Funding for COLORES was provided in part by: Frederick Hammersley Fund for the Arts at the Albuquerque Community Foundation and the New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund at the Albuquerqu 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!

ECOLOGIST BY DEGREE AND NATURALI BY HEART, PHOTOGRAPHER CHRISTINA SELBY CAPTURES THE BEAUTY OF NEW MEXICO’S WILDFLOWERS.

FOCUSING ON SHAPE, FORM AND TEXTURE, PAINTER CHASE MULLEN EXPLORES SOUTHERN ECOSYSTEMS IN ELABORATE DETAIL.

CREATING MURALS OF OVER 300 BIRDS, THE AMBITIOUS AUDUBON MURAL PROJECT IN NEW YORK CITY RAISES AWARENESS OF THE MANY SPECIES OF BIRDS THREATENED BY CLIMATE CHANGE.

A CAPE ANN MUSEUM EXHIBIT FOCUSES ON TWO ENDURING NEW ENGLAND ART COLONIES WHERE ARTISTS SOUGHT TO EXPRESS AN AMERICAN IDENTITY.

IT’S ALL AHEAD ON COLORES!

WILDFLOWER ADVENTURES.

>>Ebony Isis Booth: What inspires your love of New Mexico wildflowers?

>>Christina Selby: Wild flowers in general, I feel inspired by their color and their form and their beauty.

But here in New Mexico, compared to maybe further north like Colorado, Wyoming.

It’s a little bit like a treasure hunt.

[MUSIC] They’re maybe not as abundant as in some other areas and I really love to like seek out the ones that I’ve heard about or have seen pictures of and find them in person and find their beauty.

>>Ebony: What happens to you when you’re out in the field?

>>Christina: It’s such a fun experience for me.

I love to get out early in the season when the wildflowers are just starting to bloom and I have been out enough now that I sort of know where certain flowers are going to appear and what time of year, but it’s always a little bit of a like a magical appearance of a friend, it’s like, “There you are again!

It’s nice to see you!” >>Ebony: What time of the year does the season begin?

>>Christina: It depends on where you are in New Mexico.

Lower down in the desert it can start as early as February and then as you get up in the mountains, flowers can bloom— can start blooming as late as July or August or even into September.

So that’s what is fun about New Mexico, it’s almost a year round activity, blooming season.

>>Ebony: Any interesting stories or experiences where you have been surprised in the field doing this work?

>>Christina: Yeah, there was once I was up on this place called Hamilton Mesa and there was this little mariposa lily.

It’s a beautiful little, colorful flower.

I was like hunched down in the grasses, they’re pretty tall grasses so as I was sitting there, over my head, I heard a bit of rustling behind me and there was a coyote like less than a foot away from me and we just stared at each other and didn’t move, and then one of us flinched and he ran off.

[LAUGHING] But I have had a few experiences like that where I am so in the zone and something creeps up on me, some kind of wildlife.

Luckily it has always been a both of a shocked experience where nothing has happened.

>>Ebony: You have spoken about how the desert listens >>Christina: So it’s interesting that the desert can be such a quiet place, you know, there is— it’s almost like you can hear the silence in places where it is so quiet.

There is a flower called “evening primrose” and it opens its petals in the sunset hours and it gets pollinated by a night moth or some bumblebees, then it closes again in the early morning before it gets too hot.

There are some scientists at Tel Aviv University that did a study that shows that these flowers– they can— the petals sort of hear, if you will, the frequency of the wing beats of a certain hawk moth and certain bumblebees, and they beat at a certain frequency and the flower resonates with this– the petals, they will produce more and sweet nectar in that moment.

They know that if there is one pollinator that then another one will come soon.

So these little flowers that have this bowl shape are listeni for their pollinators and they respond with sweetness and with nectar and with nourishment and it’s a way for them to not be producing and spend that energy all the time, but to direct it a you know, their sort of benefici in that mutual relationship.

>>Ebony: How do wildflowers help with environmental recovery?

>>Christina: For example, when we have these wildfires usually what is the first thing to recolonize an area is wildflowers, and so you have this sort of destruction that happens which can be very harsh depending on the heat of the fire or what comes after– if the trees have burned then the sunlight gets to the ground, then the seed bank— you know, wildfires release a lot of seeds and they can sit in the ground for a long time and wait for the right conditions.

And that often is after a wildfire, there is all this light and the wildflowers will bloom prolifically and there is this one called “fireweed”.

[MUSIC] And it actually does not reproduce so much from seed but from its root system, from the rhizomes.

