- [Announcer] This is a production of WEDU PBS, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota.

(uplifting instrumental music) - [Dalia] In this edition of "WEDU Arts Plus," uncover the multifaceted mind of Sarasota artist Jack Dowd.

- My work reflects the world I live in and the people that surround me, and I use that as my inspiration.

- [Dalia] A quartet's mission.

- Basically what we do in concert, and when we work with students is we have a conversation on stage.

(sings melody) - [Dalia] An author's foray into the world of nonfiction.

- I'm fascinated by untold histories, and this book is full of that.

My first phase of research was kind of trying to like fact check family stories like that.

- [Dalia] And mixed media abstraction.

- [Susan] Can't really say, well, that's a treat.

You kind of say, oh, it almost looks like this.

But no, it's not.

- It's all coming up next on "WEDU Arts Plus."

(bright jazzy music) Hello, I'm Dalia Colon, and this is "WEDU Arts Plus."

Jack Dowd is a connoisseur of American types, the boisterous, eccentric, innocently hilarious individuals who rarely become the subject of art.

Dowd celebrates America's idiosyncratic extended family in his ongoing series of full-size figures with affectionate humor and satiric wit.

(light harmonica music) - I'm Jack Dowd and I consider myself a visual artist, of course, for the past 50 years.

I enjoy the most doing life-sized sculptures of people, and on the side I do a lot of painting myself.

This is my Mad Max character inspired by the movies.

This guy's missing a pin in his ear.

(laughs) Mad Max.

Mad Max.

Well, I got serious doing during the 50 years, but it started well before that in my youth, 8, 9, 10 years old when the family would come over on the weekends and play cards and I would walk around the table and sketch their faces and I would get all kinds of great vibrations from them.

So they kind of got me started.

This was a maquette.

The idea of doing him 18-inches tall and without a base, it was just gonna be a sample for the larger one I was gonna do.

But when people came into my studio and liked it so much, they wanted this size for their home, not something so big that it would dominate.

So I never really got around to doing the life-size Lenon.

And I pursued this and had a mold made and refined it.

And then I build the bases and do the music and the pictures.

The pictures come from a book of a friend that I met in New York City who was a very good friend of John Lennon's and followed him around and photographed him.

So all these pictures are from that particular book that I was able to put plus the music of his famous song "Imagine" on his base.

So, as I said, I'm touching it up for a show and it will be there.

- Jack Dowd is an amazing sculpturer.

In fact, we've sold dozens of his Andy pieces, lots of his lithographs and pastels.

He's just an amazing, a quite different sculpturer.

In fact, I'll be honest with you, I only sell one sculpture to maybe every 100 paintings.

So I'm really very limited as to who I choose to represent the sculptures in my galley and Jack Dowd is certainly the number one fellow that we represent.

(upbeat music) - [Jack] In the '60s, when I was a school teacher, an art teacher, I met a guy who was doing chainsaw sculptures on the street, and I was very interested in what he was doing.

He was taking large pieces of wood and cutting them down with a chainsaw.

So as the years progressed, I got into doing what they call chainsaw art, and I would go out on the street with a big log and take my chainsaw and do a figure out of that.

So that got me started with the life size figurative work that I now do, but much more detailed and much more incredible.

- I think that Jack Dowd is so hot in the art market for one simple reason.

He represents true Americana.

From Andy Warhol to the badass motorcycles, to the old fellas standing outside their camper.

Jack Dowd is the quintessential essence of the artists of America today.

(upbeat music) - These I love because I was able to incorporate my sketches, my prior sketches, as you can see, of the different butlers that I've done.

These are the maquettes and they also are sellable, so I decided to have them cast, my very favorite.

This was another one I like, but this is the wine steward and he's been very popular.

- One of the other interesting things about Jack Dowd is the reaction we get when people see his works.

A good example is when they see Andy Warhol, life-size Andy, yellow or blue.

