(mystical music) - [Miranda] I was born and raised in Detroit, growing up with other kids and the school system and them shedding light on my darker skin and lighter skin being preferable.

It's difficult for me to look at myself sometimes because of just insecurities.

I have a darker complexion.

When I was growing up in school, that was always something that I would get made fun of for, and it was just kind of hard to accept.

Painting myself multiple times, just over and over and over and looking at reference photos and just seeing myself in a different light.

It definitely took time for me to accept it and to be okay with it and to love myself.

When I exhibit my work, putting myself on the wall, I think it really helped with my self-esteem.

And I also wanted it to help with other Black people too.

I think like with the skin tone, it started with the Atlantic slave trade and how they would show favoritism towards lighter individuals and that kind of continued through segregation and lighter individuals being at the forefront.

And that was kind of what people wanted to go for because if you were lighter, then you had a better life.

And if you were closer to white, then you're great.

You know you're golden.

You're gonna have that American dream.

I think that that's kind of where that came from and they just kind of trickled down into where we are now and I don't think people understand that that's where that came from.

It's a very dark past, but I think just the stigma in our heads, we just kind of hold on to that.

(water splashes) I wanted to display Black people to show their true beauty, to show who they are, just authentically themselves without having to have a lighter skin person or looking for someone that looks a specific way.

These people actually walk around.

These are real humans.

These are people that live life.

yeah, yeah, I want people to see themselves and feel a connection to it and feel like they're important and feel like their stories can be told.

With the people that I paint, or even with all of these self-portraits that I did, I want to show what people actually look like, not what people look like on social media, not what people prefer people to look like.

I want them to be authentically themselves with blemishes, with the hair texture, with whatever they wear that feels comfortable for them.

Not wearing something that would be more acceptable to someone else.

Don't hide it.

You know, Black women and Black people in general are beautiful.

I want people to see that.

(music continues) (music fades) (tone playing) (upbeat music) (Jessica hiccuping) - Hi!

I'm Jessica Frelinghuysen.

We put together a program for you that's going to strengthen... (groans) Shape, and redefine your entire body.

So all you're gonna need today is your lunch and a little determination.

Get ready to crave your workout with Jessercise!

Jesser-Jesser-Jessercise!

(record scratching) (rhythmic percussion music) (record scratching) (energetic music) We've put a very special workout together for you.

Each one of our exercises has a specific focus, based on the food you crave.

So what do you say we warm up?

Okay, here we go!

And four, three, two, one!

Oreo twists!

Soda side to sides!

Feel the burn!

Get ready for bagel blasts!

(Jessica vocalizing) Really move it!

No one can forget chip and dips!

Get those legs up!

Keep doing these until the bag is empty.

Don't forget pop-n-squat!

And gurgle, gurgle, gurgle and down!

And up, and drink!

Lift the one you love!

Get them high over your head.

This one's good for the gym!

And we're done!

(Jessica coughing) Until next time!

(record scratching) (rhythmic percussion music) (pottery wheel droning) (pottery wheel continues droning) (eerie music) (eerie music continues) (pottery wheel droning) (pottery wheel continues droning) (eerie music) (clay squelching) (eerie music continues) (eerie music continues) (eerie music continues) (eerie music continues) (eerie music continues) (eerie music continues) (eerie music continues) (eerie music continues) (eerie music continues) (gentle upbeat music) - [Francis] Everybody has something to say.

For me, it took me a while to speak my truth.

I was born an only child in 1985 to Thomas and Eileen Vallejo in the city of Farmington, New Mexico.

Soon after, we moved to the East side of Detroit.

(soft music) It was there I was raised.

As a person of Mexican and Irish heritage, living in an all Black neighborhood, I struggled to find myself.

I wasn't sure where I fit in.

(gentle upbeat music) But the only thing I did know, without a doubt, was that I'm an artist.

My time in art school exposed me to an astonishing range of artists.

Every week, I obsessed over a new discovery, which informed my newest project, from "Magnola" to "Pope," "Pratt," and then "Kelly," realism, cubism, line and composition.

It was all endlessly exciting.

I had to try it all.

