[upbeat piano music] - In this edition of "WLIW Arts Beat: The Craft Of The Barber."

- A barber in deed is the art of defining someone's inner personality and their outer physical being.

And by doing that, you actually build someone's self-awareness and their self-confidence - A stage for the deaf community.

When someone is telling a story and someone else's listening, the brainwaves of the speaker and the listener actually sync up, it's actually the way in which we build relationships and connect to each other.

Art that flies.

- It's a very rogue project in the end.

You know, it's, it's, it's kind of about improvisation.

It's about the sense of openness.

And we don't really know what's going to happen tonight or tomorrow.

And I kind of love that - The energy of abstract expressionism, it's not unnatural for an artist to burst out into abstract painting because what you're doing is you're losing an image and it becomes all about shapes and colors.

- It's all ahead on this edition of WLIW Arts - Funding for WLIW art speed was made possible by viewers like you.

Thank you.

Welcome to WLIW art speed.

I'm Diane Michelle.

In this segment, we had to Florida to meet two barbershop owners who have mastered the art of cutting hair.

With their creative tools, they help their customers feel more confident about themselves.

Here's the story.

[hip hop music] - My name is Darrail Abercrombie.

I'm here today, introduced to my barber shop in Clearwater, Florida.

Edge It Up Hair Studios.

and what introduced me to barbering.

The reason why I started cutting hair is to pick up on the style and get out of the street.

Barbering actually did change and saved my life.

Now I own my own barbershop.

And I've been in business for about three years but I've been cutting for over 17 years.

- These are mostly I use for real precise edge, real precise lineup.

I have the curved sheers.

And one of the cool tricks about cutting is when you cutting, you use your thumb, you know.

And you're mostly just using your bottom fingers.

- I'm a student at SPC working on my associates, architectural design.

What brung me to actually being an architect is the art form of being a barber.

The two go hand in hand the art form of being a barber relates back to, like I said being able to give a straight ads using 90 degree angles you will be using 45 degree angles a lot of math skills that go involved with cutting hair that transitions over as to the geometry shapes.

The same thing goes for a rise in a run and building stairs.

So being a barber is just not about doing a good haircut but actually knowing form different angles different styles, and actually being able to present those styles on your client.

And I know a lot of people don't think that barbering and his art, but barbering, and is in fact the art of defining someone's inner personality and their outer physical being.

And by doing that, you actually build someone in self-awareness and self-confidence.

So I'm trying to go in the next few years and just put my stamp on the world, you know, show them that I am an artist in every form and that, you know anybody can do anything that they put their mind to.

[disco music] My name is Billy Werk.

I'm the owner of the Werks Elite Babershop.

I got into barbering probably when I was a kid.

So I grew up in the projects in New Jersey.

We were very poor.

We didn't have a lot at all and we definitely couldn't afford haircuts.

So what I did was started cutting hair myself.

So what I wound up doing is an led from cutting my hair to some friends and cousins and like my stepdad and my brother.

And it got to the point where they didn't want to go anywhere else because no one could cut someone's hair like me.

[disco music] It led to me finally getting my barber degree and I decided to go to school and actually make it a career.

And it's probably the best thing I've ever done.

Once I got out, I had a goal, I had a five-year goal to make my own, to have my own barbershop.

And I wound up within four years, I was ready to get out on my own.

I think it's the best career I've ever had.

And then, you know, including like my art and stuff, I got I got started with art also at a very young age.

I was drawing people's names on their, on their books for school, all their, the book covers drawing their names and doing graffiti.

And then it just, it just evolved from there.

I wound up having a show at the Dali museum a few years ago.

That was really cool.

We, we sold out, I sold everything within like an hour and a half.

Now.

I just, I'm still doing commissions and I'm trying to just go further and in barbering and just putting everything, you know, as one, they pretty much go hand in hand as far as art and barbering and go - For more information, go to edgeitup.com and werkselite.com And now the artist's quote of the week.

