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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC studios in Soho. Thank you for sharing part of your day with us. We'll give you a little preview of what's on tap for next week. The theater group, The Civilians, a staging what they call a creative intervention based on a series of conversations in the WNYC archive on Monday show. The writer and director joins me to discuss and to preview the performance that evening in the Green Space. Camelot is being revived at Lincoln Center. Aaron Sorkin has revised the book, Bartlett Sher is directing and Phillipa Soo is starring as Guinevere, all three will join me Tuesday to discuss bringing that classic musical into the 21st century. That's what's on tap for next week. Now let's get this hour started with some art.

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Dr. Lisa Cain can definitely use both the left and right sides of her big brain. She's a neuroscientist and a celebrated artist whose New York City debut show open at the Heath Gallery this month. Lisa Cain has a degree in biology, a PhD in anatomy, plus was a postdoctoral fellow in neuroscience at the Robert Wood Johnson medical school right here in our listening area in New Jersey. During her three decade career, she has been a leader in her field, and her resume is vast and just full of accolades, including being named a 2022 recipient of the University of Mississippi Medical Center's Lifetime Achievement Award for significant contributions to improving health outcomes in diverse communities, as well as her contributions to research on spinal cord injuries.

The very last line of that long, impressive CV reads, she is an artist. Born in Mississippi, her work reflects the daily tasks of life, the small joys of family plus some folklore. Well, it's a depiction of a country dance at a spot called Ruby's Place or painting of brown-faced angels ascending to heaven, or a collage with vintage photos of Black people overlaid over her bright acrylic painting. The work is instantly inviting among the fans of collector work, Viola Davis, Dr. Lisa Cain has her first solo show in New York. It's at Harlem's Heath Gallery on West 120th Street until April 23. She joins me now. Hi, may I call you Lisa?

Lisa Cain: Yes, you may, Alison.

Alison Stewart: Also joining me is curator, Wade Bonds, director at Rafael Gallery who curated the show. Wade, nice to meet you.

Wade Bonds: Nice meeting you.

Alison Stewart: Owner and curator of the Heath Gallery, a Harlem staple for two decades, Saundra Heath. Hi, Saundra.

Saundra Heath: Hi, Alison.

Alison Stewart: Dr. Cain, when you aren't painting and having openings in New York City, what is an average day like for you?

Lisa Cain: Oh, an average day is extremely busy. For example, before I signed on to this call, I am chairing the International Women's in Leadership Conference for the American Dental Education Association. I was on that call. Normally, I'm helping faculty at the school of dentistry and their development, helping faculty across the other six schools, associate Deans, help their faculty members, and teaching head and neck anatomy to the dental students. Just an array of things I'm involved in on a daily basis.

Alison Stewart: How did you get interested in science as a young girl?

Lisa Cain: My father was a chemistry teacher and he would take me in the yard and tell me about all of the different facets of nature. I became interested in science. From there, I ended up doing a postdoc after I received my PhD in anatomy at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. I performed a postdoc in neuroscience at Robert Wood Johnson medical school, under the leadership of Dr. Aaron Black. From there I looked at factors that influenced brain development. When I went to UTMB Galveston, I worked on factors that were neuro protective in spinal cord injury.

Alison Stewart: When did art come into your life, you as an artist?

Lisa Cain: Art came into my life around 1996. I used to really appreciate looking at art books and looking at other artists. One day I saw an artist, I painted one of his paintings, took it to him. He said, "Wonderful." From then on, I just painted things that I enjoyed thinking about, which is pretty much my hometown, my community, growing up in the rural South in Canton, Mississippi.

Alison Stewart: Wade, let me bring you into this conversation. You've had a long career as a curator. Big picture, and we'll talk about Lisa's work specifically. What do you see as your role as a curator? What's a curator's job?

Wade Bonds: To present the artist the best that I can and to stay out of the artist's way, to really present their voice.

Alison Stewart: How did you become aware of Lisa Cain's work?

Wade Bonds: It was during the COVID lockdown. I was on the internet all the time and her work popped in to my feed. I love outsider art. I was just drawn immediately to her collages. I felt I knew these people. There was an emotional response. Over a month, I finally just reached out to her online.

Alison Stewart: Saundra, let me bring you into the conversation to give a little bit of context. Your husband is an artist and you started your gallery. It was a really interesting story. He was supposed to have some work with a downtown gallery, which shall not be named. That situation, that story led to you starting your own gallery. Would you share that with our audience?

