[ Music ] Coming up on State of the Arts, the visionary folk art of Mama Girl, a photographer reclaims indigenous identity, and an acrylic artist focuses on color.

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

Hello, I'm Mary Paul.

Thanks for joining us.

East Coast artist Mama Girl was known as a self-taught visionary whose vibrant sculptures and spirit-led creations captivated collectors for decades.

Her joyful story offers a soulful celebration of creativity and community.

In this piece, we see how a simple reunion unfolds into a powerful glimpse at how art, faith, and resilience shaped Mama Girl's life.

[ Music ] She really made a difference in a lot of people's lives that I probably cannot even fathom.

My mom had a spirit of God.

She walked with God.

She taught with God.

And that's what she put into her artwork.

That's what she put into me and my siblings.

One of Mama Girl's favorite Bible verses was Psalm 100, "Make a joyful noise."

And she made her own joyful noise through her art and through her preaching and just through interacting with people at art shows.

She made what she saw.

She's telling you her world from the crab picking, the oyster shucking, to the fields.

This is one of my favorite pieces, the oyster shuckers.

With the people working in such close proximity, it was kind of a social scene.

And she just did such a great job portraying these things in her art.

I couldn't help but to cry because there were so many pieces I hadn't seen in years that were from the beginning when she first started.

We developed a friendship.

And she had just gotten back from a hospital visit where she'd had a biopsy and her cancer had come back.

And she was a little bit more introspective and quiet in this interview.

But still, she was resolute in like whatever God brings to her life, whatever comes her way.

You know, that's what's meant to be.

It was really a nice time that we had together.

She died six months later and we never used the interview.

So it sat on a shelf gathering dust.

I gave a copy of it to her son years later when I saw him.

He hears me a thumb drive of his last interview with my mother that I've never seen.

Man, you know how many tears came from that?

When Cullen and ODU decided to do this show, it became this great resource little piece that we could bring out and see her talking and talking about her life and talking about her art, which to me is so organic and so beautiful and And so, so happy that it could have a life.

I had no choice but to be a part of this because these guys are mama girl lovers, man.

They really love her.

Part of it was the spirit telling her what to do.

You know, when the spirit said paint a pig green, she said, what do you mean?

Why would I paint a pig green?

That's the silliest thing I've ever heard.

But it persisted and she finally gave in and she learned over time that if she would listen, then those are the things that people would want to buy.

You know, when chickens weren't selling well, the spirit said put boots on the chickens.

And when she put boots on the chicken, she sold out.

A lot of her work was a combination of requests from customers and the spirit talking to her.

My mother would make a tree and she would put the lady's head.

We used to call that United Nations, the UN.

Because mama would say women secretly run everything.

We can't tell the men.

That's what she would say.

She loved portraying groups of women of all different skin colors together, coming together, forming communities, supporting one another.

Watermelon is one of the most pervasive elements throughout all of her work.

When she was little, she would spit the watermelon seeds on the ground like probably we all have.

But because she lived in an agricultural area, she actually had the opportunity to see that what had come out of her mouth was growing into something nurturing, reproductive.

And that was very important to her.

It became a metaphor for planting word seeds in other people.

Mama said every conversation is a seed.

Share your love of God, share your love of community, share your love of just people in general.

Which again relates to her ministry.

It relates to her interaction with people at art shows because she just loved people and she loved encouraging people.

So when you see watermelon trees growing in her art, my feeling is that that's a symbol of positive growth for our culture, our society, for us as people.

Wait a minute.

Can I do something?

Can I hold that cat for just a minute?

I just want to bless this cat with a kiss.

At some point working on the show, my body started waking up at 3.30 in the morning and I didn't know why.

It was very odd and that kept happening.

And I told Sandra and she nonchalantly just said, "Yep, that was her time of the morning.

Always the early bird."

And I told David and David said, "She chose you."

He said, "None of this would have happened if she hadn't chose you."

Me and Colin spent about 10 hours on the phone.

And after that, I just knew that that was something genuine more in depth inside of him.

So yeah, so talking to him that got into my soul.

