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

(gentle dynamic music) - [Dalia] Funding for WEDU Arts Plus is provided by Charles Rosenblum, Hillsborough County Board of County Commissioners, the State of Florida and Division of Arts and Culture, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

In this edition of "WEDU Arts Plus" a pianist's journey through music.

- Although he's not able to communicate verbally, or function independently, he wakes up with a purpose of playing or practicing.

- [Dalia] Soap art.

- [Kathryn] That's why I think soapers in general, we don't compete with each other, we just complement each other because there's so much variety out there, and everybody adds their own personality to it.

- [Dalia] Quilted wall hangings.

- There's something deeply spiritual about creating something.

It's the playfulness, it's the letting your imagination run wild.

- [Dalia] And a full scale replica of a historic ship.

- [Whit] No one was just coming to work to punch a time card.

Everybody took a vested interest.

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

(upbeat jazz music) Hello, I'm Dalia Colón and this is "WEDU Arts Plus.

Meet Milosz Gasior, a pianist with autism who communicates through his music.

Despite challenges, he graduated as the first piano major from the Pinellas County Center for the Arts.

Today, Milosz shares his extraordinary talent through exceptional performances in and around the Tampa Bay area.

(upbeat piano music) - Milosz is a pianist.

He was diagnosed with autism at the age of two and a half.

(upbeat piano music) His diagnosis was moderate to severe autism.

(poignant piano music) So when Milosz was diagnosed, I was afraid.

But you know, my son was alive after all, and I wanted to do everything that I can to give him the best quality of life he could get, no matter his medical diagnosis.

(poignant piano music) And here, what did you do over here?

- [Milosz] The tree sap.

- Milosz has severe speech delay, and he didn't talk at all when he was little.

So at around the age of seven in my search for connection, I guided him to an electric piano and I help him press the middle C key with his little finger, and he looked at me.

It was almost like he was saying, "You know, mom, I'm here.

I want to talk to you.

Just I don't know how."

(piano music) That was really something incredible, because he didn't have eye contact.

(piano music) Excellent!

And that was the beginning of our musical communication.

(dramatic classical music) The first real success was when Milosz was allowed to join the middle school jazz band.

He played there for two years, and it was time to transition to high school.

We chose Pinellas County Center for the Arts because it offers a piano major.

(gentle piano music) - I first learned about Milosz when I heard that there was going to be an autistic person coming to audition.

Immediately I was curious, and I just wanted to know more about him, and what he could do, and what his skill levels were as an 8th grader.

(gentle piano music) He really challenged me to think about how to teach in so many modalities at the same time.

Sometimes it was not just visual, sometimes it wasn't verbal, but it was also auditory as well as kinesthetic.

Like we had to get up and move, because like if we tried to speak it was always like him repeating the last two or three words that I said.

But if I said, "Let's get up and just do this," he would get up and then dance with me and shuffle, and say, "This is how you feel a waltz move."

As he did that, you know, he never made eye contact, but he would smile this huge smile.

And then when he sat down again, I said, "Can you now feel this, right?

Remember how you moved your feet?"

And then he would play it that way and it was just amazing.

- [Milosz] One check.

- [Bozena] Music is very mathematical.

You know the patterns, the counting, one, and two, and three, and four.

And I think that is a big part of Milosz's love for music.

- [Milosz] Ah!

Play.

(poignant piano music) - At HUG, which stands for Help Us Gather, we are a nonprofit based in Clearwater, Florida, and we are dedicated to promoting inclusion, and also improving the life of people with disabilities.

(gentle piano music) So HUG has an opportunity each year where they give an award called Mr. or Mrs. Inspirational to a friend that we really feel that inspires us.

And Milosz really captured that.

(upbeat piano music) His talent put us in awe and we were just so amazed.

(upbeat piano music) - As Mr. Inspirational, Milosz had an honor of performing at the Tampa International Airport.

When he performed there, Mark Schoenfeld, a Broadway creator and impresario heard him play.

He encouraged me to write my story.

And I have written a book about Milosz's life journey, "I Heard The Light."

(upbeat piano music) (dramatic upbeat piano music) What Milosz has achieved wouldn't be possible without the village of people.

You know, sometimes we say it takes a village to raise a child.

It takes a bigger village to raise a child with special needs.

And we've been blessed with so many people.

(upbeat piano music) ♪ Over the rainbow ♪ ♪ Way up high ♪ - I'm very grateful to Milosz and his mom, because I feel like they gave us a chance to sort of prove how we could come together, and build this community so that we can actually grow as teachers and as people.

