(upbeat music) - Sporting artist Adriano Manocchia captures the magic of fly fishing in his paintings.

Learn how art can inspire and educate with D.Colin.

And catch a performance from Marty and Sean Wendell.

It's all ahead, on this episode of AHA!

A House for Arts.

- [Narrator] Funding for AHA!

has been provided by your contribution and by contributions to the WMHT Venture Fund.

Contributors include the Leo Cox Beach Philanthropic Foundation, Chet and Karen Opalka, Robert and Doris Fischer Malesardi.

The Alexander and Marjorie Hover Foundation and The Robison and Family Foundation.

- At M&T Bank we understand that the vitality of our communities is crucial to our continued success.

That's why we take an active role in our community.

M&T Bank is pleased to support WMHT programming that highlights the arts, and we invite you to do the same.

(upbeat music) - Hi, I'm Lara Ayad, and this is AHA!

A House for Arts, a place for all things creative.

Let's send it right over to Matt for today's field segment.

(upbeat music) - I'm here in Cambridge, New York, to get a peak inside the studio of sporting artists Adriano Manocchia, let's go.

(upbeat music) - I never in my wildest dreams thought I would end up being a painter.

(upbeat music) My dad was a journalist, foreign correspondent and I think I was in sophomore year of high school.

He was going to Yankee Stadium to cover a soccer match between the great Pele and an Italian team.

And he asked me if I wanted to go.

Now being from the city and a Yankee fan, I said, sure.

And the day before we left he handed me his 120 Rollex Camera which I had never used before, showed me how to use it showed me F stops and focus and we went to the game, I took some photographs and they were published in one of the daily newspapers that he worked for.

And I got the bug.

I mean, it was instant.

(upbeat music) I became a photojournalist.

I did that for about 15 years.

Every day was another experience.

Everything from spending time with Muhammad Ali at his training camp, to photographing Tennessee Williams to going to the White House, it was really an exciting time.

But I was getting burned out from the travel and we had a young son at the time and I was never home.

The business was changing.

We were going from film to video.

I was a little intimidated about that move.

And I happened to be in Phoenix, Arizona with my wife Teresa, one year covering an Indie car race.

We had a day off, went to the Heard Museum and it was a show of The Cowboy Artists of America, which was fascinating.

It just blew me away, I'd never seen anything like it.

And I started to think, gee, I'd like to be a painter.

I had some background, obviously being a photographer composition and light and color and that sort of thing.

But, I really knew nothing about painting.

So I spent about a year at the New Rochelle library just reading techniques of the old masters.

And one day I sprung the news to my wife.

Hey, I'm closing the news agency and I'm gonna become a painter.

And I just, just started painting.

it really wasn't.

I didn't stop and think that, gee maybe you really shouldn't be doing this.

You really don't know what you're doing.

It was self taught and just wanted to find out what this world was like, and I discovered it.

Little by little I started to focus more and more on wildlife, on the outdoors.

I was just learning how to fly fish at the time, and a friend of mine took me up to (indistinct) we were fishing a Croton watershed, which is a beautiful area.

And he asked me to do a pencil sketch of him landing a fish.

And I did.

And I said, that was fun.

That was interesting.

And I just started doing more and more scenes of water.

(upbeat music) I'll make a preliminary sketch, thumbnail sketches to see if the composition works.

And then I sketch a rough sketch on a gessoed smooth board because there very little texture, I build up a layer.

So what I do is I rough in, I block in the scene using just Burnt Sienna white and a little blue.

I'm able to see what the composition looks like.

Also it gives that base coat it gives that texture and surface that I can work on.

When it's dries then I start to put in color.

And again, I'll do it loosely.

I won't get into detail and I'll let it dry.

And I'll slowly continue to build.

When I'm painting water there may be six, seven, eight, nine coats, different layers that I'm building in dark and lights, different colors.

Till I begin to feel that there's some depth to that scene.

There is one painting that I did a number of years ago.

We were in Yellowstone which is one of my favorite places to paint.

We used to go quite often.

And there's a stretch of the Firehole River.

And it is, to me it's magical.

There's something about it.

The thing was I had to get there before the sun came up every morning and we'd, Teresa and I would walk along to banks and the sun would come up.

And it'd be elk grazing and Buffalo and geese taking off.

And the river had a magic to it, it had a color, it had a movement to it, very winding.

