Annc: COMING UP ON KVIE ARTS SHOWCASE.... WE CELEBRATE ARTS FROM AROUND THE WORLD AND RIGHT HERE AT HOME.

Annc: AN ARTIST DEFINES HER WORK AS INDIGENOUS REALISM.

Pamela: I hope people will gain, from just seeing my work and hearing my films and my poetry, is that they can make a conscious decision with the choices they make in life.

Annc: AN ENVIRONMENTAL ARTIST Mira: All of my work has burning of some kind in it.

And I think it does reflect both sides of creation... creation, and destruction.

And that's what nature is all about.

Annc: A MURAL THAT TELLS A STORY Ebony: We have the power to recreate, you know, like, a new Greenwood.

We just need to believe in it and... and just go for it.

Annc: PERFORMING WITH FIRE Cooper: I would describe flow arts, fire spinning, as a visual art and you'’re able to tell a story and create shapes that you wouldn'’t be able to, otherwise, with just your body.

Annc: AND A NATIVE AMERICAN ART EXHIBITION.

Gaylord: Exhibitions like this are meant to move people outside of that idea that all Native peoples are the same, homogeneous.

They were not at any time, and they're certainly not today.

Annc: IT'S ALL UP NEXT ON KVIE ARTS SHOWCASE....... ♪♪ ♪♪ Annc: CALIFORNIA MULTIMEDIA ARTIST PAMELA J PETERS USES HER ART AS A WAY TO DOCUMENT THE LIVES AND LEGACY OF NATIVE AMERICANS AND WHO THEY ARE TODAY.

♪♪ Pamela: I think to be seen as Native American, here, in contemporary times is... is... is vital for our existence, really, because it affects not only our imagery, but it al... also affects policies.

It also affects our land base.

Marinda: Multimedia Artist, Pamela J Peters, describes her work as Indigenous Realism.

Using her art as a vessel to tell the stories, preserve the legacy, dedication, resilience, contributions, and lives of Native Americans, while also building a foundation to dismantle the false and harmful narratives used for far too long.

Pamela: I was born and raised on a tribal reservation.

I was born in, um, in Shiprock, New Mexico, which is on the Navajo Nation...

When I would spend time with my father, um, he really enjoyed watching Western films... And, um, saw these Western films, and I've always saw how they depict Indians, and how Indians were seen as savages, as, um, you know, almost like this demonic being in... in their storytelling.

And I'm watching it, and I felt weird, even as a young kid.

And then I saw my dad, he jumped up and he was like cheering for John Wayne.

And he's like, "Yeah, kill the Indians!"

And I was like, Wait a minute.

What does that mean?

And as a young kid, that confused me, and I was a bit precousious, and I was like, wondering.

I was like, "Why did they want to kill the Indians?"

And this is my dad saying, "Because they're bad."

And I'm like, "But aren't we Indians?"

He's like, "Well, we're not like them."

And I couldn't understand that.

Marinda: Pamela would carry the weight of that narrative throughout her life, leaving her in search of where she fit into the world around her and how she would define herself as a Native American.

Pamela: ...Fast forward when I was, um, going to school at UCLA and I was, um, studying American Indian history and I was also, um, studying film and television history.

So, I kind of combined my focus on both aspects and it really, like, clicked with me like, Oh, this is why they did this.

This is why they created this good character and this bad character, because-— and this is why they created Western ideology is they needed to get society to understand, Well, these are the reasons why we've decimated Indians is because we needed the land base.

And what other great way to do this is through Western films.

Pamela: And we were completely erased of understanding the realness of who we are in the education system.

So, there was this mockery that's created through sports events and through, um, um, advertisements.

And so, when I really understood that, I'm like, well, this is why I was a confused, um, young kid and why I became a rebellion teenager, and why I felt suicidal, um, later in my teens.

And I think a lot of young kids feel that way because they don't see themselves.

Marinda: In finding her own understanding, Pamela embraced her Native American roots, creating cultural outlets through her art, and establishing a platform for others to be seen and see themselves, authentically.

>>>: The Mural of Toypcirina in Indian Alley, We Hear you!

Pamela: Well, I think it's important.

The work that I'm doing, it is preserving, it's preserving a narrative at the time.

I definitely think that art builds connection to understanding other cultures, definitely.

