Funding for COLORES was provided in part by: Frederick Hammersley Fund, New Mexico PBS  Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment  Fund, and the Nellita E. Walker Fund for KNME-TV  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.

HAMPTON SIDES DELVES INTO HIS BOOK, "THE  WIDE WIDE SEA," EXPLORING THE  DRAMATIC EVENTS OF CAPTAIN JAMES COOK'S  THIRD AND FINAL VOYAGE.

WORKING TOGETHER ON PUBLIC ART PROJECTS,  WIFE AND HUSBAND JEN KIKO AND ERIC RAUSCH  FIND JOY IN BUILDING COMMUNITY AND  SUPPORTING THE NEXT GENERATION OF ARTISTS.

TO BOLDLY GO WHERE NO  MAN HAS GONE BEFORE >> Hampton Sides: I can't  tell you how many people while I was working on this  book said, you know, "How's the book coming  along about the pirate?"

Uh, he was not a pirate.

Captain Cook, Captain James Cook, uh, was  arguably the greatest explorer of all time.

And I  say that having thought about him, and studied  him, for 5 years, and lived in his world.

[Music] >> Hampton Sides: He had three around the world  voyages, uh, that were huge, monumental  undertakings that involved hundreds of men and  many ships.

And, uh, these were scientific  explorations, primarily to map parts of the world  that had never been visited by, at least by  Europeans.

And you know, the quality of his  observations, the science that came from his  voyages, um, all this stuff that was published,  including artwork and, you know, charts and maps,  anthropological kinds of studies of the people he  encountered.

I mean, I just don't know that there's  any explorer that I can think of, um, who comes  close.

And the book that I've written, The Wide  Wide Sea, really focuses on his final voyage.

Um, a  voyage that takes him to a lot of American places.

Places we now know as American.

Like Hawaii, and  Oregon, and Washington State and, uh, all the entire  coastline of Alaska.

So, it's a British story about a  British captain, but it's also a very American story, uh,  and one that kept me, uh, very busy for five years.

You know, I think a lot of Americans, uh, don't really  know who he was.

People from the United Kingdom  know.

People from Australia and New Zealand  know.

But Americans, I think get him  mixed up with other captains, both real  and imaginary, like, uh, Captain Kirk from Star Trek.

>> Faith Perez: I thought that was interesting about Captain James Kirk.

Like,  that he was based on Captain James Cook?

>> Hampton Sides: At least loosely.

>>Faith Perez: Loosely, okay.

>> Hampton Sides: Captain James Kirk, Captain James  Cook.

Uh, going where no man has gone before.

You  know, some of the uh, some of the style, the way  they were constantly, you know, meeting new people  around the universe, around the galaxy.

Uh,  that's the way these guys felt back in the 1770s.

Like,  they come to another island not on the maps,  not on the charts.

Who are these people?

Are they  friendly?

Are they going to be hostile or, um, can we  trade with them?

Can we anchor here?

And so, he's  trying to play, in addition to all of his other roles as a  captain, he's also kind of playing the role of a of an  anthropologist.

Like, trying  to write down this what they  wear.

This is what they, how they talk.

This is, you know, this is the style of  their, uh, their food, or their implements  of war.

So, it's um, I had a lot of fun trying to kind of,  um, see this both from Cook's point  of view, but then also to try at least  to use oral history and, uh, anthropology, and things  we've learned since, to get the kind of the indigenous  point of view as well, on these first encounters, uh,  which happened over, and over, and over again.

>> Faith Perez: Why focus on Cook's third and final voyage?

>> Hampton Sides: I thought about a biography  of Captain Cook, cradle to grave, and you, I realized it  would be like this thick.

It would be probably pretty  boring and, it's been done before.

A biography of  Captain Cook.

And this is not by any means, I want  to stress this.

It's not a biography.

It is an account  of a single voyage, beginning to end.

I think the main character of the  book is the voyage.

There are a lot of  people on these ships, and their  interactions and the dynamics both of the  men on the ships, and the people they  encounter in the all these different  islands, is real focus of the story, I think.

And why the  third though?

I think it's the most dramatic of his  three voyages, um, in part because of what happens  at the end.

Uh, it's, I don't think a spoiler to tell  readers, I think if they know anything about  Captain Cook, is that he died uh a very violent, a  very graphic death, on the big island of Hawaii.

So, it's  a dramatic story, especially on this third  voyage.

Something was wrong with Captain Cook.

I  mean, this was not the same man that we saw on  voyage one and two.

He was mercurial.

He was  erratic.

He was violent.

He had this  unbelievable temper.

He was cruel to his own  men.

He became cruel to the indigenous  people that he encountered.

Scholars  have debated about what it was.

Did, was there  something wrong with him, like  medically?