[jazz music] Wisconsin's Ex Fabula, is a nonprofit that embraces the power of personal storytelling, workshops story slams, and more.

Up next, we attend one event where members of the deaf community came together to share their stories.

The great thing about stories is that they reflect the real complexity of our lives.

When someone is telling a story and someone else's listening, the brainwaves of the speaker and the listener actually sync up.

It's actually the way in which we build relationships and connect to each other.

Ex Fabula is a Milwaukee nonprofit.

And our mission is to connect Milwaukee through real stories.

We've been around since 2009.

And we put on story slams and workshops where people share their true personal stories.

And in the process build community connect with each other and even heal.

We started out with these stories, lambs, which are events where anyone could put their name in the hat the chance to get up on stage and share a true story.

And all the stories are on a theme.

So that hopefully over the course of the night we really just explore all the different human experiences that are out there.

Storytelling can look different depending on which group is involved.

We actually discovered that the deaf community doesn't consider themselves to be necessarily a disability community.

That it's really more of a language and culture.

- We are have two different American languages here.

We have sign language for us to be able to express ourselves.

And not only in the signs that we're using off our hands but our full body, it's, it's everything.

It's our facial expression to show our mood or our temperament.

And it's kinda like intonation in English how you speak and how you say certain things.

And you emphasize certain words.

We are able to do that as well.

- Mayra and Jose are two community members who have been shaping this particular collaboration.

When we first started the project we knew it'd be really important to have people from the deaf community, helping to design the project.

Ex Fabula has been a great experience for the deaf community.

And I think it's gonna be great for the hearing community as well, to hear our stories probably something that they haven't heard before.

- What really impacts me is this controversial topic of diversity.

- I think a lot of people in the audience will look at that as a label and just I want them to keep in mind what kind of impact that leaves.

If you're making an assumption.

- Hello, everyone.

And welcome to our very first Deaf Story Slam.

The storytellers are going to be getting up and sharing stories on the theme of labels.

At the story slam, we will have around six people get up on stage and share a true personal story.

Now these stories will be signed.

So we'll have interpreters who are interpreting from ASL into spoken English so that both the deaf community and the hearing community can appreciate the stories.

- A little bit in that time in the 80's and 90's, it was seen upon that deaf people were almost kind of embarrassing.

It was shameful because we would try to learn how to talk.

But a lot of people would say that our voice was not as eloquent or as beautiful as a person who can hear.

We were monsters.

- I wasn't ready to be done working.

I want to work.

I have skills.

I am capable.

I want to work, but nobody was willing to give me a chance.

I let them know that I was very interested in this job.

And I wanted to know they were too.

And they said, yes, we were very interested.

You have all the qualifications we were looking for but we do have one concern, you can't hear.

And with being able, not hearing, we have safety issues.

So hearing that as you probably all know was a huge frustration.

I couldn't believe that that was the one thing that was holding me back from this job that I wanted all my career.

- I should mention that I had a son at the time.

My son's school would sometimes call me.

I would step in the hall and take the call five minutes and then go back to doing meal prep for lunch.

And then I got off a warning from this boss saying and I was in violation of the rules because I was using my phone.

And I'm like, are you kidding me right now?

Because you're on your phone all the time.

You just have it up by your ear while you're cooking and you're talking and you're cooking at the same time I can't do that because I'm deaf.

I got to step into the hall and do my business and come back.

Well, I talked today about being an independent woman, you know just all the hardships I have gone through to figure out what I needed to do to be successful as I am today.

You know, those barriers are important.

They make you who you are.

They develop your character, but you know I'm very happy to be where I am now.

- But my uniqueness wasn't just a college student trying to find identity.

I was a black, deaf man, trying to find my way in the world.

My topic, I focused on communication and how to overcome through adaptation.

I wanted to focus on this idea that I didn't want to worry about barriers and how to have other people take control of my story what I thought I was going to have to make a change.

I wanted to take authority and find that way that I needed to by myself in order to be successful.

