Wisconsin Life

- The following program is a PBS Wisconsin original production.

[upbeat music] - Angela: Coming up on Wisconsin Life: meet a master glassblower, a painter sharing his journey through self-portraits, a gallery owner turning a funeral home into a thriving art space, a Two-Spirit artist exploring identity, and a tale of love in a country kitchen.

That's all ahead on Wisconsin Life!

[inspirational music] - Funding for Wisconsin Life is provided by Lowell and Mary Peterson, Alliant Energy, A.C.V.

and Mary Elston Family, Focus Fund for Wisconsin Programs, and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.

- Hi!

Welcome to Wisconsin Life!

I'm Angela Fitzgerald.

Let's brush up on our art skills as we tag along with the Art Cart in Madison, a traveling art program with activities for kids.

The Art Cart travels to different Dane County parks throughout the summer.

It's hosted by Madison School and Community Recreation, or MSCR, in partnership with the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art.

Running for close to 50 years, the Art Cart gives kids a chance to create, explore, and play.

With a new art project scheduled each day, instructors help kids paint, stamp, or craft beautiful works of art to take home.

Today, we joined the Art Cart and the "Fit2Go" van at Meadowood Park in Madison as folks get active and creative.

Both vehicles are MSCR's way to meet people where they are.

I'm gonna get ready to jump into the activities here.

Before I do, let's head out for our first story.

[cymbals clang] - Angela: We begin a collection of stories celebrating art by traveling to Madison to meet a master glassblower crafting delicate creations.

[shimmering music] - Helen Lee: In elementary school, we're sorta introduced to solids and liquids and gases, and we understand those things or how to interact with them.

But glass has this really, like, alien behavior of, like, being amorphous.

[shimmering music] How do you interact with something that's changing its behavior as you work with it?

[shimmering music] It's just really captivating to me.

[shimmering music] Now try the blades vertical and spread them to shape that shoulder.

Yes!

More vertical.

I teach at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and I teach glass in the Art Department.

[glass snaps, bounces, clanks] It's more exciting when it crashes, but... [laughs] We start with a furnace.

It's super-hot.

It's at about 2150 Fahrenheit.

And you throw in glass that we buy from a manufacturer.

It melts and then you gather it out of the furnace.

And it's like a viscous liquid.

It's sort of like when you're trying to gather up honey.

Once you have this fulcrum, [Helen whistles "pay attention"] you just have to do the lightest thing and it just comes up.

I think what I'm teaching them, it's like this act of magic to transfer that information from my body to a student's body.

Like, they can see me do something and they're like, "How did you do that?"

[laughs] But to work them through the process of learning how to do that with their own bodies is really exciting to me.

Push forward to help it get shorter, too.

Right, now it's really squatted up quite a bit.

[gentle music] We're at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Glass Lab in the Art Department.

This is a really historically relevant glass program.

It was founded by Harvey Littleton in 1962.

He was a ceramics professor that was really interested in whether one could have a kinda' independent artist studio working with glass, because prior to that, glass really existed in factories and industry.

So, it was the beginning of glass being something one could study at a university, as well as something an individual artist could practice on their own.

[gentle music] A lot of people "get bit by the glass bug," is how people refer to it.

Once you get into it, you kind of just don't stop.

[gentle music] My artwork, it's just my filter on the world.

[gentle music] This is Alphabit .

[Helen chuckles] It's modeled after a letterpress type cabinet.

Each of these pieces is an individual cross-section of a solid tube of glass.

I'm going to estimate just under 10,000 little pieces of glass type in here.

And it's kind of in response to our relationship to our phones.

We're constantly connected to them.

So I'm taking the material from the smart phone, the glass, and trying to bring it back to our former relationship with physical typography.

[gentle music] I make a lot of glass work that references language because my grandmother raised me and she only spoke Chinese.

And so, I played translator a lot.

And I was always moving between the English-speaking world and the Chinese-speaking world.

[gentle music] That experience of being bilingual has definitely influenced my outlook as an artist and my interest as an artist, as well.

[gentle music] I really like working in glass.

To ask my body to interact with this changing state of matter is something that continually captivates me.

[gentle music] My art is something that feels like it's completely mine.

It feels really authentic.

It feels like no one else can be doing that work but me.

[final note of gentle music] [cymbals clang] - Angela: Next up, we head to Oshkosh, where an artist is exploring his past by sharing his journey through self-portraits.

- A good portrait paints a picture of someone's personality.

- There's just more to capture in a person, I think.

You can capture a soul, a character, a mood.

- Jon Wos thrives on the challenge of capturing those details.

A moment.

An emotion.

An idea.