That lasted many years.

The problem was I was mimicking other artists' languages.

I would ask how they would solve a passage, not me.

(gentle upbeat music) Turns out, the answer was right in front of me.

It's always in front of our eyes.

My family, my partner, athletics, teaching.

Those are the things that I wanted to illustrate.

Those are the subjects that mattered most.

(gentle upbeat music) My name is Francis Vallejo, and I document the rich, diverse world around me with my drawings.

My spirit is free and I have something to say.

(gentle upbeat music) (birds chirping) - What you can do with a dedicated group of people and a concentrated effort is exponential to what you can do by yourself.

Community is like the heart of everything I do.

It's how I see myself.

The transition from going from making murals to making art in other ways and why, right?

I had gotten like the largest commission ever for a mural.

It felt really good and then also it felt really horrible.

I was like, all of this waste, all of this plastic, all this, you know, water that I am personally supplying to the water supply, and I really love to garden and I really think, you know, protecting our water, our soil, our air, like I truly do hold those as values.

I started hosting garden parties here in the garden.

Gardening shows you abundance, right?

Even if you only have one tomato on a plant, that one tomato has thousands of seeds.

This idea of scarcity and lack and all of those things is really a manmade concept, and you get to be in touch, I get to be in touch with that when I'm gardening.

If we really practice getting together and sharing what we know, all things are possible.

And so how do you create spaces for joy (women laughing) and knowledge transfer, (people chatting) you know, people learning with each other and seeing themselves more as a cohesive unit?

One project that I've been doing for over 12 years is called the Free Market of Detroit.

It is a joyful critique on capitalism.

The idea is that everyone brings one item or one intangible, an offering for later, pay it forward pledge, and then you can take whatever you want.

And so it's not a one-to-one transaction.

It's a one-to-all.

It started here in this garden.

It's catapulted into a whole art project that has been presented at different festivals.

It's also been presented in gallery spaces.

It's such an empowering thing to be both giver and receiver.

I think everybody deserves to thrive.

I think we have what we need, and it's like how do we think about like the art of coming together in conversation and figuring things out and not necessarily, what is the media that I'm using?

(gentle music) (gentle music) - [Narrator] You are a sinful temptation, dangerously alluring in your words unspoken.

(gentle music continues) I've been warned of you, to leave you be.

(gentle music continues) But my burning desire draws me to you.

(gentle music continues) To your forbidden touch.

(gentle music continues) And to your promises you could never keep.

(gentle music continues) You would never keep.

(gentle music continues) Your heady scent lingers heavy in the air like our little secret.

(gentle music continues) I yearn to be near you, to breathe you in, to catch my breath on your warmth.

(gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) I want to brush up against you, to feel your heat, to feel your fire on my skin.

(gentle music continues) And if only for a sacred moment, know that you are mine.

(gentle music continues) But I've been warned of you, to leave you be.

(no audio) (gentle music) (gentle music continues) (clapper clapping) - There are certain objects I gravitate toward, objects that I feel embed stories.

My name's Tony Whitfield and I am a multidisciplinary artist.

I make images, I work with objects, artifacts, heirlooms, things that are evidence of the life I've led.

A lot of what I do focuses on material culture and how it influences the stories of disenfranchised people.

My work deals often with the complexities and the areas that are kind of borderline because I am a number of different things.

I'm a Black queer man who was born in 1954, the year of Brown versus Board of Education.

And a lot has happened in those decades.

As someone who was always involved in the arts, always wanted to make things, objects have been at the center of all of that activity.

My mother had always wanted to be an artist but was told that there were no Black women artists and she should do something else.

And she did.

But she recognized early on that I had the same skills and the same attachment to art that she had.

And she nurtured that.

Most of what I did and the course that lay ahead of me, I had to invent often without the knowledge of exactly what I was getting into, which leads to an incredible messiness and a kind of need to just have a certain amount of faith that you can work through the mess and that in the mess, there is actually an enormous amount of reward.

I left academia in July of 2020 and decided I needed a really radical change.

That brought me to Detroit.

