- [Announcer] From the Lemmond Theater on the campus of Misericordia University in Dallas, Pennsylvania, WVIA presents "Keystone Edition Arts," a public affairs program that goes beyond the headlines to address issues in Northeastern and Central Pennsylvania.

This is "Keystone Edition Arts."

And now, Erika Funke.

- Welcome to "Keystone Edition Arts," where we're inviting you to dream dreams, American Dreams, against the backdrop of the approaching 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence to be observed on July 4th, 2026.

We'll meet dreamers, past and present, and explore the role of the human imagination through the arts, in the ways we live together and create our world.

Celebrated theater educator, Alvina Krause, was a dreamer.

After completing her distinguished career at Northwestern University, where she taught noted actors like Charlton Heston and Patricia Neal, she retired to Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania.

It wasn't too long before she was sought out by graduate students who didn't wanna miss the chance to learn everything they could from this master.

The students went on to establish the Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble with Ms. Krause, as they called her, the founding artistic director.

Alvina Krause believed deeply.

She said that theater should be, can be a vital part of the community.

I think just as important as the school, the church, or for that matter, the grocery store.

All theater is entertainment, first of all, but theater can illuminate what life is.

The Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble is now approaching its 50th season and the company has been realizing that goal of civic engagement with original plays like "Letters to the Editor."

Gerard Stropnicky, one of the co-founders, asks what could be more perfect project for a community-centered professional theater than to revisit two centuries of life in its hometown and honestly present the towns people's voices found in the towns newspaper.

The play was a hit in the region and it's been performed all around the country.

The Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble is a prime example of what we'll be talking about here at Misericordia University in Dallas, Pennsylvania, where we welcome three guest panelists and a wonderful audience.

Brian Carso is a professor of history and government at Misericordia, and he writes historical fiction with a recently published novel, "Gideon's Revolution," revolving around Benedict Arnold, Lalaine Bangilan Little, director of the Pauley Friedman Art Gallery and adjunct professor in the Department of Fine Arts here at Misericordia is with us, and Oren Helbok, executive director of The Exchange Gallery in Bloomsburg.

He's a noted photographer and author with railroading as his major focus.

Welcome to you all, and welcome, Dr. Carso.

With theater on our minds, let's start in a bold way with Broadway.

What do the big musicals, "1776" and now, "Hamilton," say about the ways in which we see ourselves and our history?

- What a great question and what a great thing to be sitting on this stage to talk about this subject.

It's so important as we enter the, you mentioned the 250th anniversary, the semiquincentennial, which is a mouthful.

I remember, as you all do, the bicentennial, 200 years ago.

But 250 years, that's a major achievement in human history and there's nothing foreordained that it will continue.

We have to practice democracy and practice civic engagement every day.

And what these stories, like "1776," which was very popular on Broadway, particularly in the early 1970s leading up to the bicentennial, and then, "Hamilton," of course, which has been a huge hit.

Lin-Manuel Miranda, who wrote "Hamilton" said, I read in an interview, he said, that it's America then as told by America now.

And that's something we have to continually do, is that I think we have to practice democracy, our democratic habits every single day.

It's not just walking into the voting booth.

But we have to think about what do we share in common.

What are the stories that we have in common that are part of your identity, my identity, all of your identity.

We're all different in our lives and how we live them, but we share common stories and those theater performances that have been so popular give us an opportunity to look at America then as told now and to think about how these stories contribute to who we are.

- And because of their success, they did strike a note, right?

Not just because they're razzle-dazzle.

- Who would think that hundreds of thousands of people would go to Broadway to see a show about Alexander Hamilton?

Good for them.

- That's wonderful.

And we just all may have seen that image of the ride of Paul Revere, "The Midnight Ride," Grant Wood's painting, because it was recreated just now, just recently.

But what about those images, the paintings from 1931, same thing about reflecting?

- It is the same sort of thing.

1931, of course, is the, right, the beginning of the Great Depression.

A lot of people are questioning American values.

And Grant Wood, a great regional painter from the Midwest, did a number of paintings that tapped into the mythology of the American founding.

And I love that painting of Paul Revere's ride, which was just, we celebrated the 250 years ago just last week.

And it's important, in 1931, to say, "Hey, let's reexamine our values."

Let's take a look at these founding myths and what they meant to us then, what they mean to us now.

Maybe they give us some hint as to where we should point our moral compass in 1931.

Just as revisiting these stories, which I hope we will do vigorously in our 250-year celebration coming up to help us think about, well, what does it mean?

What does this American dream mean and how do we assure that we continue to make it possible for people.

- And in that regard, telling stories on the Broadway stage or in a visual image, you've written a novel in historical fiction.

