The following is an original production of AZPM News.

(Tom) This week on Arizona Illustrated, contemporary art from the Southwest meet painter Barbara Rogers.

(Barbara) When you are finished with a painting, you've used everything to make this your idea of beautiful.

(Tom) See how one photographic effort is helping to understand the passage of time.

(Helen) The one thing that I find so powerful about using repeat photography is that you don't have to be a scientist to be able to see with your own eyes the changes.

(Tom) Enjoy a mariachi class at Pueblo High School with Señor Contreras.

(John) Es como una adicción, es como una adicción porque cuando la gente te recibe y te aplaudes es algo bonito.

(Tom) And take a trip to Blue Lotus Art Collective in downtown Tucson.

(Laura) We're daring to dream big.

We're still at that embryonic stage, but we're looking at it from a perspective that it's wide open.

Hello and welcome to Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara.

And today we'll be showcasing a wide spectrum of contemporary arts here in Southern Arizona.

So let's begin with Barbara Rogers, who uses abstraction to explore ideas of life, paradise, destruction, and vulnerability.

[♪ Soft, pensive music ♪] (Barbara) When I was little, they gave me pencil and paper.

I would draw and be quiet.

The seed was planted.

(Marilyn) Barbara really has been a mentor to many people.

She has introduced people to art who weren't really collectors.

She is just really a force as a person and as an artist.

“So one of the things I hope will happen with this exhibition is that people will tell me what it is.

” [♪ Music continues ♪] (Barbara) I had to go to art school at the San Francisco Art Institute and then at UC Berkeley.

and then at UC Berkeley.

I graduated from Berkeley and won the Eisner Prize.

I was the only person that was invited to be adjunct instructor.

Then I got hired permanent faculty at the San Francisco Art Institute, and then coming here to the University of Arizona as a full professor with tenure for really the first time in my life to live and have a studio and a garden under the same roof.

(Julie) I came to Tucson in 1995, originally to work at the University of Arizona.

That's where Barbara Rogers was teaching at the time.

When I first met her.

She was a force to be reckoned with.

This woman has more energy than three women.

What I learned over the years as I started to work with her as a curator was the evolution of her work.

as a curator was the evolution of her work.

(Barbara) When I was a grad student at Berkeley, this job offer came in from Temple Emanuel in San Francisco to teach in the Sunday school.

And they didn't say that you had to be Jewish.

The rabbi said, We have to have a talk.

And the talk was, We don't believe in heaven.

We don't believe in hell.

We believe what you create on Earth is heaven or hell.

And he said, Well, you know, you might consider if you painted about paradise, what would it look like?

I owe that rabbi, my enlightenment, My painting changed, my release from worry about Heaven or Hell.

I could design my own life and how could I design it to have it be I design it to have it be my idea of heaven?

(Julie) Her work, of course, had a photorealism focus when she was in the Bay Area.

Later, she experienced a hurricane when she was doing research and work in Hawaii.

Her work changed.

The subject that I chose to paint about was romantic kinds of gardens.

I decided I needed more exotic forms.

I flew to Hawaii in Thanksgiving of 82.

Was only there a few hours, Wind started, it ended up being a sustained wind of 90 miles an hour.

Moving in front of me were fragments of orchids and gorgeous plants.

I didn't know that I'd make it out alive.

When I came back, I just couldn't paint those romantic scenes that included beautiful people.

I spent maybe four years experimenting, not knowing what the work was going to be about.

What everybody sees today evolved from what really got to me, which was seeing everything in fragments.

And basically what remains.

(Julie) It went from this rather fun look at foliage, of empowerment of women in a very photo-realist way.

to looking at the profound destruction and beauty from destruction.

[♪ Techno pop music ♪] (Barbara) I can start a painting one year and it doesn't leave the studio for ten years.

I have this storage area in the studio.

It's basically a rest home or paintings that are waiting for me to get smart enough to be able to finish.

I don't make a plan.

I do an underpainting.

Often that underpainting is cadmium yellow.

I like yellow.

It's so Tucson.

It's just sunshine.

It's just sunshine.

(Barbara) It can be any non-verbal tickle of excitement in me, that makes me.

Oh, I've got to kind of check that out.

It either finishes easily or it's like giving birth to an elephant.

or it's like giving birth to an elephant.

When you are finished with a painting, you've used everything that you can think of to make this your idea of beautiful.

to make this your idea of beautiful.

