Coming your way.

On art.

Rock's thought provoking miniatures reveal the inner lives we can all identify with.

Being able to hand sculpt something.

I feel like my imagery has more to do with relatable objects so things that people generally have some relationship to.

Using a vintage camera to see deep beneath the surface of things.

So that always really interested in me that I was sort of creating a totally new space that didn't exist in reality and that could only exist through the camera choreography that imitates life and loss.

We got into sliding across them and that made sense to us in the imagery because it was sort of like life sliding by and trying to hang on to something and you couldn't.

And art fans given a glimpse into others creative processes.

Frankly, artists are used to paying an entry fee, right, to go to be a part of something.

And so we're turning that model on end and saying, no, we should be paying the artists who offer the service offer this experience.

These stories are next 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 Fox Smith, publisher of Country Roads magazine.

Thank you for joining us for Art Rocks.

Let's begin by spending some time with Ceramicist and LSU professor Mickalene or Mike Walsh.

Her work reflects the artist's twin loves animals and dolls and her fascination with depicting the inner life that both seem to possess.

While you'll find Mike Walsh's work in public spaces like Baton Rouge as Our Lady of the Lake Children's Hospital and Chimp Haven near Shreveport, the artist also enjoys creating objects for everyday use.

For me, the emotive quality comes through the touch and being able to hand sculpt something.

I feel like my imagery has more to do with relatable objects, so things that people generally have some relationship to a bird or an ice cream or a gift, both things that are commonplace and that through that making and touch, there's something unusual or unique or more poetic about the form itself that draws people in and allows them to feel something slightly different, maybe questioning why would this be handmade as opposed to being slipped, cast or made from a prefabricated mold?

For clay, there's such a range of possibility, not that other mediums don't provide that.

But I feel like what I've found in clay is both high touch.

It's tactile.

I can touch it, I can sculpt with basically starting with a lump, which people have done throughout time.

But it also provides the ability to say something new and a long cultural continuum for me, that containment has more to do with that spiritual or psychological or emotional realm so that the idea of a sculpture or a form as a container for something ephemeral, the small form, there's a relationship, and maybe it relates to toys or dolls or objects for the table, or it has some bodily or domestic association.

And I find through making a lot of small forms, what I can do is, is compose with them.

So the idea of moving objects around in relationship to one another is fun for me in the way that maybe words would do that for a poet.

I feel like images are a way to do that.

So for instance, putting an ice cream cone with a bird, it starts to play some sort of new symbolism.

And I think by working small, there's a greater ability to do that.

The American dream is a wall meant to resemble all the ice cream cones that you might get at Disney World, which to me is the sort of iconic American experience or a slice of Americana that's commonplace and recognizable.

I thought to myself, Why are they all just white?

And so I wanted to kind of make a range of tones that might represent just what any child going to Disney World might find and and might relate to.

So they were meant to sort of be literally, they are a blend.

I start with a very, very dark clay, and as I cast each one, I'm adding amounts of either a lighter tone clay or a white clay, and that range begins to lighten as each one is cast.

So there is a conceptual level to that, but it's also very readable, very accessible, and then all of them have the same kind of chocolate dipped ice cream quality to them.

The popsicles gave me a chance, sort of a blank slate to work with color dynamic and figure out different patterns and things that people who work 2D get to do on a flat surface.

I was doing on a three dimensional surface.

The work that I feel the most strongly about is having work that might go in a specific place.

I felt really pleased with the outcome of the Our Lady of the Lake Children's Hospital, in part because I felt like it was a culmination of imagery I've been working with for a long time, and yet it was placed in a new way and it was also working with someone and working with a client really closely to really figure something out that would work well for children, for adults for a long time I did a couple of series of hands.

One was a series of hands that were both my hands, my daughter's hands, and then the hands of some different primates throughout the spectrum.

And I cast them in a series from the center being the largest to the smallest, actually being my daughter's hands, and that they were all done in these sort of metallic tones like you would do with a baby shoe or a copper.

They were meant to be a sort of metallic tone.

It was called kin and kind.

It was in a series that I also did that was looking at animal imagery in general and in particular.

