[ Music ] This week on State of the Arts, painting the Sea of Cortez, vibrant artwork that promotes social change, and paper cutout creations.

These stories and more, next on State of the Arts.

[ Music ] Hello and welcome to State of the Arts.

I'm Mary Paul.

The Sea of Cortez, nestled between the Baja California Peninsula and mainland Mexico, is a glittering extension of the Pacific Ocean, a living jewel with more than 2,500 miles of coastline.

But changes in the landscape, fueled by climate change, coastal development, and overfishing, have taken a toll.

For artist David Andres, his art is a way to call attention and make a plea to save this delicate ecosystem.

[ Music ] This always been about beauty.

I know that's probably not a great term to use, but I think it's part of what a painting is.

I want them to know that there's more than just the beauty.

Doing landscape to whatever I'm doing, whether it's underwater or looking at satellite images, they all have something to do with the world we live in and the environment.

He is not a traditional landscape artist.

He invents what he puts on the canvas by various methods that are unique to him.

My grandmother, she died when I was eight years old.

But on my seventh birthday, she gave me a set of watercolors.

Set me down, showed me how to basically use them.

That was the start of my love of painting.

Mica's been my go-to to look like water.

Tried to start out in architecture, but got strayed, as my father would have said.

When he was mentioning what he had been doing for years, in photographing the beautiful aquarium of the world that the Sea of Cortez sees, he also encountered the problematic of the nets that fisheries are using as a way to promote consciousness in how important it is to take care of our oceans.

We thought we need to do this together.

The Sea of Cortez is very important to me.

It's been part of my life.

I would spend a lot of time underwater investigating and noticing from the 80s to the 90s, the destruction of the ocean was happening right in front of our eyes.

I did some research and found out Mexican government, because of their shortfalls in economy, had let South Korean mill ships come into the Sea of Cortez.

We started seeing breakups of gill nets floating on the surface, fishing nets over-dredging for shrimp.

I had time to figure out what was going on and started using it in my artwork to investigate.

That was particularly important for me to bring this activity to the Consulate in a way to say that we are concerned in preserving this beautiful environment.

We were able to project through art, this pride that we have in the Sea of Cortez, but also the concerns in how important it is when we consume seafood to know that this seafood is being captured without practices that damage the environment.

So I think it's trying to connect all the dots.

I try to make my work digestible to whoever, you know, people that know art and people that don't know art.

It has a quality of light that emanates from the work.

You can see what I'm talking about here.

Someone would perhaps just see this as an abstraction.

It is an abstraction, but it's not just an abstraction.

It has the reality of forms, colors, a certain movement.

I had done an investigation about water issues all the way from graduate school.

Investigating glacier meltings and bleaching of corals.

And I came back to Tucson and used my home facility to invent paintings that are related to those themes.

And I'm still doing it.

[ Music ] The vibrant artwork of Caitlin Cartwright reflects her experiences working and living abroad in places like Madagascar and Namibia.

She uses art as a tool for peace and social change.

But her art is only one aspect of how she builds community.

Geography is very important to me.

I tend to move around a lot.

I've lived in a lot of different places.

I love to just kind of be inspired by what's around me.

I call it like my visual vocabulary.

Part of being in different places is connecting with different people who may or may not live a similar life to you or have similar problems, issues.

So I love to be able to find a way where I kind of come into that story too and where I can connect to that and then kind of build out from there and create this visual narrative.

I think that when people have that experience, when you can see yourself in somebody else's story, that's kind of when, you know, empathy is born and when connection can be made.

The art I make, it tends to be kind of large format, narrative, colorful, it's painting, collage, drawing, kind of a combination.

People are often struck by the boldness, color.

I use a lot of silhouettes, which can be a little striking.

I think too another thing I've heard back from people is they just want to know more like what's going on.

Like something is happening, there's a narrative and they're ready to kind of like dig deeper and look deeper into what's going on in a picture.

I'll often start with like kind of an image in my head or a moment or an emotion and I like to sketch it out first in my sketchbooks.

From there, kind of build it out.

I work on either paper or board for the most part.

I'll start laying down a color.

