A model wears a demented woven basket on her head by British designer Alexander McQueen as part of “Horn of Plenty,” his 2009 ready-to-wear women’s collection during Paris Fashion Week Photo by Pascal Rossignol/Reuters

The women in Alexander McQueen’s runway shows were often equipped for war. A model ensconced in jet black feathers became a harbinger of death. Others marched the catwalk in plaster body casts, football gear or corsets molded to look like a human spine and rib cage. McQueen’s clothes doubled as armor.

“I want to empower women. I want people to be afraid of the women I dress,” the fashion visionary once said.

No one was going to approach the woman with the maw of a crocodile head jutting from her right shoulder — at least not easily.

Five years since his suicide in 2010, McQueen, known to his friends as “Lee,” has been the subject of two biographies this year, and an art exhibition called “Savage Beauty” that originally opened in New York in 2011 and, more recently, in London.

British fashion designer Alexander McQueen dances down the cat-walk to the applause of his models and audience after his show during London Fashion Week in 1998. Photo by Paul Hackett/Reuters

As the design house McQueen built seeks to double in size, creative director Sarah Burton, who took over the reins when McQueen died, told The New York Times Style Magazine last year that the company — and the work — had to move on. The McQueen woman that graces the runway these days carefully steps away from the personal demons that fueled Lee’s light-absorbing imagination.

With the release of the full-length biography, “Alexander McQueen: Blood Beneath the Skin” this week, we spoke with the book’s author, The Cut’s Véronique Hyland and fashion bloggers Tom Fitzgerald and Lorenzo Marquez, better known as Tom & Lorenzo, on how the designer challenged the industry he reveled in.

He embraced ugliness to make beautiful clothing.

Photos by Pascal Rossignol and Kieran Doherty and Reuters

In the 1960s, Alfred Hitchcock’s blonde heroines exuded a fashionable sophistication on the silver screen, so much that film versions of Kim Novak or Grace Kelly have longed inspired designers to update the prim pencil skirts, leather gloves and long dresses for the modern runway.

But only McQueen could look at 1963’s “The Birds” and come out with a series of garments with tire marks.

“I thought: ‘Birds, road, car tire, splat!’” McQueen is quoted as saying by Simon Ungless, a longtime friend who designed the tire print, in Dana Thomas’ biography “Gods and Kings.”

The spring 1995 collection, named after the film, also featured models wearing opaque white contacts and dresses covered in bird silhouettes. It would appear his muse wasn’t necessarily Tippi Hedren, the iconic Hitchcockian heroine in “The Birds,” it was the chaos of a town terrorized by the winged creatures.

Warning: Video contains nudity. Video by YouTube user Yukikoandthe

“He took ugliness as a starting point, instead of beauty,” Hyland said. He wasn’t a designer that wanted to be pretty, she said.

McQueen’s models, who have been caged, bloodied, or as in “The Birds” collection, actual roadkill, also welcomed accusations of misogyny, a portrayal critics of the designer continued to debate after his death at the age of 40.

“When you’re basically there to write about clothes, what are you to make of models tottering along the catwalk in ripped dresses, looking like blood-stained rape victims?” Joan Smith said in the Independent, shortly after McQueen’s death. She added that his shows were a display of “supposedly ‘ludic’ misogyny.”

Wilson said in McQueen’s imagination, he wanted to create garments and dresses and suits that would actually protect women, a kind of armor that would inspire fear in the spectator.

A model displays a creation by designer Alexander McQueen during London Fashion Week in February 2000. Photo by Reuters photographer

“He gave women an extra layer of confidence and security,” Wilson said. “When he was alive, the McQueen brand was like stepping into a kind of fantasy world. A mad doctor operating on women and creating clothing for them.”

Wilson, as recounted in “Blood Beneath the Skin,” said the designer’s obsession with darkness possibly stemmed from an instance of sexual abuse as a boy by his brother-in-law. He also said he witnessed the same man beat his older sister Janet.

Tom & Lorenzo, who recently created a podcast on this question of misogyny, said it seemed McQueen was working through his demons and poured that into his designs.

Fitzgerald said because of the medium, he was literally using women as the canvass.

A model presents a creation by British designer Alexander McQueen as part of his 2008 ready-to-wear fashion collection in Paris on Oct. 5, 2007. Photo by Benoit Tessier/Reuters

The grotesqueries that were implied on his models were meant to provoke and, on some level, make you angry, Fitzgerald said in the podcast.

“He really was trying to do his version of empowerment,” Fitzgerald said. And “he sought empowerment through transformation of the body.”

The transformations involved turning models into birds of paradise, gazelles and the undead. Even when the inspiration was Chucky, the killer doll from the 1988 horror film “Child’s Play,” the result was a runway finale of unapproachable models with scary clown make-up.

And scary clowns are not usually the victims in horror films.

He transformed the human body.

Photos by Charles Platiau, Kieran Doherty and Reuters

The overall shape, or silhouette, of McQueen’s designs weren’t always human.

The Armadillo boot, made famous by pop star Lady Gaga in the “Bad Romance” music video, is a nearly 12-inch-high footwear that elongated the leg. It also transformed a woman’s foot into a lobster claw.

The shoe appeared in one of McQueen’s final runway shows in October 2010, in a collection that also included shoes inspired by the creature in 1979’s “Alien” and ensembles that made models look like jellyfish.

“To do something special, you need to change the silhouette,” Wilson said.

A staff member amid the dresses from the Alexander McQueen Plato’s Atlantis 2010 collection in the “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty” exhibition in London on March 12, 2015. Photo by Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters

McQueen’s play with form can be traced to his early years in the industry. In 1995, McQueen introduced the world to the “bumster,” the low-rise pant that showcased the builder’s bum.

“I wanted to elongate the body, not just show the bum,” McQueen told The Guardian Weekend in 1996. “To me, that part of the body — not so much the buttocks, but the bottom of the spine — that’s the most erotic part of anyone’s body, man or woman.”

The bumster became a hallmark of the McQueen brand that reappeared in subsequent shows.

“It was unusual at the time, but he brought a heavy influence of body modification, or transhumanism,” Marquez said. “He really played with the form, the body, and tried to stretch it as far away from its natural form as he possibly could.”

And if McQueen too often turned his models into beasts, like the horned creatures in the 1997 collection, “It’s a Jungle Out There,” it’s because he viewed the natural world as a constant source of inspiration.

“He thought that nature was the best creator ever,” Marquez said.

Nature, after all, follows the Fibonacci sequence.

His shows were performance art.

A model wearing a red hooded cat suit, stands among a ring of fire during the finale of British designer Alexander McQueen’s autumn/winter 1998/1999 fashion collection on the last day of London Fashion week. Photo by Paul Vicente/AFP/Getty Images

In his 2009 “Horn of Plenty: Everything But the Kitchen Sink” collection, all the models wore various detritus on their heads with houndstooth skirts to match. Several models wore upturned umbrellas, while others wore coke cans, woven baskets and car parts atop their heads.

A model with a white plastic bag above her head has a backstory, but the world she inhabited told a loftier tale. In the middle of the show was a pile of trash, spray painted black. There was a kitchen sink.

“It wasn’t just beautiful grandiose garments,” Marquez said. “It was also a story to tell through those garments.” And his collections were also themes, embedded with social, political and personal messages, he said.

At the time, The New York Times called the collection a “slap in the face” to the fashion industry.

McQueen didn’t parse words when he mocked the establishment. “The turnover of fashion is just so quick and so throwaway, and I think that is a big part of the problem. There is no longevity,” he said at the time.

Models present creations by British designer Alexander McQueen as part of his “Horn of Plenty” ready-to-wear women’s collection during Paris Fashion Week on March 10, 2009. In the middle of the runway is a pile of garbage, including recycled props from past McQueen shows. Photo by Pascal Rossignol/Reuters

Although some of his peers, like Versace, brought drama to the runway, McQueen was among the first to come up with these grandiose, almost theater-like fashion shows, Marquez said.

In 1997, his models walked on water. In 1998, a model was surrounded by a ring of fire. In 2006, a holographic Kate Moss haunted the runway.

One particular lasting impression came in 1999, when McQueen’s “No. 13” show ended with two robotic arms spraying paint onto Shalom Harlow’s simple white dress as she rotated on a turntable.

Warning: Video contains nudity. Video by YouTube user McQueenworld

Harlow told the Metropolitan Museum that the finale was an “aggressive sexual experience” and likened it to the moment of creation or the Big Bang.

“The sound, the music, the concept and the clothes, that’s the whole experience to McQueen,” Wilson said.

He was a skillful tailor.

