Funding for Colores was provided in part by: 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 Inspired by the past, creating for the future, Kenneth Armijo█s revolutionary photovoltaic system, protects crops and conserves water in the Rio Grande Valley.

Weaving sustainability into sculpture, artist Leticia Bajuyo, transforms discarded CD█s and everyday materials into a monumental installation.

It█s all ahead on Colores HARVESTING THE SUNSHINE CONSERVING THE RIO GRANDE [Spanish guitar] >> Armijo: I grew up with a lot of stories.

A lot of dichos -- about the land and about our family.

They taught me about farming and about being able to be creative during difficult times of hail, droughts, of blight.

They never called it engineering, but they called it creativity.

[Spanish guitar] >> Armijo: They figured out how to engineer their way out of different challenges.

[Birds singing] >> Armijo: What do you know of Grandpa Clemente?

>> Armijo, Sr: Irrigated from this whole ditch here.

This was the old Sabinal ditch.

So when I first moved over here, there were pear trees, like the one that's kind of buried in there.

Not only did he raise cattle, but he also grew crops.

And he had this land here for several years.

And he grew crops that were meant for his family to survive on.

Back in the 1930s, the conservancy district had just been formed, so a lot of the waters were to spreading all over.

This was the main canal, so there was a lot of water.

>> Armijo: What I've noticed over the years growing up on this farm is that things have become drier, things have become hotter, and the thing that has been motivating to me is being able to come up with technologies and new ways of doing things in the farming practice to do more with the little water that we have.

[leaves rusting] >> Armijo: My family's been farming for over -- spanning over three centuries, and we've grown a lot of chili peppers, grown a lot of alfalfa.

But recently, in the last 30 years, we've been growing a lot of berries.

We started with grapes, and then we moved on to blackberries.

In the blackberry field that we have -- right on the very first row of blackberries on that very first trellis.

It's near some trees.

One of the trees is from my great grandfather, and it casts a lot of shade.

We noticed when we were growing the blackberries -- season after season.

All the blackberries that grew under the shade of that tree.

The plants produce better quality blackberries than the ones that were in full sun, not under that shade.

And so just looking at those poles -- those trellis poles, I guess I got to thinking -- could we use existing infrastructure to provide shade, and could we do something more from that shade than just helping to reduce sun scorch?

Why don't we put something that produces electricity?

Why not something that produces power?

[Spanish guitar] >> Armijo: There's so much solar energy on Earth -- so much.

[Spanish guitar continues] >> Armijo: In order to understand the impacts of shade from solar PV on crop growth, we needed to collaborate with other farmers.

[Spanish guitar continues] >> Armijo: Solar energy can help our farms to produce electricity, but also using solar panels that are required to make the electricity to help with shading.

Shading of crops.

One of the challenges with higher temperatures right now is the fact that we as farmers are dealing with sun scorch and blossomed.

Where when the buds get a little bit too hot, they start to wither and fall off, and that little bud -- is what eventually turns into a fruit or vegetable.

If it doesn't get too hot.

Solar panels are very interesting because they actually cast shade.

And so if you put solar panels over -- different types of crops, like berries, you can create shade so the buds don't get too hot and get sun scorched.

[Spanish guitar continues] >> Armijo: We are leveraging the Medanales agrivoltaic system in a general way to understand farming practices and adoption.

Medanales has a system that helps a single farmer.

If you multiply that system across multiple farms and ranches, there is so much potential in not just the sheer electricity produced that can help the surrounding community, but also in fostering new ways that the farmer and the rancher can use the electricity to provide more value added products to improve their own businesses.

They could provide power for our irrigation pumps.

Solar energy will provide power for electrified tractors that need to do skiing and plowing, and cultivating electricity can also run fans in a hoop house and our greenhouses, and in the winter time, it provides electricity for the heaters in those greenhouses.

[Spanish guitar continues] >> Armijo: Community based solar has become a hot topic for many people, especially farmers and ranchers.

The idea that you don't have to rely on electricity from a grid that can be unstable is huge for so many of them.

[Upbeat festive music] >> Armijo: The Rio Grande Community Farm is a partner organization that works with us on this project, where they provide the land and the farmers to -- allow our system to be deployed and proven at a very high maturity level.

And the tomatoes under the solar panels, we're getting like a third, two thirds higher yield because we have optimized the shade.

And it's not just taking my word for it, the data speaks for itself.

The weight measurements we have of the tomatoes that we've been doing throughout the whole process, and this is what's awesome about those farmers at the Rio Grande Community Farm they█ve been diligent about weighing all the produce, our photosynthesis sensors and the evaporation sensors have been showing us how the plant health has been doing.

