(Tom) This week on Arizona Illustrated, five years after the pandemic started, what lessons did we learn from lockdown?

(Theresa) Trying to find peace and calm wherever I could.

And honestly, the best source of that then and now was in nature.

(Tom) Traveling the world from the comfort of a classroom.

(Brenda) It's amazing, really, that when we bring kids out of the classroom and have an authentic, engaging experience, they bring that back to the classroom and it reinvigorates them.

(Tom) Alfred Quiroz is a very nice man who makes subversive art.

(Barbara) His work is satirical, but it comes from a base of his knowledge of history, of the world and history of America.

(Tom) To meet some kids who really don't like American cheese.

(Jim) People love cheese here, you know, and that's okay.

But when the kids come out here and taste the cheese, they're like, "What is this?"

Hello and welcome to Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara.

You know, it's hard to believe, but March 2025 marked five years since the beginning of the COVID pandemic.

And once the COVID lockdown was underway, well, there were news reports that wild animals were roaming the streets.

This period became known as the Anthropause.

And it's given scientists some important data about animal behavior.

But it may have even more to say about how and why humans connect to nature.

This is the first in our ongoing series, "The Long Road, How COVID-19 Changed Our World."

♪ SOFT MUSIC (Theresa) I remember March 2020 very well [ LAUGHS ] because my kids were on spring break.

They didn't go back to school afterwards and it was just, it was crazy.

And so it was right then too that I also remember starting to see those reports of deer walking down Main Street in Denver.

Just odd, odd stuff because everything was suddenly this ghost town.

(Katy) This was called in the literature the 'anthropause' When it's quiet, lots of rare and unusual species feel like they can come out.

Theresa and I tend to collaborate on community science, sort of the creation of the digital tools that are used in sort of the biodiversity community science.

So those are the web pages, that's the back end database, that's the data sharing.

(Theresa) We have a series of webinars happening today.

There are tons of programs that fall under this umbrella of citizen science or community science or even public participation in research.

Folks that don't necessarily have formal science backgrounds or science degrees are participating in scientific research.

And the most common way in which they participate is by collecting observations, contributing data.

If something happened really early, so what?

Do we see that something this early commonly?

Or is it truly anomalous?

And so this year again...

Through this platform that we launched in 2009, we've now amassed well over 40 million records.

(Katy) So as COVID was materializing and moving forward, we saw an uptick in participation, an uptick in people wanting to know more, an uptick in people engaging.

You certainly saw it with the birding world.

(Luke) I remember when COVID hit, what are we gonna do?

Like my whole job is centered on getting people together.

So like starting the end of March 2020, like I just started doing like two, three, sometimes four different Zoom events a week, trying to build up community.

I always find that the best way to inspire people is to be with them.

So we got to be with each other, whether its virtually like this or even better, being on location...

When it first started it was like 50 to 60, but by the end of the year we're regularly having 200, 250, 300 people at our virtual events and it just kept growing.

Anyone else have a story they like to share?

Numerous people that have shared with me.

Lukie saved my life that year getting to know the birds changed me.

I remember one time I was working out in the backyard and my first and only black-tailed gnatcatcher came through and I was like "oh man I would have never seen that if I hadn't been working outside instead of at my gym" and I remember keeping a yard list that year there's been no other year that's touched that as far as like how many birds I've seen in my backyard.

It's hard to be still.

And even more so on this side, because you got all the anxiety and thoughts and voices and all this stuff that's going on.

But when you can just sit there and just take it in, yeah, you notice a lot more, you hear a lot more.

[ BIRD PECKS FOOD ] (Thersa) That certainly was a theme throughout that whole period was just trying to find peace and calm wherever I could.

And honestly, the best source of that then and now was in nature.

And it was in even these basic discoveries in my very suburban, tiny backyard.

I remember waking up to seeing my hummingbird feeders completely empty and not knowing why.

My husband happened to have an old game cam and we were capturing the bat migration.

And so I made a point the next time that I couldn't sleep of sitting near where the hummingbird feeder was.

And it was a magnificent sight.

It was so cool to see these bats swooping in and out of there silently.

So many of them.

It was, and it went on for hours.

[ RAIN FALLING ] (Katie) Summer of 2021 was definitely special here in Southeast Arizona because of the winter rains.

We had a lot more insects.

And when you have more insects, those are more snacks for birds.

My personal favorite is certainly butterflies.

So I study butterflies and the plants that they feed on as caterpillars.

And when you look for butterflies, a lot of the similar skills are going to come into play is when you look for birds, you'll use binoculars, you'll have to look for sudden movement.

You'll be paying attention to color and pattern.

COVID had many downsides for sure.

But one of the upsides was being able to take a moment and reflect and notice things.

