(Announcer) Funding for Art loft is made possible by the Wharton Foundation.

(Narrator) Art loft.

It's the pulse of what's happening in our own backyard, as well as a taste of the arts across the United States.

In this episode, the Art of equity.

Every time I'm on stage, every time I get to play, I feel like the violin is saving my life because it's giving me the opportunity to express myself.

(Narrator) We meet LGBTQ plus artists who share openly and honestly the difference art has made in their lives.

My art.

It was also what started my healing journey of some of the things that I've gone through in my past.

(Narrator) From photography to drag to musical performance, theater and the visual arts.

We also not only do visual, we do performance.

You know, just to show a different types of art rather than what's on the walls.

(Narrator) These creatives are finding solace, solutions, and healing through their work.

I feel less repressed.

I guess it's a way to work out those things.

You can't, you know, do as a little gay boy that you can do as a drag queen.

It's a creative outlet, definitely not only with the hair and the makeup and the, you know, the jokes and the dancing and the costumes and all that.

But it's also it's also a creative outlet for your personality and your soul.

(Narrator) Stay tuned as we celebrate Pride Month with these artistic gems.

(Narrator) Like the painter and their brush art and healing go hand in hand.

Both the medical and science communities are now realizing the positive impact of the arts on mental health.

Musician Marcos Aycox has lived that very experience healing through his music.

Let's meet the man known as the Tattooed Violinist.

So growing up in Brazil in a very religious family, I always found it hard for me to be able to express myself and be my true self there.

I'm gay, and growing up in Brazil, I was very much, you know, in the closet.

I couldn't be who I was.

And once I found out I received a scholarship to study music here in the US, I was very happy.

And I moved back in 2014.

So going on ten years now in August and didn't know any English or anything.

But that's when I finally realized I could be myself.

And I also found out through my tattoos that I could use them to express and tell a little bit of my backstory.

So every tattoo has a different meaning.

I don't like to get any tattoos that don't mean anything to me, so that's how I express my art besides the violin as well.

(Marcos) Feel like my biggest bully was my father.

He's still alive, but he disowned me when I came out, and, you know.

But he.

That's all right.

You know, I feel like a lot of us have had to go through that.

And he doesn't speak with me.

I haven't spoken a word to him in probably over five years now, but I'm happier that way.

You know, I was very close to probably ending it in Brazil, which is why it was so important to make the move here to the United States.

And my cousin, whose name is also Marcos and he's a violinist as well, he's the reason I'm here.

He went to the University of Southern Mississippi to do his master's in violin, and he sent my video to to the university on my behalf.

And that's how I didn't even know.

So that's how I got the scholarship.

And he told me literally six months before I had to move up here.

So it was a big decision for me.

But it also saves my life in many ways that I can count.

I'm married to a beautiful man.

Uh, his name is Michael Aycox.

He's always with me everywhere I go.

He's also my manager.

He takes care of all the business side of things.

I play anything from Mozart to Katy Perry to Aaliyah.

You know, I have something for everybody, and I want everybody to feel welcome when they see me.

(Marcos) I don't ever want to lose sight of who I am with it.

Um, because I know that I came from a very painful past and like a lot of other artists and musicians and I it's I think that's the word for me.

It's humbling.

I never expect it to be where, where I am.

Um, and to to be able to do what I do, you know, it's just I feel blessed every time I'm on stage, every time I get to play, I feel like the violin is saving my life because it's giving me the opportunity to express myself.

I think something that I want everybody to leave with is what I do at my shows.

Um, I always end my shows trying to make sure that everybody leaves, knowing that they're not alone.

And a phrase that I always like to bring with me is be a unicorn in a field of horses.

That means be yourself.

In a world where you don't think that you can be yourself.

Be different.

(Narrator) Photographer Dennis Deane has been capturing award winning images for over two decades.

He's also a dedicated arts advocate in his work with Arts United.

Here, he shares the why behind his want to gather friends in the name of art and community.

I'm a photographer and when I photograph I will say I do a lot of black and white photography.

But when I do color, those pops of color always liked to, you know, just hone in on I did this pride series.