I work with latex house paint a lot, so I kind of tend to lay the color down and then go back in a little bit of drawing.

Paint along the way.

I often add collage elements too, so then I'll bring in, you know, different papers, cut stuff out, try it out.

Before I glue anything down, it's probably like living on there for like a week or two, just seeing and like moving like an inch, so it's just kind of an additive process.

I'm big on like taking time away, coming back.

I always like photographic because I feel like being just with my phone, you can kind of look and see like just you see it in a different way.

I always ask myself, is there anything else that can be put in here or is there anything else that doesn't need to be here that I should take out to fully tell the story concisely?

Growing up, my parents were always like really big on like every weekend, like getting in the van and driving somewhere, you know.

They were great about, you know, kind of pushing it like traveling and everything, so it's always been important to me.

When I graduated from undergrad, I just kind of had this feeling like I needed to do something else.

On a whim almost, I did a couple Google searches and I ended up in Madagascar for a year working at a kind of an orphanage and one of the things that they were big on was using traditional arts to help the young moms get back on their feet and become small business owners.

I just loved this kind of like new community work thing that opened up for me and I loved that feeling of discomfort, having to basically kind of start from scratch, build a community and form those bonds cross-culturally, just going into a different culture and community and living in that way and it was just, it was amazing.

I joined the Peace Corps after that and so I was in Namibia for a few years.

Working at a school there, I was like in an extremely rural area.

The success rate of graduating from high school was pretty low.

At my school, it was something like 60 percent and it's a difficult place to be a girl.

We started a girls' club and it started out as a safe space to talk and everything and it grew and we expanded from the school.

These kids, it was so great.

They became like small business owners.

We got a grant from the U.S.

Embassy.

We were able to buy a camera so they would take people's pictures and then people would pay and have that photo.

And then there's a traditional art of basket making and it's passed down intergenerationally so girls were able to connect to their moms and grandmas and learn how to do it and then those were sold within the country but also back in the States.

It was able to kind of help pay for school fees and books, which was cool and now I'm still in contact with the girls.

I'm blown away by what they do.

For example, this one girl, she's currently in Cuba studying to be a doctor.

There's a couple I think getting their nursing degrees.

There's one getting her degree to become a math teacher.

When I talk to them, it's super focused on like I want to go back and make a change in my community.

So it's wonderful.

I love it.

After Namibia, I got a degree in sustainable international development.

It just became clear to me art can be used as a tool of like community building, change, wellness, and the benefits that it has and how it can serve as a tool to better communities basically.

I was in India for several months documenting artisans and the work that they do as intangible heritage.

That's something that it's not a monument but it can get lost.

Everything is like handmade, impeccable, brilliant.

So documenting that process was exciting because the initiative that I was working with was trying to get the city, which is Ahmedabad, to be a world UNESCO heritage site.

And just recently it got that status.

So that was cool.

I work at Preble County Art Association and I manage education over there.

It's a community arts nonprofit and more of a rural farming community.

What we're trying to do is bring creative experiences to people and connect people with creativity.

One of the things that's really exciting to me is seeing the spectrum of people that connect with and what they bring to the artistic experience and what they can get from it.

I'm of the opinion that art is crucial.

Not everyone is an artist, but I think everyone can really benefit from having art in their lives.

I'm a big advocate of everyone trying it out.

You think you're not an artist, like have that creative moment and use a different part of your brain and be proud, like oh, look, I made this.

And beyond that, art is an incredibly important tool that not only reflects what's happening in society but can spur change too.

Right now, I'm just really excited to be making work and making work consistently, you know, because that hasn't always been the case.

I'm in the space where my life is allowing me to work consistently, which is wonderful, and I love it.

And Dayton has been a really embracing space, you know, to do that, which is great.

I've been thinking a lot recently about the girls from the Girls' Club.

I want to find like a project that connects back with them, doing something with that is kind of like my next project that I'm excited to jump into.

We visit the studio of Leah Wong, an artist based in Columbus, Ohio, who finds inspiration in nature, light and water.

Whether it be a painting or a paper cutout installation, she embraces visual complexity, rendering works that energize the mind and spirit.

