[MUSIC] In this edition of WLIW Arts Beat, a cowgirl artist.

- My art, which I would call contemporary Western art, kind of falls between the cracks sometimes because there's definitely Western galleries and Western shows that my work would not fit in.

- Costuming for the opera.

- We now have about 50,000 complete costumes.

That's about a hundred thousand pieces when you count every coat, every pants, every shirt.

[music] A beloved cultural tradition.

There's so much more that actually unites us.

And when we come together and we interact just as human beings, we realize that again, that we're all in this together.

[music] It's all ahead in this edition of WLIW Arts Beat.

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

Thank you.

Welcome to WLIW Arts Beat.

I'm Diane Masciale.

- Megan Wimberley is a contemporary Western artist and the founder of Cowgirl Artists of America, an organization that celebrates and supports women artists and makers.

We take a trip to Oklahoma to find out more.

- Many women really don't like the term cowgirl.

Instead they'll say cowboy girl or cowboy gal.

I've even heard people say don't call a woman who's a good hand with a horse or with cattle or whatever, don't call her a cowgirl, call her a cowboy.

And I think that tells a story about the West that is not accurate.

It's not the story of the West that I grew up in.

People want to be a cowboy.

Why don't they want to be a cowgirl?

[Music] I chose my cousin to portray in this art because I think she is an incredible horsewoman.

She's definitely a lot more knighted.

She's done it for a long, long time.

My art, which I would say I would call contemporary Western art, kind of falls between the cracks sometimes because there's definitely Western galleries and Western shows that my work would not fit in.

They would say it's too modern or too contemporary.

On the other hand, there's shows that, you know, like the things that aren't Western, I would be way too Western for.

A lot of times when people go really colorful, they really begin to be more abstract or expressionistic and lose some of the realism to it.

And for me, the realism is also important.

You know, I literally was riding horses before I could walk.

And I know that that seems like a tall tale, but it's not.

And there's pictures of me, as soon as I could hang on to a saddle horn, I was up there.

And my mom said I would cry as soon as they took me off.

I just always wanted to be around the horses.

Right now we're in Tulsa.

It's a lot different living in a city.

I, you know, that's not really my preferred place to live, but there's beauty no matter where you are.

And of course there's the Cowboy Museum, Oklahoma City, and I really try to get down to the Cowboy Museum as much as I can.

It's always informative, always beautiful.

Looking through the old saddles and all of that, it's so inspiring to look back at the craftsmanship and the patterns and the styles that were used.

Hi Priscilla, how are you?

Good, Megan, how are you doing today?

Doing well.

So are you ready to get started?

- So CalGirl Artists of America is an organization that's working to increase opportunities and representation for female Western artists and makers.

The idea for CGA happened in 2018 when I went to a really beautiful Western art show.

And as I looked around, I began to notice that there were not very many women.

And I just thought I want to do something about this.

And so I just started with Instagram and I started reaching out to female Western artists and I would send them a message, "Hey, your work's beautiful.

Can I share it?"

I started doing monthly Zoom meetings and then people were like, "How do I join?

How do I join?"

- Don't only get stuck in art-based hashtags.

- And so in May of 2021, I was like, "Okay, we're doing it."

They are fine artists, so they're painting, sculpting.

They're photographers or traditional artists, so maybe they're saddle makers or they are boot makers, silversmiths.

When I think about it, it's kind of like mind-boggling how much the organization has done in such a short time.

I'm really happy with it.

I, yesterday I called it, what did I call it?

Vintage, vintage pop.

That's what it feels like to me right now, a vintage pop piece, which I don't know if that's a thing or not, but if it isn't, it should be.

(music) Women are really good with horses.

(music) And a lot of times you see these cowgirls out there too with the baby on their hip.

All of that is so important.

And it's because of women like my grandma Betty and my aunt Shelly, that women are able to grow up and to do the things that they want to do because we've been supported to go out there and be cowgirls.

So thanks grandma.

- You're very welcome.

You're one of my special kids too.

It's time to celebrate the cowgirl.

See more at meganwimberley.com.

And now, the artist quote of the week.

[ Music ] The Sarasota Opera in Florida has a tremendous costume collection, so big that it is one of the largest in North America, with over 50,000 costumes from more than 100 opera productions.

We visit their warehouse to learn more.

I always refer to opera as the all-encompassing art form.

It is a musical form.

It's also a dramatic form.

It contains singers, orchestra, chorus.

It also has visual elements like sets and costumes.

So it's all of the pieces that create this wonderful art form.

Costumes and scenery set you to the time and place.

We have tens of thousands of costumes in our warehouse and we do alterations on them for the particular person.

If we don't have a costume for a particular part, then we build it or we make it right here in the costume shop.

So we do both.

For many years, Sarasota Opera had been renting costumes from companies throughout North America, but our primary source was a company in Toronto called Malabar.

They were the largest and probably the best collection of rental costumes available for traditional opera productions.

