Art Works Podcast

Early last year the NEA’s magazine *American Artscape *published an article by Paulette Beete entitled, “Let Black Voices Ring Again” about the Mount Zion Baptist Church Preservation Society’s participation in the Citizens' Institute on Rural Design (CIRD) to rehabilitate a vacant but historically-significant Black church. In this podcast, we’re following up to trace the continuing impact of CIRD’s work with the Athens, Ohio project and how these efforts have continued to progress. We’re joined by the Director of Communications for the Mount Zion Baptist Church Preservation Society, Dr. Tee Ford-Ahmed who shares the history of the Mount Zion Baptist Church, of the vibrant Black community that once existed in Athens, Ohio, and the Mount Zion Baptist Church Preservation Society’s determination to preserve that history and repurpose the church as a Black cultural center while retaining its stunning architectural features. Ford-Ahmed talks about bringing in students enrolled in various programs in Ohio University—another Athens’ institution— to work as interns and help the preservation society develop strategies and plans. Dr Ford-Ahmed discusses CIRD’s work with the Mount Zion Baptist Church Preservation Society, CIRD’s outreach to the greater Athens’ community, how  the preservation society’s participation with CIRD led to other opportunities—including additional grants, greater community involvement in the project, and the creation of a docu-series called "Black Wall Street Athens County."  She also discusses how the plans for the church have grown and evolved, the current state of the project, and where she sees it going in the next couple of years. We’d love to know your thoughts--email us at  artworkspod@arts.gov. And follow us on Apple Podcasts!

Bluegrass Fiddler and 2022 NEA National Heritage Fellow Michael Cleveland talks about his life immersed in music   Virtuoso fiddler and 2022 National Heritage Fellow Michael Cleveland talks about his life in bluegrass—and it is a lifelong love affair. He was brought to bluegrass shows as an infant and began performing on stage when he was about seven years. Known for the speed, intensity, and artistry of his playing, Cleveland is one of the great fiddler players of his generation, recognized 12 times as the International Bluegrass Music Association’s (INBA)“Fiddler of the Year” and inducted into the National Fiddler’s Hall of Fame. Cleveland was a child he came to the attention of musicians like Doc Watson, Bill Monroe, and Allison Krause (who brought him to the Grand Ole Opry to play with her band when he was 13). In this podcast, Michael talks about going to the Kentucky School for the Blind when he was four years old – a school with a rich music program that frowned on bluegrass. He learned classical violin during the week and bluegrass when he came home on weekends. We discuss Southern Indiana’s rich history in bluegrass,  how the music itself is rooted in community where jams are the real places of learning the music, and the accessibility of bluegrass performers to their audiences.  Michael recalls starting his professional career which began by playing with Dale Ann Bradley and Rhonda Vincent, his branching out to solo work, and beginning his own band, Flamekeeper (named Instrumental Group of the Year by INBA seven times.) We also discuss his many collaborations with musicians like Bela Fleck, Tommy Emmanuel, and Heritage Fellows Del McCoury, Andy Statman and Jerry Douglas as well as his Grammy Award for Tall Fiddler.  We’d love to know your thoughts--email us at  artworkspod@arts.gov.

With her second novel “The Taste of Sugar,”  Marisel Vera has created an epic tale with an intimate heart.  It tells the story of small coffee farmers in late 19th century Puerto Rico whose lives had been shaped by Spanish colonialism and upended by the 1898 US Invasion and the devastating 1899 hurricane San Ciriaco which left thousands dead and a quarter of a million people without food and shelter. Vera’s protagonists, Valentina and Vicente, join 5,000 other Puerto Ricans on an arduous journey to Hawaii to work on the sugar plantations where they find themselves instead captive laborers in a strange land. In this podcast, Vera talks about her life as a storyteller, her need to write a book that explored the history of Puerto Rico—a history most people don’t know—her meticulous research and her determination to get that history right, and the deep impact of colonization on the island. She also discusses her own struggle to find herself in books when she was growing up in Chicago, her sense that she was always living in two worlds, in two languages, and embracing that in her writing which moves fluently between Spanish and English.

A discussion with performance poet, performer, and playwright [Amalia Ortiz](Amaliaortiz.net) who directs the theater arts program at [SAY Sí.](Saysi.org) SAY Sí  is a year-round, long-term, tuition-free multidisciplinary arts program in San Antonio serving middle and high school students primarily at or below the poverty line. In this podcast, Ortiz talks about the work of SAY Sí in general and the theater program in particular. Ortiz discusses the program’s emphasis on producing original theater and encouraging a practical application of the arts.  The students learn all aspects of theater: they write the plays, cast them, direct them, create the costumes and scenery, do the sound and the lighting. They learn to work with their strengths, augment their weaknesses, and to come together as team. Ortiz also discusses creating theater in community and for community and the issues at the border for both the students and the teachers.  Ortiz discusses her own work and the impact of growing up three miles from the border on her life and her art, her commitment to and love of performance poetry, her 2020 American Book Award for Oral Literature, and her latest book The Canción Cannibal Cabaret & Other Songs. And we talk about her joy teaching at SAY Sí where she feels like a producer—helping to nurture ideas into original theater. We’d love to know your thoughts--email us at artworkspod@arts.gov.