In China, I was just traditional European, Western oil painter.

I didn't speak English when I came to the US 30 years ago.

And the thing is that I couldn't recognize the word, but I can recognize the number.

And then the English became abstract lines, just lines.

When I start to see the world much, much, much, much infinite, much bigger, my work just feel like, "Ooh, I can do a lot of things with my skills."

I'm glad I was trained, like a painter, and know how to draw, I know how to use color.

All this technique I had training become, I don't think anymore.

It's just there, because it's important for me to not to think about the technique, but when you need it, you come out.

The inspiration of the light, the water, the air, we can't see them, because we can't see air.

We need it.

Water, we can't hold it until you freeze in a container, but water is a flow, but it's very important.

And all this nature of light, without light, we have no color.

We can't see anything.

So all this kind of things start to inspire me to think, every day we have a pattern, but every day is different.

So as I look every day, I look sky.

Oh, sky is the cloud.

So a lot of shapes that come out is the creatures from the cloud.

The cloud is morphing.

So the water, they start to move, and move different shapes.

I think that's beautiful.

This is my library, visual library.

This is not for show, it's just for my notes.

But if I look connected together, this one, some reason, maybe five years ago, this one, 20 years ago, there are a lot of elements still shared.

A lot of times, the structure of our mind and imaginations is there, but it's how to compose, how to interpret it, what you have right now, it's your personal.

This one, I remember this is 2003, during the Iraq War.

This one, I hear the bombs, you know, during the time, every day, every day, every day.

I just feel that all the birds, all the stuff, together.

It's just, that's my failing.

But I like the movement.

You know, when I see the bird fly like a group like this, and it become my kind of note.

Creativity has no time.

It has no time, it's all related, we're through cycle like the earth going on and turning, turning, turning.

There's the end, what is the end, can you tell?

My day is the other place, night.

My night is other place, daytime.

So what is the true time?

Oh, depends where you look at it.

So to me, I don't have a time there.

It's kind of liberating.

So whatever works, and it works.

Communicate with you today, should communicate with you 20 years from now.

Positive and active space is whole.

It's one thing.

It's not a separate thing.

So when you cut out, you leave, you spark, become a negative space.

But negative space against a color, that color is show a shape.

So that we put together become whole.

So basically what I think when I create those cutouts, layers, by layers, layers, you leave shadows together, the visual complexity become much more interesting.

And then you see things change your perspective.

Because when you see negative, at some point become positive.

When you see blue, you shift a little bit, become a yellow behind.

So it's not the same anymore.

It's one all related to each other.

So basically, see this is one line, right?

So if I cut this one, I would cut this area.

I was thinking about the thickness of this one.

I'm not cutting out.

I'm cutting these shapes of this one.

So basically this line, this thing, and this thickness is all deliberately designed.

It look casual.

Look easy, but not easy.

Because it took me to think a lot more to cut one area than... Look for a simple, easy.

But the minute I cut it up, I have to make sure they're balanced, they don't drag each other.

And these tiny little holes represent a shape.

Kind of focus much more, because I have to think a lot more than one shape.

This one triangle here, I'm cutting three lines.

I'm looking at this line, I'm looking at this line, and this line at the same time.

Because the thing that once you cut it out, you can't put it back.

So I think very carefully when I spot it, I got it right away.

And if I don't do it now, I maybe do all the same, forget.

So then once I do it, I would look back.

Sometimes I forgot to eat, I forgot to drink.

Time just flies.

And I like that part of it.

Because you're sort of in this space.

And sometimes it pops.

When I work, all of a sudden something just pops out.

I say, "Huh."

I say, "Oh, I'm going to try this one."

Not for show, not for anything.

Just for me to look at what that looks like.

(gentle music) After moving to Cleveland in 2019, Beth Bush was feeling culturally disconnected from her Potawatomi tribe in Michigan.

It prompted her to return to her practice of indigenous beading and learn the ancient art of quill work.

Today, Bush has not only reconnected to her heritage, she's become an award-winning artist.

(gentle music) To me, it's important.

It's a way of me reclaiming what was taken from us.

Well, quill art basically historically is we use every part of an animal that we can.