Our costume designer, Howard Kaplan, worked with Malabar for a long time.

He also had designed specific productions for Malabar to build and rent.

And I became very close with the department managers, and they said, "Oh, we've seen your sketches, so Luigi, your sketches."

And then Mr.

Specka commissioned me to design Pirates of Penzance for Cleveland Opera.

When the owner of Malabar, Luigi Specka, decided he wanted to retire and slow down, he first came to Howard, knowing that Howard had the same aesthetic, and that Sarasota Opera would be a good steward of this incredible collection that he created.

We purchased the collection in the fall of 2019, and it moved down in ten tractor-trailers during that time.

We paid basically $33 a costume.

We were lucky to be able to find a warehouse and a nice clean space.

Actually, before we used it, it was a volleyball gym that we were able to build out, and it's about 16,000 square feet we were able to house these costumes.

We now have about 50,000 complete costumes.

That's about 100,000 pieces when you count every coat, every pants, every shirt.

Sarasota Opera purchased this collection to use for their own use, but a significant part of what we are doing now is renting these costumes to other opera companies, theater companies, universities, and we've actually done some work in film.

We've had some of our costumes featured in a Netflix feature.

We've also, a Kia car commercial used some of our costumes.

The Kia people called us because someone had booked every 18th century costume in the whole city for, I don't know what, some pirate movie they were doing.

So everything was on reserve.

And they were desperate to find 18th century clothing.

One of the things that we were surprised when we got these costumes from Malabar, a lot of them have name tags and had the names of singers who've used them over the years.

Yeah.

This one was worn by Mr.

Pavarotti and has his name still in the label.

And we have other great singers as well.

People like Luciano Pavarotti, Beverly Sills, Placido Domingo, Marilyn Horne.

So it's great to have not only the wonderful costumes that they used, but also a little bit of history with them.

♪ Night and cottage made tomorrow ♪ Everything is organized by shows or productions.

So there's a Tosca aisle, there's a Carmen aisle, there's a Traviata aisle.

These dresses are made to be altered.

By that I mean the inseams are three or four inches, the hems are maybe six or eight inches, so it can go up or down or in or out, but there is a lot of flexibility there to fit other people in that same dress.

- When working on a production, we'll first read the libretto, listen to the music, and then we'll move forward with sketches and purchasing of fabrics, going through our huge stock to see what we can use for that production.

Golden Cockerel, I would say, is one of my favorite productions.

And we did it years ago, Alzira, which was kind of an Inca opera.

There was a Inca art exhibit, art and textile exhibit up at the St.

Pete Museum.

I was able to purchase replicas.

They were like tea cozies or something, you know, copper plates and stuff.

You'd hang on the wall.

And then we ended up being able to put them on the fronts of the armor and stuff.

So they really look like real Inca copper pieces and gold pieces and stuff.

So that was kind of fun.

One of the things I think is great about opera is that the stories are timeless and the music is so engrossing.

Many of our audiences are longing for that live performance experience.

And I've been really heartened by the fact that in the post-COVID era, we've seen huge numbers of new first-timers coming to the opera.

I love the challenge.

I love the dedication that the artists have to their work.

They have to learn their music.

They have to learn the language.

Every opera is maybe sung in a different language.

And so it's a very dedicated profession.

And I appreciate that.

I enjoy being around that.

I love it.

[Applause] For more information head to SarasotaOpera.org Now here's a look at this month's fun fact.

For 100 years, the burning of Zozobra has been going strong in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Serving as a reminder of all we have in common, people come together to participate in this powerful cultural event.

Up next, we hear more about Zozobra and its rich history in the state.

[music] The name Zazobra means gloom or anguish.

Zozobra is created from us.

Every time we let ourselves down and we create gloom in our lives or we create gloom in other people's lives, we put out this negative energy.

And that negative energy accumulates until you have this 50-foot specter.

(soft music) - Tony Hillerman, who's a very famous author, he once said that, you know, if Zozobra didn't burn, the Aspens may not turn yellow, winter may never come.

You know, for us, Zazobra is Santa Fe's new year.

People tell me that they make resolutions the day after Zozobra, right?

It's kind of crazy, but it's that importance of renewal.

(sweeping orchestral music) - The tradition was started by a man named Will Schuster.

He was born in Philadelphia, got drafted into World War I, went to France, and was mustergassed in the trenches of France.

Came back to Philadelphia, and was told that he had about six months to live.

His lungs were so bad.

And so he had a choice.

He could either stay in Philadelphia and die or he could move out west and see if he could live.

So he moved to Santa Fe and Schuster became part of what was called Los Cinco Pantores.

And it was really the artist that really started Santa Fe down the path of becoming the art enclave that it is today.

And it's pretty funny because when they started, of course, there was not really a market for art and so they were very poor.

And so the five painters lived together and the locals would call them five nuts in a hut.

Well, on Christmas Eve of 1923, Schuster sold a sculpture that he'd been working on for about six months.

