Funding for COLORES was provided in part by: Frederick Hammersley Fund, New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund, and the Nellita E. Walker Fund for KNME-TV at the Albuquerque Community Foundation... ...New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts... and Viewers Like You.

THIS TIME, ON COLORES!

BLENDING POETRY AND ART TO CAPTURE THE BEAUTY AND SPIRIT OF ALBUQUERQUE'S SOUTH VALLEY, HIGH SCHOOLERS ISABEL JAMES AND CHEYENNE ANDERSON WANT TO CHANGE PERCEPTIONS WITH THEIR BOOK "SOUTH VALLEY."

THE INSTITUTE OF AMERICAN INDIAN ARTS "MAKING HISTORY" SERIES CONTINUES WITH ARTIST, EDUCATOR AND LECTURER CHARLENE TETERS.

OVERTLY POLITICAL THROUGH HER ART AND LIFE'S WORK, TETERS STRIVES TO OVERCOME THE STEREOTYPES OF NATIVE PEOPLE IN MAINSTREAM MEDIA.

INSPIRED BY FAIRYTALES AND ALLEGORIES, JOSHUA CHAMBER'S PAINTINGS INVITE VIEWERS TO INFUSE HIS CREATIONS WITH THEIR OWN NARRATIVES.

BATTLING CANCER TWICE, ART BECAME A WAY FOR MIRIAM ZIMMS TO OVERCOME THE PHYSICAL AND EMOTIONAL PAIN AND HEAL.

IT'S ALL AHEAD ON COLORES!

SOUTH VALLEY PRIDE >>Cheyenne Anderson: I don't want to wash my face painted with thick white paint with dark circles around my eyes and a red heart on my nose.

I don't want to wash my face covered with flowers that took hours to make.

I don't want to wash my face.

I don't want them to take the faded marigolds intertwined with my hair.

I don't want to wash my face.

Tears stream down my cheeks as the tub fills with water.

I don't want to wash my face.

I don't want to wash off the joy from the day.

The candy on my breath.

I don't want to wash my face.

My poem is about the Marigold Parade in the South Valley.

The Marigold Parade was celebrating Dios de los Muertos.

We'd all come together.

There'd be a giant parade with floats, puppets, dancers.

I just remember it in this childlike sense with candy and colors and just being around everyone and seeing everyone with their face painted and just feeling like I was part of something bigger.

It was important for me to make this book because growing up and being from the South Valley, I was met with a lot of hate and I was told that my neighborhood wasn't good enough, and it wasn't until I understood more that I realized how beautiful and how true and like how much of a community that we truly are, and I chose to make this book so that I can share it with the youth out there so that they get to see their community in a better light.

>>Pheladi Macdonald: Summer breeze.

A winter freeze, and everything from above.

Trees rustle and bees buzz, all while everyone's humming along.

My poem is about all of the sounds that you could hear inside of the South Valley.

The paths around here are so nice to walk in because there's different sounds like the birds and trees and maybe some animals.

I love just stopping for a second and listening.

What stands out so much inside of the South Valley is all of the places.

I was sad because Pop Fizz closed down after Covid and that just broke my heart and I was like, "no, we go here every single day!"

because it's by the trail that my family used to go to a lot, and now I'm like, "I wish it would open back up again."

>>Cheyenne Anderson: Something about Bill Mohr's artwork, it captures memories almost.

It sparks something when you see it.

If it's not like Dan, it's like a street corner with graffiti that we usually pass or driving by the karate studio.

You see kids and parents standing outside and you're like, I see that when I drive down there.

And we're able to capture that real people in real moments.

>>Pheladi Macdonald: You should be proud of where you come from because there's a lot of memories of it.

You want to let people know that I'm from this place and it's so wonderful here.

>>Cheyenne Anderson: You just need to have a solid community to stay strong with and we need to bring ours up and show people that we're here, we're staying, we're loud, and we're colorful, and we're beautiful.

No matter where you are, you're always from the South Valley.

