- [Announcer] Support provided by the Richard P. Garmany Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, the State of Connecticut Office of Film, Television, and Digital Media, and Connecticut Humanities.

(chiming music) - For all my life, I've loved art.

From my time as a musician and artist, I believe the stories of artists themselves can inform, excite, and elevate.

- I mean, I think, for the most part, everyone does have some type of spiritual journey, and I think it looks different for everyone.

I've learned over the years that making art is that for me.

- Artists can inform us of history, of a moment in time, and reflect on modern society, and I find this fascinating.

That's why I'm on the search for Connecticut's most vibrant artists, and to shed light on their stories from designers and painters, to muralists and poets.

Join me as I find the people that make up Connecticut's art scene on "Where ART Thou."

(rhythmic music) (graphic pops) (rhythmic music) (energetic music) Welcome to "Where ART Thou?"

I'm your host, Ray Hardman.

Today, we are in Hartford.

Now, you can't spell Hartford without using the word art, and it seems like no matter where we go, right around the corner, art is right in front of us here in the capital city.

I'm on my way to The Caf on Trumbull Street to meet our curator for this episode.

Now, The Caf, from what I understand, is this really cool, funky boutique that features some items from local artists and designers.

Our curator, the person who's gonna show us around today, his name is Joshua Jenkins.

He's the co-owner of arts and events organizer Breakfast Lunch & Dinner, which owns and operates The Caf.

He's also a visual artist.

Let's go see what Joshua has for us today.

(upbeat music) Joshua.

- Ray.

- Nice to meet you.

- Nice to meet you too.

- Yeah, this is The Caf.

Tell me about this place.

- So The Caf is an emerging multibrand boutique based in Hartford.

Yeah, well, I mean, we're just trying to give a contemporary vantage point of everything related to fashion, music, art, and culture for the City of Hartford.

- I mean, I can just, first glance, I know this is not your regular boutique, and these clothes, you're not gonna find on Nordstrom Rack.

- A hundred percent.

You know, about half of the store features emerging designers from all around CT, Hartford, Bridgeport, New Haven, you know, basically, items that we believe are just not usually accessible in this region.

(chiming music) My background has always sort of been just connecting the dots.

I've always felt more keen to celebrating the ideas of others.

You know, we like to use the tagline, "We're here to serve our creative community," - Yeah.

- and, you know, I was, you know, talking with a friend recently about the fact that Hartford tends to lack third spaces, and I think, you know, in a lot of ways, we were hoping to use this space as basically an area to serve congregation amongst the like-minded, and so, you know, focusing on the creative community in Hartford.

Different emerging designers, artists, musicians, you know, this is the place that you can come and, you know, feel like you're at home.

You know, we recognize that's kind of our job to design the type of city that we want to, you know, live in.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Well, I'm excited about it.

I've lived in Hartford for many years, so I'm just excited to see things happening downtown.

So tell me about some of the places we're going today.

- Rapper, artist, Dom McLennon, he had an opportunity to sort of take his music career on a sort of international level.

He was formerly a part of the rap group Brockhampton that has gone on to perform at festivals, have traveled all around the world.

Most people in his position, you know, they're gonna stay in, like, in New York or in LA.

Dom saw an opportunity to take everything he's learned and take some of the resources he's been able to gather to bring that back to Hartford.

- Who else are we seeing?

- Lindaluz, who is a Hartford-based artist.

She has background in, you know, street art, graffiti, but has since then transcended to a lot of multimedia.

She really has, like, sort of came into her own in terms of her aesthetic and her formula as an artist.

- Well, Joshua, thank you so much.

I'm gonna go check out these artists you've suggested.

And thank you for this introduction to The Caf.

I definitely wanna come back again.

- Absolutely.

We have, you know, plenty of events and popups, and it would be great to have you, you know, come hang out with us sometime.

- I'd love it, I'd love it.

Thank you.

(upbeat music) (gentle chiming music) - Lindaluz, how are you?

- Hey, how are you?

- So nice to meet you.

