This is a production of WEDU PBS, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota.

In this edition of WEDU Arts Plus, the resilience of an artist community.

We are a community in St. Pete, and we give space to so many artists to create their work.

A traditional Japanese drumming ensemble.

What's magical about it is to connect people together.

The post-graffiti movement.

He often gets described as the kind of soul black genius artistically.

And an artist's exploration of life.

It's really the light is what inspires me.

That's my main focus is light, energy, motion and the light here is unparalleled to any other light I've seen in all the other places I've lived.

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

[light music] Hello.

I'm Gabe Ortiz, and this is WEDU Arts Plus.

When an up and coming artist community is devastated by two hurricanes back to back, its resiliency shines even brighter.

See how devastation turned to triumph for Artmosphere in St. Petersburg?

[light music] I have been managing Artmosphere since the summer of 2023, and we officially opened in March of 2024.

Since then, we are a community in St. Pete and we give space to so many artists to create their work.

Also to showcase their work through our events that we do.

So I feel like the community is very important.

As you know, during those events, we open up to everybody.

You know, this is like a safe space for artists to make their work, create their art.

And we literally just opened it was just starting to pick up.

It was starting to create a community, and then it was just gone.

Yeah, we were, you know, scared because, uh, you know, we were supposed to have the flood.

And with the Helene, on September 26th, the flood arrived.

We tried to, you know, remove as much stuff as we can.

But it takes time.

And then during the the rehab, we heard another notice.

So the news was, oh, another one is coming...Milton.

Wait a moment.

Let's see what's going on with Milton.

And then we start back again to fix everything.

You know.

I remember that I got the call from my handyman saying, hey, did you hear about the storm?

I came here, I prepped with all the artists.

I remember I sealed the doors with, like, black tape.

I put, like, trash bags, I put sandbags on top, and I was like, you know, I hope I'm doing this for nothing.

It's not going to be anything.

And then I remember going home and I was looking at the cameras because we have cameras here.

So I was like, okay, it's holding on pretty well.

It's going good, it's going good.

And then I just started to see like the water leaking through and I don't know, I it was just so sad.

I don't know, it just there is a feeling of helplessness in which there is literally nothing you can do and just wait and then figure out something after.

[music] What it was up to here.

So basically we had to redo all the walls.

This put us so behind because we not only had, you know, Hurricane Aileen at first, and if Milton wasn't here, we would already be back.

But thankfully our team works so fast and so amazing.

Each studio was a different artist.

They really they put up, for example, Marina in this studio.

She had so much art working here.

You don't even know.

Like if you just look at all the pins and screws and everything.

This studio was full of work and painting and everything.

Yeah, here or on my paintings The water was up to here.

So I was able to, you know, say this.

Is a mirror.

It was all the way to the floor.

But now, of course, it's, uh, you know, they cut the piece out.

This artist right here.

This is Oliver.

He's been our first artist ever, and he's the one that got the most damage.

Because, of course, he imagined after a year of being here with all your supplies, all your art.

And unfortunately, his house flooded as well.

So he's been dealing with so much.

I got the message that the studios had taken on water.

When I got that news, that's when I started getting a little bit of a sinking feeling that, okay, this looks like this was probably worse than what we thought it was going to be.

And it turned out that it was.

It was probably one of the hardest moments that I've ever faced on a very personal level.

And that's even going back and looking at 25 years.

Being in the military.

For me was big surprise because I'm from western Europe.

Uh, we have not hurricanes.

And, uh, for me it was I was in shock, to be honest.

And, um, uh, it's very unusual when you when you need to, like, save everything because just the ocean.

Uh, coming.

Do you know, like, it was like a step back, uh, because studio must work day by day, every day.

I'm beginning.

I'm beginning for zero.

In the moment.

I, I need create new studio.

I came here after and it was just like chaos.

It was just like, so messy.

Everything was, like, all over the place.

Everything was, like, on top of each other.

It was dirty.

It was smelly.

So it was just, like, very discouraging, I would say at first.