>>CHAR TETERS: The reason why, you know, I decided to make this journey across the country to go to IAIA is that for me it was a decision about, not so much about getting an education.

For me, it really was about finding a safe place to be, because my journey here was about escaping domestic violence.

My story, like many students, you know, there are different reasons why we come here.

This is a place where we are encouraged to look to our own history for inspiration - for that information that isn't represented in mainstream, you know, educational environments.

Most of the work that I did at the time was very much about Native women as the center of culture, of family, of keeper of the sacred truths.

And I continued to do that kind of work so the work that is here in my studio actually are examples of portraiture where there's strong women represented in the paintings.

I'm still, as a sixty-nine-year- old woman, now, still looking to my own history for that inspiration, still looking for our birthright.

You know, those things that have been kept from us, that we are still in different stages of reclaiming.

But I made it one semester and I realized, you know, I can do this work.

I can do it.

And so, I went through the program, and I got my Associates of Fine Arts, I got my BFA, was recruited for my MFA program.

I was recruited along with two other Native students who also came from IAIA and what we found when we got to this campus is a community deeply steeped in all of these caricatures and stereotypes that come from mainstream media.

The three of us who come from our community, were going like, "what the hell is this?"

(laughs) We thought okay, they just don't know, so we'll tell them.

But when we, you know, put words to what we were feeling in this community, we all became targeted by racial hatred in the community.

So that is where my work became politicized.

Because they were using us in that way, we had become kind of logo-ized and you know, we were a fetish.

Everything but full-fledged human beings.

So, I stopped doing paintings.

This is when I started doing installation pieces, because it didn't make sense to me to make paintings, because it almost reinforced their ideas of us being something one-dimensional, when we are the whole range of what it is to be a human being.

So, I started to do these installation pieces that was really about trying to turn the tables on the power structure.

And I was hoping through my installation I could begin to get them to see and feel what it was like for us to be in this community.

My artwork was the way that I made my voice bigger.

You know, as a frontline activist you're one person with a sign.

People kind of get used to seeing people with signs.

But, you know I also used my art to make my voice bigger, so I have this whole body of work that's about the front-line activities.

So, it becomes a place for the continued debate about the issue.

And I have no problem with the debate because people have to struggle with the issues to have the debate.

So that I feel is my contribution to the legacy of that struggle.

FINDING YOUR STORY My style is illustrative and narrative and more of a minimalist approach.

It uses a lot of allegory and metaphor, humorist and a little absurdist relationship-based, Often times when I am drawing out it is tempting to put as much imagery and information into the surface as possible.

But, I have found over the years doing that often limits the viewer from really exploring and establishing their portion of the narrative.

Ultimately, the goal is for them to have enough to begin and to get the underlining text, but then to take it and apply it to their own personal view.

What I have heard people say as they are deciphering it is because they don't have a plethora of information, they often have to say, or based on what I know, I think this means this, or based on my experience this made me feel like this one, or this reminds me of a time when I felt like that.

And then they start to create those stories.

It is very difficult to pare it down to those single images and often by the time a composition hits a painting, or the surface of a painting, it's been filtering through, and cycling through my sketch books for a year or so trying to get down to that quintessential grouping and selection of imagery to get that right story.

Finding the imagery and deciding on the imagery is an extensive amount of research.

I like to read a lot.

I like to find out how culturally people view certain imagery.

In the piece Hold Me, there is the ape and the crane together.

Both are images that I use regularly.

They come from different allegories but, I like to pair them together.

The ape is clearly very angry and upset and holding strings that are tied to the ankles of the crane.

The crane is struggling with being pulled on by the ape.

The text for the piece is "Hold Me" which elicits a humorous response from the viewer because you have this, what appears to be a very negative, difficult situation, but then you have this declaration of need from one character to the other.

I really enjoy children's fables and stories and fairytales and allegories and that sort of thing, so I like you can use the animal as a stand-in for a person.

When I was growing up, some of my favorite movies were like Every Which Way But Loose and those that included apes are like the silly uncontrollable character.