It will come back and because it's so prolific and it has these underground root systems it can hold the soil in the earth there so when rains come or when flooding, or erosio happens it’s working to hold tha soil in place where the forest c then regenerate and other plants that come after the wildflowers can get a foothold among them and then so they are pretty powe part of that system of regenerat [MUSIC] >>Ebony: what is it like for you to be out among the flowers?

>>Christina: It's a very sort of, sensorial experience.

It’s about being outside with the smells, certain wildflowers have very beautiful and very fragrant smells.

It’s about being with my camera and being on the ground, getting dirty in the dirt, trying to set up different lighting, holding my foot up for a piece of shade over here and doing tons of acrobatics trying to get just the right angle for these flowers.

I love that contact that wildflowers sort of demand of me to like get down on the Earth and it’s touch and taste and smell and like all of my senses are alive in that moment.

I am looking through a lens, a very directed very sor of intimate experience of them, especially when I am looking at a macro level, you know, very cl you can see all the details of w that flower has to offer.

>>Ebony: Why is this important for you to do?

>>Christina: I think it brings me joy and happiness and peace in my life.

Being out in nature and having this relationship with flowers, you know, I like to know their names, I like to know where they grow, I like to experience their beauty and so– it’s like important for me and my heart.

My husband will say if I am getting a little agro at home, just go outside and you know, go be with the flowers for a while and I always come back home calmer, a bit more peaceful and a little bit more of a better person to be around.

[LAUGHING] You bring a lot of joy so thank you for having me.

>>Ebony Isis Booth: Thank you Christina.

SCIENTIFIC PAINTINGS.

[Music] When I was looking into these early naturalist painters, I was obviously very drawn to that style.

I think I somewhat romanticized it how they would go out into the wilderness and document this before there were cameras.

This is just how the knowledge was gathered and that's how it was passed on.

There's something very romantic about that.

I like the clean background because it reminds me of scientific illustrations.

That’s where my interest first started with older illustrators as Audubon, the more naturalist painters.

They always had a clean simple background.

It kind of drew more attention to the anatomy and the subject.

It’s about really homing in on the single subject and you’re really exploring that subject’s shape, form, texture and it is easier to do that when you are devoid of a setting.

I like birch panels because they are very smooth and, they kind of allow me to elaborate with detail and I am not fighting the texture of canvas as much.

It just makes it more of a scientific panel so what I will typically do is paint the entire thing white, with a gesso I can sand down to the texture that I like and then I will paint the subject and then once it is finished, I will go b with a nice white wash, which cleans any blemishes I may have made.

It also serves as a closing ritual for a finished piece.

That piece is titled Seed Savers, Two and it's actually an accompanying piece for Seed Savers, One, which is a very similar composition.

When I made that, I was doing some reading about native plants and crops to specific regions.

I was really interested in this idea of seeds and crops that are gone.

And there's this new generation of chefs that are looking to find seeds and crops that have left out food ways.

And they're going to find the se and hopefully bring them back an try and reintroduce them to the cuisine of the South specificall And I was thinking about how cow birds, any animal that spend a l of time in these pastures, and farms in South, how they can act as vessels for seeds and just ki of carry them.

It was just all such a fascinating subject to me.

So I wanted to build a piece tha showed all of these potential vessels, proceeds, bringing them to new areas, and also sharing t I also put a cattle egret on top cow because they typically hitch a ride, it just it all felt like somewhat of a caravan.

That’s South Coast.

I've been experimenting a lot with water levels and water lines, and specifically the perspective change above and below water, how do I bring that perspective in without completely changing lanes as far as my solid white background; completely removed and devoid of context and region?

I found that if I consider the water to be negative space the same way the white is air, but it's still negative space.

It's just two elements.

I could just fold it into the rest of my work.

I can merge those with birds and turn it into a composition.

I'm particularly interested in that piece right now because it opens the door to me, using the same perspective of ecosystems and brackish water and swamp and I can really play with land and sea at the same time.

When I was looking into these early naturalist painters; if you were to take the same approach, the environment wouldn't be devoid of manmade context.

It's clearly there.

If you were to take an Audubon-style, the world of birds, the book of birds, and you were to fold in what we've done to the landscape, how would that show up?

The LA 1 Sign for me is iconic in its own way.

And it also adds this the sense of place.

It can really give you as much context as I can give, without a background.

I don't think my work as realism as it does exist.

I think of it as realism in the form that it could exist.

For instance, we have a turtle shell, I was really drawn to turtles for a little for a little while, and specifically the shell.

I just, I liked the form.

I like the shape and the color and texture.