There's six colors and the pride flag.

And so in this series you got that purple, you got that orange, you got the red.

So it was a great series and it was very popular successful here at the gallery.

I am a part of the hotspots and that is hotspots magazine.

And in happening now network, we do like every month is a different show.

I showcase artists from Arts United and you'll see right now we have eight artists.

We have watercolors, we have an acrylic, we have sculptures, we have oils, mixed media photography.

Of course, I want this gallery to be a destination, you know, an attraction for people visiting Greater Fort Lauderdale to really come to this gallery and like, oh my gosh, this was amazing talent, amazing art.

Because we also not only do visual, we do performance.

We have an author like tonight we're going to be showcasing his book and we'll have a book signing.

It'll be like a meet and greet.

(Dennis) Um, other times we have performers, singers, dancers, actors that really, you know, just to show a different types of art rather than what's on the wall.

So that's what I like about what we do.

Tonight, this exhibit is dedicated to my sister in October because my sister, she passed away with breast cancer.

So I've always wanted to do something special.

So in October, we do Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and I get artists that have been like touched and they're healing, so it's amazing to see what they create.

I call this piece Wrapped and Strength.

It's very healing.

And I'm grateful that I have art, you know, in my life in a variety of artists that just are so thankful because I see their talent, and I'm so glad I have the opportunity to showcase their work and for everyone to to heal like me.

(Dennis) So I'm just kind hearted.

I want like here I share the love.

I want to make sure you shine because I, you know, I've done it and I love doing it.

I love being exhibited here, but I want it's all about showcasing my friends, my, my fellow artists.

And and then you meet these incredible talents, you get the back end of their stories.

And and I, I've had some great friends for many years, so it just will continue growing and growing.

But.

That's the person.

And I think the photography of the photographer is is really the same.

I'm going to make sure if I photograph you, it's going to be the best photo and it's going to be the best experience that we will have.

And then, you know, sometimes it's awesome when you photograph someone and then you see it on the wall, and then you get the reaction to all these people of what we created.

That's priceless.

(Narrator) Niki Lopez is one of Broward's best known multidisciplinary artists.

He or she shares how she found healing through the arts and learned to build community by focusing on the elephant in the room.

My name is Niki Lopez.

I'm a multidisciplinary artist, curator, social practitioner and founder of What's Your Elephant?

I use my art to engage the community for things that that I feel is important for us to address.

I do interactive pieces, I do community talks.

So I'm not just presenting works for, you know, to be absorbed as just an art piece.

I deal with arts and advocacy.

I use my arts to talk about some of the things I've gone through.

It's not just about here's a painting.

I did come see it, you know, or buy it.

It's about how, you know, how can we engage the community.

I love that more and more people are now seeing the power of art as therapy, the power of art as healing, the power of art as advocacy.

What's your elephant comes from that saying elephant in the room?

The thing that we know is there and no one wants to talk about when I started doing more works that were connected to some of the things that I went through, people like related to those things like, oh, if you're talking about this, then let me share what happened.

That's kind of where the what's your elephant kind of stems from?

Why?

They were talking about trauma, abuse, sexual abuse, racism, LGBT social issues.

So it's using art to talk about those things to be a tool for, you know, like a catalyst.

Right.

So sometimes we have difficult things that either we try not to talk about or we don't know how to talk about it.

Right.

But if you're putting it in a song, a poem or whatever, have you, or if I'm drawing doing a piece now we have something to talk about that doesn't feel so big.

You know, I went through several traumas in my past sexual abuse, being raised in a cult, different things like that.

Um, being separated from my family when these things started popping up in my art and people were like, oh, wait, I didn't know you went through that.

I just knew there was something else or people would see the work.

And they said, okay, well, if you talked about this, let me tell you.

My elephant right.

And or and share with me these things.

And so for me, it also came, it felt like a responsibility of like we need more spaces for people to share things.

And so if I could be a little bit more courageous in sharing some of the things that I've gone through, it can help other people share what they've gone through.

My art, even though it was growing my art practice and different things that I was doing, it was also what started my healing journey of some of the things that I've gone through in my past and even some present.