That character tends to represent the more mischievous, silly aspect of my personality.

Often times I will add phrases to the paintings.

They come from conversations I have with people or snippets of literature that I've read.

They morph and change as I remember them or re- remember them.

It creates another level to the story, another layer for the viewer to sift through and decipher.

I use vinyl lettering and I put that in there and then paint over it and it builds up layers around it, so as those peel out and I remove them before the final piece they're actually recessed into the surface so that gives an embossed appearance.

When re-evaluating that moment, where that dialogue seemed to have the most impact, that's when I will start to re-create that scene with these allegorical characters.

It takes something that could be a very personal moment but turns it into something that has broader interpretation and appeal or application to a wider audience than just myself.

Consolation Prize for Decline is a work in progress.

I was reading a lot of Hans Christian Anderson and there is a story about the wild swans.

In that story, brothers are saved from being turned into swans, but one brother in particular runs out of time in the process of time undoing the magic spell and everything in his body returns back to normal except for one wing.

I have always found that fascinating because in a lot of old stories and fairytales, you have everything return to normal, but often there is one thing left that is not quite right afterwards.

I was drawn to that story because I think that's very human.

We grow and we change and we improve and we go through things and things are repaired and we come out better, but often we have those scars that are left behind.

And there is something I find very interesting about that fairytale taking something that we would normally think of as negative but almost making this beautiful aspect to it but its still awkward and distorted at the same time.

The piece, 'A Friend is a Friend' is part of a series of pieces of work that I have done on paper, using that same cutting and embossing type approach to get the text in there.

It's much more sutle in the white paper but I was playing around with patterning and I like the imagery of the two crows together, and how they are tied and joined and you are not sure if it is a good situation or a negative situation but, I like that idea of playing around with the relationships that we have with other people, sometimes what and who we connect ourselves with and how sometimes that can be really appreciated and fun and sometimes it has it's negative aspects.

The color field is really my opportunity to play.

So much of the composition is planned ahead of time and a lot of it is mapped up deliberately placed in the composition, all planned out in my sketchbook.

So when it comes to the color fields: that's the opportunity I get to kind of I get just to kind of have fun with the paint.

And, sometimes it results in gradients and color changes and sometimes it is a little bit more subtle and solid throughout the piece, but usually, almost always, it's an attempt to evoke some sort of mood, be it one of unease or comfort or just curiosity.

The paintings are all on a hard wood that are couched on a birch or a pine support, so it's all painted on wood.

I started off painting on canvas a long time ago but, given the and all that, wood just holds up better to that amount of effort and reworking and, I find that I enjoy the wood because it is a lot more sturdy and you can get that smoother surface quality at the end.

I teach for the Caddo Parish talented art program.

I was really fortunate through all levels of my education to always have teachers and mentors who didn't want to see work that looked like theirs.

They wanted to see work that looked like mine and work that a came from me and my voice and so I try to re-create those experiences with my students so they too can find their individual voice.

I still want them to make the best work they can with skill and technique and things like that, but ultimately I want their artwork to look like their artwork, just like my artwork looks like my artwork.

RELEASING TRAUMA >>Miriam Zimms: I'm Miriam Zimms and I'm an artist.

I was a consultant in the solid waste management industry on the conservation side, specifically recycling and composting.

I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2010, went through treatment, chemotherapy, four surgeries, with a double mastectomy and reconstruction.

Then I found out that I needed to have my ovaries removed because I was BRCA1 diagnosed and had a genetic predisposition.

So I had those out, wasn't feeling good, had some scans, and they found out I had a second primary unrelated to the breast cancer called chondrosarcoma in my left pelvis and I had to have my left pelvis and my hip and a portion of my femur removed and rebuilt.

It was a big shock.

>>David Johnson: This is a really, really big surgery, a really stress on people physically and emotionally, which translated into a lot of impactful physical disability for her.

>>MIRIAM: And it took me two years to learn to walk again >>David Johnson: That's a lot of downtime and a lot of time for your mind to go into different places, can get depressed.

