Just ahead on Art Rocks, the careful craft of recreating real life people in clay.

Alanis Morissette talks about the success of her 1995 hit record, Jagged Little Pill and an invitation to join in the Native American social ceremony, The Powwow.

That's all coming up next on Art Rocks.

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Hello and thank you for joining us for Art Rocks.

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

Meet a Baton Rouge artist who has developed an amazing talent for replicating real people using clay.

Becky Gottsagen says she learned the basics while attending a few workshops.

The rest is practice, practice, practice.

Here's her story.

The sculptural work that I admire the most that I'm really drawn to are pieces that are very deep and disturbing, you know, that create a lot of emotions about what was the artist's thinking, what was the person that sculpted thinking?

Because I'm really, really drawn completely to figurative art.

Becky Gottsagen has always been drawn to three dimensional art, but she was in her fifties before she decided that she would become a sculptor.

I always wanted to do people and I wanted to do large sculptures, but there were no classes in Baton Rouge or even New Orleans at the time.

I took to one week workshops at Santa Fe Clay and one was working solid and hollowing the piece out when you were finished and the other was working with a pinch method.

I kind of experimented with both and I tend to go back to working solid and hollowing out because you have kind of more flexibility.

It was exciting to take my first workshop and see that I had some talent.

I could create something that looked like what it was supposed to look like.

One of her most fulfilling projects came out of a trip she took with her husband, Dr. Warren Gottsagen, to a conference about issues surrounding the human brain and cognitive diseases like Alzheimer's and dementia.

There, Becky had an encounter with another artist, Taryn Molder.

Nicole was studying slides of the brain of people who had died from Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia or complications.

And she was doing these really wonderful drawings of what she was seeing in the brain, and she was incorporating parts of the faces.

And when I saw it, my mother died from complications of dementia when she was 79 and 26.

I said, why we should collaborate on doing something together.

While Taryn created paintings of the brain, Becky made busts of the way the patients looked on the outside.

Charlie's place is a support facility for patients being treated for Alzheimer's and dementia.

One patient was Sheldon Bourgeois, the husband of fellow artist Billy Bourgeois.

Sheldon was so cute when I came, and I showed him the picture of his bust that I did.

He turned to his friends at Charlie's place, and he said, You see, I told you I was going to be famous.

I was so adorable.

But Sheldon ended up very sadly dying before the show went up at the man ship.

And Billy called me and asked me if she could use the bust at his memorial service, which was one of the most touching parts of it, I think.

Becky was also later challenged to craft characters portrayed in a play written by Lafayette resident Patricia Seidman.

The play was based in part on the lives of real people.

I said I would love to meet Patricia and I'd love to talk to her about doing figures that relate to these women.

She thought it was a fun idea, and I went and met with them all and I took pictures of them.

And so I did this series of women saying obnoxious things.

And Patricia picked first because it was her play, and she's the one who's saying, I'm sorry I hurt your feelings when I called you stupid, I thought you already knew.

The director of the Acadia Center for the Arts said we have had the best reaction to this show of anything we've ever done here.

Even when I'm trying to make something that serious, there's a twist to it.

I like to laugh at art, particularly in our political environment right now.

Becky began by working on a sculpture of an elderly woman uncomfortable with being seen in a bathing suit.

When I went to sculpt her arms, I realized that she wasn't embarrassed or ashamed that she was like, Here I am and I'm old and I have rolls in my metal and I'm proud of who I am.

And so I changed her hands and she has a cigaret in her hand.

Becky has sculpted scores of personalities, including President Donald Trump, former presidential candidate and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and the prominent PBS documentarian Ken Burns.

But the piece she is proudest of is that of her own mother.

I really was putting off my mother and I think I captured her better than anyone.

And all the pictures I had of her were old and obviously never took pictures thinking I was going to sculpt her face.

But people who see it, who knew my mother, say, Oh my God, it looks just like your mother.

Recently, Becky has become interested in learning a new sculptural technique called hyper realism.

With the way that hyper realism is done is the initial sculpture is done in clay, the way the hair is done.

You take a needle and you use a little grinder and you grind the tip of the hole and then the eye of the needle off.

So it becomes like a little cup like this.

And then you hold the hair and you just poke it in at the direction that hair grows.

