[upbeat music] [upbeat music continues] - In this edition of "WLIW Arts Beat," exploring Black male identity through photography.

- Representation is important because there's so much we can learn about other people.

[calm music] - [Diane] A famous drag queen joins the cast of "Hairspray."

- [Andrew] The art of drag is so personal.

I can create a character who may or may not be like myself, but it's still my creation through and through and to the core.

- [Diane] A gallery show for dental students.

- This will serve like a creative platform where they can express themselves through art and also for people to get to know them.

[upbeat music] - It's all ahead on this edition of "WLIW Arts Beat."

Funding for "WLIW Arts Beat" was made possible by viewers like you, thank you.

Welcome to "WLIW Arts Beat."

I'm Diane Masciale.

Based in Sarasota, Florida, Jesse Clark is a fine art photographer who examines Black identity through a contemporary lens.

In this segment, we meet the artist and learn more about the vibrant images he creates and the thoughtful series he develops.

[gentle music] - It's easy to be put in this box, and it's easy for a lot of people to tell you who you are or who you're supposed to be.

And often that is limiting, 'cause no one knows you better than you know yourself.

[calm music] Awesome!

I'm Jesse Clark.

I am a third-year student at Ringling College of Art and Design.

I major in photography and imaging.

I'm gonna go a little bit closer on you.

So I was born in Haiti, and I was adopted in 2003.

So I grew up in Lakeland, Florida, in a family of four brothers, and my mom homeschooled all of us.

And so during my homeschool years, so elementary, she kind of introduced me to like the master works, having me study full paintings, da Vinci or Van Gogh, Rembrandt, things like that, and that kind of was what introduced me into art overall.

And so I started that journey becoming a painter and an illustrator, and when I got to high school was when I picked up the camera and started exploring that, and that opened new doors for me, capturing the world in a whole completely different way for me.

[calm music] - Jesse is not only incredibly talented as a technician.

Everything he did very early, he kind of mastered the lighting and the fundamentals of picture making.

And he then moved into subject matter, very specific issues that I think he gives a very fresh and contemporary take on identity, specifically Black identity within the context that we're in right now.

- One of my biggest series and something that was a turning point for me was a series that I titled "Through Dark Eyes."

And so that was a series that I worked with my friend Jordan George, who I'm here with today, and that was exploring how I see myself.

So there are images like the pink background that he was showing like the softer, vulnerable side.

The images with the floral face mask as well, also kind of this idea of the Black male, pairing a beautiful image.

I have experience in ballet, so learning to, you know, be strong but also sort of kind of land softer.

And so when I'm representing the Black male, I'm thinking about the side that's a little softer, the side that you don't typically see in movies and things, which they always show the aggressive, the jock or even sometimes criminal, so showing, okay, how are we really a soft person, the creatives, you know, welcoming.

So one of the biggest things in my photography is the gesture, taking inspiration from my experience in ballet, so kind of like a, you know, sort of upright and soft sort of movement.

- I love that Jesse knows what he wants to see.

I love that he can help me figure out how to position my hands, contort my body left and right, how to control my face and my overall demeanor for his projects.

It really helps a lot with what I wanna do with modeling and stuff.

It helps me learn my body more.

It's just a very comfortable space.

He makes it very comfortable.

He'll talk to you about you, and you're just as much a part of his piece as he is.

So it's your world that you share with him.

It's very fun.

- Clothes I always get from Goodwill, formal clothes, often kind of earthy tones, pastels and silks and velvets as well, so something we typically don't see the Black male being represented in.

Along with that, I often shop in the women's section of Goodwills, too, looking at blazers, button-downs, and sort of more floral tops as well.

- For Jesse to be doing this and for me to be one of his muses to help push this forward, I want any Black person, especially Black boys, and they're like, "Hey you can wear this if you think it's cool."

Don't, it's not that deep.

Like, you can express yourself how you wanna express yourself, and people are always gonna say something.

- I think that's kind of the struggles that I and maybe some friends have is being judged before people get to know us.

And even during photo shoots, we've had that issue as well.