And I found that to be a really interesting vessel.

And I wanted that to be the subject of a piece.

A turtle shell is somewhat morbid.

And it's very hard to distract from the idea of death.

So I was kind of searching for something that would add to that composition typically going for some kind of plant, something that was alive, something that was coming back and growing.

Looking at plants that were regionally specific to wherever turtles are some kind of freshwater plant.

That led me to the Lotus and the Lotus has a lot of symbolism to it on its own.

Its height was right, the shape of the lotus leaf was somewhat shell-like in composition.

I've drifted more into wanting my work to be able to capture the south as a region.

Having traveled a lot, there is a particular fondness I have and an affinity that I've become more connected to a I've drifted away.

I am self-trained.

I was always drawing and painting, ever since I could hold a pencil.

I can barely remember when I was in kindergarten and I was learning to write the alphabet, and I was turning all of my alphabet letter into little monsters, adding arms and teeth.

The teacher actually noticed that.

I thought she was actually going to lecture me on it, but she was like, oh, so you like to draw, that’s neat.

MURALS WITH A MISSION.

AVI GITLER: I had opened the gallery and wanted to bring some attention to the gallery so asked the one fine artist I knew who also did quote unquote street art to paint a mural on the adjacent gates to this art gallery.

And he's from Florida and he said to me I’m gonna paint a flamingo for you because I’m from Florida, bring some Florida flavor - and I made the connection: John James Audubon, birds, and that's how the project really got started >>MARK JANNOT: And I said, wow this is a great idea.

Get the word out about the threatened birds, beautify the neighborhood, but let’s be a little more ambitious and let’s not do just a dozen birds, but let’s do all 314 threatened birds, do murals of all of them on gates and walls all over this neighborhood and Avi, crazily, said sure let’s do it and we’ve been, you know, chasing our 314 number ever since.

AVI GITLER: So it's really nice to sort of publicize one of the great Americans and really one of the most interesting Americans to people who are familiar with the name but unfamiliar with the actual person.

>>MARK JANNOT: John James Audubon was possibly America’s greatest bird and natural world artist.

He was an extraordinary, pioneering ornithologist.

He spent the last 10 years of his life here in Washington Heights.

>>AVI GITLER: The center of the project really has shifted to what was once the Audubon estate between 155th and 156th Street and Broadway.

And it's appropriate because John James Audubon's final resting place is in Trinity Cemetery on 155th.

We made the decision to paint from approximately 135th Street West to 193rd Street which is the end of Audubon Avenue and there's no great logic to it but we sort of thought it would be nice to keep the project uptown.

Picking the locations is a bit of a challenge but one of the things we decided from the beginning was we weren't just going to paint anywhere, we're looking to beautify.

So we're seeking out spaces that are in need of some sort of fix some sort of improvement so you know the big walls that we've painted all had you know crumbling paint and really were in a state of disrepair.

We've worked with landlords to secure spaces, like empty alcoves that are boarded up, and we can work with studio artists who are painting panels that we then install into the building.

We're mostly working with artists who are from the neighborhood or from the greater New York area.

We work with them to choose a bird.

We try not to paint the same birds twice and we really ask them to do what they want within reason.

Some of the murals contain more than one bird so we’ve painted about 70 birds so far.

There are challenges to painting outside, but there are also benefits of painting outside.

So there are people who come while an artist paints and they're engaged in the artists and it's a little bit distracting.

But the positive is that they're engaging the artists and their learning about the project and they're learning not just about global warming, they're learning about art.

I’m from the neighborhood originally and I wanted people uptown to be able to see the sort of art that you would normally have to go to Chelsea, or the Lower East Side, or maybe parts of Brooklyn for.

>>MARK JANNOT: One of the things I love about coming up here to look at and for the murals is that you can’t be sure on any given visit which one’s you’re going to see or that you’re going to see them all.

In that way it’s sort of like going out for a birding expedition.

You can’t know which birds you’re going to see.

When you’re talking about half of all North American birds being threatened, you’re going to see some birds there that you wouldn’t expect to see.

They will shift, they will move.

The Baltimore Oriole is projected to no longer be able to be seen in Baltimore.

The Common Loon, which is the state bird of Minnesota, is projected not to be able to be found in Minnesota.

I think that the, that sort of seeing these murals of birds in this urban environment, in a particularly urban sort of art form, is something that gets people’s attention.

I hope that they will sort of investigate and see if like, what is this, why are these murals all here?

And really learn about this kind of threat to the birds that we are used to seeing around us, even in an urban environment.