[Upbeat festive music continues] >> Armijo: And we can raise and lower those panels up and down and it adjusts the level of shade.

Some plants need more sunlight at the beginning of the season versus during the middle and the end.

Right now we are producing about 12 to 14 kW of power.

An average home in New Mexico uses about 11kW.

So we're producing much more than that from this -- just this small agrivoltaic microgrid test bed that we have up there.

[upbeat guitar] >> Armijo: As climates and crop shift, we need to be flexible as farmers, we also need to be flexible in our creative ways of dealing with the challenges that are to come.

My grandfather once told me that I'm a 11th generation New Mexican, and he used to tell me stories about the Rio Grande.

About how the Rio Grande has changed, how it's had to be resilient over the different political winds, over the different environmental changes, so many different things, and how farmers have had to be resilient with the way of the land and all of its changes.

What this whole technology and this development has meant to me, is basically myself being able to put my imprint, my chapter in this long legacy of generational farming in New Mexico, and being able to make other farmers of my generation more resilient in their farming practices and in their lifestyle.

>> Second, spin.

>> Bajuyo: Go a little further this way >> Do you need more bungies?

>> Bajuyo: So nice.

I think it asks like, how long does it take to make these?

There's the answer of like how many hours here at the site?

I recognize how much went into all of the collecting.

Tying.

But then there's also all the prep before then just figuring this out.

So even though this is this piece, it took all the other ones to get here.

[school bells] Oh, Friends season four, season six, disc four I tend to often joke that the line between the sculptor and a hoarder is a very small, small line.

So I'm basically knitting the biggest, most awkward sock as I put these sculptures together.

My name is Leticia Bajuyo and I'm a sculptor, so that way is like over under this projection And that projection I am a little bit of a materials junkie.

I look for voices inside each of the materials, and find a way to be able to incorporate them into a new object that they become, but still retains something of their original identity.

I don't want to hide what they are, I just want to sort of highlight it.

And then I combine those objects together, and kind of like a visual poem.

So I basically will take a stack of CDs and I'll drill four holes in it, and then those holes become the anchors and I stitch those together to make strands.

The sculpture is specifically for the Art now biennial exhibition at the Oklahoma Contemporary Art center, and it's going to be a site specific installation.

So it's a large sculpture, but it can only be built in that site.

It's built and designed based on a Hot Wheels track, like the loop that a Hot Wheels track would make, or a roller coaster.

It's kind of like weaving or knitting, so I'm basically making my thread with CDs, and then I get to like, weave those together like a basket.

But in this basket, each of the threads again are all of these memories, the memories that we have of the disc where you recognize, oh, I watched that movie.

And so I weave those together onto a substrate.

These can't stand alone.

They need some kind of structure.

And so one of my favorite parts to do is to design the different armatures, the different skeletons.

Sometimes it's an inner skeleton, sometimes it's an exoskeleton, sometimes it's a little bit of both, depending on what the specific site needs.

And it varies based on everything from installation, time frame, budget, size of their door, how long the show is going to be up.

All of those things go into the recipe and the magic mix where I have all these logistics, and then I get to design for that site.

>>Riley: So Art Now is our biennial exhibition we have here at Oklahoma Contemporary, really a celebration of Oklahoma's creative ecosystem by featuring some of the best contemporary artists who are not only living but working in our state.

[upbeat bass] >> Bajuyo: I█ve done many drawings and then plans.

But it's not until you're actually here and you find out what the parts around you are.

Come in this way.

Lift up.

I like that because then I get to continue to explore and design it on site.

So right now this is what I'm envisioning.

I would like it to lean if possible.

So in that way, when you're standing in front of it, it feels like you're in it.

So after we talked about exact placement.

The first thing that we'll need to look for is to do those mouths.

[upbeat guitar] Yeah go and do the second one if they're- If it does look like it, we might later might go to that one over there.

>> Columbus: When we were attaching the the initial ratchet straps to pull the piece in whichever way we wanted it to, there's a few different tries of repositioning the I-beam clamps in a certain way, and it might be six inches over here, or it could have been two inches the other way.

Leticia was very, very hands on in working with her, collaborating with her, we never ran into an issue.

There was always a way to solve it.

We've worked together and we bounce ideas off of one another.

Very rewarding.

It was a milestone in my life.

>> Bajuyo: Bring this up a little higher though, because that means that these two right now are at the same height.

I grew up in southern Illinois, a little rural town, about 7000 people.

