September 11, 2023

(hip hop music) - [Jim] Who knew when it all started a half century ago that hip hop would be the subject of an exhibit out of all places, the St. Louis Art Museum.

- And this was an opportunity for us to showcase how much of an impact this art form has had on the entire world.

- [Anchor] We brighten your day with a story about sunflowers; big and showy, and doing some important work to boot.

And we talk to this guy.

When it comes to our upcoming eclipses, he's got us covered.

It's all next on "Living St.

Louis."

(upbeat jazz music) (upbeat jazz music continues) (upbeat jazz music continues) (light music) - Good evening, I'm Ruth Ezell.

We begin with a milestone in American culture.

It's a global movement that began a half century ago when some teenagers threw a back to school party in the Bronx.

The 50th anniversary of hip hop is being celebrated across the country and all across town here in St. Louis.

One institution taking a deep dive into hip hop's influence on art might take you by surprise.

(hip hop music) A block party all about hip hop is not the kind of event you'd normally expect the St. Louis Art Museum to host, but there it was, a literal stones throw from the steps of the venerable institution.

The party coincided with the museum's August 19th opening of "The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century."

Among the sculptures on display is this depiction of a giant pair of Nike Air Force One basketball shoes.

St. Louis artist Aaron Fowler created this mixed media sculpture out of recycled car parts and other materials.

Air Force Ones took off in the hip hop world and the national fashion scene after a hit single by the same name was released in 2002 by Nelly and the St. Lunatics.

- And in this section we are thinking about the ways in which hip hop culture can have both a coded language sometimes with rap music, but also thinking about graffiti.

- [Ruth] Andrea Purnell is the museum's Audience Development Manager.

And for purposes of the culture exhibit, her role expanded to include curator.

- [Andrea] This exhibition is a collaboration between the Baltimore Museum of Art and the St. Louis Art Museum.

So we're both co-organizers and 30% of the exhibition is made up of artists from either St. Louis or Baltimore.

- [Ruth] And creatives from both communities worked with the museums as a curatorial team.

- And this was an opportunity for us to showcase how much of an impact this art form has had on the entire world.

There is a global aspect to the exhibition, thinking about artist work made mostly within the last 23 years.

But the breadth and depth of how this art form has evolved over the last 50 years is on full display.

As this exhibition is really showing us how hip hop has influenced contemporary art.

- [Ruth] The exhibit is divided into sections reflecting common themes in hip hop culture, including ascension.

One of the signature works here is this sculpture of a head made of crystals layered over concrete.

St. Louis artist Damon Davis titled it "EGO."

- This is part of a bigger body of work called "Cracks."

And I started doing this work about three years ago when my mom passed.

They're self portraits cast in my actual face and I do 'em out of concrete because I'm talking about masculinity, I'm talking about grief, and I'm talking about protection.

And I was trying to think of what's the hardest stuff in the world.

And it is the street when I think about it.

And so that's why they made outta concrete.

But usually the crystals that I do, I pick precious gems and I implant them into the concrete.

Now this is the first one of the series where I actually took a concrete bust of myself and grew the crystals on top of.

And that's why this one is called "EGO."

Since the dawn of hip hop, jewelry, diamonds, gold, embellishment, and putting on things as a protective layer when we moving through class because a lot of us come from either working class or lower class backgrounds.

And when you, I guess get famous through this line of work, in my mind that we wear as armor.

- [Ruth] Two related photographs serve as bookends for the exhibit.

Visitors entering are greeted by this 1998 picture taken by the late groundbreaking photographer Gordon Parks.

Titled "A Great Day in Hip Hop," more than 170 members of New York's hip hop community came together on the steps of a brownstone in Harlem to celebrate just how far the cultural movement had come.

And as visitors exit, they see a 2022 STL interpretation called "A Great Day in St.

Louis."

Photographer Adrian Octavius Walker chose Art Hill to be the backdrop for the gathering of local hip hop creatives.

For Damon Davis, who was born in 1985, hip hop has been a major force in his life for his entire life.

- It has definitely shaped the way I see the world and who I am as a person.

So I think it's super important too for everybody to know the gravity of how important this culture is.

(hip hop music) (light music) - This next story is about something that has a lot of things going for it; good looks, dependability, low maintenance and tolerance, at least when it comes to weather and soil types.

Brooke Butler on why the sunflower is increasingly being seen as a good neighbor.

(light playful music) - It's a common site when driving through St. Louis, vacant lots.

Like graveyards of the city's past landscape, these abandoned plots of land can be an eyesore at best, and at worst, environmental hazards.

But where there is space, there is opportunity for growth.

