♪ MUSIC ♪ This week on State of the Arts identity expressed through collage, photographs as a socio-cultural narrative, and the history of New Mexico told through cookbooks, right ahead on State of the Arts.

♪♪ DREAM POP TUNE ♪ Hello, I'm Mary Paul.

Welcome to this week's show where we bring you stories from the arts world around the country.

First, we meet a mixed media artist based out of Wisconsin.

Angélica Contreras grew up in a bi-cultural household where her art reflected her experiences.

Using collage materials like patterned papers and advertisements collected over the years, she explores identity, culture, and all that we have in common.

[ BIRDS CHIRPING ] I am working on an alebrije, and I am currently giving some workshops for children and youth.

So they can learn this craft.

And I really enjoy giving these workshops for kids.

I find it very liberating the way they create their own art.

It brings me back when I was a kid.

And I also like sharing the traditions of my country with them.

♪ PIANO NOTES ♪ I'm originally from Whittier, California, but I grew up in Guadalajara, Mexico.

I've been here living in Madison for the last eight years.

I grew up in a bi-cultural household.

I have a Mexican heritage from my mom's side, and my dad was Mexican-American.

I kind of remember living in basically two cultures.

A lot of what I've been doing here in Madison talks about that experience, what it's like to live in two cultures and how our identity is shaped through that.

Identity is made out of layers.

I started collecting scraps of paper when I was very young.

My family used to collect just a lot of things.

So the medium of collage, I started developing that when I was very young.

In fact, I have one that's really old that when I was about six or seven years old that I kept, not thinking that the medium that I was going to use was going to be collage.

But somehow that happened because I started collecting scraps of paper.

And I guess I made a connection that I could use it in my artwork.

But now I kind of look for very specific things that might have a symbolic meaning to them.

I have a lot of, we call them in Mexico 'laminas' that are used in schools that are about a specific topic.

And there's like thousands of them.

So I really like those graphics.

And I like to incorporate those.

Also from traveling and just walking around the streets of these big cities that I found very interesting to see the walls and how these walls were layered with either graffiti, publicity, and just any other thing.

And they were kind of free-for-all that people would just add and add more things.

And sometimes with time they would come down.

So it was kind of these, in Spanish we say 'cadáver exquisit exquisite cadaver that was a work that was made out of just people layering things.

But I found that very interesting.

And when I came to Madison and thinking about how identity is developed and how living in two cultures or three cultures, how that is shaped, I think that medium of collage and layering slowly incorporated into my work.

♪ SOFT KALIMBA ♪ The name of this piece is "Duality."

This painting is inspired in one of Diane Arbus' famous portraits of the twins.

Although they were twins, they were very different.

I've seen that when I talk with my students.

I think they're more open to share where they come from, than instead of just assimilatin This piece is called "La Carga."

And "La Carga" talks about being a caretaker and what people go through and all the things that they're responsible for.

And sometimes people don't realize it.

The task of having to care for others and how sometimes it's not seen.

This piece is going to be called "Todos mis Muertos."

And this particular piece talks about the issues right now in Mexico in general of disappea whether there's women, men, children, in very alarming rates.

Some of the figures are from the news.

And banners, posters of people that write, like "don't forget me, I'm missing."

What motivates me to create art is we tend to just see people or things just from the outside, like the first impression.

We don't stop and see commonalities.

Photographer and author Laura Larson has an interesting relationship with her work.

She looks to photography as a documentary practice, but sees her own photos as a product of skepticism and draws a thin line between art and political reflection.

(Laura) I'm a photographer and a writer.

And my work has taken over the years many different forms.

I've worked in a lot of different media, film, video, performance, but the central questions of photography are always at the heart of it, whether it's in print form or not.

And some of those questions for me are, you know, "what are the ethics of photography, what does it mean to represent something, what does it mean to sort of question representation, how to honor something."

My current work, which is very much in progress now, is a meditation on aging.

I've returned to using a view camera in my work, which is something I trained with, you know, 30 years ago.

And I've kind of returned to it for a number of reasons.

I like the pacing of it.