And I did a painting and it's called "My Favorite Stretch."

And it's funny because one year we were doing a show a sportsman show, and I had a print of it.

And the guy came up to me and he says, "that's my favorite stretch."

So I says to him, do you know where that is?

He says, "I know exactly where it is."

He says, "that's the Firehole in Yellowstone "by the parking area."

He says "that is my favorite spot in the world."

I said mine too.

So there's just, that was one painting that I always go back to thinking about.

what to me is a perfect scene.

The person in most of my paintings is Ted Patlen.

My dear long lost brother.

I met Teddy some 40 something years ago at a sportsman show down in Suffolk, New York.

Came over, looked at my work offered to do some framing.

Ted's a teacher, a retire teacher.

And he said, hey, if you ever wanna go fishing why don't you give me a call.

And I was fly fishing at the time but I wasn't really great at it.

Good at it.

And I started to go fishing with Ted and he just, the two of us just clicked.

I'd find a spot and say, hey Ted you mind standing over there in the sun?

And we just make the painting.

It would just make the whole scene.

And he and I, we were joking a while back about how many rivers and streams we fished together over the last 40 years.

And we came up with 99.

So I told him he and I we have to find one more stream to make it an even 100.

(upbeat music) I enjoyed my previous career but there were a lot of limitations.

You were given an assignment, make sure you come back with this, this, this, and this which was exciting.

But there were the deadlines there was that a constant worry about producing something for someone else.

Art has given me the opportunity to really express myself the way I want to.

And I think that's been the greatest, greatest thing for me.

- D. Colin is a poet, painter and actress who uses art to inspire and educate others.

Much of her writing draws from her background and experiences as a black woman.

Why are the arts so vital for working through issues of identity and loss?

I spoke with D to find out.

D welcome to A House for Arts.

It's so nice to have you back at WMHT.

- Thank you for having me.

- We are so excited to have you, you fill so many different roles, so many different hats.

You're a poet, you're a painter, you're also an actress.

And we'll come back to your acting, your acting experience and your collaborations with local artists in a minute.

But I first wanted to know about your most recent collection of poems.

- My most recent collection is called "Said The Swing To The Hoop."

It came out in 2019.

It started from the title poem, "Said The Swing To The Hoop."

And the poem was, is a conversation between the hoop and the swing on a playground talking about the children that should be playing there and realizing that too many of them are laying on the ground.

And so - And laying on the ground, what kind of image are you conjuring here?

- Laying on the ground, I'm trying to conjure images of too much violence, images of young people lost to trauma experiencing things that they don't, they shouldn't have to experience at a young age.

- These are like middle schoolers you're talking about here.

- Exactly, middle school, early high school.

And I was teaching middle school for a little bit.

For me, like I started to really think about what it was like for me in middle school and the experiences that I had growing up.

So the collection kind of grew from that.

- And it draws from your past then in many ways.

- Yeah, in a lot of ways I draw from personal experience trauma that I've had to heal from just experiences in middle school that I had that I'm sure kids are still experiencing now, even, and it wasn't all trauma.

Some of it was, I had a crush on this boy and he didn't like me.

- Isn't that a coming age story.

- The book is just a visitation into who I was as a kid.

And how that helped me develop into the person I am now.

- So this is so great D, it sounds like this really pulls from your life.

Would you mind reading us a poem from your newest collection?

- Sure, I will read the title poem since I mentioned it.

And it's called, "Said The Swing To The Hoop."

I think we might be the best parts of the playground.

We make hearts fly a little, see the sky different.

You see it's all about perspective.

We know what it's like to have legs push for us on a swing to a rim.

We know about trash talk, kids saying who can go higher.

We know about late nights and street lights.

We know about emotions when they go wrong.

See, no one goes to the slide when they're sad, we got swag.

We be a new way to see clouds before they rain.

We just might be the best parts of the playground.

We see dreams big as life.

The ground on one side, the sky on the other.

Only difference they have to jump through hoops to get yours swing a lot, to get mine.

We see sweat and pain and tears and scrapes.

We see blood.

Sometimes it's not the kind from victory that kind of play ground up like I lost my memory.

Like I forgot the way laughter sounded on the way down.

Too many of them are laying on the ground.

I just can't swing that kind of pain.

Tell me how do you keep them above the rim.