Afro-Dominican filmmaker Loira Limbal’s documentary Through the Night is an intimate look at one home-based 24-hour day-care center in New Rochelle, the couple who runs the center and the mothers and children who need it.  The film, which was co-produced and presented by the PBS program POV, examines the impossible situations workers who are single parents--primarily women and most particularly women of color-- can find themselves in a 24 hour-a -day economy. Limbal asks: “What happens when they don’t have family to pick up the slack?” And Through the Night goes a long way in answering that question.  In this 2020 podcast, we talk about the social and political conditions that lead to the need for 24 hour-day-care, the personal cost of our modern economy for working mothers and for the caretakers of their children. But we also talk about the film’s appreciation of the ways communities of color can answer these needs creatively and lovingly even as the film decries a system that demands this adjustment to survive. Limbal also talks about the making of the film, the women she met during filming and her responsibilities to them, the overlap and differences between journalism and art,  her determination to make Through the Night while raising two children and working full-time job, and bringing out a film during the pandemic.  We’d love to know your thoughts--email us at artworkspod@arts.gov.

Flamenco Artist and 2022 National Heritage Fellow Eva Enciñias has transformed and broadened the performance and study of flamenco in the United States generally and in her hometown of Albuquerque, N.M. particularly. In this podcast, Enciñias talks about the artistry and history of flamenco and her family’s roots in this art form;  her dual loves: flamenco and teaching,  her 43 year-long career as a teacher in the dance department at the University of New Mexico where she created a concentration in flamenco in the undergraduate and graduate levels— the only accredited dance program of its kind internationally. We also discuss the institute she founded The National Institute of Flamenco which houses many programs and events including the Flamenco Festival Alburquerque (they went back to the original spelling) which has just celebrated its 35th anniversary and is one of the premier flamenco festivals in the world, and her on-going work weaving flamenco in the fabric of her community. We’d love to know your thoughts--email us at artworkspod@arts.gov.

Composer and Dean and Director of the Music Division at The Juilliard School, David Serkin Ludwig talks about the opportunities and challenges at The Juilliard School, with its 850 plus students in music, drama, and dance. He discusses issues of equity and diversity at the school and in “classical” music as well as his longstanding commitment to a more inclusive music community and the importance of creating a vibrant culture of new music. We also talk about his own musical lineage which goes back seven generations and includes his grandfather Rudolph Serkin and his uncle Peter Serkin—both extraordinary pianists. We discuss his composing-- what inspires him, how he works—his teaching, and how each energizes the other. We chat about the upcoming season at Juilliard (some 700 events-- most free or at a reduced rate) and his vision for the school five years down the road. We’d love to know your thoughts--email us at artworkspod@arts.gov.

The new monthly series “Art at the Intersection” will explore the ways the arts are helping to shape and inspire work being done in many areas of society, for example, in healthcare, city planning, infrastructure design, public spaces. The list is long, varied and sometimes unexpected. The Mississippi Center for Cultural Production (Sipp Culture)  is a case in point. Co-founded by artist, researcher, and organizer Carlton Turner in 2016 in his hometown of Utica, Mississippi, Sipp Culture uses story to address food insecurity and to support community, cultural, and economic development. In fact, its motto is “Telling our story. Growing our future.”  In this podcast, Carlton talks about the connection between story and food, the dinner table as focus for story-telling and sharing history, gathering stories about Utica from community-members and using that information to help create infrastructures that support the community’s needs, creating a farm and apprenticeship programs, creating an artist residency program for rural artists in a five state region, their research program Equitable Food Futures-- a collaboration with Imagining America, and programming for the long-term around work that can take a generation to realize. Turner also talks about creating purposeful art in, with, and for community, his growing up in Utica where his family goes back eight generations, and what Sipp Culture’s success in Utica will look like. Follow us on Apple Podcasts!  And let us know what you think, drop us an email at artworkspod@arts.gov  

Author and 2020 NEA Literature Fellow Vanessa Hua is getting a lot of well-deserved praise for her recently released novel, Forbidden City which tells the story of the Chinese Cultural revolution as experienced by a woman who is a member of Chairman Mao’s dance troupe. In fact, Vanessa ‘s NEA Literature Fellowship enabled her to finish the book, so it seemed like a good time to revisit my 2020 interview with her—which remains one of my favorites both because of the books and because of Vanessa—she has a wonderful sense of humor and a feel for an apt turn of phrase. In this podcast, she talks about her novel A River of Stars  which she describes as “a pregnant Chinese Thelma and Louise” and her book of short stories Deceit and Other Possibilities whose theme she says is “model minorities behaving badly.” These two books explore the lives of immigrants in San Francisco’s Chinatown and the divide between 1st generation parents and 2nd generation children.  She also discusses the 2020 Lit Fellowship which allowed her work on Forbidden City, as well as her experiences as a journalist, as a writer of fiction, as a mother and as a 2nd generation Chinese-American.  She is clear these experiences don’t exist in silos but are always informing one another.

The 2015 vote of the  New Orleans City Council to remove four Confederate monuments from public grounds was met with death threats, protests, lawsuits, and rallies.  Writer and comedian CJ Hunt, curious “why a losing army from 1865 still holds so much power in America” covered the hearings and protests. The result of Hunt’s exploration is a documentary called *The Neutral Ground--*a personal, disturbing, sometimes-funny, and informative exploration of the struggle over the removal of the monuments in New Orleans. But more broadly, the film, an official selection of the both the Tribeca Film Festival and AFI Docs, is an examination of collective memory, the myths of the confederacy, how history was re-written and reaffirmed, and the price paid, especially by Black people, to keep the story of “Lost Cause” alive.  In this podcast from 2021, CJ Hunt talks about the film’s journey from short funny video to a timely and scholarly documentary, his decision to insert himself as a central character in the film, the conversations Black people have been having about these monuments since Frederick Douglass, and how humor can be a great method to get people to examine uncomfortable truths.