Cheech Marin, voice-over: I've been a comedian and an actor and a singer... now an art collector.

Yeah, that's a nice painting, huh.

Ha ha ha!

Man: We would buy a little bit and get more comfortable and then buy a little bit more.

Man: We have many thousands of teapots.

Woman: They're containers full of ideas.

Woman: I know you like this one.

- Yes, I do.

- Mm-hmm.

Man: The best collectors articulate an aesthetic vision, where you go into their homes-- it's as interesting as going into an artist's studio.

Man: I love this.

I work with making things.

I live for making things.

[Sanding] Woman: If I find artists that have imagination, I give them that little push forward.

Marin, voice-over: I was the only guy buying Chicano art.

Being a collector, what you learn is what is original, what is different.

There's two images of Cheech in here.

You gotta find 'em.

Ha!

[Theme music playing] ♪ [Rotary tool cutting] Woman, voice-over: People equate quilts with hearth and home, comfort, safety, and security.

I'm a curator and an artist, but I'm also a collector of quilts.

♪ I taught myself how to quilt.

I have never had lessons, but it just became a passion.

♪ I make narrative quilts.

Either they're about my family or African-American history or the status of women.

♪ To be able to use quilts to tell a story, I feel I'm just fortunate to do that.

I draw out the images first, and a textile company prints it on fabric.

[Sewing machine humming] Then it's sandwiched with cotton and a backing, and it's then quilted.

This quilt is called "Strange Fruit," inspired by Billie Holiday singing the song "Strange Fruit."

And it is about the history of lynching in this country.

It's very important for me now to make quilts about these untold stories that are very difficult for people to hear, see, and deal with.

This is the best part of quilting when you're doing the last, last little step.

Putting the sleeve on.

Mazloomi, voice-over: 38 years ago, I founded the Women of Color Quilters Network.

Currently, we have about 500 members.

I ask them to create quilts surrounding a certain theme, some facet of African-American history... and then I curate exhibitions of their works.

"And Still We Rise" was a show about events and people that impacted Black America from 1619 to present day.

There's a quilt by Carolyn Crump that depicts slaves on the ship, and she has one that has jumped overboard.

There were quilts celebrating sports figures, quilts about historic Black women, and the era of civil rights.

That exhibition traveled for six years to museums all around the world.

That says a lot for the power of quilts.

♪ This is one of the largest quilts that I have in my own collection, and it was made by Sharon Kerry-Harlan, and it's called "On the Face of It All."

This is dozens and dozens of these, um, squared patches here, and each one has a different face and symbols.

And what the artist was trying to depict is the complexity of individual lives.

Woman: Dr. Mazloomi.

- Oh, I love it.

- How you doing?

- Good to see you.

Yeah.

- Good to see you.

Yeah.

You have to tell me about these new quilts.

Mazloomi, voice-over: I love Cynthia Lockhart's quilts.

She uses fabric.

She uses found objects.

Lockhart: This is--this is a lot of things going on that kind of looks like it's chaos, but it's not.

It's dreamy.

It's got that mood of the whirlwind and being in the stratosphere.

Mazloomi: OK.

I love it.

Is it for sale?

Lockhart: Of course.

I keep telling Rezvan I'm not buying anymore stuff, but... [Sighs] I just can't help it!

Lockhart: Right.

Oh... Lockhart, voice-over: Dr. Mazloomi has been incredibly important in my life.

She took me in under the Women of Colors Quilter Network.

♪ She invites you to these shows, but she is very demanding... and you have to do good work.

♪ But it was just a phenomenal learning process.

I learned how I wanted to approach quilting by telling stories, by being impactful.

Mazloomi: Cynthia Lockhart's "Levi Coffin" quilt was a part of "And Still We Rise," and then I purchased it.

Lockhart: Levi Coffin was a white pastor who was risking his life to help slaves journey to freedom.

These circles represent the Underground Railroad stations, and this would be Levi Coffin's home.

Mazloomi: It's a pivotal point.

Lockhart: Right.

That was the meeting place.

[Sewing machine clicking] I'm an artist and I enjoy being an artist, but a lot of times I wasn't selling, but being in her shows helped my work to be accepted by collectors.