(Marilyn) Being in her garden number seven was one of the first pieces of art that we bought in Tucson.

It was the first time she had inserted glass into her work.

She has a little flower inside this glass box.

When you look at the painting closely, the colors are layered and layered and layered.

and layered and layered.

This one is called Cambridge.

Barbara was thinking in terms of Cambridge, Ohio, which is where she grew up.

She named this piece in honor of the memory of her mother.

And this one.

I love the spray of flowers.

Just the earth itself has become my kind of religion has become my kind of religion And the work That's at Tohono Chul exhibition, is about shrines to loving the earth and doing whatever you can to help.

So the only thing you can do is to be kind.

It is really about understanding your smallness.

In the scheme of things.

Everything's temporary.

We're all just passing through this.

Do as little damage as possible on the trip.

[♪ Soft music slowly fades ♪] Mariachi Aztlan's Director, John Contreras, has been committed to teaching Mariachi to the students at Pueblo High School for the last 20 years, earning him the 2021 Governor's Award for Arts Education.

(Jorge) Empecemos sacando nuestros instrumentos todos vamos preparando estiramos un poquito para calentar.

De ahí podemos ir arreglando lo que necesita será arreglado y se acaba el día.

(upbeat music) (Contreras) 1, 2, 3, 4, 1. pam, pam, pam, padam, padam... (singing in foreign language) (Contreras) Tengo 21 años aquí en la escuela preparatoria de Pueblo High School.

Es un orgullo ser maestro de mariachi.

(Jorge) Oír la música desde un pedazo de papel y hace un sonido muy bonito, no puedo explicarlo.

(Jiselle) Me siento muy orgullosa de ser parte de una comunidad muy única, porque esto no lo ves en cualquier ciudad.

Tucson para mí viene siendo el capital de la música de mariachi en los Estados Unidos.

(upbeat music) Son 31 años de Mariachi Aztlan.

Cada año entran nuevos, salen los que se graduan, ya es un, como dice, una fuerza.

Jajaja.

♪ ¡Mariquita dame un beso!

♪ ♪ Tu mamá me lo mandó.

♪♪ Esto empieza 1964 con los Changuitos Feos, que fueron el primer mariachi formado de niños.

♪ Date gusto vida mia ♪ ♪ que yo me daré otro tanto ♪♪ Ellos lo empezaron este movimiento.

Había muchos mariachis, todavía hasta hoy, hay muchos mariachis en Tucson.

La Conferencia de Mariachi fue algo muy importante.

Linda Ronstadt.

♪ Tú, solo tú.

♪♪ Cuando ella grabó Canciones de Mi Padre, I was very excited.

eso fue exitazo!

y fue algo que pegó por todo el mundo.

Ya la gente decía, ¡oh, mariachi!

Yo sé que es.

¡Ah, mariachi!

Sí, escuchado.

¡Oh, Linda Ronstadt!

¡Oh, ella canta mariachi!

I'm very happy to be here with you.

Mi papá me enseñó guitarra cuando yo tenía como tres años, yo diré.

Las cosas más impactantes que me acuerdo, son cuando fui a tocar canciones para mi abuela.

Le fuimos a tocarle "Las Mañanitas" en sus cumpleaños y se me hace que como yo tenía unos cinco, seis años en ese tiempo, me acuerdo que empezó a llorar.

Para mí fue una conexión, una conexión que nunca he sentido.

Me dio más ganas, me dio más ganas para seguirle tocando guitarra y cantando.

Es como una adicción, es como una adicción porque cuando la gente te recibe y te aplaudes es algo bonito.

[Aplausos] One more time, one more time.

One more time, one more time.

make sure you extend all your bow, guys.

Use all your bow.

(Jiselle) Yo diría que la influencia de Señor Contreras es muy grande, porque antes no supe como leer música, no supe como tocar fuerte, y ya cuando entré a Mariachi Aztlan toqué mucho mejor.

(Jorge) El Señor Contreras me ha dado miles de oportunidades muy grandes, como el verano pasado nos fuimos a Washington, D.C.

Me ha dado la oportunidad de tocar con Mariachi Vargas.

We are very happy.

(Jiselle) Nosotros pasamos mucho tiempo con nosotros mismos.

Entre nosotros estamos muy cercanos y también con el maestro, el Señor Contreras.

Somos como familia.

(Jorge) El clase ayuda pues todos como la Jiselle, ayuda a la Karina, yo ayudo al Gabriel y Elias, y así forma la comunidad de Aztlán.