You write academic articles and books and so forth.

What about when we hear, "Well, sometimes fiction can be more true than facts."

- Well, it's always a challenge to say how do we make that connection with other people, not just our friends here in the audience, but people from the past.

You know, one of the fascinating things as a historian or an artist is that life is infinite in its variety, but it's repetitive in its forms.

So we can read Shakespeare written 400 years ago, and you know, Hamlet was not worried about car accidents the way I worry about car accidents.

But we share the feeling of fear, or love, joy.

I mean, all throughout human history, every human being has had that experience and we can relate to that.

So, right, the challenge for artists, I think, and what I certainly enjoyed writing historical fiction is to say, how can we even go the next step to relate to those people from our past, to understand their stories and how they contribute to what our stories are.

- Wow, thank you.

Thank you.

And we'll urge people to, "Gideon's Revolution" is what it is.

Thank you, Dr. Carso.

We began with Alvina Krause, a woman of vision, inspired by the project of multimedia artist Judy Chicago in the 1970s, teachers from Wayne County's three school districts and The Cooperage Project Pop Up Club ask students, "If you could have dinner with any woman, historical or contemporary, who would she be?"

The "Wayne County Arts Alliance Dinner Party, Setting the Table for Women," was a month-long exhibit in March 2025, and WVIA attended the opening reception.

(air swooshing) - [Connor] We're at the Wayne County Arts Alliance Main Street Gallery, here in Honesdale, Pennsylvania.

- 2025, this is our first show and I as the educational coordinator, are very happy that it's the student show 'cause I love working with kids.

- This has been the culmination of several months of effort between students and teachers, community members, to get students together to create works of art, representing the women that they would wanna see represented at a dinner party.

- [Debby] Who would they most wanna eat with, thinking about women that are inspiring to them.

- I made Amelia Earhart because she was interesting to me, because that was exciting back then for people who had never seen a woman fly an airplane alone.

I might wanna do that someday too.

- Over 200 students' works are represented here from three districts, Western Wayne, Wallenpaupack, and Wayne Highlands, including some work from students in the community from The Cooperage Projects Pop Up Club.

- At first, they were a little taken aback and they were kind of overwhelmed, but very excitedly, they started with building plates and then they moved on to their cups and once they got kind of free rein to like start creating, it just kind of grow and grow.

- The work is so fresh and so beautiful and so much fun and the kids really rose to the occasion.

- It was great to get them to think about like just some important people that were in their life that were women or important people in the world that they had an interest in to learn more about.

- I picked the first woman pharaoh, Hatshepsut, 'cause she thought that there weren't able to be girl pharaohs, so she wanted to be more like a guy pharaoh.

So she did more guy work than woman work for her.

- Sometimes we would be like putting the plates out or putting the objects out and we'd be like, "Oh, wouldn't these women have a cool conversation?"

- [Jessica] This is another student of ours, and she created a plate for Cleopatra and this is another one who created a beautiful plate for her mother.

- I made a rosebush because my grandma always loved roses and she was like my favorite person.

Every time when I look at it, it gives like a bit of confidence in myself.

- We all went very, very separate directions with this project.

- [Student] I did Aphrodite 'cause she's the goddess of love and beauty.

- I did Anne Frank 'cause she was only like a young girl when so many crazy things happened to her and I thought that was really inspirational to me.

- I painted Buffy Summers from the series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," because yeah, she's very powerful, inspirational.

- I made my piece after Sylvia Earle, a female marine biologist who is really inspiring to me because I inspire to be a marine biologist when I grow up.

- I did Marie Curie 'cause of the effects of radiation in cancer treatment.

It's important to know what she did.

- I did Belle from "Beauty and the Beast," it's a favorite movie of mine and I always found it...

It was always a big inspiration for me.

- I did Lady Gaga because she changed music forever in the way that she decided to create it.

And she's also just a very big activist for the gay rights community and women in general.

And I aspire to be like her when I grow up.

- It doesn't matter what our backgrounds were, it doesn't matter what these kids' background were, they were able to sit down and create something that was important to them and then share it.

- I feel like a lot of places, women are left out, so they should be put in to be really standing out instead of just in the background.

- There is a woman of vision and action who has been committed for decades to fostering civic education, democracy and the arts, here in northeastern Pennsylvania, the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, nationally and around the world.

Sondra Myers is former senior fellow for international civic and cultural affairs at the University of Scranton.

She served as cultural advisor to the Pennsylvania governor from 1987 to 1993.

She worked at the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Commission of Fine Arts in Washington and she is the editor of "The Democracy Reader" and "Democracy as a Discussion," translated into over 20 languages.