- Good, nice to meet you.

- This is absolutely beautiful!

- Thank you, appreciate it.

- Tell me about the mural.

- Yeah, definitely.

So this mural is a collaboration with SINA.

We have been working on a series of murals called "Hartford Heroes," and this year, we wanted to celebrate Nuestra Historia, which is our history, our story, so I ended up creating this concept where I wanted to have hands interlocking, and have each hand represent just a different identity and culture, and kind of having this infinite loop going.

And then you have these butterflies, monarch butterflies, that normally, they migrate, right, from Mexico to the United States, and vice versa.

- I know muralists all do it different, but how did you deal with the scale?

- Yeah, so I have been playing with different techniques, lately.

I was fortunate enough to project this onto the wall, so it was very tedious, especially given that there's a lot of traffic in this area, so I had to come over, like, two o'clock in the morning to try to get the best angles, and also less traffic flow.

So I was able to do that with a friend, and then I then went in and started painting throughout the day.

- I know that you're known for murals, but you have started to move in a different direction.

- Yes, this is (indistinct).

- Can we go to your studio and have a peek at what you're working on?

- Yeah, definitely, for sure.

(upbeat rhythmic music) - So Lindaluz, let's just go back to the beginning.

I mean, were you one of those children that was just inherently creative?

Were you an artist at a young age?

- Yeah, I guess I would say so.

I definitely have been surrounded by art at a really young age.

It's funny, 'cause I was just talking to a friend about this not too long ago.

I remember, even in school, like, the teachers would always notice that I was, like, more interested in drawing, so they would kind of put me aside, and they're like, "Just go at it," you know, so I would spend hours just drawing, and playing, and, you know, figuring out, like, what world I want to create visually.

So I did spend a lot of time as a kid- - You were a drawer back then?

- I was a drawer, I was a painter.

Like, I remember, preschool, walking into my preschool class, and I saw a easel, and the first thing I wanted to do was paint.

Like, that was, like, instant for me.

And then now, 15, When I was 15, I was, like, really more dedicated and serious about taking on art as a career.

(serene music) My father, Victor Carrillo, used to be a boxer in Peru, really well known.

You know, they came to the United States, to New York, to live that dream, you know, the American Dream, immigrant dream, alongside with my mom, like, they, he saw, like, my passionate interest for art, and really encouraged me to continue doing that.

I even think there's times where he would mention that he wished he was an artist.

Like, that was something that he gravitated towards at a really young age, but unfortunately, didn't have the right mentorship to do that, so boxing was his thing, you know.

- In your artwork, in your murals and in your regular artwork, what is your hope for the person that sees it?

- That's a good question.

For me, I think, a lot of the times, it's more of, like, people being able to see themselves.

A lot of the murals that I have done throughout the years are very intentional, with not just the people that are collaborating with the mural, like, community, whether it's elders or, like, youth, but it's also just kind of the space.

Diving into my roots, I've been, like, studying my culture a little bit more, and, like, getting familiar with, like, just practices that were done through Peruvian culture, and yeah, I'm noticing that's kind of been a huge, like, impact, and hopefully, that can help me better define exactly what it is that I'm trying to create here.

I mean, I think, for the most part, everyone does have some type of spiritual journey and I think it looks different for everyone.

I've learned over the years that making art is that for me, and sometimes music or just playing around with sound, and, you know, sacred spaces are meant for people to feel safe, not just you, as in the person creating that sacred space, but also the people that you're inviting in, so I always think about that often, more so, now, and there's times where I even practice rituals with myself, and rituals, you know, they can mean so many different things.

Like, as of recent, I have been doing a lot of, like, meditative practice and breath work that kind of sets a tone for a space to be sacred and feel more connected.

- Mm-hmm.

- Yeah.

(papers rustling) (gentle music) I actually went to the University of Hartford, graphic design.

I realized at a early age I needed to find something that was more substantial as an artist.

Painting was something that I loved, but I realized easily, like, you can't really make, you know, money or survive off of that, so I did graphic design and got to learn technology, you know, and really delve into that.