So now he gets all the support I can give him.

Just said, "All right, Mama Girl, here I am.

Let me know what you want in the show."

And you know, in telling the story of her life, it was a very emotional journey because she had a lot of challenges in her life.

She endured a lot, but she always persisted.

She always found a way to just be a champion.

For anyone who has a piece of her artwork or anyone who even got a chance to meet her or even come into this exhibit to see it, they can feel what she put in there because every piece she put a part of herself in it.

Carla Romero is a photographer whose work centers on reclaiming Indigenous identity.

Through her monumental fine art photographs, she gives her subjects agency, counters stereotypes, and imagines a more dynamic future.

We meet her now in this story from New Mexico.

I think we became a figment of people's imagination.

People were missing a connection to us as human beings, as living human beings.

And there was, to me, a real danger because then you lose the connection to a community's humanity.

With your work, there is a very theatrical quality to it where it's almost like you're taking moments from memories and dreams and making them a reality in your photos.

Can you tell me what draws you to that approach?

I'm a daydreamer.

I think a lot of people ask about where the ideas come from, and I think that they just start forming in my mind's eye.

I start with stories or issues, and they begin to just kind of appear for me.

Photography is such an interesting medium to work with in that way.

You can work with it in the way of documentation and capturing something that happened, but you can also create a moment.

And you can create a moment that encompasses more and layer more and more and more.

And you can play with time, and you can play with all sorts of visual and psychological communication with your audience.

With your water memory series, which I really loved, what was it that you learned about yourself and your community with that series?

So that one really started with one of those multiple mind's eye moments, and I could see the mysterious deluge of water.

And I began to wonder what it meant.

And I thought about sea level rising.

I thought about climate change.

And then simultaneously began to think about how our community had been flooded out for the advent of hydroelectric energy.

And that was a really common story between my community and other tribal communities.

Contemporary Native American communities were experiencing flooding in unprecedented ways.

And so I really felt like it was something that I wanted to lean into and explore.

But the art can become something much bigger to the world.

And I think that that particular series was deeply impactful.

I don't think that we had seen ourselves that way.

I think that our human relationship with water and the way it holds us and how it's part of all life had a deeper impact than I ever imagined.

The other series that I found really interesting, which I really love all your series honestly, but the First American Girl series, what was the spark for that one?

Our daughter, she's a dark, complected Native American girl, and there wasn't really anything representative of who she is.

There were a few.

There was like a First American Girl doll that was Ojibwe.

We used to make her kochiti clothing and furniture.

But other than that, there was a paucity of representation and things that don't represent our diversity or our individual vernacular from each of our communities, how our regalia is different and emerges from each bioregion.

And so I just went for it.

We built a life-size doll box.

The very first one was Kaiowa Comanche.

She was a traditional powwow dancer.

And it was about that love for detail and accuracy and everything that she's surrounded by her family made.

It's not the disappointing pony beads and felt buckskin.

It's the real buckskin and beadwork that took five family members over a year to make and the different cultural accoutrement that she's surrounded by.

And then the series kept going, and there's really no end to it.

Each one is incredibly diverse and different.

We had our first Alaska and Kanaka Maui, and so I think that the series in that way is kind of infinite because there's diversity in every single community.

The women that you collaborated with, what was their response to seeing themselves represented like this?

You know, we have so much beauty in our community, and I tend to really work with friends and family and take time.

I spend a couple of days, you know, helping people to feel comfortable, making sure that we're telling their stories, making sure that they like the way that they look.

We're often representing ideas bigger than ourselves or, you know, even our community.

And so I think building trust and giving the collaborators agency is really at the forefront of what I do in the creative process.

I think when people are documenting or making ethnographic images of folks and they're from outside of the community, there's an edit on it on what they think is interesting, you know.

And so these are really edited from the inside out.

And so, you know, we're telling stories together and giving agency, and it's a really important part of the entire process.

You've described your work as being grounded in Indigenous Futurism.

Can you explain to me what does that term mean to you?

So Indigenous Futurism is a genre, it's an art movement that has popped up in different communities, Afro-Futurism, Latin Futurism.