♪ Woman, voice-over: My day job is in advertising.

You want a snack?

Yeah?

Yeah?

Woman, voice-over: When we built this home, I wanted lots of space for my art collection... and my wife wanted windows.

And our architect did a really good job of combining both elements.

No matter where we go throughout the house, you will see art-- in the bathrooms, in the closets, down in our workout room.

And even I got some art in the wine cellar.

So, I'm kind of a crazy collector like that.

♪ Waddell, voice-over: I have felt in my collecting that women are marginalized.

Their art doesn't always garner the support that male artists do.

Promoting women artists is kind of what I call my jam.

And so my gallery in our home is only women artists.

♪ This crocheted AK-47 is by a local artist named Jen Edwards.

It's just very soft and very pretty, but yet very violent as well.

I collect things that focus in on issues of today.

A lot of the collection is political.

A lot of the work is emotional.

This piece is by Ashley Carroll, and she likes to bring homage to Black woman's hair.

I actually acquired this piece while Ashley was still in grad school at Miami University.

It's just so exciting for me when I collect work by a young emerging artist and to see them blossom... it warms my heart.

♪ This beautiful quilt is Cynthia's.

And I like that she's telling us to do what we need to do-- exercise our voice, our rights, beautiful craft, and yet talking about voting.

- Every quilt has a story.

- Every quilt-- - Has a story.

- This is your work.

Waddell: Meeting these artists just adds to the collection and adds to my whole realm, because I love-- I love artists.

I'm like an artist groupie.

Mazloomi: This is one of my favorite quilts, and it's called "A Lady Sings the Blues."

Many years ago, Cynthia suggested that I be in an exhibition at Cincinnati.

I put it in hoping that no one would purchase it.

I even raised the price to make sure no one would touch this quilt.

I went on a trip somewhere, came back, and called the gallery manager.

Then she told me, "Well, the quilt was sold before the show opened."

I said, "What?

I want it back.

I want it back."

So she says, "I don't think you want it back, because the person that got it is a well-known collector."

Waddell: Carolyn and I became really close, and it was through Carolyn that I met Cynthia.

So it's just--it's this, I don't know, this sisterhood of friendship.

Lockhart: I can almost feel-- I can hear her singing this song.

Mazloomi: We're all under the banner of needle and thread in the spirit of the cloth.

Waddell: We both collect, kind of similar in some ways, Carolyn.

And we go after things.

Mazloomi: I have a responsibility as a collector to the artists because I know I can't keep it forever.

I have a surprise for you.

It's going to a special museum, so... Lockhart: Really?

Oh, my God, That's a huge significance for me.

It's going to be shown, um, and people will see it, and it will exist so much longer than I will exist.

- So, I'll let you know soon... - OK, OK. - Ha ha!

Which one.

I'm excited.

- I'm excited.

- Yeah.

Lockhart: We need our collectors.

We need our curators.

We also need our artists to tell the story of what's next.

What is the next?

♪ [Clicking] [People talking indistinctly] Woman: The mission of the American Craft Council really has two parts.

The first is to help craft artists make a living and a life in craft.

And the second part is to foster a broad, appreciative audience for the handcrafted.

We all do live in the material world.

We are surrounded by objects, and that has all kinds of consequences-- environmentally, socially.

So we, as the American Craft Council, want to get people thinking differently about the stuff that they live with and to choose to live with things that are well-made and thoughtfully made to have a craft-centered way of living.

Man: This is brand-new.

I just started-- I called it the... Specht: Collectors are an extremely important part of the equation when it comes to supporting the lives and careers of craft artists.

Woman: Good to see you.

Can you tell me a little bit about the process that you used for these?

Woman: So, I use stickers, and then I cut out the outlines as I... Woman: I collect many things, but primarily jewelry.

I think I have just about 200 pieces of jewelry.

And it started pretty small, just something that I would do at craft shows.

And then it became something where I was following artists and really getting to know artists.

- Can I try these on?

- Yes, sure.

Prada, voice-over: And from collecting jewelry, I started to collect other objects as well-- some ceramics, a little bit of glass work.

Being able to come home and see the objects that I collect reminds me of stories, reminds me of memories, and it makes me feel like my life is decorated in a really wonderful way.

