Hi, everybody.

I'm Felicia Curry, and welcome to "WETA Arts," the place to discover what's going on in the creative and performing arts in and around DC.

On this episode of "WETA Arts," aspiring costume designers compete at Awesome Con.

Cosplayer: If it gives you confidence to do that, like, when you're at a convention, it'll give you more confidence in your everyday life.

Curry: A portrait competition hosted by the National Portrait Gallery expands the genre.

Man: This is how I'm going to tell the history of my family.

This is the legacy for my son.

Curry: I talk with Heather Goss, founder of a photography organization called Exposed DC, which spotlights the DC photography scene.

Heather Goss: I know a little bit more about the city when I see how you see it.

All these stories coming up on "WETA Arts."

The Washington Convention Center hosts all kinds of gatherings, but few as colorful as Awesome Con.

Awesome Con attracts over 70,000 fans to celebrate every conceivable genre and subgenre of pop culture.

Shady Haze from Northern Virginia is an Awesome Con celebrity guest who attends conventions around the country.

There was like tens and thousands of Facebook groups in the DMV with different niches.

So there's DC comics, there's "Star Wars."

"Maybe there is for, like, LGBTQ geeks."

Curry: One niche represented at the convention is cosplay, combining costume and play to inhabit a character from a work of fiction.

Roquois Clarke co-owns a company called Plus Ultra Entertainment, which organizes and markets cosplay events.

She is a fan of anime, a popular genre of Japanese animation.

Roquois Clarke: "Sailor Moon" is one of my favorite anime, and it just literally shaped a lot of who I am, the whole magical girl essence.

And, so, when I cosplay Sailor Moon, I become Sailor Moon.

I am running around, trying to make everyone feel good, and just bring a lot of that "Moon" magic.

Curry: Among the events at Awesome Con is the cosplay competition for people who make their costumes by hand.

Candace Birger, known as Plexi Cosplay, is one of three judges at this competition.

She's a veteran of the cosplay scene, having won major cosplay competitions, like Baltimore Comic-Con, New York Comic Con, and TwitchCon in Amsterdam.

People come to compete because they put a lot of time and effort and probably money and sweat and tears and probably some blood into these costumes.

And so they don't want you to just take a glance at it and say, "Go prance on stage for me."

They want you to pick apart their costume.

Cosplayer: Yes, I can.

And they go over my glasses.

Birger: Oh, they go over your glasses!

Birger, voice-over: For me, as a craftsmanship person, someone who's really focused on making really cool stuff, I want to see, Did you spend the time to do it right?

Did you really take time to develop your skills and give us the best that you've got?

Curry: Cosplay competition judge Black Crystal Cosplay has been in the scene since high school.

I graduated high school in 2013, and in 2012, they had a Spirit Week.

So I said, I'll just dress up as Korra from "Legend of Korra," because she was my favorite character at the time, and I love super strong femme protagonists.

And so when I wore it to school, everybody was like, "I love your cosplay."

I really was like, What the heck is a cosplay?

I didn't go to my first convention until 2014.

That convention, I believe, was Katsucon at the National Harbor.

That was when I really started.

Like, 2014, I was like, "I gotta do it, I gotta do it!"

Birger: With your goggles on... Curry: Candace Birger first got into cosplay in 2016 and quickly got involved with high-level competitions.

I didn't really know what cosplay was, and I really discovered that I felt more comfortable in a costume and I felt like I belonged somewhere.

I enjoy the craftsmanship.

I enjoy the ambition, building new things, meeting new people, and networking, and I've made it a big part of my life.

Once you start competing in really high-level competitions, it's time to give back.

So, this is my way of giving back to the community with really good, experienced judging, and in a way that I know that I would want to be judged.

I would want to be judged by somebody who really looks at the details.

I want to be judged by somebody who's positive, optimistic, accepting.

[Cheering and applause] Hi.

Curry: Brionna Walker is competing as Belle, the title character from an anime released in 2021.

She's hoping to repeat her first-place win at the Sakura Matsuri Japanese Street Festival in Washington, DC, which took place near the Capitol on the last two days of the annual National Cherry Blossom Festival.

Brionna Walker: I sewed these patches on and then did all the gems, and I bought the corset for the outline, but then I jeweled all of it all around, and then I jeweled the sleeves.

And I also jeweled my crown.

The crunch time was about 80 hours with five hours of sleep.

Black Crystal Cosplay: The contest, they have different tiers of it.

So they have, like, the beginners.

Sometimes they have the juniors for the kids.

Sometimes they'll have, like, the super-super advanced ones, where people all over the world will come out and showcase these huge props and, like, LED lights and, like, the smoke machines and everything.

[Announcer speaking indistinctly] If you don't look like what a character would look like in the comic, you can still dress as that character because we're judging your costume.

We're not judging the way you fit into it.