- Bozena, she is a super mom and I think it makes such a difference having such a strong advocate in your corner.

She has really moved mountains to allow Milosz to express himself, and have these really amazing opportunities to showcase his talent.

(audience applauding) - For those of you who face challenges in life, I have this advice, seek out and boldly ask for help, never give up and never accept no as the first answer, because eventually someone is going to take a chance on you, on your child, on your loved one.

I want to share my son's story because although he's not able to communicate verbally, or function independently, he wakes up with a purpose of playing, of practicing, of preparing for possible next event on his calendar.

It is my hope that he's going to continue to play.

- Play.

- But most importantly, to perform for others.

- Perform for others.

(upbeat piano music) (gentle upbeat music) - To hear more, visit asdvirtuoso.org.

At Wild Sierra Soap in Reno, Nevada, artist Kathryn Howard demonstrates how making soap is both an art and a science.

Using locally sourced ingredients, she handcrafts one of a kind bars of soap with care and attention.

(gentle upbeat music) - The beauty is, is that you've got the world is, you know, wide open.

There's so many possibilities, and that's why I think soapers in general, we don't compete with each other, we just complement each other, because there's so much variety out there and everybody adds their own personality to it.

So it's just a ton of fun.

I'm Kathryn Howard.

I'm a high school teacher.

I'm certified in math, science, and I've formally taught home ec for 15 years.

So I use those skills to blend them together, because you need to now have a background in all of that to put together a nice bar of soap for someone.

Today we're gonna be making a vegan soap, but I also do goat milk bars.

So some of the bars add goat milk.

Goat milk helps a lot of emollient properties, and a lot of vitamins that adds to your skin.

Wild Sierra Soap starts with our snow.

All of our water is supplied through a local well, and that well is supplied from mountain feed off of Mount Rose.

(gentle upbeat music) So we're gonna start out with getting your ingredients together and your materials.

And with anything, this is just like any science experiment, safety is a key so you need goggles, I wear an apron that's plastic, and gloves.

Get all your materials going because once you start soaping, soap is not forgiving.

It moves and you've gotta be ready to move with it.

So we're gonna start out with mixing water with lye, and let that cool down.

I like to soap at room temperature.

And then in another bucket, I've mixed together all of the oils that we're using.

We're gonna use a stick blender, and that's gonna blend together the lye water into the oils.

It's a pontified fancy-schmancy word for lyes blending with oils.

So when they blend together, and you'll see it comes together like a vanilla pudding.

From that point, you can add some colorants, you can add fragrances, then you're ready to pour it into your molds.

Once it's poured in the molds, then it has to incubate.

Soap is exothermic, produces its own heat, so sometimes I'll let it just sit in the oven, sometimes I'll wrap it in a blanket.

Good to let it sit for at least 24 to 36 hours.

During that time, soap goes through what we call a gel phase.

Glycerin forms naturally in the bars, and it also allows any of your colors to really pop.

I like to to go through gel phase 'cause I enjoy that pop of color, and I want glycerin in my bars, I think that's really nice.

At that point then the bars are cut, they're stamped with our little stamp that says "Handmade With Love."

And then they go into a curing cabinet for about four to six weeks where they dry.

So that's pretty much from start to go, and then we have to package it up, and get it out to the customer.

(gentle upbeat music) This is be about three years now that I've been working on soaps.

I was gifted some super nice soap, and then when it was all gone, I went to look for it, and it was $10 a bar.

And I thought, "I bet with my science background, my math background, a little bit of YouTube videos, a little bit of reading, I can start putting this together."

So I started playing around.

My eldest daughter said, when I was making the first bars of soap, she looked and she said, "Mom, thought you were making soap.

What is that?"

So the first bars looked anything but that.

The soap seized on me.

It was ugly.

So it took a little bit of messing with formulas, doing more calculations, because every oil that you use needs a different amount of lye with it.

So now all those formulas are printed out, they're in a binder.

They've got plastic sleeves over them so that they're in one good place, and I don't lose them.

Sometimes fragrances will also interact with the oils, and the soap as it's going through and will change.

For instance, I'm using a vanilla fragrance today.

When we started pouring the bears for the soap we're gonna make today, they're white, they're polar bears.

Within three days, they turn into black bears because the fragrance is reacting with the oils, and it turns it.

Same with micas and some of the oxides that are used for coloring.

They're all natural, same as you find in your makeup, but when they're reacting, some of 'em are change.

I have one that starts out as a beautiful fuchsia.