There is a kind of evolution of an environment that I'm seeing, that I feel like I'm part of, that actually has breathed energy and life into my practice and my understanding of what's possible.

(inspiring music) (soft music) - [Gail] Each of us carries the imprint of our ancestors in our DNA and in our cultural memory.

I wanna shine a light on a past that has been totally misrepresented for too long.

- Child, you sure got a lot to learn.

It weren't like choosing a hat you was gonna wear that day.

It was serious.

Could get you arrested, beat, even get you killed, claiming you was one way then somebody find out you the other.

No, sir, law say one drop of Black blood, you Black.

Mama Black, you Black, that's it.

That's where the line was.

Now, folks did cross over the line.

Don't get me wrong, yes, they did.

I got a bunch of kinfolk went over to the other side thinking it'd be easier than living what we was going through.

Ossie never did want to do that, but people would always be forcing it on him 'cause of how he looked.

Mm hm.

- [Gail] I write my plays longhand because I can hear the character's voices more clearly that way.

The voices that come through allow me to explore the ways we confront fear and search for healing.

- Laid her down and kissed her cheek.

Now, I knew it wouldn't take more than an hour.

That's all I needed.

Not even an hour.

And I left (laughs).

(upbeat music) Whoo, and I danced.

Oh, oh.

(upbeat music) I danced like I never danced before.

Yeah.

(upbeat music) And then I smelled the smoke.

I don't know how, my house is three blocks away, but I did.

And then I heard the sirens so loud and I just knew.

Lila!

God, please, please, don't take my baby.

Oh, I'll do anything if you just let me keep her.

Just don't take her.

If you let me keep her, I promise, Lord, I will never dance or feel that good again.

(Geneva crying) Well, God kept His promise.

Lila's here.

And I kept mine.

- [Gail] I write to explore the impact that personal and institutional racism has had on all of us, and how those impacts occurred throughout generations.

(soft music) (people speaking over each other) (Claire speaking in foreign language) - I was born in the '80s, and I was born with HIV.

Immediately, they say I would not live for five years then.

They were saying my life expectancy was five, but I made it.

This year I celebrated my 40th birthday.

(dishes banging) (water rushing) The kitchen is the most important place in my writing career.

(timer beeping) For me, kitchen represent safety, so I'm making an impact (shutter clicking) from the kitchen.

I write stories from the kitchen.

When you write, not as an elite, you find the problem and you solve the problem.

No matter how bad, how English is, they get an answer, solution.

(playful music) - Look at this.

(bell dinging) - Nothing, no trophy, nothing would be above me being a mother.

(shutter clicking) Motherhood always was something I would choose over everything.

When I'm writing, I'm with my children.

When, if you see Aaron, the young boy is the one with me, you will see he's always around, always in the background of my Zoom meeting.

He's there everywhere.

Because I believe if you choose me, and if you want me to be with you, you have to accept that I am a mother.

My grandfather, my paternal grandfather, didn't know how to write and read.

The only way we know about our history and our stories is through storytelling.

Here in the United States, my stories helps me keep connected to my country and my culture.

So there's no gatekeepers.

We can do it, or we can publish on Medium, we can have our blogs.

We simply have to have the skills, and I believe our skills are, we can learn all the skills we need if we put our hearts on doing the stuff we like.

(no audio) (paint materials rustling) - So I'm doing a first layer, and then I'm going to go over and define.

The first is like putting the base color for it, trying to make sure that there's paint in there.

(paint brush rustling) (gentle music) This is actually the first time that the community, like members of the community, reach out to me and they wanted me to paint a memorial mural for Odemaris.

She passed away one year ago, and it was too hard for people to accept that she's not around anymore.

And, you know, for them to decide that I am the muralist that should work on this project, that means a lot to me.

(gentle music continues) - Do you like it?

- Hi, guys.

- Ready?

Thank you, love, I appreciated it.

- Everything started really early, you know.

One of my early memories is when I was like about four years old, and I, you know, discovered that I really wanted to be an artist when I grew up.

When I am painting, when I'm creating art, I am happy.

(toy trucks running) (emotive horn music) I discovered a community here, a Mexican and Latino community in Southwest Detroit.