Sondra Myers is also a thoughtful writer of "Letters to the Editor."

We want to acknowledge for decades long work and commitment to civic education, democracy and the arts.

She is a pioneer and a true leader.

We've just spoken about the international reach of the work of Sondra Myers.

Nigerian American artist, Ibiyinka Alao, is a writer, architect, and filmmaker who uses his art around the world to further civic education.

Ibi, as he is known, has been a guest at Bucknell University, hosted by the Biology and Theater and Dance departments with the Office of Civic Engagement, the Bucknell Center for Sustainability and the Environment, and the Samek Art Museum.

He recently spent a week working with students at Berwick Elementary Schools, a residency that culminated in an exhibit at McBride Memorial Library, and WVIA was there.

(air swooshing) - I am a painter, architect, filmmaker.

I use art as a tool for peacebuilding around the world.

And the way I do that is through storytelling.

At Berwick Elementary School, that's one of the most incredible times that we've had.

We were there for a week, sharing with the children about storytelling.

Everyone has their own unique stories, including the children.

So it was a chance to really be able to interact with the children, with the student about telling their own stories.

- [Staff] So which one is yours?

Point out which one.

Did you read a story about koalas?

- There's a video about it.

- A video too?

- I used my scholastic published book, which is called "Ibi's Fireflies," and you know, also shared with them the original way I wrote it.

And then I encourage the children to use their own words, including their own colors.

So this painting actually came before the writing.

So I made the painting first in 2006 and then the words came to me to be able to tell the story.

If you look at the painting, it starts early in the morning to the afternoon sky, to the sunset, to the night skies with all the stars and then back to the morning.

So it is, in a way, a message of hope.

And one of the things that the children noticed about the painting itself is that how it covers the whole day and then coming back to a new day, that you don't have to be sad over a day that ends at night because there's a brighter morning coming in the future.

The real crux of the whole story is this part here, which is the fireflies.

It was a childhood story of mine.

So in telling them this story, they could relate with it because I was the age that most of them are, some of them are in kindergarten.

I was six and a half years of age when this happened to me.

It was a simple story of my dad was driving me back home from his work and I had spotted a cluster of fireflies on the side of the road.

I said, "Daddy, look, fireflies."

Then, you know, he stopped the car and reversed it back to where the fireflies were, allowed me to catch as many fireflies as I wanted to.

Now, for a boy who loves fireflies, that's like heaven.

After catching all those fireflies, he said I had to let them go.

Dad told me that in the middle of the night, fireflies turn into stars.

So if I want to keep seeing the stars that I love, anytime I caught the fireflies I love, I have to let them go.

Well, that made come absolute sense to me that night.

It was the reason he gave for letting the fireflies go.

That's why I paint a lot of them in my pictures and also paint a lot of stars.

Even as an adult now, that I know that it's not really true that fireflies turn into stars, that what he was really trying to share with me, is if I love anything as much as I love those fireflies, the best thing is to give them freedom and they become a brighter, bigger source of life.

Sharing that with the kids, you know, they all could find what is in their life that is the firefly and what kind of star it can become by sharing.

- Thanks to Ibiyinka Alao, and you're here with us in the audience.

Welcome, Ibi.

You use your art to bring people together and that sometimes when they're even refusing to acknowledge each other, how do you approach that?

- Well, thank you, Erika.

It's wonderful to be here to meet in person.

And with the United Nations, you know, simply it's because of winning an award, the United Nations International Art Competition, I ended up winning the first place among 61 countries.

That's why I was named the art ambassador to the United Nations, using art as a tool for peacebuilding.

And it's part of my American dream because growing up in Ilorin, I never really thought that anything like that was possible on a global stage.

And so I will share with you the story, which is what inspired the new civic center that I'm building.

I think the model for it is the gallery right here.

I will use this story about true miracles, a painting of mine, to share with people about the need for forgiveness.

And sometimes even the word forgiveness can sound controversial because of maybe spiritual intonations, but that we can share it as artists by sharing stories.

So it's inspired by the life of an oyster.

You know, the most extraordinary about an oyster is this, that irritations get into its shell.

The oyster doesn't like the irritations, but when it sees that it cannot dispose of the irritations, it chooses it to do the loveliest thing it ever has the chance to make, which is a pearl.

That if there are irritations in our lives, there's only one prescription, to make a pearl.

It may have to be a pearl of patience with a lot of love poured into it, but in any case, make a pearl.

And it takes a lot of hope, faith, and love to do it.

I come from a Christian background religiously, but no matter what the religion, whether Muslim, whether Buddhist, whether you know, just any religion or no religion at all, that the idea of forgiveness is that, you know, when we do bad things, an almighty God is able to forgive us.