Good morning.

Woman, voice-over: I was astonished to learn how many craft items are made in Baltimore, so I was proud because I reside here.

How about the-- How about the eggs?

Woman: The eggs are enameled.

They're silver... Woman: So, whether it be visual arts or porcelain or jewelry, I collect them.

Whatever I can afford, I collect.

- Now, this is-- - So, now that does have about two carats of pave-set diamonds in the center.

Walters: Rebecca makes incredibly beautiful jewelry.

Wow.

Rebecca: We design, make, and set everything-- - Wow.

- here in Baltimore.

Aww...Rebecca, this is so beautiful!

Woman: Collectors are important to our business, and Dahlia is just a very dynamic person.

So, having her in our-- in our camp is always wonderful.

I came by earlier... Walters, voice-over: I collect any artifacts that bring me joy or support artisans that I know.

Man: The cheese board, end grain cheese board.

Walters, voice-over: Darryl Patterson, a dear friend of mine, is a wood artisan.

- Oh, wow!

- They're laminated.

Mm-hmm.

Walters, voice-over: He makes cutting boards, vases, furniture--you name it.

Patterson: It breaks down.

In 2003, I lost my index finger in a car accident, and the doctor told me to do fine work.

So I got to make a tabletop, and this tabletop became a profession.

So it means a lot to me when someone invest in my art.

It's perfect.

Walters: The object tends to speak to me and it gets me excited, I can't stop thinking about it.

It makes me happy, and it typically makes everyone else happy, so it's transcendent.

♪ Woman: After water, tea is the most consumed beverage in the world, and wherever you find tea, you find teapots.

Man: Our collection comprises over 20,000 objects.

Woman: We don't live with all of them because the collection is too big for our house.

Of course they're ours.

So, it's like your children and grandchildren.

♪ Man: As an attorney, I did estate planning, so I learned a lot about objects.

But I think Gloria has a better eye than I do.

I was more of the acquirer, and Gloria was more the...appreciator.

Gloria: Definitely the appreciator.

We have a big antique collection, things from the 1700s on.

This one that looks Chinese, 'cause of the bamboo, is actually British, and this one came from China.

We have a collection of miniature teapots, particularly from Victorian times on.

I feel like I'm four or five years old again when I look at some of these.

Sonny: I used to go Sunday morning to the flea markets, and I saw these production teapots.

These are made by companies.

There's houses and there's cars and there's people.

I found them fun.

Gloria less so, but... [Gloria chuckles] Such sincerity, you know.

♪ We love contemporary, one-of-a-kind teapots.

We refer to them as "containers full of ideas."

Because I think what the artist was thinking of or celebrating or worrying about came through in their work in their hands.

♪ Richard Notkin.

His works are often very political.

This is from his "Broken Heart" series.

The chain around the heart, a reference to the prisoners of war in the Vietnam War.

This is one of my favorite teapots, because years ago I would run seven miles a day every day.

And if you call it a teapot, it's a teapot.

♪ Gloria: We have a collection of ephemera or paraphernalia, things that aren't teapots, but that have tea or teapot images on them.

♪ Sitting down and having a cup of tea with someone, you know, it's a universal symbol of friendship and hospitality.

♪ Many of the pieces in our collection have been commissioned, and commissioning was a real adventure because you never knew what you were gonna get.

- And we would talk to-- - It's like a blind date.

[Both chuckle] You would talk to an artist to say, "You know, we want you to do something in your language, your artistic vernacular."

And sometimes we were absolutely amazed with what artists would do.

We have a teapot made of teabags, used tea bags.

This is window screen, pistachio shells.

Sonny: We met an artist who said, "I have all these watches, and I can put them together and call it the watchdog teapot.

There's probably 100 different watches on there, none of which work very well.

♪ Gloria: This is Peter Shire's wonderful teapot.

We have a lot of his work.

Teapot madness, boy.

[Grinding] [Machine humming, coffee flowing] Shire, voice-over: I come to my studio every day and do different things.

Sometimes it's making coffee.

You guys want an espresso?

I work with making things.

I--I live for making things.

I'm arguably happy when I'm actually making things.

And sometimes it's making ceramics.

