Women in leadership.

A local production of PBS Michiana - WNIT, is presented in partnership with Mr. Jerry Hammes.

Mr. Hammes is proud to present this program in memory of his late wife.

Dorene Dwyer Hammes and all the women who continue to impact our community for the better.

Additional funding provided by NIPSCO, the South Bend Clinic and First Source Bank.

Thank you.

Anna Russo-Sieber runs and opera ARS Arts and Cultural Center out of Benton Harbor, Michigan.

I'm Anna Russo-Sieber founder and executive director of ARS Gallery Arts and Culture Center.

And I do a bit of everything, It started on the foundation of a summer arts camp, and I literally intended to only open the space for two weeks just to try it out, just to see if I could, you know, reach out to the youth in the surrounding area, And I had this sort of idea that if I could bring socially and economically, diversely different children together under one arts program to see, you know, if I could do that.

And and it worked.

We had 23 youth from the surrounding community.

And I just said to my landlord, Hey, I'm not leaving.

I'm staying right here.

He's like, Cool.

It's it can hurt your heart to see kids not have the same opportunities because they don't have the money, you know?

So my girlfriends are all writing checks in the beginning, could you sponsor that child?

Could you sponsor that child?

You know, could you still have to buy art materials, You still have to pay the art teachers.

There's still a cost to turn on the air conditioning or the heat.

So you have to pay for things, In 2014, we became a not for profit and we are considered a community arts center, a small rustic warehouse, you know, But we are we're community art center.

I'm proud of it.

We've seen oh, my goodness.

Oh, well, over a thousand, probably 1300 to 1400 just underserved youth alone, I think it's always been probably in our family that cultures highly important and so that was a very big part of just my upbringing and what seemed important to me.

So art and culture made sense.

And it's been from the very beginning like a goal to offer those things.

I had a beautiful, lovely opportunity to take five women this last October to Italy, we were like in Venice, to Udine and a few other lovely places, some nice wine tasting and fabulous food And just lots of art.

here's the problem.

Okay?

Deep down, the big problem is I like way too many things.

I love cooking.

You know, I love creating art.

I love teaching art.

I love talking.

I love throwing parties and having opening receptions.

And I just I like like, like a lot of things and I thought, you know, if I'm going to do this, why can't I do what I want?

a lot of stuff under one roof and it seems to make a lot of people happy, you know?

I'm happy about that, you know?

So tonight, beginning at 5:30, we have a program that we've done a couple of times before called the Women Empowering Women.

And it's where ARS invites thought leaders and the community to come in and speak about whatever they desire, if So it's anybody's guess tonight what might happen.

There is nothing I like more than collaborating with other women and hearing their stories.

Everybody's journey is different.

We can all learn from it.

So I'm excited to introduce Tami So Anna just sent me a text saying, hey, I've got this event coming up, would you like to be a speaker?

And we we shared a few emails back and forth about what the event was and what the purpose of it was.

And and it was just very good timing.

So I have been at the Krasl Arts Center since 2008, and in the last six months I transitioned into the executive director position.

This is about going from being assisting to leading is the idea behind this talk and I don't have a tight talk to give you.

I don't have a tight strucuture.

I've tried to tell this talk in advance out loud in my living room for the past two hours.

And I just can't decide which wa And it's also an unusual shift in that my predecessor, my boss, is now a direct report.

She did not leave the organization.

She stepped into a new role and I now manage her.

Well I sat down with my boss Julia Gourley and I said "Julia it's time for me to move on, it's time for me to leave the Krasl.

And I'd like to do that the next year come."

And she looked at me and said well how about you be the director of the Krasl Art Center and I was like, Are you serious?

I love the idea that the woman empowering women gives female leaders a chance to speak with other female professionals and just talk for real about what's going on in our work lives, what those what those shifts mean to ourselves.

You know, they can be challenging their rewarding.

And I love that opportunity just to have dialog about about our workplace and how it's impacting us and how we're impacting it.

So the idea of taking on the upcoming projects was just super exciting to me still and allowed me to say that Yes I did want to do this and to mean it, you know, And to release that burnout to release those feelings of what was sort of holding me back in the first place I think, the first time I met Anna was at an opening of an exhibition at Krasl Art Center.