I really enjoyed, like, learning about just how the structure of that works, so.

- It's interesting, because you've got this background in computer graphic design, but so much of your art seems very free and liberating.

- Yep.

- Do do you notice that?

- Yeah, of course.

I mean, and that's the whole thing, right?

like, going to high school and, like, really being experimental, but then going to U Hart, and getting more structure, and developing, like, some type of, like, really fine lines, I guess, digitally, really, and then merging them together has really allowed me to play between, like, limitations, and also not having limitations, just, like, an abundance of variation of things, if that makes sense.

- Right, so finding that creativity within the boundaries - Yeah.

- of a computer program.

- Yeah, yeah.

I'll spend hours sketching on paper sometimes, and then I'll develop a digital version of what those pieces are.

So this ended up being...

I changed it completely.

- Oh, isn't that beautiful!

- Thank you, but essentially, this is, like, an image of, like, an inner child reaching up and then this is, like, a form of, like, the person resisting, but then you have this ancestor behind you, kind of, like, guiding you through.

- Oh, yeah.

- So I've, you know, and then this is, like, another sketch, so it's just, I go back and forth from paper, drawing on paper, to drawing digitally, to sometimes going straight to the canvas.

I feel like I've been in Hartford for so long where I can really try to capture an essence, in a sense, and honor, that's, like, a constant theme, so I think, yeah, finding that togetherness, and hopefully, people start to see that.

- Well, Lindaluz, thank you so much for inviting us into your studio, seeing all your beautiful art, and sharing your story with us.

- Thank you, I appreciate you being here, and, you know, sharing these beautiful conversations.

(upbeat music) - You can't talk about Hartford's art scene without mentioning the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art located right downtown.

Art surrounds you every place you turn there, and while each room offers a different experience, I got a chance to catch up with the museum's conservator, and a behind-the-scenes look at the process he takes to preserve these priceless pieces of art.

- Wow!

Allen.

- Hi Ray, - Nice to meet you.

- My pleasure meeting you.

- This is incredible!

Tell me about this space.

- It truly is.

This is the conservation studio at the museum, and what we do here is all of the conservation work, which entails the study, the preservation, and restoration of objects in the collection.

- Allen, I know this is a painting that you are intimately familiar with.

Tell me a little bit about it.

- This is a wonderful painting, one of my favorite in the collection here at the Wadsworth.

It's by an artist named Francisco Ribalta.

It was executed in about 1625 for a Franciscan monastery, and what the painting is showing us, the scene is actually a really interesting point in the narrative of St. Francis's life.

This is before, he's not on his deathbed quite yet, but he is very ill at this moment in time.

He's in his chamber, which is not very lavishly set out, you could see it's a very humble environment, and just at this moment, St. Francis has this vision of this angel that bursts into the room, riding a cloud, playing beautiful music, and he is so enthralled and in ecstasy, and the title of the painting is "The Ecstasy of St.

Francis."

- It only makes sense that there would be, you know, some kind of disrepair on a painting that is hundreds and hundreds of years old, no matter how well you take care of it.

What's some of the simple, or what are some of the basic issues you have to deal with.

With a painting that's been taken care of, relatively, what kind of issues do you deal with to get it back to what it was like?

- Well, one one of the unfortunate truths of conservation is much of the work that we are doing on paintings today that have been around for hundreds of years is really undoing or fixing issues that arose when individuals in the past tried to fix a painting.

Today, we had the luxury of environmental controls in museums and the ability to really care for a painting.

This is an image here during that cleaning process.

- Okay, so you're taking off some of the old restoration, and... - First and foremost, it's the varnish layer that's over the surface, but it gives you a real sense of how that process is kind of carried out.

- So this is the tear down.

- This is the tear down, this gets us back to... Again, there is some restoration there, so it's not necessarily what's left of the original painting, but it really is the point that we started with with the real restoration process, which is putting color back onto the surface to complete the image.

- Oh, wow!

Let's talk about the x-ray.