And a long time ago, not sure who, but someone discovered that if we took the quills off of a porcupine, we could actually weave them, braid them, or sew them down.

Quill, it's old.

It's like the oldest decoration that we have.

It was before beads.

It was our first way of decorating, like our moccasins and our coats, our bags.

It was prevalent before the fur trade came.

It's something that we keep alive and continue to use.

These were what we used to decorate, not only clothing, but also baskets, household items.

So to understand who you are today, you need to understand where you've come from.

It goes back to my ancestors a lot.

And it goes back to the boarding schools.

About like four years ago, they found out that there was unmarked graves in Kamloops, Canada, where there was a boarding school.

And I had been just sitting around here and not doing anything culturally.

So when I heard that, it really touched my heart.

And I picked up my beads again.

I hadn't beaded for a long time.

My dad had passed away, so I put all my stuff away.

And then I started fresh and I tried to honor their spirit.

And then with that, I found out my own, like grandma and my grandpa, they kept it from us.

You know, they didn't really tell us about their experiences.

My grandpa was like a big, big influence on my art.

And he was so proud of me.

And I try to do that for them.

I had a hard life before art has really helped me.

I was thinking about what was taken from them.

And then I picked up the quills.

I put down the beads.

That's my first medium.

And I taught myself how to work with porcupine quills because I wanted that connection.

And I found it, you know.

She has really, leaps and bounds, honed her skill with quill work.

And she's willing to do things the right way.

With the quills, it's such a long process.

The quills I have, come from Montana.

I trade my earrings for these quills.

And then I take the quills.

I wash the quills.

I sort the quills.

I dye the quills.

I sort the quills again.

And then I choose the best that I like.

And it's just a little tiny bit afterwards.

It's really a labor of love.

It's a lost art here, especially in the city in that.

So a lot of young people are discovering it, taking it up again.

They're getting books.

I read books about quill work because so many of our techniques were lost to us through the boarding school era.

And even in these books, they're from like 1919.

And they talk about how the examples are deteriorated.

So there's no evidence of them.

So we're just trying to bring it back.

She takes her ideas from nature the way it should be done.

To get inspiration, I get outside and I get to be with nature.

I started exploring the metro parks.

That in itself is healing.

Cleveland, this is where I started my art for real.

I'll see something or I'll have a dream.

And then I'll put that into my design.

That one, I made that for my son.

We went to Oklahoma and we were outside for a powwow.

And there was greckles, just greckles everywhere.

And they were making these noises.

It was the first time that we encountered them.

They were just everywhere, they're having a great time.

We brought that memory home and I made him that greckle medallion.

Just like a little piece of that memory in that piece.

She has some very innovative ideas.

She's mixing some modern ideas with traditional ideas such as her 'wabozo,' her rabbit.

You'll see pictorials of the old rabbits on a lot of the caves, especially Northern Ontario.

I started applying for grants and I won.

And that fueled me to make more quality art, I guess you'd say.

It gave me the funds for it and continued to go to Indianapolis to a market at the Eiteljorg Museum.

And I was awarded a Harrison Eiteljorg Purchase Award.

That was awesome.

It's in the museum now.

Other people get to see it, and that's really cool.

I fought depression for a long time.

Art is expression, and so depression.

You know, I've heard that a lot.

It heals me because it lets me express what I want to in colors, in shapes, in lines.

Like the beautiful part that I feel, I get to share that with everybody.

Sometimes I'm amazed because people like my work so much.

It really floors me.

It's nice to see a young person and taking this art form up and using it for educational purposes also with others.

My main goal is to teach people so they can teach other people.

You know, there's not a lot of people who do it and it needs to be brought back because I know how much that helped me with my depression and it's given me self-confidence and I know it could help other people too.

It's who we are.

It's part of our history.

It's part of our culture.

It's why we work so hard to keep our children involved in it.

So they understand this is who you are.

This is what your people did long before there were any settlers here.

They say we walk in beauty.

That's what we try to do.

Walk in a good way that would make our ancestors proud of us.

(upbeat music) I'm Mary Paul and I'll be back next week with another new episode of State of the Arts.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music)