♪ You know, this clay, when it fires, will be white, but I want this to be very distinct on top, not too transparent.

♪ Shire, voice-over: In the sixties, my direction was towards pottery because it harkened to a trade, which of course made it déclassé in the art world.

But there was a moment in California Clay by John Mason and Peter Voulkos and Ken Price using ceramic as a sculptural medium, and had taken up the flag of abstract expressionism.

♪ I love this.

[Paint splattering] Man: Peter Shire is a Los Angeles legend.

I'm always attracted to artists who have a vision, a whole artistic vocabulary that's beyond just making the object.

And for Peter Shire, it's through and through.

There are ceramics that are not very expensive.

It's art for the people.

♪ But his vision extends through his sculpture, his very sophisticated paintings.

It extends to his truck, even to his scooter.

[Engine chugging] We wanted Peter to bring his special artistic world into the gallery.

[Shire chuckling] ♪ Shire: I came up with "Rumpus Room" from that kind of fifties' notion of the rumpus room as a place where anything can happen that you can't do in any of the other rooms.

♪ These works are a cross of design language, craft language, and what we call art.

♪ The teapot is maybe the ultimate object within the lexicon because it's got the most parts.

Spout, handle on an axis.

See, and then there's the lid.

I had an idea of combining sculptural values into the teapot, yet still this hydraulic situation.

It could be--be operative.

How does the liquid go in?

Where does it go?

How does it move within the piece?

This is my Mickey Mouse teapot, you know.

Of course, the nose is the spout and the--one of the ears is the entry for the tea.

And the handle is the other ear.

Got its balance.

Sonny: We talked to him about commissioning a mailbox for us.

Gloria: It's sort of like a giant teapot in a way.

[Door creaks] And he has all these little flying figures kind of oiling the works to keep our mail coming.

But after it was installed, we didn't get mail for a few days, because the mailman didn't know what it was.

♪ Shire: It was such a funny endeavor, but I'm a collector, too.

♪ My wife--she says, "You're a hoarder."

These things I work with.

And yes, there are certain things that don't get used.

But we take joy in looking at them and maybe remembering a moment.

These two hammers...

Uh, one was my dad's favorite hammer.

He used this to frame houses.

And this is the hammer that was my grandfather's.

They're virtually the same hammer.

♪ It's so nuts... hammers and teapots.

But God bless the collectors.

Ha ha ha!

The Renwick Gallery is the Smithsonian American Art Museum's branch dedicated to contemporary craft.

When people walk through our doors, they get a totally different kind of experience than they're used to.

We're not a gallery full of paintings.

We're objects, and people respond to objects.

We try and keep a pulse of what's going on through the arts fairs, through the galleries.

And some of the people that we learn from are the collectors that we work with.

Fleur Bresler is one of the the quiet supporters who's had just such a broad influence.

She's given many, many objects to the Renwick and other museums.

Bresler: Collecting for me is like...a high.

♪ I was born in 1926.

Washington was really a small southern town when I was growing up.

♪ My family had a jewelry store, and on the top floor was the engraver, and that was where I would be deposited to be quiet and stay out of the way.

And I'd watch him hand-engrave, so I know what it takes to make something perfect.

Atkinson: The most interesting collectors are the collectors that got in before an artist was very famous.

They had a good eye.

They started collecting early.

They found affordable objects.

Well, my husband was involved politically, and I was looking for something that was indigenous to Maryland.

So duck decoys was where I started collecting.

Atkinson: She quickly expanded the scope of her collecting to turned wood objects.

Bresler: I was in the vicinity of the Renwick, came in out of the rain.

The guard said, "There's a wood show upstairs."

I had never seen wood in that many different colors, all those patterns in it.

And if I could have taken the tops off of the cases, I would have.

♪ Atkinson: Fleur has a very particular way of looking, and she likes things that are sometimes more avant-garde.

Bresler: It's got to show imagination, it's got to show skill, and it's got to show that it all comes together to make a object that is attractive.

I like whimsy, and I seem to like animals.

♪ I will buy some wild, quirky sort of things.

Why?

I don't really know.

Man: I wonder if we're gonna get a special on the flooring...

I'm a gastroenterologist.

And I'm an internal medicine doc.

