Funding for COLORES was provided in part by: Frederick Hammersley Fund at the Albuquerque Community Foundation New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund at the Albuquerque Community Foundation ...New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts... and Viewers Like You.

THIS TIME, ON COLORES!

THROUGH A CHICANO LENS, ERIC GARCIA SERVES UP SHARP CRITIQUES OF OUR SOCIETY.

CREATING POLITICAL ART THAT CONFRONTS THE AMERICAN DREAM.

TO FEEL THE JOY AND HOW EXCITING THE INDIGENOUS LIFE IS...

PROUD OF HER NATIVE AMERICAN HERITAGE, JEAN LAMARR .

CONNECTS TO HER ANCESTRY TO KEEP NATIVE CULTURE ALIVE.

EACH INSTRUMENT TELLS ITS OWN STORY.

FOR OVER 50 YEARS, FREEMAN VINES HAS BEEN BUILDING GUITARS OUT OF PIECES OF HISTORY.

IT'S ALL AHEAD ON COLORES!

A NEW DREAM [Music] >>Eric Garcia: The American dream, for me it's become the American Nightmare.

It basically comes down to hypocrisy.

The United States is always cheering that this is a democracy, this is a free country, anyone can be anything; then when I see the opposite constantly on the news, it just breaks my heart and that frustration- that's like galvanizing fuel that pushes me to create.

[Music] >> Faith Perez: What experiences have shaped your understanding of Justice?

>>Eric Garcia: My time in the military had a deep- eye- opening experience of what it means to be just, and having the perspective of how the United States is looked upon from other countries.

And then coming back to the United States and still in uniform, but still being questioned, "where did you come from?

", "Who are your parents?

", " where did your parents come from?"

This interrogation of where you're from, are you really from here.

Are you truly an American?

There's so few people of color creating political cartoons.

Political cartooning is a very niche world and I think that we need to have our voices in it.

In the United States, if we really want to show the different viewpoints, the different perspectives of what's happening politically and culturally.

And in my case, I'm bringing in that Chicano voice that is here- that has always been here.

Sometimes it's been blatantly muffled but it needs to be heard because it's a perspective, it's embedded in the United States, and it's not going away.

[Music] >>Eric Garcia: I often use Lady Liberty and Uncle Sam in my political cartoons as polar opposites, as a kind of a domestic dysfunctional family.

With Uncle Sam being more of the conservative and Lady Liberty being more of the liberal.

And usually Lady Liberty is being harassed, or threatened, or endangered, by Uncle Sam.

But unfortunately, with our immigration system Lady Liberty has really transformed into an aggressive icon that's pushing the way.

It's not standing there with open arms anymore.

>>Eric Garcia: Especially here in the Southwest, sometimes they depict her as a La Llorona type figure that's a hunting the ditches that's haunting the rivers, ready to take your children away.

As the Migra is actually doing in our borders.

It's a challenge for people to see this darker side of this icon.

But in a way, it's- I think it opens eyes and makes people think a little harder about reality and what's going on.

>>Faith Perez: So tell me about Lucy Gonzales from the Political Prisoners Series.

What was the motivation behind using her stories and the other stories from Political Prisoners?

>>Eric Garcia: There's several different activists that I put in that series who had been silenced by our government, and put in jail for their fight to give people rights and to give people the justice that they deserve.

Lucy Gonzalez Parsons is a very interesting character that should be- actually globally known, because she's the one that helped create the working situations that we all take for granted.

You know, the eight hour work days, the weekends, lunch breaks, and all these activists are trying to help their communities.

Then we have a government that are- they're doing their communities at a disservice.

A lot of time- our authorities the people that we think are taking care of us, that are policing, that are that are protecting us.

Sometimes they're working actually against us.

[Music] >>Eric Garcia: A new generation gets born every so often, and they need to be introduced to these to these Heroes again, and again, and again, so they were not forgotten and so their legacies are not forgotten and then- so the newer generations can pick up those mantles and continue this this fight, because it's ongoing.

[Music] >>Eric Garcia: So, I want people to realize- to look back and understand that our history is not Rose Colored.

There's a very strong push right now against learning your history.

The history of the United States.

And our history is ugly and it's tragic.

But if we don't know about it we then go forward thinking that everything is hunky-dory.

[Music] >>Eric Garcia: I want to accomplish change, I want a new generation of our society in the United States who really wants to see that American dream come true or to at least make something new.

Maybe there's a new idea, a new dream that is actually possible.

>>Faith Perez: What is the new dream?

>>Eric Garcia: I think that's the biggest question.

I think that's the hardest question.

What is the new dream?

Are we talking about- a whole new government?

Is the government so in chaos and incapable of getting things done, that we need to disassemble it and start over?

Putting a new hood ornament on an old beat up vehicle every four years isn't cutting it, I think the whole motor needs to be taken out and disassembled and put back together.

HOPE FOR HEALING Well, I hope when someone sees my work, that they feel joy and feel the colors and how exciting the indigenous life is and designs...

These were all created by my ancestors and they were experts in these fields.

