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.

DANIEL BARELA SHARES THE REMARKABLE STORY OF HIS GREAT-GRANDFATHER PATROCIÑO BARELA.

A SELF- TAUGHT WOODCARVER WHO BECAME AN ART WORLD CELEBRITY IN THE 1930S AND SIGNIFICANT FIGURE IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY HISPANIC AND NEW MEXICAN ART.

AUTHOR JYOTSNA SREENIVASAN WANTS HER READERS TO UNDERSTAND THE INDIAN-AMERICAN EXPERIENCE THROUGH HER CHARACTER'S EYES.

MERGING EMBROIDERY, PAINT, AND TEXTILES NNEKA JONES EXPLORES SUBJECTS THAT ARE OFTEN DIFFICULT TO SAY OUT LOUD.

CARVING HISTORY >>Faith Perez: Can you share any personal memories or stories about your great- grandfather?

>>Daniel Barela: Oh, I didn't know him personally, but over the years of going to art shows and listening to my grandfather, we've heard just tons of stories about him.

My grandfather would be the one to harvest all the carving wood from my great- grandfather.

My grandfather Luis, would come back from the forest with a big truckload of wood and my great- grandfather Patrocino.

He would go through his wood and find the couple pieces he really liked, and then he would joke with my grandfather Luis and tell him, out of this one piece of wood, I'm going to make the same amount of money that you're going to make selling this whole truck of firewood.

So that just really resonated with me because it kind of shows his personality and how he was kind of a jokester, but was proud of where he had made it in his art career.

His first 30 years were really rough.

He worked as a sheep herder, as a steel worker he worked in the plantations in southern Colorado.

And then in the thirties, the curator for New Mexico, the WPA program, Vernon Hunter stumbled across his piece of artwork at the Taos Inn.

It was holding open the front screen door of the Taos Inn, and so he asked the front desk how he can get ahold of this artist who made the sculpture.

And so they get him in contact and they put him from the labor section of the WPA to the art section, and from there they start sending his artwork to different federal government buildings that the artwork was going to.

So later on during that program, there was this big art show in New York City at the Museum of Modern Art that Vernon took eight of my grandfather's sculptures to, and from there he emerged out of that show, the Discovery of the Year in Time Magazine.

And so that engraved and solidified his name in American history as the first Latino to have national recognition for their artwork.

My grandfather was self- taught, so a lot of locals didn't really realize that they could become artists without having to go to a school.

And so he inspired thousands of local artists to continue traditions and to start creating their own artwork.

I would go with my father to a lot of these art museum exhibitions that were of my great-grandfather.

And so, you know, I was just a little kid running around in these beautiful museums and seeing my great grandfather's sculptures and seeing the excitement and energy that people had when they would see his art just inspired me to want to learn and want to do what he did.

So at 11 years old, when I was old enough to get a chisel, my father taught me how to carve, and so I've been doing it ever since.

>>Faith Perez: How has your great-grandfather's work influenced the way that you create your own carvings?

>>Daniel Barela: Well, his sculptures, his carvings had stories, had meanings.

So Santos, which are religious, the Spanish have been making them since they got here to put in the chapels and to fill the missions and to tell the stories of the Catholic religion.

But my grandfather took it up to another level where his artwork was now telling stories of the local community, of local people, neighbors, and kind of capturing everyday life and the struggles and hardships that people had in the community.

And so now that's what I try to do is I try to express through the artwork, different stories, different parts of our history throughout Northern New Mexico.

It's almost like a picture that we're able to carve out of a piece of wood to capture these stories.

People didn't always think of his carvings as this really special piece because they were kind of, kind of crude and they were very modern.

He never had a lot of tools.

He maybe had a handful of chisels.

And so these woodworkers would go into his woodworking shop and tell him, where are all your tools?

And he would tell them, well, you don't need a lot of tools.

My main tool is right here.

His imagination was his main tool.

>>Faith Perez: How was Patrocino perceived in the art community during his lifetime, and how did that perception change over time?

>>Daniel Barela: After the show at the Museum of Modern Art in the publication, he had these museums wanting to showcase his artwork and they wanted to start promoting him, but because of racial biases at the time back in the thirties, Vernon Hunter must've came under some scrutiny for promoting this Mexican, this Spanish person instead of probably all these other Anglo artists that had been in the show.

And so when Vernon came back to New Mexico to tell my great-grandfather what had happened with his art, they told him, well, we have all these museums, all these galleries in New York that want to start showing your art and selling it, but we're not going to be promoting you and we're not going to be taking your art because if we make you rich, and this is what they told him, if we make you rich, your artwork will no longer be good.

You won't have that struggle.

They said his artwork had a lot of struggle, so he never made it to become a super famous artist, but he was able to at least make a living off of his art.