Um, I think my work has definitely, um, opened people subconscious, um, mind to say, "Oh, I didn't know.

I didn't know the... the history of American Indians in the city.

I didn't know that there were 567, you know, federally recognized tribes..." I definitely think it does, and it gives-— It... it gives existence to the atrocities of our history... Marinda: Pamela's work has also given many of its viewers a resilience to take a deeper look at their own understanding of how they may subconsciously view others through a biased lens, while also giving opportunities to ask questions.

Pamela: Well, I think what people can understand with Native American culture is that we are just not one image.

♪♪ So, for right now, I'm just kind of, um, documenting, um, the existence of who we are, as contemporary American Indians today.

I hope people will gain from just seeing my work and hearing my films and my poetry is that they can make a conscious decision with the choices they make in life, and to really understand the diversity of American Indians.

We're not one Relic Indian.

We do have multiple voices.

We are the fabric of the United States.

I'm just a small, small fraction of the many stories that can be told.

Um, I think everybody has this creative ability to do it.

And I hope I can carry that, you know, pass on that torch to the next person.

Today I live with pride.

Today I live with pride.

Today I live with pride.

♪♪ Annc: FOR FOUR DECADES, FLORIDA ECO-FEMINIST ARTIST, MIRA LEHR, HAS BEEN RENDERING ABSTRACT ARTWORKS THAT REFLECT ON NATURE AND OUR ENVIRONMENT.

♪♪ Mira: The beauty is very important to me, but I have to take the bloom off the rose.

I'm Mira Lehr, I'm an artist.

All of my work has burning of some kind in it.

And I think it does reflect both sides of creation... creation, and destruction.

And that's what nature is all about.

It's always related to the environment.

I always drew when I was a little kid, I never really knew I would be a professional artist.

As I grew older, I decided I was going to study art history.

In college, I was so lucky because, at the time I graduated, the abstract expressionists were holding forth in New York and there was a major movement.

So, I was right in the middle of this really wonderful scene.

So, from then on, I did art.

And I was not really into the environment as much, in the beginning.

I just did nature, a lot of nature studies, but eventually, I heard of Buckminster Fuller, a man who was very much about the planet, and I saw an opportunity to work with him in 1969.

I went to New York and I worked with him on something called The World Game.

And that was about how to make the world work in the most efficient way, and doing more with less.

So from then on, I was hooked.

I'm feeling two urgencies-— one, I'm getting older, that's an urgency.

You know, how many years do I have left?

And the other urgency is how many years does the planet have left?

So we've converged.

Every day, I get up, raring to go.

The Orlando exhibit, it was called High Water Mark, because that's where we're at, and that's where they felt my career was at.

So, that show had very, very large sculptures of mangroves.

And you could walk through the mangroves and feel you were encased, in the roots, the root system.

There's something about being enclosed in the space that makes the viewer very much more attentive to what's happening.

And so, I watched people walking through the mangroves and they were all moved by it.

And so, now, I'm back in the studio and I'm turning to something I'm calling "Planetary Visions" because I'm doing images of earth masses.

I've also added writing, which some of it is from Bucky Fuller about the planet.

Some of it is just poetry about nature.

I've always felt that abstraction is the highest form.

Even though I like...

I like representation, but to me, abstraction gets the essence... the essence of everything.

And you can take it and go on with it.

And it's more spiritual to me.

You know, if the world falls apart and people are concerned just with their little everyday existence, I don't see a great future.

But I'm hoping there's still time.

The clock is definitely ticking, and I'm not a politician and I'm not a scientist.

The way I can express it is through my art.

And, um, that's what I'm trying to do, along with having a wonderful experience making it.

♪♪ Annc: WITH WOOD AS HER MEDIUM OF CHOICE, OKLAHOMA-BASED ARTIST, EBONY IMAN DALLAS, CREATED THE MURAL "“GREENWOOD IMAGINE"” BASED OFF OF A POEM BY ANTHONY CURTIS BRINKLEY.

THE ARTWORK IMAGINES A WORLD IN WHICH THE 1921 TULSA RACE RIOTS NEVER HAPPENED.

Ebony: My biological father came from, you know, from Somaliland.

And literally, like, when the civil war broke out, bombs are being dropped on your house by the government.

So, it reminded me of what happened in Greenwood.

