[upbeat music] [upbeat music continues] - In this edition of "WLIW Arts Beat".

An exhibit that highlights women artists.

- [Laura] In this show, you see skilled artists, but they're professional, they're different ages, they're self-taught, and they're all good.

- [Narrator] A two-dimensional cafe.

- [Maria] What when we expect people to feel when they come in here is that wow effect.

Our slogan is "Be the art" because we want our customers to become the focal point of our art on that road.

- [Narrator] The writings of an acclaimed poet.

- Paul Laurence Dunbar was exceptional.

He wasn't a usual person.

He was an exceptional person.

- [Narrator] 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.

Since 1881, the American Association of University Women has been advocating for women and girls, and in an effort to advance gender equity, the Utah branch put together an exhibition for women artists to show their work and be rewarded.

Take a look.

- The American Association of University Women is an organization of university women throughout America.

We have about 170,000 members.

It was organized, formed back in 1881.

And it has continued with the objective of providing equity and opportunities for women.

In Utah, we have three branches.

We have two here in the Salt Lake area and one in St. George.

Then we have a state organization, and we all work together then on various equity projects for women.

We work with other organizations in the state to do whatever's needed for those women.

And we have approximately 170 members here in the state.

- We didn't have a theme.

We said celebrate women and that's all we said.

Women show in galleries and museums at a lower rate than men do.

And frankly, it's gone back to the Renaissance.

And so it's important because there's two ways all artists make money, and it's to sell art, and there's not a lot of places that you can show your art.

And another thing that happens that I think is really important about this show is that because we hire an out-of-state juror, there's no nepotism because you'll watch, you'll see the same artists come up, come up.

And in this show, you see skilled artists, but they're professional, they're different ages, they're self-taught, and they're all good.

[bright music] - I think it's really important to carve out women-only spaces so that there's no overshadowing by male artists.

So this is the first exhibition that I juried that was only women.

And I think I'll say I don't really know that one could, as sort of essentialist argument that maybe women produce more domestic scenes, or maybe women work in textile more or something like that.

But I'll say as the juror looking over nearly 200 submissions, I mean I was looking at the artwork from its technical, from a technical standpoint, was it well made?

That is always my first, always the first criteria that I'm judging.

And then I'll start to think about the subject matter and sort of the composition as a whole.

[gentle music] - We've had found a home here at the Utah Cultural Celebration Center, and they've been wonderful to us.

Michael who hangs this work is incredible.

And I don't think we want to go anywhere else because it's just been, it's just a wonderful venue.

- [Laura] This is an important thing that we're excited about.

This particular show, we had the most attendees.

We expected a hundred, we got 230.

It's the most amount of art sold.

And so that's exciting because that's the only way artists make a living is to sell art.

And that goes with the AAUW mission is equity and wage, and a livable wage.

So I think we're providing something that's really important.

[gentle music continues] - The winning artworks cover a very broad range because of course there are 16 artworks that were awarded prizes.

So the Best of Show is called "Choose" and it's by a very mature professional artist who is of Japanese descent who spent time in an internment camp during World War II.

The main figure stands, obviously a woman stands with one arm raised in a gesture of protest, in a sort of a power gesture, and is surrounded by origami cranes made with gold colored paper and black colored paper.

And the work is presented very much like a traditional Japanese scroll.

And as we were discussing it, Marilyn and I, during this discussion about the awards, it was just so obvious that the work was technically so perfect and its meaning is so profound and really has to do with so many of the issues that are affecting people today.

[gentle music continues] - If anything I learned being new to this exhibition and a leadership position is revisiting how the artists, many of our artists don't know how to take it to market.

And so what I hope to do in the future is for AAUW to do more outreach in between, but also some educational pieces or workshops and the fact that we say how do we take it to market and important things when you enter a show, like you've gotta know DPI and a JPEG and you've gotta have it photographed and you've gotta be able to price it and it has to come with a hanger.

And there are a lot of things that self-trained artists really don't how to enter the market.

They don't know about a bio.

And so yeah, that's what I hope we do better is more outreach.

And I also would like to bring in the Native American women, the Chicano women.

I want it to be more diverse and more outreach.

So that's part of our outreach so that we include all women in the state.

- For more information, head to aauwutah.org.

[upbeat music] And now the artist quote of the week.

[upbeat music continues] When you enter 2D Cafe in St. Petersburg, Florida, it's as if you've stepped into a black and white comic book.

Painted and designed by local artist Chad Mize, the immersive space allows you to become part of the artwork and enjoy a memorable experience.

[upbeat music] - When we expect people to feel when they come in here is that wow effect.