Tell me what x-rays tell you as a conservator.

- X-rays, well, and when we're x-raying a painting, believe it or not, it's very much like x-raying a body part.

Areas of of either physically thinner paint or molecularly lighter-weight paint is gonna appear dark, but on here, too, we can also see, well, one, we're seeing the wooden stretcher behind the the canvas, - Oh, sure, sure, yeah.

- and then we'll see all these dark spots in the painting itself, these are areas of flake loss where again, as the canvas kind of expands and contracts, the ground layer, the paint layer, the gesso that's holding onto the surface of the canvas flake away.

- Tell me why this is all so important.

I mean, obviously, to make the painting look good, but tell me more.

- Well, the preservation of the artwork is really our utmost responsibility here at the Wadsworth.

You know, we tend to talk about these paintings as though they were our paintings, right, the Wadsworth, we own this painting, but of course we don't, this painting belongs to the world, and so we are merely the caretakers at this point in time, so it's really our responsibility to receive this from the past generation and then pass it off to the next generation.

And so sometimes, when an area, sometimes when there's active degradation of painting, again, it's maybe actively flaking away, we're obliged to step in and halt that.

The preservation of the object, the physical object, is one thing.

Preservation of the artistic message that the artist is trying to communicate to us, that's a whole 'nother thing, and so this process of cleaning the painting and getting back to what's original, and then restoring the picture is more of this kind of abstract concept of preservation, where we're trying to preserve that artistic idea.

- Artists in Connecticut's capital city are always up to amazing things, and just as astonishing as restoring the old is creating the new, and that's exactly what musician Dom McClennon is doing.

(upbeat music) Dom, thanks so much for having us in your studio here.

- Of course, Ray, thank you so much, thank you guys for being here.

- Yeah, yeah.

Tell me about this space.

- So this is kind of like my creative laboratory, I guess, if you will, my personal workspace that I've extended and opened up to the community.

So Brockhampton was the boy band that I have been a part of for, like, the better half of the last decade of my life.

- [Ray] After signing with RCA records in 2018, Brockhampton's album, "Iridescence," debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 album chart, and that's when Dom toured the world.

- Really, really incredible group of individuals.

I learned so much about, like, comradery, and leadership, and building and developing a team, and fostering growth and talent, and manifesting potential with those groups of individuals.

And, you know, we started, I started with them in 2012, but they started in 2009, and it was just like, "Oh, this is, like, really cool, like, you really built this, like, unit, and stuff like that.

(group singing rap lyrics) Originally, it started kind of as a collective, where everyone had their own solo things going on, and we just kind of appeared on each other's records and stuff like that, but then 2014 was when Kevin, the frontman of Brockhampton, made the decision, he was, like, "Okay, I wanna really, like, lock in on this band thing, and if anybody wants to commit to this, let's move to Texas.

Our main engineer, and one of the other vocalists, and the lead members of the band is going to school at Texas State, and they're doing a sound recording technology program.

While they're doing that there, we should all move to the same town, and we should all, like, start locking in and going to the studio together, and things of that nature, building up the chemistry, all that type of stuff."

So it was just a matter of, like, "Okay, am I ready to, like, commit to this?"

And then it was just, like, "Let's try it."

- I keep hearing Brockhampton referred to as a boy band, and there are things about Brockhampton, to me, that seem very anti-boy band.

One of them you mentioned, that everybody in the group had their own forte, their own thing, and then you guys just kind of forged together, and, you know, typically, when I think of boy bands I think of, like, a producer-driven type of situation where- - Hundred percent, yeah.

- Yeah, but you guys were out there doing your own stuff.

And it wasn't just, you know, three rappers and a DJ.

You had lots of different, people have lots of different skills.

- Lot of different, yeah.

- Talk about that.

- I think that's just, in my opinion, like, a sign of the times.

It was, like, a sign of, like, what independents can do, and, like, you know, DIY, but not only just DIY, do it yourself, but do it together, and, like, the power of doing it together, you know, so I feel like that's really, like, part of the core foundation, as to, like, what made the nucleus of Brockhampton even work in the first place.