So my dad's from the Philippines.

He moved to the US in 1968, during a time when there weren't enough doctors in the Midwest.

My mom was a resident nurse.

They had a little ER romance.

They moved to Metropolis to raise a family.

Being in this multi-generational, bilingual, multicultural household in this quiet landscape created some joys but also some complications.

And that has a lot to do, I think, with my my work, I do now, and the way that I spend time thinking about each object and whether or not it's wanted or included.

My goal meant I'm gonna move today and Heart of Hearts.

My goal would be to get all of the armature set and the ratchet straps change out for cable.

Once all of that is done, then I can start using the bins of all the tied together CDs and start filling in the gaps between and so.

But I think, I think we should be able to get there.

I don't want to jinx it.

>> Goetzinger: In my particular curatorial practice.

I was intentional about choosing a wide variety of materials and mediums, and how those specific materials really pushed the boundaries of their traditional ways that they've been shown.

Leticia specific installation is going to invite the audience to not only look at the form this beautiful, massive architectural form that she's making, but also think about their relationship to the CDs and DVDs that she's strung together to create this piece.

I think at the heart of it, it's a dialog about value allotment.

What is it that we find to be important?

We tend to be a pretty fickle society.

You change your mind a lot.

And so what is it that had been our favorite song yesterday, or maybe the most desirable approach to communication?

And then it hasn't changed.

But we have.

But it's not its fault as a material that it's now just in this junkyard, >> Bajuyo: so you can find that there's a hole in it.

The outside.

Yeah.

So that's where we.

Yeah.

Right there.

>> Heffron: So my expertise in hanging theatrical scenery and lighting equipment, audio equipment over people's heads.

So in here in the art space, I use that to hang different types of big, unique pieces from ceilings and stuff like that.

Patricia's great.

She's an amazing artist.

I learned a while working with her and then just being a part of her experience and figuring it out was very, very fun and very cool to be a part of.

>> Bajuyo: Oh, wow, you like that coming to life right?

Getting closer.

Them.

Just learned that I would be able to stay late today, which is like magic words.

I teach tomorrow at campus, so I want to make sure I have enough energy for my students.

But if it can help set Thursday and Friday up to be even more just copacetic, that would be good.

I've been a professor for 24 years, and that has been part of my making almost as long as making as far as I get as a professional artist.

And so the two for me are really connected.

it's not moving and then.

Yeah, just straight cut thinking, okay, I find that my classes aren't classes where I'm necessarily teaching somebody how to make sculpture.

I can see it going in a couple different directions.

So but they're actually empowerment classes and we happen to make sculpture along the way.

Pretty much everyone in this class is already taken the beginning sculpture.

So they've learned a way around most of the tools in the shop.

But now what do you do with those in a more independent way?

When we get started in the semester, one things I look for is what is it that their goals are for this term and how can I help them individually?

But as a group that we still continue to work as a team?

So what's going on right now is I'm finishing up a few more of the bar structures that go between those basket tubes.

And so I'm now up in the top right area.

They're almost all secured.

And so I'm finishing those up while Christian is up on that ladder.

And what he's doing is he's changing out the ratchet straps and replace them with the aircraft cable.

When I'm using the CD, I'm borrowing this, what they usually would do and I'm giving them this other life, but I'm also taking them out of their waste stream.

And so I try to find materials and ideas that I can use that minimize my carbon footprint.

That doesn't mean, again, I can save everything, but I think the more cognizant we are about the choices we make and what we use, it will help.

As we make further choices and be aware of our existence.

A word that I avoid and I try not to use as I don't use the word talent.

People will often say, oh, you're so talented.

And it's a way to say that I. Oh, I can't do that.

You must be so talented.

As if it's a compliment.

But in many ways, it discounts your individual ability to take the chance to do it yourself.

That you can do it, but it takes time.

I very much believe in and the commitment of time, the commitment of work.

Nice.

Yay!

So I still do like the zip ties in that one section underneath right there.

But other than that, this goes all the way back to like when one of my friends taught me how to knit.

I didn't know how to knit.

She was knitting One day, I was like can you, can you just show me?

It was years and years before I ever made one of these sculptures.

And so I just recognized I wouldn't be doing the work I'm doing now if it wasn't for so many people along the way.

And so I very much believe in thinking your mentors.

But then as soon as you can think about that, you might actually be on the other side of that table, and you actually can lift up someone else.

How is it that we can help bring people to the table?

>> Pilar: 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 New Mexico PBS, Great Southwestern Arts and Education Endowment Fund, and the Nevada 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.