- She has been committed to rejecting the idea of the vanished American Indian.

She wants audiences and everybody who sees her art to know that Native American cultures are a living and vibrant culture.

- There's nothing about us in the fourth grade, I never learned about California Indians.

And I said, "We're all Indians?"

Because just me and my sisters were going to school and we were the ones that were getting beat up on.

- [Ann] When Jean went away to college at UC Berkeley, she was told by her professors that she couldn't include cultural content in her artwork.

She couldn't paint things that had native relevance or cultural relevance, or it would be considered folk art.

Jean has always rejected those types of ideas, and she's been committed to forging her own path.

- I went to Berkeley and it was a class of over 500.

Peter Selz was this art historian talking and he made a comment about a artist's work, and one student in the class said, "I object to that, I don't think you are right about that.

I think it should be this way and this way and this way."

Right away, It felt like, "Oh man, that guy, he's gonna be in a lot of trouble.

He'd get kicked out of class."

But Peter Selz welcomed that and thanked him for his input and said, "Yes, that did add to that."

So I finally realized I have a voice because we're the product of the boarding school parents and students, and we're told not to talk, say, dance, do anything whatsoever.

Well, finally, we get to be recognized.

We finally get to be recognized and we're proud of who we are.

We know our own history and nobody can put us away because we had a lot of brave people.

Because they were so brave, we're able to be alive now.

Murals are so important, 'cause they're they like a community statement, especially if you can go out and get the oral histories and learn some of the early histories and what really happened to that community.

You can put that image in that community and no non-Indian can come in there and say, "No, that's all wrong."

I worked on a mural in the gymnasium on the Susanville Indian Rancheria with the community.

The Susanville Indian Rancheria is where we all live.

Most Indian home places are called reservations, but in California they called it the rancheria.

So this is beginning of life.

So we heard about the coyote stories, and here's Mr. Coyote sneaking around going looking for food.

We showed sagebrush and the baskets that are made from here.

It comes around here too.

An era that was ancient from hundreds of years ago, they had layers and layers of baskets of.

Then it goes all the way over, goes to the times when Larson was here and then to the bear dance that had been a real long tradition, then old man Joaquin is in the middle.

Then it comes to the contemporary times.

We're still alive.

We're still celebrating our heritage and our culture.

This mural is done in Susanville, California on East Larson Street.

Our ancestors' our future so I interviewed all these different people in town 'cause I know they had ancestors here from a long time ago.

We got a lot of good comments.

People walking by, "Oh, this is really nice."

The Indian people, I see them standing by their relatives.

Oh, look there are kids standing in front of their relatives and they take a picture of it.

It's just really nice.

It's really nice, that's what I like to see.

And I respect the fact that murals do need to be changed.

They can't stay forever.

It's not a Michelangelo where they have to keep repairing it.

So it reflects the time.

If we do murals, that says we're present, here and now.

That means we're still alive.

- In the early 1990s, Jean returned to her hometown of Susanville, where she established the Native American Graphic Workshop.

The graphic workshop is a unique community hub where she brings together youth from the community, elders as well as different artists.

- It's fun for people to do.

It's an introduction to printmaking, working with the oils, solvents, paper, how to handle press, how to handle the paper.

I got people that do some fantastic work, but they don't even realize what they're doing.

They're doing something beautiful.

'Cause if I could do it, they can do it.

I hope I can block down barriers.

See I like how the transparency looks, it's not too heavy.

It's softer then you can bring up some hard lines with a definite imagery.

- All of us here have either learned from her, worked with her.

Been inspired by her work.

Continue to be inspired by the work tonight or as for Jamie and Toby Stump to come up and sing an honor song for Jean.

- The Nevada Museum of Art is really proud and honored to be able to present this retrospective exhibition of Jean Lamar's work.

It features over 50 years of her paintings, prints, murals, installations.

- I'm so grateful for Ann to giving me this opportunity.

No other museum would've given me this opportunity.

I'm a community artist, political artist.

So it's difficult to get into a place.

- As you're looking at Jean's artwork, you'll see a variety of symbols and motifs appear from time to time.

Sometimes that's a military fighter jet flying overhead.

Sometimes it's sort of this ubiquitous barb wire that you see throughout the American West.

Sometimes it's an American dollar sign, and she uses all of these symbols in different ways to critique American culture and to critique what has been a dominant culture that's for a long time suppressed Native American cultures in the United States.

- Everyone has a hope.

Everything has hope, happiness in there.

It might look negative, but there is hope for every little thing or I'm making fun of something.

I would never hurt anybody's feelings on purpose.

That's not my personality because we're really kindhearted people.

Being positive, being positive on all notes.

That there's a way out, there's hope.

There's always hope.

I always have that hope.

BRINGING STORIES TO LIFE ♪ I want to be at the meeting ♪ ♪ ♪ I want to be at the meeting ♪ ♪ ♪ I want to be at the meeting ♪ ♪ When all saints get home.♪ ♪♪ - [Lisa] 79 Year old Freeman Vines has been making and playing guitars most of his life.