I like to sort of work slow and work in an intentional way.

The work itself sort of takes several different subjects and working metaphorically with the idea of aging, but particularly being a woman who's aging.

The work began in the pandemic when we were all sort of thrown into the great outdoors.

And I discovered this geological sort of formation that is very much in this part of Ohio.

They're called concretions.

And I was incredibly moved by them.

And in some ways, the project has been kind of unpacking my fascination with them.

But they are these rock formations that emerge out of shale.

And essentially what happens is, like, biological matter would get stuck between the sheets of shale through the sort of movement of the rain and different minerals.

These rocks would grow.

And then you eventually would emerge from the shale.

And when I saw them, I was just incredibly moved by them.

Like, on one hand, like, they're monumental.

They're not small.

And at the same time, they're incredibly fragile.

And for me, I just saw this kind of very powerful image of like what it means to age as a woman.

You know, in some sense, they're sort of all, you know.

And I'm speaking very personally now.

Like, I feel monumental at this age.

And at the same time, I feel like deeply, deeply vulnerable, like sort of in my attachments to the world and in my body.

♪ SOFT INSTRUMENTAL ♪ I don't think about my work in a kind of activist sense, like that it's really meant to be strategic in some ways.

But I do think of it as being deeply political.

So in that sense, like, I think there are many artists out in the world who are sort of that sort of line between taking action as a citizen and sort of what they do in their studio is very thin.

I guess I see my work as sort of holding a lot of my own values, you know, be they political, be they just the sort of politics of it.

But I wouldn't say it comes first.

Because part of it is I love working with the materials I work with.

I love the sort of contemplative aspects of it.

But they always sort of begin-- they do begin with questions about how can I kind of live in the world as a citizen and live in the world as an artist.

[ WATER RUNNING ] The first book I wrote is about my daughter's adoption.

And part of it was I was really interested in thinking about how is adoption a kind of primary way of being a mother as opposed to-- I think a lot of people think of it as like, well, I can't have a baby.

So I'm going to do this.

And so it ended up combining several things for me.

It was like, how can I talk about my experience, which I haven't really seen reflected in other kinds of art, other kinds of literature.

It also roped in my interest in 19th century photography because I use the Hidden Mother form, which is this kind of 19th century vernacular form where the mother would hold the baby, but she would be hidden by the photographer in some ways.

And so I think it's always a little bit like triangulating these-- it's like, "what is going on with me?

What are my sort of political interests, my intellectual interests?

And then how is it meaningful to me in kind of working through materials?"

Born in 1894, Fabiola Cabeza de Baca was the writer of one of New Mexico's first cookbooks.

During her lifetime, she taught families different ways of cooking, introduced new recipes, and passed on household traditions.

We head to our neighboring state in this story of cultural heritage told through food.

♪ SOFT PIANO ♪ Fabiola Cabeza de Baca was an articulate writer, prolific, a teacher from the Llano Estacado.

What made her so brave and so intelligent?

Well, I think in terms of brave, one of the first things that comes to mind is just biographically, her mom died when she was very little.

So she was raised on the ranch with her dad and a lot of the vaqueros.

And so if you think about the Llano Estacado, it's this really stark landscape.

She describes it in one of her books as loneliness without despair.

It looks flat.

It doesn't look anything like these green, lush valleys.

Some days it hasn't rained for so long, the sky almost bleaches white.

So it looks like a landscape that would have to make you brave, right?

Because to see that kind of openness, it can be overwhelming.

And to try to find water and make a living from a place that's so dry, that's so hard to access resources from, I think you have no choice but to become resourceful.

And I really think she looked around at her community and thought not just how are we surviving and how are we flourishing, but how can we take these skills out into other parts of rural New Mexico?

And that's really what she did.

One of the things that's really fascinating about her is she became an extension agent.

So her work, like her schoolwork, was in home economics.

She talks about it as kind of like this science, right?

And you read her work and it's all about these chemicals that you put together to make the kind of the best nutritional kind of value, like elements and what do you call it, minerals and stuff like that, that we would never think about.