I think that the group of Vasas and Yevar (Contreras) Yo sé que lo que te vas a llevar del grupo, vas a decir, ¿sabes que?

Tenemos que trabajar duro para la excelencia.

Cualquier cosa que quieren hacer, este, que la hagan con ese mismo pasión y que se dedican a lo que están haciendo y trabajar duro.

I think that the first time I met Mariachi Yo sé que soy el primer maestro de mariachi que ha recibido ese premio de la oficina del gobierno.

Y para mí pues, este, me siento muy orgulloso.

No más sigo la carrera, la misma carrera de que he seguido cada año.

Ya el Mariachi Aztlan de Pueblo High School viene siendo algo más grande, mucho más grande que yo.

[music] From glaciers to the Grand Canyon, landscapes have changed dramatically over the last century.

Next you'll see how repeat photography allows viewers to take a journey through time and observe these transformations.

We have over 35,000 medium format negatives.

Some of the most striking images in this collection are of Grand Canyon and the Colorado River, and one of them in particular is of the spot where Glen Canyon Dam is constructed.

And it's the before image pre dam and post dam.

And then other images that we have of the changes in the Colorado River corridor are striking and show the differences in vegetation, differences in sandbars.

Repeat photography came about through the work of a Bavarian mathematician in the late 1800s.

He was using photo surveys to study glaciers in the Alps, and then it was picked up by glaciologists in the US and it progressed from there.

Repeat photography is the technique of taking multiple photographs at a particular location it is used to assess ecological, geological hydrological change in a landscape.

This particular archive originated at the Desert Laboratory in Tucson on Tumamoc Hill, and it came about through the work of Dr.

Ray Turner, who is a USGS botanist.

The collection grew through the work of Robert Webb and he worked with Ray Turner, assessing channel change in rivers, especially with regard to the Colorado River.

Well, I was working in Grand Canyon starting in 1984, and I came across this guy by the name of Robert Brewster Stanton, who had the second successful run of the Colorado River following Major Powell.

He was in 1889, 1890.

He was an engineer.

He was trying to document a railroad passage through the Grand Canyon.

He took photographs roughly every mile upstream and downstream.

So it's a beautiful set of photographs to work with.

I started using repeat photos in the Grand Canyon in order to document debris flows.

But then you start looking at these photos and all kinds of stuff starts showing up and it just becomes an adventure of discovery.

One of the things that I remember being struck by more than anything else was cryptobiotic soil.

Now known as soil crusts or biological soil crusts.

They looked the same 100 years later!

I mean, it was stunning!

People have been concerned about biological soil crust for decades, about people trampling it and making it go away.

And there have been all these claims about how long lived it this well, we can demonstrate how long lived it is.

And that's the point of repeat photography.

You can actually demonstrate that stuff as opposed to just guessing.

I became interested in repeat photography, actually, as a result of the work that Bob Webb did, you know, learning, for example, that these little shrubs had been living in the same spot for over 100 years.

Visitation of people in the river corridor could unknowingly be destroying plants that had been there for over a century, several centuries, in some cases, just with a misstep that really opened my eyes to how powerful repeat photography can be, not only for talking about change, but also talking about what hasn't changed.

You know, we'll pull out the photograph and we just start scanning the the horizons and trying to find the general location.

I've been down working in the Grand Canyon for over 40 years now, so I have pretty good idea of where things are just looking at a photograph and just getting to some of the places that can be a challenge unto itself.

There was one photograph that we matched.

The image shows this wide open beach.

Well trying to get to the same spot to match that image required one of the most challenging bushwhacks I've ever done.

It's a little bit like an Easter egg hunt.

It's actually a lot of fun, as well as being really challenging.

And so the collection is now over 100 years old.

We have over 100 years of imagery and it spans work in the larger Southwest.

And we're in the process of digitizing it and protecting the negatives.

The one thing that I find so powerful about using repeat photography is that you don't have to be a scientist to be able to to see a photograph and see with your own eyes the changes that we often try to translate into graphs and charts and and numbers.

It's it's a really powerful way of communicating.

It levels the playing field for everybody.

They can all see the same image.

They can all interpret the results from their own background and perspectives as well.

The Blue Lotus is a water lily that grows along the Nile, and in ancient Egypt it symbolized the triumph of wisdom over suffering.

In Tucson, it symbolizes the Blue Lotus Artists Collective, which is home to some of Tucson's top contemporary artists.