A dress which was created for the Alexander McQueen No. 13 1999 collection fashion show is displayed in the “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty” exhibition in London on March 12, 2015. Photo by Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters

The “Savage Beauty” exhibition at the Met in 2011 and the Victoria & Albert in London this summer took McQueen’s garments out of the context of their theatrical productions and set them behind the glass. In their stillness, the clothes were divorced from the catwalk where so much of McQueen’s artistry was found in seeing them move.

But the stationary museum setting revealed an oft-forgotten aspect of McQueen’s mastery: He was an impeccable tailor.

“I don’t think he got enough credit for the ways he excelled in traditional forms,” Hyland said. “He’s remembered for blockbuster shows and sets, but the actual clothes didn’t get their due.”

A model presents a creation by British designer Alexander McQueen as part of his 2008 ready-to-wear fashion collection in Paris on Oct. 5, 2007. Photo by Benoit Tessier/Reuters

For four years, McQueen was a one-time apprentice on Savile Row, a centuries-old destination for men’s tailoring in Britain, where he mastered the construction of a garment. Upon closer inspection, one could marvel at the precise stitching and shape of a Victorian-influenced jacket, details that may be overlooked when, say, a model wears a dragonfly headdress made out of Swarovski crystal.

Underneath all the sartorial transformations of McQueen’s garments, they always had a foundation of fine tailoring.

He reveled in history’s darker moments

McQueen’s influences went far beyond Gothic horror, nature and Tim Burton, exploring some of history’s sometimes unsavory moments.

He printed photographic images from the Vietnam War on his clothes. He mined iconography from the Victorian era. He also referenced historical murders, including a personal connection to serial killer Jack the Ripper. A 15th century painting of Jesus’s crucifixion by Flemish artist Robert Campin appeared in the middle of his animalistic 1997 collection.

He also famously explored unsavory parts of British history in his 1995 “Highland Rape” collection, which was “widely misinterpreted,” Hyland said.

Warning: Video contains nudity. Video by YouTube user fashiongirl22

The models were bloodied with strategic — and disturbing — rips in their tartan and lace dresses, sometimes exposing their breasts. It was the type of collection from McQueen that earned him the title “l’enfant terrible” and fierce accusations of misogyny in the press.

“[McQueen] said that he didn’t intend for it to be about actual rape, but more about what happened to his ancestors,” Hyland said.

In Wilson’s biography, McQueen said the collection was a corrective to the “fake history of Vivienne Westwood.”

“[Westwood] makes tartan lovely and romantic and tries to pretend that’s how it was,” he’s quoted in the book. “Well, 18th century Scotland was not about beautiful women drifting across the moors in swathes of unmanageable chiffon. My show was anti that sort of romanticism.”

The post How Alexander McQueen’s grotesque creations wrecked the runway appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

Habacuc Avendaño holds out cotton thread that has been dyed a greenish-blue and purple from the liquid of a marine mollusk. Mexico’s Mixtecs have used liquid from the Plicopurpura pansa snail for centuries to dye thread for their brightly colored clothing. A dwindling sea snail population threatens that practice. Image from ClothRoads: A Global Textile Marketplace

On the shore of Mexico’s Huatulco National Park, Habacuc Avendaño loosens a snail out from underneath the craggy rocks.

Holding several strands of white thread, he flips over the snail to reveal its flesh, gently squeezes it and rubs the white liquid that emerges onto the string.

The thread turns yellow, green and finally purple after drying in the sun.

As he has done for decades, Avendaño returned the snail to its humid but shady home among the rocks.

Habacuc Avendaño rubs the liquid from a purple sea snail onto threads of white cotton, which will eventually turn royal purple after drying in the sun. Image courtesy of Mexican Dreamweavers

For centuries, the indigenous Mixtec people of Mexico’s Oaxaca region have used the purple dye that comes from milking a sea snail to make their brightly colored clothing, but the snail – and their way of life – is in danger.

Advocates say the snail (Plicopurpura pansa), known to the Mixtecs as tixinda, is under threat from poachers and increased tourism in the area.

The purple marine mollusk of Oaxaca is related to the Mediterranean muricids, which were used by the Pheonicians as early as 1570 BC to dye the fabrics worn by the upper class a reddish-purple shade known as Tyrian purple.

A bluer hue of the color became known as royal purple during the Elizabethan era.

Patrice Perillie, an immigration attorney who supports the indigenous dyers and weavers with her organization Mexican Dreamweavers told PBS NewsHour that dyers need around 1,000 snails to color four ounces of cotton thread.

Seen here is a member of the Tixinda Weaving Cooperative for women, who uses a backstrap loom to create an enredo (wrap) skirt. Image courtesy of Mexican Dreamweavers

While Mexico’s National Commission of Aquaculture and Fishing has regulated the collection of the snails since 1988, Avendaño estimates that in five years there are likely to be no more milkable snails, unless something more is done to protect them.

Perillie said that some 300,000 Mixtecs have gone to the U.S. over the years, often because they were unable to make a living selling their woven wares.

“Let’s not force them to migrate,” Perillie said. “I want people to preserve this ethnic group.”

A strap around the lower back secures this weaver to the loom bar. She uses the same portable and inexpensive weaving device as her ancestors used centuries ago. Image courtesy of Mexican Dreamweavers

Avendaño, 74, who has been milking the purple snail since 1956, came to the U.S. for the first time at the end of August to speak about his craft at The New York Botanical Garden, following a screening of the 2006 documentary about his work.

He is one of 15 men, all over the age of 50, who are licensed to farm and milk the snails – a tricky operation if the person wants to preserve the snail’s life – in Pinotepa de Don Luis, one of the last places where this traditional practice continues.

Age has caught up with Avendaño. His hands tremble and the added weight he has put on over the years make it challenging to balance on the sea rocks and squeeze between them to collect the Plicopurpura pansa, he said.

But Avendaño still returns to the beach every lunar cycle, or 28 days, to practice his craft.

“Of course, this is not work you can live by,” he said. “It is a culture that was passed down to us by our ancestors, and one which we are working on preserving today.”

The post The dy(e)ing art of Mexico’s Mixtecs appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

By day, Minneapolis native Drew Erickson works as a charter pilot. At night, he spins under the name DJ LAST WORD.

Erickson started flying at the age of 17 and also taught himself to DJ from a young age. Since then, he has gained a following spinning for Brother Ali, Mally Get Cryphy and others.

The two jobs are very different — flying has a very regimented schedule and structure, while the DJ environment is “just one big party,” he said. But certain skills are necessary for both jobs, such as having an acute awareness of your surroundings.

People from both the pilot and DJ worlds are surprised to learn of his second profession, Erickson said. “I try to keep them as separate as I can, but it doesn’t always work out like that,” he said.

Video produced and edited by Maria Bartholdi. Local Beat is an ongoing series on Art Beat that features arts and culture stories from PBS member stations around the nation.

The post This DJ has an equally cool day job appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

Michael Derrick Hudson photo from his Poetry Foundation profile

The poem was rejected nine more times. But then it ended up in front of Native American writer Sherman Alexie, the editor of this year’s “The Best American Poetry” anthology. Among the hundreds of poems Alexie read, Hudson’s poem stood out to him for its unique title and the fact that a Chinese poet had written a poem with “affectionate European classical and Christian imagery,” he wrote.

When Hudson received word that his poem had been chosen, he contacted Alexie to tell him he is not, in fact, the Chinese woman that his pseudonym seemed to suggest. Instead, he is a white poet based in Fort Wayne, Indiana, working at the Genealogy Center of the Allen County Public Library.

At this point, Alexie faced a difficult choice, he wrote in a lengthy blog post. On one hand, the poem was submitted under false pretenses; Alexie could have left it out of the anthology and avoided embarrassment and criticism.

But to do so would have implied that Alexie “only chose poems based on identity,” he wrote. Ultimately, he considered it the most “honest” choice to include the poem with a full disclosure of what had happened. He wrote:

If I’d pulled the poem then I would have been denying that I gave the poem special attention because of the poet’s Chinese pseudonym. If I’d pulled the poem then I would have been denying that I was consciously and deliberately seeking to address past racial, cultural, social, and aesthetic injustices in the poetry world. And, yes, in keeping the poem, I am quite aware that I am also committing an injustice against poets of color, and against Chinese and Asian poets in particular. But I believe I would have committed a larger injustice by dumping the poem. I think I would have cast doubt on every poem I have chosen for BAP. It would have implied that I chose poems based only on identity.

An outpouring of criticism followed on Twitter:

Michael Derrick Hudson submits poems as Yi-fen Chou because he thinks it’s easier to get published. He’s wrong on so many levels.