Becky is still taking workshops, including one with an artist who works with the legendary wax museum, Madame Tussauds in London.

She is optimistic that she'll continue to improve with each person she recreates and each lesson she takes.

Louisiana's always abuzz with opportunities to get up close and personal with the visual and performing arts.

So here's a list of some exhibits, performances, classes and festivals coming up this month 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 B Dawg and follow the prompts.

Our next story originates out of Cleveland, but it's actually got more to do with a musical masterpiece by the renowned Baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach.

Controversy has long swirled around his oratorio, The Saint John Passion.

And here is why.

But it came out of nowhere.

Released just before summer in 1995, the album Jagged Little Pill tore into culture with all the ferocity its title would suggest.

The lyrics were all those of a teenager, Alanis Morissette, who had been a purveyor of pop in her native Canada.

Today, she remembers, she suddenly had something altogether different to say.

I was giving myself permission to express exactly what was going on without without sugarcoating it.

Over the next year came a flood of singles that burned through the sheen of life.

It was the anti pop and writing with producer Glenn Ballard.

Morissette got real and raw.

There was an urgency to the writing.

Definitely.

It was it was almost manic in a way, a very channeled experience, super exhausting, but really, really gratifying.

And we got all the vocals on tape.

One or two takes 80% of the record or the original demos.

So it was a very sacred experience.

Certainly the record won five Grammys, went on to sell 33 million copies, and is now among the best selling albums of all time.

Do you look back at it now and what happened to.

What the heck happened?

Know, I mean, I make funny guesses at this, but some of it was was that there was a movement and whether whether it was the feminist movement or consciousness evolution movement and the wave was happening.

And I feel as though I put my hand up and volunteered to be on the front top of the wave with my surfboard, you know, And and I became a spokesperson of a kind for this emergence of of of an authentic experience of what it is to be human, what it was to be a woman in those times.

Let's try this, because it really.

Made out the women to go to plan B today under the direction of Tony winner Diane Paulus.

Jagged Little Pill is taking on a new life as a brand new musical at the American Repertory Theater.

The running joke became the circumstance in the story that was emerging.

And I and I would say I have a song for that.

And and they would say, Of course you do.

The musical centers on a middle class family in Connecticut.

Picture perfect on the outside.

They're unraveling from within.

Beset by a host of issues plaguing families today, from opioid addiction to sexual assault.

I was up for it out of the gate.

You know, I didn't want the songs to to lead as such.

I wanted the songs to support the story, if that makes sense.

The songs do an incredible amount of heavy, heavy lifting.

Academy Award winning screenwriter Diablo Cody makes her theatrical debut with Jagged Little Pill, writing the show's book with myriad projects in the works, including her latest film, Tully, which just opened to rave reviews.

Cody says she didn't have time for the show, but as someone whose adolescence was shaped by Morissette, she couldn't say no either.

I couldn't not do it.

Those are the projects that you can't walk away from.

When you think to yourself, I will be consumed with jealousy and rage if somebody else gets to do this.

Like the ones where you just you can just see future you regretting not doing this.

Here, Cody has created the family and all the issues surrounding them as a metaphor for society writ large.

Addiction chief among them apt, she says, for a show called Jagged Little Pill.

Right now we are in a place as a society where a lot of people are in desperate need of comfort and are feeling just kind of disenfranchized.

And so it honestly doesn't surprise me to see this the the opioid crisis.

It just doesn't.

It feels.

Sort of grotesquely appropriate to the times when it boils.

Down to, as does Morissette's music, even though it's now more than 20 years old.

It's crazy to me how well it holds up.

There's no song that I hear and think, Oh, that's juvenile or Oh, I can't believe I thought this was profound when I was 16.

If anything, it's more profound to me now.

I can still sing it with as much conviction, perhaps even more based on the fact that I think there's more receptivity to some of the topics that I dive into when I write.

Including Anger, a label that's always been synonymous with her work and which defines some of the show's younger characters.

I love anger, you know, and if I'm going to be one dimensional ized as anything, I'll take anger.

I think it's a gorgeous life force.

I think it gets a bad rap because of how it shows up destructively in the world.