How much more if we do it for each other as human beings.

For the oyster, which incidentally, the word Susquehanna, I learned from the residency at Bucknell, really means oyster river.

It's native America, meaning oyster river.

I just thought that's so beautiful because it's already ingrained in the history here.

You know, the biological history of the area.

So the oyster takes these dirt particles that enters its shell, it pours down its enzymes, and over time, it becomes a pearl.

When we look at the pearl, little do we know it comes from the ugly irritations in the first place.

Now, I know that people in this part of the country, in this part of the world, probably live perfect lives.

Maybe you don't ever have irritations in your lives, but you can relate in one way or the other that you know, even for children, what irritates you, they will say things like my brother or my sister or my parent, that you don't think about getting rid of them.

You learn to forgive them.

And that if we learn to forgive people who hurt us, over time, the memory of the wrong they did to us becomes beautiful, becomes like that beautiful pearl.

So as world leaders, you know, talking about ambassadors or presidents or kings or queens of nations, if we learn to forgive, we save a lot of lives and we don't fall into wars because if you're a leader of a place and there is a war and everyone dies, who is it that you are leading?

Zero.

So if we do it as people, as leaders of nations, as individuals to each other, as city, cities, communities, and you know, just all over the world, that when we learn to forgive, we become like the oyster that makes something beautiful out of ugly things that comes its way.

- Ibi, thank you for your stories.

You are a remarkable storyteller.

We're so glad that you're here with us.

Thank you.

- Thank you so much.

(audience applauding) - And welcome, Dr. Lalaine Little.

As the gallery director here at the Pauly Friedman Gallery, but also you have a role as a teacher, how do you see museums, galleries, libraries, other spaces as places for civic education and conversation?

- Well, here at the gallery, I mean, especially lucky position that I get to work with college students and this is such a great age and a great age of curiosity, a great age of independence.

We're really thinking about self and how we want to be in the world and what comes next.

And those kinds of moments are so rich for thinking about what is your role in civic life, what is the role of those visual images that you encounter every day.

When we're in a political climate or when we're in, when we're thinking about my first apartment, or when we're thinking about, and I know the students are very involved in, how do our campus buildings work?

How does the visual images around campus work?

And it's a great time to get people involved through the visual image.

And these images, I think, express things that we can't always.

And so this is a nice time to introduce students to that concept.

- And you've had some extraordinary exhibits and you've actually come and brought the artists with you to talk for our art scene radio show.

Is there some show that comes to mind that might be a real, have served as a real catalyst for civic engagement in the context of the show, for example?

- Well, I'm particular excited about what we have in the gallery right now.

This is the EVAC project, the experiencing veterans and artists collaboration.

We brought the entire show to campus in 2020 and 2021 when our campus was closed because of COVID.

So the only people that saw it were our students.

And at first, I thought, well, they're too young to really remember things like 9/11, they're too young to remember things like the Iraq War.

And I thought, you know, this is gonna be so far removed from what their experience is.

But when we got back to the classroom after looking at this exhibit for, and just really studying it for a long time, spending a lot of time one-on-one with each artwork.

You know, my students were, they had people in the military in their lives.

And this is, this show is a way to get the public to understand military life, to talk about things that are quite silent, that are a bit private for military families especially.

And this was a way to do that.

And it was a way that my students opened up to me in very unexpected ways.

- And the notion that we've been hearing about interacting and with these stories, whether they're in a novel or on a canvas or on the stage or anywhere, how do you get students, or do they need to get to read now the visual images, we're bombarded with visual images, so.

- We talk a lot in my class about trust.

We talk a lot about what our images do for us.

And right now, I'm teaching global architecture, so we're thinking about the role of buildings and you need air conditioning, you need light and things like that.

But also, what are the costs to the environment?

What are the costs to human beings if we have architecture, or a certain way or not a certain way.

And so, all of these surroundings in our environment, in our visual environment have so many ways that they can get out in the world and impact what their environment looks like.

- Good, good.

Well, you are tuned to "Keystone Edition Arts" here at Misericordia University.

Thank you so much, Dr. Little.

We're in Dallas, Pennsylvania, and this is a show titled "American Dreams," exploring civic engagement through the lens of the arts.

With us, Dr. Brian Carso, historian, a novelist, and Dr. Lalaine Bangilan Little, director of the Pauly Friedman Art Gallery, both on the Misericordia faculty.

And now, Oren Helbok, who is executive director of The Exchange Gallery in Bloomsburg and a noted photographer.

Welcome, Oren.

- Thank you.

- When WVIA was planning this program, we thought of The Exchange Gallery right away.