— Victoria Chang (@VChangPoet) September 7, 2015

White male poet who used a Chinese pseudonym should apologize. Not just to Chinese American writers, or to writers of color. To all writers.

— Jean Ho (@jeanho) September 8, 2015

This is essentially Alexie and @BestAmPo saying “Way to go. Congratulations on the yellow face.”

— Alexander Chee (@alexanderchee) September 8, 2015

Hudson has published under the name “Yi-Fen Chou” before, notably whenever he has trouble getting a poem published under his own name. “As a strategy for ‘placing’ poems this has been quite successful for me,” he wrote in a bio for the anthology.

If the strategy works, it is because of an effort on the part of editors to correct an imbalance in publishing female poets and poets of color. Alexie recognized this effort in his statement, which listed this among the rules he followed while picking poems: “I will pay close attention to the poets and poems that have been underrepresented in the past. So that means I will carefully look for great poems by women and people of color.”

In the past, that imbalance has compelled many such poets to use white, male pseudonyms in an effort to get published, including George Eliot, George Sand, and J.K. Rowling, whose publisher urged her to use initials because young boys might “be wary of a book written by a woman.”

Now, Hudson’s move assumes the opposite: that the pendulum has swung so far in the other direction that white men are now at a distinct disadvantage in publishing. But according to the numbers, this just isn’t true, Jia Tolentino pointed out at Jezebel:

Look at the last names on the bestseller lists, the table of contents of lit journals, the VIDA count, the New York Times reviewing 90 percent white authors, the 86 percent whiteness of the newspaper industry, the status quo in literary fiction that ensures that even in the best, most inventive novels of the year, white people are still described as just people, and people of color are described as such.

These imbalances often originate in the submission process itself, before poems even reach a judge, agent or slush pile. Many journals and contests require submission fees, which are a deterrent to low-income poets, and that participants be legal residents of the U.S., making undocumented poets unlikely to participate. And in spite of groups that support the work of poets of color, including Kundiman, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and the Undocupoets movement, those policies continue to exist at a number of institutions.

This is not the first time that a white poet has used a pseudonym to assume another racial identity. Poet David Dwyer in the 1970s had work published in the feminist journal “Aphra” under the guise of Ariana Olisvos. When “Aphra” discovered that there was no such poet, they demanded Dwyer buy back the rights to his work. Dwyer has said he created the character to see if he was “getting it right, whether it was convincing” and attributed the move to “arrogance.”

In another instance, the poet Araki Yasusada, an alleged Hiroshima survivor whose work garnered praise in the 1990s, was later discovered to be a hoax. Many people attribute the work to Kent Johnson, a professor at Highland Community College in Freeport, Illinois, though he has never claimed credit.

These poets, like Hudson, assume that racial identity is a “strategy” white writers can employ at will. For Hudson at least, the strategy seems to be fading. “Prairie Schooner,” the journal that first published his poem, has said it will never again publish work by Hudson under a pseudonym. Alexie himself came to a positive conclusion:

I’m exhausted by the Best American Poetry mess but, wow, how cool that so many people are crazy-passionate about poems. — Sherman Alexie (@Sherman_Alexie) September 8, 2015

The post Why a white male poet was just published in ‘The Best American Poetry 2015′ as ‘Yi-Fen Chou’ appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

Video produced by Frank Carlson and Mark Hiney.

Salman Rushdie’s new novel, “Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights,” tells the story of an attack on New York City by mystical genies. It’s a work that combines fears and anxieties of the real world with manifestations from a fantastical one. The NewsHour’s chief arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown reported on the book’s release this week.

In the extended interview above, Rushdie talks about the process of writing a world influenced by both reality and fantasy. “What the book is about is … the engagement between the world of imagination and dream, the irrational world, you know, which is not subject to logic,” he told Brown.

He also addressed the destruction of cultural artifacts in wartime, such as the Temple of Bel in Palmyra, Syria, which was destroyed recently by the Islamic State. “Culture has no armies,” he said. “I think people of a tyrannical bend fear art, because art is not controllable. Art is the expression of human genius and liberty. And if the game you’re in is to control liberty, then you dislike manifestations of it.”

Rushdie himself faced protests and threats of violence over his 1989 book “The Satanic Verses,” which some called blasphemy against the prophet Muhammad. Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini called for the author’s death, which led him to go into hiding for almost a decade.

Now, he said, he still believes that free expression is important to any society. “One of the things I think we must remember as free societies is that one of the parts, essential parts, of freedom is to say things that other people don’t like,” he said. “I think that idea of accepting … what you find objectionable is absolutely essential to an open society.”

But there’s one way Rushdie does not always enjoy speaking out: on Twitter, which he says he may quit soon. This, after Rushdie tweeted a snarky comment at Jonathan Franzen, who quit Twitter in 2012, calling it “unspeakably irritating“:

Dear #Franzen: @MargaretAtwood @JoyceCarolOates @nycnovel @NathanEnglander @Shteyngart and I are fine with Twitter. Enjoy your ivory tower.

— Salman Rushdie (@SalmanRushdie) September 16, 2013

Watch the full interview for more.

The post Why Salman Rushdie is probably quitting Twitter appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

Street signs with anti-racist messages from Ghana ThinkTank appeared at the New Museum’s IDEAS CITY Festival in May. Photo courtesy of Christopher Robbins

Street signs dot every city block in the U.S. Without commanding much attention, they serve as a silent but ever-present reminder to live within the rules. Now, an organization is harnessing that authority to create New York City street signs that challenge people to consider their own role in systemic racism.

Displaying messages in support of the Black Lives Matter movement like “White guilt is complacency” and “Your privilege doesn’t need consent,” the signs will appear guerrilla-style along 14^th St. in New York City as part of the Art in Odd Places public art project in October.

The signs were designed by students at SUNY Purchase working with the organization Ghana ThinkTank, which was founded in 2006 to address problems in the “developed” world by brainstorming solutions with people in U.S. prisons and other countries including Cuba, Iran and El Salvador. Their messages emerged from street conversations and interviews on how civilians participate in systemic racism, according to Carmen Montoya, an organizer with Ghana ThinkTank.

The signs are meant as a recognition of the public’s participation in unequal systems, according to Robbins.

The signs originally appeared in New York City during the New Museum’s IDEAS CITY Festival in late May. As the group installed them, several people asked them to put up the signs in their own neighborhoods, according to Christopher Robbins, a Ghana ThinkTank organizer and associate professor of art and design at SUNY Purchase.

The signs use the same materials and graphics that appear on New York City’s municipal signs, which carry the authority of a greater system, Robins said. “A street sign signifies the official voice of the system around you,” he told the NewsHour via email.

Ghana ThinkTank first experimented with street signage in 2011 in a project aimed at addressing alleged police harassment of immigrants. For this project, dubbed “Legal Waiting Zones,” the group responded to complaints of police harassment toward people on Roosevelt Ave. in Queens by putting up posters in English and Spanish that read:

It is OK for you to wait here.
And in all public places.
For a friend, your mom,
or simply because it is too
hot in your apartment.

An effective street sign “should blend in enough to initially be absorbed as something official and sanctioned,” Robbins said. “Once the content has sunk in, a rupture happens.”

Street signs and address markers were originally born of a higher authority’s attempt at control. According to one account, the British army established house numbers across Manhattan during the Revolutionary War “to establish military control.” Street signs and house numbers were rare before the war and unregulated until the New York Common Council passed a law requiring house numbers in 1793.

As New York grew, street signs became a common denominator across the city, a visual sign of the social rules and designations that govern the public. Their design and location have also been regulated and re-regulated frequently, leaving the mark of multiple administrations upon the city.

The signs highlight the “difference between the law as it is written and the law as it is applied,” Robbins said. Photo courtesy of Christopher Robbins

Originally, street signs and names of businesses were etched or painted into the sides of buildings. In the late 1800s, street signs themselves were works of art, boasting ornate Victorian design. From the 1910s to the 1930s, simple blue signs with white lettering became more common. In the 1960s and 1970s, many of those signs were traded for utilitarian dark yellow signs with black lettering.

The 1980s brought more changes still, when many existing signs were replaced with green ones, created by the city in an attempt to be consistent with federal highway signage. And in 1989, the city began installing brown street signs with white lettering to designate historical districts.

Confused? You’re not the only one. In 2012, the city changed the font and letter case of street signs, a move to make the signs more legible, a project years in the making. Parking signs, in particular, have long irked New Yorkers with multiple sets of elaborate, often redundant instructions per sign, which the city recognized in 2013 with an attempt to streamline the signs.