[bright music] You know, I make the joke, like we were dressed like Shakespeare in the park photographing at this tennis court, but someone had an issue with our presence there, and we were, you know, dressed very nicely, and we'd think that that would change their thoughts on us.

But you know, that's not always the case.

There's that fear there.

I know that I can be feared by others, and that's certainly what I don't want, having that comparison, especially like to my, some of my brothers who are white, so how we navigate life a little differently.

So growing up in that family and kind of noticing those differences is kind of what drove me to produce work like this.

[bright music] - Photography matters today because it tells us about ourselves.

Yes, everybody has cameras on their phone, but the art side of it is a little different because art means you have to stand for something.

You have to put something on the line to talk about issues.

And in terms of Jesse, that's always, involves quite a bit of courage actually to speak about issues that matter to you.

[upbeat music] - I think it's really important, especially right now.

I feel like a lot of men in a lot of spaces and a lot of spaces in art are breaking the molds of what it is to be a man.

And I really think that's important, especially for a Black man to see that I can be vulnerable, to see that I can be soft, and I don't have to be tough all the time, to know that it's okay to cry.

This body of work, these pieces of work that Jesse is creating right now are going to help a lot of kids in the future.

- Now representation is important because there's so much we can learn about other people, and I certainly can't speak fully on a whole other group of people, but I can speak on myself, and if that helps another person, then I'm doing something right.

One, two, three.

[camera clicks] [upbeat music] - [Diane] To see more of Clark's work, head to jesseclarkart.com.

And now the artist quote of the week.

[upbeat music] [upbeat music continues] Andrew Levitt, aka Nina West, is an acclaimed drag performer from Ohio.

He is also an activist, singer-songwriter, and actor who joined the national tour of "Hairspray" playing the character of Edna Turnblad.

Up next, we hear more about Levitt's career journey.

- My professional career probably started after I graduated college, but I wasn't really intending on moving to Columbus, Ohio.

I was gonna go to New York City and chase the dream of being an actor on Broadway.

And I graduated in 2001, May of 2001, and I was gonna move to New York, and then 9/11 happened in September, and it changed my whole path.

Everything kind of happened for a reason, right?

I found drag.

My drag mother, Virginia West, introduced me to the art of drag while I was still in college.

So I did it as like fun kind of a lark.

It wasn't anything I was really gonna take seriously.

And then young, I stayed here in Columbus, and Chris, stage name Virginia West, Chris had encouraged me to like just give myself over to drag, and I did.

And I just had tried it a couple times, and that's where Nina West came from.

And everything was growing in the city, right?

I was able to not only do drag in nightlife for many years, but I was also like really early on in my career trying to find ways to work within the community and do different kinds of drag.

I started to do things within the city and working with city council on some initiatives and talking to organizations about the importance of LGBTQIA+ people and our profile within the community and what that means and how valuable this community is to the greater Columbus community.

And that all, it just all kind of added on to itself.

And I was doing a tremendous amount of charity work within the shows at the bar, which then extended itself to, thanks to my friend Matt Goldstein, who runs Besa, which then introduced me to the Columbus Foundation, which gave the Nina West Foundation a home.

So the path wasn't traditional.

It was just kind of just growing, and different seeds were being planted in a very small garden, and then everything started to, then the garden got bigger, and it was just what a wealth of I think really incredible gifts.

And then "Drag Race" happened, which changed everything.

And I can easily say and proudly say that my time in Columbus prepared me for what I'm experiencing now, right?

I cut my teeth in a city that is a mid-size city, you know, one of the larger cities in the country, a really beautiful progressive blue dot in an otherwise fairly conservative area and state, which I think spoke to my desire to want to provide better life and access to people who were like me and allowed me to find my activist voice.

I think a lot of people find their activism or find their strength in activism because of their own personal stories.

And so my story, I found, I just found myself really alone and really isolated and didn't find anyone who in my growing up and my youth who didn't look like me, who didn't sound like me, who wasn't, who didn't present themselves like I did, who was effeminate who, you know, like, you know so many times I was told who I was wasn't, didn't have any value or worth.

And so Nina taught me a lot about how to, I think, to walk and embody a feminine character even though it's kind of a louder personification of myself.