And I'm very clear, especially if I'm doing a workshop and I tell them I know the importance of therapy and creating safe spaces, and I can give resources.

But I don't claim to be a therapist, even though I do have people that say, I feel comfortable saying this to you.

I feel like, you know, you're not judging me or there's a safety in sharing those things.

But I said, okay, I'm not a therapist I can share.

(Niki) This is what helped me in my journey because everyone's different.

It could help you.

Or it could be, you know, maybe not talking to a therapist to help you, maybe having movement as therapy, bringing in all those things and and having it and showing the importance and the role that art plays in all of those pieces.

I used to have a podcast.

It's on pause right now.

Um, the circle where it talks to artists, activists and social entrepreneurs and someone who I interviewed that knew me and she said, thank you for healing so publicly.

And I don't share every single detail, but the things that I share, I saw the benefit of not just for me, myself, but other people say, hey, this is what I have, or this is something I've been holding on to.

So that's just been really kind of rewarding, responsible, you know, because I feel, you know, sometimes people say, is it easy to talk about these things?

And I was like, no, but I feel like if not me, then who?

And I also live by the model of being what you want to see in the world.

I want to do things as I learn them.

I'm sharing them, but also as I feel that people should be doing these things because one, we can't just tell people to do something we're not doing ourselves.

My hope is that I not just inspire people, but I motivate people to take an action because we could be inspired all day and on our couch.

It helps me be accountable for my healing journey and the things that I do and be really intentional.

But it also seeing that it helps others.

And so for me, art has been just it's like the air that I breathe.

It's not like it's there's no separation between me and art and what it is to me.

(Narrator) Next up we meet Zalin Yates, performer turned founding managing director, shaking up the local drama scene.

His Brevo Theater is staging powerful works around real topics, reflecting younger brown and black stories that affirm community, confidence and identity.

Brevo is a, I'll say, family oriented theater company.

We pride ourselves on telling genuine stories, having artistically conscious conversations, and just nurturing our community through the power of the arts.

I saw a major lack in not only black and brown artists, but young black and brown artists.

I'm just like, oh, so there's an actual problem that they don't see a lot of me, you know, as an artist, a lot of it is about me, me, me.

I, I, I, I know that artists will say that I'm going to create it and I don't care what anybody else thinks about it.

It's for me.

And which is true up to a certain point.

I personally feel like once you choose to start a company or start producing work that is at the consumption of people at large, and you're inviting people to come and see your work, and you're inviting people to say, hey, this is what we want to do.

Can we have your opinion on it?

I think that at that point you have to take yourself out of it and you have to say what is going to make the biggest impact for the community.

Yeah, it seems to want to part ways.

At the end of the day, South Florida, there's a lot of theater.

Where can we come in and still still provide a quality experience, but set ourselves up and hopefully add another level that other people aren't doing as as consistently?

When you're being intentional about choosing that season, it's a journey for me with Funnyhouse of a Negro, that was such a intense rehearsal process and the fact that it took us three months just doing table work, just reading the script, analyzing the characters because it was so heavy that I really wanted to make sure that they understood what was what their characters were conveying.

You know, as an actor, we have a mission and a goal to tell this story.

And so when you get when you get to that thought process in the in the rehearsal process, you then find an appreciation for the character, and now you appreciate what she is going through and why you're telling the story.

During the rehearsal process, you really have to dive in and find yourself in the work and and really ask each other questions that make you think, that make you reevaluate your own thoughts and opinions about about things in society, about viewpoints from other people, about life in general.

And so I think a lot of the shows that we've done has lent itself to like, slowly, um, I would say mend those dark places for me over time.

The the arts has always become a vehicle for healing, whether it be dance, singing, um, poetry, because you're able to just almost like, step out of yourself, right?

You're able to step out of yourself and use your life experiences to just communicate them in a way that that works for you.

I can say that Brevo has helped me grow both in my own personal self-confidence and I would say, overall professionalism.

