This week on, Art Rocks!, a Lake Charles artist who's putting a fresh face on some of the city's historic structures is good for the history.

It's good for people that want to keep the historic things there.

And it's good for us to open up new walls and have building owners, you know, want our stuff on my wall art that's organic in form and function.

I guess maybe that movement came from the water movement after living art so many years and being surrounded, looking up and out.

And this week we're treasuring late Charles's historic courthouse building.

That's all coming up on Art rocks.

Art rocks is made possible by the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting and by viewers like you.

Hello, I'm James Smith, publisher of Country Roads magazine.

And welcome to Art rocks.

Let's get started with a young Lake Charles artist who figured he was destined for a career in law enforcement until a professor told him he had such talent as an artist.

It would be a crime not to develop it when it comes to describing his esthetic approach, the camera shy Jeremy Price might be a man of few words, but he has no problem making his hands do the talking.

Let's take a look.

I went work and you know the industries and came back.

Finished my couple semesters of criminal justice and I took a drawing class.

No goals or anything.

And my professor gonna just suck me into the art world.

And he really kept pushing me and encouraged me to stick with it.

And eventually I just wanted to do everything and I want to stay at school for, you know, forever.

If they would let me and just learn every single thing about every process and art.

Jeremy went on to complete a degree in criminal justice, but he also added a degree in fine art along the way.

Recently, I've quit my full time job and started painting, and it's been more exciting.

With a deep commitment to public art and its ability to engage the community at large.

Jeremy has donated time to enhancing and beautifying various historic structures in his city with vibrant works of art.

Those painting is basically the story of creation.

It's God blowing the planets out through a bubble wand.

It's fun for children and intrigues adults.

It's been the the favorite for most of the people in Lake Charles that are interested in the arts.

We did one big project called great.

It's a big box themed mural, and that one, we had about five team members on that one.

My favorite work is What's Inside Llewyn alive?

That was the first one where I had full freedom to just call me paint whatever you want in here.

Some people say it's Gaia.

I don't know anything about that.

I was just drawing a lady.

I use some old Egyptian symbology and a few things come on.

Another discovery thing.

Just exploring.

There's another.

The big octopus.

It's all smoke.

Shop and town.

It's almost like graffiti style.

Just all spray paint.

Not only is Jeremy working to enhance his city's public face with outdoor works of art, he's also restoring some familiar old designs.

It's good for the history.

It's good for people that want to keep the historic things there, and it's good for us to open up new walls and have building owners, you know, want our stuff on the wall.

While much of Jeremy's work is on public display, he will also create a piece for the wall in your home.

Like this commissioned piece of the Last Supper.

It's not too far from being complete.

I still have to do a few details.

And the hands and the hair.

The eyes and the feet.

And it's really, really just about there work with painting.

It's almost like working on a 3D object.

I get so focused on it, almost.

It's like the what would be the fabrics kind of popping out at me and as I see it before, it's there and just kind of work with it.

It's kind of a lot of faith.

This one's nearly done.

It's all I'm doing is putting some more line work in the hair.

And then some of these are feathers here, and that's about it.

the face is done, backgrounds done.

The artist also works in lino.

That's that's Magellan for.

I spent about 40 hours carving out linoleum.

I draw it on when I went first.

And really, it's just staying absolutely true to my pencil marks.

I pour out ink and put it on a, you know, piece of plexiglass or something.

Then you use a big roll or it's almost like a bread roller, but it's, more of a rubber stamp material, and you roll that out until you get the perfect sheen.

Once you get that, you roll it again and you take your roller that has the ink on it, and you roll the ink over the linoleum.

And then from there, I soak my paper because it pulls a little more detail out.

Then you lay the paper on top and run it through the press, pull the paper up and let it dry.

This is Copernicus.

During this stage, I was kind of exploring myself and exploring art and just kind of with some of that's about.

Jeremy throws pottery two.

He notes that the deeper he dives into each discipline, whether that be painting, drawing, linotype or ceramics, the more he falls in love with the process of creation.

Jeremy says he had not picked up any art supplies since middle school, before finding himself in a drawing class in college.

No matter where you live in Louisiana.

Opportunities to connect with the arts are everywhere.

You just need to know where to look.

So here's a list of exhibits.

Festivals, concerts, and more fun things coming to a creative community near you.