Or you know, mentally or  spiritually?

Did he have a parasite that was  preventing the absorption of vitamins?

And things like this.

There's a lot of  speculation about what was wrong with Cook, um,  on the his third voyage.

Not only  that, but you know, in back of Cook,  whatever we may think about him and his  personality, there's this larger imperial,  colonial chess game going on, in  which the great powers of Europe they're  all competing for, you know, trying to  carve up the planet, and claim land, and  exploit resources.

And it's a  relentless and brutal chess game that has  huge implications around the  world.

This is one of the reasons he's so  controversial  today.

It's not so much what he did, as,  because he was primarily an explorer, a map maker.

Uh, it's what came immediately after Cook,  uh, as a result of his voyages.

Because his  voyages, uh, fixed these places on the map  permanently.

It became easy for the next  generation of explorers to just come  right to these places.

And here come the  Navies, and the Armies, and the, you know, the  alcohol, and the, and all these diseases that  devastated the population of these places.

You know, just the whole catastrophe, of uh,  colonialism, comes shortly after Cook.

[Music] Faith Perez: Can you talk about that in the  context of him meeting the Palawa people?

>> Hampton Sides: Yeah.

The Palawa people.

Um,  one of the many stops on this third voyage was, uh,  what we now call Tasmania.

And he and his  officers had a first contact experience  with the Palawa people, the Aboriginal  people of  Tasmania.

And it was a good one.

Uh,  everything went well.

Um, they traded.

They, they  were curious about each other.

They were friendly.

Uh, there was, there was no violence.

There was no  sexual relationships that led to,  the, you know, spread of venereal disease.

Uh, it was like, you know, this is the  way it should be, right?

This was a good  encounter, it seemed, seemingly on  both sides.

Cook was there about a week, uh, but  almost exactly one century after, uh, Cook's brief  stay there, the Palawa people are nearly  extinct.

Um, they're devastated by  diseases.

Uh, English settlers hunted them  down for sport.

Just the whole litany of  problems that came with imperialism,  came with colonialism, really devastated  that population.

And uh, there was a woman named  Truganini, who, uh, was photographed in uh, 1877 I  believe was, believed to be the last full-blooded um,  Palawa person still living.

Even though it wasn't  Cook's fault.

Um, that's how quickly these societies  unraveled, Uh, it's been called the fatal impact.

>>Faith Perez: What were some of Cook's discoveries  that advanced the field of science and exploration?

>> Hampton Sides: Yeah.

Um well, on this voyage we  get a lot of um, an anthropological kind of  pieces of information that that Europeans had never  heard of.

You know, for example, the concept of  taboo.

He went to a lot of temples.

He went to a lot  of Polynesian societies, and the word taboo was  fascinating to him.

And when he got  back to England, it very quickly entered the English  language, uh, the concept of taboo.

That, you know,  the whole notion that there are, you know, red  lines that you cannot cross, or will not cross.

And it's  just amazing how quickly that word took off in the  English language.

His voyages give us the first,  uh, description of the sport of surfing, uh, which is  something that the English officers, they couldn't  believe that the Hawaiians would swim in these  gigantic waves, let alone surf.

Uh, get on some  board and stand up, and uh, glide your way into the  shore.

You know like, they couldn't believe that this  was happening.

Another thing we get from Cook's  voyages is the first descriptions of tattooing.

Um, the art of tattooing, uh in Maori culture in New  Zealand and elsewhere.

And almost all his sailors  wanted to get tattooed themselves.

And they did.

And they got back to England and it just went  viral.

And so, you know to this day, if you're a sailor,  you're supposed to have a tattoo, It's just one of  those things that got started with Cook's  voyages, um, 250 years ago.

Cook's voyages, um,  were important also for his sort of analysis of, um, the  problem of scurvy.

As many as half the sailors  would die from this  horrible, horrible disease that caused the body to  sort of disintegrate from within, caused by a lack of  vitamin C. He seemed to understand something  about the disease.

He made his men eat fresh  food, fresh vegetables and fresh meat, fresh fruit.

And  he didn't understand that it was vitamin C that was  causing it.

But his regimen was very successful and  not a single man on any of his voyages died of scurvy,  which was considered a major breakthrough.

>> Faith Perez: Is it true that he, uh, had to force  some of his men to like, eat their veggies?

>> Hampton Sides: Yeah.

Eat your broccoli kind of  thing.

You know, eat your peas.

Um, the sailors are  creatures of habit, and, they liked their salt pork  and their hardtack biscuits and their boring food.

And  uh, Cook would come on an island and have his men  go cut some grasses or some weeds or something,  and try to make a beer out of it.

Or in Alaska he  would, they made his men hunt uh, walrus, and eat  walrus, which is apparently virtually inedible.