And then slowly, because we have like an amazing team, we were able to rebuild everything.

Studios were reopening was huge.

It was good and it was heartbreaking at the same time because you see the amount of work that had to go into rebuilding everything.

It was a bittersweet moment.

If you lost something, you of course it's sad in the moment, but after this, after this, uh, I'm feeling I have, I had a new I had a new wave.

I had a new wave for energy to do new artworks.

And I did.

It was sad.

But at the end we are here again.

And then, you know, we survived.

So now that everything is back to normal, I'm definitely feeling really good.

It's so nice to come here, have all the artists work in their space and just, you know, walk in the hallways and I peek in and I see, you know, somebody working on their new painting, somebody's working on their new sculpture, photography projects and so on.

And I'm back into showing the art studios for new artists.

I show the event space, so it's really fun.

I was blaming myself for like a long time, and then I realized that my creative energy was going to something equally beautiful, which was, you know, creating a community and a space for other artists to create.

Then slowly, once everything went back to normal, it became a pleasure again to be here.

To find out more, visit artmospherestpete.com.

Formed in 1997, Reno Taiko Tsurunokai is a traditional Japanese drumming group based in Reno, Nevada.

This talented ensemble plays music and brings Japanese culture to audiences.

[drumming] Reno Taiko Tsuruoka is a traditional Japanese drumming ensemble based in Reno, Nevada.

[drumming] I just love drumming because it's just exciting for me.

It's not something that you hear just from the ears, but you feel it in the body.

When people actually feel your music.

It's quite an amazing experience.

What's magical about it is to connect people together.

[drumming music] My name is Rico Shimbo.

I live in Reno, but I was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan.

I was interested in drumming since I was really little, but I never really played drum until when I was in college.

I played in a rock band.

[rock music] When I heard my friend learning traditional taiko drumming, I thought, oh, that would be really fun to learn.

I learned from a place called Aramasa, which is a professional Japanese traditional music and dancing group in Tokyo, and I was part of that group, and then learning and performing there before I moved to Reno.

I met Japanese American people who were really interested in Japanese culture.

And that's when I met Cindy.

I asked Reiko if she would be interested in teaching some of us, and she graciously agreed.

We organized the first workshop together and I mean the rest is history.

You know, 25 years later, we're still drumming in our community, and every day it's fun.

I saw.

[drumming music] The taiko drum has two different parts of it.

So not just the rhythm itself, but also the movement is a big part of it.

How we move the arms, how to hold the bachi, how to stand, how to use the whole body.

More like a martial arts in a way, because you have to have the whole body in a very balanced way, and also use the strength in an efficient way without hurting the body.

Part of our choreography includes leg and arm movements.

Some of the songs we actually move around, rotating and playing around to visually makes it more interesting and exciting.

It's actually quite artistic, so it's really a full body drumming experience.

[drumming] We have different types of drums.

The biggest one is called Odaiko and we have a taiko oshima daiko, which is the smaller ones.

The smaller drums are usually doing like a bass beat.

The larger drums are doing the actual song.

Sometimes the large drum.

We play both sides of it differently.

Also we have other instruments accompany drums.

Uh, Chiapas or Cani, which made out of metal and make a little more piercing sound or more cheerful.

Kind of a, you know, accessory for this ensemble.

And then also we have the bamboo flute that we play, and then the voice is also a big part of the ensemble.

Sometimes people ask, what does that mean?

And then like, it's not really means something.

Some of the things are just kind of like cheering sound.

A lot of songs that we play is coming from different parts of Japan, in the villages, like Farmers Villages or Fisherman's Village.

Pucioasa is what we call our Fisherman's Song.

[drumming music] That's also quite athletic, which is in line with the strength you sometimes need as a fisherman when you're throwing out nets or fishing large fish.

So it's wonderful to know the meaning behind the songs, because then when you're drumming it, you have a different perspective of how you should be drumming and performing.