And maybe that's something we can take away moving forward is that it's a good idea to build quiet into your practice of living.

(Luke) Just to slow down, I think I've forgotten that a little bit.

I think a lot of us have.

It really forces us to slow down and think about what's important.

The people are most important.

I mean, birds, yes.

But that's what really moves us to appreciate and to take care of the wildlife around us is taking care of the people around us first.

Imagine stepping into a painting and standing right beside the artist as they create or exploring a museum halfway around the world, all without leaving the classroom.

Well, that's what ACT One's Arts Immersion Program is making possible for students in Arizona.

♪ MUSIC (Brenda) I've probably taken kids on literally about a hundred field trips with Act One.

and the students are always like, "Where are we going next?"

They either take you to in-person field trips like Botanical Gardens or museums or we bring the field trips to you guys in the form of virtual reality.

(Brenda) Students love Act One.

We've never had, you know, nothing but a smashing success of a field trip.

All right, we are calibrated.

Are we ready to roll?

(Narrator) Are you ready?

This is not just any field trip.

This is an Act One arts immersion.

[ SWOOSH ] Act One is a non-for-profit.

Our goal is to spread as much art as we can across Arizona public schools.

Currently, I'm in my studio here at home in Tempe, Arizona.

(Sophie) In 2020, we also started our VRS project, which is basically VR field trips where we go to schools that can't afford buses or maybe have special needs kids or kids that maybe just can't handle being outside the classroom and be able to go to places like Chicago, museums, like they see the Louvre, basically wherever they want, and be able to experience art and learn and talk to people who have like real world experience about what is art and like how it actually is important to them.

We say that our our loom is an individual person.

It's living and it's breathing.

(Alexander) The moment it was put on my head, it felt, it felt like I was transported into a new place.

Being able to see that without being there, that was a really cool experience and it just showed like how things are actually happening out there, you know.

(Alexander) I don't think I can say I've ever done anything like this in a classroom setting and it was like a field trip in the classroom.

(Brenda) I'll ask kids, how many of you have been on field trips?

And about half of my students have never been on a field trip.

(Tyrrell) Spiderman was the first weaver who learned how to construct the loom.

(Sophie) Title One schools typically, like the district doesn't always give them funding where they need, so teachers will have to dig into their own pockets to make things happen.

Everybody knows that teachers work really hard and organizing a field trip is a lot of work and paying for the field trip is the greatest hurdle.

Our role is really just to make it easier to take away like another hurdle for a teacher that's just trying to make her classroom more engaging.

(Brenda) Without Act One, I would have to do fundraising on top of all the other, you know, planning expectations and teaching to it and worrying about, you know, managing the kids and recruiting chaperones um, so Act One takes most of that pressure off.

[ BIRDS SINGING ] (Sophie) So today we had the Tyrrell family, which is an awesome sheep herder family that actually turned into a weaving family.

[ SPEAKING DINÉ ] And then we have the Duncan family, which is like a very famous hoop dancer family in Arizona.

(Daniela) It was really beautiful, the videos and everything that they showed us.

My favorite part was this one guy dancing with the hulas and he was making like animals.

My grandma said something to me that really stuck with me, she said, "You'll remember it when you need to."

(Yunitza) We saw a lot of what like the native people, how different our lives are compared to theirs.

We get to see several different like perspectives of art and it really does show that art is everywhere.

(Narrator) A long time ago, there was a woman from across the canyon.

(Brenda) It helps to remind us that we're talking about human beings here, you know, who have feelings and hopes and dreams and fears and we can see all that in their art.

(Narrator) Hoop dance they say originates from the Taos Pueblo people as well as the Jemez Pueblo people.

(Alexander) I think dance is a really good way to project emotion because it's an art form and whenever you feel something very strongly, dancing, like hoop dancing, it's a way to not only feel emotion but project it outside of you.

It's a different feeling seeing other cultures outside of your own culture.

(Brenda) We study those cultures and also many of my students belong to those cultures.

So it's an opportunity to recognize their culture and their history.

Yeah, that's awesome.

That's a great skill.

Like, mannerisms and how we go through the world is also tradition.

(Brenda) It's amazing really that when we bring kids out of the classroom and have an authentic, engaging experience, they bring that back to the classroom and it reinvigorates them and makes them more enthusiastic learners.

(Narrator) Each strand of brilliant color is a record of Tyrrell's people and their history.

(Alexander) It kind of just makes me think about my family, what they've gone through as well and how much they've sacrificed for me as a person.

We've seen on the news stories about, you know, problems with technology and cell phones and how technology is interrupting.

And this shows us the flip side, the positive side of how technology can be used to enhance the education experience.

You get more people in the conversation of like sharing what's going on in their society.