He spends several hours a day in his Oshkosh studio, bringing a blank canvas to life.

- A person just has so much story they can convey just in and of themselves.

- Jon knows how to sketch someone's story because he learned how to share a very special one... his own.

[gentle music] Jon was born with osteogenesis imperfecta .

Otherwise known as brittle bone disease.

It makes his bones more fragile than the average person.

At birth, he had 13 broken bones.

- My bones would never really heal well enough before the next fracture.

So I would fracture several times a year, different bones.

First 10 years of my life, I...

I think, we didn't keep track, but I probably had more than 50, 60 breaks.

- The slightest bump, twist, or fall can lead to a bone fracture and a long, difficult recovery process.

Everyday activities that most people take for granted are risky for Jon.

It made life difficult, but it also drove him towards his passion.

- I was always-- any extra time I had, was art.

- Still, Jon struggled with self-image.

He carried the fear of a fracture around with him constantly.

Art became his therapy.

He began experimenting with glass.

[firing blowtorch] - There's just something about glass that I've always been attracted to, even as a little kid.

It may even have something to do with my bones are basically glass.

I really like to just experiment with it and see what, if I change this one thing, what's going to happen in the end?

- His big breakthrough came in college at UW-Oshkosh.

A professor encouraged him to transform his canvas into a mirror.

He started a series of self-portraits.

- I started out exploring my past, and the pain and struggle that I went through with having osteogenesis imperfecta .

- Soon, he found himself looking forward.

- The whole process of the self-portraits was very much a journey into me finding my... my happiness, I guess.

How to get past the disability.

- Jon discovered that even though his body is fragile, his spirit is not.

- No matter what you want to do, there's always going to be something to stand in your way.

Most of the time, I think it's yourself.

- Jon learned to manage his condition.

Bone fractures became less frequent, and his art flourished.

- It gave me a sense of pride.

Something that I could do that others couldn't.

A lot of times, I'd run up against things that I couldn't do that others could.

So this was a big self-esteem booster for me.

- Today, Jon is a full-time artist, producing everything from portraits to stained glass windows.

His works appeared in galleries from Wisconsin to California.

It's been more than a decade since his last bone fracture.

Now, he's not just a successful artist.

He's a happy one.

- I don't see how I can't have a very positive attitude considering the life that I was given and then what has become of it.

- And that's a portrait of persistence.

- I like to show people with my art, I guess, that life, um, is worth the struggle, even if it gets pretty tough sometimes.

[cymbals clang] - Angela: Now, it's off to Milwaukee, where a gallery owner converted a funeral home into a thriving art space.

[energetic music] Life is full of layers.

[bag crackling] - Fatima Laster: My art is usually absence of form, so that falls in the category of abstraction.

I do do more gestural work, and so it's about movement and color.

– Angela: Stripping away one layer to get to the next.

- People really have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable without being told what the piece really is.

– Angela: Until finally revealing what's hidden within.

- There's many layers that are hidden in the work.

You know, you have to really study it and look at it to appreciate it.

[car engine chugs] - Angela: Fatima Laster did just that when she purchased this abandoned building in 2018.

[light music] - Prior to now, the space was built in the 1920s, and it's always been a funeral home.

Most people current day know it as a black-owned funeral service facility.

– Angela: And transformed it into an art gallery.

- I wanted to make it a very communal space and share a space with other artists with a mission and focus of highlighting artists of color and other marginalized artists who still have under-representation issues in our industry at large.

– Angela: Located on the north side of Milwaukee in the Five Points neighborhood, buying the building was an opportunity to give back to the community Fatima grew up in.

- This is my childhood neighborhood, and it's a conscious reinvestment in that.

When you look at fine art-- which this is a fine art space-- you're going elsewhere.

You're going downtown.

You're going to the suburbs.

You're going to another city.

You're going to another country.

And so, I sought to make this place as like a globally-appreciated space that you have immediate access to.

– Angela: The gallery allows her to display underrepresented forms of art.

[electronic music] - So I might gravitate to what some people might call "weird," but I show the range.

I've done attractions; I've done realism; I've done sculptures.

– Angela: Support from the community has helped fuel the project.

- And I got a lot of support through everyone who came through this space, and they liked and appreciated the new use.

[electronic music] - Angela: Fatima's been stripping away misperceptions of art her whole life.

- And so, we just try to create a new experience and a new concept of what art and art-making is and what is considered art for the space.

So, then, there should be something for everyone.

– Angela: And revealing the value hidden within.

- So, this was the goal.

I feel accomplished with this.

And it's just allowed me, you know, evolve from here and grow from here like I want to.