And I was really watching Native Futurism for, you know, the past decade and wanted to be part of the conversation.

I think one of the big takeaways that really excited me about the movement is the mantra our whole life has been, "We're still here."

It's about screaming for acknowledgement of presence, of survivance, of resilience, and, you know, we've made those strides.

Futurism is about this idea of imagining ourselves in the future for the first time.

You know, I think I really gravitate towards ideas that are hopeful in really bringing forth ideas of Indigenous science.

And as we talk about climate change, as we talk about the human condition, I think Indigenous communities have deep insight, you know, to heal people and planet.

And so all of the series that I've worked with in Indigenous Futurism are really honing in on this idea of the really old coming through into this speculative future.

So they're fun, they're sci-fi, but there's an important message.

I really loved the Three Sisters piece that you did.

Could you talk a little bit about that in the context of Indigenous Futurism?

I really wanted it to be a futuristic set.

I wanted to paint them in blue light.

There's dry ice, there's twinkly lights, the wires coming in.

Each of them have their ancestral tribal designs tattooed onto their skin.

You know, the wires, you know, really speaking to this idea of connectivity.

But the wires are not meant to, you know, be bringing information in.

It's really like the information that these women hold, you know, being a source of healing for people and planet.

So people are surviving by their life energy, you know, radiating out.

Talking about the future, what do you hope Native youth take away from seeing themselves reflected in your work?

I grew up without a ton of accurate representation that celebrated diversity even within our communities.

And I hope that all Native people can find a sense of humor, that they can see themselves and, you know, be happy to see themselves in a living, present tense.

I think I really try and counter narratives of stereotypical representation.

I hope that that expands not only cross-culturally how people think of us and who we can be and what we can be.

But I hope Native youth realize that they can be anything that they want to be and that we're part of these greater dialogues and belong as part of deeper dialogues.

[music] Galerist and artist Sydnee Spivey isn't afraid of color.

Across her body of work, she uses an array of hues rendering visual art that's bathed in light and reflective of her own persona.

[music] I am an acrylic artist.

I am also doing graphic design and digital art as well.

I have done all kinds of acrylic art.

Sometimes I do what my mind is telling me to do.

Sometimes it's line art or different ways of color If I have a specific idea, I like to go with as much details as I can.

I like to use as much color as I can.

My mind is very bright and light and airy.

I think that's how I carry myself, so I think that's what I want to put into my work.

I just like brightness.

I think my personality reflects that, so I use a lot of whimsical things.

I've always been a creative.

I just feel like I want to get that creative, those juices out.

I picked up a paintbrush in 2017 and I haven't stopped since then.

I wouldn't say taught myself, but I got more comfortable with being creative and understanding my ideas and thought process in my brain as far as how I want to get my emotions out.

The fifth represents Blacker SEMA as the infamous sign for Black Power for the Stones.

I wanted to bring in the Infinity Stones in the Avengers movie.

The artwork around Thanos, I just thought that it was pretty cool that he could just change the whole trajectory of the story with one simple action.

I think that really reflects during Blacker SEMA knowing that we as Black Americans kind of lead the way in pop culture in a sense.

I wanted to showcase that in my own way.

Using the Infinity Stones and using the watch on the wrist and the rings kind of just shows royalty The first big piece I did at that time was really trying to challenge myself on how a line art is going to look and how can I execute it.

I just wanted to throw some color in the background.

Again, I just like to wear colors.

I would call a piece where I don't really know what the paint is, so I'm just going to paint and just allow the paintbrush to move, or my brain to just move it the way that I see fit in the moment.

Sometimes I get into overthinking and trying to plan too much and not really knowing how to go about it.

Sometimes I just sit down and just paint and just allow my creative expression to translate to the canvas.

What is most rewarding for me is being able to express myself in a way that not a lot of people can.

I think align myself to be able to express myself in color and express myself in creativity and pushing myself to see what more I can do with my creativity and not be, align myself to not be boxed in as a creative.

I think also being able to see my ideas come to life in front of me, I think that is a very, I would say superpower in some sense.