It's not very often like Native people or like Hispanic people get the space to like be the center like the main character of their own art.

So this is a chance for them to talk about like their, what's going on in their society, their culture and like how it's relevant to them.

Alfred Quiroz was born in 1944 here in Tucson.

In 1963, he graduated from Tucson High School and enlisted in the US Navy where he saw action as an assistant navigator in Vietnam.

Quiroz then used the GI Bill to begin what would become a lifelong career as an artist and educator.

♪ PLEASANT JAZZ MUSIC (Alfred) Peter Saul, my first mentor, asked me, "what do you really think about?"

And I said, "well, the things I really think about are not very nice."

And he said, "that's what you should be painting."

(Anne-Marie) We seem to have a great capacity to tolerate violence, but we have a limited capacity to tolerate critiques of that violence.

(Julie) He works from a place of political outrage.

As a Mexican-American, he understands what discrimination is.

Some people sit there and just cry.

Others, with the kind of talent Alfred Quiroz has, can bring attention to injustice.

(David) He was the first Hispanic to be hired as a full-time professor at the University of Arizona.

I actually first met Alfred when I took a painting class with him.

It was fun to come to class.

At the same time, he's a serious artist.

He has high standards for students.

(Alfred) I was always reading comic books, Mad Magazine, and then I started copying the comics.

I was always the school artist, but my main focus in school was always math and science.

If you wanted to run for office in high school and you wanted to get elected, you went to see Alky I was Alky.

And Alky would do your thing with magic markers, Mad Magazine stuff.

They would get elected.

So when I graduated high school, I had a high expectation of continuing my career as an artist and then found out there were no art scholarships that year, so I joined the Navy.

I ended up going to Vietnam.

I came to ships to artists, designing flags, painting.

Plus I was teaching a little bit of art classes on the ship.

When we first got to Vietnam, off the coast of Vietnam, I couldn't believe it was like looking at paradise, these beautiful white pristine beaches, palm trees, you know, the jungle.

To me, it was like, why are we screwing up with paradise?

Throughout the whole entire four years, three months, two days, I would write to the San Francisco Art Institute every month.

I want to study painting at the San Francisco Art Institute.

Sincerely yours.

And then I would put my rank down, you know, Alfred Quiroz Seaman or Alfred Quiroz Quartermaster Third Class.

Then I became Quartermaster Second Class.

So-- The GI Bill was reenacted.

January of 1968, went to the San Francisco Art Institute.

I'm applying to get my BFA in painting, and they said, "Where's your portfolio?

I don't have a portfolio.

I have nothing."

Looking through my paperwork, they said, "You're the one who's been writing.

We've been getting all your letters."

Yeah, that's me.

The GI Bill covered tuition, period.

I would give them the green check, and they would say, "Thank you."

And I'd be like, "Oh, isn't there like, is your rent money and food money supposed to come out of there?"

Nope, nope.

Gotta get a job.

So I got a job as a fry cook.

So I would work a graveyard, 11 to seven, 40 hours a week, union cook.

I would draw floating hamburgers on my hat.

Head supervisor came and complained that "stop drawing on your hats."

I made a series of hamburger drawings just to get that element out.

(Barbara) His work is satirical, but it comes from a base of his knowledge of history, of the world and history of America.

And history of immigration, the wonderful things immigration has created for this country, and the problems this country has created for the immigrants.

(Anne-Marie) He's actually got a really sculptural sense of painting and space, shaped canvases, and the way that he sort of constructs environments with the narratives of the large scale.

There's something almost theatrical about that.

But the result is that the work is deeply immersive.

(Alfred) This is how I start.

This is my rough sketch.

It's a wall piece.

I'm figuring out the size, six by eight.

So I make notes, say, Good Old Hickory.

Okay, he was known as Old Hickory.

He's known for the $20 bill.

His inauguration was the first one open to the public.

So they were serving cheese.

And I'm like, "serving cheese?"

I'm thinking that his legs are gonna be, maybe be in a jig.

1838, the Great Removal Act.

Removing the Indians militarily.

♪ SOFT PIANO MUSIC The Medal of Honor paintings idea happened, came to me in 1972 when the war ended in Vietnam.

I cried.

Too many friends are still there.

One of the paintings I did was put them on top of us, was an actual incident that happened in the Vietnam War.

I knew I was going to upset a lot of people.

I mean, I've given lectures where ex-military people get up and walk out.

And I understand, I know why they're doing that.

There's a certain patriotism, but they don't understand what I'm really talking about.

I'm really talking about the symbols that are being used, and the fact that we always think of war as either being an economical element or against somebody that we don't like.

But majority of war is a way of legalizing murder.

One of the greatest Black artists in the United States acted as his mentor.