What's amazing is that the people first think that they were done by Andy Warhol, but no, it's Jack Dowd who made these wonderful sculptures, and so we have to correct them on that.

But it's wonderful because it just shows you that he can convey many other famous artists' feelings in his works.

- My work reflects the world I live in and the people that surround me, and I use that as my inspiration.

I walk around Walmart or the streets of Sarasota, or when I'm up in Vermont and I meet people and I see things and boom, there's an idea.

So it's out there and I have nothing better to do than to recreate what I see and the life I live.

I encourage any artist who's getting started to get out on the street with their work.

What a lot of my success stem from doing sidewalk art shows, Coconut Grove, Fort Lauderdale, Miami Beach, New York City, Central Park.

I did all those shows.

I met so many wonderful people, made so many great contacts, sold a lot of work on the street.

This is back in the chains between the chainsaw days and when I was coming to the more realistic work, and it was just so much fun.

You meet other artists, you meet people that buy and at some point they're gonna say, "You need to be in a gallery.

We need to represent you," and so on.

So you have to start at the bottom.

And I did.

Good luck.

- To learn more, visit jackdowd.com and artavenueflorida.com.

Through performance and education, Harlem Quartet expresses their strong admiration for classical music.

Up next, hear from its members and sit in on one of their masterclasses at Highland High School in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

(light orchestra music) - I feel music has so many influence from math, from history, from all sorts of things that it's just a little excuse to dig deeper into many other aspects of life.

(light orchestra music) - We play the greatest composers because they already had something to say that transcends nationalities.

- A professional orchestra is coming to engage us and to teach us.

Of course, I wanna take the class.

(light orchestra music continues) - I remember being that kid that, for the first time heard Beethoven, for the first time heard Mozart, for the first time heard any kind of music, and I will be amazed and always had that curiosity to know how is this all about.

How you actually are able to make that music possible.

- They have a lot of expression and they're really fun people.

They're just like outgoing and like loud and obnoxious.

And so like, people think that if you play classical music, you're just kind of serious and like uptight and they weren't.

It was like just hanging out with your friends, but playing instruments.

- [Speaker] We're excited to hear you.

- [Speaker] You're ready?

- Whenever you're ready.

- Yep.

(light orchestra music) - Starting out as a musician, I don't think it's a totally rational decision.

- I think you need to have a certain level of obsession.

- I believe music and the arts are so incredibly important because they express something that honestly, sometimes we as humans have difficulty coming up with the words to express, whether it's a feeling, yeah, an emotion, a character.

And also with our specific medium, the string quartet, basically what we do in concert and when we work with students is we have a conversation on stage.

(sings melody) And then occasionally one person, you, for instance, would have (sings melody).

It's a dialogue, right, back and forth.

- And for us to translate that into actual playing, you want make sure your bow always has more on the main beat.

So every time you see a bar line, just play with more bow.

And right after that, play with a little bit less bow and a little bit less weight.

- Okay, so before we get started, if we're gonna try this without a conductor, who becomes our initiator of, yes.

Have you practiced this already?

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

(laughs) - Sorry.

(light orchestra music) - Music really has a way of like making me express myself because I'm not so good at expressing feelings or anything or talking to people.

And that's how I like communicate and socialize with other people through music.

(light orchestra music continues) - Okay.

- Very nice.

- Where we stop, that's the end of the phrase from where you start.

So (sings melody) it's like you're reading a paragraph.

- So even if I was with my ears closed, the bow is describing the hierarchy.

So more bow, less, less, and more, less, less.

Can you try that?

- So the down bow.

Can we try just the violas once?

- Okay, so one, two, one.

(light orchestra music) And more, less, less, and more, less, less.

And less than.

That's it, you got it.

- Nice!

- That's what I wanted.

That's what I wanted.

- Also, the cue was great.

- I learned that since I'm the first violin, I kind of have to be the leader of the group.

And so in the piece that we worked with the Harlem Quartet, like whenever I count off, it's like a nod and then- (light violin music) And you do that.