I've always had a predilection for the primates as a conservation and the piece kin in kind.

I actually donated it to Chimp Haven up in Shreveport, Louisiana for their office space, but that piece was just meant to kind of be a reflection or a meditation in a way on our connection to other creatures, other beings, our own families, our own communities.

So it's a little bit haunting, too, because I think there's a sense of conservation and what is not happening in terms of connection and preservation.

The gift booths were all handmade.

I constructed them using sort of ribbons of clay there glazed was a way to sort of generate gratitude and people could come and choose a bow to then take home with them.

And some of the bows were sold and all the money went to benefit.

The Baton Rouge gallery.

So it was sort of a way to give back.

And also the gift.

A bow image is such a universal, simple, strong image of gift and generosity.

My grace palette is very intentional most of the time.

Sometimes there are happy accidents, but I feel like color and the use of color is a way to kind of evoke joy and a sense of celebration with some of the forms.

While the subject matter might be a little bit on the more challenging side.

So I think sometimes color is a way to pull people in.

I do develop my own glazes and then I use some commercial glazes.

It's a bit of a play between blot things and things that have been made in my studio.

But I feel like color is also a way to bring out sort of the painter in me.

I really enjoy color theory and color design and I think it's a way to just play with some of those optics within the work.

I see my work as having more of a universal appeal so that children relate to it teenagers, adults.

It's a tough territory to try to appeal on a universal level, but I feel like when I find a symbol such as an ice cream cone, it has really an ability to a lot of people.

Fine art delivers beauty and inspiration for creator and viewer alike, so get involved.

Here are some of our picks for notable exhibits coming up soon at museums and galleries in our part of the world.

For more about these and many more events in the arts, visit p b dot org slash art rocks.

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So to see or to share any segment again, visit LP Dawgs Art Rocks.

Detroit, Michigan Born artist Laurens Semi Van uses a camera that dates from the time of the Model-T Ford, but what she captures with it goes beyond the physical world.

The artist instead aiming to depict the interior life that lies hidden within things.

So let's look carefully.

The photographer Geoff Wall talks about photographers as being either hunters or gatherers, and I definitely identify with the gatherer rather than the hunter.

The large format view camera that I use dates from the early 20th century, and it's a very simple kind of primitive camera, which it's basically a box with a lens and a ground glass on the other end.

So I have the large piece of black velvet that I use as a dart cloth to block out the light so that I can see the image that I'm photographing.

And the camera takes eight by ten negatives.

So the negative is much larger than, say, a 35 millimeter or even medium format negative.

And so as a result, there's much more capacity for detail.

Often what I'm looking for as I'm photographing is a way to kind of suspend time itself or to be able to say something that can't be said without the film and the act of photographing.

Sometimes I'll start with an idea based on literature, and then the composition evolves from there.

All my photographs are made in the same studio and they're incorporating painting and drawing and found objects and sometimes the figure as a narrative tool, the set sort of evolves until it sort of devolves into the next picture.

And so I kind of I really enjoy how the process is this continuous organic moment from one image to the next.

This is an example of a set that was really pretty precariously constructed.

So these are individual little sticks that were kind of pressed into the the backdrop against the tool fabric.

I kind of enjoyed the element of it could all fall apart at any moment.

As I'm working, my concept of time is a little bit different in that everything is much slower paced and there's a really intense kind of element of composition.

And working with the large format camera, you can sort of go into this black cloth and then see what you're photographing upside down and backwards.

So it's sort of transposed in a way and removed from reality even further.

So that always really interested in me that I was sort of creating a totally new space that didn't exist in reality and that could only exist through the camera.

And then that the finished product is not something that is really visible or even I'm conscious of what's going to happen until I can see the final print or the negative.

I have two sizes.

One is 40 by 50.

That size is quite large and it's almost a 1 to 1 scale relationship with the viewer.

And then the other way that I work is by contact printing the eight by ten negative to make a cyanotype.

So the cyanotype they're made on basically a watercolor paper and the emulsion is a mixture of two different light sensitive chemicals.

So a mix them together and then you hand coat the paper with the emulsion and then you allow the paper to dry in the total darkness.

