Coming up next on Art rocks, arresting art inspired by the heavy burden of alcohol and drug addiction.

You hear all the pain, the problem at the beginning, then you start seeing hope at the end.

You see where they are now plain not using in the life change that they have.

So I try to put these in the pieces of artwork I do.

The humble home of author Edgar Allan Poe.

They walk into this small little cottage located in a sea of tenements.

Capturing the artistry of wide open spaces.

You've got to be able to get back to nature.

You've got to get it out of the city.

We all need that, whether you paint or not.

And the people whose stories speak from the Spirit House of New Orleans, that's all coming out right now on Art Rocks.

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Hello and thank you for being part of Art Rocks.

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

Today, we're starting with the story of a Baton Rouge artist who uses a decades long battle with alcohol addiction to inspire hope in other sufferers.

Much of BNP Buddy's deeply personal work tells of the consequences of addiction and the freedom of getting sober.

But when it comes to storytelling, that's not all that Peabody is making happen.

First grade I got interested in art because I want to contest.

I was kind of a storytelling piece of work.

It's a picture of my whole family in a car going across the Mississippi Bridge.

We'd go to foster a lot.

My family had a camp over there.

I got a chance to really study a lot under LSU with Michael Crespo, and then I went and got my Masters of Southern Research will study with Brian Cane, Jean Paul Hubbard and Frank.

That was a big influence on me.

I really enjoyed it.

I've always enjoyed storytelling in my artwork.

I've been in recovery for 29 years and so I work with a lot of young people that have addiction problems.

And I taught at Baton Rouge Community College, was the head of the Baton Rouge Foundation there.

And we a lot of young people there would come and talk to me about their problems because they felt safe.

They felt that it was comfortable for them to be able to come and tell me the different situations they were having with school, family and whatever.

And so when we had our first art contest or really art show there, the kids kind of challenged me and said, Know, Mr. Peabody, what are you going to do for our art show?

And I said, okay, I'll do something.

It was about the young people I talked to in their recovery.

This was 16 years ago.

A lot of the kids were wearing the hooks in their nose and eyebrows and they had the tongue rings and everything.

So I kind of made, I guess, fun and just love them.

And had fishhooks all and part of the face.

But then it also has Adams in there.

You know that back then you could buy something for five bucks.

They could get a hit for five bucks.

So let's get the $5 bill.

There were a lot of times in total denial that they had the problem.

And so that's one of the things whenever we ask them, it's, oh, no, it's not me, it's my friends get the problem, not me.

And then over time, I'd have people that would actually come over here and tell me about different drugs, because I was not really familiar with all of them.

With this day and age, just they change.

And every day we hear something different.

And so they would come over and tell me about them and I'd make a piece so that I could kind of talk to other people about it.

What this has done is really opened a good dialog for people to come over and look at them and talk to.

A lot of time people will tell their story and there is what we call a speaker meeting.

They will tell all about themselves from the beginning, what it was like their recovery was, and then how they're doing in sobriety.

And it's interesting to hear them because you hear all the pain, the problems at the beginning.

Then you start seeing hope and then at the end you see where they are now plain not using in the life change that they have.

So I try to put these in the pieces of artwork I do.

And one of them was about the young lady.

It's called a chameleon, and she was telling her story and said more or less she had to be a chameleon.

And this she had to be one way around her parents, one way around her friends, and one way around the drug dealers.

And I found this really interesting that that's exactly what she was doing.

She was being a split personality and it was eating her lunch, having to do that.

24 seven.

There's another piece about a young man who said he worshiped the alcohol bottle just like you would Bible.

And he said he instead of having a Bible by his bed, he had a whiskey bottle by the bed.

And the first thing he did during the march was get up and take a sip of whiskey and had that with him when he would drive, put it under his car seat, just like whenever he needed that little hit, he would have it.

But he said that's all he did was worship the alcohol of women to give me one word about their recovery.

And these are mostly women who have had more than one or two or three years in recovery.

And so they have given me words that what recovery has meant to them and the words that they used, it's God's will.

They have trust, they have faith, truth, happiness, words that really are, you know, something that means something to them personally.

So that's what the piece is more or less trying to reflect.

Recovery does really change someone's life for the betterment.

And so that's why I've used these 30 words from these people to more or less tell that story.

And if, you know, Southside had a heart of gold, you were really trying to get that heart of gold to come back.

And that's when we decided we put them in a book form so that we could actually use it as a tool just to open communication with people who want to be able to talk about addiction in a comfortable way.