Both Colescott and Quiroz terrified people, and in the best possible way... (Alfred) My presidential series was a direct spin-off of the Medal of Honor series.

Who's in charge of the Soldiers of the Medal of Honor?

President of the United States.

He's the Commander-in-Chief.

My relationship between art and justice, for me they go hand in hand.

It's my way of justifying some of the stuff that goes on, the evils in the world, the evils of the other experience.

I've been called every Mexican slur word you can imagine.

In my artwork, it was important for me to be able to reflect on that.

So justice is about my work.

We're not making things pretty.

I can make it look pretty, but I can hammer you over the head with that prettiness.

And it comes with Duchamp's thinking of shock, shocking the viewer.

And that's the idea of my work, is to make you think.

Why did he do this?

Or why would he show that?

If I can alter your mind a sixteenth of an inch, then I've struck.

♪ SOFT JAZZ MUSIC To learn more about the arts and how they inspire us, join me here at the Coalition for Arizona Illustrated, the Art of Civics on Saturday, May 3rd.

starting at 6 p.m. You can watch our stories featuring local artists who are building a stronger community through their creativity.

Plus, enjoy free refreshments while meeting the creators who make Tucson what it is.

For more information and to reserve your spot, visit azpm.org/arts You're about to meet a group of young performers whose voices are as powerful as their stories.

The African Children's Choir has traveled all the way from Uganda to bring their message of hope, joy, and unity to Southern Arizona.

(Producer) Who's the best dancer here?

- Me!

- You're the best dancer?

- Really?

- I'm a best dancer.

♪ UPBEAT CHOIR (Todd) We are very excited because today the African Children's Choir has come to prepare to sing for us.

We are serving as their host and for them to be able to bring themselves, their joy, their youth, their enthusiasm to a lot of us is really something very special.

And hopefully we give them some things to be able to take home to share with their families and with their friends and with their communities.

That program is comprised of a choir, choir children from Africa who travel to the Western world doing concerts to raise funds for their education and also to run other programs that are run by Music for Life.

All the kids are from Uganda and it's comprised of 17 children.

They are children at the end of the day, so they do need to run around, you know, have fun, ask so many questions because it's their way of learning.

This is a totally different experience.

It's the Western world.

You know, there's so much to see and so much to learn.

You find cheese everywhere in America, almost every day.

(Producer) You got something to say.

What didn't you like?

- Cheese.

- None of you like cheese?

- You don't like cheese?

- Mac and cheese.

- Mac and cheese?

You don't like it?

People love cheese here, you know, and that's okay.

But when the kids come out here and taste the cheese, they're like, what is this?

They're exposed to so much development which triggers their mind and they believe that they can take that kind of idea and knowledge back home so that they make it better.

You know, through these children, we're able to see change, positive change.

You're able to see them grow, you know, from nothing to men and women of substance.

Once they're selected, they know that this is an opportunity that has been given to them.

And so many others have missed out.

So what are you going to do with the opportunity?

You know, make the most of it.

Their parents know, you know, they have witnessed, they have seen the success stories they have had.

That, oh, this organization really works.

Oh, they saw snow.

They saw snow in there for their very first time in New Mexico.

And you can't explain that.

It was, you know, shouts, you know, jumping, rolling around in the snow, trying to make a snowman.

(Producer) Did you make a snowball?

- Made a snowman!

- You made a snowman?

As soon as we told them it is snowing outside, everybody ran out.

♪ DRUMMING CHOIR My life changed when I joined the choir as a child, you know, seven, eight years old.

And I go to tour and I got the experience and exposure on the road, was able to see the possibility of development.

Through the sponsorship of the organization, I completed school, I graduated, and I have a degree in social sciences.

And used that to help my immediate family, you know, my parents, my brothers and sisters.

And also help community.

I always thought to myself, you know, how can I say thank you to this organization that gave me a life pretty much, you know.

♪ INSPIRING CHOIR So I joined the choir, and this is the least that I can do, you know, to be part of the transformation, to help the next generation to be the best versions of themselves, to also change their story.

You don't have to have much to be a blessing.

If these children have been helped and they're able to make it in life, you know, through sponsorship, the world is able to change, you know, we're able to witness the new generation through the eyes of these children and know that there is hope for us tomorrow, there is hope for Africa.

(Todd) Being able to host them is a magnificent experience.

There's so many things that on the surface would seem to divide us.

There's so much nervousness in the world right now and in our community and in our nation to be able to come together and to focus on something that is joyful and is honest and is pure as these kids.

We really feel like family.

♪ SOFT CHOIR Like what you're seeing on Arizona Illustrated?

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Thanks for joining us for Arizona Illustrated and to find out more about our event on 4th Avenue on May 3rd, just head to this website.

I'm Tom McNamara.

We'll see you again next week.