We're judging the craftsmanship of what you brought to the table.

I was that kid.

You know, I loved, loved making my Halloween costumes.

Loved it.

But I always felt one day, you know, I just want to-- Halloween's not enough.

It's something about cosplay that I really feel that, you know what, none of my problems are here right now.

Curry: Clarke founded Plus Ultra Entertainment to increase attendance by cosplayers who are Black or people of color.

Clarke: What I realized about a lot of convention events, I never really saw enough people that looked like me.

The local cosplay community, it's big and diverse.

Black and POC cosplayers are here.

We are in numbers, and we have so much to offer not just the cosplay community, but just the nerd and entertainment community in general.

Curry: In a room off the convention floor, Shady Haze is hosting a panel about queer representation in pop culture.

In the community, a lot of geeks are also gay.

So, I got a bunch of friends, and I said, "Let's do a panel about LGBTQ cosplayers and representation in media."

I love cosplaying characters that are male characters, like Cyclops, Superboy, Danny Phantom, Poe from "Star Wars," and I get a lot of, "Oh, you're not representing the characters accurately."

You know, "You're Asian."

"You're small."

"You're a woman."

You know what?

It's fine.

I'm cosplaying the character however I want.

My friends support me, the community supports me, and I do a great job doing it.

Ha ha!

Black Crystal Cosplay: The bigger I got, the more of a following I received.

And when it started to hit certain social media platforms, I started seeing the slurs pop up.

But seeing that, sometimes it does get hard to continue to navigate these spaces, and there are days where I'm like, "I don't think I even want to do this anymore."

But what I like to do, I just like to prepare other people for it.

"Here are some ways that you could block this out."

"Here are some other ways you could be positive," just to make sure that you're protecting your mental at all times.

I have ups and downs with the community.

Sometimes I deal with racism.

Sometimes I deal with sexism.

Sometimes I deal with colorism.

And so sometimes it can be discouraging, but then I also have, like, friends who I cosplay with, and they make me feel better.

Curry: Walker and the other finalists meet on the main stage for the cosplay finals.

[Cheering and applause] Walker: It's very nerve-wracking because you don't want to sell yourself short and get onstage and be like, "Oh, this person's costume is better than mine," or, "This person's armor is better than mine."

So you just have to take a deep breath and just say, "Well, if I don't win, at least people saw me."

Announcer: ...jewels by hand.

[Cheering and applause] Curry: The competition in the intermediate category is fierce.

This time around, Walker doesn't place.

Reporter: How are you dealing with it?

I'm OK. Just seeing the crowd, the interactions, doing my little poses, that's always a win for me whether I win or not.

Curry: Whether or not they compete, at an event like Awesome Con, a cosplayer can find like minds.

What makes the community special to me is feeling like I am not alone.

I might reference an obscure anime, and somebody will be like, "Ha!

I get it."

And I'm just like, "Ah!"

It's that feeling of, like, "Yes, you get me!"

Being in a community where you feel so safe, to just have that in the back of my mind and, "Oh, my gosh.

So many haters.

"Why can't this fictional character be personified as a brown-skinned woman?"

When I'm in my Sailor Moon cosplay and I see little brown girls run up to me: "Oh, my God.

You're so beautiful.

I love Sailor Moon!"

I'm just like, "Yes.

Now you've seen someone "that looks just like you.

You can do the same thing, too."

Black Crystal Cosplay: It's OK to be weird.

It's OK to dress up as long as you're having fun.

If it gives you confidence to do that, like, when you're at a convention, it'll give you more confidence in your everyday life.

Awesome Con takes place in June, but you can find cosplay events year-round throughout the DMV.

Large conventions include Anime USA, this year from October 14-16 at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City, and Katsucon in February at the Gaylord Hotel in National Harbor.

Be on the lookout for other local events by following Black Crystal Cosplay, Shady Haze, and Plus Ultra Entertainment on Twitter and Instagram.

At the National Portrait Gallery in downtown DC, the finalists of a triennial portrait competition are on display.

Called the Outwin prize, it's the sixth edition of a contest founded by former docent Virginia Outwin Boochever.

Taína Caragol, a Portrait Gallery curator, is one of the competition's jurors.

When we think about American portraiture in general, we very often think about Colonial portraiture.

But the juror has so many possibilities, and artists are engaging with it in very innovative ways, expanding our notions of what a portrait can be.

Curry: The competition is open to artists across the United States and its territories.

Caragol: We do not start with a predetermined topic, but topics emerge.

Some of the themes are intergenerational relations and making visible people who have been invisible in portraiture traditionally.

Curry: Of the nearly 3,000 works of art that were reviewed by the competition's jurors, only 42 make it to the final exhibition.

Caragol: We put together a panel of jurors who are distinguished people in the art world.

And the first two rounds are virtual.