And he had people coming to Taos just to find him and find his artwork.

And even though he was selling a piece of artwork for $20, which is now worth four or five thousand, he still lived a full life and he might've not been able to read or write, but he was a great storyteller and he had just a wild imagination.

Back in those days of the thirties, forties, fifties, people were still very generous and there was people always helping each other out in the community, and he would capture that story, and a big heart was his way of showing that that person was caring and giving and a loving person.

For sure, this man was depicted as having a big heart, and he must have been a very loving and caring person for probably these two people that were down here.

His inspiration just came from all these different stories in the community.

>>Faith Perez: So can you tell me a little bit about this statue right here?

>>Daniel Barela: Yeah.

So this piece was made for a famous Taos gentleman, John Dunn, and he must've commissioned it from my great-grandfather to make it, and it's his dog.

And so I don't know what kind of dog it was, but you could see kind of the way my great- grandfather would, you know, see a piece of wood.

And some people say it's kind of like the way Michelangelo says he would see the piece and he would only have to take off what wasn't meant to be there.

>>Faith Perez: What does it mean to your family to carry the legacy of Patrocino?

>>Daniel Barela: Well, I take it very seriously and the way he inspired hundreds, if not thousands of artists to continue the Spanish colonial traditions of New Mexico that are unique just to our area.

I'm trying to inspire the next generation of New Mexicans to see how important and how unique our culture and our traditions are, because I feel like I have to almost fill his shoes and continue his legacy in trying to promote the youth to take up some of these traditions and cultures that make us so unique and special.

>>Faith Perez: How do you hope future generations will remember your great- grandfather and his work?

>>Daniel Barela: Well, just that he broke through a lot of racial barriers by becoming the first Latino to have that national recognition in Time magazine and just that any of us can really become a great artist or, you know, make our mark be an inspiration for future generations.

BECOMING THE CHARACTER Even when I was a little kid I remember before I could read looking at my father's handwriting and just being desperate to know what it said, just desperate to know how to read, and I was so thrilled when I learned how to read.

I started writing little stories and poems when I was a kid.

One of my first children's novels was called Arinana's journeys and it's about an Indian American girl growing up in Ohio.

I don't know where I got that idea.

I wrote it partly because I loved to read and I didn't see any books that represented who I was growing up in Ohio.

You know, books about -- I would see books that were about folk tales taking place in India or books about elementary kids like the Ramona books by I loved or the little house in the big woods which I loved.

I think I almost wrote it for my parents because growing up we had a lot of culture clashes they didn't understand why I thought I was American.

I am American and they were like, no, you're Indian.

So that struggle I couldn't ever get -- I couldn't ever communicate that properly to my parents.

So, my parents are immigrants so they are what I would consider the first American generation and I'm the child of immigrants, so I say second generation.

People -- some people say that I would be a first generation American, but I like to say second generation because that acknowledges that the immigrant generation is also an American generation.

To me and I am biased because I'm second generation the transition from immigrant to American is one of the foundational stories of our country.

A lot of us shares an immigrant heritage yet a lot of us identify as American.

Where does that transition happen?

And I think a lot of times it happens in the second generation.

We grow up in this country, we have an American accent, we don't have the accent that our parents have from the ancestral country.

We feel ourselves to be Americans and sometimes other people looking at us say, no, where are you really from?

And I say, you know, I say I'm from Ohio.

Where are you really from?

And they're curious.

Trying to figure out, well, what makes a person American?

What does that mean to be American?

And I think that is a struggle that a lot of second- generation people go through and that can inform us as we grow older and start to contribute to this society.

So, this is my new book it's called "These Americans" and it's a collection of eight short stories and a novella and, again, they are all about Indian Americans.

A lot of the stories take place in the Midwest or in Ohio and they are arranged by the age of the second- generation character.

So, in the very first story which is called mirror the new immigrant mom is giving birth to her American daughter.

It's based on the story that my mom told me about my birth.

I love the cover of this.

So, this picture of the mom with the baby, that is based on a picture of my mom holding me.

That is my mom holding me.

And so, then the artist flipped it and then the idea that the baby grows up and she has her own child.

And the other thing that not a lot of people have noticed is that the colors of the mom's sari are kind of like the American flag and then the American daughter has colors inspired by the Indian flag.

So, the green and the orange, like that.

So that there's the mixing of the cultures.

I have written a lot of stories that were based on my life, based on kind of the cultural clash or melding of, you know, Indian culture, American culture, Indian American what does that mean?

It's hard.

So, I feel like there's been a lot of failure along the way, a lot of learning along the way.

I think the hardest part for me is getting myself out of the way because at first I think -- at least for me I'm putting it on the page and I'm like it is so impressive, everyone is going to be so impressed with me.

