Up next on Art Rocks, a New Orleans artist who uses actual landscape to address landscape issues.

I'm very concerned about the environment.

It's very important to me to have the freedom of expression politically, poetically, the many facets of working in glass.

I love working with glass because it's both artistic and technical and a musical group that will change the way you think about the handbell Chorus.

That's all about to happen on Art Rocks.

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Hello, and welcome back to Art Rocks.

With me, James Fox Smith, publisher of Country Roads magazine.

Allow me to introduce New Orleans artist Jacqueline Bishop.

She's a highly regarded landscape painter who creates symbolism.

Rich paintings that express her concern that natural habitats a yielding to the pressures of human activity.

Listen now as Bishop discusses the visceral connection she strives to make between her art, her viewers, and the land, air and water upon which we all depend.

It's very important to me to have the freedom of expression politically, poetically.

And I would hope that no two viewers would have the same view of the work.

Because how can that be?

I mean, we're all coming from different histories, different personal stories and experiences.

I'm very concerned about the environment, the future, but also the past and what we've already done that can never be repaired.

I work in many different mediums, painting primarily watercolor, collage, assemblage.

I really love printmaking because of the surprise that it brings when you pull the paper off the press.

But I love the whole meditation of painting, getting up every day, knowing that you're going to go back into that painting where you left off yesterday and completing it and knowing when it's done.

But I love watercolor because of the spontaneity of it, especially the method that I use over collage.

It's just very filled also with surprises.

When I'm traveling in South America, especially Brazil, I end up giving my clothes away so I can have all this space in my suitcases to bring back discarded papers and other items that I can use in my collage work or my assemblage work.

And it could be mostly news press.

I like the whole idea that, you know, even in Southeast Asia, that's a big difference in the paper quality from different cities in India and then and Bangladesh.

I picked up all this newspaper and it was very different paper.

And then I collect water.

For years I collected from the Amazon River.

Now I collect from the Mississippi River, the Gulf of Mexico and post BP oil spill was very strange water.

And I use that mixed with watercolor over the collage.

There's no way to predict how the water and the watercolor will react on the paper because it will be very different substance and it reacts very differently from the top to the bottom.

So I call that a chemical reaction in the watercolor.

It's fascinating.

I love birds and bird imagery and I started having to do more research on the birds and found out that a lot of the birds I had been painting were extinct, which seemed like a pretty strong word to describe anything.

I realized that my paintings contained extinct species without even knowing it.

And that took me in that direction, which ended up taking me all over the world to study birds, to travel with scientists, to study the landscape.

And of course, looking at my own landscape from the Mississippi Gulf Coast to the Louisiana landscape that is disappearing.

And as much as I never considered myself a landscape painter, I was a landscape painter.

Combining science with art was not really a priority of mine.

I didn't set out to do that.

It just happened, I think more through the birds and having to do more research to find the subject matter that I wanted to use in formed my paintings and my work has always been about the narrative.

I like storytelling, but I also like real stories, whether they are real landscapes or not.

Probably my landscapes are imaginary, but telling real stories from the vine to the vein and a female tree shape with a bird head and the branches turn into arms and everything is absolutely connected in that painting.

But the background is a beautiful, kind of a fiery red sky.

So beautiful.

But our beautiful skies and sunsets are beautiful because of the chemicals in the sky, because of the chemicals in the refineries or from the cattle ranching or from the cities with all of the pollution coming out of them.

They change the color to something so beautiful.

But we're not supposed to be breathing it.

World view is a larger scale painting, and it is very nest like.

And the subject matter, there's the earth and in the very middle of it, but it's almost camouflaged with everything.

And right in the center is a howler monkey that I have seen in Brazil making an announcement and the mouth of the monkey is wide open, screaming at the top of its lungs and everything around it is very close knit nest like built by something.

But many of them are leaving that nest or it's unraveling on its own or by something.

It doesn't feel as comfortable and beautiful as it looks on the surface, because I do observe the landscape and I have this affiliation with garbage and discarded objects and whether it be natural or manmade, I did notice many years ago how many baby shoes were in the landscape, and I started picking them up and putting them in my backpack.

Well, you know, I'm going to do something with these.

And then I started painting them, painting landscapes on them because I realized the correlation between the landscape and children and our memories to the landscape and how it is disappearing beneath their feet because of the decisions adults have made about it.

So it seemed very important to cover them with the landscape.

No matter where you live in Louisiana, opportunities to connect with the arts are everywhere, but you still have to know where to look.