How do you view as the director, the mission, the gallery itself, in light of the theme of this project, as you as an entity in the community and the region?

- The Exchange takes as its mission, bringing the arts to all communities throughout our region.

When our board came up with that over the course of a strategic planning process, we deliberately left it vague.

All communities means not just Berwick, not just Bloomsburg, it means all of the people in all of their various subsets.

We would like to engage with all of them.

We can bring them into the gallery, we can go out and meet them where they are.

We also, when we said throughout our region, that's vague too.

Our region can be as large as we wish.

The show that we have there now called "American Dreams" is an excellent example of how the community pours itself into our gallery.

We say to the world, here's the theme, bring the work.

The only rule in our gallery is that the work has to fit through the front door.

After that, it all goes up.

There are 40 artists with work in this show.

They're from seven central Pennsylvania counties.

Of those 40, 8 of them are showing at The Exchange for the first time.

So our community keeps growing.

This morning, I actually went back and looked at all of the spreadsheets of all of the shows that we've done in the last 11 years.

There have been about 80 of those open call shows in The Exchange Gallery.

I've been saying recently, about a thousand people have shown work.

It turns out it's 1,500, more than 1,500.

These are people of all walks of life.

We have Bloomsburg University art professors, we have 2-year-old children.

All the work goes up together.

When Mindy Cronk from VIA called me last summer and said, "Would you be interested in something about the arts and civic engagement?"

The answer, of course, is yes.

When VIA calls, the answer is yes.

We had actually done a show in 2016 called "Art the Vote."

We encouraged people to think about what the election meant.

By the time the 2016 election came around, the election cycle had already been long enough that I think people were sort of tired of thinking about it.

So it was one of the smaller shows that we've had.

"American Dreams," it may not be the largest, but it certainly has an enormous range of work.

As soon as Mindy called and talked about the arts and civic engagement, what struck me was, we are interested in what the American ideas are.

What are the things that make us American?

What are the things that America does well?

What are the promises of America that have been kept or not?

Those are the ideas that we put out to our community.

And among those 40 artists and their 80 pieces, we have a broad range of thoughts about what America's promise is, could be, should be, or not.

(air swooshing) - We are surrounded by American dreams.

I wanted people to give us their ideas about what America is.

- This is my American dream and I think this is the American dream of many immigrants.

I'm an immigrant.

I moved to the country in 2010 from Ukraine.

And us as immigrants, fresh immigrants, we see our American dream as opportunity.

To have an American dream, all of us have to get together and work together.

That's my idea.

That's what it is here.

- I was born and raised around Ashland, Pennsylvania and I've created this book recently, "Reclamation: From Coal Dust to Hope," which traces my immigrant family's lives here in Northeastern Pennsylvania.

Thank you, grandfather Pat, thank you, Catherine, and all those who stood on slag before our arrival.

You have made our passage so much easier.

Thank you.

- When I think of America, I love going out in the countryside and especially the state parks.

I think they're kind of a fundamental part of America.

This was a waterfall photograph at the Leonard Harrison State Park, and this one is the overlook at the top of Leonard Harrison State Park.

- My father was a World War II veteran.

He earned a Purple Heart and he had two bronze medals.

My brother, who just recently passed away was also a veteran.

My husband is also a Navy veteran and he served during the Vietnam War.

And this piece, I think I titled this one, "Handle With Care."

Everything we feel about our country needs to be taken seriously and handled with care.

- I'm an elementary school teacher for about 16 years.

I'm now in trainings in hearing about school shootings.

I wanted a piece that people would fully feel what I feel, wanting to see a change in America.

I'm applied a QR code to the sounds that I compiled through different media.

So people can take the journey, scan the QR code, and experience the artwork and hopefully, spark a conversation.

- This is more of a disillusionment with the American dream that we're not living up to it.

"We cut our skin on the jagged tide of anger, at least we do not bleed."

If it does move people to go towards change, yeah, I think that would make me very happy.

We can only hope and pray.

- This piece is called "The Three Stepping Stones."

Religion, the most important, morality, it was based on good morals, and America is a republic, if we can keep it, as Benjamin Franklin puts it.

- [Oren] We as human beings, we wanna share with each other.

We share through song, we share through story, we share through artwork.

- It's such a big story.

It's an ongoing story.

Everybody has their own story of what the American dream is.

I'm a book artist, I have this book structure and I have some pencils and people can write whatever they think is their idea of what the American dream is, because we are the creators right now, ever changing of the American dream.

- I hope they feel good when they look at this.

I hope they feel good when they look at all of them 'cause I think underneath, everybody's proud to be an American.

