[Announcer] Funding for The Art Show is made possible by the L&L Nippert Charitable Foundation, Montgomery County, The Virginia W. Kettering Foundation, The Sutphin Family Foundation, The Wohlgemuth Herschede Foundation.

Additional funding provided by, and viewers like you.

Thank You.

In this edition of the art show, bicycle-powered photojournalism, (uplifting music) Africa embodied in art and fabric, (uplifting music continues) colorful work in cross-stitch and paint, (uplifting music continues) and cowgirl art of the American West.

(uplifting music ends) It's all ahead on this edition of "The Art Show."

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music ends) Hi, I'm Rodney Veal, and welcome to "The Art Show," where each weak we provide access to local, regional, and national artists and arts organizations.

Let's meet a human rights advocate and adventure cyclist who calls Dayton home.

Eleanor Moseman uses a camera to document and share the social and cultural narratives of underrepresented communities.

Her journey began with a 15,000-mile bike journey across Asia, where she documented the humanitarian issues of Buddhists in Tibet and the Uighur community of Xinjiang along the way.

This solo odyssey was the catalyst that ignited her photojournalism career.

Here's her story.

I'm Eleanor Moseman, a human rights activist and visual storyteller.

I went to Virginia Commonwealth University for my undergrad degree.

A guy I was dating at the time moved to Shanghai to help his brother who had an architecture firm in Shanghai and asked if I wanted to go, and I said yes.

So in 2008, I moved to China.

It was a big change.

I had a hard time adjusting.

I was applying to photo studios for assisting work, and I had one studio tell me blatantly, "We will not hire women because our clients will not respect you."

I started planning a bicycle tour around China.

It kinda had to do with this just really big depression I fell into, and I knew that I had to change my life in one way or another.

It ended up lasting about two years and a bit over 15,000 miles.

I ended up wandering all over the country, spent about four or five months in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan.

I got really sick, and so I just decided, "Okay, no more bike tour.

I'll just stay in Xinjiang and spend a couple months documenting Uyghurs and their life and the countryside."

The Uyghurs are a group of people persecuted by the Chinese government.

They speak a language that's closely related to Turkish and Uzbek.

It's its own language.

The original intention was not to spend two years on a bicycle, but the further I got, the more I became comfortable with it.

Sleeping in culverts under the road, sleeping almost on the side of the road, exposed.

Riding through the mountains during the wintertime, I just became used to it.

It just became second nature and was almost like uncomfortable became comfortable.

I think it was the second month of my bike tour that a man decided that he was going to lock me in a room with him and he was going to have his way with me.

And that was not the last time, but it was one of the more intense times.

I was able to get away.

I would just get so pissed off because when I'm out there on these adventures and expeditions, I don't see myself as an American, I don't see myself as white, I don't see myself as a woman.

I don't see these labels.

I'm just existing.

And it's like every time I'd be harassed, it was like, "Thanks for making me remember all that stuff."

Like, "Thanks for making me remember all these labels that I don't want to adhere to."

But eventually, I get to this point where I'm riding down this gravel road and there's a bunch of Tibetan prayer flags, and I see this monk coming towards me, and he invites me into his house.

I'm tired, I'm hungry.

Yes, okay.

And so in the morning, his sisters were getting dressed to go to the market, and they were putting on these beautiful gowns of this, like, deep rich reds and this Tibetan brocade, and I started photographing them.

And I remember that exact moment, like, photographing these women in their home.

I wasn't even existing there.

I finally was able to say, "Yeah, you know, I'm a photographer."

Like, "I am a photographer."

If I had to sum it up in one sentence, when people ask me about it, I'm just like, "Yeah, I learned to love myself."

I was in my early 30s, I was figuring myself out, and most importantly, I figured out what I wanted to do.

I started photographing Tibetans and Uyghurs, and it just seemed to be my calling.

Her photography is giving them a voice and a presence because their culture will disappear, their history.

And so her photography is capturing the essence of who they are and what is going on.

I'm in awe of her passion and her perseverance, (gentle music) and how much she loves these people.

I asked her once, I wish I had the passion she has for something, like she has for representing these people, for the persecuted.