And then in another one of our songs, we have a long note, then it's the same thing with like a nod.

You play the note and- (light violin music) - So when you have to go more, you actually need to play with the same amount of bow, the same amount, because you need to come back to the same place, right?

So weight, less.

(light violin music) You almost come down to that, but if you come back with the same weight, this is the result.

(light violin music) So I don't really understand which one is more important.

And for them it's always like that.

(light violin music) No, sorry, less, more.

You see, I do the same amount of bow, but a lot lighter.

- I never really worked with a professional orchestra before, not even in middle school.

So it was really like understandable and more learning and more having experience with them too.

- Remember, music is mathematics.

So two, one.

(sings melody) So divide with, listen to them and then you play the music or your part with the line.

Okay, one more time.

(light orchestra music) - I love working with students because now that I am a little bit older, I recognize that they really are the future and it's fun to know that we're getting to sculpt a way that they can identify themselves, perhaps as a musician if it's going to be, or just one day being a leader, but embracing their voice and being confident in what their voice is and knowing that they have the power to influence people and affect people, which is what we do as musicians.

(light orchestra music continues) - Smile.

(all laughing) (teachers applauding) Nice job, everybody.

Okay, stand up and take a bow.

- I love getting together with a bunch of other people that also love music and then creating music altogether.

Because when you're with a bunch of people that also love music, you can create something beautiful.

- Head to harlemquartet.com to find out more.

In this segment, meet Arlo Haskell, author of the book, "The Jews of Key West."

Learn about his experience as a writer and historian and listen to stories about the Jewish community in the Florida Keys.

(soft music) - Jews headed many of the smuggling networks that emerged.

To the migrants whose lives were saved and families restored, these criminal organizations served a humanitarian purpose.

A migrant who followed this route later told his story under the fictitious name, Lewis Kirland.

"We lay in the boat like herring in a barrel," Kirland said.

"It was very hot and the heat from our bodies made it hotter.

I am ready to go to hell if I have to.

It cannot be any worse than that day in the boat."

(light music) - We're here in Key West with the author Arlo Haskell.

So tell us a little bit about how you evolved as a writer.

- I really came up as a poet, and then about 10 years ago I had started to do a little bit of historical research looking into the kind of literary histories of writers who had spent time in Key West and learned that I kind of loved getting into archives.

In addition to being a writer, historian, I'm the Executive Director of the Key West Literary Seminar.

I get to make sure that literary Key West is not just part of the past.

I also, I run a small press, Sand Taper Press, and we publish poetry, a little bit of fiction.

I'm sort of always working on one book or another.

- [Interviewer] Your latest book is called "The Jews of Key West: Smugglers, Cigar Makers, and Revolutionaries."

- Jews have thrived in this climate since the 1820s, even where they have been forgotten or where anonymity was essential to their survival.

Jews have shaped the island we know today.

Their history is the history of Key West.

I'm fascinated by untold histories and this book is full of that.

My first phase of research was kind of trying to like fact check family stories like that.

- One of the things I found surprising and had no idea about was that Jews were part of the industry of cigars down here.

- The cigar industry is one of the more popular components of Key West history, and it's always told as a Cuban story.

You know, it's certainly a big Cuban story, but actually, in fact, the cigar industry in Key West was pioneered by Jewish manufacturers, particularly a guy named Samuel Seidenberg, who capitalized on a tariff structure that made it financially advantageous to produce cigars domestically in the United States rather than on the island of Cuba.

- So one of the main characters that features in your book is named Louis Fine.

- Louis Fine was a Lithuanian Jewish immigrant, and he was a real, was a catalyst for the community.

He was not an ordained rabbi, but he was the defacto rabbi for the community.

- So we're here in the Jewish section of the cemetery at Key West, and this place sort of is one of the beginnings of organized Jewish life down here.

- [Arlo] This is the place that brings you the furthest back in time as far as a physical place you can visit.