That is not what you want as a fiction writer because you want the reader to be involved with your character.

So for me to be able to learn about who that character is, what they care about, where they are, what they care about in their environment, what they really want, it took a while to get to that point where the reader was engaged and interested and excited and so it's been a long process.

When you read fiction and you become that character you kind of see the world through that person's eyes, you understand, you empathize.

So, I think that's, um, a really important part of what I hope the reader will get.

HOLDING A MIRROR Nneka Jones: A lot of the times, the first question that I get is what is the material that I used or what's that texture?

And the second thing is, who is the girl?

Are you related to her?

Where did she come from?

How do you know her?

And so, with that first question that's exactly what I want you to do.

Question what the texture is on the piece, go closer to the piece, kind of figure out and look through the cracks of the piece and realize that it's not just thick paint on the surface.

It's actually condoms beneath that, but also leading from the texture of the condoms into her actual face, you notice that she's kind of representative of young girls of color that have been put in the situation of sex trafficking or human trafficking.

What I do is, based on different images, I kind of collage them in Photoshop so that I come up with this image that looks like it's one person, but it's actually a collage of different girls.

It's basically that symbol of representing every young girl of color.

Jocelyn Boigenzahn: Nneka's work is delicate and detailed.

She's intricate in every element of the texture she's working on, the, the tone and temperature of her works, the color choices.

And so, if you like something that's rich and full of all overlapping meaning using color and form, Nneka's work really satisfies that.

But it also has a deeper context.

And so, she uses the different forms of art to really explore things that are often difficult to say out loud.

She takes on amazing subject matter, really putting a mirror up to society.

Anthony Jones: When I view Nneka's artwork, one word comes to mind.

One, one word would dominate my thinking, and that would be profound.

And a piece that comes to mind is a piece she did on cancer awareness, where she actually created the image of a lady with one of her breasts removed so that I saw that the works she produce was not surface level type art, but very profound, deep thinking productions.

Nneka Jones: Since coming to the U.S., I think I've developed more of my narrative side of my artwork because I had a bit of technical skill before, but I still felt like that, that artistic voice was lacking.

And when I really started to get into my different classes at U.T., I realized that I didn't want my work to just sit on the wall at a gallery or just sit on a wall at your home.

I wanted it to reside beyond that and reside in your mind and evoke some kind of emotion out of you.

Anthony Jones: Nneka was one of our four daughters, our last daughter.

And Nneka was always independent.

One of the things I clearly remember of Nneka growing up is that ability to take charge of her own life and being in a position to recognize where she wants to go and what are the next steps.

Nneka Jones: I actually grew up in Trinidad and Tobago.

I was born in Trinidad.

And eventually I actually realized that I had a passion for art.

And after placing first in the Caribbean in my high school exams, I decided that it was best that I continue to pursue an education in art and try to pursue a career in art.

Being influenced by the Caribbean culture, I also wanted to experience cultures outside of that.

And so that kind of drew me to coming to the U.S. and looking at the different schools here.

When I came to the University of Tampa, I took a few classes, a few sculpture classes, drawing classes, etc.

But it was truly when I took my experimental painting class that I found my artistic voice because I kind of loosened up a little bit.

The professor, Chris Farley, told us he wanted us to create a painting without using paint.

Immediately I was like, how am I going to create a painting without using paint?

Like, how am I going to find materials that I can manipulate to look like a painting?

And so that's actually when I did some research and I discovered embroidery and I just continued developing my work from there and kind of learning the material and the technique, but also learning how can I incorporate meaning behind this and how can I make these pieces narrative?

Jocelyn Boigenzahn: She really started a lot of her growth while she was here at UT, and so she really developed a following starting in 2017, 2018, and her background as a marketing major also really kind of led her to springboard into what a lot of artists need to do, especially young and up and coming artists need to do, which is self market.

Nneka Jones: My mom used to sew.

She would always have me thread needles for her.

That was like the only thing that she would let me do.

So I think now I'm like a pro basically at threading needles.

It's kind of interesting that now I'm kind of like a seamstress, but I'm sewing these portraits.

Coming up to my final graduation show and then having COVID happen and the pandemic happen.

So I had graduated virtually.

And about three months after that, I actually got an email from one of the art directors at Time magazine, and in the email he had expressed to me that he was blown away by the fact that my work was hand- embroidered, which was exactly what I learned at the University of Tampa.

And he's telling me that my work is worthy of being on the cover of the magazine.

And after doing the cover for Time magazine, so many opportunities have come to me.

I'm kind of on that journey now of kind of balancing that confidence and being able to say, yes, I am an artist and yes, I am a contemporary artist and I will be successful.

Jocelyn Boigenzahn: Nneka is truly special.

She sees things in such a positive way while taking on very difficult subjects and that is something that we need today.

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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.