People talk about, "Oh, well, as a woman, you have to take different precautions, you have to be more careful," but I also believe if you haven't found the benefit or the perks or the strengths of being a woman, like, you haven't found your power of being a woman yet.

The fact that I am let into households, that mothers give me their children to hold and leave to work in the field while I'm in their house with their children, like, I don't think a man would have those options, and I know they don't.

I've talked to plenty and they're like, "You get access that we don't get."

So there's a few women that stand out in my mind most vividly, and one would be Jamyang Samo and her mother Gala.

Gala is the matriarch of the household, and she has a daughter, Jamyang Samo, which was probably about five or six years younger than me, but I was not just a guest.

I learned how to herd yaks.

They thought it was very humorous when I could not milk a yak.

I helped with food.

I just became part of the family.

And these women get up before the men, before sunrise, and get to work immediately, and they are the last to go to bed.

It is constant work.

They live in one of the most difficult environments and they're facing, you know, these issues against the government, and it's like every day is gonna be a struggle, but they face it with just such compassion for one another.

(gentle music) So during summer of 2022, I competed in an ultra-endurance bicycle race, the Silk Road Mountain Race, which takes place in Kyrgyzstan.

It's noted as the most difficult race in the world.

I was the only woman from North America to complete the race.

A total of three women finished the race.

So I arrived in Kyrgyzstan a couple months before the race because I wanted to acclimate, and unfortunately, I was one of the cyclists that got very sick.

And during those four or five days of being sick, I was just crying nonstop because I was convinced I wasn't gonna be able to race.

And I was just like, "It's all gone."

You know, "It's over."

I tried to recover as much as I could.

I showed up at the start line, and I ended up at the finish line 15 minutes before cut off, so even with all of that happening, I still finished that race.

I've learned what being brave and resilient is all about, and most importantly, I learned what that is by watching and living with the women I did out there.

They are the ones that are brave and resilient and compassionate.

These people showed me who I am.

And I also hope that when people see these photographs or hear these stories, the viewer isn't overcome with a sense of hopelessness.

I hope it affects them in a way that they can look at their own lives a little differently, or look at their own community and, you know, be inspired by these people that are facing some of the worst injustices that anyone could ever imagine, but they still persevere.

(gentle music) If you'd like to learn more about this or any other story on today's show, visit us online at cetconnect.org, or thinktv.org.

Fabric is a part of our daily life, and central to an exhibit inspired by the book "Homegoing," about two sisters from Ghana.

Let's step inside the gallery at the Massillon Museum for a look at the recent exhibit, "Home Again: the Embodiment of Africa Through Art and Fabric."

(playful music) I wanted people when they came to the exhibition to be able to travel through the essence of the book.

The essence of the book is always bringing you back to home, which is Ghana.

The book is all about two sisters who were half sisters.

They were separated at birth.

One sister ended up staying in Ghana and marrying a British man who came to colonize in Ghana.

The other sister ended up being sold into slavery.

It was really important for me to have the show be a great representation of the story, and so I wanted to have artists that were international artists from Africa, I wanted to have artists that were local artists, as well as national artists.

So we have national, international and regional artists represented in the show.

"River's Spirit" is an accumulation of different fabrics that I've painted and embellished.

I make a form out of what would be considered, like, papier mache and I cure the paper pulp for about two years.

This happens to be a representation of the struggle of someone that is from the motherland, Africa.

She lives off of the river.

Her spirit comes from the river.

She is the river spirit.

(uplifting music) Chepape Makgato is a South African artist.

He is a painter who does collage work with fabrics.

I love his work because he's representing oftentimes women in his culture.

He represents people that are socialites, like this particular one is actually someone who's a royal person in South African culture.

And so he does work that is definitely inspired by what's happening in culture.

He has a piece over here called "Family," this piece over here, that has the mask on, that was created during the time of COWID.

He wanted to show how family members were still able to be together and communicate, even though, you know, they were having to be draped with these fabrics around their faces.

(gentle music) When we think about home, typically we think about the curtains in our grandmother's living room, or we might think about the sofa print that was, you know, the floral print that was on the sofa.

