Frederick Hammersley 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!

AN ANCIENT ART IN OUR NEIGHBORHOODS - NEW MEXICANS CREATING BEAUTIFUL MODERN MOSAICS.

CREATING A PLACE FOR INSPIRATION AND COMMUNITY ZERO EMPTY SPACES TRANSFORMS VACANT SPACES INTO AFFORDABLE STUDIOS.

OVERCOMING ILLNESS AND BIAS, WATERCOLORIST ARTHUR DILLARD'S DREAM HAS COME TRUE.

EXPLORE WHERE ERNEST HEMINGWAY WROTE "THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO" AND MANY OTHER OF HIS SHORT STORIES.

IT'S ALL AHEAD ON COLORES!

MANY PIECES TELL A STORY.

>> Manuel Hernandez: I think my inspiration mainly is nature.

I learn a lot from nature, and that gets reflected in my work.

>> Lisa Domenici: What inspires me, is the fact that I have a whole bunch of people coming together.

And they might be strangers, not know each other, and together as a group we're able to produce something that's really incredibly beautiful.

>> Laura Robbins: The art of mosaic is really about many different kinds of connections.

It can connect people to each other, to their own creativity, to inspiration, whether it's personal or inspired by others.

>> Manuel Hernandez: It feels like you're Literally.

I mean you have all these pieces, big and small, and colorful, and muted, and all colors.

For me, that's a metaphor for community.

That's a metaphor for coming together.

>> Lisa Domenici: The fact that it's very permanent and it's usually in a spot that's accessible.

And so, someone can come up and they can run their finger over run their hand over it, they can feel the tiles.

They can drive by it and see it.

They can see it -- how it changes from daytime to nighttime.

>> Laura Robbins: Albuquerque is rich with mosaics.

From the convention center, to churches, the South Valley.

It has a wealth of beautiful mosaics done by Papas and Sandra and Marguerite.

And all the way to Placitas having it, people will be amazed at how many publicly accessible mosaics are, either driving by or walking by --- and that's just a touch of the mosaics that -- um -- it doesn't even look into the mosaics in private homes, and in schools, oh my goodness!

Schools, there are so many schools that have >> Lisa Domenici: The magic of making mosaic, at least in a group setting, is that people who haven't done art before are able to be successful.

They create something that becomes part of something And they can go back and say "I did that piece!"

That -- that's my contribution to this bigger piece of beauty.

>> Manuel Hernandez: You know I go to thrift stores, yard sales.

I tell people "if you break something you're sad, I'm happy, so don't throw it away."

So here we have plates, um -- and plates give it a lot of texture.

You can kind of see the curves here of the plates.

I have stained glass, like somebody gave me a little bit of stained glass.

Tiles, marbles, I mean I use everything.

>> Manuel Hernandez: Everything starts with brokenness.

I think that's also a metaphor for life.

Because in life, it's not even a choice, at some point we're going to be broken, and to me doing mosaics is also a metaphor to -- coming back together, like all the pieces.

And it's a really hard process, both in the metaphor as well as in the mosaics.

But that's to me the beauty of mosaic is just like bringing that brokenness back into wholeness.

In this mural Brother, Son, Sister, Moon to me is an inspiration of Saint Francis.

Saint Francis you know, it's the saint of nature and there's a poem by Saint Francis called Brother, Son, Sister, Moon.

>> Laura Robbins: I care deeply about wildlife, but my ability to affect change is limited.

I knew that I could work with people well, I could teach them how to do mosaics, and that we could get it done.

My friend Cirrelda joined me, and we did this project together.

Hundreds of people worked on it, and it is a 75-foot-long mosaic, that now can state the culture of Placitas.

It's right there when you enter Placitas.

So, it's powerful in that way, that it was a community project, it's saying "we care about wildlife here.

We care about wildlife corridors and the ability of animals to move between mountain ranges".

>> Lisa Domenici: Some of my participants will do something that changes the outcome of the mosaic.

It changes -- it may change it subtly or may change it very differently.

But it's a process of my own letting go.

And something accidentally may happen.

Where someone for example, cuts a little piece of tile in a different shape and suddenly the whole table is cutting all these tiles in little smiles, for example, and creating roses out of these little smiles.

And so, when you go up and look at Our Lady of Guadalupe, you'll see all these roses made out of little smiles.

That was not part of my plan <laughs>, and it ended up being really magical.

I'm doing it with them, and it becomes our work.

It's not just my work, or her work, it's a whole cluster of people's work.

>>Manuel Hernandez: I think in general you know um-- sometimes in life, things are hard.

And at least to me in my experience and I see it in Having that channel of making art, brings healing to people.

Brings confidence to people.

And I think we need more of that in society.

Because the more people feel better, and more confident, and happy.

The better we will be.

A PLACE FOR COMMUNITY.

We feel now more than ever there's a strong need for artists and creatives to have places to be able to create in outside of their homes.

