(mysterious music) (person speaking in foreign language) (person speaking in foreign language) (person speaking in foreign language) (person speaking in foreign language) (person speaking in foreign language) (person speaking in foreign language) (calm music) - What inspires me is community, more than anything.

The people that I meet along the way.

My name is Danielle Coronado or Dani Coronado and I'm from St.

Louis, Missouri.

I moved to Kansas City back in 2011 to go to UMKC for art and art education, and I minored in mathematics too.

And then I went back there actually for my master's degree, recently, in studio art.

♪ My arms are open wide ♪ (narrator speaking Spanish) - There's nothing like, you know, helping a young person to understand or see the world a little differently.

And I think art's a great way to do that.

Usually they use three colors, they have black, red, and then it kind of varies between blue or green in a lot of 'em.

I think that's more of a... You also have a lot of masks like this, but still weaving in textiles.

A lot of cedar wood.

More than just like covers.

That's the gallery.

What you wanna start with.

Like what's the first thing you're gonna see?

So that's more like South American and we're moving north, right?

(narrator speaking Spanish) (calm music continues) - I always was creative and I loved to paint and I loved colors.

But my dad really got me into the arts.

He would sit on the back deck with me and we would draw on a sketchbook.

I still have some of those drawings somewhere.

Like he would just say like "Lions and tigers and bears, oh my."

And like he would draw the lion and I would write lion and all of that.

So it was just kind of part of our every day and part of our hanging out.

(narrator speaking Spanish) (narrator speaking Spanish) - Both really ingrained in us, their ethnicities, the Irish, the German, the Peruvian.

And I've always just felt mixed, and in a good way, though there were struggles.

It was always a good thing.

(narrator speaking Spanish) (mystical music) - And I knew that we, through my grandmother, have Incan blood, but I didn't know exactly what that meant outside of history classes.

And so I started reading through the book and I knew about the corn, but I didn't know how important it was to Peruvian society.

(narrator speaking Spanish) (narrator speaking Spanish) - Women, when they had their first menstrual cycle, they would be locked away with nothing to eat for the week except for raw corn.

It found something in me, it really drew me into this world of corn.

So I started painting corn and corn after corn, after corn, I was just making these little paintings of corn but also giving them some kind of personality, right?

I have a corn that's a little bit more yonic, a corn that's a little bit more phallic, a corn that stands alone.

Maybe just one kernel or one that's like half eaten.

All these different varieties of corn, too.

We have Indian corn, we have corn of Mexico, we have corn of Ecuador, we have corn all over the place in the Americas.

And I just was on a journey of corn.

But I think where it really hit home was I started making plaster casts using the chicha morada purple corn fermented or molded to create this plaster.

And that caused my plaster blocks to mold in creating this imprint of this Incan deity, Viracocha.

(mystical music continues) (narrator speaking Spanish) - Talking to my noni, my grandmother the other day, you just have to listen to each other.

'Cause we have these ideas that we don't talk politics, we don't talk religion.

Why?

Why do we have those ideas?

That's not gonna cause any progress.

Life is reflection and life is growth.

And we should continue to ask people questions so that we can build our knowledge and build our empathy and have conversations around politics and religion and every hard topic that's on the table.

(narrator speaking Spanish) (narrator speaking Spanish) (narrator speaking Spanish) (mystical music) (animals hooting) (mystical music continues) (animals hooting) (mystical music continues) (animals hooting) (mystical music continues) (animals hooting) (mystical music continues) (mystical music continues) (narrator speaking Spanish) - I think that just asking questions, paying attention to what people are saying, paying attention to what people are doing, is really important and it's gonna help us grow together rather than growing apart as we so constantly see these days on social media.

So just take a breather and ask your neighbor a question.

Ask them for a drink.

Ask them for some food.

Bring them some food.

Talk to them over the table.

That's my hope.

(calm music) ♪ I turned every stone to ease your pain ♪ (calm music continues) ♪ When I was down, and you'd forgotten ♪ (mystical music) (person speaking Spanish) (person speaking Spanish) (person speaking Spanish) (person speaking Spanish) (person speaking Spanish) (person speaking Spanish) (cheerful music) (radio speaking Spanish) (cheerful music continues) (cheerful music continues) - My name's Adolfo Gustavo Martinez.

I'm from Kansas City, Missouri.

(narrator speaking Spanish) (narrator speaking Spanish) - [Adolfo] I started when I was a kid.

I don't know why.

I just did it.

I've always drawn or painted.

(narrator speaking Spanish) (narrator speaking Spanish) (person speaking Spanish) (person speaking Spanish) (person speaking Spanish) - [Adolfo] When I was still a kid, I would read books about different cultures and they were all in Spanish.

So I learned to read Spanish.

I lived on the second floor, had my own room, and my dad put a desk in for me.

And I would just stay up there and draw and paint whatever I'd want.

(narrator speaking Spanish) - When I went to college, I think I know I got a lot of books on the different tribes, and, I was just interested.

I always liked artwork too, especially the Mayans.

(narrator speaking Spanish) (narrator speaking Spanish) - [Adolfo] As you can see, I still put a lot of Mexican history into my artwork.

Well, it's where my family's from, and I always, I just thought it was part of me.

(narrator speaking Spanish) (narrator speaking Spanish) (narrator speaking Spanish) - [Adolfo] Well that's just for Dia de los Muertos, and this is a dream, sometimes I do my dreams.

That one's just me and my sister.

It's called "The Game."

When we were at my abuelita's, they would make us sit across from each other and gave us a ball and said "Play."