Photo courtesy of Christopher Robbins

Street signs have served as a medium for artists in the past. In March 2013, artist Jay Shells created street signs using rap lyrics that mentioned specific locations in New York City and placed them at those locations. Killy Kilford, a British artist, installed inspirational messages such as “Listen to your heart” on street signs around the city in Nov. 2013.

Though they use the visual language of regulation, street signs also serve as a call to action, holding the public accountable for their participation in a system, Robbins said. “Our own action and inaction is part of the cumulative process that helps extend these unfair systems,” he said. “I hope the ‘official-ness’ of the signs points to that often overlooked connection.”

The post When streets signs tell you to walk, yield and stop racism appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

After Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast in Oct. 2012, the Jet Star roller coaster in Seaside Heights, N.J., was left in ruins. It was demolished in May 2013. Photo by Matthew Clark

Once, the Jet Star roller coaster was alive with the sounds of roaring passengers in its cars, the hammering of the wheels along its tracks and the thundering vibrations on the wooden pier.

In the months after Hurricane Sandy, I went to the New Jersey shore to shoot surf images and saw the destruction firsthand, the remnants of people’s homes and the beginnings of the rebuilding process. This storm affected the coastline I was so familiar with from years of swimming in the Atlantic Ocean’s frozen mid-winter surf with the other dedicated surfers, many of whom owned the homes along the shore. Yet, I hadn’t been to Seaside Heights since before the storm, where the Jet Star once rumbled and shook on Casino Pier.

In March 2013, I drove though Seaside Heights to see if I could photograph the coaster, which rumors said would be dismantled in the coming weeks. The shore was a spectacle of flashing police lights, barricades and “No Entry” signs. We walked up to the caution tape barricading us from the shoreline and saw a police officer patrolling the immediate area. But we wanted to get closer.

My friend Casey, who was with me, ran back to the car and grabbed a surf magazine I had in the backseat, which featured a two-page spread I had taken in Indonesia the summer before. Casey showed the officer the magazine and he recognized some of my work. “I know your name — you shoot surf photos down here a lot right?” he said. By chance, the officer was friends with some locally talented surfers and had been surfing this exact spot, right next to Casino Pier, since he was a kid. He let us beyond the police tape down to the shoreline, where I could set up my tripod and photograph the skeleton of the Jet Star.

Now, the shot above is all that’s left of the coaster.

Matthew Clark is a fine art water photographer based in New York. He recently won the Weather Channel’s “It’s Amazing Out There” photo contest with the image above. Parallax is a blog where photographers offer the unexpected sides and stories of their work. Tell us yours or share on Instagram at #PBSParallax.

The post Why I jumped the caution tape to photograph an abandoned roller coaster appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

Featuring larger-than-life creatures powered by pedals, Austin Bike Zoo is a one-of-a-kind blend of puppetry and cycling. This “human-powered puppetry” was born out of a passion to combine the beauty and strength of human movement with the artistry and theater of puppets and a dedication to creating interactive works.

With collaborative support from the Austin, Texas, community, the zoo presents a new take on classical plays, transforming Shakespeare into a circus performance. Featuring a vast menagerie of creatures including an 80-foot long rattlesnake, Austin Bike Zoo aims to educate and inspire while touring the country with their mobile majestic zoo.

Video produced by Chelsea Hernandez and Mario Troncoso for KLRU’s Arts in Context. Local Beat is an ongoing series on Art Beat that features arts and culture stories from PBS member stations around the nation.

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English crime writer Agatha Christie at her home Greenway House in Devon, England. Photo by Popperfoto/Getty Images

Today marks the 125th birthday of famed British novelist Agatha Christie, a pioneer of detective fiction best-known for creating enigmatic characters Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple along with suspenseful whodunits like “Murder on the Orient Express” and “The Mousetrap.” But even Christie’s less-publicized accomplishments are impressive. Below, a few highlights that may surprise you.

1. She wrote her first novel on a bet.

Agatha Christie wrote her first novel, “The Mysterious Affair at Styles,” because her sister Madge bet her that she couldn’t. The book was published in 1916 and featured Hercule Poirot, a Belgian detective who would appear in many of her works.

2. She knew how to catch a wave. 

Christie is the first British woman documented to have stood up while riding a surfboard, according to Pete Robinson, founder of the Museum of British Surfing. In 1922, Christie’s first husband, Archie, was helping to organize a world tour promoting the British Empire Exhibition, an event celebrating British imperialism that ran during the summers of 1924 and 1925 in Wembley Stadium in north London. While in Cape Town, the two took up surfing. They later traveled to Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii, where Christie stood up on her board for the first time. She wrote about the experience in her autobiography:

“I learned to become expert – or at any rate expert from the European point of view – the moment of complete triumph on the day that I kept my balance and came right into shore standing upright on my board!”

3. She was a part-time archaeologist.

In 1928, Christie became interested in archaeology and toured a dig led by archaeologist Sir Charles Leonard Woolley at Ur, an ancient Mesopotamian city, in Iraq. She was invited back the following year, when she met her second husband, archaeologist Max Mallowan. Christie learned to help out and assisted on several of Mallowan’s digs while also reserving time for writing.

Actors Sean Connery and Vanessa Redgrave appear on the poster for the film “Murder On The Orient Express” (1974), based on the 1934 novel by Agatha Christie. Photo by Movie Poster Image Art/Getty Images

4. She was an expert on poisons. 

Christie’s novels are known for their descriptions of poisons, with more than 80 people having fallen victim to poison in her stories. In “The Pale Horse,” she described the symptoms of thallium poisoning so well doctors were able to use it to identify and cure a real case.

Christie learned about poison while working as a nurse and pharmacy dispenser during World War I. She addressed her preoccupation with poison while writing about her first book “The Mysterious Affair at Styles” in her autobiography. “Since I was surrounded by poisons, perhaps it was natural that death by poisoning should be the method I selected,” she wrote.

5. She’s second only to Shakespeare in popularity.

Christie is widely acknowledged to be the best-selling author in the world after Shakespeare. Her books have sold more than two billion copies and translated into more than 103 languages.

6. Her characters received the star treatment.

The New York Times ran a full-page obituary for Hercule Poirot on Aug. 6, 1975, shortly before “Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case” was published. The first paragraph read, “Hercule Poirot, a Belgian detective who became internationally famous, has died in England. His age was unknown.” It is the only time the paper has published an obituary for a fictional character.

7. She wrote the world’s longest-running play.

Christie is the author of “Mousetrap,” the world’s longest-running play. First performed in 1952, the play is still running on the at the St. Martins Theater in London. Its run exceeds that of the longest-running Broadway show, “Phantom of the Opera,” which opened in 1988 and continues today at the Majestic Theatre. She was also the first female playwright to have had three plays running on the West End simultaneously.

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TV critics review so much more than pilots these days.

Sure, they still turn in reviews on the strength of a new show’s first handful of episodes, but they also recap and analyze every episode of “True Detective” for clues to the show’s endgame. They scrutinize the style on “Mad Men.” They file separate “Game of Thrones” recaps for “experts” and “newbies.” They defend “The Walking Dead,” and condemn it.

Ahead of the 67th Primetime Emmy Awards this Sunday, can you guess which shows these critics praised or bashed? Take our quiz above.

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Art by Kate Beaton. Image courtesy of Hark! A Vagrant

A self-described history and literature nerd, Kate Beaton’s comic collections come with an index.

Beaton, the creator of the massively popular webcomic “Hark! A Vagrant,” has a new collection out this week — “Step Aside, Pops” — where a clingy Superman and an annoyed Lois Lane rub shoulders with some of history’s unsung heroes, such as Dr. Sara Josephine Baker and her contributions to public health care. While some of her comics have tackled feminist commentary, she’ll still take the time to draw a version of Batman galavanting in a cowboy hat and chaps. “Is that low hanging fruit? Don’t mind if I do,” one caption reads elsewhere in the book.

The NewsHour talked with the Canadian cartoonist about her first children’s book, how she selects her subjects and why there’s humor to be found in some of history’s saddest tales.

How have your comics evolved since you started publishing them on the Web years ago?

They started out being this six-panel gag, six-to-eight panel. And then they started to get longer than that, and they started to become less traditional comic strip forms sometimes. I started some long form ones in “Step Aside, Pops” because I was just sort of breaking loose from the rigid structure that I had before. I got tired of it and wanted to try something new. But then, when I tackle a historical or literary topic I used to just make one comic and now I tend to make, like, six, because I think it adds a bit more depth to the comics that I’m making.

In terms of how you drew your figures, is there any particular evolution there?