So yeah, that would definitely be the most rewarding part about being an artist and a creative and seeing what other kinds of art can I get into, whether that may be sewing or fabric work or something along those lines.

Being able to see where I can go in my creative career and on a personal level and a professional level is the most rewarding thing.

Finally this week, we wrap up with a story out of Norfolk, Virginia, where an immersive theatrical experience brought Rosie the Riveter to life.

The event honored real women who joined the World War II workforce, helping reshape history.

Inspired by letters and lived experiences, the production captured the spirit of resilience, unity and female empowerment that defined the home front during that era.

Whenever you're ready for it.

One, two, one, two.

One, two, three.

People can expect to see a story of resilience, of perseverance, of unity, a story in which we show how good it can be to challenge the status quo.

I was searching for a story to inspire my female actors.

There was a dearth of female stories out there.

So I decided to start writing my own works.

And then once they kind of uncovered it, really it was is like kind of mirroring art and history.

Rosie the Riveter.

And if you join her.

Rosie as like a character has been really interesting to imagine what that icons life might have been, that you actually existed.

It's been cool.

During the Second World War, when factories had large portions of their workforce either volunteered or drafted, there was a very real labor shortage.

And women from all across the country, from rural backgrounds and everything, would join the US workforce to build equipment.

I started researching and started pulling lots of dialogue from real people's stories and sort of started putting this sort of piece together.

To the point where Hocken, one of the largest amphibious invasions the world has ever seen.

Two years ago at Great Bridge High School, I came and I met Keegan and we started a relationship because he was very interested because I called him and asked, "Can I have a plane?"

And he was like, "I've never been asked that before."

So we loaned them a fuselage that was under construction and very much looked like it would belong on a factory floor.

That was kind of a quirky thing and it was exciting and engaging and those drama students at the high school got to work on this real airplane.

From there when I was bringing all his stuff back including a plane.

He said, "Well, I would love to have this here."

And I said, "Me too."

And so we sort of started a year-long conversation about how to transform a stage play into an experience that was at the museum.

But we met in high school.

I was a cheerleader and he was the president of our class.

We really wanted to be immersive, experiential, sweep the audience up in the space and transport them back to the era.

Which would encompass the audience being a part of the production.

Not in the way that we put the lights on them and give them lines to say, but in a way that they are close to the scenes and the energy and they get to participate in some of the scenes if they want to.

But they are part of the world and the environment of the show and we get to allow them to experience it rather than just to sit and watch it.

In a stage play you can follow Rosie from scene to scene, but in an immersive experience you're going everywhere and you might not catch that character but a few different times on your track.

So we had to decide like how can we make that feeling of that piece and the communication of that piece fit in this environment.

It's been a lot of trial and error, timing things, cutting lines, adding lines.

Just trying to make everything flow together as best as possible.

I'm used to doing shows in a big old theater on a stage where there's a huge divide between the cast and the audience.

And so I think it's pretty vulnerable.

I think that it makes us as actors be more engaged because people we're talking to are right in front of us.

And I think it also helps the audience be more engaged.

I've seen and heard and I think that that's pretty beautiful.

There's not so much of a separation.

It's like you're all in it together.

I couldn't give you one of those cushy jobs working at the patent office.

So then what when I was I understand that.

A lot of the samples from some of the scenes are from letters that real women wrote home.

And when you're coming into this hangar in particular and you're seeing planes that were built by women.

It's a beautiful thing and it really hits you when you first enter the space.

It is an honor to be a part of this production where I can pay even just a little bit of an homage to the woman who came before me.

It's really great to have people what I call in theater.

Yes and projects.

A lot of times in our world the answer is no.

And I found like Keegan was a big proponent in the museum to say yes.

Why not.

I even brought my students out here and they learned to rivet.

Our actors have learned to rivet during this production.

So like all together everyone just kind of getting on board and having that collaboration.

You know great things can happen and that's how art gets built.

That wraps it up this week on state of the arts.

Thanks for joining us.

Until next time.

I'm Mary Paul.

Goodbye.