My work is not limited to addressing addictions.

I did quite a bit of other three dimensional art, and this was a process I learned with very Caden how to cast like that.

So I would cast plaster of Paris cloth in the mold and then when I pop it out, I have the cast of the Fish and so then from there I just have a plain white plaster Paris model that I then start working on by just selling and painting.

And then adding the fans and make them stands for them, or either put them in a piece somewhere that I have on the wall.

I paint mostly with acrylic and I use pen and ink and all, but my methods have been something I've come up with now, and it's kind of a I put paint on and then I take it off.

I put it down.

I can a stroke to restructure the stroke to restructure.

And I like the old patina look on a lot of things.

So that's why you'll see a lot of texture and different colors in my paints because it's layered multiple layers to be able to get to that effect I have and I use that affect more than just shading.

I like to do that in my work by being able to put on different layers of paint.

I use a technique that I've kind of created where I can remove paint and leave parts of it on and then put another layer on and keep building up where I have four or five or more layers of paint under one surface.

Louisiana is always alive with opportunities to get involved with the visual and the performing arts.

So here's a list of some of what's headed your way in the weeks to come.

To learn more about these and other events in Louisiana, pick up a copy of Country Roads magazine.

Another resource, The Art Rocks website features every episode of the program.

So just log on to LP dot org and follow the prompts going up to the Bronx in New York City.

Now to visit a site that should be on the bucket list for fans of mystery and the macabre.

Everywhere, it's Po Cottage, where the legendary Edgar Allan Poe penned some of his most enduring works, including Annabel Lee, The Bells and the Cask of Amontillado come inside Poe's last home.

If you dare to see where this great figure of American romanticism passed some of his final and most productive years.

Edgar Allan Poe's cottage is located in the Bronx.

It sits inside Poe Park, which is on the Grand Concourse of East Kingsbridge Road.

Edgar Allan Poe moved here in 1846 with his young wife, Virginia, and his mother in law, Mrs. Klem.

And the main reason was to save Virginia from dying of tuberculosis.

Edgar Allan Poe moved to a small village called Fordham, located in Westchester County.

It wasn't the Bronx at the time.

This was the countryside of New York City.

Doctors thought this was the ideal environment where Virginia could be cured because it was the countryside, the house was located on a farm owned by the Valentine family.

It was built in 1812.

It's the last remaining structure of the village of Fordham.

This was the typical style residence for a working class family.

As we all know, Edgar Allan Poe was one of the poorest writers in American literature.

The House today sits in one of the poorest districts in the Bronx, and the Bronx is one of the poorest districts in the United States.

People don't realize it.

They assumed that he was this rich writer because of his popularity today.

But he was extremely poor.

All of the items inside are period pieces.

Just give you an idea of what Edgar Allan Poe might have had while he was living here in the 1840s.

But we do have two original items here.

There is a mirror, there's a gilded edge mirror here hanging on the wall and there's a rocking chair as well.

Now, the rocking chair dates back to the 1840, and it actually belonged to Mrs. Kline.

There's a coal burning stove that was built just two years after he died, but it was very typical to the type of coal burning stove that was being used in his time.

It was a very useful tool or appliance to have had not only cooked your food, but it would warm up the house.

As you walk throughout the cottage, you notice that it has low hanging ceilings.

Well, this just kept the house warm.

It kept that warm air close to your body during the winter time.

Unfortunately, despite all these efforts to keep Virginia comfortable, she died in this small bedroom on the first floor in 1847.

The actual bed frame she died on is still there.

It's the third original piece of the house.

Pohl was very productive here.

He wrote one of the best short stories.

It's the Cask of Amontillado.

He wrote Annabel Lee here.

He wrote The Bells.

He also wrote Landau's Cottage.

And in it he describes the scenery.

He describes as the cottage.

He gives us an idea of how the Bronx looked to him in 1846.

This is where Edgar Allan Poe last lived.

This is where he lost his wife.

And people feel that when they walk into this house, they walk into this small little cottage located in a sea of tenements.

And they get this feeling, especially when we tell them the story of Annabel Lee and how he was inspired to write it.

When Virginia died, her funeral was in this house.

And when I describe her coffin being viewed in the party room, people really feel that.

They really feel that emotion.

And so I would say this is where you would get the crux of of the emotion and the inspiration he felt when he wrote these stories.

So at the turn of the 20th century, there was a push for preservation of New York City history.