One minute, everything is fine, and then, the next moment, it's all gone.

My name'’s Ebony Iman Dallas, and I'’m an artist.

Um, I love to tell stories through my work.

I would definitely say a lot of my choices are influenced by my background.

♪♪ In 2008, I went to visit my family in Somaliland.

We were getting Henna done and my art just kind of lent itself to... to that.

My art, since then, has... has definitely, um, become a lot more free.

Close to a year and a half ago, Tony Brinkley, um, got in touch with me because he had this idea called Greenwood Imagine.

Tony, he's a poet -— amazing, phenomenal award-winning poet.

And his grandson, Derek Tinsley is a filmmaker.

And so, they were looking for a painter to create a series of murals that would go along with the poem.

And so, I proposed to him that I create the murals solely out of wood.

This is where you have to make sure not to cut your hand off.

So, the very first scene is like the past.

So, it's like, let's show what Greenwood was like before the destruction.

♪♪ So, it's this beautiful scene of the little girl with her father walking through town with an ice cream cone.

The second scene is-— was pretty much created after reading through a series of interviews.

But this one, specifically, talked about, you know, it was a survivor.

I believe she was about five years old when the massacre occurred, and she talked about these reoccurring dreams that she would have.

And to me, it sounded like PTSD.

Like, she talked about the smoke and she talked about the smells and she talked about the fire.

And it was just so vivid, her description.

Like, I immediately was able to create a sketch for it.

I guess, in some ways, I may have went that direction because my father was murdered by police officers.

And so, um, so that... that idea of this father-daughter relationship and loss, like, resonated with me.

And then, reading these stories about people who lost parents in Greenwood definitely resonated.

♪♪ The third scene is let's imagine what it could have been like.

Like, what would it be like if, you know, had the massacre never occurred?

There'll be some puzzle pieces missing.

And so, then we'll have someone from the audience come up and place it into the piece.

Tony: Let'’s imagine a "What if?"

What if the massacre never happened?

What if Tulsa residents had enjoyed free reign to flourish into the future, and Greenwood never lost that "“yes we can"” mindset?

Can you imagine this?

Ebony: But basically, it'’s like we have the power to recreate, you know, like, a new Greenwood.

We just need to believe in it and... and just go for it.

♪♪ Annc: WE HEAD TO RENO, NEVADA, TO MEET ARTIST COOPER BAYT.

COMBINING FIRE SPINNING, JUGGLING, AND DANCE, HE CREATES DYNAMIC PERFORMANCES THAT LEAVE THE VIEWER AMAZED.

♪♪ Cooper: I would describe flow arts as a visual art, much like dance, but you're combining modern dance with prop manipulation.

So, it's adding that extra element where it's kind of an extension of your body and you're able to tell a story and create shapes.

♪♪ My name's Cooper Bayt and I'm from Reno, Nevada.

I am a flow artist and professional fire spinner.

I was gifted a pair of juggling sticks when I was really young and I spent countless hours at the park, training this thing that I had no idea would really, kind of, take over my life, later on.

Controlled Burn, which is a local fire spinning group, had a workshop when I was only 13 years old and so I was able to fire spin for the first time when I was 13.

And my grandma, she was a professional photographer.

She actually captured that first time.

She instilled a lot of that fine arts background in me and that beat dynamic.

♪♪ There are specialized tools.

Take a juggling club.

And the way you would do it is you would have, let's say, a jar, or an ammo container, full of white gas, kerosene, or lamp oil, and you actually dip it in and this wick will absorb like a sponge.

When you dip the prop into the gas, that's like a moment of mindfulness, like, you're counting, you're measuring the amount of fuel that you soak and you hold it there and you let the excess drip out.

And in that moment, you know, you're collecting yourself, you're getting ready, and when you're ignited, that poof, that initial rush is like, "Okay, here we go."

Everything just starts to fade away.

You just get that internal rush of the fire around your body, the sound of it, wooshing past your head.

It's an amazing feeling.

I love to interpret, like, hip hop dance with creating shapes that are extensions of my bodies with the props.

So, it's kind of that mix of dance and prop manipulation, very much inspired by hip hop and modern dance.

A lot of it is improvisational when it's just a solo flow performance.

I do also choreograph and write shows with multiple fire artists so it becomes a choreographed dance that is very structured that we all have to hit the certain notes on the certain eight counts in... in order to create the illusion, create the shape that we want the audience to see.