I try to be really focused on, um, on the sound, immerse myself in the moment, because that's maybe the best thing that I can do to really do my best to connect with people and create something amazing.

Taiko drum is not only for Japan because now it's spreading all over the world.

The reason why it goes spreading all over the world is it's because it has such a strong effect for people to feel it, and then being together and then being connected.

music can connect so much, and that really changed my life.

When I came over here, I had a kind of a confidence and feeling that I can really connect with people with the drumming.

[drumming music] Learn more at renotaiko.com.

Visit the exhibit Writing the Future Basquiat and the Hip-Hop generation, located at the Museum of Fine Arts in Massachusetts.

The show shines a light on the post-graffiti movement and the pivotal role Jean-Michel Basquiat played in its development.

Blazing off the walls of the Museum of Fine Arts.

The massive paintings of Jean-Michel Basquiat.

He was a New York street artist of the 1970s and 80s who became a darling of the art world.

Three years ago, one of his paintings sold for more than $100 million at auction.

Legend.

Icon.

Maverick.

He bore all the crowns so frequently depicted in his work before his untimely death.

He often gets described as the kind of sole black genius artistically of the time, and what we're trying to show is that he absolutely was an incredibly genius artist, but he was surrounded by his peers who were on a similar journey with him.

This new exhibition at the MFA is the first to examine Basquiat and his fellow artists in the hip hop generation, who changed the chemistry and sound of New York.

All the way back.

Rammellzee, Fab Five Freddy, Basquiat.

They were among a crop of fresh faced art world outsiders from marginalized communities, but they made New York theirs, says co-curator Liz Munsell.

They came from many different boroughs Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and then they began to converge downtown.

They were getting a little bit older, and they saw this incredible scene of 1980s creatives, people like Madonna around.

And they became part of this club scene.

But before that, they were labeled graffiti artists, pursued by police for tagging buildings and a most prized canvas, the New York City subway.

Painting subway cars guaranteed their work would be seen by thousands of people as trains raced throughout the city.

There's a lot of chaos for the eye to see every day.

Writer and musician Greg Tate is the show's co-curator.

He knew most of the artists featured here when they all began to mix with performers, filmmakers and musicians in New York's downtown scene.

[music] This is a youth movement, and in America, youth is everything, so whoever's leading that charge is going to win.

What the outsiders called graffiti.

The artists simply called writing, a form Basquiat noted had dated to ancient times and would artist Lady Pink said was like calligraphy, but it was all a language the artists shared.

Abstracting it, coding it, crossing it out.

They really, in the vein of hip hop music, are incorporating really whatever they can get their hands on and very freely in an unfiltered way, getting all of that into their canvases.

But these artists wanted off the streets and into the galleries.

They demanded they be heard and seen.

The art world took notice, and in the US, two of them, Keith Haring and Basquiat, rocketed into the stratosphere.

I could see the handwriting on the wall.

It was mine.

I've made my mark in the world and it's made its mark on me.

Basquiat's work was fueled by his interest in history, not to mention the years of museum visits he'd made with his mother while growing up.

He charted his thoughts in notebooks.

Went to a party, went to one party at his house once, and, um, you know, walked to walk past his bedroom on the way to to the loo.

I saw there was, um, uh, like a video of Superfly that was on and then, um, you know, and then all these art books stacked up.

So when he wasn't painting, you know, he was in there just, you know, studying the artists he liked.

Basquiat's work is also often populated by random bits of anatomy.

When he was seven, he was hospitalized after a car accident and developed a fascination with the book Gray's Anatomy.

But it's this crown that is most ubiquitous in his work.

My my work is about three things.

Um, royalty, heroism, and the streets.

Right.

So he was also, uh, as someone who had gone to all the major galleries and museums and didn't see any black people represented there.

He's letting you know that, um, you know, his royalty is a street royalty.

That reign would extend into the art world where Basquiat achieved superstardom.

But in 1988, he died of a drug overdose.

He was only 27, but he'd managed to see his community of artists get their due.