Sunflower fields have become a popular site in recent years, mainly for getting that perfect summer selfie.

But aside from the picturesque backdrop there are many benefits to these flowers.

Food and shelter for birds and pollinators, and as we learned from this site in North City, a probable solution to restoring vacant lots.

(birds chirping) - The Sunflower+ Project, what we do is grow sunflowers as a way to beautify a vacant neighborhood.

And in doing so, we've created an outdoor classroom, a biodiversity project, a pollinator project, and a way to connect plants and people, which is- - [Brooke] Richard Riley with the Missouri Botanical Garden is a founding member of the Sunflower+ Project, which as you heard him describe, has a lot going on for such a small plot of land.

And believe it or not, it started out aiming to do much more.

In 2012, the Sustainable Design Land Lab, organized by Washington University, the city of St. Louis, and Old North St. Louis, conducted a competition for ideas to revitalize vacant lots in Old North.

As you see on this map, the red areas show the wide majority of vacant lots are overwhelmingly located in this part of our city.

The Sunflower+ Project was selected as one of five winning submissions.

And while any effort to build up underdeveloped areas in our city is commendable, this site was also experimenting with the healing properties of sunflowers.

- You know, it's when we began the project our initial research showed that sunflowers could help remediate lead in soil.

Now a deeper dive into the literature proves that's not quite the case in urban environments.

Sunflowers might and probably do some good work in places like Russia and Japan where there have been nuclear accidents.

But that's way above my pay grade and way above anything we're trying to do here.

- Now, if it's above Richard's expertise it's definitely above mine.

But what I do know is that the sunflower is a hyperaccumulator, a type of plant known to absorb dangerous metals in the soil.

And like Richard mentioned, this process called phytoremediation has been implemented at sites with nuclear contamination.

However, to oversimplify this complicated scientific process, some studies showed great results while others didn't show any significant findings.

Despite the project not remediating the soil like they thought it might, it continues to provide great opportunities for those who care for the site, like the Missouri Botanical Garden Outdoor Youth Corps.

- The program itself is a workforce development program for youth ages 16 to 24, providing them an opportunity to learn about environmental jobs and also just to be stewards of the community.

We get to work on a lot of different sites within the St. Louis area, but Sunflower+ has definitely been a site that seems to be a favorite with the OYC crew.

- I think the Sunflower+ project is an excellent example of what can be done with an empty space.

I think for me it really is a great example of how vacant lots don't necessarily mean that a community is empty.

- One thing that's very unfortunate is that most people will hear about Old North or anything St. Louis and North in it and assume that it's just bad news one day after another.

There are tons of wonderful resources that are in this place brought to us by people who live in this place and maintain.

And that is often a story that's not told about Old North and the north side in general.

- It's nice to walk outside and look at these sunflowers and see that there's still communities that care about what we have surrounding us.

- You know, kids going outside, playing around, interacting with the environment.

They don't have to just like pull weeds like I do, but you know, just having fun in it, it makes the world seem more alive.

- [Brooke] Through the winter months, they focus on keeping the field clean and colorful.

St. Louis public school students along with various volunteers have painted artwork on recycled materials.

And of course we have to address the scarecrow which was made by a local artist, Jamaica Ray.

- He's had a colorful history, this scarecrow.

He once took a a roman candle to the back of the head and burst into flames.

But the folks who did that were so upset that that accident happened.

They got a fire extinguisher and put 'em out and we had Jamaica Ray rebuild him once more.

And, you know, this is a humble project.

It's always been a way to pass lessons on and to share beauty and to share the circle of life.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] This week, 100 years ago, St. Louisans were getting a hold of or making pieces of smoked glass to view what in the Midwest would be a partial eclipse.

Smoked glass now considered wholly inadequate for eye protection was the go-to eclipse viewing technique at the time.

The path of totality, September 10th, 1923, it tracked from Japan across the Pacific and just clipped Southern California before heading over Mexico.

St. Louis saw about 60% of the sun blocked by the moon, and there was plenty of coverage in the newspapers.

"The St. Louis Star" the next day, published a front page photo said to be taken at the peak of the eclipse.

But I suspect it was highly touched up because even in 1923 getting a good photo of an eclipse was quite a challenge.

Scientists were using new technologies.

They sent up an airplane to try to get photographs, but plane couldn't get above the clouds.

It was reported Washington University would be making motion pictures of the eclipse, but couldn't find any reports of how that turned out.

This photograph though, was taken at California's Mount Wilson Observatory.

But illustrations were still an important resource.

Artist Howard Russell Baker was part of the scientific team that went to California.

And his painting of the eclipse and especially the colors, were considered an important record of the event.