Our slogan is "Be the art" because we want our customers to become the focal point of our art on that wall.

So when you take a picture, it's you inside this comic book that we created.

- So when I first walked into 2D Cafe, I stopped at the door and I'm looking, I said "Oh my God" it was amazing.

I felt like I was inside of a cartoon.

Yeah, it was really awesome.

My job duties here consists of being a barista.

I make all of our drinks here, latte, teas, matcha.

I've had matcha all over the city.

We have the best matcha.

- We saw this concept first a couple years ago in a Forbes magazine article.

The first 2D Cafe originated in Tokyo, Japan.

And it blew our minds.

We started thinking that how cool would it be to bring that amazing concept and experience to us here locally?

[gentle music] Chad Mize is a very well known artist here in the community in St. Petersburg, Florida.

And we wanted to commission someone that was gonna make it very unique in his own art and also make it very St. Pete.

And he did an amazing job with that.

- I've been a self-employed artist for 20 years now.

Recently, probably in the last eight years, I've been doing mural work.

So I do large scale murals for corporate and interior clients.

And so that has really opened up a world for me where it's more about people in general seeing my art.

They don't have to go into a gallery to see my art.

They can be in a restaurant or walking down the street seeing a mural on the side of the street, which is really powerful.

So for so long in my career, I toyed with other styles of work and kind of put this in a little bit of a backseat, like the free flow doodle style.

And probably in the last five years, I've realized that it was my strength.

It was something that was natural to me.

And I feel like when I put that out there, that's when my career really elevated because I was doing what was most natural to me.

And you could kind of see that, you can see like that's what he should be doing.

So I worked with Disney this past year, did a piece with them, which was awesome.

And then Coach, they all hired me for this type of style that I'm doing, and I call it my free flow style.

[upbeat music] - When we started collaborating together with Chad, we wanna give him free range and for him to go with his own unique, amazing style that he has.

However, we wanted the cafe to be a European bistro, therefore we wanted to incorporate European elements in the design.

- When you add these personal touches to it, you can do little Easter eggs and hide things.

And I did add my dog Cookie in here, she's in the piece.

Then also the owners, the Maria's, gave me a couple things to add that are personal to their life and that was kind of cool too.

- We wanted to make it unique and also bring some of our own cultures and families and the things that are important to us personally to the design and the art.

My wife is from Greece, her name is Maria.

So we're both Maria's.

- I love humor as well.

So there's a lot of humor and like tongue in cheek in a lot of my work.

- [Maria] It's playful where you can almost get the sense of you don't know what's real or not.

- Typically when I do like a restaurant, I'll have like just one wall.

So to actually give free range of a whole space and cover every surface, that was a big undertaking.

But it was exciting at the same time.

To date, this has been the largest interior piece that I've worked on.

- We had to come up with ideas to really bring the 2D effect to life.

So we actually created these columns and arches and the keystones that make the 2D effect even more complete.

- It totally transformed the space, adding those birches.

And then because it's so tall, you wouldn't typically have like a clock go all the way to the ceiling based on the size of these ceilings.

So we kind of did the patterns and stuff to fill in the top portions, which kind of gave that another element of the type of work that I do, which is pattern-based work.

[bright music] - When we developed our menu, we wanted to incorporate both of my wife and I's culture in it.

So we have a few dishes that represent her culture, and I was born Uruguay in South America.

So we have in our menu for example six different kinds of empanadas, which is something that I bring from my culture.

And our 2D Mocha is very popular.

It's actually white and dark chocolate with the coffee.

So goes with the theme.

- It's very welcome and cozy inside the 2D Cafe.

You just walk in and you're kind of, you just see all the sites at once and you kind of wanna explore and see all the bits of inspiration and where this cafe might be.

I just think that it's a really fun addition to downtown St. Pete and it's a fun place where people can come and hang out.

- Well if you go down central now and you see all the development and it's just so filled in, this is definitely part of the mix.

It definitely stands out on its own, but it also is part of the whole creative culture that is in St. Pete.

We're inundated with color so much, so to come into a space and to be very stark and black and white, but also very busy, there's a lot to look at in here and I would hope that someone that came in here would leave with an inspiration of their home.

- Working with Chad Mize, it was great.

It was a breeze.

He did an incredible job of making a 2D Cafe so unique, so St. Pete and so ours at the same time.

- It's just really cool to leave your mark and help a business with its artistic vision, and it's been awesome for me to be part of that.

- [Narrator] To find out more, go to 2dcafe.com.

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

[upbeat music] [upbeat music continues] In 2022, the 150th birthday of poet Paul Laurence Dunbar was celebrated in Ohio.