Or we often times think about quilts and our bedding, the things that kept us warm in the evening.

The Gee's Bend Collective has a tremendous history.

They started quilting during enslavement times, like around the mid 1800s is when the Gee's Bend Collective started.

They didn't call it that at the time, but that's when the ladies started quilting, and eventually, their quilts became this international phenomenon.

You can see Gee's Bend quilts in the Smithsonian.

They have been collected all over the world.

I drove to Gee's Bend and met a woman by the name of Qunnie Pettway, who was a very, very famous quilter in Gee's Bend.

And these quilts really symbolize what you can do with your hands and a little bit of something, just a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and it turns into this.

(gentle music) This is "Tallulah Beulah", and Tallulah Beulah is, like, my version of what we call a scarecrow, or a garden fairy, that would be placed in the garden, or what would be formerly known as the plantation.

These are mostly a collage of cuttings from art pieces that I have made over the years, and designed for, what I consider, wearable art.

The dream pot next to her is, as a child, I had a neighbor that was down in Selma, that used to tell us, "Just tear off a piece of cotton, or tear off a piece of fabric.

Think about your dream.

Drop it in the pot, honey.

It'll come to you."

So that is what that's from.

(gentle music) So Chesley Antoinette, she did a collection called "Tignon", where she created sculptural pieces as well as photography.

And what I absolutely love about these pieces is that it shows the depth, the richness, the variety that women can use.

And so in Louisiana, there was the Tignon Law, and women, they had to wear a head covering over their head.

It was law.

They couldn't leave the house without it.

And so Chesley's work being almost like a reinvention of what those ladies probably looked like, you know, a long time ago, and the variety of things that they did and how creative they had to be to come up with all of these different styles that they had to wear, you know, as a way to oppress, but really, it became an enhancement.

(gentle music) It is such an honor to be showcasing artists who are local and national and international because it really reflects the extent to which our community has an ability to invite artists and perspectives from all around the globe.

Museums help shrink our worlds by introducing us to how large and vast the world is, but helping unify us around these common themes and these things we have in common.

One of the things that connects us all as human beings is our use of fabric, and so I would love for people to just be able to come into this space and feel a connection to the human experience.

(gentle music) If you miss an episode of "The Art Show," we've got you covered.

It's available to stream at cetconnect.org, or thinktv.org.

You'll find all the previous episodes, as well as current episodes, and links to the artists we feature.

Androa Kontras expresses herself in both serious and silly ways in her artwork.

Like many of the artists at Goodwill Art Studio and Gallery in Columbus, she enjoys working in mixed media, and always keeps an eye on the details.

My name is Andrea Kontras, and I'm at Goodwill Art Studio and I do artwork.

It's mixed media.

I'm using painting on cross-stitch material and I'm line stitching lines in different shapes.

(upbeat music) I do interesting work.

I just do what comes from my brain onto the canvas.

Sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's serious, it just depends.

(upbeat music continues) I would probably be at home crying or bored to death if I couldn't come here on Tuesdays and Thursdays, because I'm out in the community on Mondays and Fridays with Alec, my daytime staff, and then Tuesdays and Thursdays, I'm with Nicholas and Heather and Colleen and Ed here at the studio, and I really enjoy it.

It makes me feel a sense of accomplishment and makes me feel, like, wanted.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) I'm such a saleswoman.

I do a craft show in November, every November, and it's the only one I do, if you guys wanna come out and see me at the Grove City High School.

[Interviewer] How does it make you feel when one of your pieces sells?

I love it.

It's like cha-ching.

(upbeat music) It makes me proud to have my artwork be sold, and it feels like a sense of accomplishment, that somebody actually bought and really enjoyed my painting.

(upbeat music continues) (upbeat music ends) If you crave more art goodness in your life, the podcast "Rodney Veal is Inspired By" is available now.

You can find it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you lister to podcasts.

Learn more and find show notes at thinktv.org or cetconnect.org.

Tulsa, Oklahoma-based artist Megan Wimberley noticed that few women artists had work displayed in Western art museums, and even fewer women were depicted in the artwork, so she flipped the conversation and founded Cowgirl Artists of America.