Time and time again, artists are telling us that they're fighting over the dinner table space, where they make their artwork on.

And that impetus has really created the growth and demand for Zero Empty Spaces.

Evan Snow, co-founder and managing partner of Zero Andrew Martineau, co-founder of Zero Empty Spaces.

So the initiative came through some of our other arts advocacy initiatives, where we had formed so many relationships with artists over the years that they were continually asking us, where are the studios at, let alone affordable?

We found this was a great vacancy management solution to activate vacant space, to make affordable art studios.

Once we decided that we wanted to look and pursue trying to get, you know, chronically vacant spaces, initially we did a little bit of research on where are the other affordable artist studios in South Florida, and all of them were non-profits.

And so very limited number of people could actually be part of it to be able to pay that low rent.

So, we kind of took that number and tried to create a program and a model that could still afford the artists to be able to pay $2 a square foot with us paying all the utilities.

We do a month-to-month deal with both the artists and the landlords.

So, it's fully transparent because we take big spaces and we break them up into much smaller spaces.

The artist doesn't have to take over a 3000 square foot space.

They can take a hundred square feet, 200 square feet, 300 square feet.

So the amount of money that they pay is a lot smaller.

I am ecstatically happy to be here because I was occupying three bedrooms, two bedrooms and a den and a garage at home.

I'm Barbara Ziev.

And I do many, many different mediums, but this is, has many meanings behind it.

It started out that, a white square actually is another sign As I got into it, the baby comes out.

I found this baby.

It's like, these things were just popping in front of me.

And I thought, you know, that's really about classification.

So it is about peace, but I ended up naming it classification because I think we're all born into a classification because people look at us and judge us.

I really, to be honest with you, I have a hard time calling myself an artist.

I call myself a creative, but lately I'm starting to say, okay, I guess it's okay to call myself an artist.

Another inspiration for the concept was obviously the early days of Wynwood artists going into it, these vacant warehouses at the time, which weren't incredibly expensive to rent.

So, the idea is that artists really kind of create that activity in areas and places that maybe didn't have that much activity.

And they create a lot of positivity in these areas And that certainly attracts investment and that attracts other people wanting to come into this area to really kind of be part of that creative energy.

Having a space that is activated, it really kind of helps the walkability from space to space.

So, you don't have to like pass by a dark storefront before you get into the next location.

it really creates additional activity for the tenants of So, one of the greatest things about the program that we found as arts advocates - some of the artists have only ever created in the privacy of their home and never sold and never published on social media or any of those things for many, many years.

And now that they're in a space where they're getting to see other creatives, it's been really beneficial for artists careers in, in many various levels.

I'm very comfortable with, if there's something I don't know how to do, I'm sure I can find somebody here that can say here, this is how you do it.

And I'm excited about that.

The spaces are open daily between the hours of 12 and 5pm to the public.

It's a really free and open kind of opportunity for people to come through and really take a tour and see the kind of work that's coming out of the space.

It's been a very organic, authentic, grass-roots driven process that thankfully the community is really responding well to.

FOLLOWING A DREAM.

Arthur Dillard: My name is Arthur Dillard.

I'm a watercolor artist and I've been doing that for about 20 years.

In essence, I really have been doing it all my life since I was about eight years old, but professionally I've been doing it 20 years.

And I always had a love for art and everybody discouraged me from being an artist, saying you can't make a living doing that.

And because of that, I listened to them for over 20 years.

I was an engineer for 25 years.

I really didn't enjoy being an engineer because at that time when I graduated in engineering, there were very few black engineers in the state of Florida and I didn't want to leave Florida.

So every job I went to, I was the only black engineer or, or the first one there.

I got sick when I was 35 and it took them eight years to determine that I had M.S.. My last job was downtown Bradenton as a project engineer, and I ended up start having physical shutdowns where the M.S.

would act ugly and then all of a sudden I'd get real tired and so happen, I saw some art studios down the street.

So I end up getting an art space there.

When I start having those physical shutdowns, I would go around there for an hour, hour and a half, and then kind of recuperate.

And at that point, I ended up start painting again on a frequent basis.

I end up getting that studio and just like I said, I've had that studio for over 20 years now and everybody told me, say, you'll never make a living doing art.

You can't be successful at art, especially in this area.

You got to paint trees and beach things and things like that.

And I ended up believing that for a minute and I ended up in hating painting those kind of scenes.

And I start painting what I enjoy painting.

And I end up doing shows all over the United States in order to survive, because at that time there were very little shows in Florida that African-American artists could participate in.

So I ended up fortunate enough to meet some other artists that was going through the same thing I was going through.

And we came up with a group of artists, was about 19 of us.

When I first started, we always kind of reminded ourselves of doing like the Chitlin Circuit, which a lot of the musicians did.

Back in Atlanta, they had the National Black Art Festival They had one in Houston.

We would go to Houston.

So because of that, you would always have a circuit.