And our our paths have crossed many, many times since then.

So we are a small community and you get to know one another in the arts in this community.

I love what Anna's doing here with her gallery and what she does with the youth in Benton Harbor.

Hello everyone my name is Soroya Pierre-VanArtsen if you don't get it right the first time it's okay, I've heard everything.

I'm the President of now the Corewell Health South foundation.

Sounds pretty impressive doesn't it?

Long fancy title.

But you know really what my business card should say is mother, wife, daughter, granddaughter, friend, caretaker, employee, leader, executive, chauffeur, cook, housekeeper, gardener, pet-owner volunteer, board member, PTSA member, neighbor, and that list goes on and on and on.

How many of you can relate to that?

They're very powerful, lovely humans.

And they they have some pretty big jobs.

But it's it's really inspiring to others to to hear them speak that it isn't all that easy.

You know, it's a challenge.

Like it isn't easy for me.

I want to help my parents right now.

They're getting older.

You know, I have grandchildren.

I want to be with them more.

with Tami and Soroya, same thing.

They're trying to balance all of these things.

me personally Anna and ARS are so thrilled to have Soroya speak and Tami.

That was real.

Talk to you guys When we have visitors come through the door during open hours, you want to evoke many, many feelings.

And I hope they walk away with a bit more knowledge, a bit more understanding of the arts.

And I hope they feel like they were really welcomed in.

And, you know, sometimes I'll serve coffee or a little prosecco or something, you know, just make people feel comfortable and welcome.

Nicole Williams The driving force behind Rhythm to You brings the power of rhythm, offering dynamic team building and educational programs.

Move in a little bit right here, kind of like fill it out, move in a little bit with your drums and all.

That's still a bit, you know, a circle right here.

Bring your chairs with you.

My name is Nicole Williams, and I contribute to human flourishing through my business Rhythm To You.

this is not a small circle is an intimate circle.

We got a reframe, reframe Where I bring the power of rhythm, dance and movement to organizations from the youngest citizen of our population to our oldest CEO.

She just brings a different perspective and does it with confidence So are we ready for some singing?

Oh, yes.

Say.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

We gonna start that again.

I say.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

And I always say they're two things that bring people together like nothing else Good food and good music.

And so that's how Rhythm To You was born out of seeing the need.

In mostly the marginalized communities, we're recognizing that music anyone with heartbeat.

Then a mine to the left, then mine to the right, then mine to the left, My name is Autumn McCully.

I am the vice president of Empowerment Services at the YWCA in North central Indiana.

the YWCA National has a stand against racism And so for each week we did something in the community where we partnered.

And so for the music part, we partnered with Nicole really to focus on music, bringing music so her dance and drum and bringing the community together and really just talking about racism through her music.

How many?

Real quickly, how many of you rumble?

If you had to, you've been followed in a store.

How many of you knew that you had to show up looking a certain way because they don't know you and you had to try to impress?

People who may not look like you.

My top strength is I'm a connector.

That's what I do.

And I want you to think about the music teacher that you might have had, that music teacher had.

You bring everybody in that building together to to have a concert, right, different personalities, different backgrounds.

And so I think music teachers, I'm a little biased.

I have a special gift of bringing people together for a collective good.

[Nicole singing] Music has always been a part of my life.

I was that kid that my family members would come in the house.

My dad was okay, Nicole, and everyone would be livingroom, and I would be dancing to the music.

I was in school for accounting.

So one day I was sitting in the lunchroom and I was looking.

I don't belong here.

That night I started my application for Berklee College of Music, And I've never turned back ever since.

Oh my gosh, Nicole is her energy, is, it's just powerful.

I'm going to bring my energy and I'm going to pass it on to you, Dorris, You're going to pass it all around.

Oh, she is able to help people to to talk about racism or different topics through music.

we have a journey, brother.

You need it.

Bring it, Bring it I've been called Doctor Joy.

I've been coined the name Dr. Joy, we see so much of the other stuff, right?

The frailty of just life.

And I try to do as much reframing and believing if we can have one mustard seed of hope, a mustard seed of love, a mustard seed of joy, it can can produce immeasurable return When I come in that space, it's going to be kindness.