By the time it finishes though, it goes blue.

(gentle music) I had a couple surprises that I did not expect that to happen.

And you just went, "What?"

And you look at it and you're like, "What happened?"

Now, lots of times it's not maybe what you wanted, but someone else goes, "Well, I think that color is great."

And you're like, "Okay but I was shooting for, you know, green and I got orange.

You know what happened here?"

I always tell customers like, "If you really like a swirl in that bar, you better pick it up because I can't reproduce it again, it's done by hand, and no two bars are ever the same, even within the same loaf."

So it, that's part of the fun is getting to see what that looks like.

Making the cuts are always the fun piece.

Wide, currently.

All right, let's see.

All right, see a nice gradual green, darker on the bottom, getting super light on top.

Super perfect.

Love that.

(gentle music) I think I wanted to have something that I could probably use, rather than just have around.

You know, I think over the course of anybody's life, you mess with different things and different art forms.

So this was just a new medium that I'd never tried before.

And it was a challenge.

It was a challenge to work the chemistry, to work the math, to work the art, and put it all together.

So I enjoy that and I still do.

That's part of it to get it.

It's like create something new each time you go to make something and be able to, you know, sell it, and share it with other friends.

(gentle music) - To see more, visit wildsierrasoap.com.

Renee Wormack-Keels is an Ohio based fiber, and mixed media artist who quilts.

Using African prints, hand dyed and commercial fabrics, her textured art quilts are full of meaning.

- My motto is, there are no mistakes in quilting, there are only design opportunities.

(gentle upbeat music) When I was a child, I learned to sew.

You know, those were the days of home economics, and I made the little apron, and the little blouse that you make.

So I fell in love with sewing.

(gentle upbeat music) A time went on, I think when I was in high school, senior high school, I made a lot of my clothes.

And then when my children came along, I started making my children's clothes.

(gentle upbeat music) Through the years, I kind of got away from it.

And then someone I was on a panel with, we were talking about the things that we like to do, and this person was telling me she was a quilter.

And I said, "Well, you know, I've always been a sewer, and when I retire in 25 years or so, I'm going to learn to quilt."

And she said, "Oh, Renee, don't wait until you retire.

Let me teach you now."

So I spent about two weeks with her learning how to make what is called a log cabin quilt.

I wanted to learn the process.

I wanted to learn the skills because I wanted to learn how to make art quilts.

There are the traditional quilts that you would put on your bed versus the kind of thing that I make now that goes on your wall.

(gentle upbeat music) There's something deeply spiritual about creating something.

It's the playfulness, it's the letting your imagination run wild.

There are quote unquote "rules" in quilting, and while I do try to make sure that my seams are straight, my sewing is straight, my points don't always, you know, match up.

My colors may not necessarily be analogous.

I have put orange and purple together.

I just love the idea of putting different pieces of fabric together and watching how they play together.

(upbeat jazz music) I consider myself to be a narrative storyteller quilter.

That is my quilts tell a story, and typically they will tell stories about women's lives.

(upbeat jazz music) What I want people to come away from is not only to be inspired, but to learn about the unsung heroes.

Sheroes, I guess I should say.

The women whose stories are not told.

"Wild Women Don't Have The Blues" is the first of a series of three quilts.

I got interested in blue singers of the '20s, '30s and '40s.

Alberta Hunter, Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith.

And I said, "I'd like to tell the story of these singers in a quilt because sometimes people will never pick up a book and read it, but they might be willing to at least read a quilt that goes on your wall."

(upbeat jazz music) The second quilt is called "Cafe au Lait and Brown Sugar Divas," because in the entertainment industry, African American women were sometimes segregated according to skin color.

In that quilt is a little different fabric.

It's yellow tones, it's light brown tones, because I wanted it to sort of mirror the images of the women and and their skin tones.

(upbeat jazz music) "Cocoa and Hot Chocolate Divas" is the quilt that I created for darker skinned women.

Hattie McDaniel, Beah Richards are in there.

So that's how that series of quilts came into being.

(sewing machine whirring) Maybe about 10 or 12 years ago, going through some really deep emotional turmoil, and quilting became very therapeutic for me.

(gentle poignant music) There's a quilt that I do once a year, and that quilt is for my son who is incarcerated.

(gentle poignant music) One of the things that I could not do last year was to go see him.

So one of my pieces is called "Your Blues Ain't Like Mine," and it's blue fabric, it's blue hearts because I haven't been able to visit him during the pandemic.

That made it pretty difficult and painful for me.

