Funding for COLORES was provided in part by: Frederick Hammersley Fund for the Arts at the Albuquerque Community Foundation and the New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund 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!

THE RIVER CONNECTS US ALL.

WITH PAINT, PENCIL AND PHOTO, MARIE M. HUGHES ELEMENTARY STUDENTS BRING TO LIFE THEIR ONE-YEAR STUDY OF THE RIO GRANDE.

A VORACIOUS VISUAL EXPLORER, PHOTOGRAPHER LARRY HAMILL SHARES THE WONDERS OF THE WORLD.

A WEIRD GENIUS, MARK SISSON'S PASSION FOR PRINTMAKING INSPIRES HIS STUDENTS TO GO BEYOND WHAT'S POSSIBLE.

IT'S ALL AHEAD ON COLORES!

DRAWING CONNECTIONS >MUSIC< >> Ebony Isis Booth: You spent the school year studying the Rio Grande, the Bosque, and the plants, animals, and people that depend on it with sixty-seven first, third, and fourth grade artists.

What discoveries were the students making?

>> Andy Young: We had them take on the roles of being native species and invasive species and plant themselves in the big room we were working in and then other kids had to come in and like clean out the invasive species.

Watching the first time they did it, it was just a wipe out!

Like they came in and picked everything and the room was empty.

But it was a great learning opportunity right, because we could stop them and say look there is nothing growing here anymore.

You need to be more conscious of what are the invasive species, what are the native species, and shuffle their roles so that they weren't the same thing they were before and then plant themselves again and go back in there and see just by the end of that lesson like after two more iterations they were much better about, okay that's a native, okay that's invasive .

You have to go they just had to touch each other on the shoulder.

It is very pleasurable working with really young kids and drawing because their drawings have this really unexpected natural line and freshness to them.

They re not really they haven t been through a lot of art education and so they re doing a lot of original and innocent things in their art that reveal their knowledge and so they will draw a bird, like a woodpecker, and its head and feet are so emphasized and it has this tiny little body.

And you see in that, they re showing you what they recognized as the most significant thing about that.

When you see a drawing of a fish and just the colorful speckled sides of the fish with like every color in it, they re demonstrating to you what they were noticing in their art.

When you see okay, they included a lot of nocturnal animals.

So we got the idea across that animals are nocturnal and we could adjust for that too, we could go like the first time they drew, it was just like owls, and owls, and owls.

So we were like okay, let s visit nocturnal animals and talk about the different things that are out there.

So we could use what they were drawing and ask teachers and go and say hmm, look how they re revealing they re really showing us a lot of animals and fish, but they have not done as much as plants.

So let s revisit plants again and give them more information about plants and see what comes from that!

So the first time someone drew shelf fungi, I was very excited about that.

We saw this tree with shelf fungi on it and it is not a greatest hits animal it s not like a coyote or something that s famous, but it is a very important part of the ecosystem down there.

So when you see a student making a drawing of an unusual animal like that, you think Alright!

They now know a more complex idea of what is out there in the Bosque.

And so at the same time they are learning this factual information whether it's the small facts like the animals, or big facts like how the water cycle works.

They are also learning how visual expression works and how they can express themselves that way.

And then they also did photography of themselves.

The theme was the river connects us all.

So taking that idea that the river of something that connects places and then we presented to the kids now what do you feel connected to?

and had them take photos of that.

So the artworks are a mixture of drawings they ve made of the plants, animals, and people of the Bosque and the river.

But the photographs they took are the things they feel personally connected to.

>> Ebony Isis Booth: What did your students walk away with?

>> Andy Young: There are some things that are obvious that they walked away with.

Like at the end we have them all meet in teams and share what they learned and write it all down so you get this list of facts.

But there are also some that are maybe a little harder to put a finger on that we know we're like planting the seed of like that idea of the river as a metaphor for connection.

I am not expecting a first grader to come to me and say You know, it s interesting how we talked about how you have a metaphor for it, I think that is really cool you re not going to get that now, but you re hoping that you are planting that seed for that in the future.

So there is this combination of things that are easy to assess like the facts, whether you are doing a formal assessment of like we did with them or just their art and their photographs and seeing oh I can see what they got out of it.

But, there s also things like understanding that art can have an impact on the community and that art can carry a message.

For first graders especially, but also for the third and fourth graders, art is how well can you draw.

The artist is the kid who can draw the best looking car and you re not an artist if you cannot draw a good looking car and to expand that idea to say No, art is something that can - has meanings.

That you can put out there for people to think about, and to ponder, and to doubt, and wonder about, and have questions about, and learn from.

As for adult artists is one of the most fundamental ideas, but is also one of the strangest ideas about art for young children, so introducing that idea is an example of one of those long-term things you hope will grow over time.

>> Ebony Isis Booth: What are the students sharing with us through their art that you think is really important?

