) - I think we take democracy for granted in this country.

We just assume it's always going to be here.

But democracies are a very fragile forms of government.

They tend not to last.

(gentle guitar music) We tend not to think about that or think about the fact that our freedoms have been eroded.

And voting rights is certainly one of the freedoms that's been eroded.

So I think it's really important that we remind people all the time how important it is that they vote, and that we protect the elective franchise for everyone in this country.

One of the things that we'd like to do at the Cooperstown Graduate program is to give students real experiences, not theoretical experiences.

And this is a real experience.

They actually went through the entire process that they would do if they were working professionally for a gallery or for a museum.

So they really got hands-on experience, real-life experience of finding artists, working with artists, talking with artists about their work, selecting works of art, and figuring out how they would organize an exhibition.

What would you put on the wall, where would you put it, what can go next to what.

It's the entire process that you would go through if you had a professional position.

- [Adara] Working with curator Jimmy Nunn Jr., the students searched across the country for individuals whose work and ideas fit the exhibition's theme.

We were able to visit with four of the contributing artists, with the first being Greta Chapin-McGill.

- This exhibit is truly overwhelming.

It's very well done, very well curated.

I think the works, all of the works are really quite powerful and really have something to say about the state of this democracy that we're in.

(soft dramatic music) Well, I wanted this piece to tell a story.

I feel for myself and for other Black Americans that the story begins in the journey here.

So the first panel of this piece is about that journey.

They were transported here.

They knew that's where they were coming.

We didn't know where we were going.

We were like in a fog.

You are ripped from your home, your parents, your everything that you know to be familiar.

That is what the first panel represents.

This middle panel, I went to a casino in Mississippi that was built on a plantation.

And it's beautiful.

I mean, the trees and everything are beautiful.

But I always have felt underneath of those trees was something.

That's what the trees in that second panel represent.

So not only are they my ancestors in that field, but who knows how many people are in that field.

Yet this beautiful person came out of that field (soft dramatic music) and has something to say.

And then there's the rest of us Indigenous people.

Whether they are American Indians, whether they are Chinese, whether they are Haitian, whether they are East Indian or Indonesian, all of the people of the diaspora who also make up this democracy.

So that's us all in that painting.

(soft dramatic music) Well, color is very powerful.

It can make you feel a certain way.

It can make you look a certain way.

If you see two colors together, you're going to get a certain feeling.

And as an artist, that's a very powerful tool to have.

It's a very powerful understanding.

On the way up here, I was just amazed at the colors of the foliage, and I thought about that fall foliage.

This is something that ever since I was a little girl...

This is why you came up here.

You came up here to look at these colors because they made you feel fall.

They made you understand that the seasons were changing and certain things were happening.

But that's what color can do, give you a feeling, and give you a way to express that feeling.

(soft dramatic music) The democracy belongs to us all.

It's not just one person.

An exhibition like this makes that abundantly clear, that it is all of us together that make this work.

(soft dramatic music) - Being a photographer, first of all, I really try to make sure that, when I have an exhibition, that people can really connect.

For me that's touching.

I am very much so into texture and things like that.

I want people to feel it.

I want people to be able to really fully immerse themselves into the work.

So I thought it would be great to kind of print on material, specifically silk, and have people kind of feel like they shouldn't be touching it, right?

Because still you think of it being more fragile and like something you're not supposed to really touch.

- Are people supposed to do this?

- [Assistant] Yes.

There's a sign right to the left of the clothes line.

She wants viewers to touch the scarves and take a look at the artwork... - Oh.

- [Assistant] that's hanging.

- Okay.

- I wanted people to be able to connect with the work in definitely a different way and not sort of feel as though it's just an image that they're looking at and they can't touch and feel.

I'm very much so into that, into the texture and things.

- Can't you feel it?

(gentle piano music) Wow.

I do like it, but it surprises me.

(laughs) (gentle piano music) - This project consists of six portraits of myself that are printed on silk.

The machine part kind of came later on.

And I not going to speak too much about that because I really want people to leave and feel however they're supposed to feel after having that.