Man: We were both in medical school, and so I called her up.

That first date turned into four more dates that week and then got married and took off on our adventure.

Chernoff: We had a house geared toward the kids.

All the rooms were playrooms.

Then we purchased this kinetic sculpture by David Roy.

At that time, the word "collector" was totally foreign to us.

Bernstein: Well, we started going to the craft shows.

Oh, here's a good booth.

Chernoff: Going to the shows was learning about what there is in the craft world.

Woman: And this is all manzanita-- Chernoff: Mmm... Woman: and the leaves can be moved around.

Bernstein: It looks like flame.

We were getting to know the artists.

Chernoff: We learn about their latest series... Man: ...geometric shapes... Bernstein: Is that paint or rope?

Chernoff: about their techniques.

Man: This is wool that is dyed.

Bernstein: We would buy a little bit and get more comfortable and then buy a little bit more.

Chernoff: Oh, my gosh!

Beautiful.

Bernstein, voice-over: Over about six years, we found we were leaning towards the wood artists.

The wood artists were very open about their work and explaining it.

Chernoff: The first stage of our collecting was for simple bowls that brought out the beauty of the wood, the grain, and the figure.

Eventually, we started to understand the abstract nature of what some artists were trying to do.

We'd like to tell you a little bit about Stoney Lamar, who we've collected in depth.

Bernstein: This is an early piece of Stoney's, and it does not look like a round bowl.

That's because it uses a technique called multi-axis turning.

You still have the vessel in the center, but the bulk of it is holding up the vessel with the flanges here.

Chernoff: The way that Peter Voulkos shocked people in ceramics, I think this was a shocking piece.

Bernstein: So, the next series that he did started introducing metal.

Metal adds a tension.

Wood is warm.

Metal is cold.

♪ This piece was done later on in his career, and this is called "A Well-Lit, Dark Path."

It's a homage to Stoney's experience going through Parkinson's.

We liked the piece to begin with, but once you know the story behind it, it adds so much more feeling and importance to owning a piece like that.

Bresler: An artist's life is not easy.

And if I find artists that have imagination, I can start giving them that little push forward.

Man: Fleur Bresler has over 70 of my peculiarly shaped wooden spoons, and she has been the single-most active and supportive collector that I've had in my career.

♪ Bresler: The first piece of Norm's that I bought was a spoon-like spoon with a long handle, but Norm went through a long progression.

Sartorius: I switched from making a variety of things-- canes, knife racks, cutting boards, letter openers, shoehorns-- to almost exclusively spoons as sculptural art objects.

♪ But I felt some doubt about what I was doing.

I went to Boston three times for a show.

I think I only sold a couple spoons up there.

People would say, "This is beautiful, but this is too nice to use."

♪ This is a piece of maple from-- that was extra leftover from the making of Fleur Bresler's huge, beautiful bed.

I knew the woodworker doing it, and he saved some of the wood for me.

[Cutting] I begin by cutting out what doesn't belong.

I'm looking for what the wood has to offer, thinking, "What can this be?"

[Cutting] I think the best work comes when I'm receptive to, call it whatever you want-- intuition or the voice in your head.

It's your head, but is it?

What--what's that voice?

♪ Woman: The inspiration comes from his heart.

I am the spoonmaker's wife.

Cup of tea?

For 41 years, I have received a heart for Valentine's Day.

Sartorius: Wow.

Woman: Well, I always encouraged him to take it to extremes.

Make a spoon as--as far out as you can make it.

The less conservative it is, the more successful it is.

[Sanding] Sartorius, voice-over: This is a pneumatic drum sander.

Using a sanding drum as a sculpting tool to refine the shape came from my very first teachers, Phil and Sandye Jurus, before I knew anything.

I was a social worker who gave that up to do a woodworking apprenticeship with them.

[Sanding] There are parts of a spoon, you know.

There's a bowl and a handle and there's finials, these little things on the ends of handles.

It keeps both your eye and your hand in the piece.

For me to go toward unique and different forms, I wanted to see what I think of as sculptural spoons in other cultures.

At the Smithsonian, they store over 3,000 wooden spoons, ladles, or dippers.

They're mostly gathered by anthropologists in the field.