[MUSIC] Critical race theory being under attack we have AP African American studies being attacked and we continue to be left out of a history of a country that we built.

We think it's important to have other ways then to get that story across.

We're hoping to utilize this gallery and the artists to do that as well.

My name is Laura Pendleton-Miller.

I'm president of the board of the Blue Lotus Artist Collective, a local gallery that was designed to showcase Black artists.

My name is Amber Doe and I'm proud to be one My name is Amber Doe and I'm proud to be one of the artists featured in their inaugural show.

A lot of my work is a mixture of conceptual but also historical basis.

A lot of it has to do with American experience, particularly Black women in America.

George Welch, Black artist of the community.

My inspirations come from my experiences, experience with others and basically with nature and how forces come together, coloristically you might say.

Through the heart, soul and spirit.

My name is Allison Miller.

I come from a family of artists.

My dad's a painter and he taught me how to paint.

He was my high school art teacher.

I wanted to make him proud so I kept doing it.

What I paint is to elicit a certain reaction, especially from Black people.

I really like watching them feel joyful when they see some of the images I'm referencing.

We were getting input from local artists that it was really hard for them to get visibility and we wanted to see if we could help with that.

Originally we met in January of '22 with the purpose of trying to figure out how we as active community volunteers in the arts could encourage the existing institutions to show more Black artists.

We got to a point where we thought, "Yeah, why are we waiting for them to want us?

Why don't we just do it ourselves?"

We had so many gifts along the way of people who stepped up and volunteered to do things.

So it was really a synergistic effort.

One of the local artists, Willie Bonner, came up with the suggestion that we be called Blue Lotus Artist Collective.

It is a flower that grows out of muck into great beauty.

Blue Lotus Artist Collective, the acronym is BLAC.

I identify as a Black woman.

In the past, seeing Black women in media was always really specific.

Maybe they were slave women or Jezebels or maids.

So I like to find images where we are celebrated a little more outside of that, specifically representing Black queer life from the 90s, which wasn't really spoken about.

We feel that it's a great opportunity to educate, especially at a time like now where we feel like not just as Black artists, but as Black people we're being left out of the story.

And we have these artists who are telling that story.

This particular piece behind me, The American flag, is sort of inspired by my grandfather originally.

He lied about his age to serve in World War II.

And when he came back to the United States, he faced a lot of challenges that were very unique to sort of what was going on in racism at the time.

So I wanted to do something dedicated to him and my grandmother.

It's actually her linen that I did this piece on, and it's to reflect sort of what it's like to be an American, but not completely seen as fully American.

I have this series of paintings that depict forces and experiences in my life that are in categories.

And this is the African series called Distant Relations.

It's about memory.

And for all of us who've not been here all their lives, that distant relations are from other countries, other cultures that have merged here and became sort of new experience here.

I don't see necessarily specialness every time I look into my own work.

I see it as just a material form of storytelling.

In the corner, it's indigo, which is a crop along with cotton and rice that my uncle had done the research and found we were actually slaves on a plantation that was based in indigo, cotton and rice production.

So I thought it was really important to tie that element into the actual piece and have a sense of sort of my ancestral connection with what's happening in sort of modern times.

I use mother of pearl shells to sort of indicate the traveling across the ocean.

And then within the stripes, I have an interpretation of the Middle Passage.

So the other piece is called God is Non Binary.

And I wanted to sort of acknowledge the people that came before me in that space, how they utilized the yucca plant for fabric, for baskets, for food, and the sort of ways that women continuously reuse things and have to reuse skills.

And it sort of shreds us at the end of the day.

So the slip looks a little shredded.

When they look at my work, I'd like them to look at themselves through my work, therefore finding transcendence, something above what they knew a minute or two before they looked at it.

I would love people to walk away with a sense of interrelatedness with the environment around them.

I try to bring natural elements to a lot of my pieces to tell another layer of the story.

I wanna make sure we're thinking about things, not just from a human perspective, but in terms of an ecosystem.

- We have a lot of plans.

We're daring to dream big.

We're still at that embryonic stage, but we're looking at it from a perspective that it's wide open.

I hope that the community will take the cooperative into account when looking at the culture as it expands, diversifies, and becomes much more global in its intent.

Blue Lotus is such a new and exciting space to sort of bring local artists to the larger community within Tucson and the greater Arizona area, sort of shine a light on the Southwest.

So it's a wonderful new space to be a part of.

Thank you for joining us here on Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara.

We'll see you again next week.