Born to two former slaves, Dunbar became one of the first African-American poets to garner national critical acclaim.

In this segment, we travel to Dayton to learn more about his story.

[gentle music] - Well I'm very passionate about working in the community and also I love history.

And so the role as project manager for the Paul Laurence Dunbar 150 ended up being something that fit me very well.

It gave me the opportunity to really interact with the community and connect the community with history, the history of Dayton through the legendary Paul Laurence Dunbar.

The Dunbar 150 is a community approach to celebrating Paul Laurence Dunbar in his life.

Special commemorations began actually in 2020, and it also continues until February of 2023.

So it's been an incredible multi-year celebration of people coming together and several projects have been created.

And there have been shows and performances and lectures, so many things that have come out of this that have brought people together from all over the country.

Also introducing people to Paul Laurence Dunbar.

There are too many people in Dayton that have not heard about Paul Laurence Dunbar.

So Paul Laurence Dunbar, he was a phenomenon.

[bright music] So Paul Laurence Dunbar was born right here in Dayton Ohio in 1872.

His parents were enslaved.

They both moved here to Ohio from Kentucky.

His father, Joshua Dunbar, escaping enslavement into Canada and deciding to fight in the Civil War after that.

Matilda Dunbar, his mother, when she came to Dayton, she actually learned how to read.

So education was something that both Matilda and Joshua Dunbar were very passionate about.

When Paul Laurence Dunbar was six years old, he started rhyming words and started putting poetry together.

And it became very evident that he was extremely talented, naturally talented in that way.

And he loved books.

A lot of people know him as a poet, and he definitely was a poet.

He also wrote in several different forms, including short stories, novels, musicals, and songs.

He was a writer, really, he was an artist.

He was famous all around the world.

He traveled to Europe and all around the United States he took part in the world's Columbian exposition in 1893.

There he met Frederick Douglass.

Frederick Douglass connected him to a lot of the pivotal figures and African-American leaders during that time, people like Charles Young, actually now General Charles Young, who led the Buffalo Soldiers.

His work was appreciated and that's why he went all around the United States and the world sharing it.

- Paul Laurence Dunbar is probably the most creative, the most productive, and the most loving writer to ever be born in America.

And he was the first African-American to be accepted by the discipline of American literature.

Dunbar is our genius, and I don't wanna see him covered in history.

I feel that Dunbar should be appreciated, cherished.

Paul Laurence Dunbar was exceptional.

He wasn't a usual person.

He was an exceptional person.

And on top of all that, he had the determination to work hard at whatever he was doing.

- Paul Laurence Dunbar wrote about life.

He wrote about experiences and he wrote in the voice of people.

He wrote an African-American dialect.

And in that way, he just expressed the experiences that people were having.

And that included themes of love, laughter, sadness, happiness, disappointment.

He talked about issues of justice.

He spoke about religion.

He spoke about families.

He spoke about hatred as well.

He also addressed lynching, which was prominent during the day.

And he spoke to empower people through his writings.

He spoke to people who were like him, not too far removed from slavery, who were figuring out life as freed individuals.

He wrote to encourage them to utilize their gifts as he did.

So the Paul Laurence Dunbar house, it's the last home that Paul Laurence Dunbar lived in and he purchased it in 1904 for himself and his mother.

He had tuberculosis for years.

He needed a place to settle, and he had the means to buy a nice place for himself and his mother.

It had everything that was needed and so much more.

And so this property was perfect for Paul Laurence Dunbar and something that he cherished and was able to live out a comfortable life for the rest of the time that he had.

He passed away in 1906.

- He was 33 at his death.

That house really did meet Dunbar's hopes and dreams.

The Paul Laurence Dunbar house site is the very first memorial to honor a black man in America.

- The home became a historic site in 1936.

The Paul Laurence Dunbar House historic site is located on the west side of Dayton, and it's not far from the Wright Dunbar historic District.

So if visitors could take away one fact or a bit of information, I would like for that to be that Paul Laurence Dunbar was here, Paul Laurence Dunbar was in this community, and that Paul Laurence Dunbar was an incredible writer, but more than anything that he used what was inside of him and shared that with other people.

And that's something that people can be inspired to do when they visit.

- I think people like Paul are not born every day, gifted, brilliant, and loving, concerned for others, helpful to others.

He had so many traits that I think they should not be forgotten.

Dunbar should be revered forever, and esteemed as one of the better writers in this world, period.

[gentle music] - Discover more at nps.gov/places/dunbar-house.htm.

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

[upbeat music] [upbeat 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".

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

Thank you.

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