For five decades, this self- trained luthier has cut, sanded and chiseled amazing instruments out of materials that encompasses past.

Things like tobacco barns, radio parts, and mule troughs.

- Oh, back y'all know one day, they had a horse barn out there, and I see this thing over there and I asked her man, "Could I have a finer of mule trough?"

Now these are his words, he said, "That mule slobber, may have preserved that wood," I could not rest until I made a guitar.

I have made guitars out of some of everything, I can't even remember all of them.

- [Lisa] But nothing has impacted his life and his work, like the guitars he created from the wood of the hanging tree.

♪ Southern trees ♪ ♪ Bear strange fruit ♪ - That tree produces only the most horrific and different things you just won't believe.

I bought some wood from a white fella and as I would load it on the truck, he told me, he said, "That wood that you bought," he said, "a man was hung on that tree."

I didn't believe it.

- [Lisa] He shared his story with his friend, Tim Duffy, who decided to do a little digging and uncovered the bone chilling truth of the horrific lynching that had occurred in 1930, not too far from Freeman's home.

- [Freeman] He had newspaper clippings, and he had done infiltrated them folks and found out that that it was true by the way, a man was killed on that wood, shot him 200 times and cut off stuff and stuck in his mouth, and it was horrific the way he died, and that were the beginning of the hanging tree wood.

And there was something about that wood, that you just won't believe.

Some of that wood was telling the story.

By scraping out the little pieces of deteriorated wood and stuff, you will find out that it had a pattern.

It had features in there that, all you had to do in bust some wood off, John Brown while brushing.

Here would come stuff that will scare you to death.

Most had features like skulls, terror on faces and stuff, and snakes coming out of skull's mouth and eyes and all like that right there dead.

All I had to do was spray for a little bit, then get the bad wood from the good wood, and when I get those scraping, I screamed, "God almighty, let me leave this alone."

I ain't never had my hand on some wood that had experienced it all and seen, and heard, what that wood had.

I had to break myself from working out that night.

Have you ever been somewhere standing in line or maybe in a store shopping and you know somebody's looking at you behind your back and you ain't seen him?

Well, that's the way it did me.

I would be working and I would catch myself, glancing all around and stuff.

I said, "I got to quit this."

And then some people, highly educated people, told me and said some supernatural power was happening.

One day I was sitting on my porch.

Now I had before that again, so I got my hammer, I hit the knot, flat piece fell out.

I messed around a little bit then smoked a cigarette and looked, I hit the other part of the knot, when it came out, it was a shoe.

And if you see the John Brown figures of that way in that wood and stuff, you know nobody could have carved it in there.

It's too direct and perfect, and I said, "Their wood had not would come out at wood at shoe."

He said that the guy that was lynched on that tree said that, "you wore it, don't you?"

That solved the mystery of what this shoe thing was in the tree.

[Lisa] Freeman says, while he's glad he knows the truth about the hanging tree, he has no desire to see the spot where the tree once stood, or ask his neighbors about who was involved.

- See you get to dig into deep and you live around here, one old guy traveling in the field by there, one old guy over here working at night, and so you might create a problem.

You know the deal, you know about say they ain't changed all that much.

They changed faces, but didn't change that much.

Like I said, leave they toes alone, they leave you alone.

- [Lisa] Meanwhile, his mini guitars travel across America, each instrument telling its own unique story of wood once used for both good and evil purposes.

- [Wendy] He works with a lot of found materials, which I love, and there's a really deep tradition of that in the south.

So not just the wood and pieces from trees, but some of the masks that he uses, so an African mask that he may have found on the side of the road, or perhaps in a flea market that he then turned into a guitar.

I thought that was a really powerful image.

And again, something that I think resonates with our viewers of looking at sort of this make do attitude that we have in the south, of just finding something and making it work, he really embodies that and that's something that we've lost a little bit, I think, in this modern age, but when people see it done well, they really respond to that.

He is a contemporary artist and he's creating these wonderful sculptures, and so I think that that's something that's important for people to remember.

We do have these contemporary artists who are perhaps of an older generation and they're not going to be around for much longer, so we do need to appreciate them and show their work while they are still here.

♪ I want to be at the meeting.♪ - [Lisa] As Freeman Vines' guitars travel from museum to museum, they bring with them stories of life in rural North Carolina, and some of them specifically the hanging tree guitars, pull a history that is seldom told, one that embodies the horrible acts of racism committed in the Jim Crow South, a story brought straight out of the wood and into the world.

♪ Then we'll have a meeting around the throne ♪ ♪ ♪ TO VIEW THIS AND OTHER COLORES PROGRAMS GO TO: New Mexico PBS dot org and look for COLORES under What We Do and Local Productions.

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"UNTIL NEXT WEEK, THANK YOU FOR WATCHING."

Funding for COLORES was provided in part by: Frederick Hammersley Fund for the Arts at the Albuquerque Community Foundation and the New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund at the Albuquerque Community Foundation ...New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts.

...and Viewers Like You.