We start eliminating works.

When we have a selection of about 80, we bring those here onsite.

We look for more detailed aspects of the works, such as texture, scale.

We're looking for technical excellence.

We're looking for artworks that convey something important, something that needs to be said.

It's a thrilling process, really.

Curry: One of those finalists is Washington-based printmaker and mixed media artist Khánh H. Lê, with his work entitled "She Waited for Her Family from This Point in Place."

Here's simply my grandmother, like any other grandmother, like any other Vietnamese, but underneath the story of the sadness of how we ended up here.

We fled Vietnam in 1989.

The only thing we carried was our two suitcases of clothes.

No scrapbook, no baby photos.

That doesn't exist.

Curry: Lê uses traditional portrait painting materials, such as paints and canvases, as well as non-traditional ones, like glitter and buckets of plastic gems.

Khánh H. Lê: Here was an opportunity for me to create something fresh and new by painting and drawing on top and collaging it.

I was in the process of making it during covid and experiencing the loss of my father and having my kids at the same time.

This sort of solidified the idea of, "Oh, this is what it is about.

"This is how I'm going to tell the history of my family.

This is the legacy for my son."

I hope that the audience just don't take things on the surface, even though the glitter and the pattern is mesmerizing.

But I hope they would ask bigger questions.

Who are these people?

Why are they here?

Why do they exist here?

And how did they end up here?

Curry: Another DC-based finalist is Holly Bass, a multidisciplinary performance artist, who presents a portrait in motion titled "American Woman."

In "American Woman," you'll hear people who inspire me.

There are speeches by Shirley Chisholm, there are speeches by Fannie Lou Hamer.

Fannie Lou Hamer: I was met there by my children, who told me the plantation owner was angry because I had gone down-- tried to register.

Then there's also voices of female artists and singers.

Dionne Warwick: ♪ Don't make me over ♪ ♪ Now that I can't make it without you... ♪ Holly Bass: I don't see this as a self-portrait, I see it as a portrait of Black women in general, that I'm representing a history and a legacy.

So much of Black women's labor, my own grandmother's labor, is undercompensated or uncompensated.

And so to be able to say, "No, this is valuable.

"This deserves the same kind of frame that George Washington would get," that was important to me.

Frames allude to the tradition of portraiture.

They centralize that person, that Black woman that has been out of the picture, and they speak to her experience.

I think as an artist, one of the things I've sort of learned to harness is the power of seduction.

I love to, like, draw the audience in, where they're like, "What is this?

What's going on?

I want to look at this," and then, like, bring in the sort of, like, political message, and then people go, "Oh, it's not all fun and games."

Jennifer Holliday: ♪ Ooh, ooh, love me ♪ ♪ Ooh, ooh, ooh, love me... ♪ Curry: Works like Bass' are prime examples of the Outwin competition's goal-- to expand and evolve the definition of portraiture.

It's a very important show for us because it really exposes not just the public but also us to the great variety and diversity and vitality of portraiture through the nation.

And it also presents perspectives that counterbalance the tradition of portraiture that is visible through our permanent collection, which has many omissions.

Bass: The reception to "American Woman" has really been far beyond my own dreams.

I'm shocked when I come to the museum and see people actually sit down.

You know, because usually, people, they just walk by the art.

And so the fact that people might sit for 4 or 5 minutes is really awesome.

I wanted just a chance, an opportunity so that my own family would be in such an institution, so that I can take my own son and take him here and tell him about his grandmother.

Lê: I was hoping that with my own success that maybe not necessarily for my son, not necessarily for Vietnamese, but maybe an immigrant or refugees, that their path to be able to tell their story would be a little bit easier, a little bit wider than my own personal path.

"The Outwin 2022: American Portraiture Today" exhibition is on view at the National Portrait Gallery through February 26, 2023.

Though the winners of the competition have been announced, there's still one prize you can give out: the People's Choice Award.

You have until October 16th to vote for your favorite portrait.

Go to the exhibition webpage, portraitcompetition.si.edu to cast your vote.

In 2006, Heather Goss launched what became an annual photo contest and exhibition called the Exposed DC photography show the competition, plus photographer meet-ups, became the bedrock of a nonprofit organization called Exposed DC, which celebrates the life and culture of Washington, DC, through local perspectives.

We met with Goss at an exhibition of historical photographs at the DC History Center in the Carnegie library in downtown DC to hear about all things photography in the Washington, DC, metro Area.

Hi, Heather.

Welcome to "WETA Arts."

We are so excited to have you here.

We're actually sitting in the DC History Center, which is the home of the 10th anniversary celebration for Exposed DC.

What is Exposed DC?

Exposed DC is really a community of photographers who have gotten together because they love this city and they love what it has to offer them.

They want to go out and explore it.

They love photography, and they want to find new ways of capturing what's going on and make new friendships.