You have proponents for preservation of houses that belong to writers.

You had the Shakespeare Society of New York City campaigning to save places like the Edgar Allan Poe cottage, Teddy Roosevelt as police commissioner.

He was also involved in Preservation of Poe Cottage in the Bronx.

We had the Bronx Society of the Arts and Sciences, and they were the major push to have the house not only moved from across the street, but have a restored and opened as a museum.

In 1917, we have the Edgar Allan Poe cottage on the Northern end.

We have a Bandshell, which was completed in the 1920s at the southern end of the park.

We have the new Pole Park Visitor Center, which was just constructed three years ago.

It was designed by Japanese architect Toshiko Mori, and it's supposed to look like the raven in mid-flight when I have a young group of students here and they asked me, you know, why should we care about Poe?

And I say, Well, you like hip hop music?

Absolutely.

We love it.

Well, what is hip hop?

Is poetry, right?

Oh, was a hip hop artist who and he was a he was a rapper.

He wrote pieces that bind and he was inspired by what was bothering him at the time.

We read some books.

Well, what have you read?

So there is a connection there.

I want people to learn about the man himself, and I also want young writers to know that a lot of their inspiration, a lot of their best works comes out of their emotion.

Just like Edgar Allan Poe demonstrated in his works today, were able to not only preserve these houses, but to show them to the Bronx community and brag how rich the historic heritage here in the Bronx is.

A group of artists in Reno, Nevada, have teamed up with the Nevada Land Trust to help conserve large tracts of the state's dramatic open spaces.

The artists collaborate, creating landscape works and offering them for sale.

Proceeds from those sales support the Land Trust's various conservation projects call it the Art of conservation, if you like.

The important thing is how it works.

Our mission as an organization is to protect the open spaces and special places in Nevada for future generations.

Art as a vehicle for Nevada Land Trust is very important in the way that it allows us to tell the story of Nevada's open spaces.

The Art of Conservation is an art show that we have been privileged to participate in for the last four years.

My manager, the executive director, Alicia Rabon, came in contact with Eric Harland, a local artist over the Winnemucca Ranch project some years ago when they were looking at developing out there and kind of annexing that into Reno and found that they had a common interest in protecting the land out there.

And through that conversation and collaboration, they hatch the idea of having a joint art show.

We were invited to participate and become beneficiaries of a portion of the proceeds.

We have over 100 artists on our list, and usually about a quarter of them will participate any given year.

We have photographers, we have painters, fine art painters, we have collage work, we have glasswork sculpture, and the majority of it is going to be landscape painting.

What we do is, is we try to bring together public awareness as well as efforts through the Nevada Land Trust to keep out big developments and subdivisions.

If you look up at the top of Mount Rose, where the sledding meadow is, that little bit of property was slated for development.

It was supposed to have a hotel and a helipad on it.

And when we found out about it, we were able to dive in, raise some money and actually purchase the property and keep it in its natural state.

Ultimately give it to the Forest Service so that that land actually remains pristine.

But it's also a place of recreation for the community.

It's a tremendous vehicle for us to tell the story of Nevada.

I've been so blessed in being able to be related with these artists and understanding the passion that they have for the landscape and being able to tell the story of Nevada's open spaces to people that maybe don't get out there or don't really understand or appreciate it and are quite stunned to find out that this, you know, rendition in a painting is actually in their backyard.

Well, we had a paint out a couple of weeks ago out by Washoe Lake.

A paint out is where we all go out in our own directions and find a scene that we like and paint it.

And a lot of times they will end up in the show.

Not only do we like to go out and paint, a lot of times we'll camp where we are.

We will hike where we are, picnic where we are, and it means something special to not see buildings and roads.

Every artist has a different vision, a different palette.

They have favorite colors.

And then, yeah, you can do a 360 degrees around one spot and have an entirely different view.

And with Nevada you can turn look in one direction.

Have pines turn the other direction.

You have a playa, you've got all sorts of views from one spot.

We use art throughout the year.

I think not only in the tangible fashion that we use it here in the art show, but we keep a lot of the images up on our website.

And so somebody who's just cruising through, you know, passing through our Web site, who otherwise may just see a lot of words, you know, someone that catches their eye and they're able to resonate with the work that we do, you know, And in that way through art, it gives us another voice.

Throughout the year.

I see art as a lens and it helps to focus around the world.

It helps us focus beneath our feet.

It helps us focus within a person so that we can see in a very constricted way without outside influences.