Art by Kate Beaton. Image courtesy of Hark! A Vagrant

I’ve just become a better artist over time. I look at my older stuff and I’m like, “yuck.” But then, everyone thinks that way about their older stuff.

How do you balance the humor with historical figures that are not as well known? In “Step Aside Pops,” I think of Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian and Benito Juárez, which I thought was awesome because I didn’t expect the book to have Mexican history.

There’s a bit of a formula there to it. If I do something I know not a lot of people know that much about, you’re going to see more strips initially that have to deal with their exposition. They still have a joke in it. I have to let the audience know who I’m talking about and when it is and a little bit of a background. And then, over the course of a few strips, they kind of get to know the characters a bit and you can put in more nuanced ones at the end. You only got, like, six strips to do it, so it’s a bit of a math equation sometimes.

Art by Kate Beaton. Image courtesy of Hark! A Vagrant

I try to understand my audience comprises of people who don’t know anything about it. It’s not like I can phone it in. I have to know what I’m talking about, but I also have to respect that everybody’s going to know exactly what I’m talking about. And also because I work on the Internet largely and because it is the Internet’s stage, even if people don’t know, it’s so easy to find the information really quickly. And I think that’s part of the fun in my comics for a lot of people. It’s like, “I didn’t know about this person, and I looked it up, and I read about it, and I read the comics again and they made more sense.”

I didn’t know the history of [Frédéric] Chopin and [Franz] Liszt themselves, and while the punch line still landed, after going back and researching myself, there was still other humor I hadn’t realized that was there.

That’s a lot of fun, to be able to do that. I mean, if I wasn’t making comics I’d probably still be working in museums. That’s all about public education, so not too far away.

Art by Kate Beaton. Image courtesy of Hark! A Vagrant

How’d you make that jump then? What prompted you to do comics and make history funny?

It all started when I was in university. I was studying history and making comics for the school paper and there was just kind of a reflection of what I was reading every day. The comics online, “Hark! A Vagrant,” really started when I was working at the Maritime Museum in British Columbia. And when you are an avid history or literature nerd, I think there’s a lot of joy in getting to know the things that you’re studying and finding humor in it. You always find people who are big fans of Lord Byron, or something. That’s not just because of his writing, it’s because of his personality. There’s always a sort of personal connection there. And it’s really not hard to get there when you approach it from that kind of personal perspective.

Was it difficult to find the humor in Ida B. Wells, who had to weather so many trials and tribulations?

The big powerful white guys, they’re easy to take down and nobody really cares if you take them down a notch with, like, a jab, because they’re powerful white dudes with a lot of money, and it’s not really gonna hurt their reputation. But for someone like Ida B. Wells, it’s so hard, there’s kind of really nothing funny about it. You don’t want to make a comic that makes fun of her, that’s horrible. I can make a comic about [Thomas] Jefferson and make fun of him, and that’s okay. But he was the president, he’s fine. Ida struggled a lot and is a real hero of mine. So in the comics about her, it’s a different kind of humor that you employ.

Art by Kate Beaton. Image courtesy of Hark! A Vagrant

I love that your comics punch up. They don’t punch down. Has there been any subject that was difficult to write for other reasons? I’m thinking “Sexy Batman” or some of the other sillier stuff.

“Sexy Batman,” that was just a lark. We were playing a drawing game with a couple other friends and we kept drawing sexy Batman. He’s just in that pose, where you can see your chest and your butt at the same time, the pose they’re always putting ladies in in superhero comics. I like having a mix, I wouldn’t want it all to be serious.

Art by Kate Beaton. Image courtesy of Hark! A Vagrant

Art by Kate Beaton. Image courtesy of Hark! A Vagrant

You also came out with a children’s book this year, “The Princess and the Pony.” I imagine you’d have to recalibrate your approach for a children’s book.

Oh yeah, because children are just a different audience. They’re very smart and equally smart as adults, but they just don’t have the same points of reference. They’re experiencing the world for the first time, their humor doesn’t rely on wit and nostalgia and reference and things like that the way that we employ as adults. But if you talk down to them, they know it. You’re trying to reach them on their level, which is very serious, very smart, very aware of everything on the page. They soak it all in, all the detail. And I just wanted to make something that would make them laugh.

What’s next for you?

Another book with Scholastic. I finished two books this year, and two are being published, so it’s been a really busy year. That’s probably the hardest thing to navigate for me right now, is taking on other projects while maintaining my online presence because I don’t like it when too long goes by and there’s no update, and I don’t think readers do either. But then at the same time, it takes up to a week to make a comic sometimes, especially if it’s one of the research-heavy ones. They don’t look like much, I feel like people often describe them as — they look like scribbles, but then they’re good! But they take a long time. And if you’re working on something else, you’re like, well, I don’t have a week to make a comic. I have to keep doing the things I’m doing.

I feel like even throughout this year, you tried to maintain that communication with your audience.

Yeah, I don’t want to disappear. I’ve seen people do that. It’s not that people forget about you, but I just can’t step away from the thing that created me.

That’s true with webcomics, about people just dropping off.

Yeah, it happens. and with webcomics, it’s not like someone hands you a check every week and says good job. It’s all at the whim of whoever’s reading. And you can build a business as a webcomic, but then sometimes people get married, they have kids, they got lives and bills to pay, and you can understand why the comic sometimes drop off like that. It’s a difficult thing to maintain.

Kate Beaton will be a special guest at the Small Press Expo in North Bethesda, Md. this weekend.

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Watch PBS NewsHour’s senior correspondent and chief arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown report on Juan Felipe Herrera, the current U.S. poet laureate.

This marked the first week as U.S. poet laureate for Juan Felipe Herrera, the 21st poet to hold the position and first Hispanic poet to do so, as well as the beginning of a new nation-wide poetry project.

Herrera announced his project, “La Casa de Colores,” earlier this month at the National Book Festival. The project will combine submissions from the public across a different theme each month; combined, they will form one giant epic poem over the course of his laureateship.

Starting this week, anyone can submit up to 200 characters per 30 days to the project on the Library of Congress’ website. From now until Oct. 15, submissions should address the subject of family.

“La Casa de Colores, ‘the House of Colors,’ is a house for all voices. In this house we will feed the hearth and heart of our communities with creativity and imagination. And we will stand together in times of struggle and joy,” Herrera said in a statement on the project.

Herrera gave his inaugural reading on Tuesday at the Library of Congress, where he performed a variety of pieces from the span of his career, including “Are You Doing That New Amerikan Thing?” and “Saturday Night at the Buddhist Cinema.”

He also spoke about his path to writing and poetry, which began in third grade in San Diego when his teacher Mrs. Sampson asked him to sing a song in front of the class. When he was finished singing “Three Blind Mice,” she told him: “You have a beautiful voice.”

Those words were powerful in Herrera’s life, and he has spent the time since then telling others the same thing, he told the audience at the Library of Congress. “And I’m going to say it to you tonight: You have a beautiful voice,” he said.

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A man in the H Street neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Photo by Brittney Sankofa

Editor’s Note: The H Street neighborhood of Washington, D.C., was badly damaged in the race riots that followed the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, prompting white flight from the area. Now, that trend is reversing, causing problems for the area’s longtime residents. In this week’s edition of Parallax, photographer Brittney Sankofa, who grew up in the neighborhood, describes her relationship to H Street.

The men who leave afternoon Crossfit for their luxury condos won’t understand how it felt as a seventh-grader interviewing toothless liquor store regulars in the cold for a youth urban planning program called CityVision about what this street “usta be like befo’ ‘68. Was real nice. They had a street car would take ya to all the shops.” Amid these hip cafes and happy hour deals, it’s hard for me to channel my 12-year-old brain. I do know, however, that its absence is unnerving. So to combat that emptiness, I make an effort to acknowledge the “remnants of old H Street” as valuable antiques, griots to a colonized village, or, less romantically put, regular human beings. Two men smoking Newports on a stoop near the Atlas Performing Arts Center spot me taking photos. “Hey, sis!” one of them yells. “You ain’t never seen a smile this pretty!”

The word “parallax” describes the camera error that occurs when an image looks different through a viewfinder than how it is recorded by a sensor; when one camera gives two perspectives. Parallax is a blog where photographers offer the unexpected sides and stories of their work. Tell us yours or share on Instagram at #PBSParallax.

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Partido Young Lords, c. 1970. Photo by Máximo Colón at El Museo del Barrio

The Young Lords, a largely Puerto Rican group of radicals, virtually took over parts of New York City in the 1960s and early 1970s fighting for self-determination for Latinos and against racial discrimination and inequality.