Saundra Heath: Sure. At the time that my husband started his career, my husband's name is Thomas Heath, he was, not when he started, but when he got ready to show his work, he was invited to show downtown. We went to take the work downtown, and to keep this from being a very long story, the gallery was not going to show the work and he was hugely disappointed. We decided that we would begin to show his work in our own space.

We didn't have a gallery space, we just had a space that was under renovation to be our home and decided that we would take a floor for his artwork, and pretty soon after began to show other artists' work. Because other artists were having the same challenge in finding places to show their work. There was also a sense that I was getting from talking to people and inquiries that the gallery scene was only downtown, that the art scene was only downtown, and that was absolutely not true.

Alison Stewart: How did your collaboration with Wade and Lisa's work come about?

Saundra Heath: Sure. Well, one of the things is that the art world is small, it's really about relationships and connections and meeting people, and choosing to work together. I met Wade by happenstance, a couple of years ago. We did some work on another project. I've always wanted to continue working with him. He said, "Hey, there's an artists I think would be perfect for your space." I love folk art, outsider art, mixed media and collage, it really became a perfect blend of our interests and timing.

Alison Stewart: My guests are Dr. Lisa Cain the artist, Wade Bonds the curator, and Saundra Heath the gallery owner. We are talking about Dr. Cain's first New York show HOME at the Heath Gallery on West 120th Street. Of course, the exhibition is called HOME, Lisa and South is home for you. What did you want to represent about home in your work?

Lisa Cain: Well, I would like to represent the importance of foundations. For instance, my hometown was very instrumental in forming who I am today, the people that I grew up around, my spirituality, the church, individuals in my community, and that home is in the spirit and home is in the heart. Although I'm not presently in the town of Canton, Mississippi, I live in Lake City, Texas, but home is always with me. The things that I learned and also the generational wealth, which is not based on materialistic items, but based on values, based on lessons learned. I take those things with me. Those are the factors that have enabled me to do what I do, to reach out and to help others, to make a difference in the lives of students and faculty members across the United States.

Alison Stewart: Wade, when you think about the narrative of the show HOME, the story that it's telling, what is the story?

Wade Bonds: For me, there was a spiritual connection to it. I'm not from the rural Mississippi, I'm a city kid, a suburban kid. But I felt a deep historical connection to these characters. I felt I knew them. I felt it was a celebration of Black History from back in the day. It seems like we're trying to erase that at the moment, I just felt that the combination of her work and being in Harlem was very important.

Alison Stewart: Saundra, what were the conversations about how to show the work, because the work is really brightly colored. [unintelligible 00:09:52] people they can go to either your Instagram or to our Instagram @AllOfItWNYC right now to see some of Dr. Cain's work. What conversations did you have about how to show it? Because it is colorful, it is bold. There is texture to it because there's mixed media as well.

Saundra Heath: The work of the curator is really to make sure that the work is well expressed inside of the space and certainly, the Heaths walk the gallery every day, and so we have our own point of view about what's going to look best and just the feeling of work in a particular space. Working with this work, I would say for both of us, without speaking for him, was pretty easy.

What was more challenging was determining what's the abundance of work that was available to us, what was going to be selected, how to winnow down her work to show both the mixed media and collage pieces, as well as the, acrylic painting on canvas and to make sure that, across the collection, the stories that are important for her to tell were coming across.

Allison Stewart: Lisa, let me ask you about this piece called The Great Migration Broken Dreams. It looks to be, you've painted a train station in a fiery orange sky behind, and then there's this vintage photo of a group of people in the foreground. How did you come to find that image of those people? Then what is the story of this piece?

Lisa Cain: Well, I've read about the great migration about African-Americans leaving the South, going to the North in hope of a better life. When I painted that painting, I thought about the fact that it wasn't a better life for everyone. It was a different life. For some, it was a struggle. They weren't used to the factory work or the crowded conditions. For some, the dreams were wonderful, but for others, they were broken. The railroad track, which is broken, symbolized broken dreams. In that painting, I use color to symbolize both hope and also despair. That is the story behind The Great Migration.

There are individuals who, even from my hometown and my family members who went to the North and seeking for a better life, and some were happy and some were not.

Allison Stewart: When did you start using collage?