I decided that I wanted to create something to represent them, you know, something that is inspiring, that is kind of portraying our positive side, and like our qualities, you know, our values, all the contributions that the Latino and Mexican community has made to the Motor City and to the entire country.

This is the first building you're going to encounter when you are coming from Canada into United States.

Highly inspired on one of the panels that Diego Rivera painted at the Detroit Institute of Arts Industry Murals, but instead of painting my people as working class people again, I decided that I wanted to paint them as movie stars, as very important people, you know.

I try to see the positive side.

I like to focus on the contributions.

I like to focus on the value.

I like to focus on what the people is proud about.

What is really important to me is that we, the Latino community, for us to be well represented, you know, for our community to have access to opportunities like everybody else.

(emotive horn music continues) (lively music) (ominous music) (ambiance sound) (ominous music) (old man murmuring) (footsteps crunching) (old man murmuring) (footsteps crunching) (ominous music) (ominous music) - [Old man] Mission.

The dead Palestinian brother, I have lost each of you, my personal friend and sister, in a glass of cold water.

My firm hand blindly feels for frozen rocks in the night.

I just want to sleep.

In the nightmare, I slap your dead foreheads with my blue and gold passport.

(ominous music) (ominous music) (ominous music fades) (gentle music) (old man murmuring) (gentle music) (old man murmuring) (gentle music) (gentle quirky string music begins) - In some ways, I think of my paintings as a one frame movie.

I have this one frame, and how much of the total picture can I capture?

There's enough information visually and psychologically that people can unravel the mystery that I put together and give them an insight to how I'm thinking about a specific subject.

(shovel digging) The Secrets Project is a series of paintings that explore the nature of secrets.

The content was generated through requests that I posted on the internet.

People would send me one personal secret that I could use as an element or a subject in my paintings.

These anonymous postcards and letters were sent to a post office box.

When you release or tell somebody your secret, there's both fear and the relief that you no longer have to hide the secret.

And like everything else in life, when words leave your mouth or when a painting leaves my hands, then it's up to everyone else as to how these things are understood or how these things are taken.

I use the term, "Illusionism," because realism truly doesn't fit what I do.

Illusion makes you think you see something that really isn't there.

For example, in my painting, it is literally dirt glued onto a canvas.

You think you see shape, you think you see form, but it's really only flat.

It goes top to bottom, left to right, but there's no real space there.

There's no real form or real objects.

It's all illusion.

The power in art or any creative expression is the great ability to transfer information, feelings and understanding between you and another human being.

Narrative and illusion carry with it more than just visual entertainment.

More than exciting, the eyes are developing form.

It's the ability to transfer information without real experience, and this is the essence of being human.

I'm Robert Schefman, a visual artist.

(gentle quirky string music continues) (gentle music) - Ever since I was a little girl, I had this love for Black history.

I think it's because my parents are both from Tuskegee, that's where they were born, and Tuskegee is famous for Tuskegee University and for what Booker T. Washington did there.

And so I grew up in an atmosphere where there was a great deal of pride and respect and honor for self-sufficiency, because that's what Booker T. Washington did.

So this was the type of background that I grew up in, having this pride about what we can do as a people.

So when I decided to develop my practice, it was only natural that I, you know, draw upon that background, that sense of history.

And my practice today is very African or African American-centered, and I am very involved in African and African American culture.

I mean, everything, not just the arts.

It's about the religion, or spirituality is what we had in Africa before we came here.

And just values, morals, the love of nature, all of that is culture and much more.

And that's what I bring to my practice.

I am a multidisciplinary artist.

I'm a sculptor.

I'm a painter.

I create fabric designs.

I paint.

I'm a printmaker.

So I do a little bit of, not everything, but a lot of things.

And that kind of ties into our history as Black people because we did everything.

There's a particular era in the country, as a matter of fact, because of segregation, we had to depend on ourselves.

And we had a whole slew of Black-owned businesses.

We had Black communities.

In documenting the history of Black Detroit, I'm resurrecting it because it's been largely forgotten or ignored.

So that's one of the things I want to do for Black Detroit, is to make people aware of the history.