>> Andy Young: I think that the photograph that they took of themselves, sharing what they feel connected to, were very compelling and powerful.

You re getting this insight into what they think represents themselves.

From the perspective of teaching about art, the idea of the river can be extended to include the idea of what you feel connected to and to help them make that connection is one of the more difficult things we were trying to do in the project.

>MUSIC< >> Andy Young: The river is so fundamental to being in Albuquerque and rivers and water are so fundamental to being in New Mexico.

To understand that the river is more than just a resource, to develop more than just a sort of knowledge of the river but a relationship to the river.

To be able to look back and say when you learned about the river, you learned about yourself too and you learned about other people too .

That s a very powerful kind of learning.

And that s one of the things that art helps us do, is art helps us see the human connections to things and ideas, or I think they can.

So that was a major part of and like I said, one of the harder parts of what we re trying to do with this.

A VISUAL SAFARI Over the years I just keep thinking I am like a visual explorer.

I am just out there exploring.

And I keep voraciously wanting to see things I ve never seen before.

Being across from German village, I just love walking through the village and documenting how it changed.

It's kind of historical to see how all of these trees have changed over the years.

New Huntington garden replaced the old asphalt pathway that was there.

Almost every day I go out walking or take pictures of things, because there's so many different ways to see things.

My grandfather was historian for Ohio bell, and he loved photography.

And I remember -- one of my vague memories was being in his dark room and just seeing how magical it was when an image appears out of nothing, when he'd be processing prints.

So that was a real treat.

From that point on all I wanted to do was be an artist.

A real strong moment in my life was when I was in seventh grade.

My parents were away and I am down in the basement and I rigged these wires together to create a carbon arc light.

And a carbon arc light is one of the brightest lights you can have on the planet.

That's what powers search lights I put the two pieces of carbon together and this incredible light burts.

And I am just thinking if the neighbors walk by and saw my basement it probably looked like a nuclear reactor or something.

Because there was such bright light.

And I wake up the next morning and I can't see a thing.

For five days I thought I d never see again.

I thought, we'll there's my life.

I want to be an artist, it's kind of hard if you can't see.

But what happened is I scarred the cornea of the eyes, so I literally couldn't see anything until it healed.

And from that point on I feel so privileged to see things.

I went to Ohio state and graduated with a degree in painting and drawing and I minor in expanded arts.

I never had a class in photography.

I'd just go through the kodak volumes on how to photograph things and had things that I could ask question of.

And from that point on I realized I couldn't make a living off of fine art, so I learned commercial art.

One of my first clients as far as art goes was Bernie s bagels and deli on north High street.

I went in there and they said well we need to do some ads and things.

I said let me come up with an idea of the bagel man.

So I did that and they said ok, you're hired.

Just do our menus use the bagel man and then do ads in the lantern.

And so the bagel man kind of evolved from that.

So I just did different types of art work and saved up and bought a zoom lens.

That was a big deal.

My first tungsten light.

I had a light so I could have more control.

So it's just very gradual getting the proper equipment.

I chose to shoot slide film.

And you can only be like half an f- stop off.

So you really have to hone in your exposures.

That helped me learn too, because you just couldn't make that many mistakes.

We're spoiled today with digital.

It's so easy to get your color balance down and all these other things.

But I really like the slides because they're more vivid.

They work better for reproduction and in print materials.

Med Flight has been great client for like 28 years.

I've been working with them and before them I worked with life flight at grant.

So I spent a lot of time fortunately in helicopters and shooting air to air.

This is one of the best assignments I ever had and that was a shoot for Sony.

And Sony introduced a new camera to video record commercial shoots.

And they wanted to show it off at the gathering of mustangs and legends at Rickenbacker field years ago.

It was the largest gathering of P-51 mustangs since the second world war.

So I am up in a P-130 transport plane, I am on the ramp here.

I am tethered just like the camera man is and I am using a flash to balance the light with the outside because otherwise this would just be total blackness.

So I was able to photograph the planes flying and then when I was done shooting that, I was able to shoot the planes in action.

Growing up all I could see on the horizon was the Lincoln Leveque and that was pretty much it for the skyline.

So it's kind of fun over the years to see how our skylines changed and what other angles it could be shot from.

I try to get a lot of different vantage points, put Columbus in a different context.

This is a series of calendars that I started 31 years ago.

That's when photoshop first came out.

Growing up in Columbus Ohio we are so geographically challenged, that I always wanted to see mountains on the horizon and with photoshop it let me make that happen.

So in this particular case I took a shot that I took off of Neace France with the alps behind.

I put that in the background and then I took a shot that I took in Thailand on a beach in the foreground.

I think it's kind of funny.

They ask where is this?

I say well it says Columbus right on the top.

And nobody will accept that, so obviously we don't have mountains, because of the glaciers and everything.

I still would like to see these mountains beyond our skyline.

But photoshop was the only way I could figure it out.