>>Miriam Zimms: At the time, prior to breast cancer, my husband and I were trying to start a family.

And then with sarcoma, we were not able to continue that process because of the issues with my pelvis.

So yes, the cancer was both incredibly difficult, but for me, I had to work on the loss of family.

That was the bigger issue.

I knew I needed to lean into the loss, feel it, so I could move forward, and that is when art came into my life.

The Arts In Medicine studio is on the third floor of the magnolia campus at Moffitt, and I walked in and they have a menu of items that you can choose from that are what they call the healing arts.

>>David Johnson: When you have a cancer diagnosis, it's almost like you relinquish your life.

Okay?

Because you basically give it to your healthcare team but you want some control, and I think the Arts In Medicine provides individuals that control.

>>Miriam Zimms: I started predominantly with ink.

I can no longer dance the way I used to, so movement of that ink for me is almost like a new way of dancing.

Then I moved into watercolor, mixed media, I started to do some 3D things.

And so, anything I can get my hands on now, I will put ink or color to it.

Most of the things when I draw, three circles end up appearing, and three circles, for me, represents multiple things.

They represent my globes, AKA my breasts, but I call them my globes since I was a tree hugger prior, in my previous career.

And then the ovaries, and then how the ovaries and the fallopian tubes connect.

And so, those three circles represent for me those losses of my female body.

And Frida did that, and so she became my muse.

>>Sandra Sroka: She did a number of images, different images of Frida Kahlo, or used that as sort of a model.

And I just love those because Miriam empowers people and Frida Kahlo was a very empowering woman.

>>Miriam Zimms: Frida Kahlo is my inspiration.

Frida came to art to process after a devastating body, skeleton fracture from an accident.

And when I first saw Frida's work, before I became an artist, I was like, wow, I don't know if I can look at that.

That's pretty tough.

Now I totally understand.

A lot of people don't talk about body loss after cancer, body trauma, for men, women, and children, and it is a big deal because we see our bodies every day.

I have 17 scars on my body, one that's three feet long, the chondrosarcoma one, and I use a lot of that etching to signify and release that body trauma because I see it every day in the mirror.

It's just part of an art canvas on my body now, so the way to do that is through drawing it.

>>David Johnson: It doesn't mitigate 100% of their pain that they're going through, but it certainly helps with it, a lot.

It takes your mind off of the things that are ailing them and the disabilities that they have.

With relieving some of that stress, I do feel that it allows the body to heal itself.

>>Miriam Zimms: The arts came into my life to help me process all of it.

And therapy, I'm not some superhero, I had to have some therapy 'cause some very traumatic things happened, but the art played a role in a daily practice for me that changed my life.

>>Sandra Sroka: She started developing through art a whole new career.

>>Miriam Zimms: So my husband was the first person to tell me that my art is amazing and I thought, "My husband loves me, so thank you so much."

And then a curator said to me, "Miriam, you're really talented," and then I started to think, "Hmm, maybe I am an artist!"

There were opportunities that have come up for gallery shows though the library, through Arts For All Florida, which helps disabled artists have their art shown, and all of a sudden I have been in galleries throughout the state of Florida including the capital.

I am 12 years triple negative breast cancer free and nine years Chondrosarcoma free.

So it's a miracle and I'm grateful every moment to be present and alive.

THE AWARD WINNING ARTS AND CULTURES SERIES: COLORES IS NOW AVAILABLE ON THE PBS APP, YOUTUBE, INSTAGRAM, FACEBOOK AND AT NMPBS.ORG, FROM CLASSIC EPISODES TO BRAND NEW SHOWS COLORES IS EVERYWHERE!

WATCH NOW ON YOUR FAVORITE NMPBS PLATFORMS Funding for COLORES was provided in part by: Frederick Hammersley Fund, New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund, and the Nellita E. Walker Fund for KNME-TV at the Albuquerque Community Foundation... ...New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts... and Viewers Like You.