I used to be somebody who was very afraid to to speak up or voice a concern or voice a a just trouble or a thought that I had about a process, because I did not think that I would always talk myself out of it, like, you know, well, what do I know?

I'm not really in this space or, you know, I'm just I'm just I'm just sailing.

I'm just thinking out loud.

I really had to, uh, pull myself out of a, I think, after a out of a dark place because I got so intimidated.

I literally just told myself enough was enough.

I had to get over this confidence issue and and and step in my truth in any space.

And this is just all because of, of spaces that I entered and just showed up as my authentic self and, you know, confidently spoke about the programs and the impact that Brevo was trying to make in the community.

So yeah, Brevo has made me an overall better human being.

In my opinion.

(Narrator) Miss Amanda Austin is known in the drag world for her wit and wicked sense of humor.

The performer and emcee at lips, the iconic Fort Lauderdale Supper Club, explains the art of drag and its power to change lives.

(Amanda) One of the best things about drag is being able to live out your fantasies and your insecurities, and working through all the trauma in your life that you know you've you've been suppressing.

Because now you can say those things, you can do those things, and you don't have to worry about judgment from other people because, you know, you put a wig on and you put makeup on.

You're somebody else.

You know, think of me as a glamorous clown.

I guess that's rule number one.

Have a good time.

Things that used to bother me before I started doing drag on a regular basis don't really bother me anymore.

I don't care what people say about me, I don't care.

You know if people think I'm old or fat or whatever anymore.

Those things used to, you know, as a young gay boy, those were devastating things that people could say to you.

And now I'm just like, okay, great.

Tell me something else I don't know You know Ladies and gentlemen, are y'all ready for a show?

(Amanda) I feel less repressed.

I guess it's a way to, like I said, work out those things you can't, you know, do as a little gay boy that you can do as a drag queen.

So, um, you know, it's it's a creative outlet, definitely not only with the hair and the makeup and the.

The dancing and the costumes and all that.

But it's also it's also a creative outlet for your personality and your soul.

Welcome back, Amanda Oster.

Off screen, we'll say off stage.

I'm a completely different person.

I'm very quiet, you know, I'm very, um, I'm very creative, but I'm not like a big party person.

And on stage I have this big personality, you know?

So it's it's kind of getting to live out two sides.

And it sometimes it's a lot of work.

Sometimes it's takes a lot of energy to be a bitch sometimes, you know.

So, um, you know, it's it's sometimes it's a lot of work, but sometimes it's a lot of fun and it's therapeutic too.

So.

Coming to a drag show is like sort of watching a movie because you're immersed in this whole different world, especially like when you come to lips because you look around, you know, it's it's like Liberace's playhouse here, you know?

Yvonne LeMay is the creator and one of the owners of lips, and Yvonne has sort of created a place where drag artists who normally don't have steady employment can come and work almost on a full time basis.

Since the very beginning, she's been the one that sort of had the creative vision and sort of put everything in motion to create lips.

If you look on the wall, there's three pictures and Yvonne is in the middle.

RuPaul, who is another drag icon who's brought drag into the mainstream, is next to her.

And Lady Bunny, who's on the other side.

They all, um, sort of started in New York City together and they, you know, have all become sort of legendary icons in their own right throughout, you know, the last 30 or 40 years.

If you've never been to a drag show, it's just a lot of fun.

We've taken people out of their normal element, and you know, we've given them this experience where for an hour or two, they can enjoy some food and they can enjoy some drinks, and they can enjoy interaction with the drag queens at the table because they're they're waitresses.

But then they also see this spectacular, over-the-top show that's funny and that's touching sometimes, especially on the day you don't want to come to work.

You're tired, your feet hurt, you don't want to put on makeup, you come to work, and there's somebody here that is visibly moved by the show because they forgot about their divorce, or they forgot about their mother just passing away, or they forgot that they're dealing with cancer or whatever.

And so it takes them out of that realm that they're dealing with, sort of to a fantasy world for a while.

And that makes coming to work on those days worthwhile.

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(Announcer) Funding for Art loft was made possible by the Wharton Foundation.

(upbeat music) (Announcer) Funding for Art loft is made possible by the