But it was something that was inspired from an event.

I had one of my fellow community members tell me I need to return back to my country.

And so it was inspired by my feelings at that time, feeling uncomfortable but not sure why I felt uncomfortable, 'cause I knew it was something deeper than just my skin color.

And also just feeling unsafe and not being sure why I felt like that and why anyone would feel entitled to come up to me and say something like that.

(gentle piano music) I was inspired to have this setup like this due to my beginnings in Trinidad.

Growing up, my grandmother would hang out our clothes after it was washed.

It was just a really fond memory, and it was just like something you do on a Sunday.

That's what she did, at least on a Sunday.

We would hang our clothes out in a specific way, and having her here in this country now is like, in my work, I often try to...

I don't even think it's intentional, but now I realize those little moments that even if the work is something that might not be so positive, I have to have special moments like that of my childhood.

(gentle music) I think when people first come into the exhibition, they may think that it has to do solely with race, right?

Whether you're Black and white.

And I would like people to look a little bit more in depth because it's much more profound than that.

The body of work is far beyond that.

It's not a Black or white thing.

It's multi-layered.

It could be a class thing, ageism.

It's multi-layered.

(gentle music) - Thank you for joining us on this special episode of "Expressions."

And we'll be back shortly to look at two more pieces that were part of the Our Votes, Our Stories exhibition.

In addition to presenting the artwork, Golden Artist Colors also worked with the Center for Artistic Activism on furthering this discussion with the New Berlin community.

- And how negative politics... How much negativity politics can create in people.

And so she just wanted to replace all those bad feelings with something really positive.

Hi, my name is Rachel Gita Karp, and I'm the program director of Unstoppable Voters at the Center for Artistic Activism.

And we're all about bringing more creativity and innovation to protecting the freedom to vote in the United States.

And we've done that all across the country, working on mobilizing voters but also all the intersectional issues that are tied to voting.

And that might feel a little bit more personal than just casting a ballot.

(indistinct chattering) So the Center for Artistic Activism, we do a lot of trainings and workshops with anyone really who's interested in either bringing more creativity to their social justice work or using the creativity they have to have more direct impact.

- What are the things that are really important?

So if there are those things that you really do feel are opportunities that you'd like to pursue, is these and these folks.

- Mark Golden has been a supporter of the Center for Artistic Activism for a while, and he knew about our work all over the country supporting people who are trying to make it easier to vote.

And so he wanted to bring us in to be part of this and also to help activate the local community, because there might be people who want to get involved and they're not sure how.

And so we're going to run some workshops that are all about bringing this more artistic spirit to try and mobilize voters.

(gentle piano music) Something I also love about this exhibit is it's not just about the art.

It's called Our Votes, Our Stories, and it's connecting that human element and the stories of these artists, telling your own story about why voting matters for you or who you're voting for or what you're voting for.

Because just telling people to vote can have very little impact, and it's really like, what is your vote accomplishing.

And is it making sure you have healthcare or if it's making sure you can pay for school or whatever your issue might be, giving that personal lens is a really great place to start.

(gentle music) - I like using pictures to make pictures and thinking about how we can retell stories by looking through archives.

I've done a lot with my family photos and I've done a lot with media and historical images, like in the pieces I have here.

(gentle music) The fight's not over, which is part of why I think we have this exhibition here.

Our democracy right now I feel like is at stake.

Voting rights are at stake.

Women's rights are at stake.

So it's really also important for me to do something about women really claiming their power and kind of demanding to have a voice.

(gentle music) I found this image of this woman here standing on a soapbox.

Clearly she was having someone take the picture of her before she went out to kind of talk about women's right.

And I was just so struck by the hope, the power, the self-determination in her stance that I knew that that had to be part of it.

(gentle music) Sojourner Truth, she was a suffragette, an abolitionist, a freed slave who commissioned self-portraits of herself that she would sell, and with that supported her activism.

So she's been my inspiration for years and years.

We have Elizabeth Eckford here with this famous photo of her integrating schools and thinking about how important her taking the power to change history.

(gentle music) Also learning about the Native American activist Zitkala-sa.