What started as a turf gang on the streets of Chicago in the fall of 1960 ultimately grew into a Puerto Rican nationalist party that expanded to New York City — as its members opened offices in the Bronx, East Harlem and the Lower East Side. “They grew up during a period of struggle and they had a profound sense of responsibility to the community.”

Now, the radical social activists have reclaimed their territory at three New York museums with the exhibit “¡Presente! The Young Lords in New York,” which explores the civil and human rights activism of Latinos through photography, film and other artwork to showcase the legacy of the Young Lords.

“They grew up during a period of struggle and they had a profound sense of responsibility to the community,” said Johanna Fernandez, a professor of history at Baruch College and co-curator of the Bronx Museum exhibit. “That experience of seeing the discrimination in the schools, in the hospital, at the police station, radicalized them emotionally at a very young age,” she said.

Digital prints at Loisada Inc of the Young Lords’ announcing the formation of the group at Tompkins Square Park in 1969. Photo by Hiram Maristany

Organizers announced the formal founding of the Young Lords at a public rally to commemorate the Cuban Revolution on July 26, 1969, at a bandshell at Tompkins Square Park in the city’s Lower East Side.

In an era defined by protests — largely those calling for an end to the Vietnam War — the group’s radical beginnings were further influenced by the militant group, the Black Panthers, who fought against racial prejudice and police brutality in the 1960s and 70s.

The Young Lord’s members were generally young and were often the primary English speakers of their families. Many attended universities in the U.S. but later dropped out to join the organization.

The group developed a 13-point platform that combined principles of racial justice and socialism as well as calls for for Puerto Rican sovereignty.

Pablo Guzman, Yoruba of the Young Lords, at the Bronx Museum of the Arts. Photo by Fred W. McDarrah

One of the Young Lords’ first actions became known as the “Garbage Offensive”, when the group blocked a portion of Third Avenue in 1969 with discarded waste to protest what they said was the Sanitation Department’s neglect of East Harlem.

The more intimate moments of the Young Lords’ community work were documented by Hiram Maristany, a former member of the Young Lords.

“It’s important to show photographs of them not just in the march, at the protest, doing the action but in quiet moments too when work is being done…the more reflective moments,” El Museo curator Rocio Alvarado said.

The group’s activism also led to the creation of the group’s weekly publication, Palante, which translates to “forward in struggle” or “right on” in Spanish.

“They were a revolutionary organization and there is a history of newspaper production in radical Socialist organizations,” Fernandez said. “[Palante] was the means by which the Young Lords put their ideas out to the community about issues like Puerto Rican independence.”

Archives of the newspaper cover a large section of the El Museo and Bronx Museum galleries.

Installation view of the Young Lords publication “Palante” at El Museo del Barrio. Photo by Connie Kargbo/NewsHour

The group later staged two lock-ins at Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx, known to many in the community as the “butcher shop of the south Bronx,” to protest what they saw as poor health conditions and racism toward people of color at the hospital.

Many in the hospital staff supported the Young Lords in demanding better treatment and access to information for patients. A draft text outlining how patients should be treated at Lincoln Hospital eventually led to the first Patient Bill of Rights.

Installation view at the Bronx Museum of the Arts of Palante (2015) and Women of the Young Lords (2015) by Sophia Dawson. Photo by Vanessa S. Clifton​

But while the Young Lords fought for better treatment and services for their community, women within the organization quietly battled what they saw as a misogynistic environment.

Documented in the exhibit, “Women of the Young Lords: The Revolution within the Revolution,” the Bronx Museum tackles the internal politics of the women who pushed back against the organization’s status quo.

These women rejected the idea of “Revolutionary Machismo,” a tenet included in the first draft of their 13-point platform. Instead, the women of the Young Lords lobbied to include “Down with Machismo and Male Chauvinism” as part of the plan.

At a recent panel discussion Denise Oliver-Velez, the first female leader of the Young Lords, called Revolutionary Machismo “the oxymoron of the century.”

Working with Young Lords Women’s Caucus, artist Sophia Dawson created a painted collage that pays tribute to the work of the women of the Young Lords in fighting for gender equality.

Art installation “Theater of Struggle” by Adrian ‘Viajero’ Roman. Photo by PBS Connie Kargbo/NewsHour

In the Lower East Side, the Loisaida Inc. space honors the icons of the Young Lords and their ‘theatrical brand of cultural activism.’

The entrance of the exhibit, by Brooklyn artist Adrian ‘Viajero’ Roman, is a shrine-like mixed media installation that serves as a memorial to not only to the Young Lords but to the generation’s community activists as a whole.

The exhibits are currently on display at the Bronx Museum through October 15; El Museo del Barrio through December 12; and Loisaida Inc through October 10.

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Artist Alex Katz paints at his New York City studio. Photo by PBS NewsHour

At an age when some artists might hang up their paintbrushes for good, Alex Katz is churning out new work. “I’m really cooking. I don’t think I ever painted more than I’m painting in the last year or so.”

“I’m really cooking,” Katz told PBS NewsHour in an interview at his Maine summer retreat. “I don’t think I ever painted more than I’m painting in the last year or so.”

“You never know what’s going to happen when you start on a canvas,” he said. “I love the adventure.”

Today, the 88-year-old artist said he still paints seven days a week. When I offered that many people his age might slow down, he had a ready reply: “Well, I ain’t most people,” he said.

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Katz’s stature has soared over a six-decade career in which he has outlived many of his early contemporaries, including Jackson Pollack, William De Koenig and Robert Rauschenberg.

This year, his work has been the subject of two museum retrospectives.

Katz’s work was on display at Atlanta’s High Museum of Art earlier this summer. Photo courtesy High Museum of Art

The first, “This Is Now,” at the High Museum in Atlanta displayed 40 of his distinctive portraits and large landscapes — beaming with bright colors, clean lines, monochromatic backgrounds and billboard-sized optimism. The High exhibit closed on Sept. 6 and travels next to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain.

The second, “Brand New and Terrific,” at the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine, features 69 early Katz works from the 1950s. The Colby exhibit remains on display through November.

Katz’s work on display at the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine. Photo by PBS NewsHour

“He has been one of the most important representational painters,” Colby College Museum of Art curator Diana Tuite said in an interview. “He has really transcended any art movement and continues to really be influential for young painters today.”

Since the 1950s, Katz has straddled two homes – in New York City, where he grew up and still lives nine months of the year, and in the coastal Maine town of Lincolnville, where he has spent his summers since 1954.

A decade ago, Katz built himself a sun-filled studio in the woods overlooking a pond, where he swims daily during the summer. His subject matter can be found outside his windows.

“I like the light,” Katz said. “The further north you get, the less white light you have and the more color, and I thought the color around here, you know, is just really marvelous, and that was a big reason for coming here.”

White Roses 9, 2012. Oil on linen, 108 x 216 inches. ©Alex Katz/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Katz started coming to Maine in 1949. At the time, he was an undergraduate scholarship student at the prestigious Cooper Union School of Art in Manhattan.

He took summer classes at the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture in Madison, Maine. There he shifted his style from painting from photographs to painting from direct observation.

“I have a lot of training.  I’m not high natural talent,” Katz said.

1975 painting, “Summer Picnic” shows his transition from figurative pictures to landscapes. ©Alex Katz/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

One thing you learn visiting Katz in his studios is that his paintings are all planned out. When you see a larger painting of his, it has not been improvised. “Everything starts with sketches, studies,” he said.

Katz transforms these small studies into huge canvas paintings faster than one might expect.

When I visited him at his Soho studio in New York, I saw in real time how fast he works — layering wet paint and applying different colors while wielding brushes in both hands.

He completed a 15′ by 11′ painting of trees, which he titled “Cross Light 3,” in 90 minutes.

“You have to really want it, and you have to go for it,” Katz said.

Katz adds a finishing touch to a painting he named “Cross Light 3″ in his SoHo studio. Photo by PBS NewsHour

Initially Katz thought he would never be a full-time painter without the financial support of another job.

He spent ten years carving frames for a living while painting and living in apartments without heat. In his first gallery shows, nothing sold, except to a few friends, he said.

“I had five flops in a row,” Katz said with a hearty laugh. But now? “I love sticking it to people who didn’t think I was anything for so many years.”

Blue Umbrella #2, 1972. Oil on canvas. 96 x 144 inches. ©Alex Katz/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Given his long summer residency, it’s perhaps no surprise that a Maine museum is the leading repository of his art.

The Colby museum holds 850 Katz pieces in its permanent collection, including works featuring his longtime muse, Katz’s wife, Ada.

Across the decades, she has appeared in more than 250 paintings.

