Good Day Uncut: Moore College of Art & Design

Philadelphia, we are Uncut. Good morning, everybody. What's going on? I told you, I told you, I told you. One of these days, guys, I am going to get my flowers. Is today the day? These aren't my flowers, everybody. This instead is actually a colossal exhibition across the wall here. Libertad, libertad, libertad. This is one art piece from a woman named Michelle Angela Ortiz, who you will meet today on Uncut. Hey, this is Uncut. I'm Hank Flynn, your host. We are at the Moore School, the Moore College of Art. And design the oldest art school for women in the United States of America. And we're fortunate to have its president, Cathy Young, with us here today. Cathy, thank you so much for making this. There's a microphone. Thank you. Thank you so much. Nice and high, too, if you will. Okay. What a treat to get a chance to talk to you. That's fine. It's fine. What's new here at Moore? Obviously, Michelle Angela Ortiz's Stories of Us. In the five galleries, is she taking up all five galleries? Yes. Wow. We are so thrilled to have her work here. And so proud of her. Yeah. Well, it wouldn't be proud of her. She'd have to be one of yours to be proud of her. She is one of ours. When did she graduate? Oh my gosh. There I go. You're going to have to ask her that question. Right on the old spot. A couple years ago or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if she's from South Philly, but I know she works out of South Philly. Yes. Yes. I was with her a minute ago talking about that. Your experience as being boss of a school like this in Philadelphia, you would know just by judging the students who come through. And we're about to look at some of their self-portraits hanging in this gallery right now. Is Philadelphia, are Philadelphia people the most naturally artistically inclined people? These are self-portraits, and it's so good, I thought that they might be the work of one person, and they're all individual works. So of course I'm going to say yes to that. Yeah, me too. Philadelphia is an incredibly talented community and a vibrant city for art and design. This is work of our illustration students. These are self-portraits. Just gives you a little bit of an indication of how talented our students are. Well, I just love the way they portrait themselves, too. I mean, like the way that they portrait themselves. God bless this kid popping his zit on their face. This one's got a little locust or some kind of a fly. Here's a young woman who's like, you know what, that lock's coming off. I actually caught one of my five. I have 15-year-olds, but one of my five-year-olds, I caught him cutting his own hair one time. I want to tell you a little bit about the college. All right, I'm sorry. No, please lead the way, and thank you. So you might know that we have recently opened our admissions to include men, it's a huge change for us as a historically women's college, and I want to share a little bit about how excited we are about that. Moore is really Philly's art and design school now. We are the only independent art and design college in Philly. As an independent art and design college, that means that art and design is all we do. It's everything we do. And that's a very immersive and transformative environment for students. We wanted to make it possible for all talented students who want to study art and design in that kind of environment here in Philly to be able to do so, which is why we've opened our doors. And we're really excited about it. Now, you're pushing 200 years. We're 178 years old. So at a certain point that fall, as a women's only institution to go co-ed at this point, and I don't think you're wrong. I mean, with the college environment being what it is, a worldwide, nationwide, maybe change is afoot, I don't know, but it's an interesting thing to do after all this time. Well, let me speak to that. Please. So we have a huge continuing education program that serves children and youth. That's always been co-ed, as is our graduate program, as is our adult continuing ed. So the change is really happening in our undergraduate programs. And I just want to say, you know, it's interesting because, to your point, people sometimes think art and design. Is that relevant now in terms of career preparation? Is that relevant in terms of college? So let me just share, let me just share, because I agree with you, if you think about The app you're using on your phone, the clothes you're wearing, the interior of the buildings that you move through, the signs you see on the streets, the video games you play, all of that is created by people who have studied what we teach here at Moore College of Art and Design. Well, and not just a good thing either, Kath. Again, guys, Kathy Young, president here at Moore. But no. If you're good at that game, if you're good at that design game, I've always been told that if you're good enough, you can write your own ticket. You're going to be not even just fine and happy in your work, but probably pretty wealthy as well. That is totally true. So let me, let me share this. We have data now that says that this generation of college students is going to have between 12 and 15 jobs over the course of their working lives. What is going to be the through line in those jobs? Are the skills going to change? Yes. Are the tools going to change? Yes. What's not going to change is the need for human creativity. And that's what we teach. That's what we're experts in. So we feel like we're preparing our students to thrive, not just when they graduate, but over the whole course of their careers. Good stuff. Kath, why would, why should, at this particular point, a young man who wants to be a designer trust Moore? Why would a young man be part of this first class of young men? I think you're going to, I think your first class, and it's not going to be separate, they'll all be in there together or whatever, but the guys that come to Moore that first year, keep an eye out. They're going to be intrepid dudes, you know. I don't think that a young man would come here for the same reason that any of our other students would