And so I think when she became an extension agent, she was really, really determined to bring that knowledge out to the rural communities of New Mexico.

So she went to the smaller Hispano villages, but she went to the Pueblos.

And she does talk really interestingly about how she became part of these communities.

She even talks about San Ildefonso, which we tend to think about Pueblo communities as maybe being a little more isolated.

But she talks about becoming part of these communities.

And these were like, and became like not just comadres, but almost like relatives.

And I think that's really important and why she was probably so tenacious is she was going to go visit her family, right?

And she's the author of the first bilingual cookbook in New Mexico.

Right, yes she is.

That came out in the early 30s and it's full of just recipes.

And it's interesting because I tend to think that we tend to think of cookbooks as just being cookbooks, but in her work it's really about also expressing New Mexican culture.

And in really thinking about how women are the caretakers of that culture, right?

Through the food we make, through sitting around in the kitchen, you know, doing the work we do.

Right, and it seems like she definitely secured those cultural practices in her writing.

Yes.

But also brought in an element of modernity.

I really think it was about bringing knowledge across the communities, you know, about how to make life a little bit easier.

How to incorporate these new kinds of technologies into their kitchens.

One of the things she focuses on a lot is pressure cookers.

And how pressure cookers can cook food in far less time than, you know, your wood stove or anything like that.

So it's just like, she is spreading the gospel of the pressure cooker.

Which I think sounds like kind of, you know, maybe trite or insignificant.

But it's significant, like it changes the way women cook in the state.

Prior to her work, people were drying food.

And then she comes in and it's about canning food, right?

And I think that's also a really important way of getting, you know, how to keep the stuff that we've grown all season fresh and accessible throughout the winter.

Because we know our winters in the Llano Estacado are kind of frightening.

Right, right.

My grandmother's still using a pressure cooker in the 1980s.

And I think it's a legacy of this.

That's really what I thought when I was looking at the archive, is it's a legacy of probably Fabiola Cabeza de Baca going through saying, this is a way to save time and give more time to your family.

And in what ways did she, was she informed through her cookbook about the ways of the land, the language, the women?

So she had that cookbook first, and then she kind of updated it in The Good Life.

And what she does in that cookbook is combine recipes and food with the seasons, with the landscape, with how families work.

One of the big seasons, obviously, is spring is plantain season.

So up in Las Vegas, where she's from, and in other parts of New Mexico, you can kind of count on the last freeze happening before May.

So on May 15th, which is San Isidro Feast Day, that's when people plant, like officially.

And that's when the ceremonies happen, and the singing in the fields, and all of this really beautiful stuff.

So throughout her cookbooks, she really talks about, at this time of year, this is what's growing.

Or at this time of year, this is what we've harvested and how we preserved it, and this is when you eat it.

And then she combines that with cultural practices.

Have you tried any of her recipes?

Yes, I've tried the calabasitas, because it's easy, right?

It's just cake.

Atole, because it's also easy.

There's the ones that are a little bit more intimidating.

She talks about things like making cheese every day, I'm never gonna try that.

It's a little intense.

Yeah.

But yeah, there's stuff that we know now.

We're supposed to be eating, right?

The Three Sisters, corn, beans, and squash.

And she makes sure that that's part of something that's included in her cookbook.

So it actually is pretty practical.

Anybody could pick up The Good Life and try those recipes.

Do you think she wanted to bring New Mexico into the future?

I think it's a combination.

She wanted to bring technology, and I think make things easier for these women that she saw in these communities across the state.

But I also think she wanted to preserve the culture of it, which is why she talks so much about how these particular foods interact with these particular times of the ye because there's something we're planting that time of the year.

There's, in winter, it's storytelling time.

So she talks about gathering around the wood stove and eating these foods, but also engaging in activities like weaving and colcha, or embroidery.

And those are things that are very traditional to our state.

So it's cultural practice with environmental practicality with technology.

Why is her work important to us today?

In terms of just cultural preservation, that's probably the most basic one, right?

Is it's teaching us what we were like and what we were doing almost 100 years ago now, really.