The acting out of anger in destructive ways is a big boo for me, but the actual life force itself, in the sense in the body of what anger is in the heat and the jaw clench and the the forward movement, I mean, it helps me and others, I'm assuming, set boundaries, speak up for oneself.

Say no more is it says when she finished the album, she had no idea it would be so successful.

The intention was to make the music matter.

And write from the far side, and that's.

A philosophy she now carries to the musical.

My dad said when I was younger, he goes, Sweetheart, people are going to love you, people are going to hate you.

And most people won't give it.

You know?

And I said, okay, well, if that's the case, you know, I'm left with just defining myself and trying things on for size and seeing if they fit and defining what my value system is and how I want to show up and how I don't want to show up.

And that's all I can continue to do.

On the road.

Again, to visit a woodworker who calls Cincinnati, Ohio, home.

With a creative mind and incredible attention to fine detail.

Jeff Vollmer sculpts complex wooden boxes that are a treat to open.

Check these out.

A puzzle box is a puzzling box.

It's the box is also a puzzle.

You have to work your way into the box.

That's the hard part.

You can't really describe how a puzzle box works because everyone, one looks different.

That's part of what a puzzle box is, is something that a little more unusual in its shape configuration, but never two identical pieces.

I only know how to make snowflakes.

Levi would have told me I would be a professional woodworker.

In my life, I would have laughed at, you know, he really.

Come on.

I was a buyer for department store chain guns, you know.

But you learn and you adapt.

And you have fun doing it.

When we start the process of making a box, first thing we do is dryer wood.

I work with wood that most people wouldn't even bring in the house and put in the fireplace.

Most of my would come from the West Coast because I work with barrels.

And barrels are the roots of the tree.

Hardwood basically dries at a rate of an inch per year.

People don't realize you're looking at a five inch thick piece of wood.

It took me five years just to get that piece of wood to where I can work.

I never know how things are going to turn out until they're done because there's no plans.

We never draw anything out.

I can't draw and I can use a pencil to design them.

You have to let the wood talk to you an awful lot.

First off.

But sometimes wood's going to let you do things, and sometimes it's not.

So if it's got a particular shape or odd thing to it, you try to do something with that.

So when we start making our cuts and cutting is all done on one song, primarily 99 and a half percent of our work is done on a band song, which is a circular blade going round and we use an eight inch blade and that's in most all of our work is done in that sometimes we use drill press to drill holes for magnets or springs or things, but pretty much we use a band sole to make the boxes and then we've got to glue pieces back together.

We go through a lot.

I mean, we've got standards.

You really believe will occur on seven Coats of Mac or with that, then we put our lining in the box and the last thing we do is put a little feet on the bottom and I sign each piece by hand and then put a price tag on about 20 years ago, give or take a couple.

I woke up one morning at four in the morning and just thought in my head, well, I got out of bed at four in the morning, came down to the shop and my thought was at four in the morning as a drawer have to be straight.

I never saw a drawer and it wasn't straight.

That doesn't mean I have to be.

So I came down to the shop and I made a small box that had one around the drawer.

It went in one side, It came out the other.

40 some odd years later.

Now, those are what I call the ultimate jewelry box.

So yeah, it's just probably my favorite pieces is making a round or box.

They're the hardest pieces I make and the most time consuming.

Some of them will run up to 100 man hours.

25 years.

I've made boxes, and every year I've found a new way to do something bizarre, to create something to hide, something from hiding things.

We have boxes we call our cash boxes, which are designed to hide money.

And when you open the box up, it looks like a very simple little piece.

And then you see a note inside.

It says, Look, pretty good money.

And people laugh at me and say, Oh, there's nothing in there.

That's it.

Certainly there is $1,000 in that box.

And not only is there $1,000 in that box, but it's in its own box.

You just haven't found it.

20 minutes later, they're calling me a liar.

Imagine I say thank you.

I want people to have fun.

I want people to be mystified.

I want people to look at and say, How the hell did that crazy guy do that?

Or maybe why would somebody do that?

And back here on home turf, Louisiana's Chiton Mar, A Tribe hosts the annual social gathering known as a powwow to celebrate their culture through music, dance and feasting.

It's also an opportunity for everyone to enjoy the customs, arts and crafts preserved by tribes throughout the United States.