- Diversity does not mean difference.

Diversity means a collective that works together.

There are certain ideas here.

We hold these truths to be self-evident.

- As an immigrant, it's you know, it's a light in the end of the tunnel, the America.

- Well, that was remarkable to see, Oren.

That was when you were accepting the work, now what has happened?

What are the conversations that have resulted?

- It's been really interesting as people have come in to see which of the artwork draws them.

It's hard to even choose one particular piece.

I'd like to actually go back to when the work was coming in, even before that your crew was there.

We had work come in from Chet Davis, who is a retired art teacher from the Coal Region.

Chet is one of the most prolific artists I know.

He has ideas and he turns them into art.

He paints and draws all the time.

He brought three pieces to the show, all of which are about school shootings.

So the American nightmare, not the American dream.

Those came in on a Thursday morning.

On Thursday afternoon, another piece came in from another teacher, Julie Ridings, who's the second grade teacher at the St. Joseph School in Danville.

She brought in a piece about school shootings.

She has to teach her second graders what to do if they hear gunshots and this eats at her.

She brought in her piece.

I said to Julie, "You know, it's really interesting.

Another teacher brought a piece in on this same subject.

Here is the work that Chet Davis brought in."

Julie said, "He was my art teacher in high school.

He was one of those inspiring teachers."

Obviously helped inspire her to become a teacher herself.

She said that when she was in high school, she and her father, another artist, would travel around the region to see art shows in the area, would find Chet Davis work.

At some point, they went to a show, there was a piece that Julie just loved.

She, next week in school, said, "Mr. Davis, I love that piece that I saw at the show.

Could I buy it?"

He said, "It's already been sold."

Because Julie's parents had bought it and presented it to her as her graduation present and it hangs in her house now 20-some odd years later.

That to me is an example of The Exchange being the exchange.

People come together.

People who knew each other, now they know each other again.

People who don't know each other come in and find ways of making connections because of the artwork that's on the wall.

- Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for that story.

Again, wonderful stories today, Oren.

Thank you.

We have seen a little bit of that gathering of the canvases and exhibits, poetry and so on, and the Bob McCormick's book there in that video.

But we also saw those young people from Wayne County who made the pottery plates and mugs so that they could eat and break bread with Amelia Earhart and all their, all the women who mean so much to him.

One's grandma is the one he wanted.

Debby Pollak is coordinator, arts education coordinator at Wayne County Arts Alliance.

And Debby, you are here and we thank you for that great work.

We congratulate you for that great work.

What do you say now?

It's over, right?

The show is over, but what is, what are the fruits of that show?

- Wow.

Well, I guess the fruits of the show are so many because I get to see the kids all the time and they're like, wasn't that fun, and that was so great.

And we have a community that's growing, I guess, is the main thing.

The dinner party exhibition was, you know, many people's work.

I mean, mostly the teachers in the three Wayne County school districts and their students.

I think it was 211 students participated this year.

Last year at the gallery, which is, this is the third year of the Wayne County Arts Alliance Gallery being the gallery.

We have our own building in Honesdale.

Last year, it was 150 students participating and this year, it's, well, 54 more people and their teachers as well as the Cooperage Project, their afterschool program, participated.

I get to see those kids all the time.

And the meaningfulness, I guess is the word, is hard to really put into words because art is energy, art is community, art is kind of a living force.

And when I see it happening from all parts of Wayne County and then coming into this little gallery in Honesdale, it's quite a, well, kind of moving and exciting experience.

There's lots of people here with me today who also helped with the exhibit.

The Arts Alliance is a real labor of love by artists in Wayne County.

All of us wanting to make a hub for the community.

I really wanna go to The Exchange Gallery 'cause it sounds really cool, and it's the idea that we're having there of making a place where people, all kinds of artists, people who are interested in art, who have an idea they wanna make art, who have been making art for years, children, adults.

We have group-themed shows.

We have the student exhibitions.

It's a growing thing.

And I think that, I used to live in Philadelphia and I was an art teacher there for years and years and years.

There's many of the same, I would say, challenges, in the school districts in Philadelphia as there are in these rural school districts.

And if we can possibly create the feeling that art is this healing force and a power that is hard to put into words 'cause it's visual and it's tangible and it's makeable, then we can really build something great.

I also feel like, I'm really excited about next year's show, which we're planning already.

I have all the teachers that are really, really excited about having their kids work in the gallery.

They're coming back to sort of do a debrief of the dinner party and we're gonna start thinking about next year's show, which I think is gonna be sort of, well, we'll see what it'll be, but it'll be what we make it.

And it's really exciting and the gallery is a great, great place and the kids are what make it great, I guess is.