And I know that's kind of weird.

The art of drag is so personal.

I can create a character who may or may not be like myself, but it's still my creation through and through and to the core.

So Nina kind of gave me the familiarity of the body, definitely the ability to walk in the shoes, but I think that's where it stops.

And so Edna is a real mom, is a real mother who happens to be played, casting happens to be of a male, I think one of the greatest roles ever written for musical theater.

She is really complicated.

You know, so much of my Edna is, I think, so much of what Andrew is, and that's why they asked me to do it.

They wanted heart, and they wanted, I think, an energy that was maternal or paternal and however you might see that.

I mean, I think I have a very maternal energy, too, and I had to really tap into that because my job when that curtain goes up is to get 2,500 people to believe that I am that 16-year-old girl's mother.

I'll never understand what it's like to be a woman.

I'll never understand what it's like to give birth, but it doesn't mean the human condition doesn't allow me to understand what it's like to love and to love fiercely and to give all of my heart and my energy to someone else and to, so that their dreams can be achieved.

And that's, I mean, like I just thought about my mom and I thought about my grandmothers and I thought about my sisters and every other really incredible, strong, decisive, empathetic, impactful woman that I've ever come across to try to bring that to Edna.

When you come to see "Hairspray," you're gonna experience so many different things.

You're gonna see a girl who doesn't fit in because she's fat and big and she can't find her way, but she doesn't, she's also like not aware of that.

Like, she's blissfully unaware that, you know, like what, maybe I don't fit in, you know, but why can't I.

And you're gonna meet Seaweed who is, you know, who is Black and who cannot be on a television show except for once a month.

We all have our differences, and we all have our stories , and they all circle around one another, and it couldn't be more true of what we're experiencing now.

That's powerful, and I just didn't see my career, I just didn't see it happening like this.

And like, but again, my career has taken [clicks tongue] a bunch of turns.

[lively music] And then I get to come to Columbus, Ohio, and I get to play the Ohio Theatre.

If you would've told me that five years ago, I would've, I just, I wouldn't have believed it.

So like this is a, it's so special, 'cause I'm here because of the love that my community gave me initially, of I think how people I think respected me and reared me and corrected me and allowed me to step into spaces that at the time drag queens in Columbus weren't walking into.

It's humbling, it's really powerful.

Little Andrew would never have believed opening the new season for Broadway series in Columbus and doing this.

Hopefully I'll get to New York one day.

You know, that's always, that was always the dream.

So boy, wouldn't that be like a full-circle moment?

That'd be crazy.

But in the meantime, I'm just gonna keep working, keep doing that Midwest work ethic and smile along the way and try to bring joy to it all.

- [Diane] Discover more at ninawest.com.

Now here's a look at this month's fun fact.

[calm music] [calm music continued] [calm music continued] In March 2021, Janice Darko founded the Black & Art Dental Student Association.

As the first Black female student at the University of Utah School of Dentistry, she wanted to promote oral health equity and provide ways for students to express their identity through art.

We visit one of the gallery shows organized for the dental community.

- This is a way for Black students especially to elevate their voices in the community.

This will serve like a creative platform where they can express themselves through art and also for people to get to know them.

Like, this will be a way for them to be known wherever they find themselves.

[bright music] I wanted to express more of myself and my identity.

I wanted people to get to know who I am and my background.

I'm originally from Ghana in West Africa, so I wanted people to see the other aspects of me as well, and art is the way of me to express myself.

I wasn't an artist before, but one day I went to the Eccles Library, and I noticed that the medical students did like an art exhibition at the library.

So I was inspired, and so I decided, "Well, if medical students can do it, I think dental students can do it, too."

And when it comes to dentistry, it's not just using science.

You have to be artistic as well.

You should be able to use your hands.

So I thought maybe if I start an art gallery exhibition at the dental school, I will get more participation from the faculty, students, and staff.

[bright music] I came up with that theme, hoping, creating by creating more art.

Once people come to the exhibit, they will be inspired to dig deep down in them, see if maybe they have an artistic side that they haven't discovered yet, and try new things to see if maybe they'll be able to express themselves through art as well.