So that's what we did, just, rolled the ball across to each other, and it was, I wouldn't say it's fun.

That's what we're supposed to sit there and be quiet basically.

And this one's "The Day the Earth Stood Still," I put the image from that.

This one's called "We Come In Peace."

And I put a sombrero on him.

I liked it.

I thought it was kind of fun.

There's, I think of something, a good idea.

Yeah, I'll go ahead and start on it.

(calm music) I'm getting some panels ready to figure out what I'm gonna do next.

I'm not sure.

It'll come to me.

(plastic clacking) (calm music continues) (plastic rustling) (calm music concludes) (peaceful music) (narrator speaking Spanish) - I don't know.

It really sucks, mean... I just, I don't understand.

I think it's wrong.

The deportation stuff, you know, these are just regular people, you know, trying to make a living.

And now we're aliens, you know, like, ridiculous.

You know, they're just people trying to get a better life.

That's how I see it.

There's no difference between us and them or me and them.

'Cause everybody wants to have a better life.

(cheerful music) (cheerful music continues) (cheerful music continues) (engine rumbling) (cheerful music continues) (pen buzzing) (cheerful music continues) (pen continues buzzing) (cheerful music continues) - My name is Juan Moya.

I'm from Kansas City, Missouri.

(narrator speaking Spanish) (calm music) (narrator speaking Spanish) - I painted that originally about 35 years, with some homies from the neighborhood.

We got together, got some money together, our own funds, and painted it.

It was riddled with gang graffiti and we thought we'd beautify a little bit more with some strong imagery, and fortunately over the last 30 years I've been able to redo it three times now.

(soft music) I grew up in the projects and I'm very proud to be from there.

The west side, a lot of good things, some bad, but it's basically means my life.

It was mostly good times outside the house.

We were always playing till the sun went down.

(engine rumbling) Kansas City for me is my heart and soul.

I feel like it's pretty much where I've lived most of my life.

And like I said, I get all my inspiration from all my surroundings, and my surroundings is Kansas City.

(soft music continues) I got into art as a kid, pretty much really poor, didn't have money for toys, little action figures that everybody was playing with.

Always had scrap paper and pencil to draw.

So I've always been into art and drawing as a getaway and as a meditation.

Didn't know that as a kid, but it was pretty satisfying for me.

I feel like with my art, I try to stay on the positive light with it.

I get a lot of inspiration from celebrities in the Latino community that are doing big things and you know, that we know on the big screen, are athletes that are doing big things.

I get a lot of inspiration from that kind of stuff with my art.

(mysterious music) I got into tattooing as a youth, as a very young kid, I would see, you know, whether it's my grandfather or people that I knew in the neighborhood, have little markings on them.

And I noticed that they weren't going anywhere and I realized they were permanent.

As I got a little older, I got my hand on a teenager magazine, which is a magazine from LA, and they had a lot of like prison art in there, what we'd call it back then.

And it really intrigued me.

And from then I really, really got into the thought of wanting to get a tattoo.

(pen buzzing) My first tattoos were done, hand poked.

And then I went from some equipment that was kind of given to me by the older guys in the neighborhood.

I was always an artist or thought I was an artist, always known to draw, and they had me tattoo them so I experimented on them.

But I knew that that is something that I wanted to gravitate towards and get better at, at all costs.

And luckily I stuck with it and I had no clue that it would become so mainstream.

(air hissing) If someone asked me to let them mark me for life, it just means so much to me.

So I feel like almost every customer is really special to me, just for the fact of them letting me actually tattoo them for life.

Staying relative in the art scene, it's really hard, especially as you get older.

We have a lot of young people coming up.

I think for me, staying relative is just being true to myself, sticking with my roots, and treating everybody with the utmost respect.

(mysterious music continues) My 52 years of life, I would say, one of the most important things is just to appreciate waking up every day and appreciating life and knowing that someone has it worse than you, twice as worse as you.

So appreciate what you have, appreciate what's in front of you, and live life for the moment.

And don't try to live life for others.

Like in this day and age, to stay grounded, it's really hard.

Social media definitely pushes us to try to do things or be a thing that we're not.

I feel like if you just stay busy in your own life and not put too much attention to social media and actually live in the moment, in the present, in the presence of life around you, everything will be good.

(mysterious music continues) My mother is from Guadalajara and my dad is pretty much from Juarez, Mexico.

I didn't know my dad growing up, but my mom has been there.

(heartfelt music) (narrator speaking Spanish) (narrator speaking Spanish) - Lucky I made it through that, the rough times.

I thank God for giving me another chance in life and being here.

(heartfelt music continues) (narrator speaking Spanish) (narrator speaking Spanish) - A big change in my life came when I started having kids.

(fire crackling) My family means everything to me.

(heartfelt music continues) I get to set the example for them that wasn't set for me.

(fire crackling) As a youngster, I remember my stepfather hesitant to go out because he was worried about what we called back then, la migra being out.

(heartfelt music continues) How the immigration would make sweep to the west side.

It was a really big deal, but it wasn't like it is now where people are actually getting snatched up from work and separated from the families.

(narrator speaking Spanish) (heartfelt music continues) Right now, it kind of hurts my heart to see so many families getting broken up and separated and I get the pros and cons of everything, but the overall imagery of mothers and fathers getting stripped from their kids really hurts.

(fire crackling) (narrator speaking Spanish) (upbeat music) (people talking in Spanish) (upbeat music continues) (people continue talking) (upbeat music continues) (people continue talking)