- Well, we just hope you'll keep in touch with us and let us know about what happens with the revisiting and all the new and the good work that you're doing.

And it's an example of what you described, Laine, about the gallery space as a place, and Oren, for coming together of people in art and conversation, whether they're little ones or high school or doesn't matter the age.

But that's wonderful.

And we mentioned Sondra Myers as a woman of vision, and Sondra Myers is someone who was a co-founder of Interdependence Day.

And it was a move to follow 9/11, 9/12, the day after, with an examination of who we are together rather than a divided world.

So there were programs not just in Scranton, but around the world actually on Interdependence Day.

And that's how I first got to become aware of the Hexagon Project.

And with us, Melissa Cruz, art teacher from the Howard Gardner School is with us.

And Melissa works with the Hexagon Project.

Tell us what it is and how you use it as a teacher.

- Well, the Hexagon Project is a nonprofit organization and they ask teachers, students, and also community members to use social justice topics and use art as a medium to explore the complexities of that topic as well as put it into action and create a piece that reflects on their role and then an action that's coming out of it.

So a possible solution or their idea about the topic itself.

And so you can use pretty much any medium.

We've had all kinds of mediums turned in over the years, and we do ask not only teachers to get involved with their students, but also we go out into the community sometimes and have them also participate in the Hexagon Project.

And this upcoming year they're choosing AI for their topic and its possible benefits, hopefully, ethical benefits, to society.

And so if anybody wanted to be involved in the Hexagon Project, we ask that you contact Beth and her email is beth@hexagonproject.org.

- Melissa, just quickly then, why the symbol?

What is the symbolism of the hexagon itself?

- So, thank you.

That's a great question.

The hexagon itself is representing the ways that we are all connected because of its natural shape.

It's the most connected of all of the shapes because of the six sides.

So it represents how we're all connected and sometimes how all of our problems and even all of our solutions are connected.

And so it's really a great metaphor.

- Thank you for the good work you do with young ones.

And thank you for joining us right now.

I'm curious, as we have just heard so much, we've seen so much.

What are your reactions, Dr. Carso, what have you heard and what other further thoughts do you have?

- I was really moved by the artwork in The Exchange about the American dream.

And, you know, art, whether it's created today or a hundred years ago or 200 years ago, it invites us to have a conversation, with just the artist perhaps, but to engage in some thought about what are the stories we share in common.

When we talk about civic engagement, we talk about democracy, what we're talking about is a citizenry that has the ability to reach consensus and if we can't do that to accept compromise.

And that's a learned trait.

You know, we've talked about, to participate in the American dream, the American experiment, we have to be able to elevate our sort of primal notion of self, me, a person, and turn that into, we, the people, which everybody should be familiar with that idea as we seek a more perfect union.

And to do that, we have to think about the other person.

We have to be connected to them.

And the working tools of democracy are sympathetic identification, right?

To understand how my neighbor might feel, and reciprocity, to say, well, I'll help my neighbor out today because he or she will help me out tomorrow.

And mutuality, that maybe all my neighbors will get together and we'll do something for our community to lift it up.

And I think you access those through art, like whether it's Winslow Homer or Grant Wood, or the students, the young people or the community members who are putting things up in The Exchange.

I think it's fascinating to have that conversation because you're seeing an idea whether on paper or sculpture or wherever.

- And the spaces that you both are directors of, are just ideal in that.

Anything that you heard or you wanted to react to?

- Well, I hope that people are compelled to become patrons of the arts in some way.

If art making is not your thing, certainly go to museums and art galleries where you can have these shared experiences with other people, to learn sympathy and empathy.

And you know, this emotion that I was feeling was so private and yet I see it right in front of me is it's such an incredible feeling.

And I love introducing people to those kinds of experiences through the arts.

- Oren?

- Stories.

- Stories.

- You talk about stories, we can tell them through "Hamilton," that's a great story.

We can paint and there's a story behind that painting.

The reason that The Exchange is called The Exchange, it's a place where people have the opportunity to come and meet the artist, to hear that story.

I get to meet all of the artists.

I have the best job there is.

The artists tell me their stories and then I get to share them as well.

And that's the way that we come together.

There is something about hearing each other's stories.

There's always something that resonates with us.

Something in your story touches my heart, something in my story touches yours.

That's the way to bring people together.

- Well, we're going back and forth to, from Grant Wood to 2024, maybe many people saw the film "A Complete Unknown" about Bob Dylan and that brought attention to the tradition of social protest songs in America.

And that's a long-standing example of civic engagement through music.

It probably goes back to the revolution, does it, Dr. Carso?

- Sure.

- Yeah.

See.