I would open the case, and here's 100 beautiful Filipino spoons, or spoons from the northwest coast of U.S., where some of the most wonderful spoons are carved.

That just added into the mix.

[Sanding] Once I get it to the depth I want and have enough wood cut out, then that leaves marks in the surface that need to be mostly scraped out with scrapers that I make out of old putty knives.

[Scraping] [Blows puff of air] I'm working first to please myself.

It's about an emotional response to the piece.

That's part of how you know when you're done.

Does it do that feeling?

And if it does, then I think probably somebody else will like it.

♪ Bernstein: One of the series Norm did was this series called "A Spoon of Forgotten Ceremony."

And this was a commission piece that we did from him.

It gives the implication that it's a spoon that was passed from person to person, so therefore there were two handles and that there was some kind of ceremony that was important, but it was forgotten.

We don't know what the ceremony was, but still you have the object.

♪ Our collection got so big that we wanted to deaccession a little bit, and we wanted more people to see it.

You can feel how light it is because it's very hollow.

Woman: It's so light and... Woman: I was able to work with them to select 43 works of art in wood for the Renwick Gallery.

Bernstein: Before they left, we took all 43 pieces and put them on tables in the dining room and the living room.

Of course we miss them.

We miss holding them.

[Chernoff speaking indistinctly] Savig: One wonderful thing about collectors of the craft world is their commitment.

They are able to let go of it and then let it live with the nation.

♪ Jeff and Judy's works were included in our exhibition, "This Present Moment: Crafting a Better World," that celebrated the Renwick's 50th anniversary.

Bernstein: When we walk into the room at the Renwick and see our pieces, a smile comes to my face because they're old friends.

♪ But we see the inspiration of people.

We see the inspiration of nature, and it all interacts very well.

♪ ♪ Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo ♪ ♪ Doo doo doo doo doo ♪ ♪ Mexican-Americans don't like to just get into gang fights ♪ ♪ They like flowers and music ♪ ♪ And white girls named Debbie, too ♪ Cheech: I've been a comedian and an actor and a singer and a writer, and now I'm an art collector, Chicano art collector.

That's what I do.

That's my new, uh, profession.

♪ Hmm ♪ [Chuckling] Cheech, voice-over: I like to surround myself with really good paintings.

Oh, yeah.

It's... And all the things that I've learned about art informs my appreciation of Chicano art.

♪ I discover stuff every time I look at them.

Adios.

♪ Originally, the term "Chicanos" was an insult from Mexicans to other Mexicans living in the country, the concept being that the Mexicans who are now living in the United States were no longer truly Mexicanos because they had left their country, they were something less, they were something smaller.

They were Chicos, they were Chicanos.

I was really comfortable with the term because I had never been to Mexico.

I didn't speak Spanish, but I know I'm part of that.

All of a sudden, you stop being defensive about being a Chicano and being very proud of being Chicano, because this is who we are, we're original.

♪ I'm of the opinion that all the Chicano artists somehow describe what's going on in their neighborhood.

I always call it "news from the front."

This is what my neighborhood looks like.

This is what the people in my neighborhood look like.

This is the products that they buy.

This is how they fall in love.

♪ This is a painting by Shizu Saldamando.

She's the perfect Chicana for me.

She's half-Japanese, half-Mexican.

And this is one of her friends.

Part of the Chicano definition is a defiance of what the accepted norm is, and they want to be seen as who they are today.

This is our neighborhood, and these are the people in our neighborhoods.

♪ I went to school in L.A., and my class took a field trip at the Grand Central Market, and the teacher told us to draw what impressed us the most.

So I started drawing these giant banana squashes.

And so the teacher walked around, admired everybody's art, and she got to mine and she picked it up and goes, "Well, you'll never be an artist."

And it was like, "Oh...

Ahkkkk!"

We're in college.

I took a pottery class.

And as soon as I got my hands on my first piece of clay, It was just--doong!

This is it.

This is what you're meant to do.

You know, you-- you have found your calling.

Crowd: Hell, no!

We won't go!

Cheech: But then I joined the draft resistance movement, and the FBI was after all of us.

So then I went up to Canada and lived in a little log cabin, chopped wood, and made pottery.