So here's a list of some cool exhibits, festivals and concerts and tours coming up around the state.

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

And while we're at it, PVS Rocks website features an archive of previous episodes.

So to see any episode again, just log on to LP dot org.

The Glass Studio is a creative arts and teaching facility in Sparks, Nevada.

It's home base for four local artists, each with a different background as you're about to see in their hands.

Glass reflects an almost infinite variety of colors, forms and textures handle with care because his their story The Glass Studio is located in Sparks, Nevada, are the only glass art studio that's open to the public and I'm aware of.

In the northern Nevada area, we have four artists and we're all glass artists, but we all have a different discipline.

Where does the cast pieces, architectural pieces and very linear precision pieces?

It was about 20 probably about 27 years ago.

I got involved with Glass, What I like about working with Glass is that it is it's a rigid state, but it also can and some of the processes that I use, it's in a molten state or liquid state.

It's challenging.

You don't know sometimes what you're going to get when it comes out of the kiln.

Yeah, it's a little it could be a little warmer.

You have opalescent and transparent glass and we can have all different shades and characteristics in between.

Cindy does copper foil and LED came traditional stained glass.

Glass is so versatile.

I think that's one of the really interesting things about it, especially stained glass because it's the light is usually transmitted through the glass.

It's got a real life of its own.

The soldering iron is 700 degrees Fahrenheit to melt the solder, the hottest part of the blade is right here on the side.

So that's where I'm touching the solder to the blade.

I stand it upright on the corners so it flows well off the side of the blade onto the seam.

Julia makes beautiful flame work, beads of all different kinds.

It's magic.

There's so many things you can do.

The colors change in the playing in different combinations, depending on what you're making look different.

You can cold water, you can hot work it.

So that heats towards the core.

It's going to get more molten and I have to keep it spinning to keep gravity from affecting the shape of the bead.

So now I have a white glass with green dots, and then I'll use the flame to melt those flat.

Usually my little critters get most of the attention.

The owls and the frogs are probably my most favorite.

I work with feasible glass, which is colored art glass that's specifically designed for heat work.

I like to kind of paint a picture using the crushed glass.

I recently went to South Africa and so I am working on a giraffe piece because I love giraffes.

I sketch out the animal, I draw them on clear glass, and then I color it in using the colored pressure glass.

And then I have my main piece, my focal piece, which is the animal.

And then I put it on some sort of background piece.

It's not only an artistic process, it's also a scientific process.

The glass is made with the manufacturers.

They do use silica sand and chemicals added into the silica sand to get the colors that they want.

Sulfur results in yellows and oranges and reds and coppers will result in blues and chromium, I believe is what they use for greens.

I majored in science.

I have a Bachelor of Science degree in geology.

Of all things.

The glass behaves differently at different temperatures, plus the different colors behave differently at different temperatures.

It may not have the color that you see when it's cold than when it's hot.

Once it's put into account, it will change, color will mature to its final color.

What's next for the glass studio?

I would like to go big.

I want to make some big projects, technically challenging projects, do a little bit of collaboration.

I like to make this space more inviting to the public, which is why I like having all the other artists in here as well.

Dayton, Ohio Cartoonist Mike Peters makes work that same daily in more than 800 newspapers all around the world.

A lifetime of real world experiences guide Peters storylines and the canine antics of his beloved comic strip, Mother Goose and Grimm.

Take a look.

I still work for the Dayton Daily News in Dayton, Ohio, but it's like I live there because I have my computer.

I get on their thing and I hear the news.

The newscasts, what they think are the top stories.

And I go, okay, I can do a cartoon about that, you know, And and my editors, they are always amazed that I am so attuned to what's going on in Dayton, Ohio.

He works for the Dayton or the Chicago Daily News and then the Dayton Daily News as an editorial cartoonist.

Then, after he won the Pulitzer in 1981, he was being courted by bigger papers.

The syndicates had been asking me to do a comic strip, which is very rare.

I mean, you know, usually you have to go and beg to do a comic strip to the syndicate.

But I have been syndicated with my political cartoons.

He really like we like living Dayton and we like our kids growing up in Dayton.

And he said he'd always want to do a comic strip and maybe that would be a good outlet.

But it never dawned on me that I was going to be doing it every day of my life for the next 30 years.

I had no idea Tom going to art school.

But in the meantime, I meet this girl, fabulous girl, you know.

Well, it turns out her father was the dean of students at Washington University and then art school.

He did what he did best, which was draw cartoons for the newspaper in the yearbook and stuff.