Katz’s latest rendering of his wife Ada, who he has painted more than 250 times. Photo by PBS NewsHour

“Ada’s like a perfect model. Picasso would have jumped at her,” Katz said of the Spanish artist who depicted a series of his own muses.

Katz keeps coming back to the one he married 57 years ago, as he described her, with “Miss America measurements.”

“Ada literally stopped the traffic on Route 1 the first time she came in a bathing suit,” Katz said. “She goes on a beach, guys fall over.”

Today, in his renderings of Ada, the face is still familiar, but the hair has gone gray. “I think, in a sense, the world caught up with me.”

As for Katz, he doesn’t mind getting older. He keeps in shape. He keeps working. He accepts commissions, too — with one small caveat: you must already own two of his pieces and agree to pay double his normal price.

“I feel like I’m 30, 40 years younger than I am,” Katz said. “What’s happening now is that it’s like an explosion of different people are interested in my work than were, like, ten years ago.”

“I think, in a sense, the world caught up with me,” he said.

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The Latin Jazz Youth Ensemble of San Francisco was founded with a simple but ambitious mission: to preserve the traditions of Latin jazz and Afro-Cuban music by teaching it to young musicians, who can then become role models for future aspiring artists.

Now in its fourteenth year, the ensemble has been home to over 120 young Bay Area musicians, developing a love for the music and joining a community of elder players who’ve helped shaped it. The group has opened for greats such as Poncho Sanchez and the Cuban bassist Israel “Cachao” López, jammed with the likes of pianist Chuchito Valdés, and recorded three albums — including “Con Mis Manos,” released earlier this year, which includes student musicians playing alongside notable guests including Louie Romero, John Santos, and Jerry Gonzalez.

As the artist-in-resident youth ensemble of the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival, the group is often seen headlining energetic dance salsa concerts around town, performing classics like Celia Cruz’ “La Vida Es Un Carnaval” and Miguel Matamoros’ “Lágrimas Negras.” In addition to their fresh arrangements of popular favorites, they also play original tunes, often melding funk and soul with Latin jazz.

“It’s definitely opened up my world, working with and getting to know some incredible musicians who I never would’ve met otherwise,” says 17-year-old Xiadani Avila, one of the group’s singers who has commuted from Modesto — sometimes weekly — for band practices and performances since joining the group three years ago. “I’ve learned to be confident, and to trust myself, which I lacked when I first started.”

Musical Director John Calloway has witnessed countless members take a similar journey. “That’s my joy, watching them grow from having difficulty keeping time and holding the ensemble together, to becoming prominent soloists,” says Calloway, a music teacher and professional musician.

Calloway runs the group with partners Arturo Riera, a leading Bay Area curator and promoter of Latin music who manages the band and its bookings, and Sylvia Ramirez, who brings television industry experience in marketing for the group and coaching the youth in stage presence. Together the three have managed to sustain the group on earnings from gigs, and they’ve stayed committed to keeping young musicians’ participation in the group free.

“We were intentional about starting this group with zero limits to entry, and unlike a lot of groups that have to cream the crop, we are able to achieve real diversity,” says Riera.

The ensemble attracts young musicians from diverse racial, ethnic and economic backgrounds, and girls and young women in the group find themselves equal participants in roles playing piano, trombone, sax, and bass, where they’re often underrepresented in the music industry.

Many alumni have continued as professional musicians. Standouts include Natalie Cressman, who’s played with jazz luminaries like Nicholas Payton, Wycliffe Gordon and Peter Apfelbaum; Charles Ferguson and his Afro-beat band Zongo Junction; Daniel Riera and the newly-formed Soltrón SF, recently gaining fanfare for its “New Mission” sound; and guitarist Francesca Simone, who recently joined Beyoncé’s stage band.

“We don’t treat the members as kids, but as you would any professional musician,” says Riera. “Practice, show up on time, and when you play, give the performance of your life every time.”

Video produced by Kelly Whalen. Local Beat is an ongoing series on Art Beat that features arts and culture stories from PBS member stations around the nation.

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[Watch Video]Video produced by Alexandra Hall and edited by Justin Scuiletti.

Raciel Pereda Bernet’s first skateboard was already in bad shape by the time he bought it from a girl in Havana for the equivalent of $45 U.S. dollars. Like all skateboards in Cuba, it came from “the outside” — meaning, outside of the island where all trade with the U.S. had been cut off for decades. “They all come from the outside,” Bernet said.

Every skateboarder knows that boards break and shoes wear out. Living in the United States, that can make skating expensive, but depending on your income, it’s manageable. All cities and most small towns have skate shops, and thanks to the Internet, most equipment can be shipped to your doorstep.

But for skaters in Cuba, the mortality of skate gear can be debilitating. That’s because skate shops, and domestic skateboard production, simply don’t exist in Cuba.

In 2010, Bernet met Miles Jackson at the muros presidentes, a gathering place for skaters in Havana. Jackson and his girlfriend Lauren Bradley were studying abroad in Havana and noticed the lack of resources for skaters. They decided to start Cuba Skate, a nonprofit organization that would connect skaters in Cuba with skating equipment and resources.

Raciel Pereda Bernet in Cuba on June 21, 2015. “When I first started skating, I was just a kid. But once I got older it became more than just a hobby,” he said. “Now it’s a part of me, a way for me to escape from my problems, simply because I like it.” Photo by Marian Fleita Mojena

Despite limited connectivity to the international skateboarding world, Cuba’s DIY skate culture is talented, innovative and resourceful, Jackson said. “They make boards, that normally might last one or two weeks, last months,” Jackson said. The only thing that community needed were more material resources.

It started as a blog. Then trips to Cuba through Canada. Five years later, Jackson hand-carries boards and other skate equipment from the U.S. to Cuba several times a year, with full authorization from the U.S. government’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.

These days, he’ll normally bring around 50 boards packed into his luggage on a single trip. That, in combination with shoes, trucks, wheels and other gear can amount to 100 lbs. “Even if we bring down all these boards, they only last so long,” he said.

Reinaldo Vicet Reyes skating in Cuba on March 15, 2015. Photo by Neftalie Williams

Cuba Skate raises money and donations from individuals and skate companies. The group’s next project is a complete renovation of Cuba’s only official skate park, El Patinodromo, Jackson said.

Orlando Rosales of 23yG, a skate crew in Cuba, skating in Cuba on March 15, 2015. Photo by Neftalie Williams

Cuba Skate also organizes trips for pro skaters from the U.S. to Cuba and works to promote the concept of “global skateboard diplomacy,” the idea that cross-cultural exchange of skateboard culture between two countries can improve relations between nation states. Other skaters in the U.S. have started similar projects, like Amigo Skate and Skateistan.

The group’s work comes at a moment when the U.S. and Cuba are normalizing relations after decades of diplomatic silence. Cultural exchange between skaters in the U.S. and other countries can help improve relations between nations from the bottom up, according to Neftalie Williams, Cuba Skate’s Chair and Research Director at USC Annenberg’s Institute of Sports, Media and Society. Williams compared the potential of skate diplomacy with the role that ping-pong played in restoring U.S.-Chinese relations in the early 1970’s.

Skaters in the bowl outside the Kennedy Center at the “Finding a Line” festival on Sept. 10, 2015. Photo by Alexandra Hall

However, there are still barriers to cultural exchange. Cuba Skate invited three skaters to travel to the U.S. from Cuba for “Finding a Line: Skateboarding, Music, and Media,” a festival showcasing skate culture at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. from Sept. 4-13. But when three Cuban skates — Orlando Enrique Rosales Caraballo, Reinaldo Jorge Vicet Reyes and Yojaní Perez Rivera — went to the U.S. consulate in Havana for their interviews, their visas were denied over concerns they planned to emigrate to the U.S., according to Jackson.

“There must have been a miscommunication because when the Cuban skaters went for their interview in Havana, they were seen as three Afro-Cubans off the street,” said Jackson.

Cuba Skate submitted a letter to appeal the decision, but ultimately Rosales, Vicet and Perez didn’t get to skate at the Kennedy Center. Representatives from the Kennedy Center declined to comment on the visa issue.

But Bernet and another Cuban skater, Fernando Verdecia Maseda, who moved to Miami two years ago, were at the festival as the Cuban flag was raised in the Hall of Nations. Bernet’s new board has a drawing of a green palm tree against a black background, and it is stunning.