When I was in college I honestly didn't think that a support system was needed.

I thought independence meant me and myself only.

I thought I could make it by myself meant that I was successful.

But we had to think about making sure you had support it.

There was teachers or emergency contact or someone who could just ask you if you were all right.

I wanted to make sure that I had that transparency with individuals in my community as well as I have with my family.

- I decided that I wanted to make sure that I had a company that supported me in the communication realm and the expertise that I brought because I am qualified to learning how to communicate with the hearing world.

- Am I proud?

Yes.

I'm proud to be deaf.

I'm proud to be Mexican.

And if you don't like me.

- I want people to be more aware.

Deaf people have been through a lot.

I want you to acknowledge that we know what we're talking about.

Keep that in mind as you meet us out in the workforce or in other daily situations, be our ally.

Come alongside us.

- To learn more head to exfabula.org.

Now here's a look at this month's fund backed.

Centered around a glistening 100 foot tall hot air balloon.

Doug Atkins, new horizon is an unforgettable project inspiring observers, state-wide this artistic wonder travels across Massachusetts and leaves a lasting impression.

- Good morning.

Lauren's traffic Hutter Mullen 8, 6, 9 uniform Sierra.

Do you have any this morning - For this story?

We'll begin at the end on Monday, we'd been taking a pretty serene ride over and over Handover floating above the tree tops in a hot air balloon designed by artists, Doug Aitken a shimmering inflatable sculpture he's titled new horizon.

- I seen it the horizon's really kind of a sculpture of time.

It's something which is it's temporary.

It's changing continuously when it stops.

We can have these kind of incredible communal moments.

- But on this flight, we got communal fast.

The wind picked up and we had to touch down after two failed attempts.

Our pilots spotted a make-do landing strip this small grassy median at the intersection of two busy routes at rush hour.

Suddenly New Horizon was on the ground.

It's silvery skin collapsing in a tired exhale.

Cars stopped.

The state police rushed in - Behind us.

There's cars pulling over diving in and helping, you know I think it's just this miraculous.

- We had an exhilarating landing.

- Pedro Alonzo is the guest curator of art and the landscape and effort by the trustees of reservations to disrupt the group's historic sites not with art that's ornamental but art that engages.

yet bay Hines, mirrored labyrinth at world's end in Hingham, Sam Durant's meeting house at the old man's in Concord and Alicia quad.

A's exploration of reality at the crane estate in Ipswich.

- I'm convinced that the public wants art.

They just don't want to feel intimidated or uninformed when they look at it.

And this is the kind of artwork that people will be surprised that was art.

- Alonzo, also takes a devilish glee in the element of surprise.

Remember the photograph that mysteriously appeared on Boston's former Hancock tower one day that was Alonzo teaming with French artist Jr.

They did it again two years ago, installing an image of a child peering over a Mexican border wall into the U S - That kind of surprise is for me much more valuable than a programmed event.

Well, what is it to, to, to, to plunk a sculpture down in the middle of rush hour traffic literally in the middle of it, rush hour traffic.

Ah, it's it's well, first people take notice, you know people definitely take notice.

And I think it's the kind of thing that just changes your day.

You're going to think very differently about how your day went.

- In a world where everything is so homogenized.

So repetitious, you know, we need disruption.

We need moments of kind of a crack in our daily reality - Hundreds of feet, up in the air before our sudden landing artists, Doug Aitken says when Alonzo commissioned him to create a piece for art and the landscape, he knew zero about hot air balloons.

So he used the idea of the classic American road trip.

As a point of departure - It's kind of baked into our DNA, this idea of the other this idea of disappearance, or kind of moving into the landscape that we don't know.

You know, I think there's an aspect of this project is intensely physical.

I could have said it better than that sound.

- The California based artist and filmmaker is a big thinker and creator.

He's animated and entire Manhattan block with his piece sleepwalkers.

He curated station to station a train that doubled as a light sculpture as i crossed the U S and in underwater pavilions he submerged giant sculptures off the California coast.