Wherever I go, there's going to be empathy.

Wherever I go, there can be laughter, wherever I go.

But there's work to do.

Say, there's work to do.

Look at somebody.

There's work to do.

Oh there's work to do work.

So at the very beginning, I think people were coming in nervous, right, because they didn't know what to expect.

And sometimes I think, you know, having an event like that, people are like unsure and they don't know what to think.

And they're nervous.

Right.

Because they they don't know what to think.

I'd say about ten, 15 minutes and you could tell people were relaxing.

Right.

And they were getting into the drumming, whether they were doing it with their hands or using the instruments.

through her music and through her drum and her dance, she really connects people.

And it's like they don't want to leave.

And they just wanted to continue on.

It's really beautiful, the way that my dad speaks about me to this day, you would think I had a mantle like 20 Grammys, right?

He has always been one of my biggest cheerleaders.

you know, you see your dad, you think, Dad, But when I saw him on stage, I'm like, Now I know why they called you Mr. Dynamite.

Reality is that none of us were born way that we are by and seek that we all have our own views about life.

We have different experiences and it shouldn't negate somebody else's, that your experience from where you're born is different from the griminess of the concrete jungle of New York.

But it's something that we could still connect, right?

We share our stories and each story is valid.

And so I think especially right now, that we need to honor people's stories, even if it's not your reality, I want you just lean in there.

Really listen to what I'm saying.

Honor my truth.

Even if you don't understand, can you at least honor my truth?

And I think that's where barriers will hopefully be eliminated.

It doesn't take a relationship to have them, but it takes a relationship to to break them down.

And so that's my hope.

Glassblowing is an art that takes a team to create beautiful pieces at Water Street Glass Works, Jordan Rose and Lexi Ziebarth work together to make some amazing works.

My name is Jordan Rose and my position is studio tech and instructor at Water Street Glassworks.

Lexi if you can add a little bit of that orange to a scoop so I can make sure I cover the bottom I originally started here because I was just here all the time.

And then they're like, We should probably be paying you because you're here so often.

My name is Lexie Ziebarth position is kind of hard.

So I tech, I teach, I do a little bit of everything here, Paddle on, So Jordan and Lexi are glass partners.

You know, unlike most mediums, glassblowing requires a team, you know.

So anything that they're making, you know, requires at least another person.

I don't want to say like yin and yang, but they feed off each other.

Their personalities are just enough different where they're able to complement one another.

you see the personality differences where Jordan is, let's go, let's do it.

And Lexi is that's a great idea.

Let's think about how we're going to do it.

And so they are so great at feeding off each other and working together.

And their personalities are just both positive and great to be around.

we are able to instinctually know what the person's going to do next, where that person's going to move around the studio, are they going to need a colored foot?

Does it need to be two, three gathers and just how to kind of move around each other?

And, you know, there's almost a silent communication level that happens between really good partners.

And I think Lexi and I have accomplished that.

Well.

and flatten and flip flatten One more time I started with our T.G.I.

Friday classes at the time, they were just kind of like, Come in on Fridays, bring your own glass.

We might have a project for you to do, but, you know, you can kind of also do your own being kind of like a free studio.

and then I just started taking more advanced classes.

So we're like, Oh yeah, if you're going to teach this class, this is how you do it.

And then I took all of the classes we offered and I kind of had nowhere else to go but just to be here.

I actually taught Lexi previous to meeting her here at Krasl Arts Center.

I was a camp counselor there for, for a number of years.

So I've kind of watched Lexi grow up throughout the years.

I first encountered Lexi here at Water Street, I don't know, probably seven, eight years ago, and she was just such a creative kids.

I knew immediately that, you know, this was going to stick for her.

throughout middle school and high school.

I was in the fired up program for learning how to do all of like the booth work and talking to people and selling your own art and which was really fun.

And I stayed here more.

So I like learning how to do the kilns, run the kilns.

And then during fired up, I actually switched to being in the glassblowing studio.

That's where I learned how to do all the glassblowing.

And then again I just kind of hung around until they were like, Okay, this is how you do this.