And so he goes to his compatriots and he says, "Hey, you know what?

I'm tired of eating rice and beans.

This new hotel, La Fonda, just opened up downtown.

Let's go have actual, you know, steak."

So they get to La Fonda and they're drinking and they're eating and everyone's just in a really bad mood.

And Schuster's really upset with this.

And so he grabs a sketch pad, which he always carried with him and he takes out pieces of paper and he hands it to each of his compatriots and he demanded that they write down what was bothering them.

And after some convincing, they did it.

And then he gathered it up in the middle of the table.

He grabbed the candle and he lit it on fire and he declared that all their gloom was gone.

And so this was kind of the spark in Schuster's mind that you could physically write down what was bothering you and burn it away.

He just needed a kind of a vessel in order to do this.

And so the first Zozobra takes place in Will Schuster's backyard and it's only 5 feet tall.

But by 1926, now Zozobra has grown to 20 feet and it's on the banks of the Santa Fe River with the cathedral over Zozobra's shoulder.

And so Schuster's starting to think about how do I get a deeper meaning to this and so that's when he invents these other characters, the gloomies and the torchbearers and the fire spirit and it all comes together in this mythology that we have today.

I think that he understood even back in the 1950s and 1940s that there had to be an opportunity for people to come together as a community.

But also an inflection point for just looking back and kind of thinking about what it means to be a human being.

And as we've gotten into our social media, TikTok, 42nd world, we just don't interact as humans anymore.

And so I think anything that takes us out of that and just pushes the pause button on that and puts us back with our community and gives us an opportunity for self-reflection, I think that that's really, really important.

(upbeat music) - Traditions live and breathe by the fact that you have people who are involved.

(upbeat music) You know, we have like four or five young men, nine years old, eight years old, 16 years old, that are coming to help us construct.

That's gonna be the future of this tradition.

And so any way that we can incorporate the community, we want to, because Kiwanis is the legal title owner, but New Mexico is the equitable owner of Zozobra.

And so they have to be involved.

They have to be able to touch and feel and do those things, because without that, our tradition would die.

(crowd cheering) - What was really important to Will was the fact that Zozobra was not a martyr.

He wasn't somebody that was just gonna sacrifice.

We had, just as we created him, we had to do him in.

We had to show up.

We had to give that fire spirit that juice to be able to destroy him.

And if we don't, Zozobra will win.

(people chattering) [music] - Part of what's really important is still this idea of writing down your gloom.

It's something that's really sacred.

(dramatic music) And people will bring us old love letters, they'll bring us divorce papers, they'll bring us wedding albums with people cut out.

I've seen all these sorts of things.

- But I will tell you that my most emotional gloom was a Zozobra day where a security guard came and got me and said that there was this woman there and she asked if she could see me.

And as I approached her I thought she was holding this little blue blanket in her hand.

And when I got there she explained to me that she had stage 4 cancer.

And that her doctor had basically said, you know, that this is it.

She needed to make preparations for passing away.

And in order to emphasize the point, he pointed to her hospital gown and said, "That'll be the last article of clothing that you ever wear."

And hearing that did something inside her where she decided she was going to fight back, that she wasn't done living.

And so she actually went into remission, and she'd been in remission for two years.

And it wasn't a blue blanket, it was her hospital gown.

And she was asking me to put it inside Zozobra.

And she said, "Is that okay?

Can I put it in?"

And I said, "No."

And she kind of looked shocked.

And I said, no, you need to put this into him.

And so I walked her to Zozobra and she put that hospital gown.

And I remember that year, as I ignited him, I was able to see that hospital gown burn.

It was quite emotional.

[MUSIC PLAYING] Zozobra is not the embodiment of evil.

He's in the embodiment of gloom.

And I love that word because gloom is kind of-- it's in the grayscale.

It's not black.

It's not white.

Because there's lots of things that cause you gloom, right?

And so what that says to me is there's a belief that as human beings we are good.

But we do these things that cause ourselves worry and anxieties.

And we do these things that cause other people that.

And so if you're able to then take a step back every year and say, "Okay, am I going to be more like Zozobra and continue to put gloom into the world?

Or am I going to be more like the fire spirit and put light and hope into the world?"

You know, you look around our nation, you look around our world, there's all these things that divide us.

But there's so much more that actually unites us.

And when we come together and we interact just as human beings, we realize that again, that we're all in this together.

You know, we only have a little limited time on this small rock.

We all want to be loved.

We want shelter.

We want to be cared for.

And when you have a community event that does that and places people together, it reminds them of our humanity.

And I think that that's critical to everything that happens going forward.

So I think that if Schuster were here, I think he'd be very proud of us.

(soft music) - Discover more at burnzozobra.com.

(upbeat music) And here's a look at this week's art history.

(upbeat music) - That wraps it up for this edition of WLIW Arts Beat.

Visit our webpage to watch more episodes of the show.

We hope to see you next time.

I'm Diane Masciale, thank you for watching.

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

[MUSIC]