- I think it's very important to have students kind of be involved in different measures and different avenues, particularly the arts, because it allows them to express themselves really in different kind of climates and allow them to say, "Okay, I may be a dentist student, but then I can also produce art and express myself freely and be able to showcase who I am in a bigger picture."

I believe last year when I talked to some of the students, they said that they really enjoyed just kind of getting away from the hustle and bustle of schoolwork and being able to express themselves, draw different types of things, put together different pieces and really just be able to relax because of the hustle-bustle of school, especially in a pandemic, especially of different things that are going on around the world, allowing them just to express themselves and kind of take a step back.

So they really enjoyed it.

- A lot of people may not think about this, but if you think about dentistry, there's a lot of science to it, there's a lot of studying to it, there's a lot of knowledge to it, but there's a lot of art to it as well.

As dentists, we use our hands all the time, and we use our hands shaping teeth, making them look better.

And so there's definitely an artistic side to being a dentist.

Students come with a certain level of spatial orientation and hand skills, and they adapt that to dentistry.

But having a background in art really helps that, helps a student to do that a little bit better.

- The connection between art and dentistry is huge.

Even today, we were working on class IV composite restorations, and we had to contour, and we had to imagine the way that a normal tooth would look using composite.

So being able to use your hands and to visualize what you want to see your hands do is, I think, a huge way that art and dentistry are interconnected.

- It's true, why I chose dentistry because of the high emphasis of art that it is, and learning about dental anatomy and learning about the tooth structure, even how our jaws align when we close our mouths, it's all truly beautiful.

There is so much nuance within teeth, and the further in that you go and looking through your magnification loops and you just see the beautiful intricacy that is our dentition, and that's truly what dentistry is all about and combining those two and truly seeing the art behind the science.

- We've received a lot of positive responses, especially from the current students that are participating.

And every time we have this exhibit, we're seeing more and more participation with that.

We're also seeing previous graduates still send in some of their artwork, and you can see that they wanna be a part of this community because it does express who they are, and they want to include everybody that they can.

And it's just neat to see the participation grow over time.

- What has been rewarding is knowing that there are so many undiscovered artists amongst us, the dental students, the faculty, the staff and their family members.

I'm able to see new things every time I do the exhibits.

Once the arts gallery exhibition, it's coming up, people contact me and tell me about themselves and why they want to display their art works.

So that has been rewarding for me.

So yeah, I enjoy getting to know people through that.

- I think the exhibit is absolutely amazing.

It really covers different areas about African culture and history, both contemporary as of right now, but it's also previous culture, so going back hundreds of years ago.

And it's truly beautiful to see that progression of an entire culture and just truly be immersed in it and truly learn from the roots up and its prevalence in today and how they're, all Africans and people of all different cultures are such an integral part of our nation and who we are as individuals.

- What I hope, one, is to kind of get a lens of kind of Pan-Africanism, really understand the global aspect of just Black folks from across the globe.

But then on top of that being able to showcase, again, that students, even though they may be in one of the, you know, a tight subject or a very heavy load of classwork that they're able to also showcase that they're more than just a student but also an artiste.

- I'm hoping people who kind of get to know dentists more than just like them being afraid of dentists.

[laughs] They should rather appreciate the other side of dentistry which is the artistic part.

I'm hoping they will also be able to be challenged to look inside themselves to see if they are also artistic and then try new things.

I want people to be entertained, be inspired, and also try and donate so that we can keep the arts gallery exhibition going, and then in the hopes of raising enough funds to help in the community, especially the low income and underserved people in the community.

- Find out more dentistry.utah.edu.

[calm music] And here's a look at this week's art history.

[calm music] [calm music continues] [calm music continues] That wraps it up for this edition of "WLIW Arts Beat."

We'd like to hear what you think, so like us on Facebook, join the conversation on Twitter, and visit our webpage for features and to watch episodes of the show.

We hope to see you next time.

I'm Diane Masciale, thank you for watching "WLIW Arts Beat."

[calm music] Funding for "WLIW Arts Beat" was made possible by viewers like you, thank you.

[calm music] [calm music continues] [calm music continues] [calm music continues] [calm music continues]