A lot of things had changed by the time we experienced the 2017 total eclipse.

Special viewing glasses have replaced smoked glass, and getting pictures and video is much improved but can still be tricky.

We're gonna be added again this year, a partial eclipse in October, and the next total eclipse in parts of the by state in April of next year.

It never really gets old, not now, nor then, 100 years ago "This Week in St. Louis History."

- Well, that was then.

And this is now with a partial eclipse, again, next month.

And a total eclipse in the spring down towards Cape and the bootheel.

And we've asked Don Ficken to join us because he's with the Missouri Solar Eclipse Task Force, which has been pretty busy, I guess.

- [Don] Yes, we have.

- Doing what?

- Well, basically we're trying to raise awareness and make sure that folks have the glasses they need for it to be safe.

And we're starting to focus a little bit on schools now.

Schools have a lot of challenges, I think, it's a little bit later than the last one.

And so we wanna make sure that we get the children, that they get to see something and be safe doing that.

- Yeah, I mean that's part of this.

So there's this educational thing, which you would love to share with everyone.

- [Don] Right.

- There's the safety aspect.

- [Don] Right.

- But the towns that are in the path of totality and in Missouri we're talking with Poplar Bluff and West Plains, Cape Gerardo, Farmington, Perryville.

Then you move into Illinois and I think it's Marion and a number of other towns, Mount Vernon.

Those folks have a lot to do.

In fact, they're already doing it, aren't they?

- Yeah, that's right.

In fact, a lot of the towns, you know, this is a big thing for the towns themselves.

And so tourists will be coming from everywhere.

I mean, I don't think we completely realize how far people will come for this.

It's a rare event for a particular area of people will chase eclipses from all over the world, which is what happened last time.

And where I went we had people from Italy, from Ireland, from wherever else.

And so it's a tourism boost, I think, for the economy, for the state of Illinois and Missouri.

- Yeah, but it's a one day thing, maybe two days.

And people are already booking rooms, I guess, right?

And campsites and things like that.

- Yeah, it's really compared to the last one, we actually, the path went across the state of Missouri, straight across.

So we had, I-70, you had lots of hotels to stay.

But this time in the bootheel, there's not a lot of places to stay and they're pretty much sold out at this point.

So for those who want to travel from the metro St. Louis area or even from Arkansas, whatever else, you're gonna have to probably start early in the morning to get there if you wanna avoid traffic.

- Yeah and last time in 2017, which thrilled me by the way, I was at Jefferson Barracks, got the full total eclipse.

- [Don] Oh yeah.

- LT was there, who's on that camera over there, got the shot of totality- - [Don] Oh wow.

- While we were there.

But that was just a drive down the road- - Yeah.

- Now folks in St. Louis are gonna have to go a little further.

You also have folks in Memphis who are probably going the same distance to come in.

Folks from Nashville also have to get in there.

I think until you hit Indianapolis and Carbondale, that's when you really get the full meal deal for big cities.

So there's gonna be a lot of people on the road.

- That's right.

I think so.

Yeah.

I think one of the important things to realize is that last time, in 2017, we had a pretty good population within the eclipse, but it's actually more than doubled this time.

And what's really a big deal is that the path will go through the east coast.

And that means the media on the east coast are gonna pick up on this.

And so we don't hear too much about it quite yet because we're talking about an October partial.

The east coast is not really involved in that too much other than just being in a partial.

But next spring, January, February, March, you're probably gonna get tired of hearing about the eclipse actually.

And I think that's gonna drive a lot of people.

In fact, some of the schools and other places that are not quite sure about what they're gonna do yet, they're probably gonna be driven to have to do something just to respond to the media.

- Yeah, let's talk about it.

These are my glasses I saved from 2017.

- [Don] Yeah, okay.

- Gathered a few more.

You've got those.

- [Don] Yeah.

- We mentioned the smoked glass back in the '20s.

I think these came in in the '30s or '40s.

I can't remember what my research indicated.

But this is important stuff.

I mean, and you've gotta get those, I mean the task force and others, you gotta get these out to people and get them to use them.

- Yeah, any sliver of the sun...

This is very important to understand.

Any sliver of the sun, you do not wanna look at it, okay?

So you want to be able to make sure that you have something that's really safe.

So you don't want to use sunglasses, you don't wanna use smoked glass, you don't want to use CDs which people have tried to do before.

You can use welding glasses if you have a certain number or higher.

But you know, at the end of the day, so the problem we had last time is that there's an ISL standard, which is a good standard developed.

It's very robust.

But what we found is that people were able to artificially, they were able to recreate those glasses with the exact standard, but it wasn't actually the correct film.