- The idea of community, the idea of these kind of flashpoints across the landscape has been very provocative.

- New horizon has been popping up.

And in our case floating across Massachusetts for the last two weeks moving from Martha's vineyard to the Berkshires.

In daylight it's a 100 foot tall beacon.

At night it's a floating light show.

And wherever the balloon goes, people gather for music speakers in conversation in organized happenings.

- They see this object and they, you know and the track it down and suddenly they were there.

And, you know, it's almost like a kind of hallucination.

- It's what we saw.

People coming out of their homes, taking a break from work it's from up here that we saw how different our community looks in the lushness of summertime Massachusetts presents as a veritable rain forest - Those moments, you know, when you have a kind of awakening when you really kind of see the mundane and it becomes vital and fresh and real again.

- And new horizon reminds us that a lot of life nature, fate it's all out of our control minutes before our adventure some landing, Aiken told me he even planned for the unplannable.

- It's a very rogue project in the end.

You know, it's, it's, it's kind of about improvisation.

It's about the sense of openness.

And we don't really know what's going to happen tonight or tomorrow.

And I kind of love that.

- Especially when a grounded hot air balloon makes you appreciate an otherwise benign traffic median on a whole new level.

- Discover more at thetrustees.org.

And here's a look at this week's art history.

[jazz music] Ruth Gilmore Langs is isn't abstract expressionists in her vivid artworks.

She favors texture, color and shapes.

We visit the artist in her studio gallery to find out more.

- I love color.

It seems to talk to me when I work.

My name is Ruth Gilmore Langs.

I'm an abstract painter and my studio galleries in Islamorada, Florida.

I think that The keys are unique in their light.

The light is very different here.

It's very ultraviolet light and that's an inspiration.

As an abstract expressionists.

I love painting large scale.

I love thick paint all the way.

Thicker, the better I use a lot of texture.

Definitely.

I used to be a Weaver when I was younger and I loved the texture and fibers.

And I think it's translated into the painting.

[soft piano music] It's not unnatural for an artist to burst out into abstract painting because what you're doing is you're losing an image and it becomes all about shapes and colors.

And for me, I see it as a very high form of expression and extremely challenging because you're you're losing the trees and the ocean and trying to emote and communicate through brush stroke, color, paint, energy.

In my heart and in my soul, I'm a storyteller.

And however I, whatever medium you'd land on as an artist it's storytelling.

If we're lucky we get to show and showing is a completely different thing than painting and working.

So suddenly you've been working alone and working alone and focusing on your topic and then you move it into a studio and hopefully have a really big fun party.

I pick themes and then I follow them.

And that's true for the USA series.

I've been following it for 20 years.

And one of the things about following a story is it started with 9/11.

And the shock of that, the shock the whole country had, the whole world had with that.

And then to follow that series into what America is today there's a story there and I'm telling it through shapes and color.

And what it's saying is gonna be... everybody's eyes and ears to figure that out.

For me that painting is a victory because I'm was trying really hard to express the beauty of America, the rivers, the sunshine, the land the expansiveness.

All the while with the limitation which isn't that big of a limitation, but I was on a ten and a half foot canvas trying to express our huge nation.

The second piece to the USA series, which I started after 9/11, is probably the darkest piece in the series mostly because it's black and white.

It's a repetition of USA and the numbers 11.

And as I began repeating the numbers 11, it became obvious to me that that represented the twin towers.

I myself have come to see the paintings as mirrors and there are reflection and I think they'll offer whatever needs to be offered to each individual person because we bring ourselves as much as anything to these paintings.

They will give out, but you bring yourself and everybody's going to bring their own history and their own story and their own feelings about America no matter where you're from in the world.

And I think these paintings are an attempt to express it through abstract expressionism.

How lucky is that?

That that's my tool.

- To see more head to instagram.com/ruthgilmorelangs _.

That wraps it up for this edition of WLIW art speak.

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.

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

Thank you.