And we do exhibits.

We are able to show off the work of seriously talented photographers.

Can you tell us just a little bit about the beginnings of the organization and what you were hoping to accomplish when you started it?

Exposed DC actually started as a project of DCist.

DCist at the time was this small, little media startup, and we were really focused on covering neighborhoods at a real local level.

And so, we were developing this readership, and they started contributing photos to us.

We were using them in our stories to illustrate our reporting.

And we thought, I wonder if there's an opportunity to not just make the photos part of the story, but to make the photos the story.

And so we held a little contest, and we kind of thought the photographers and their friends would come out, maybe some of our readers would come out, and we were a little surprised to find that many hundreds of people came out.

Our readership were really looking for this visual celebration of the city, and so Exposed DC really grew from that.

Tell us a little bit about the photo contest.

The annual contest, that's our big show of the year.

It's what everything is centered around.

We are really looking for photographs that show us the city through the eyes of people who live, work, and love here.

Sometimes, those are kind of, like, local news, like the cicadas waking up after 17 years, or Dave Thomas Circle finally being torn down.

We do feature--I mean, the monuments are here.

That's part of our lives, too.

We try to think about it as, this is our backyard, these are our neighborhoods.

A really great photo by Erin Lassahn shows this fisherman down by the Tidal Basin.

Most people would just take photos of the cherry blossoms and the Washington Monument in the background.

She got this really great daily scene.

It's not just about the photos and the galleries.

It's really a networking organization as well.

Can you just tell us a little bit about what the photographers get from this organization in that way?

So what I think is important about Exposed DC is that it's not really a camera club or a photography club built up from this exploration of the city.

It is built around that exploration, and the photography is just what brings us together.

That might be some casual events, like happy hours and meet-ups, but we also build events from people in our community.

For example, we have a photographer who's really great at photographing the planes flying over Gravelly Park.

So we organized a little event where folks could go and you could teach them how to do that really well.

We also do bigger events.

One of my favorites was an exhibit we called Flaunt, and that was a partnership between 4 photographers who are great at portrait photography, and for up-and-coming local fashion designers.

We had the exhibition with the photographs, and then we had a runway show.

We're always looking for that kind of talent in the community that we can use our skills to help more people see their work.

And I love, you mentioned the celebration of community.

I love that.

When I came to DCist and I was looking at hundreds of photographs a week, I was really seeing we were all living in the same city and walking in the same neighborhoods, but everybody was seeing something different, and I think photography can help you develop a kind of empathy.

And I think that's true for all of art, but there's this accessibility to photography that allows just so many more people to show people their vision.

I feel like I know a little bit more about you when I see your photo, and I know a little bit more about the city when I see how you see it.

You've mentioned a couple of photographs that have really stood out for you in the past, but are there any others that have just been really meaningful for you?

One photo we've exhibited recently was by Holly Garner, and that shows a bunch of on-air cameramen and women, and they're all decked out and waiting for Pope Francis to arrive, but it has clearly been a long wait, and they are sprawled out over this riser, just reciting their lines in their head.

Or Matailong Du photographed some museum workers-- seven grown men, who are handling this giant portrait of George Washington and trying to get it into place into the museum for thousands of people, then, just kind of stroll by, not realizing how much work went in to get that portrait there.

One of my favorites is by Pepper Watkins, and that's a photo of Wolf Trap.

He's standing at the very back of the theater, and the theater is completely empty except for the director, who's in the back row, and the string trio that's onstage doing some kind of rehearsal.

It's just that moment.

It's very quiet.

It's this beautiful theater, and you can see the kind of work that goes into creating that beautiful concert that happened later.

Somebody watching is probably thinking, "Can I submit a photo, "or does it have to be someone who has a professional photography background?"

So you don't need to be a professional photographer.

This is something that they do in their free time, walking around their neighborhoods.

Anything that you are photographing around the city you can enter into our contest in December.

We close that contest around January or February, and then we hold the show either in the spring or in the summertime.

You can submit as many photos as you want, and we encourage you to go out and see the city in a different way.

A lot of people use the camera as an excuse to go out and explore it.

We really want to see how you see the city and, through that, we can really connect with the city in that way.

Heather, thank you so much for coming to "WETA Arts."

It's been a pleasure having you.

Looking forward to seeing more from you and from Exposed DC.

Thank you so much for having me.

You can submit your entries to the 2023 photo contest between December and January.

Go to exposeddc.com for contest details.

See winning photos from previous years, and sign up for the newsletter.

Here's a thought from Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel: When you go through a journey together as an audience, your heart and your spirit become lighter.

Thank you for watching this episode of "WETA Arts."

Be well, be creative, and enjoy the art all around you.

I'm Felicia Curry.

Announcer: For more about the artists and institutions featured in this episode, go to WETA.org/arts.

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