[upbeat music] [cymbals clang] - I'm with MSCR's Art Cart, learning about their work to make art more accessible to communities across Dane County.

[energetic music] The Art Cart has a long history of bringing art to families across Dane County.

We met up with MSCR's Youth Arts and Enrichment Specialist, Sarah Zahn, to discover more about this program on wheels.

[energetic music] - Art Cart is a program that started in 1975 in Madison.

It's a partnership program between Madison School and Community Recreation and Madison Museum of Contemporary Art.

It is a mobile art studio that travels to different parks throughout Madison and brings art to the community.

The idea behind the program originally was to bring arts to art deserts in Madison.

– Angela: As the Art Cart travels around town, it brings new projects for kids to get messy and create.

- So, as far as curriculum, we do have traditional projects that we do every summer.

So, Friday mornings, we have beach stops, and we do plaster sand-casting on the beach.

– Angela: MSCR, a program of the Madison School District since the 1920s, runs mobile programs like "Fit2Go" and the Art Cart as a way to connect with local neighborhoods.

– Sarah Zahn: The mission of MSCR is all about accessibility, right?

Our mission as an organization is exactly that, and there couldn't be anything, I think, more accessible than bringing the programs to the people.

We're on wheels, and we can go right to the people.

Mobile programs are still relatively new to recreation.

They're more and more coming onto the scene, but Art Cart has been around for almost 50 years now, and to just have something that's been around for so long and so well loved and doing a great job at it and being able to be a part of that is really cool and really fulfilling.

So, it's just really fun to be a part of.

[upbeat funk music] - This is my finished masterpiece.

What a fun way to learn, experiment, and try new things.

Now, it's time to meet others sharing their talents with us.

[cymbals clang] - Angela: We join a Two-Spirit artist in Lac du Flambeau who explores identity, empowerment, and representation through their work.

[relaxing music] [birds chirping] - Ryan Young: Ryan grew up in the Ojibwe community on the Lac Du Flambeau Reservation in northern Wisconsin.

[relaxing music] - Angela: Despite this tranquil Northwoods setting, Ryan Young had a complicated childhood.

- I felt isolated in a sense that there weren't other folks that identified the way that I did that I could really talk to.

– Angela: Ryan never really felt connected here or understood why.

As a teenager, Ryan was told to make a choice.

[relaxing music] - I was basically told you're gonna have to choose whether you wanna be Native or you wanna be queer.

At that moment, I was, like, probably just devastating.

The one time I meet someone who's out and queer and to kind of be handed that question.

[relaxing music] - Angela: A few years later, a random computer search erased that burden, connected the dots, and recast the doubts Ryan had been feeling.

- It wasn't until I went to college that I was kind of researching queerness in Native history.

That's where I stumbled upon the "Two-Spirit" term, which is translated from the Ojibwe term, Niizh Manidoowag.

– Angela: Two-Spirit embodies both the masculine and the feminine.

It's a centuries-old Ojibwe phrase for queer Native people, adopted as a pan-indigenous term at a gay and lesbian conference in the 1990s.

- As soon as I saw that it was an Ojibwe word, like, that just, like, kinda clicked.

Not only can I do this, this is my history.

This is my culture.

That was my 'aha moment' right there, just kinda figuring out I can exist as both these identities.

– Angela: Ryan now uses art to provide a voice and example for those still searching for answers.

[relaxing music] - I still see my role as kind of helping and healing.

All of our journeys are different.

The reason why my art focuses so much on identity, empowerment, and representation is because that wasn't there growing up.

– Angela: Drawing came first, then photography.

[snapping case] [turning dial ] - I started a Two-Spirit project, so I was focusing on photographing people that identified as Two-Spirit.

The piece "my queerness is traditional" was to remind people that that's a part of our culture.

I wanted to use text, give them mantras and quotes that build up our identity.

– Angela: In middle school, and again, at the University of Wisconsin, Ryan was told to abandon any aspirations of being an artist.

- The advisor was like, "Well, I saw their work, and they should pick a different major."

– Angela: Ryan transferred to the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe.

– Ryan: So, I didn't listen, and, like, two years after that, I got flown back to Madison to talk about my art.

– Angela: Today, Ryan's artwork hangs in institutes of higher education, like the University of Illinois, Brown, and Princeton.

- This piece is called "My Gender is Indigenous."

A lot of people that have seen this piece are just drawn in by him staring right at you.

– Angela: Now, a lot more people are seeing Ryan's work.

[relaxing music] - Eighth Generation put a call out for concept ideas of the Two-Spirit blanket.

– Angela: Once again, an opportunity to mix art, culture, and identity when Ryan's design was selected.

– Ryan: It was unreal.