But the other reason is important is because you've seen, I know we've always seen, the kind of movement towards sustainability in our state and across the United States, because we really do need to take into account kind of the scarcity of our resources.

And she's really doing that in the 1930s because she's had to from where she grew up, right?

Those resources were always scarce.

It's important also to understand sustainability, to understand food ways.

You know, fundamentally it's good for us to follow the seasons, right?

And to put that food in our body at that particular time of the year.

♪ SOFT PIANO ♪ And to think as much as 80 years ago, 90 years ago, we were already crossing borders, right?

She was leaving New Mexico to go to Mexico.

She has these sections in her archive of going to Spain.

And it's like, you know, there's this reputation of New Mexico as being isolationist.

But we were actually always kind of transnational.

And I think she reminds us of that.

She was a wandering spirit, but with a mission.

Yes, with a very particular mission.

Adam Hernandez is an ardent proponent for the Latino artist voice.

Originally from the Bronx, he talks about connecting emotions by taking inspiration from ancient times and presenting it through his very contemporary works.

(Adam) The first thing that kind of comes to mind when I'm describing my work, I kind of have dubbed it modern hieroglyphics, where I'm borrowing from ancient hieroglyphics, but incorporating modern techniques.

Most specifically, techniques and imagery borrowed from graffiti.

I have a kind of a philosophy where I think graffiti and hieroglyphics are kind of one and the same.

They're people leaving messages on the walls for people behind them.

I think it's just kind of funny that, you know, one is like in hieroglyphics are in museums and we, you know, hold them in such high regard and graffiti for some folks kind of look down on it.

But, you know, I just would challenge them.

That's like, what's the difference?

It's still people creating art, telling a message, asking folks in the community to remember something.

For me, it's like kind of drawing the comparison and parallel and then kind of interpreting that in my own way.

Borrowing from ancient hieroglyphics and then bringing it to modern times.

I love to use bright colors, thick bold lines.

You know, a kid in the 90s, so I love cartoons and comic books and stuff like that.

So definitely, I think that's kind of an influence.

A big motif in my work are these characters I call Godmasks, and they are kind of inspired by a mask you might see, like a shaman or, you know, somebody wearing like a ceremony.

And that's something that's true across so many cultures through like most of recorded human history.

You know, as somebody who struggled with some mental health struggles that a lot of us do in life, kind of to me, it's like these masks, these fierce things, things like kind of channeling that power from wherever it may be for yourself, whether it's from your heritage or from your family or from the nature that surrounds us.

And that's why these cool, powerful beasts, for me, it's like trying to channel that energy and kind of put myself out there.

So, and then again, being Puerto Rican, there's a tradition of mask-making, specifically called 'vejigantes' which is kind of influenced by Spanish, Taíno, and African roots, different elements of all those cultures kind of culminated on Borinquen or as it's known, Puerto Rico, if you would make these masks.

And so like my paintings are inspired by that.

And then more recently, I've been kind of dabbling in actually like more dimensiona mask making.

♪ UPBEAT MUSIC ♪ This is a print I made a few years back when I was vending at Festival Latino downtown.

It's in my signature style, you know, it's a Godmask inspired by all the things.

But yeah, the special thing about this is that if you scan it in an augmented reality app called Artivive, it actually comes to life.

So it's something that I've been experimenting with the last couple of years.

And you know, this was kind of like the first iteration of that and now I even have like a tour around town where people can scan some of my murals and there's like a whole kind of immersive game that involves augmented reality in my artwork.

♪ UPBEAT MUSIC ♪ Innately, everybody is drawn to art and creation.

And so to kind of be, you know, a person who gets to create that experience for people I think is like a magical thing.

So that's probably my favorite.

Like just the fact that I get to make things and share it with people, it's just very basic, but it's a really special thing to me.

[ CAN SPRAYING ] ♪ LATIN SALSA INSTRUMENTAL ♪ Thank you for joining us this week on State of the Arts, back next week with a new episode.

Until then, I'm Mary Paul.

Goodbye.

♪ DREAM POP INSTRUMENTAL ♪