Maybe I can keep them reaching for the sky.

Real talk, we be the best parts of the playground.

We be the only ones have them reaching for something bigger than themselves.

- Wow, this personification of the playground and different elements tells such an incredible story.

I can't help, but think a lot of your work really deals with pain and loss on many different levels.

Why are the arts so important for dealing with these very difficult and frankly almost universal human experiences?

- Well, art is healing.

Art gives pain language that we don't always have.

For me it's always been a way to start a conversation around something that I don't really know how to start a conversation on.

If I can put it in a poem, or if I can create some kind visual piece to it, then I have a doorway into it that wasn't present before.

And I think that's what it does for people who hear the poems, or they see art, or they experience music.

You listen to a song and it puts us in a whole different mood.

- Have you seen this play out specifically in your own experiences?

Because what you read for us is a poem you wrote for the page, but you also do spoken word.

Have you ever seen how your work impacts the audience too when you've done these live performances?

- Absolutely, sometimes I get on stage, I perform.

And then after the show someone comes up to me and says, thank you.

They'll say, you put words to an experience that I've had or they'll say I've been through that too.

Thanks for sharing your experience.

Maybe I've shared something that they had no idea about because it wasn't their experience but now they can kind of see what someone else has gone through.

Maybe even treat a situation in the future differently because of that.

it's a powerful thing to be able to just tap into a human experience and share our stories because all of our stories are connected to each other.

We only know that if we share them - It almost creates more open space for people to be like, oh I can kind of fill that in with my own memory.

And, oh, I really remember what that feels like.

So it's great.

You're giving people a space and you're giving them a container, in a way to kind of revisit these things and understand them in new ways.

On a recent podcast with Marion Roach Smith you talked about, the host asked you about identity and you were talking about the arts as a lens for understanding your own identity as a black woman.

I would love to know a little more about how your identity as a black woman plays a role, not only in your artistic expression, but vice versa as well.

- Well, I had a professor in college say write what you know.

And it's like, that's a common piece of advice that's given to people.

For me, I am black and I'm a woman.

And so I speak about my own experiences that shows up a lot in the writing.

But beyond that, growing up I really was looking for representation I had to work hard to find it, - In books, in movies.

- In Books, film, television shows.

I could name all the shows that I watched as a kid, so I could see myself.

I used to go to the library and the librarian would help me find books that had characters in them that looked like me.

Because I wasn't getting that in school.

And I wanted to, I wanted to see me, - And so it sounds like visibility is a really important thing.

- Visibility is a very important thing.

And so as a writer, as a creative person I want to give that representation in my work, because I know that it's important.

And I think that we've made strides since I was a child.

I see a lot more shows on television that I could see myself in.

I've since read a lot of literature that I can see myself in.

But that's, it's an ongoing thing of opening it up opening up the space more so that we can tell our stories very honestly and candidly about who we are.

- So not only through poetry and prose, but I also know you do painting.

You also act.

Can you tell us a bit about the way you use these other types of artistic mediums in particular the acting and the kind of focus you do on historical figures?

Because it sounds like your identity as a black woman plays an important role in that as well.

- Yes, it does.

So I started doing reenactments of historical figures mainly Sojourner Truth.

I started with Sojourner Truth and then over time I added Harriet Tubman and Shirley Chisholm.

That's also another thing about representation and telling stories and telling history.

- But why are these figures so important?

Why are these particular women so important to you?

- Well, Sojourner's life is, if you read about Sojourner's life, she was just a phenomenal person.

I don't know how much it's taught in schools.

I know that I've been booked to reenact Sojourner because educators are looking for fresh ways to bring learning to a classroom of who Sojourner might be or who Harriet might be.

And I think, for me personally I learned more about Harriet growing up than I did Sojourner.

And so I've become very close to her life and what happened in her life, and the kind of courage that she had to overcome a whole bunch of things and just, every time I'm Sojourner on stage I just, I feel, one, I feel her presence in a way.

But also it feels that I feel like I'm helping to uphold her legacy.

And I think that's really important.

Tapping into history so we understand, what happened before, where we came from, and taking some of those gems from history to move us into the future.

- Incredible.

Well, D it sounds like you are having such a massive and positive impact on people educating and inspiring them with your work.

So thank you so much for sharing your story on A House for Arts.

It's such a pleasure to have you.