I went to Vancouver and met Tommy Chong, who was running an improvisational theater company in a topless bar.

And I started writing for the group, and then I started performing with them and everything.

And then the group fell apart and Tommy and I stayed together.

"What do we do now?"

"How about Cheech and Chong?"

"Yeah, sounds good."

♪ We were very successful and we made records and they were successful.

All of a sudden I had money, from no money to a lot of money, and I could start buying art.

[Whistling] I was always interested in art.

I think I was 10 years old when I went to the library and took out all the art books, and then I started going to museums at that age.

♪ For a long time, I was the only guy out there buying Chicano art and buying on a mass scale.

I'm obsessive, and so I just let that path--ha!-- "Take me where you will, O obsession."

Carlos Almaraz was kind of the first Chicano painter, and it really spoke to me, his paintings, and how mysterious and how spiritual they are, you know.

♪ Carlos theorized that the Chicanos were painting something unique, and if they came together like other groups of artists had come together before, they could make a big impact.

So, Carlos founded a group, and they called themselves Los Four.

Man: No, the thing is this.

Since you guys don't want to be hassled... Man: It was collective art with Carlos and myself, Gilbert Lujan, and Roberto de la Rocha.

Man: No, I mean, the point-- - But ask for some control.

- Of what?

Man: Of money.

Man: Artists, by definition, are very possessive of what they do and, you know, think they're right about everything.

Romero: No, I'd rather just go it alone, if that's what you want out of me.

So, you know, we were always arguing over the kitchen table and doing drawings.

You really want to change what you've been doing all along?

You're kind of happy... Cheech: They were serious painters right from the very beginning, but with a sense of playfulness, just like Picasso had a sense of playfulness.

And Frank has his own sense of playfulness in his painting.

Romero: About 50 years ago, Cheech called me directly, and I was learning about selling art in those days.

So I doubled my price.

And of course, we bargained and I let him have it for half.

So this is actually how I got into working with collectors.

Ha ha ha!

♪ Cheech: The thing about being a collector, what you learn is to hone your intuition about what is original or what is different.

I generally only buy something that has been haunting my dreams.

That's how I know.

♪ When I got the collection up to a significant amount, I made the decision that people have to see this, and we started the first big touring show called "Chicano Visions" and went to LACMA and the Whitney and the Smithsonian-- 14 major museums.

♪ Woman: The City of Riverside has a population of 317,000 majority Latino community.

In 2017, we were able to bring one of Cheech's touring exhibitions to the Riverside Art Museum.

It was a huge success.

We had tripled our normal attendance for an opening reception.

We had lines out the door.

In Riverside, our main library no longer functioned as a library in the 21st century.

So the city had a new library.

But what would be a comparable use of this 60,000-square foot building?

Man: The city manager at the time, John Russo, pulled me aside and he said, "So what is Cheech gonna do with his collection?"

And I said, "Well, you know, I don't know.

You know, we can certainly ask him."

Three weeks later, we sat in a restaurant, and in 45 minutes, pitched the idea for a Chicano art museum to Cheech.

Cheech: And at first, I didn't understand what they wanted to do.

And I said, "You want me to buy a museum?

"Well, I'm doing pretty good, but I don't know if I'm museum-rich yet, you know, so..." "No, no, we want to give you the museum for the collection."

We were walking out, Cheech and I, and Cheech didn't want to turn around, but he whispered to me, he says, "Did that just really happen?"

♪ Man: There's lots of art movements that have come out of Southern California, but none has a permanent home until now.

Woman: We've shown over 300 Chicano artists, and we're celebrating 131,000 people coming through our doors the first year of the Cheech.

♪ Cheech: This is from a young artist, Francisco Palomares.

I fell in love with this right away.

I mean, a piñata in a John Constable landscape.

Ha ha ha ha!

You know, the juxtaposition of those two images, and it looks like he belongs there.

Man: I'm a product of East L.A., the first in my family born in the United States.

♪ My identity and my surroundings influence me.

That allows me to reflect on the beauty and the celebratory aspects of my community.

The series where I juxtapose a colorful piñata in a classical landscape, it's just like in our real world, where we're Latinos starting professional careers and all of a sudden you look around and it's not your gente or your community.