Take a look.

(uplifting music) (cow mooing) (cow mooing) Many women really don't like the term cowgirl.

Instead, they'll say cowboy girl or cowboy gal.

(uplifting music continues) I've even heard people say, "Don't call a woman who has a good, like, hand with a horse or with cattle or whatever, don't call her a cowgirl.

Call her a cowboy."

(hooves thudding) And I think that tells a story about the West that is not accurate.

It's not the story of the West that I grew up in.

People wanna be a cowboy.

Why don't they wanna be a cowgirl?

(uplifting music continues) (uplifting music continues) I chose my cousin to portray in this art because I think she is an incredible horsewoman, and she definitely knows lot more than I do.

She's done it for a long, long time.

(upbeat music) My art, which I would call contemporary Western art, kind of falls between the cracks sometimes because there is definitely Western galleries and Western shows that my work would not fit in.

They would say it's too modern or too contemporary.

On the other hand, there's shows that, you know, like the things that aren't Western, which I would be way too Western for.

A lot of times when people go really colorful, they really begin to be more abstract or expressionistic and lose some of the realism to it.

And for me, the realism is also important.

You know, I literally was riding horses before I could walk, and I know that that seems like a tall tale, but it's not, and there's pictures of me, as soon as I could hang onto a saddle horn, I was up there, and my mom said I would cry as soon as they took me off.

I just always wanted to be around the horses.

(upbeat music continues) Right now, we're in Tulsa.

It's a lot different living in a city.

You know, that's not really my preferred place to live, but there's beauty no matter where you are.

(upbeat music continues) Then, of course, there's the Cowboy Museum in Oklahoma City.

And I really try to get down to the Cowboy Museum as much as I can.

(upbeat music continues) It's always informative, always beautiful, looking through the old saddles and all of that.

It's so inspiring to look back at the craftsmanship and the patterns and the styles that were used.

(upbeat music continues) (connection dialing) Hi, Priscilla.

How are you?

Good, Megan, how are you doing today?

[Megan] Doing well.

So, are you ready to get started?

So Cowgirl Artist of America is an organization that's working to increase opportunities and representation for female Western artists and makers.

The idea for CGA happened in 2018, when I went to a really beautiful Western art show, and as I looked around, I began to notice that there were not very many women, and I just thought, "I wanna do something about this."

And so I just started with Instagram, and I started reaching out to female Western artists, and I would send them a message.

"Hey, your work's beautiful.

Can I share it?"

I started doing monthly Zoom meetings, and then people were like, "How do I join?

How do I join?"

Don't only get stuck in art-based hashtags.

And so in May of 2021, I was like, "Okay, we're doing it."

(upbeat music) They are fine artists, so they're painting, sculpting, they're photographers, or traditional artists.

So maybe they're saddle makers or they are boot makers, silversmiths.

When I think about it, it's kind of like mind boggling how much the organization has done in such a short time.

(upbeat music continues) I'm really happy with it.

Yesterday, I called it, what did I call it?

Vintage, vintage pop, 'cause that's what it feels like to me right now, a vintage pop piece, which I don't if that's a thing or not, but if it isn't, it should be.

(upbeat music) Women are really good with horses.

(upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) And a lot of times you see these cowgirls out there, too, with the baby on their hip.

All of that is so important.

And it's because of women like my Grandma Betty and my Aunt Shelly that women are able to grow up and to do the things that they wanna do because we've been supported to go out there and be cowgirls, so thanks, Grandma.

You're very welcome.

You're one of my special kids, too.

(upbeat music continues) It's time to celebrate the cowgirl.

(upbeat music continues) And that wraps it up for this edition of "The Art Show."

Until next time, I'm Rodney Veal.

Thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) [Announcer] Funding for The Art Show is made possible by The L&L Nippert Charitable Foundation, Montgomery County, The Virginia W. Kettering Foundation, The Sutphin Family Foundation, The Wohlgemuth Herschede Foundation.

Additional funding provided by, and viewers like you.

Closed captioning in part has been made possible through a grant from The Bahmann Foundation.

Thank You.