(gentle music) But then I also learned, which is where the title to this piece comes, "How Long Must Women Wait?"

that in January, 1917, women were the first people to pick at the White House, something that's not very known, and for nine months they were out there every single day with the signs, "How long must women wait for liberty?"

And I was just so struck by this in reading about it, and they were finally arrested and their arrest caused such outrage, which made Woodrow Wilson actually change his tune.

And that's partly what led to the passage.

(gentle music) So I had made years ago a a piece using a pushed-out blister pack, thinking about medication.

also thinking about what we've discard, and seeing these little holes as like a way to kind of view the past.

And which I often do in a lot of my work, and it's in both pieces.

I'm here looking in, putting me as like the artist, the viewer, the consumer.

(gentle music) I mean, hopefully exhibits like this, A, will get people to register to vote and vote for candidates that really believe in democracy and believe in working for the people.

- It's important in a democracy that every individual have the vote.

So I think this is a very important exhibition, just to remind people how important it is that we get to vote for our elected officials.

(gentle music) - I became an artist, I think, in the ninth grade.

I was convinced that's what I wanted to do.

And I think we all gravitate towards the things, either the things we're really good at or the things people tell us we're good at.

And I've been working and making art for probably 40 years.

(gentle music) Probably since 1990, I've been doing artwork that is more and more oriented towards social justice.

And I've also been spending more time researching.

Pieces like Fannie Lou Hamer, her voting booth.

I read just about every biography I could get my hands on and just studied everything I could to learn about her.

And then the piece came together fairly quickly.

(gentle music) - [F. L. Hamer] You can pray until you faint, but if you don't get up and try to do something, God is not going to put it in your lap.

(gentle music) In June 9th, 1963, I had attended a voter registration workshop.

- The big deal for Fannie Lou Hamer was voting rights.

She was born a sharecropper in Mississippi.

She only got a sixth grade education.

And she went on to become one of the foremost leaders in the civil rights movement.

(gentle music) - [F. L. Hamer] All of this is on account of we want to register to become first-class citizens.

I question America.

Is this America the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off of the hook because our lives be threatened daily because we want to live as decent human beings in America?

Thank you.

(audience applauding) (gentle music) - I admire her because, unlike a lot of the civil rights workers, her growing up and living in Ruleville, Mississippi on the delta, and her connection to the rural poor made her realize that poor Black people in Mississippi were not going to be interested in registering to vote if they didn't have shoes on their feet or if their children weren't being educated or they couldn't feed them.

So Fannie Lou Hamer went across the country doing fundraising and gathering food, clothing.

And she would go back to Mississippi and she would hand out bags of clothes and food.

And with every bag was the message, "Now go register to vote."

I truly admire her courage and her tenaciousness.

Every time she was (indistinct) in her work, every time she was threatened, every time she was beaten, her resolve doubled and tripled and got magnified, and she was all the more determined.

And then she didn't stop.

When LBJ signed the Voting Rights Act, she continued to push and start a Head Start program in Mississippi and a Freedom Farm to provide food for a cooperative situation where people would work for it.

(gentle music) I made Fannie Lou Hamer a voting booth.

I thought she's earned her own voting booth.

The voting booth is exactly five feet, four inches in height because Fannie Lou Hamer, when asked if she was afraid that she might be killed doing the voting rights work, she said quite clearly she was fully prepared to fall five feet, four inches forward in the fight for freedom.

So the voting booth is leaning precariously, but it's leaning forward.

And we know now how precarious our voting rights are in this country, so this both honors Fannie Lou Hamer and I think is a call to all of us to do whatever we can make, whatever sacrifices we need to make in order to maintain our democracy.

(gentle music) - That will close out this episode of "Expressions."

If you would like more information about the artists featured on this program, then please visit the websites that are listed on the screen.

If you are interested in voting information, then visit your local Board of Elections website for details.

Until next time, this is Adara Alston.

Thanks for watching and goodnight.

(soft dramatic music) (soft dramatic music continues) (soft dramatic music continues) (soft dramatic music continues) (soft dramatic music continues)