This is how you do this.

You can talk now.

Yeah.

Lexi wears lots of hats.

She leads our Our Spark program, which is a volunteer based program in our fuzing studio.

She also helps teach the fired up program with me on Thursdays.

So, you know, having an alumni do that I think is more meaningful.

And as far as like the work that Lexi is making, she's doing a really cool thing where she's, you know, a ceramics major in college.

But she, you know, has this skill set that maybe not all ceramic majors have, right.

This experience over a long period of time with glass.

So she's blending these two mediums together and making some really compelling work.

It's fascinating to watch her just in the time that I've been here, watch her grow in her role, in her teaching role, and see the possibilities of what she's going to do with her educational background and her arts background.

So I went to College for Creative Studies on the other side of the state in midtown Detroit, CCS is one of the only schools in the state of Michigan that teaches glassblowing.

And so there was something about the fluidity of movement and the studio art dance as glass blowers call it, that you move around the studio that just was rhythmic and kind of enticing and kind of really draws you in to watch it.

So I spent some time watching it and then just quickly took a class and just fell head over heels for it.

So my first glassblowing job in that was actually at Cedar Point in Ohio.

they wanted and encouraged students and glassblowing to then come and teach glassblowing.

So I started there as doing production glass, which was very experimental.

We were pretty much given free reins on what type of things we wanted to design and make So I started there.

I spent a good summer there.

I went back to school, did a year of school.

The next year I spent a summer at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.

while I was there, I worked with a couple of different visiting artists, but we did very traditional historic glassblowing.

Not only was I were you blowing in a true historic glass lens to do that, they moved to Henry Ford.

But then you were making the the history of it.

So I met Jordan here at Water Street Glassworks, I would say about 2018, and she was just graduating college around that time or about to graduate college.

so she took a different path than than you know, a lot of our students here where, you know, she was formally trained by a fantastic school in Detroit called CCS College for Creative Studies.

And so, you know, when I had the opportunity to hire her back here gather some of that wealth of knowledge that she learned in school and, you know, harness that for Water Street.

know, as far as glass you know, it's been a largely male dominated medium, It wasn't until the 1960s where the studio glass movement came to be that you started to see women in leadership roles in the studio.

when you go back to historic Italian Venetian glass blowers, there weren't really women on the island except for wives or daughters.

They were not allowed in the studio.

And so it's a lot of families that who have had girls and not boys.

The art has died just because it wasn't allowed.

Oh my gosh, I can't even begin to describe all of, like, my favorite art pieces that, like, people have contributed to male artists and they're not.

like, different manuscripts would be made by female artists, but they were not legally allowed to do that.

So then they would have to sell it under their dad's name and they never got the credit for it.

So I feel like there's definitely not a presence of women in art, but I feel like there always has been.

We just don't always recognize it.

I think the future of glass is women.

You know, I think that most innovation is coming from women nowadays in glass, and I think it's a really awesome thing.

Lexi and Jordan both have wonderful support systems.

They both have mothers who are involved at Water Street.

Both of their mothers volunteer here.

and they already are mentors to the students that we have here, I don't think that they realize yet what mentors they are.

But they they are because glassblowing is a dance and has so much free movement.

it really takes on emotion.

And I think that that really is emulated beautifully in glass that isn't necessarily emulated in other mediums.

you can pick up a glass like you drink out of a glass every day, but you don't realize, like all of the work that one has put in, like the amount of history that's behind it.

We work with the same tools that Egyptians worked with and people would never know that history if it wasn't for this place and places like it.

So I think it's really interesting to, like, come back to your roots almost and to have a a deeper understanding of this everyday objects.

It's kind of the same in ceramics with plates, but it's just this, this nice down to earth, like I made this with my own hands and it's functional and it's looks good and it's just so, it's so touching, I guess Women In Leadership.

A local production of PBS Michiana - WNIT has been presented in partnership with Mr. Jerry Hammes.

Mr. Hammes is proud to support this program in memory of his late wife, Dorene Dwyer Hammes and all the women who continue to impact our community for the better.

Additional funding provided by.

Thank you.

This WNIT Local production has been made possible in part by viewers like you.

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