The Native American powwow continues to be a Louisiana treasure.

Within the depths of old growth cypress swamps, miles of sugar cane fields and bayous and rivers of the Atchafalaya Basin.

Liza 1000 acre parcel of land.

It is a home of the sovereign nation of the Chatham Archer Tribe of Louisiana.

Less than half of the tribe's membership lives on the reservation.

But on this one weekend, the cheetah watcher, along with other tribal nations, gathered in large numbers to celebrate the age old tradition of powwow.

The word POW is actually from the Algonquin language, and it meant a gathering of medicine people.

And so I guess the colonists sort of extrapolated that it was just a gathering of tribal people.

And so the term became being used, although it was more ceremonial at that point.

But as the reservation system began, government regulations suppressed the gatherings, and Native Americans were thought to be a vanishing race.

In the late 1800s, Colonel William Frederick Cody Buffalo Bill influenced the U.S. government to allow him to secure a Native Americans for his Wild West show.

Between 1887 and World War One, over a thousand Native Americans went wild, wresting and were able to preserve dances and ceremonies that otherwise may have been lost.

As powwow culture became popular throughout this country and Europe, Native Americans educated the general public about their history and culture.

Over the years, Powwow soon became a source of tribal enterprise.

And today is a place where families of many nations gather to sing, dance and celebrate and preserve their shared cultures.

It all begins with a grand entry as the Eagle staff is carried into the circle, followed by the American state and tribal flags, all carried by veteran warriors.

So it is not a lot of power in there.

All those eagle feathers that you see forces from the eagle, it flies the highest to us and maybe always brings us a lot of good feelings and blessings to the people for those warriors.

Long time.

Ago.

Once everyone is in the arena, a prayer is offered and a song is presented to honor the flags and veterans.

And then the powwow dancing begins.

Everybody has their own dance styles.

You know, you have certain dances, but you have your own dance styles.

Have fun.

Have fun.

Enjoy yourself.

That's the main thing.

Each dancer is telling their story and might be telling the story of a hot.

There may be track and something they listen to that drum that we refer to the drum as the heartbeat of American Indians.

It's to a heartbeat.

So when that drum starts, that's that's our heart going.

And then the spirit comes out of it and that move.

And when you begin to move, you begin to tell a story.

And the most important thing of all is when you put your regalia on, you feel like you who you are, you feel like the person that you represent your tribe.

I am considered a southern cloth dancer.

You'll see a variety of different styles of cloth.

However, mine is considered a tea dress and it's covered with imitation teeth.

Everything on what I'm wearing represents my tribe.

For Pat and Tanya moore, powwow is a weekend way of life for them.

The chance to escape the demands of their workweek and keep their cultural traditions alive.

All the hustle and bustle throughout the week, all that goes away.

The minute we get dressed and we go out there and dance with our brothers and sisters.

These relationships are lifelong.

They're generational.

And for some, like Adam Narwal, it's a full time way of life.

That's who I am.

It's that it's a part of my culture.

It's how I identify myself.

Me and my family were full time POW audiences.

My kids are home schooled, and this is what we do.

We travel the country and perform and.

Compete at.

Powwows.

Competition.

Dancing is an important part of the powwow, and a good dancer can make a good living.

Traveling from one event to another.

That's a lot like a rodeo circuit.

You know, when when people rodeo, they go.

From one event to the next event to the next event.

In a competition series.

Yes, it does feel like family.

But if at the end of the day, it's still a competition, it's a lot of little things that we look at from, you know, the amount of prize money.

How are we doing compared to other tribes?

Just what what gifts are we going to give them?

You know, how do we honor the people that are coming to be with us?

To me, it's a way of life.

I grew up doing it.

Ever since I could walk, I was dancing.

That's the way we bring our children in.

So as they begin to walk, we dress up.

We get them out of the arena and we turn them loose and dance.

Throughout the years, they find out who they are and what they represent.

It's like a healing.

That helps us stay closer to our culture because we're all spread out now.

All spread out, and the people that go, the younger people, they they're learning.

So they can carry on.

When we're gone.

And that is that for this edition of Art Rocks.

But keep in mind, you can always watch episodes of the show at ELP, the dot org slash Art 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've been James Fox Smith and thank you for watching.