Bernet skates at the “Finding a Line” festival at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 10, 2015. Photo by Alexandra Hall

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“Stonewall,” directed by Roland Emmerich, misconstrues the details of what formed the beginning of the modern gay rights movement, author Mark Segal says. Photo by Philippe Bossé/Roadside Attractions

Last Sunday, I was at the Stonewall Inn in New York City to kick off a campaign to make neighboring Christopher Park a national park. As the site of the infamous 1969 riots that energized the struggle for LGBT equality, it deserves to be memorialized and for its spot in history to be officially recognized. Those in attendance agreed: activists, community members, neighborhood residents and members of Congress, including New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand. It was a remarkable, dignified event.

But the movie “Stonewall,” directed by Roland Emmerich, which comes out this Friday and purports to portray this history, is not so dignified.

I take this subject personally, since many of the people portrayed in this film were, and some still are, my friends and family. These real-life events shaped me and guided me to all that I’ve done and accomplished in my life.

In 1969 I was 18, one of those street kids who spent their nights walking up and down Christopher Street and occasionally popping into the Stonewall. The homeless sex workers that form the main portrayal of the LGBT community in the film were oversimplified and trivialized in the film. Homeless LGBT sex workers were only one part of a large and complex group of people, a group who wanted to stop being beaten up and jeered at, who wanted to feel something other than dehumanized. In reality, Marsha P. Johnson, who is portrayed in the film, kept a switchblade handy for anyone ready to attack her.

From the ashes of the Stonewall riots, we created the Gay Liberation Front, and from there I formed a group called Gay Youth. Meanwhile, my friends Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson created Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR). Gay Youth and STAR were both working to end the oppression of all LGBT youth, and all of us were doing something that had never been done before: create the idea of an LGBT community.

But “Stonewall” is uninterested in any history that doesn’t revolve around its white, male, stereotypically attractive protagonist. It almost entirely leaves out the women who participated in the riots and helped create the Gay Liberation Front, which included youth, trans people, lesbian separatists and people from all other parts of the spectrum of our community.

Before then, much of the gay rights movement focused on lessening discrimination in employment. But in the Gay Liberation Front, we were about defining ourselves first, rather then allowing society to do so, and in doing so we realized that we were a community. In one year, we created a system that would issue health alerts, support gay youth and trans people, create the first LGBT Community Center and, at the end of that first year, create the first gay pride march, then called the “Christopher Street Gay Liberation March.”

This is all oversimplified or absent in “Stonewall.” The most disturbing historical liberty, one brought up again and again in the film, is that Judy Garland’s death had something to do with the riots. That is downright insulting to us as a community, as inaccurate as it gets and trivializes the oppression we were fighting against. (Full disclosure that I had reached out to the film’s producers earlier in the process, offering to give them my account of what happened at Stonewall. They did not take me up on it. But it is clear that they must not have taken anybody else up on this offer, either.)

In taking a simple, purely sensational route, the film misses the point, by miles, of what Stonewall did and created. Before Gay Liberation Front began to organize a community, there had only been about 100 openly LGBT activists willing to go public about their sexuality. One year later, between 5,000 and 15,000 people joined in the Liberation March. We were able to do that by uniting under oppression.

The one redeeming character of the film was Johnson. I was emotional when I left the screening, thinking of her and her humanity, especially around that time. Otoja Abit captured her essence. But, after thinking further about it, I realized the film did not actually address the oppression from which Marsha had suffered all her life, nor did it flesh out the story of supporting character Ray, who many will believe to be based on Sylvia Rivera.

Ultimately, the controversial trailer for the film showed what was important to the film: the story of the boy from pure, white-bread America, a boy who is made into the hero of the film. Yes, there were plenty of people like him in the real-life gay rights movement. But a movement stands not just on the shoulders of one, but of many. In this case, it was too many for the film to handle.

Mark Segal’s book “And Then I Danced: Traveling the Road to LGBT Equality” comes out Oct. 6.

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A scene from the Bustan Al-Qasr neighborhood of Aleppo. Illustration by Molly Crabapple

Daily life in Syria is a mystery to many Americans. Since the Syrian civil war began, access within the country has been increasingly difficult for foreign reporters and humanitarian aid, especially since the rise of the Islamic State in the region.

Illustrator Molly Crabapple wanted to capture the scenes of life amid war that often go unreported in Iraq and Syria, where the Islamic State has captured territory. Crabapple began working with Marwan Hisham, a writer who works under a pseudonym, to obtain images from Iraq and Syria via cellphone on which Crabapple could base a set of illustrations. The pair published a piece in Vanity Fair this summer on life in Aleppo, a city to which Hisham returned this year for the first time since 2012. 

While Crababble was working on a project about Doctors Without Borders at a refugee camp in Domeez, Iraq, she and Hisham explained via email how they go about illustrating war.

Molly, for how long have you been illustrating war scenes, and what began the Syrian war series?

Illustrating war grew from illustrating protest. In 2011, I had a close view of Occupy Wall Street, and in 2012, I did a book with Laurie Penny called “Discordia” on the Greek financial crisis and anti-austerity protests. “Discordia” taught me to draw riot cops, demos and blood in the streets. Later, my body of work grew to include child fighters, migrant workers, prisoners, bombed out buildings, in places like Guantanamo Bay, Turkey, Abu Dhabi Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Gaza and Palestine.

Illustration by Molly Crabapple

What has your process for those illustrations been, and how do you decide which scenes to illustrate?

Marwan sends me cellphone photos that I then use pen, ink and watercolor to illustrate. Marwan and I choose the scenes together, trying to create images that show Syria is more than the cliché of rubble and fighters.

What are the challenges of illustrating scenes from the Syrian war from afar?

This is the first time I’ve ever worked primarily from someone else’s photos, and I always feel very through a glass darkly.

Fighters from the Islamist group Fastaqim Kama Umert. Illustration by Molly Crabapple

Right now, you’re in Domeez documenting the lives of refugees. Can you talk about some of your experiences working there?

I’m immensely lucky to have been brought to Domeez by Doctors Without Borders to document their work in the camp. They do fine, vital work but the camp itself is a wasteland of heat and powercuts and dust storms, with nearly every family I spoke to either longing to, or actively planning to go to Europe.

Illustration by Molly Crabapple

I saw you had tweeted about Abdulbadi Suliman, a graphic designer producing art in Domeez. Have you met any other Syrian artists working in refugee camps?

Abdulbadi is the only artist I got to know in Domeez, but Castle Art is an incredible project in Akre Camp, Iraqi Kurdistan, where young Syrian artists paint murals. Check out this beauty.  

The remains of the Ayn Jalut elementary school in Aleppo, which was bombed on April 30, 2014. Illustration by Molly Crabapple

Your illustrations are unique from the graphic photos and video that depict much of the Syrian war and refugee crisis in the news. What do you want to add to representations of war?

People live lives, even in war zones. Sometimes, when we just see photos of atrocity, we forget that these are humans in that atrocity, who scam and love and watch satellite TV and buy vegetables at the market and love their kids. Me and Marwan tried to show daily life, real life, of which war was a part but not the whole.

A question for Marwan: What do you want the world to know about recent events in Syria?

Living under ISIS rule doesn’t necessarily mean you are pro-ISIS. It’s absolutely the same for people who are living under the government or rebels’ territories. Many people don’t have the money to leave and the world has been hard on judging them. I always felt committed to give them a voice.

A scene from the Tallat Al-Zarazeer district in Aleppo. Illustration by Molly Crabapple

Illustration by Molly Crabapple

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A boy in Tepito, Mexico City. Photo by Adriana Zehbaruskas

Editor’s Note: In this week’s edition of Parallax, Mexico City-based photographer Adriana Zehbaruskas, one of three photographers who just received Getty Images’ inaugural Instagram Grant, describes how she met the boy pictured here.

I spent two years photographing a Mexico City neighborhood called Tepito, also know as El Barrio Bravo, or “The Fierce Neighborhood.” Tepito sits in the heart of Mexico City, and besides being known for its violence and for the commerce of all kinds of counterfeit objects and illegal substances, it is also known as the cradle of Mexican boxing and the primary worship place for la Santa Muerte, or the folk saint of death.

On the first of each month, people come from all over town to pay homage to her and ask for protection. “You go to her when you can’t go to anyone else,” they say. They all bring offerings — tequila, cigarettes, marijuana, candles — and attend an open-air mass.

One day, I felt confident enough to venture to one of these masses on my own. There, I encountered the boy in the picture. He struck me because of his air of defiance mixed with a certain innocence that betrayed his young age. Innocent and fierce — exactly like what I thought Tepito was, and was trying hard to translate into images.

The word “parallax” describes the camera error that occurs when an image looks different through a viewfinder than how it is recorded by a sensor; when one camera gives two perspectives. Parallax is a blog where photographers offer the unexpected sides and stories of their work. Tell us yours or share on Instagram at #PBSParallax.

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