To learn more about these and other events in Louisiana, keep your eyes peeled for a copy of Country Road Magazine.

And while we're at it, PBS's rocks website features an archive of previous episodes.

So to see an episode again, just log on to lpb.org.

Come with us now to the southern tip of Florida, which is where we found wood sculptor Helen Harrison.

Helen works with organic materials, including the palms and tropical fruits common to her Key West home.

Her sculptural concepts rely on the pairing of vibrant colors with the rhythms of botanical forms in motion.

Come inside Helen's studio to see how down in the keys tropical Breeze is where we sing our songs.

You can sing along.

My husband and I opened Harrison Gallery in 1986.

Why were primarily showcased here?

I ventured out a little bit, but, Key West has been just the perfect spot for my needs in 74.

Ben and I went to Costa Rica and we got a 38ft sailboat, and we finished building the boat.

It took us about three years.

I'd pick up smaller pieces of wood and tackle it myself.

So.

Well, you know, the construction, the functional art that I started looking and having the vision of shapes, shapes, forms, texture that's what I'm all about.

And movement.

I guess maybe that movement came from the water movement.

After living on it so many years, and banks around the building on an island, there was hooker.

Move to the real world.

She went astray.

Now she's back to stay for 30 years.

25 years I did nothing but wood sculpture, exotic works, down woods, whatever I needed for a moment and a lot of woods would inspire me.

You could see something and you go, oh, I see you.

And you don't have a bamboo wall, root of something.

So that can trigger an idea.

But then there are other subjects that you, You want to make something you want to make a particular shoe, or you want to make a particular style, and you go after a piece of wood.

That aside, I started looking for found objects.

This is the forehead of the ear from the outermost, and I saw a nail dancer in it.

People are always a bit fascinated because they go, oh, that's the, you know, deer antler or this is a fish bone, I'll use fish bones.

Deer at work.

This is a banana stem.

Calabash is a natural, natural things that are overlooked.

I don't think other people bother with.

I see three feet off the island and I'll use keystone or coral.

We have so many great trees in Key West.

And this is a, an inverted palm tree.

And when you remove that, take the plate off of it.

You see all the fibers of the palm fall down.

It's pretty special.

I like to do some more of those.

I've always just been a person made things.

I try to incorporate good design balance with them, texture, all the components that you're supposed to do.

But I lately I would say a feeling of motion is what I've been out diving for treasure, living for danger, and for the thrill of it all.

The day is below.

We get off Key West.

Gotta go.

We.

Helen says there's no limit to the variation you can find within wood, and she sees few limits to what she can do with it.

Heading now to Broadway Dance Lab in New York City.

That's a place where choreographers gather to test new ideas and work in different styles.

A true incubator, the Dance Lab gives performers the resources they need to bring their wildest dreams to the stage.

Currently, there are no other places in New York City that exists, like Broadway Dance Lab.

We provide space for choreographers and a dance company to choreographers, so that all the choreographer has to do is walk in the room and begin.

We do not place demands in the lab on what you are.

To work, on what you are to explore.

It is truly a creative place for you as a choreographer, to come in with the best tools at your disposal and just start.

Just play.

Follow your impulses.

If that's what you feel like doing, and seeing where that leads, or coming in with a pre-planned idea and seeing if it works so that they have no concern whatsoever.

But the artistic process.

I, as an artistic director, do not dictate what a choreographer works on.

So I could reach out to Marcello Gomes, for instance, from the the ballet world, and he could come in and want to do something hip hop.

I know that sounds somewhat outrageous to some people, but this is the freedom that we're looking to offer our artistic community.

This was a really, for me, an incredible invitation to to say, hey, we are giving you the studio for four hours, each day, and you can create whatever you want, and it's fine if you don't show something.

And it's fine if you do show a little piece of it.

If you want to just talk to your dancers, you can.

And to have that blank canvas, you are able to be much more creative.

Wait and see what we might put together.

Know that would be my lucky day.

Yeah, come by me.

Probably.

Dance lab is the only place that employs dancers at a competitive salary to retain their services.

We also give them insurances that if a dancer gets injured, that can be a very costly thing for them.

They have doctor's appointments and physical therapists and, recuperation can be very, very expensive for them.