- Yeah.

- And so what we're recommending now is the American Astronomical Society has put together a list of preferred suppliers and retailers that you can go and safely know those glasses are okay.

And if you go to moeclipse.org, you'll find that link on there to go to this wonderful resource.

They're doing a great job of making sure that you get it.

But the important thing is to make sure that you've got the glasses from the right source.

Not just what looks like the correct glasses.

- Yeah and these are good for October 14th, which is a Saturday.

- [Don] Yeah, yeah.

- And that's a partial eclipse, but it's still kind of cool to look at.

- Yeah, actually every eclipse starts with a partial, and ends with a partial.

- Right.

- So at the end of the day, no matter whether you're in the totality for April of next year, you need to have those on.

And so they're very cool to look at.

And of course you need to use 'em properly.

And if you have children, make sure that you supervise them.

That they don't look at the sun before they put their glasses on.

- So October's a Saturday, but April 8th is a Monday.

- [Don] Yes.

- It's the week after Easter.

So schools will be in session.

Most schools I think will be in session.

They've got some issues to deal with.

They want the educational opportunities, but they don't necessarily want the liability that might go with it.

- Yeah, I think we really have to divide the schools into two groups, okay?

So for the schools within the path of totality what I'm hearing from them, and I've talked to quite a few, they're actually closing, most of them are closing.

One of the problems is, is that the maximum of the totality is right at two o'clock and schools will probably have to be heading home at that point.

So, but for the metro St. Louis area, I've talked to quite a few school districts and what they're doing is they're planning to be open, they probably have glasses, and they're planning activities before and maybe up through that day.

- Yeah, I'm really looking forward to it.

Again, it was supposed to be a once in a lifetime experience until I found out it was gonna be a twice in a lifetime experience.

So I'm hoping to be in Cape for that.

Maybe take the day off.

I'll check around about that.

So, Don, thanks for your work with the task force and all that's going on.

Don Ficken is with the Missouri Solar Eclipse Task Force.

And again, thanks for the time 'cause I know you've been really busy.

Finally, we're gonna take a look at something else that's really worth seeing.

It's also free, but it doesn't need eye protection.

For years now, Dine on Dance has been providing outdoor lunchtime performances in St. Louis.

And producer Jess Pierce and videographer Aaron Landgraf found them downtown this past summer.

(light music) - Dine on Dance was kind of a dream project for me.

When I was living in San Francisco, I just loved the vibrancy of the city, the activities that were going on, there were performances outside.

And when I moved here, I just started to feel like I wanted to bring some of that energy to St. Louis.

And so, in 2004, I started Dine on Dance, and I thought I'd make it a lunchtime performance, as this is.

So people can come out from their offices or they're walking by and they can stop and take a peek at what's going on.

It was kind of my way to bring dance and live music to our city, to spaces that don't typically have access or availability to see dance.

For audiences that are going to a theater, there's clear intention to go see this performance by whatever company it might be.

Whereas I wanted something like this to be open and accessible for everybody.

(cymbals dinging) - It is fun and I mean it's nice to have people that really plans to come and watch and sit and see the whole show.

And for the people that walks by, it's just an experience like a perhaps a moment experience that they see it for one moment and they keep going.

But we are hoping as a performer or even as a choreographer, to put that little curiosity.

That little element of like, "Ah, I would love to see more maybe some other time or I would like to experience more of this kind of work."

Which I think is Dawn Karlovsky's attempt is to bring that art to the audience, to approach it to them to see that it can really touch everybody.

- Having this live soundscape of the city noises, of the cars passing, of people's voices, adds a lot to the atmosphere, and adds a lot to the soundscape of the entire performance.

Dine on Dance takes place here at the old post office plaza and we also have had a long history of performing at Strauss Park.

When you see art in the space, in the urban setting, it stands out.

- I think it may become an inspiration as you are in the area and you begin to realize the magnitude of the space, and the small of you.

And everything that surrounds you and how all that gets into your soul.

And it begins to inspire you to grow and become a bigger person, performing that reaches all that magnitude of space all around you.

So, performing outdoors is an excellent experience on its own.

- I love it when the wind blows the silks, the trees sway in the breeze, and there're these arcs and waveforms.

And then you have just more room to expand.

So yeah, it's wonderful to dance outside.

(enchanting music) (light playful music) - And that's "Living St.

Louis."

You can send us your comments at ninepbs.org/LSL.

I'm Ruth Ezell, thanks for joining us.

(light playful music) (light playful music continues) (light playful music continues) - [Announcer] "Living St. Louis" is funded in part by the Betsy & Thomas Patterson Foundation, and the members of Nine PBS.