come here, which is this is an excellent art and design education. It's a career-focused art and design education. We tell our students we're here to help you turn your passion into a paycheck, and that's what we do. So I think for any student who's looking to immerse themselves in what they love and then figure out how to translate that into a career that's meaningful, this is the place. Good stuff. Guys, Kathy Young, Moore School of Art and Moore College of Art and Design. You're looking at a mural by Michelle Angelo Ortiz. This one here, we are human beings risking our lives for our families and our future. This apparently hung across from ICE headquarters here in Philadelphia. We have Michelle coming up, but a couple of other notes from Kathy as well. Huge things happening, guys, here at Moore. Plus, huge art coming up. Don't go anywhere. This is Uncut. We'll be right back. All right, everybody. We are at the Moore College of Art and Design. We are human beings risking our lives for our families and our future. Kathy Young. President of the Moore College of Art and Design, and you're in charge of the co-edification of the institution. But it shows off beautifully. Remind us one more time that there are five galleries here at Moore always showing off the best, foremost art, and it's always $0 to come in and pay you all a visit. We want people to come in and see what we're doing here, come to our art shop, come on in. And people can take a tour, too, prospective students or whatever? Absolutely, yes. We have tours for prospective students, we have open houses, and let me say this, if you're a prospective student and you apply to Moore and you come visit, we give you $2,000 just for coming to visit. What? Yeah. If you choose Moore, it's cool. Well, watch out with that, Kathy. You're going to be . I'm telling you. Now, we don't just write checks and walk in the door. You've got to choose. Right. You've got to pick Moore. You've got to apply and pick Moore. Right. But if you do that, and that's part of our focus on making a Moore education accessible to students. Our top scholarship is our Visionary Honors Scholarship. That is $30,000 a year over four years. So, $120,000. We also have an artist in residency program for students who'd like to live on campus. That's up to $20,000 a year. That's up to $20,000 a year. That's up to $20,000 a year. Over four years, so $120,000. We also have an artist-in-residency program for students who'd like to live on campus. That's up to $12,000. $12,000 a year in a housing grant for students. 100% of our students get more scholarship and financial aid. Our whole focus is making this education available and accessible to students. Excellent. Thank you so much, Kath. It's not unusual for Michelle, Angela, Ortiz, or any other Moore grad to be shown here. That's correct. And she is a graduate. She is a graduate. We're so proud to claim her. Our grads do amazing things. You'll see in a moment when you talk to Michelle how incredible she is. Come on, let's go and meet her. I'm sure she's down here. So when I saw her before, she was busy with a number of things. And the thing that really knocked me out about her, Kath, is that you can't just do a hang with her. She's got four or five different mediums. You've got to see it all. Hey, how are you? Hey, how are you? Kath, thank you so much. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to see you. Wonderful to talk with you. Thank you so much. Come on in, everybody. Come down to Moore and see what we're doing. It's an amazing place. There it is. Let me have that microphone. Oh, yeah. Thank you so much, Kath. I appreciate it. Thank you. Kath Young, everybody. Over to Michelle Angela Ortiz. Michelle, thank you so much. Lord save us. All right, so we've already seen some of your stuff, and when I came in, I just thought it was more of a mission statement or something, which I guess it sort of is, but I didn't realize. I was walking past some of your work as I came in. They're in all five galleries here. That's correct. Tell us about Libertad and also this statement on the wall here. Sure, so Flores de Libertad and We Are Human Beings are two of the public artworks that were shown between the span of 2015, 2017. These were all created with community members, which is how my work is really centered. The We Are Human Beings piece actually was installed in front of the ICE building with a 90-foot long stencil. Here we're seeing it condensed 50 feet in the space. These are very public works that are being shown as part of my solo exhibition mid-career spanning my 27 years, over 25 years of work as an artist. I'm a visual artist. I am a community arts educator, filmmaker, but most importantly I'm a visual storyteller. You certainly are. I'm really excited to be here at Moore because I'm a Moore alum. I graduated. Watch out there, Hank. Look at this. Michelle, she's an artist and a lifesaver. I was about to bowl these signs over. I think I was silently imploring her to take us. What's the first one you want to show people? Other than the ones they've sort of seen. As you come in, you see these big, massive pieces, 40 feet to 50 foot long pieces. This is a reproduction of one of my most recent murals, which most people know me as a muralist here in Philadelphia. And it is a reproduction of a 30-foot-tall mural honoring the worker in the 9th Street Market, what's known as the Italian Market or La Calle Nueve, which is my neighborhood where I grew up and was born and raised. And so this piece is two-scale reproduction of a portion of the mural. So you kind of hit with these very three public spaces as you come in. And then I can show you, if you come along with me, Hank, into... The Paley Gallery. The Paley Gallery. This is the Paley Gallery, all right. Correct. So we've already seen one, two, three different galleries. All right, guys, I need to make the point one more time to buckle up because everything in here is hers. Yes, paintings. This is not like a group show. This is Michelle's show. And there's all kinds. She has no, she's got no limits on her medium. She does what she wants to do. She'll