The piñata is a reflection of all of that.

So, when we enter spaces that are new to us and you feel like maybe I don't belong here, but yeah, you do belong.

And you are this exotic creature that brings that color and flavor into these spaces.

♪ Cheech: Uh, this is a painting by Gronk.

I don't even really know Gronk's real name, but he's just really developed his own style.

Always with the tormenta, la tormenta.

This is-- this dramatic figure here.

I really like painting as an art expression.

That's one thing that Chicanos are-- they're great painters, they never gave up the brush.

They don't just deal in concepts, you know, they do an actual hand-to-canvas kind of painting.

♪ Man: As a kid, I always did things to shock people.

So I feel with my artwork, I kind of like push it to a way where it's like where people don't expect.

♪ I usually kind of start with a central figure, which would be the head.

The head kind of isolates, cements it in a sense, where I could build off the head.

♪ I always, like, kind of focus on my creatures-- like the octopus, germ squid-- to be floating in the air, more like a dreamlike state.

I try to experiment a lot with details, with the Virgin Mary, with the little drops, and there's collectors who have told me, from one day to another, they find different little areas where they kind of, like, find joy.

Cheech: Jaime came out of lowbrow art.

That's where I discovered him, but it wasn't indicative of his Chicano roots.

And so I started talking to him, said, "Put some Chicano elements in there, and you could be the Chicano lowbrow guy, you know?"

Zacarias: It inspired me to push towards more like a post-Chicano, pop-Chicano artwork.

And now that I'm part of the Cheech collection, I feel like I've accomplished something.

♪ Cheech: I was talking to you about this the other day.

Woman: Yeah.

This is a wonderful piece.

Cheech: Yeah.

Woman: I think what makes Cheech unique as a collector is that he understands that the Center has a broader mission.

Cheech: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I like this.

Ha ha.

Woman: You see the Wonder Bread flying?

Cheech: Yeah, yeah.

Ha ha!

Woman: We launched a research initiative to have oral histories on the artists, to research the works in the collection and identify gaps so that we can expand the collection.

Cheech understands that we do have more work to add and support artists in that way.

♪ Woman: I started to bring my paintings off the wall and give them a three-dimensional form... [Tapping] and try to create my paintings, but in clay.

The three sculptures that Cheech has were the beginning of the larger pieces to come.

♪ Cheech: Yolanda is a very good painter and a ceramicist as well.

I wish I was as talented as her, but I can sing better, so... it all evens out.

♪ Gonzalez: I've been creating these lovely ladies with the two chongos on the top of the head, which are like pigtails or buns.

Some people say they're me.

I don't really see a resemblance, but maybe, maybe.

Cheech has really exposed Chicano art to the world.

Some of my pieces that he collected went to Musée d'Aquitaine in Bordeaux, France.

He's also commissioned me to create a portrait of his lovely wife, Natasha.

Cheech: As soon as you walk into the museum, there's a big piece by the De La Torre brothers.

They're the foremost practitioners in the world, I think, of lenticular art.

We had to cut out the floor to fit it in.

With lenticular pieces, the image changes depending on where you stand in relationship to it.

There's hundreds of images in this, and they keep revealing themself.

And there's two images of Cheech in here.

You got to find him.

I love how these--these doves appear and disappear, but the main image is this transformer.

It goes from an ancient Aztec goddess to the modern age.

Right when we opened, I was walking around and there was this little girl, and she was standing in the corner, and she could see her reflection.

And so she was dancing with her reflection, and she was part of the art piece now and melded in with all the other images.

It was a remarkable interaction with art, maybe the most remarkable I've ever seen.

♪ [Cheech speaking indistinctly] Woman: Overwhelmingly, what people have said is that this has felt like a homecoming, a homecoming for the artists, a homecoming for community to see their culture reflected back to them in this way.

♪ Man: What a great moment for Cheech to have that collection that he built become an international platform for Chicano art.

Yeah, that's a nice painting, huh.

♪ Palomares: The part that collectors play is what gives an artist inspiration, resources, affirmations, opportunities, but it's also giving you emotional kind of, uh, refueling to, uh, to give you that confidence that they're willing to, uh, put value in what you have been dedicating your life to.

Ha ha ha!

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