And beyond that, says Liz Munsell, they began to influence the A-list artists they worked to be alongside Frank Stella.

You can you can see his referencing.

And he also he also notes that he was looking at graffiti and trying to find a different surface for his painting.

Um, in his late 80s works.

It was a hard fought acceptance.

And for it, this singular group of artists hanged together still.

Discover more at mfa.org.

Travel to Islamorada in the Keys to meet artist Elena Madden.

In her artwork, she examines light and the way it reflects against the water.

As a result of this exploration, her paintings are full of energy and movement.

As a young girl, I would just stare then at this water.

I called it diamond water.

It just resonated with me.

And it just one of those things that I felt like I had to get onto a canvas or panel.

My name is Elena Madden and I am the owner of Elena Madden Studio Gallery in Islamorada, Florida.

My parents were both artists.

I grew up in an artistic family.

I had an affinity for nature and painting.

I went to the Savannah College of Art and Design.

I married my my Scad sweetheart.

We would come on vacation to the lower Keys and we'd camp for a couple months and I would paint down here, and I fell in love with the colors, the water.

This is my third location, and I love it because I'm right in the middle of the Arts district, which is fantastic.

[bright music] Oh my goodness.

It's, um.

It's really the light is what inspires me.

That's my main focus is light, energy, motion.

And the light here is unparalleled to any other light I've seen in all the other places I've lived, and which makes the color just amazing.

This may sound crazy, but every piece starts with a red background and build layer from there.

Um, transparent layers.

And so that creates this glow and underneath.

And so that's similar to what I'm imitating life here because you have that, that light from below and above.

They're still evolving.

I'm constantly learning about it and I love it.

You don't want to overwork it.

I never wanted to paint from photography because I assumed it would make it stiff.

So I don't use photography at all.

I want it to move, so I have to.

So it's really from memory and it's fairly intuitive.

So I started this series about 22 years ago.

Um, I was actually still in South Carolina when I did, and I lived on a body of water, and I would just do thumbnails and just paint from memory over and over.

I'd do small pieces and then I'd make them large.

What happened was I found my own rhythm.

So gradually get lighter and lighter and lighter until I'm satisfied with the the light.

There's many facets of of my reflective series.

So I started with a pure, pure series, which is just a pure reflection of light and everything that was around it.

And then I started with a horizon series that gave people a little bit of a point of where they are, and it grounds them a little more.

It's a little more traditional than than the other.

Then I did a a still series, uh, with the glasses.

Um, and that's also reflective.

And I, I really put away any type of type of photography with that as well and just kind of go and they become more whimsical that way.

And so painting something that moves and then something that still is a nice balance to keep, keep it fresh and keep your hand and your mind bouncing between those two.

The figurative series, it's a positive negative study.

And it's, as you can see, some reflection coming through the figure.

Basically, the concept is, you know, it's a very feminine idea with, uh, the moon, the tides, water and how the how we're all connected.

I want the viewer to feel what they feel.

I had one, one person say, um, they came in the gallery that it looked like bubbles of love.

And I thought that was fantastic.

Funny, it was a, um, a piece that I actually painted for my husband.

And so I named it Amor because as as I finished it, you know.

She said it looks like bubbles.

And I said, well, that's interesting.

That is for my husband for Valentine's Day.

So it's one of my favorite pieces.

I love painting on the wood panel.

It is I prefer birch.

I love the grain.

It's understated, but at the same time it looks like, um, it looks like water ripples.

So, uh, it doesn't have any bounce when you're painting like you do with canvas and the finished product, it appears wet, just like the subject.

So it works really nicely for me.

Really my goal if I can inspire people to see the world in a different way, um, bring a little joy.

I mean, it's been a dark year for everybody.

Um, if I could distract them with a little beauty and maybe let them see all the beautiful things we have around us, um, that would be my goal.

I feel like, you know, my job would be done if I brought a little joy.

[light music] See more at elenamadden.com.

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

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

Until next time, I'm Gabe Ortiz.

Thanks for watching.