I've been in this studio for 45 years.

Over the years I ve shot hundreds and hundreds of thousands of rolls.

Essentially what I ve got is like a sliver from 1976 to 2021 of our culture around here and other parts of the world.

So hopefully people can access these images and make new images from them or bring back times.

So hopefully I am providing a substrata or culture in this period of time.

It's just so unlimited, the world that we live in.

And there's so much to explore.

Every day I am looking forward to something else I can see.

I just go out and whether I sketch it or take a picture of it.

It's just constantly a source of wonder around us.

So I think it's really important to have that sense of wonder inside you to experience the wonder that's all around us.

PRINTMAKING MAGIC He's like this weird genius.

He knows everything under the sun.

I know that loves printmaking.

A rich trove of interests.

Bicycling, unicycling, telescopes He s an amateur astronomer.

Stamp-collecting.

He's one of my favorite people to listen to.

Uh, diarrhea of the mouth.

(Laughs) He can talk on any subject.

Like once he gets going, he can't stop talking.

Well, Mark Sisson is an artist, I think that's clear.

Well, who am I?

Right.

Hello, my name is Mark Sisson.

And I teach printmaking.

I've had people say, oh, well, he's an iconoclast.

Like I'm attacking the very structures of, of our society.

But I've had other people call me a moralist.

So that seemed like a pretty broad spectrum I'm covering there.

And I m alright with them thinking either one of those things if they want.

The thing I like about printmaking is, uh, there's a kind of a magic to it in some ways, there's a mystery to it in some way.

Try to put the light on when possible.

And I always have to take my glasses off for this part.

It's fraught with, um, possibility.

And it's also, uh, fraught with perils.

Because you, you don't know exactly what you're going to end up with in the end.

I'm interested in, um, you know, human beings are social animals, as political animal.

I thought, well, I'm going to do portraits.

But I'm going to do portraits where the way they're gesturing, what they wear, is really gonna speak to, uh, current events.

Things that are going on right now.

So this piece here was about trickle-down economics and sweatshop labor.

This work here really is dealing with, uh, sexual assault on campus.

This is a portrait of Cameron Richardson, Peace Peace.

Cameron is a former student.

And it speaks about Black Lives Matter, but I think in general more about value to the ballot box.

It s interesting for me that your models for your stories were chosen from people that you know, in your immediate community, some students.

Yeah.

Some fellow faculty.

And you kind of put them in a different life.

If they had said, no, I didn't really have a backup plan at that point.

I did this self portrait, uh, with my, uh, cat, uh, Vango.

Vango was my favorite cat and, and, and I knew he was dying, and I had dug a hole in the backyard to bury him.

It took me a long time to do this work because it was really painful.

I put it away, it s still hard for me to look at.

Mark Sisson is our printmaker.

And as such, he teaches all the classes in printmaking.

He's extremely knowledgeable.

And a lot of our students haven't really ever met anybody like him.

And so our students are completely fascinated by him.

Printmaking requires, uh, what we affectionately call a matrix.

it's indirect.

Painting s direct.

Yeah.

Grab some paint, but a brush put it on a canvas.

And that's why you need students who are OCD.

You know, you need people who really are compulsive.

I saw that there was a printmaking class and I was like, Ooh, I really want to take that class.

I'm doing 10 colors, um, and you work lights to darks.

I mean, you have to be patient with this stuff.

You can't rush into anything.

The best students always make this worthwhile.

It's not just a one-way street, where I pour a bunch of information down their throats and then they go and they produce these brilliant things.

There's a lot more give and take I think than people understand.

It is hard to imagine leaving.

Uh, it is hard to imagine, like moving on to a different chapter.

And I will miss being around here and being around my colleagues and the support staff and the students.

Mark has been my sounding board and ally if you will We all have people that help us get through situations and I will miss him greatly, for sure.

And the thing that I'm also gonna miss, uh, for our students um Um, he's just really a fantastic artist and teacher.

He gets in there and helps students see how to draw.

And when you look at the work that they're able to accomplish during a semester in his class, it's phenomenal.

When I first came to OSU was August of 1989.

Prior to that, I had never lived south of the Mason Dixon line.

But now I've lived here longer than I've lived in anyplace And so this in a way is my home now.

It feels like that.

Just because I'm retired now, I mean, it's not like a lot of jobs where it's like, oh, what am I going to do?

Go play golf?

That to me to be like the worst nightmare in the world The art part of it stays.

I mean, this is just who I am at this point And so, for whatever that s worth.

TO VIEW THIS AND OTHER COLORES PROGRAMS GO TO: New Mexico PBS dot org and look for COLORES under What We Do and Local Productions.

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UNTIL NEXT WEEK, THANK YOU FOR WATCHING.

Funding for COLORES was provided in part by: Frederick Hammersley Fund for the Arts at the Albuquerque Community Foundation and the New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund 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.