I hope that it inspires people to think about that and to kind of be inspired to do something about it.

>>AVI GITLER: On 163rd we have one of my favorite murals.

It's by the artist Cruz, who is a New York-based artist, and it's a painting of three Tricolored Herons.

And in the mural, the polar ice caps have melted and sea levels are rising and the three herons are sort of fighting for the last food, in this case a snake.

There's so many things I'd love for people to take away from the murals: an understanding of the threats that the environment faces, more neighborhood pride for uptown Manhattan, a sense that art is accessible.

>>MARK JANNOT: I strongly encourage people to get up here because it’s really an extraordinary experience.

CAPTURING PLACE.

As much as artists have always been drawn to, say the sea, they’ve also felt the gravitational pull of each other.

Throughout art history it’s been the crux of many an art colony.

“In the case of Cape Ann, it is a place where teachers and art teachers and students and professional painters, amateur painters all seem to gather and find inspiration among themselves.” Cape Ann has been a draw for its harbors in Gloucester and Rockport—places which have long found a balance between bustling and the rustic grit that defines ages of seafaring.

Martha Oaks is curator of the Cape Ann Museum.

“Here in Cape Ann where it's a very welcoming place for artists and everywhere you look, you can find something that attracts you no matter what medium you work in.

So it's easily accessible.” But many of the same artists who have made Cape Ann their artistic oasis, have also found their muse on Monhegan Island.

One hundred miles up the coast from Cape Ann, it’s a picture of stony isolation.

“We find the beautiful coastline, the rocky coastline, the ocean, crashing waves and unspoiled land.” “When I was there this summer, I stepped off the boat and literally the first thing I saw was an artist at an easel.

And it's wonderful to know that those places exist.” Oliver Barker is the Director of the Cape Ann Museum which, along with the Monhegan Museum of Art & History, is presenting exhibition documenting the growth of the two enduring art colonies.

“It's looking at that period of the late 19th century into the early 20th century and a period when artists were searching for their own unique American voice.

And I think it's perhaps why they were drawn to these two rugged landscapes to try and encapsulate that that new sense of American identity.” Artists began creating arts colonies in both locales in the years after the Civil War when transportation improvements made access to Cape Ann and Monhegan easier.

Both places, Barker says, illustrated the differing dimensions of an America on the mend.

“In the case of Gloucester, you see in recalling that these works were made at a time when Gloucester was in its heyday, it was America's largest seaport.

Then I think that you see the really the working industry of the fishing industries here.

Going to Monhegan for the first time this summer going to Monhegan for the first time this summer and sitting on that boat and going out from Port Clyde for 12 miles out into the middle of the ocean.

And what impressed me about that experience is that there are people that live there year round, and it obviously was a way of life.

It still is.

And this to me, it shows a pioneering spirit.” It was also a spirit of welcoming, Oaks points out, as we tour the show.

Especially for women like artist Theresa Bernstein whose work we find here.

She was a pioneer in her own right as one of the early 20th century’s leading artists.

“This shows a group of women artists in the Folly Cove neighborhood on the backside of the Cape and we see some of the local people, the man who are the woman who ran the boarding house where artists stayed.

The man who supplied her with the lobsters that she cooked to feed the artists.” (Well, we just long for days like this here in the fall, right?

)I know//Eric Hudson, who's painting is shown here, he’s one of the few artists who actually resided in both places.

The story is he would frequently get in a dory or a small boat and actually take his canvases out with him.

So not as much in this one, but some of the paintings you look like you're actually in the trough of a wave with the artist.” What carries through these works is an aura of place—something that comes from years, if not decades, of familiarity and careful observation.

As we see in a lifetime of work by Stow Wengenroth.

“(I love works like this where you can you can smell the wood almost, you can smell the evergreens.)

But what we have here is an early lithograph they did in the nineteen thirties of a cape Ann scene and then on the bottom, a drawing done on Monhegan, and he was really a master at black and white.

When you look at them, you really think you're right there.” And, as both Oliver Barker and the artists still working in both places today remind us, we still can be.

“These landscapes are all still here around us.

So we very much hope that people, when they come to see the show, will also then step outside and explore this wonderful place.” TO VIEW THIS AND OTHER COLORES PROGRAMS GO TO: New Mexico PBS dot org and look for COLORES under Local Productions.

Also, LOOK FOR US ON FACEBOOK AND INSTAGRAM.

“UNTIL NEXT WEEK, THANK YOU FOR WATCHING.” Funding for COLORES was provided in part by: Frederick Hammersley Fund for the Arts at the Albuquerque Community Foundation and the 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.