(laughs) But what about jazz?

Reverend Bill Carter is a highly respected jazz pianist, composer, band leader, and pastor of the First Presbyterian Church at Clark Summit.

And we welcome you, Bill.

You are someone who writes and speaks about jazz in addition to all the performing you do.

Your recent book is titled, "Thriving on a Riff: Jazz and the Spiritual Life."

Now, how do you talk about jazz as a model for living with each other?

- Well, how much time do we have, Erika?

I could be here all day.

Jazz is one of the many soundtracks of our lives.

And it originates as folk music.

It comes from the folks, as Dave Brubeck was famous for saying.

And the rhythms are the jambalaya that come from all the complexity of American life living together.

And one of the paradoxes of this music is it honors individual expression and the solo.

But in the context of interdependence, you know, the soloist takes a leap out into the unknown and creates new variations on the harmony or the melody, but does so only with the support of the musicians around her or him.

And so this is, I think, one of the most democratic of art forms.

Wynton Marsalis has said that over and over again, mostly talking about his own band.

But it's a very different thing when different people, diverse people, find some channel for their creativity, when they can agree on what they're going to perform.

And they can do this with the ethics of trying to improve life around them.

And this, I think, is the very important soundtrack for us.

And it is a thoroughly American, but now a global form of music.

- And you are someone who's very good at talking about the way that we, as listeners to the Presbybop jazz ensemble, you as individual musicians listening deeply to each other and creating marvelous music.

But what about us as those who are sitting there listening to you perform?

How do we get drawn in and what does it do for us?

- Well, there's got to be a place of connection and there needs to be a place where the artists offer something that folks can step into themselves imaginatively.

I'll go back to a story that I've told you on the air, of my mother at age 19, hearing Louis Armstrong.

And she said there were two things about that performance that she will never forget.

One was the stack of folded handkerchiefs on top of the piano.

And within 30 seconds or so, pops Armstrong was wiping his brow.

He was so immersed into the music.

The second thing she said was, the room changed.

I said, "What do you mean by that?"

I mean, this is 1955, an African American musician, Northwestern Pennsylvania, probably not even able to spend the night in that community.

I just pause there.

And yet he presents this music that is intoxicating for the whole room.

And everybody left knowing that they had been lifted and it had been from the offering, the sacrificial offering of these musicians working together.

And let me put on my Presbyterian hat and say, for those with ears to hear, listen.

- "Thriving on a Riff," tell us about what that means as a title of a book.

- Well, it was a Charlie Parker tune and it was a counterfact, a new melody based on I've got rhythm.

But "Thriving on a Riff" gets at the point of what is it that causes a human community to thrive?

What is it that stirs up?

And some of that is an honest assessment of our past, whether it's racism, which we're still emerging out of, but not even close, or whether it's simply figure out ways to respect one another, to collaborate with one another, to find common ground when other forces are trying so desperately to tear us apart and make money at it.

The true artist is not concerned about making money.

The true artist is concerned about telling the truth and building community.

- Thank you.

Thank you, Bill.

Thanks for being with us.

(audience applauding) Just for the final thought now as we have all these images and all these wonderful perspectives and then fiction, historical fiction, visual arts, architecture, the works at The Exchange Gallery, which we saw included poetry and essays as well, poetic essays, and just then the jazz.

What are we to take away then ultimately, what should we, as we've watched this "American Dream" show?

You can repeat what you may have said before, but again, point us in a way to help us as we close, think about what we've just experienced and what we might think more about.

- I would say one thing is, we should each resolve, as I have, preparing for this show, to look at art and to take comfort from that.

We live in a divisive time.

And I took comfort looking in the galleries, but as I was looking at examples of art, there was one painting by Winslow Homer that really spoke to me.

It's called "Snap the Whip."

In 1872, it's reconstruction, we're five, six years out of the Civil War and still a very divisive time.

And he painted this picture of determined, rugged, exuberant teenage boys playing a game where they had to hold each other and swing around.

And it was a game that only succeeded if you cooperated.

And it was his expression of his vision for the future, vision of hope.

And that speaks to us today, too.

And if we can look at art and think about these things, it can help us through difficult times.

- Thank you, and we'll let you be the last word but not the last word.

We just want to let you know that PBS will present a documentary series titled, "The Express Way," with actor, dancer, and singer Dule Hill, celebrating the transformative potential of creative expression.

And the show will air on WVIA TV, Thursdays, at 10:00 PM in May.

We'd like to thank our guests, Brian, Lalaine, Oren, and Misericordia for hosting.

And we want to close with the Presbybop jazz ensemble led by Bill.

Help us thrive in community.

(gentle jazz music)