I want other people to be emboldened by it, to be educated by it, to be inspired by it.

I make it for Black people, but I want everybody to see the art because even non-Black people don't know the history, don't know the culture, don't know the wonderful things that Black people have done.

(gentle music continues) (birds chirping) (gentle upbeat music) (gentle upbeat music continues) (bouncy upbeat music) (bouncy upbeat music continues) (bouncy upbeat music continues) ♪ Ooh ♪ Ooh (bouncy upbeat music continues) (music skipping) ♪ Ooh (bouncy upbeat music continues) ♪ Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh ♪ Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh ♪ Ooh (bouncy upbeat music) (footsteps walking) (footsteps walking) (no audio) (foot stepping) (no audio) (sheet rustling) - [Austen] Sometimes (sheet dropping) while I watch you work, I think to myself, you are the definition of art.

(tranquil music) So much pain in your eyes, such a story in your expressions.

(tranquil music continues) So much emotion in your movements.

(tranquil music continues) It's like watching a statue come to life where you create other statues, waiting, hoping for them to come to life, but they never do.

(tranquil music continues) And that's where the sadness comes from within you.

Sometimes while I watch you work, I begin to weep because I know that death is an open wound that you keep.

(tranquil music continues) You leave my face covered in clay as you wipe away my tears with eye contact so fervent, there's nothing that either of us need to say.

(tranquil music continues) (tranquil music continues) (tranquil music continues) (ethereal music) - [Narrator] My greatest desire is to help humanity, to inspire people to look for the power that exists within themselves.

Every day I go for a run.

Today's my 912th straight day of running, and I do it for so many reasons, but one of the main reasons is my obsession with patterns and how they shape and influence our lives.

It's the patterns of our lives that determine this reality, this human experience.

And if we want to improve humanity, we must first learn and decide to improve ourselves.

The process starts by focusing our attention inwards and pausing to listen to our inner dialogue and thoughts, realizing that everything begins here.

Whatever you watch, listen to, read, whatever you've been told or taught by your family members, friends, peers, society, entertainment, institutions of education and news, that is what you consciously and subconsciously think about, and that's what you become.

Just as the quality of food impacts our physical health, the quality of information we take in determines our mental health, and that's my greatest desire, for everyone to realize that, and that we all play a critical role in improving this reality, simply by choosing to transform the landscape of our minds.

It's about finding peace within and finding predictability within yourself, within your patterns, and through the things that you consistently have control over.

In this crazy world that's constantly changing and increasingly unpredictable, you must become predictable.

You must become the thing, the place where you can find peace, and that peace will be reflected back to you and the world.

When you change your mindset, you're not just reshaping your life, you're becoming a catalyst for positive change in the lives of those around you, through your cumulative thoughts and actions, steering humanity towards a better future and a more peaceful existence as a whole.

(gentle music) (water splashing) - Yeah, I was writing since I was a little kid.

I didn't know I was actually embarking on a lifelong thing.

I was a juvenile sentenced to life without parole, I spent almost 30 years in prison.

So this is where I keep my writings.

Everything that you own in prison has to fit in a duffel bag or a foot locker, so I write small because of the limited space that we have.

I have thousands of poems in a small stack of paper.

The spirit, in essence, of a haiku is the capturing of a moment.

It is literally a snapshot of a moment in time, but caught in words.

"A fly, blissfully unaware of the end, passed the bars, the parking lot, and the horizon."

Writing allowed me to express thoughts and ideas and emotions that generally in prison aren't allowed or encouraged.

Really helped me get through my prison bit, it's interesting now, you know, this one year later, I'm in the same car going back.

Today is the one-year anniversary from the day I got out of prison.

You know, I recall that day so vividly.

I'm trying to the best of my ability to recreate the events of that day.

(tranquil music) We went to Main Street where I had my first meal out.

- [Staff Member] Opa!

- [James] We saw the prison which I got out of.

- Kinda wanna get a picture of you with the, hold on.

What was it like to go back up there today?

- You know, like you go through an old childhood neighborhood or something and be like, "Oh, man, I used to lock in that unit.

Oh man, I used to write poems about that water tower."