So if I'm a choreographer in a room with my dancers and I know they don't have workman's comp insurance, am I going to ask them to try something that might be a little bit dangerous?

So my philosophy is we secure these dancers with competitive salaries and insurance in order to allow them to feel the freedom to try anything.

I don't think it can be underestimated.

the effect that working with all of these multiple choreographers has on the dance company itself and that company of young dancers.

So one week, they have Marcello Gomes, the next week they're working with Andy Blank and Buehler, a Tony Award winner who may come in and work on some pre-production for a new musical he's developing last night.

So Kirk was on the road pushing on the weekend every week, opinion polls, working with, Camille Brown, who may wish to do as many two minute sequences as she possibly can.

And all of these dancers are hired so that they can do as much of that as possible and provide as much of that for each choreographer as possible.

See my hero.

In no time do I hear, oh, just like that.

I, for one, have seen the dance world around me be very segregated.

You are either a Broadway choreographer or a modern choreographer, or a ballet choreographer.

By gathering together the dance community at large that we can strengthen and the products that we see on the stage.

I think that as dancers, we train our bodies to over the years, many, many years to be able to do that certain step or to be able to be the perfect Juliet or the perfect Swan Queen.

And I think that you do need time as well to develop yourself as a choreographer.

Of course, it's nice if something has a future, of course, somebody if if they if they see it and they like it, but it's also okay if it not because I know that dancers and I have have done something and we have worked towards something, I cannot tell anyone where we will be in ten years.

But the arts community, from the ballet world to the Broadway world, need a place like this.

So it's my firm belief that all it takes is the awareness that it's here now, that we're here to stay, that we need your support and it will find its way.

Back to the boot.

Now for our Louisiana Treasures segment.

Lake Charles is Ryan Street is lined with a row of magnificent historic buildings, none grander than the circa 1911 courthouse.

Adly Cormier shares the history of the institution that stands as the fulcrum that keeps the scales of justice in balance.

We're in the 1911 historic Calcasieu Courthouse.

It was completed in 1912, after the Great Fire of 1910, that leveled most of Lake Charles.

Lake Charles was a city of wood.

It was a sawmill town, and because it was a sawmill town, buildings were built really close together.

There were even wooden sidewalks.

And in April, in 1910, the town literally went up in flames.

there was a strong breeze from the Gulf.

there was trash fires behind, the Williams Opera House, which was located just up the street.

And that fire leveled most of downtown Lake Charles, about 100 blocks of Lake Charles were affected.

27 blocks were burned to the ground, to the ashes, including City Hall, the courthouse, the Catholic church, schools, and about 106 businesses downtown.

The police jury decided to rebuild better, stronger and bigger with a fabulous building.

the Green Dome Copper Dome courthouse is a real symbol of southwest Louisiana.

And, they went with trophy architects of the time.

The New Orleans firm of Pharaoh and Oliver Day, who designed thousands of buildings all over the South and the Midwest and were really the trophy architects of the day, the ones you really wanted to have if you wanted a great building, while the folks in southwest Louisiana wanted a great building and they got a great building.

the building has a lot of wonderful classical details, great materials.

Marble, bronze, oak.

It's a building made to last for centuries, and it's doing pretty well.

It's been 105 years in the making.

We are in historic A, courtroom A and courtroom A was the site of many famous trials.

perhaps the most interesting was the trial in 1930.

From 1939 to 1942, the three trials of Tony Joe Henry, a woman who was convicted of murder and actually was executed on the premises of the courthouse, the only Louisiana woman to be electrocuted for murder was executed right here in Calcasieu Parish.

there are some people who say the courthouse is haunted by her memory and haunted by her actions.

the smell of cheap perfume and burning hair, the lights flickering off and on, and all sorts of electrical hijinx are part of her legacy in this wonderful old building.

But it's a grand building.

And, some of the things I want to point out particularly are the really elaborate, moldings and details of the pilasters.

There's wonderful columns with, with, really spectacular, carving, the oak, of course, is the dark fumed oak water, sort of beautifully carved to represent the epitome of what a southern fourth room should look like.

It's very adjustable.

the judge's stand is even graced by two ceiling fans, which would have been important before you had air conditioning.

So it's, it's a grand brand building.

In one of the showstoppers.

Southwest Louisiana who fabulous lighting fixture was actually, put together in a renovation based on what lighting fixtures were designed to look like for buildings of the stature.