Even to today, there's a lot of shows that a lot of African-American artists can't get into, but that's just a bias that we have in this society.

>>Keith Foxworth: I first met Art at the Black Arts Festival here in Atlanta almost 20 years ago, about 18 years ago.

I think it was 2002.

It was the last day of the Black Arts Festival and I went specifically looking for John Coltrane or Muhammad Ali, and I was about to leave out of the, the mall and his booth caught the corner of my eye and, and when I went in, he had everything I was looking for.

So his, you know, his black and white pieces are, you know, what he's famous for.

But all the jazz pieces and the sports pieces really spoke to me >>Dillard: All of a sudden when you do one jazz musician, all of those intertwine.

So we end up doing John Coltrane, all of a sudden Miles Davis show up, Monk show up, and it just goes on and on.

Basically, all of them was in that same circle.

>>Foxworth: And the really cool thing about Art is, he's such a great guy.

He's one of my best friends and a quick story, when he was staying with me for one of the Black Arts Festival, I think it was 2004, the room he was in, I had some pictures out and stuff.

So he actually snuck a picture of my, my dad out, made a copy of it, went back to Florida, painted.

My dad boxed.

And so he did this, this huge color piece of my dad and brought it back the next time he saw me.

It was just really cool.

And he also did a picture of my mother after she passed and made prints for all my siblings.

So I gave all my siblings a print of it for Christmas a few years back.

So just a really special guy and like I said, one of my, one of my dearest friends.

>>Dillard: One of the things in my artist statement, I always say that I love painting old people and kids because old people always have a story with the lines and the wrinkles in their face.

It tells their whole life story.

And I always like for my art to tell a story.

And kids are so innocent.

One of my two favorite pieces is of my two aunts.

I did those two pieces because I remember when I was little, we would always go to my mom's hometown in Georgia and she and her sisters would always be going to church on Sundays.

And they have those huge purse and big hats.

Some of the kids pictures are some of my grandkids.

And the reason I ended up doing them is that just like I said, I got real sick when I was 35.

I didn't think I was going to live very long after that and I said well God, just let me live long enough to see at least one grandchild and, you know, I was blessed to see twelve and three great grandchildren.

So with that, it's always a blessing to do something that you love.

And that's why I tell a lot of young artists that I've mentored over the years, when you paint, paint things that you love and you can identify with.

And with that, people will love it.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY'S WRITING STUDIO.

My name is Alexa Morgan, and I am the director of public relations here at the Hemingway Home and Museum.

So when visitors come and enjoy the property, they're already taking a step in time because we've tried our best to preserve when he was here in the 1930's.

So they still get a sense of Hemingway when they're visiting with us.

Our visitors are from every end of the spectrum.

They're history buffs, love, Hemingway read many of his books, or they've heard about all our cats.

Hemingway and Pauline, which was his second wife, traveled to Key West to pick up a Ford Roadster that her uncle Gus purchased for them.

During that time, they stayed on the island and after a few weeks fell in love and decided to purchase a home of their own.

In that time, he had finished "A Farewell to Arms" and with that inspiration wanting to continue writing and being here.

So they found this property here.

Uh, it was not in the best shape.

So they had to renovate.

Pauline, being an employee of Vogue was very into fashion and high end details.

And when they were working on the renovation, she kind of took the lead on that and imported many glass chandelier's that she installed in the home, along with, retiling the bathrooms and things like that, all those, extra details.

So this originally was the hayloft of the property, and he had a catwalk from his bedroom that extended right here to this floor.

He turned this into his writing studio and would every morning come, write, work.

And then in the afternoon, enjoy the Island life.

Even in this writing studio, we have one of his typewriters.

He had multiple typewriters, this is just one of many of his.

While here in the writing studio he completed "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," "To Have and Have Not," "The Green Hills of Africa" and many other of his short stories and other works.

With his writings, I know like "To Have and to Have Not" was more heavy of like Key West characters, more, inspired of what he would see and who he would interact with while here on the Island.

When he wrote, "Old Man and the Sea" he was no longer living here, but it was a lot of like the deep-sea fishing that he was introduced to while living here.

So I think as throughout his travels and the people he meets and where he has lived has all been an inspiration for his works.

So right now we are offering a writing experience where guests can come on property and enjoy the writing studio, the home, and the gardens privately, and maybe get sparked with some kind of inspiration to write their future novel or any kind of writing piece.

Well, it's something we've never offered before and going to other museums and visiting, there's always some kind of behind the scenes or some kind of experience you can enjoy.

And everyone is always drawn to our writing studio there.

So we thought, why not open it up for other writers?

We are opening the experience during the weekdays so they just have to inquire and make sure the date is available and we can book that for them.

Our first booking, it was actually a husband booking it for his wife as a birthday gift.

She is an up and coming author.

So he wanted to give her a spark of inspiration while they visit in the Keys.

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 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.

(CLOSED CAPTIONING BY KNME-TV)