I was just super excited 'cause this was a really important project, you know, just to know that this is gonna be a gift to the Two-Spirit community and that I had this opportunity to have my art out on a larger scale was just a unbelievable experience.

– Angela: The inspiration for the blanket is steeped in Native lore.

[tribal music] - This story was told to me by my Ojibwe language teacher when I was younger.

I had talked about how at one time, crows had rainbow-y feathers and bright, vivid colors and had a really beautiful singing voice.

And one day, there was this forest fire.

As they were flying past the smoke to warn the animals, the smoke turned their feathers black, and it made their voices hoarse.

[bird cawing] So, they ended up having to sacrifice these really beautiful elements [bird cawing] of their appearance and their existence in order to save their community and help make sure that all the animals got out safely.

[bird cawing] For me, it just kinda symbolizes a similar experience of giving sacrifice and having to give up parts of myself, really put myself out there in order to help my community, and to know that I still carry the effects of those sacrifices even today.

It's kind of like the symbolism of my feathers turning black and my voice going hoarse.

– Angela: A writer for The New York Times got wind of Ryan's Two Sprit story.

[energetic music] - Ryan: It is an identity that fits Young uncomfortably, one that took time to find even though the term itself comes from a translation of an Ojibwe phrase, Niizh Manidoowag.

It was probably one of the coolest.

My mom and my dad were super excited.

We literally were hunting The New York Times .

As soon as that got published, we bought four or five newspapers.

– Angela: Again, Ryan's truth connected with the Two-Spirit community.

- We are important, and we are valid, and we exist, and that's, you know, that's empowerment to me.

– Angela: Discovering that Two-Spirit term awakened Ryan to new possibilities: a reconnection to Ojibwe culture and provided a sense of home in northern Wisconsin.

[cymbals clang] For our last story, author Michael Perry shares a poetic country kitchen memory in this animated tale.

[upbeat music] - Early in our courtship, my wife Anneliese took me to visit Tom and Arlene, an elderly farm couple she'd grown close to during her teenage years.

[birds chirping] We stepped through the screen door and seated ourselves in the kitchen.

The kitchen is small and close, dominated by the bulwark of a cast iron wood range dating to 1893.

[wood knocking] Add to that encroaching cupboards, the kitchen sink and dish-stacked countertops, a refrigerator, a modern electrical stove, and an overloaded coat rack, and there's not a lot of room to maneuver.

The wooden floors are dark brown and unpolished but worn to smoothness by over a century of boot soles.

The table, as I've come to know over the course of many subsequent visits, is always happily cluttered with mail and pens and notepads and cookies and saltines and always a Skippy jar filled with peanut M&M's.

The worn floor, the dim corners, the bacon grease undertones, [birds chirping] this is the same kitchen I've known from clear back to my grasshopper-size days in Sampson township.

[birds chirping] These are not the kitchens of slick magazines and stainless steel appliances.

These are the kitchens of clutter and stack, of the dishrag hung and the pans piled, [dishes clanging] of the countertop bucket spilling onion husks [dishes clanging] and potato peels.

Company is happily received with no preemptive clearing of the decks.

Just clomp right in, boots and all.

Your chair is waiting.

More often than not, left at an open angle, ready to receive the next visitor.

What I'm saying is, "The first time I walked through Tom and Arlene's door with Anneliese and stepped into that kitchen, even though I had never been there before, I knew exactly where I was."

When Anneliese and I left that night and after I had dropped her off, and was headed by to my very bachelor home, there had been a key change within me.

As I watched her laugh and trade stories, I saw signs of an old soul.

[crickets chirping] A person who paid her respects and paid them to the sort of people much of the world passes by at top speed.

[traffic noises] Prior to our night in Tom and Arlene's kitchen, I saw Anneliese as beautiful, desirable, smart, and strong.

More than enough, in other words, and easily more than I had earned.

But as I watched how she honored Tom and Arlene with nothing fancier than honest talk and clear laughter, [crickets chirping] I began to realize I had found a person perfectly and unpretentiously matched to the roughneck kitchen of my dreams.

[strumming guitar] - I've been able to create and learn about the Art Cart in Madison while meeting new people with extraordinary stories.

[upbeat music] To access our full collection, visit WisconsinLife.org.

Share your art or hobbies with us by emailing [email protected] or connect with us on social media.

Until we paint the town again, I'm Angela Fitzgerald, and this is our Wisconsin Life.

Bye!

- Announcer: Funding for Wisconsin Life is provided by Lowell and Mary Peterson, Alliant Energy, A.C.V.

and Mary Elston Family, Focus Fund for Wisconsin Programs, and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.