(gentle poignant music) And as you can tell, this heart is not completely reconnected, and that's on purpose.

That heart is reconnected, but this heart is not.

(gentle poignant music) - I'm hoping so, yes.

I'm hoping so.

(gentle poignant music) As I quilt, I'm thinking, you're leaving your own legacy of your own stories and people may not know all of my story, but they will know some of my story, and hopefully that will encourage them to think about their own stories as well.

(gentle music) - Learn more at metamofosi.org.

Up next, head to Plymouth, Massachusetts to see Mayflower II.

It's a full scale replica of the ship that brought the pilgrims to America.

For three years, a skilled team of shipwrights and artisans worked to restore the ship, and bring it back to life - [Jared] In Plymouth Harbor, Mayflower II is the embodiment of promise, a full scale replica of the ship that delivered pilgrims to American Shores where they expected to establish religious freedom.

- It was a Greyhound bus of its era.

It was just a ship that a group of people had hired to get them to what they thought would be Virginia, and ended up being New England.

- [Jared] Today though, it's an indelible part of this nation's founding, and on the 400th anniversary of that famous sailing, Mayflower II has just undergone a three year, multimillion dollar restoration.

- [Jared] What do you see when you look at the Mayflower II?

- The American story.

That for me, Mayflower is a memory device, and it is a symbol.

For someone that has direct family ties to that ship it may mean one thing.

For an indigenous person it may have another meaning.

- [Jared] The ship is operated by nearby Plymouth Plantation where Richard Pickering is deputy executive director.

The historic site recreates life during those first precarious years as the pilgrims settled here, although Plymouth plantation's name is changing.

- We wanted to make certain that the Wampanoag voice, the indigenous voice, was as important as the English voice.

So we have become Plimoth Patuxet Museums.

- [Jared] Back to the Mayflower II, it gleams once again, and more importantly, it's staying afloat, says Captain Whit Perry.

- When I first took the job before we did the restoration, the bilge pump would be coming on seven or eight times a day to pump out the water coming in.

And of course, the first rule of any boat or ship is keep the water on the outside.

- [Jared] The ship's restoration happened at Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut where a team of shipwrights and artisans restored the ship's sails, wood, and metal parts, sometimes even using 17th century tools.

- [Whit] No one was just coming to work to punch a time card.

Everybody took a vested interest.

Come on aboard Jared.

- [Jared] Like a kid, still excited to show off his new toy, Perry took me around the ship, pointing out the paint colors, bright combinations chosen so sailors could identify ships from afar.

And the tweendeck where more than 100 pilgrim passengers were relegated for their 66 day crossing.

- It's kind of like no umbrella drinks, and a carnival cruise for those folks in 1620.

- So quarantined but no social distancing.

- Exactly.

- [Jared] Perry points out where restoration has happened, like on this windlass, which hoists the anchor.

And where whole sections of the ship have been fully replaced.

An expedition all its own with wood sourced from around the world.

- [Whit] We actually started coining the phrase "from tree to sea."

We would start right with the log in the woods, and one of my favorite parts was going out in the woods with the spray can to pick the trees right out of the forest.

- [Jared] Steering The Mayflower was nearly as complicated.

- You can see that we can't really see much out here at all.

So how do you steer the ship?

Certainly they would've had a magnetic compass, and the helmsman would be down here.

But if you look at this hatch grading, the officer of the deck would be giving steering commands from up on the half deck.

- [Jared] Mayflower II was gifted to the US by England in 1957.

A thank you for American support during World War II.

Across the Atlantic then and set sail again on the open sea this summer as it returned from Connecticut.

Perry captained the ship with a crew of 27.

Is it peaceful?

- Oh yeah.

Yep.

It's all of those romantic sounds that we all know and love from movies of the creaking of the rigging, the wood working against each other as the ship moves like a living thing, and twists, and moves, which it's meant to do.

- [Jared] There's one sound though, which Perry saves for the occasional visitor who also happened to have emceed, the ship's launch ceremony in Connecticut.

- Jared, thank you very much for showing an interest in Mayflower.

I think you should ring our bell for us, the Mayflower Bell.

- All right, here goes.

(bell dinging) One o'clock and all is well and as it was.

(gentle upbeat music) - Find out more at plimoth.org.

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 Colón.

Thanks for watching.

(upbeat dramatic music) Funding for WEDU Arts Plus is provided by Charles Rosenblum, Hillsborough County Board of County Commissioners, the State of Florida and Division of Arts and Culture, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

(upbeat music)