Uh, and  the men just hated it, hated it, hated it.

But um,  nonetheless, it probably saved their lives.

Uh, the  last thing I would mention is the chronometer.

Um,  he is, um, he was not by any means the inventor of  the chronometer.

But his ship on his second voyage  was the first to make use of this amazing  navigational tool, which allowed him to know  exactly where he was in the world.

This  chronometer, which told exactly what time it was in  Greenwich, England, allowed him and his  astronomers to figure out, very quickly and very  exactly, where they were in the world.

Uh, he  proved, you know, basically on his second and  third voyages, that this chronometer was an  amazing tool that would change navigation forever.

>>Faith Perez: What surprised you the most  about Cook's story?

>>Hampton Sides: Well, um, you know, Cook is very  frustrating in the sense that, um, we, we get very  little sense of his interior life.

You know, like, what  did he really think?

What did he really feel?

Part of  that is the nature of sea captains back then.

You  know, they weren't emotional creatures.

They  didn't write memoirs where they really told it  all, you know?

Uh, part of it is the nature of being  from Yorkshire, which is where he he came from in  very modest circumstances in Yorkshire.

He never  named for example, in all of his travels, a single thing  after himself, uh, which is unbelievable.

I mean, that  was the prerogative of explorers back then, was  name everything after yourself.

That's fine.

So,  he's super modest, but, underneath all of that is  this smoldering ambition to go to go farther than  any man has ever gone before, as he put it in one  of his letters.

Um, you know, he wanted to be in  the pantheon of the greatest explorers of all  time.

It gets to the heart of who he was as a person.

If  you want to understand sort of the modern world,  and how it got to be the way, the way it is, um, you  know, these voyages of discovery, um not just  Cook's, you know there are many others, are, were  really important to understand.

I'm fascinated  by this time when there was just still some very  large mysteries in the world, on the planet, uh,  left to solve.

I also think that it's really important to  understand that, you know, kind of like the  desire to understand what's over the next hill, or  the over the next mountain range, uh, or  across the ocean, is just so deeply embedded in sort  of human nature, um, in our DNA, that as much as  we may want to criticize these voyages, uh, we can  also, kind of say they were inevitable.

It's just what we do.

[Music] GENERATIONAL HOPE When I really think about  why I do what I do, community building is  probably paramount above everything else because it  brings me a sense of joy to build community as much  as it does to create a piece of artwork or to earn the  all-important money that needs to be made to  support the studio and do all of that.

When we're  around each other we're kind of in our happy place  because it's our mental health check-in place, you  know, we're working on clay and you are having  discussions with people and sometimes that can  be, you know, completely essential to your daily life.

I  teach high school art, and I have for a really long time.

It's my 26th year teaching, and I love it and it's very  rewarding and the kids are amazing.

They need that  connection to something and being a maker and  finding other makers I think is really comforting in  terms of your lifelong journey, so I try to say that  to kids.

If you're not going to make stuff to sell, that  doesn't matter.

You gotta turn to this as part of your  DNA and something that you can do and have  control over and have fun with so that you can be  comfortable in your own skin and for your own  mental health.

I realize that, I think at a pretty  young age that, if we can take lessons and resources  from the generation above us, if they're there for us to  take, that's an opportunity, that's a privilege.

If you  have that to take advantage of and then you  can pass on knowledge and resources to the next  generation, whether or not you have your own kids, to  me it's one of the main purposes of life is to build  generational wealth for everybody.

So, what I can  do for that is pretty much limited to my little circles  so within the studio I have a work trade opportunity  which allows artists to trade work time for studio  time and I've employed quite a few people from  the work trade opportunity.

I had one  person join on as a paid apprentice.

Gemia.

She's  now been with me for almost two years and she's  picking up more hours and taking on full responsibility  for glazing the stump pottery in the studio which  is a huge part of our cash flow which is so important.

One thing I learned early on is you don't accomplish  great things on your own, it really happens when you  can be part of a functioning team, you  know?

It's not about just getting a bunch of people  together, but, you know, having people work  together to, to see a vision come true.

That's as good  as community building to me.

I think that Jen and I  when we do a collaboration, the very first  bit of it is totally unseen to any committee, but is the,  you know, weeks that we get this idea.

Okay, we  have this idea and we're going to apply to do a  piece for this, so we bounce these things off  each other and go really silly sometimes and we  kind of find which concepts we come back to over and  over again and then Jen starts to make the  composition.

She's just so incredibly talented at  doing that, I just love to watch it.

>> I like the composition and design and he likes the  materials, so we kind of have to, like, work  together to find something that's going to work for  both of us.