The motif is actually original trials were done during the day, and all of these lunette windows would have been open to allow drafts to come through the building and for the audience and the spectators for the trial, the parish courthouse and all of the buildings that were built after the great part were done with the, wealth that was created by lumber in Southwest Louisiana.

Craig Mitchell Smith is an unconventional artist.

He's self-taught, and he travels the world teaching techniques of glassmaking that he developed himself.

so come through the looking glass to see for yourself.

I had always loved making things.

My joy has always come from making things, but I could never label those things art.

I just could see it in my head of what I wanted for my garden that didn't exist.

And so I just started.

I borrowed the money for the kiln and I just started making glass.

And my work looks so different from anybody else's glassware because I'm completely untrained.

I was doing things that later I was told you couldn't do.

And now I'm traveling the world teaching these methods of glassmaking that we've developed uninhibited by his lack of experience, Craig Mitchell Smith developed a technique of molding glass into three dimensional shapes.

The technique I have, I don't know that it really has a name yet.

I used to be a painter.

I was a theatrical set designer.

I did a lot of restoration paint work.

And so I think like a painter.

So what I knew to do once I got a kiln was I started cutting glass in the shape of brush strokes.

I by chemically compatible glass that can be melted together, and I cut them in the shape of brush strokes.

And then I imagined that the bottom of my kiln is a canvas, and I draw with shards of glass on the floor of my kiln.

And then I fire them to about 1500 degrees and it liquefies.

The glass melts together and it slowly cools it.

So then I end up with a flat piece of glass.

But I want those pieces to be three dimensional and curved.

So then I look at each piece of glass and I imagine it.

It comes in a flat form, and I imagine the shape I want it to have.

And then I take stainless steel and I bend it or find curves of stainless steel, and I form topography in the bottom of the kiln.

And I balanced the glass piece on top of it.

And when I fired a second time, the glass gets just warm enough to lose its strength and it collapses onto the curves which it takes on itself.

One of the things I love about glass is I'm a language guy, and it's a metaphor for me, for the human condition.

It is malleable.

When it's warm, it's brittle when it's cold.

At its best, it is transparent and brilliantly colorful.

Those are all the things I think we can strive to be as people.

Smith's passion for gardening in flowers is rooted in his childhood.

My inspiration has always come from nature.

Ever since I was a little boy, I spent my time in nature trying to understand and be part of what I see around me.

I'm still living in a garden that I started to plant when I was a child.

So I am, a nurturer, all gardeners.

I am a gardener at heart, and all gardeners are people who tend things.

So this is a natural expression of the the beauty.

I see, in nature around me is the, the, the basis of my personal joy.

Each one of Greg Mitchell Smith's large glass flowers is put together on site, and they can be a bit tricky to assemble.

This is what you're most likely to crack the glass.

When you drill glass, it has to be kept wet to both lubricate it and cool it.

Through a couple of years of experimentation, I learned how to bolt the glass together, with cushy fittings in between them.

and we learned how to put the glass together in a way that's durable and holds up through these winters.

You drill this last hole, and then this one is done.

As Craig Mitchell Smith goes about planting and pruning his glass flowers, he hopes that visitors will be inspired to stop by each of the ten gardens at Stan Hewitt and smell the roses.

Our goal is these pieces are, beautiful and they're sited exactly where I wanted them to go.

I'm trying to get people to see the gardens in a new way, and we've, situated all the pieces so that there are beautiful photographic opportunities with the house always has the background.

One of my favorites, of course, are the poppies.

I love doing those insanely happy looking, orangy.

Red poppies on there, twisting copper stems just rising out of the magnificent flower beds, adding a color that, right now the beds are filled with purple and lavender and you've got the shock of orange.

But later on in the season, more of the flowers are orange and red and gold.

So, what I'm trying to do is give people a reason to come back and see the gardens and new.

They're very beautiful gardens and they're very different.

Spring, summer and fall.

And that is that for this edition of Art rocks.

But don't despair.

You can always watch episodes of the show@lpb.org slash, rocks.

And if you want more, Country Roads Magazine is a great resource for making the most of Louisiana's vibrant arts and culture close to home and all around the state.

So until next week, I'm James Fox Smith, and thanks for watching.