tell you. Yeah, and so as part of being a visual storyteller, you will see traditionally my large-scale mural pieces here. This is displaying some of my process, right? Because sometimes people see muralists on scaffolding and riding a boom lift, but they don't really get to see the process of the artist. And so there are some processes here which span a lot of the work that I have done, again, for the past 25 years. And I've done work not just in Philadelphia, but across the United States and abroad through United States, as a United States Cultural Envoy, and through independent projects. So this is kind of a scene of the mural that you can see on 9th and League Street in the market on 9th Street. And it's actually on the block that I was born and raised in. Your color palette is so attractive, and there's so much power in that particular one. It's not the opposite of this, but this almost looks as though it's painted to feel almost as though you've... This picture feels like it was taken 80 years ago. There's a sepia tone to the whole thing that feels like it's supposed to feel old maybe. One thing that I pride myself in is that in all of the images that you see, and so even including these portraits, which are more smaller versions of paintings, speaking to the connection of mother and child, these are all real people. And so one of the things that I pride myself in in the work that I do is how to utilize art to represent stories And to amplify the... The stories of the existing voices of the community and also their power as well and using art as a platform to do that and to represent that. I do want to talk about... I've got to ask before we leave here, though. Your choice to use sheet metal as the canvas here, I think, is stunning because it jumps back out. I don't know if it was more or less difficult to work with, but there's a reward as soon as you begin to put paint on it. It wouldn't even occur to anyone to do that, but there it is. It occurred to you, simple transition, but it makes so much difference. Yeah, I mean, the use of material is also something that I'm always constantly thinking about and how to, again, best represent the story. In this case, this is speaking to family separation, what happens when a parent is, because deportation is a part of, Of, again, removing someone from a space, but what is the connection that a parent has with their child? And so the delicacy of that and kind of, again, that human connection is really important to me. Excellent. Michelle, give me one moment. Guys, picking the artistic brain of Michelle Ángela Ortiz, South Philadelphia muralist, and many, many other things to call her a muralist, just doesn't get it. There's way, way, way too many things going on. Trying to wrap our heads around a really brilliant Philadelphia artist from right here at the Moore School of Art and Design. Give me two minutes, guys. We'll be right back here with Michelle with more on color We'll be right back. I should have had this shot on going. But this is what I'm talking about, guys. If you look at the masking tape here, some of these things, this could even be a piece of poster board from a different project that Michelle, you know, there's cardboard here. You're... Medium is part of your storytelling. The things that you use really knock me off my feet. But this is what I'm talking about, because you just don't, like, it's... This is, I guess you'd call this sculpture, but what you've got going on? This is an installation, one of my most recent ones, that was installed in the market. And they're representing four different stories of the people from the market. So from a produce vendor, butcher, a cook, bartender, but all of these different people that have come at different points in time. And so they're responding to a question is what is the weight that they carry? And so utilizing the scales as the weight that they carry and also what lifts the weight. I think what's important when we think about the market, and by the way, this is one of the stands of Paul and Francis Giordano, which is the business where my mother worked at for 25 years. Wow. Well, I was going to say, I knew it is a market table immediately just based on the wheels and the fact that it's... It's good steel. It's made for years. And so it becomes a framing of these stories. And this is the first time it's shown inside of a gallery space. So the great thing about, again, Stories of Us is that it allows people to see all of these different types of works that I've created, both in public space and also in my studio works, which are more personal around immigration, being a child of immigrants, being born and raised in South Philly, and being able to represent these different layered stories of my own family. that then trickle out into these public works that we see here. So if you want to come with me, we can actually head over to the other space. Please do lead the way. Just give me a quick word on what this is, because it's interesting. This is the blueprint for a mural. You've actually got it. I didn't know, and then I saw it, and then I realized, is this foot by foot or five feet by five feet? So each each foot is about each each block is equivalent to about two feet onto the wall. And these are this is actually a sketch from one of my murals in Mexico, in Juarez, Mexico, which I worked as a cultural envoy, as a U.S. cultural envoy. So you've already done the artwork more or less, but then you've got to translate your artwork onto a blueprint here so that so that so the craftspeople can get it on the wall. Exactly. And the way that I work with my murals is that it's consistent participation from community members. So I teach color theory. I teach how to do the drawings and then to be able to do it on a large scale. All right. Well, Michelle Angela Ortiz, you're extraordinary. This is not a kick to a commercial, but as we walk across over to another gallery, which is also filled by her work, as we're in here, this is probably a great place to ask you exactly what role Moore College of Art and Design played in your life. I'm thinking things like... That