Instead of going to class, because nobody ever told him going class is a good idea until he met this one professor.

He said, You're a great cartoonist, do cartoons.

He said, When you go to figure during class, don't draw a figure, exaggerated, exaggerate the figure, make it into a cartoon.

When you go to a painting class, paint a cartoon.

When you go to design class, design a cartoon.

I said, Mr. Brownell, don't they get mad?

He said, Mike, you're already flunking.

It's okay.

And then, much to my father's dismay, he started getting A's and B's and actually graduated.

It changed my life.

I knew then that cartoons was my destiny, was my goal with my bliss.

I love to do them.

And and obviously the world is telling me, you've got to do this.

If you try to make up something, it's not as real as if you just do it right out of your life.

And not a lot of my stuff is right out of my life.

The comic strip came about pretty much out of his head, characters that he'd always played around with.

And then the dog is him.

He's the dog.

And one time I proved it because the dog drinks out of toilets when he doesn't do that, but he does it out trash cans and I caught him.

He was trying to wean himself off of Fritos.

So Marion came in one day to my office and she said, What are you doing?

And I came up and and I am licking my finger and getting the crumbs of the of the Fritos down at the bottom.

And she says, Oh, my God, you're the dog.

I never realized I was a dog.

I always thought the dog was just this entity that I was trying to do.

Funny cartoon, but I was the dog.

And once I learned that the strip all came together and I'd been having a great time ever since I made about 700 papers around the country, around the world.

So it's great.

And this was my daughters are always saying to me, Dad, you've got a bat in the cave.

And I was thinking, Who can say that?

So I have Abe Lincoln saying to Roosevelt, Teddy, you've got a bat in your cave, which I thought was a really funny idea, because he probably does have a bat in his cave.

But that's how I come up with ideas.

I think of things.

I write things down that my kids say or that people say on the news or that I see at a grocery store.

And then I try to make it into something that's funny that people will hopefully laugh at.

I know when I'm hitting my truth, it'll hit the truth of a thousand other people out there.

And then I always get good reaction from people because they say, Oh my God, is exactly true for me.

And finally, the musical group Ten Tabulations from Reno, Nevada, is a handbell ensemble with a setlist that is as varied as its members imaginations from holiday staples to Led Zeppelin classics.

This Choir of Bells astonishes and enchants with musical stylings that really rings its audiences.

Bells and whistles are an interesting instrument.

People think handles are only played at Christmas, but a lot of people think that bells are only in church and they aren't.

To learn the basic technique of a Handel is actually very simple Pick up the melody, make sure it's facing the right direction at twice important double check to make sure the right bell in your hand.

And then you just do a quick flick of a wrist and it'll ring.

Like with a piano.

It's like taking off a piano key and handing it to someone and then taking off another key and handing it to somebody else and handing it to somebody else.

Each bell has a pitch, just like each key on a piano is a certain pitch or a certain note.

And just like, you know, a tuba plays really low notes and a piccolo plays really high notes, Size is relative.

So the small bells play, the high pitches and the really big bells play the little pitches and smash it as if you just walked in off the street thinking, Wow, what is this whole tin tabulations handbell thing?

What you would see is a group of very energetic, very good musicians helping you to have a great time and show you millions of things to do with this instrument that you probably have never seen before and go, Wow, I did not know you could do that.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

How did some tabulations get their name?

Someone had heard the word Tin Tin tabulation, which is a rough translation of what a hand would be in Latin.

So they said, Barb, what's that word?

And she didn't really know, so she tried to conjugate it herself from her understanding of Latin, and she missed some of tin tin tabulations.

We got ten tabulations.

This is not your grandma Handbell choir.

We like to do a lot of different genres.

We don't stick to just classical or just pieces written for bells.

I think that's a unique art form because of the dependency upon other people to make the beautiful sounds.

The thing that makes tintype fun is that they're passionate about ringing.

We all have different skill levels, there's different people are better at different things, but in the end the focus is always on making music.

It's a big time investment.

We rehearse 3 hours a week, we do about 20 to 30 performances a year.

You really feed off an audience's energy.

I would like to have enriched their lives in some way through the performance.

The best thing we can do as an ensemble is to make one.

You person in the audience come back or even become a ringer.

And that'll do it for this edition of Art Rocks.

But remember, Art Lover, you can always watch the episodes of the show at LP B dot org slash Rocks.

And meanwhile, Country Roads magazine makes another great resource for learning what's going on in the arts all across this state.

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