Lisa Cain: I started using collage in the year 2020. It was something that I wanted to experiment with, and at first I just started putting things on canvas, just different objects, but I'm a storyteller, I'm a memory painter, so I ended up combining my traditional acrylic folk art with photography in order to tell a story, such as in the great migration.

Allison Stewart: Wade, when you talk about this kind of art, and Saundra I'll ask you as well, some people use the term folk art, some people use self-taught, some people use outsider art. Do you have a particular language you like to use around this kind of work?

Wade Bonds: I call it outsider art. It really doesn't matter though. I just like the simplicity and the purity in most of these artists, including Lisa's work. It tells its story deeply with no manipulation at all. I just refer to it as outsider.

Allison Stewart: What's the piece in the show of Lisa's that you think really fits that description that you could describe for our audience?

Wade Bonds: Oh, there's a young girl with an umbrella, and she's standing in front of a moody house, and she's totally unbothered by the house. Anything could have happened in the house. It's almost spooky. Yet you can tell that she's a survivor and she's just going to go on with her life. That's my favorite piece.

Allison Stewart: Saundra, how about for you? What language do you like to use folk art, self-taught, outsider art?

Saundra Heath: Sure. I like to use the term, folk art, and I like all different kinds of art, but the art of Black folk, particularly resonates with me, and particularly, telling our stories. When I use the term folk art, I love to have it roll off my tongue because it's telling the stories of our folk.

Allison Stewart: Lisa, where in your work do we see, if we see, the part of your life as a scientist, the part of your life that is science? Where does the science and the art, where do they connect, if they do?

Lisa Cain: Being a scientist entails having vision. You also have to use a certain amount of creativity. You have to put little pieces of facts and information and data together to tell a story. That's the correlation with my art. With my art, I have a vision and I put together media and my thoughts in order to tell a story. I think that's the intersection. As a researcher, I feel like I have to be creative. I have to envision, I have to think, I have to dream about what I could possibly discover and find. Within my art, I do the same thing. I have a vision, I dream, and I put my story together on canvas.

Allison Stewart: Lisa, where were you when you found out your work was going to be featured in a Denzel Washington movie?

Lisa Cain: Ooh, I was, was sitting in front of my computer looking at my email, and the email flashed across, and I was really, really, excited about that. I had two pieces of art that were actually on set, a yellow flower and the juke joint. You can visualize and see the juke joint in the movie, and I was excited about that.

Allison Stewart: Wade, why is it important to have art like Lisa's in films?

Wade Bonds: In films, I think it draws people in who are not necessarily interested in art. I think it pulls them-- You could see it in good times with the opening credits where the people identify with that painting. You see it on the Cosby Show when he had artists there, and people really strongly identified with the work. I think it is very important to put those in popular media.

Allison Stewart: Saundra, why do you think it's important to see art like Lisa's in film?

Saundra Heath: Because I believe that not all of our story is always told that we are not monolithic, that it becomes an opportunity to be exposed to something that you may not have been aware of. Wade made reference to something earlier that I think is very important about this exhibit. If we look at what's happening in this country where there is an assignment somewhere to remove culture, to change stories, to minimize, I think each of us has to have a real commitment to making sure that our stories are told, that the fullness of our lives are shared, that the diversity of our experiences are not lost.

Allison Stewart: Lisa, something I noticed about a lot of your paintings is the people smile. They're often smiling. Why is that?

Lisa Cain: Yes. When I paint a lot, specifically my traditional folk art, I paint from the eyes, in my view, as a child growing up. When I was a child, I spent a lot of time around my grandmother who died at the age of 98. She was my world. With her, I was always smiling because she did not buy me one materialistic item, but I was her queen. She had time with me, and in my community I was happy. I paint about the happiness that I felt growing up in my hometown of Canton, Mississippi. That's the same smile that you see now. That's the same smile that I utilize when I work with-- I'm the vice president here at UT Health Houston for all of the different faculty.

That's the smile that I have carried from my foundation, from my grandmother, from my community, my parents up until now, today doing this interview.

Allison Stewart: The name of the show is HOME. It's at the Heath Gallery on West 120th Street. It's up until April 23rd. Head up there, get some ice cream at Sugar Hill Creamery. Make an afternoon of it. It's a beautiful gallery. My guests have been Lisa Cain, curator Wade Bonds, and gallery owner Saundra Heath. Thank you so much for your time today. We really appreciate it.

Saundra Heath: Thank you.

Lisa Cain: Thank you. Thank you.

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