blueprinting stuff that you do. Yeah, so large scale. It's very, very technical stuff that your average artist isn't going to just do on their own. They may need no... Find out they need to, I guess. Yeah, it's like a combination of two things. One thing is that being in Philadelphia and a very vibrant arts community and having a college like Moore College of Art and Design became a space where I could grow as an artist. I started my connection here with Moore as a young artist workshop student, so as a teenager. Yeah. And then evolved into getting my bachelor's degree in fine arts here. And so during my time at Moore, Thank you very much. In 1998, 1999, I started working and doing work in the public spaces, doing murals, mosaics, with many different organizations here in Philadelphia, including the Mural Arts Program. And so what we see here in this space are more of my own personal family stories. These are my mother's hands and a projection of one of my public pieces. If you come through this space here, Hank. Hey, Michelle, will you indulge me? Will you please? Talk about these paintings first because I love them. I think they're beautiful. I don't know if that's aloe or what. So the flower, yes. There's so much. The title of the piece is called Morivivir. Now this is one piece in two paintings? This is a diptych, correct. So the Morivivir is a beautiful plant in Puerto Rico which is where my father is from. My mother is originally from Colombia. Morivivir is a plant that opens its leaves and clothes and the literal translation is to live and to die and so it's really thinking about not so much life and death but like the cycle and so this is the first portrait that I did of my son and my father together and it's talking about the childhood that I'm offering my son is a very different childhood that my father had and so thinking about hardship but also what do we what do we come out from that hardship thinking about the love and and the joy that we bring even despite the challenges Thank you for telling me about it, I just think it's beautiful, I think it's just a wonderful painting, I love it. Thank you for showing it to me. Yeah, so when people are able to come and see, so these works that you see here are actually the very first time that all of these pieces are brought here together along with my public artworks. And I think it gives people a perspective of my mid-career retrospective, right? Really thinking about all of these different pieces. There's more animated pieces here. For example, Arrival and Belonging. Michelle, forgive me. I got to get a real quick break, but let me ask you real quick before. When they tell you this is a mid-career retrospective, does that, like, put you on your heels and you go, oh, mid-career, holy man, you're halfway over? Does it really rack your brain a little bit? No, I think... You knew you were there more or less anyway. Yeah, I feel like it's been... I'm glad for the galleries and more and providing this opportunity to mark this moment. And I feel like having all of these works here together actually helps me really think about what are the next... 20 years of work, right? And what are the next steps that I need to take? So I don't see it so much of like, oh, my God, but just like an honoring of that. And not just my work, but the people that have been a part of my process. Beautiful stuff. Michelle, Angela Ortiz, guys, are you an artist yourself? Ask yourself, do you have the presence of mind to shoot your mother's hands washing while she's still here? Angela did. Give me a quick break, guys. We'll be back to wrap up this special artsy episode of Uncut for more college of art and design. We'll be right back. All right, everybody, we are back to more of the School of College Design, the five galleries here. And here's a time-lapse video of Michelle's installation in front of the ICE facility going up. The one you saw out there in the hallway, she has the presence of mind to shoot these things and to document them in many more ways than Sunday. I'm always a little bit surprised what I'm going to get coming around the corner with you, and I love that. That's great. And I think, again, this is a great moment to showcase all of these different pieces. These are paintings that were created in my studio, but then were reproduced into larger pieces in the public space as part of my Familias Separadas project which stands for Separated Families. There is a film that came out of that which we will be screening here at Moore College of Art and Design on Monday, November 16th at 6 p.m. Monday, November 16th at 6. At 6 p.m. and I will be here as well as the director of the Pennsylvania Immigration Coalition and Free Migration Project and we will be not just showing my 30-minute film, which is, you see an excerpt of this right now on the screen, representing the four stories of mothers that fought for their freedom while they were detained at the Berks Residential County Center. Michelle, I've got about one minute left in the show and I'm interested in all of this. I just had to sort of interrupt you to tell you So that you can make whatever final points you want to make. This is here now. This show has opened, guys. So you can come here and see it. And again, it costs absolutely nothing. Yeah, absolutely. It's free. You can come from Monday to Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Again, don't... miss out on all of the five galleries because there's work all across the board. And there are also, if you go to Moore College of Art and Design, as well as my website, you'll be able to see the days that you can come for certain events, which is, by the way, on Monday, November 16th at 6pm. But the show is open through January 16th. So if you want to have, there is a Christmas break, a holiday break, but just check on more.edu. Check out the exhibition dates, and please come. Michelle, thank you so much, guys. Michelle, Angela Ortiz on the show here. Thank you on behalf of her, on behalf of Kathy Young here at the Moore School of College and Design. We've got Jen Fred coming in with a new show right about now. See you tomorrow.