- Thank you for having me - Please welcome Marty and Sean Wendell.

- We're glad to be here today and do some songs from a brand new album we have it's called "Risky Business."

And this was produced by Chris Scruggs in Nashville.

And we've got a lot of guest artists on this album.

And my guest artist on this cut was my own son, Sean Wendell.

And he's here today helping me do these songs.

And we hope you'll like this one.

(upbeat music) ♪ We started out as Rocket Billy ♪ ♪ When Dick Clark was the king of Philly ♪ ♪ Hank it died and Elvis was the rage ♪ ♪ In those early years we never thought ♪ ♪ Time would pass and we'd get caught ♪ ♪ Looking back at memories of those days.

♪ ♪ Then Dylan sang of changing times till ♪ ♪ Rock and roll pushed folk behind ♪ ♪ The Beatles said a new world would unfold.

♪ ♪ It's funny it never came ♪ ♪ So many things just stay the same.

♪ ♪ It's hard to understand the way life goes.

♪ ♪ Are we growing old ♪ ♪ Trying to keep a hold ♪ ♪ Of all the dream we had so long ago ♪ ♪ Are we out of time ♪ ♪ 'Cause the words don't seem to rhyme ♪ ♪ All of them old songs we used to know ♪ ♪ Are we growing up or growing old ♪ ♪ Then the 70s were the outlaw years.

♪ ♪ We all grew long hair and beards ♪ ♪ But we were country boys just like before ♪ ♪ Then the 20th century flew away ♪ ♪ The music's changing every day ♪ ♪ Is there still room for us here anymore ♪ ♪ Are we growing old ♪ ♪ Trying to keep a hold ♪ ♪ Of all the dreams we had so long ago ♪ ♪ Are we out of time ♪ ♪ 'Cause the words don't seem to rhyme ♪ ♪ To all of them old songs we used to know ♪ ♪ Are we growing up or growing old ♪ ♪ Are we growing up or ♪ ♪ Growing old ♪ (upbeat music) This song is also from the album and my guest artist on this was exceptional young lady from Nashville Tennessee Lindsay Scruggs.

And she's the granddaughter of the legendary Earl Scruggs.

And she joined me for this song, which is called "Like A Ghost."

(upbeat music) ♪ A morning sun beats down like flames of fire ♪ ♪ Burning down the warehouse in my mind ♪ ♪ Where I have stored the heartache, hurt and pain ♪ ♪ Making me a man no one can find ♪ ♪ I'm just like a ghost down on the coast ♪ ♪ Hiding in the sand ♪ ♪ I'm just like a ghost making a toast ♪ ♪ With a drink in my hand ♪ ♪ This disappearing act ain't what I planned ♪ ♪ Everything that once made sense is gone ♪ ♪ Like 1,000 shattered pieces on the floor ♪ ♪ There's no way to move ahead and carry on ♪ ♪ So I'll remain invisible for sure ♪ ♪ I'm just like a ghost down on the coast ♪ ♪ Hiding in the sand.

♪ ♪ I'm just like a ghost making a toast ♪ ♪ With a drink in my hand ♪ ♪ This disappearing act ain't what I planned ♪ ♪ I don't see redemption in the cards ♪ ♪ Of the hand that I've been dealt to try to play ♪ ♪ The time has come to fold and take the loss ♪ ♪ I realize I threw it all away ♪ ♪ I'm just like a ghost down on the coast ♪ ♪ Hiding in the sand ♪ ♪ I'm just like a ghost making a toast ♪ ♪ With a drink in my hand ♪ ♪ This disappearing act ain't what I planned ♪ ♪ This disappearing act ain't what I planned ♪ (upbeat music) - Thanks for joining us.

For more arts, visit wmht.org/aha and be sure to connect with us on social.

I'm Lara Ayad Thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Funding for AHA!

has been provided by your contribution and by contributions to the WMHT Venture Fund.

Contributors include the Leo Cox Beach Philanthropic Foundation.

Chet and Karen Opalka.

Robert and Doris Fischer Malesardi.

The Alexander and Marjorie Hover Foundation.

And the Robison Family Foundation.

- At M&T Bank we understand that the vitality of our communities is crucial to our continued success.

That's why we take an active role in our community.

M&T Bank is pleased to support WMHT programming that highlights the arts and we invite you to do the same.