One particular facet, whether it be political, environmental, sociological or just emotional and personal.

So art is our lens to see the world.

And you see that world through an artist's eyes and what their lens looks like.

Nonprofits like ourselves are always striving for ways to get a message out.

We don't always have the physical infrastructure to do heavy ad campaigns, so finding those unique ways to speak to the public that can resonate with them and inspire them to join our cause or to be interested in what we're doing.

You know, Badlands are very important and we need to protect them because we're getting a lot of growth to this area.

And growth is vital to our economy.

But we have open lands and they don't need to be sprawled on to I do feel protected of these lands.

These lands aren't protected.

We don't have any place to go out and paint anymore.

We'd be doing cityscapes.

So what's the point?

I think we are, as artists, able to get out and to places that other people aren't able to see us that need conservation.

So we're able to bring people and awareness to what is out there back home.

It's our Louisiana Treasures segment The Spirit of African Americans who helped construct the city of New Orleans looms large in the small frame of a building known as Spirit House.

Sculptor Martin Payton reveals how he and the late renowned sculptor John Scott came up with the concept for this major site specific public sculpture.

Sits at the intersection of DC and Saint Bernard.

It was called the DC Circle for a long time.

Then around 2000, 2001, they put out a call for artists to submit and Scott and I got together and submitted as a team.

And what resulted is the sculpture.

You see, they're called Spirit House.

It's a monument to the unnamed African Americans who contributed to the development of New Orleans.

It exists near two schools, Saint Leo, the Great and Madame Nelson Elementary Schools.

So we went to the schools to speak to the students about what we were trying to do and talk to them about how this monument came up, what we what we thought about the African American contribution to New Orleans.

And we asked them to contribute by making drawings of what their parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and older cousins had done for employment.

And we got all of these drawings.

One child whose grandfather was very important to the Mardi Gras Indian tradition, Drew, that we had plumbers and auto mechanics and teachers and cooks and musicians and those children's drawings were transcribed, blown up and cut into the front and back ends of of the piece.

And that was about having the community own the piece as well.

I had seen John Scott creating examples that might be monuments for this kind of thing for almost 30 years.

And so when this commission came up, it was an opportunity meeting preparation, and.

Now we're off to a South Florida warehouse that's been transformed into a unique space in which to experience art.

Listen to what inspired 29 artists to join this creative collaboration in Fort Lauderdale.

Rough and Tumble was inspired by the space that this exhibit is housed within because it is a very raw warehouse space.

There's about 8000 square feet, and it's really ideal for projects that are more experimental and rough.

You know, a lot of these projects that you'll see in the exhibit were made specifically for this exhibit.

So I gave the artists my definitions of both rough and tumble, and they were supposed to be inspired by that.

So some of the works were made beforehand and other ones were made specifically for the show.

This space offers a lot of challenges and it also offers a lot of opportunities because it is so raw and so large.

So one of the biggest challenges is actually the height of the ceiling because the space is is so large, it oftentimes works well to exhibit works that are hanging people's reaction when they walk in.

This space is generally wow.

As soon as they walk in, they'll see this like 30 foot tank that's manned a bicycle parts.

It's actually made to be movable and manned by four different bicyclists.

It kind of goes in a straight line back and forth on the street, but it's kind of in its conceptual stage right now.

It's a sculpture.

And, you know, right when you walk in, there's a giant mouth made out of ceramic teeth.

There's really not much else that I know of in South Florida that's like us.

It's got this wonderful light during the day from the clear story windows and large garage doors.

But then at night it takes on a completely different character.

So a lot of the work in this show actually is projection oriented.

And then there's also some interesting intimate works as well that people can look up.

Of course, that there are often a lot of interactive exhibits in here, like a few of the pieces in this exhibit are supposed to be walked through.

There's a stretchy fabric installation that's supposed to look like it's supposed to be the idea of flesh, and people are allowed to walk through that, as well as a couple other pieces that are interactive.

So that makes it a little more approachable for the audience of interactive pieces.

And, you know, having videos, television is something that people instantly have a connection with.

So that's not always the kind of thing that you see in an art museum that you do see here in this exhibition space.

And that is that for this edition of Art Rocks.

But remember, you can always watch episodes of the show at LP B dot old slash rocks.

And if you can't get enough culture country, Rhodes Magazine makes a great resource for getting up close and personal with visual and performing arts experiences close to home and all around the state.

So until next week I've been James Fox Smith and thanks for watching.