"Bolted to the wall, a phone hangs in its cradle, the steel cord, connecting it to the body, stiff and short, the hard plastic of the phone cold against my ear.

'Will this call be debit or collect?'

At 94 cents a day wage I dial zero for collect.

'Your call was not accepted.

Please try again later.'

A hallway fan stirs the dust bunnies, someone coughs."

(paper rustling) "If I was a poem, I would probably be on the piece of paper, maybe on some screen.

I'd be made of words for they're made from ink or graphite, or maybe just electrical signals.

If I was a poem, I'd be translated into many languages, interpreted, critically written about and analyzed.

If I was a poem, I'd have a beginning and a middle.

(tranquil music) (tranquil music ends) (gentle music) - [Mario] The studio, for me, is a sanctuary, a place for experimentation and exploration.

I try my best to not get caught in what people want me to make.

I focus on the things that keep me excited, engaged.

Lately, that has been time.

Time is the luxury we all desperately want.

In my mind it is also the thing we consistently ignore.

All of it occurs around us at once, past, present, and whatever that potential future is.

But we often forget the stories of yesterday or pretend they never existed.

We create wasted myths and enlarged personas as humans, and especially as Americans to satisfy our own lives.

I'm a maker, an investigator.

I want to find those buried nuggets of truth, acknowledge the triumphs, brilliance, and resilience of people who look like me and those who came before me.

What does it mean to be human?

What does it mean to be an artist?

I think those two questions go hand in hand, and the first is more important than the last.

I have no grand scheme or idea of what human beings should be, but I do know in my little corner of the world, in my sanctuary I can create a certain freedom through pictures in ways that my ancestors were unable to.

And I hope that the little corner of freedom that I have to make things out of pigments, canvas, paper, and anything else I can get my hands on, is able to spread beyond my studio to engage with a much broader world than my own.

(gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music fades) - I've had a real blessed magic life and always being at the right place at the right time.

For me, art is like breathing.

Like right now you know how cold it is in here.

When I'm painting, I don't feel cold.

- Nora Chapa Mendoza's work employs many different mediums, figurative painting to, you know, printmaking, paper mache, you know, 3D, to her more well-known abstract paintings.

- Once I was doing an abstract painting, and they said, "Well, how is that Hispanic?"

(laughs) And it's Hispanic because I'm doing it.

- There are these really large abstract paintings that she has that seemingly could just be like, "Oh, this is an abstract painting," that she would point out, you know, a face that kind of emerges and says, "Well, you could say that this is a person.

Or you could just let yourself, you know, think freely."

It'll always be a little bit of storytelling amidst what is seemingly abstract.

- Yeah, one of the things I think that Nora has really kind of mastered and showed many of us is that you can be very proud of your history and your culture by digging deep into that history.

So if you look at her artwork, she highlights the experiences of people like migrant workers, people from the Southwest.

And she also emphasizes quite a bit and underlays the importance of the Native American culture to the Southwestern part of the United States and to Mexican American culture.

- A group that I've learned to call "Canto de la Tierra," "Song of the Earth," Canto chose me to be the one to travel to all these places and to represent our group, which was indigenous and Latino.

- Whenever you mention her name, Nora Mendoza, around our community of artists, and when I say artists, I'm including musicians, poets, visual artists, photographers, they would just say, "Nora Mendoza, Nora Mendoza."

She was the standard for them.

A lot of times people say, "What do you think Nora would say?

What do you think she'd say?

Or maybe we should call her and get her advice."

So she had that impact on a lot of us.

- Yeah, I paved the road and made it easier for other Hispanics to get to where I was going.

I was the first Latina artist that went throughout the state and lectured and workshops all on Hispanics and Hispanic art.

- And I ran across a couple photos of Nora talking and explaining her artwork to some of the students and faculty, and I remember how she was explaining her pieces of work and what the meaning was and how people felt at ease with her.

- In any field, fear's one of the things that holds us back, and it's a very bad thing to have, is fear.

And in order to get rid of that issue, you tackle it.

You do it.

And that's why, you know, I just throw the paint and let it tell me what to do.

(soft music)