♪ Tried to sacrifice it for the success ♪ ♪ Internal burdens while externally blessed ♪ ♪ It's been a world I accept ♪ ♪ My therapist said that's too much to compress ♪ ♪ Put my soul to the test ♪ ♪ Identity could be the infinite jest ♪ ♪ Along with time robbing all of the stress ♪ ♪ It's work to stop the descent ♪ ♪ It's different when the listener ventin', I understand ♪ ♪ Commitment and fulfillment I balance on either hand ♪ ♪ I still get co-dependent and worry about the plan ♪ ♪ Adjusting to a space where I'm callin' out the commands ♪ ♪ Appreciate the patience while I been learning ♪ (gentle rhythmic music) - [Ray] So Dom, you've got a lot of layers on this track so far.

What's next?

- So what I would do next is I feel like I've figured the core arrangement of the track out, I've figured out, like, what the hook sounds like, and we've got all of our instruments that are gonna be in the record.

Now it's gonna be a matter of taking some stuff out, making sure that things are placed in the right position, arranging a verse, if you will, and then being able to set this arrangement up so that it can either be used with or without drums, and, you know, maybe somebody ends up sampling it and using it in a completely different record, maybe it ends up on a commercial, like a advertisement as, like, a sync, or maybe I end up writing to it and putting a record out myself with it, or with, like, one of my friends, I might write for a singer that I know, or something, like, that.

Potentially, what my big-picture goal is is, like, doing library music out here with the musicians in the community really, like, comes into play, because all of this stuff can kind of get utilized in so many different formats.

There's the commercial world, there's the audio production world, there's the just non-commercial, like, creative, artistic world, and I'm really excited about the idea of being able to kind of express my creativity, not just as a creator, but as a curator of, like, being able to, you know, develop these experiences where I get folks together, and we're able to just express ourselves - What would you like to do for dinner?

- [Second man] That's a good question.

- [First man] I got a cod.

- [Second man] You got a cod?

- Let's talk a little bit about your new venture, COURTVISION, - Yeah.

- which I love the name of because I'm a basketball player, and COURTVISION is a great way to describe what you're doing, and it also kind of is this Brockhampton method, in a way, too, where you have all these different skill sets all working together toward the same thing.

Was that kind of the idea?

- Yeah, so I took a lot of the things that I learned being a role player in Brockhampton to be a team leader at COURTVISION (upbeat music) COURTVISION is the creative agency that I've been building out and developing, and we have a lot of work that we've done with producing events, producing experiences out here.

My dad is really big into basketball, and has been, like, around the Hartford and Connecticut community as, like, a basketball force.

He used to train with guys like Donyell Marshall, and Vin Baker, and Ray Allen.

- Oh, yeah.

- Like, all those guys at Gampel, When I was, like, a little kid, he used to take me to Gampel, and I would just, like, run around the court, or, like, sit on the sidelines while they were, like, playing, and stuff, like, that and then, like, had, like, memories of, like, Ray taking me to, like, go get ice cream from the food court, and stuff, like, that.

- Oh, is that right?

- Yeah, he's awesome people.

(Ray laughing) - Well, Dom, thank you so much, first, for showing us your great music, but telling your story, seeing all the great things that's happening with COURTVISION, really eyeopening.

Thank you so much.

- Thank you so much.

I really, really appreciate you guys coming out here.

Thank you so much, Ray.

Like, your presence is needed out here, - Thank you.

- and we're very grateful for you as the arts community and creators in this community of you helping tell our stories.

(upbeat rhythmic music) - Well, Hartford's art scene has so much vibrancy and life, with so much to explore, I'm so grateful to get a chance to experience a piece of that.

Until next time, I'm Ray Hardman, and this is "Where ART Thou?"

(upbeat rhythmic music) - [Announcer] Support provided by the Richard P. Garmany Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, the State of Connecticut Office of Film, Television, and Digital Media, and Connecticut Humanities.