- [Interviewer] And in your research, did you see a lot of these names popping up?

- Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, I would sometimes come here as a research visit, I found that it would help me thinking about the people I was writing about.

- So around the same time as this was established was around when the first synagogue was established, right?

- That's right, yeah.

The cemetery was established in the 1890s and then in the first decade of the 1900s, Lewis Fine and others purchased a wood frame building and established the first formal synagogue.

There's a restaurant there today called Sarah Beth's and B'Nai Zion is the temple that continues in Key West today on United Street.

- [Interviewer] And that's the one that opened in the late '60s.

(bright music) - Into this thriving, multicultural multilingual community of Key West, in the late 19th century comes a very pivotal figure in Cuban history, Jose Marti, who was the one to kind of successfully crystallize the decades-long struggle for Cuban independence.

Jews like Louis Fine, they lent their support to the cause.

He carried this family legacy of having been, his family having been persecuted by the Spanish during the Inquisition.

What surprised me is how much that story and others had disappeared, even from oral history in Key West.

- Where can people find out more about "The Jews of Key West"?

- There's a website, jewsofkeywest.com and if you're interested in this history and interested in the book, I would say go to your local bookstore or your local library and ask for a copy.

(bright vibrant music) - Visit jewsofkeywest.com to learn more.

Reno, Nevada artist Susan Handau's canvases are of a minimalistic nature.

With color and texture, she creates abstract, organic shapes surrounded by neutral hues.

(light music) - My name is Susan Handau and I'm an abstract artist.

I work in mixed media.

I do acrylic, oil, sometimes wax, I put gypsum, mix it with glue for texture, and sometimes I cut up paintings and sew 'em back together.

I do color blocking.

It's just blocks of color that are scratched away.

It's an organic kind of shape.

It's not like a square anymore.

I've been chipping away at it, scratching away at it, and then I'll do the border or the background in a neutral color.

I can't really say, well, that's a tree or something, or that's like even like a box or something.

You kind of say, "Oh, it almost looks like this," but no, it's not.

(light upbeat music) When I start a painting, all I know is that I'm going to do color blocking and really, I do a layer of colors upon colors and then I put the gypsum in.

I call it mud, you know, it's not really mud, but I just put the mud down there to build the texture up.

And then you can see that it cracks a lot, it dries.

And then I start putting a different color on there and push the color around in the cracks.

Then I'll paint another color over top of it, and then the one color will stay in the crack.

And then I really scrape it.

I start scraping and marking.

And that's where the fun comes in, because then you get different layers that pop out.

So that's my canvases.

So with my paper, that's a whole different story.

With my paper, I'll put a little texture on there, and then I'll do the same kind of thing with the paint, the color blocking, and then when I get it just so, just how I like it, then I cut it up, I actually cut the paper, and then I sew it onto another piece of paper.

And then I'll just see how it goes and I don't really ever have anything planned.

Color to me is pretty important.

When I'm mixing colors to find an unusual color, bizarre color combinations or ones that really you don't expect to see together.

And then of course, shape.

I really like to cut away at an image to make it really more organic.

If it's not right in my mind, I can't show it.

Just keep working on it till it's right for me.

Even then, after a show, if a painting doesn't feel right, I'll change it.

I'll paint over it.

I've painted over so many paintings.

This one behind me, that's like, there might be two or three paintings under that one.

I really like beautiful things.

And that's like my goal is to, for myself, to really like it.

Then I'm so proud of it because I love it so much.

When somebody buys my painting, I'm like, "Oh my gosh, they feel the same way I fell."

It's not the money thing, it's the fact that, "Wow, somebody really likes what I like."

That's what makes me feel good.

It's always been that way.

(light music) - See more of her work at saatchiart.com/susanhandau.

And that wraps it up for this episode of "WEDU Arts Plus."

To view more, visit wedu.org/artsplus, or follow us on social.

I'm Dalia Colon, thanks for watching.

(light jazzy music) (light music)