What I get out of flow arts, juggling, fire spinning is the fact that it's good.

It's good for my mental health.

It's not so easy to talk about mental health and people's anxiety and fear, and I think this has been a means that has really, um, really saved me, in a way, to be able to dance like nobody's watching.

You really can get into a meditative state.

It's the "flow" state that we refer to and it's mindfulness, because you're able to move your body in a certain way that you're able to release, you're able to let go of everything else and train relentlessly to give me some kind of purpose in this crazy world.

Like, even if it's just as silly as learning a new trick that night, it's doing the problem solving, the-— going through the motions and the failure, in order to pick it back up and... and start again.

And so, that translates into my life tenfold.

♪♪ Annc: AT THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART IN NEW YORK CITY, THE EXHIBIT "“ART OF NATIVE AMERICA: THE CHARLES AND VALERIE DIKER COLLECTION"” SHOWCASES A WIDE RANGE OF NATIVE AMERICAN WORKS FROM OVER 50 NORTH AMERICAN CULTURES.

Gaylord Torrence: The most important thing, I think, about this exhibition, other than the celebration of Native American art and the artists that created these works, is the fact that it is being shown-— these works are being shown in the American Wing, which is the first time in the history of this museum since the wing opened in 1924.

So, it's a momentous movement, in terms of recognizing Native American art as foundational to our cultural heritage.

Exhibitions like this are meant to move people outside of that idea that all Native peoples are the same, homogeneous.

They were not at any time, and they're certainly not today.

I find the Pawnee war club to be one of the most astonishing objects in the Diker collection.

First of all, just as a sculptural work, it's sublime, in terms of its proportion, the elegance of the shape.

It is a functional weapon.

It was carried to war.

But it was also an important piece of artistic expression.

Yup'’ik masks, as a group of objects, are some of the most amazing images that one can imagine.

This particular mask, and I would say most Yup'’ik masks, represent the prey animals.

It's often said that these masks represent something called "“Yua,"” which is probably easiest translated as "“the ongoing soul.

"” When you see an image of a fish or a seal or a bird, it doesn't represent specific creatures, it represents all of those of that genus that have ever lived or will live in the future.

So the mask is timeless, in that respect, and it places the Yup'’ik people in a timeless relation with all of the animals with whom they share their world.

Standing Bear was a participant in the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

He was 16 years old at the time.

That was in 1876.

In the 1880s, Standing Bear went to Europe with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.

He met an Austrian woman, they fell in love, he married her, brought her back to Pine Ridge Reservation, and Standing Bear began to develop his art.

He basically tried to bring together, in this painting, six different episodes that he remembered.

Now, they didn't all happen at the same time, but within the tradition of warrior art, Standing Bear represented them all as though they were occurring at the same time.

There are horses that are being run off, separated, leaving the soldiers on foot.

There is a depiction of a group of soldiers that ran down from the hill and were killed in a ravine.

Another group of soldiers tried to break away on horseback riding back to the south.

They were overtaken and killed.

And then, there's the final battle on the hill, including a depiction of Custer himself.

They all are great, kind of, sweeping battle narratives like one would expect to see in the great painting-— battle paintings and tapestries in Europe, which he undoubtedly saw.

Carrie Bethel was a master basket maker.

She was prominent in the 1920s and 30s in California.

This particular piece was her first attempt to create a basket of that scale.

It took her three years.

Maybe the best way to think about the achievement in that basket is to think about it, first, in relation to the materials, which required an enormous body of expert knowledge, in terms of knowing which plants to gather, how to prepare them, before the basket was ever begun.

A basket of that kind is created using a coil technique, which begins in the center of the bottom and then started upward and outward to form the sides of the object and then, at a certain point, the midpoint, began to curve inward to reach its final form.

There was no revision possible.

She simply wove it from the bottom up.

And when you see the perfection in that form, in the relationship of that two-dimensional design to the volumetric shape of the object and, ultimately, the kind of tension that that form holds, the achievement is visible and amazing.

The objective in presenting these objects in the way that we've done is to respect them as works of art, as sophisticated and beautiful creations.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Annc: Episodes of KVIE Arts showcase along with other KVIE programs are available to watch online at kvie.org/video.