>> I have worked with  other artists, and there is a trust that's involved with  that because you're taking someone's art work, which  is, you know, that's someone's baby and  you're taking it in your hands and trying to help it  turn into a fledgling toddler and see what  happens, but um, taking her drawing and putting it  into tile is where I become more of the primary artist  but I'm still bouncing everything off of her.

"Hey,  we could - you know, here's a couple of options,  which one do you think is best?"

And it just works its  way all the way through to the end to where the real  collaboration.

>> We've done a lot of  projects together, like art projects and life projects.

We joke that one of ours is called the divorce project,  cause we were like, if we don't get this done, we're  going to kill each other.

Our first piece in the  convention center parking garage, our first major  public art piece, was a real test of everything.

It's just  like going through a renovation or something  together.

Going through the first piece together and  the joke was and is, if we don't get divorced through  this then we can do anything.

>> We were figuring a lot of things out kind of like on  the fly, and it was very late nights and working in a  garage with a very small child-with just one small  child, was still hard but later there was two small  children.

So, you know, it's super fun.

It's super unique.

>>But I never feel like when we argue about an artwork that is anything  but constructive because we also have -- I think the  trust is built in that you're not going to- you're not  going to knock this person out at their ankles and  belittle them and make them feel bad.

You know,  we both are focused on the same goal.

So, when  we have differences of opinion on color or  material it's not quite fun, but it doesn't feel like, you  know, it's going to ruin our relationship, and I think  actually it probably helps our relationship  tremendously to be able to butt heads like that a little  bit where we're both working together and it's  like, "ahh" you know, and it just help us  communicate really clearly.

Why do you like this?

>> The pros, of course, are  that you kind of know people's strong suits.

Like  what you're good at, what I'm good at, like, he's really  good at problem solving.

He's really good at  reaching out to the right people if we don't know  how to do something.

We kind of push each other to  make it better because at the end of the day both  our names are on it, and we don't want it to be  unsuccessful or not be proud of it at the end.

Nobody is asking for public artwork to be put in front  of them.

It's just meant to be there, you're walking  along, it's meant to enhance the space,  enhance your experience, in my opinion.

I don't know  that this is putting aside, of course, memorials and  other things that are meant to really bring you  to a moment and have you experience something.

I do  think it's important that the first feeling you get is,  like, oh, wow, I like that.

So from far away we're  talking about bright colors or something, just oh, cool  and as you get closer to it, you know, hopefully,  something of the imagery can capture you and bring  you in and the work that we do out of tile and brick,  when you get up close to it there's a whole other level  of these micro details that you just can't experience  from anywhere, but six inches away and then you  know of course, feeling the textures of the piece and  seeing little bubbles and the glaze and all of that.

So, you know, those - it's just kind of, like, hey, bring  you in and then once you get in and see the details  that's also where you could have some meat to  the concept of your piece.

So, with the Dublin piece  we titled it in the neighborhood because the  concept of the piece is to hopefully remind you of  the local flora and fauna and we do that by giving  you a list of everything that's in the piece that you  can find because we did some research behind the  cone flowers and the goldenrods and of course,  there's sun flowers in there and the cardinals,  the male and female.

I do have hope for the world  that we live in, but it's a generational kind of hope.

Having two kids that are now just about to turn 11  and 7 and being able to show them year after year  how if you build on a vision, you might  underestimate even what you can accomplish.

You  might surprise yourself by what you can accomplish if  you just kind of stick to it.

>>We're like a little bit old-  fashioned of the priority of eating dinner together  when we can.

Eric is a really good cooking  machine, so that's helpful for me.

So, we kind of split  up, you know, the morning things, he deals with kids  and in the afternoon I deal with kids.

We live in a  typical suburban neighborhood here in  central Ohio, but we have a little yard where we can  have different areas where the kids are encouraged to  play outside.

We have a bed of rocks, just so they  can go see what's underneath of them, you  know, observe the trees growing through them.

I  point it out to them how those little whirly things  that fall down, they grow into trees and we pick up  most of them, but we allow a few of them to  grow.

So now after five or six years, how big those  are.

We've got groovy plants over here and an  indigo tree over there.

Just to get that passage of time  and that understanding to them.

So that no matter  what they go into, that they have just these core  values of hard work for whatever that means to  you and sticking through with something that you  commit to and bringing life into this world through  plants and caring for animals and all of that, you  know, is just really important I think for what  is to be an optimistic next generation.

The award-winning arts and culture series  ¡COLORES!

is now available on the PBS App, YouTube,  Instagram, Facebook and at NMPBS.org.

From classic episodes to brand new shows,  ¡COLORES!

is everywhere.

Watch now on your favorite NMPBS platforms.

Funding for COLORES was provided in part by: Frederick Hammersley Fund, New Mexico PBS  Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment  Fund, and the Nellita E. Walker Fund for KNME-TV  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.