When the papers dry, you can print the negative directly in contact with the paper in the sunlight.

You leave the print in the sun for your exposure, and then you can wash it in water.

And then you have your say in the type.

The show that I recently had a David Klein gallery was titled Door into the Dark.

And to me this idea is more about the creative process as a pursuit of the unknown.

The creative process is something that kind of connects people through time and space and also I think that as we as artists are making things, we don't necessarily always know what we're doing or what we're looking for, but we feel the need to keep to create the thing, you know, and to keep making it.

So I feel the process is sort of the door into the dark.

The painter Pierce, who lives, talks about his black paintings as being more just representative of the forms that are in the paintings rather than about other ideas.

Or, you know, they're non representational, so they really can't be described in language.

And I think a lot of art is that way, and that's the strength of art, is that we can't necessarily always explain or identify what may be happening when we look at a painting or any kind of image.

So I would say that I hope that my viewer is able to kind of enter the photograph and have questions and things to think about and want to be in that space, but maybe not necessarily have a way out of the space so that they can feel relate to it enough to sort of understand.

But then maybe their questions are what, keep them there or keep them looking at the piece?

Maybe some people are more comfortable knowing the answers and others are comfortable with not understanding exactly what is happening, but being engaged in and at the same time now from the visual arts to the performing, let's listen.

As Minnesota based choreographer Joni Smith reflects on her company's production to have and to hold Named for the iconic poem, the Work explores the pain and loss associated with the AIDS epidemic.

Let's listen.

Have you noticed?

For you, it's a question of economy.

Where do you buy hay in the city?

Enough for a mattress?

The gist is interesting the way that we used text enough to lie down.

The actual poem is very sparse.

The text has its own imagery.

It has its own rhythm, and the dance movement has its own imagery and rhythm.

And every now and then there's an intersection, an evening long past.

They heighten each other.

I use it to sort of explode the imagery.

It lets you know clearly where the relationship is.

This relationship is older and it's probably ending, which might have taken a very long time to show you and dance.

And so I think placing it suddenly there, the first word is midnight boom, There we are in the middle of the night.

Obviously, something's wrong.

It locates us.

That's important.

Why are we eating so late?

Relationships always seem to have some kind of role in the work that I make.

I find that so interesting.

The impact that people have on one another or have on whole groups of people.

Because we all see relationships.

We all see how we fit in the world and how we respond to other people very differently.

SHAPIRO And.

Smith Dance is ever changing.

At first, it was this dream that Danny and I had.

We wanted to choreograph.

We found somehow together that we could make things.

The first dances were duets, and then the possibilities got too small.

So then we expanded and we got more company members.

That was a whole amazing thing to have all these different voices then, not just Danny's and mine.

It was like going from a string quartet to an orchestra.

The relationships, the structures, the harmonies, the dissonance.

Everything became so much more complex, which was exciting to have and to hold bench.

Danny and I made it in 1989.

We had just returned to New York from a year in Finland.

Everything had changed.

It was a time of AIDS.

It just seemed that so many things were different.

It seemed that we couldn't hang on to anything.

So we suddenly started thinking about making a work where people were waiting.

We thought of three unfinished wood benches.

And as we started sort of playing with these benches, we got into sliding across them.

And that made sense to us in the imagery because it was sort of like life sliding by and trying to hang on to something and you couldn't.

And it starts out with a feeling of high energy and the desire as a youthful person might to best something and to conquer the world and to pair up to find a partner.

And by the end of the dance, we find the dancers letting these partners that they've found go.

So the journey from not a care in the world to having to let someone go forever.

It's about the persistence of memory.

The people beneath the bench reach up and are touching the person above.

To me, that image was like when someone died.

There you are.

And you suddenly smell a piece of their clothing.

The memories come back.

Danny and I could never figure out why Bensch works so well.

600 dancers have performed it.

So many companies, so many schools have asked us to restage it.

It seems to still resonate for people.

Danny added, For those we have loved and lost, but not forgotten because so many people had died of AIDS.

Little did we know it would ultimately serve for him.

Danny died in 2006.

In October, he died of cancer.

He was diagnosed at age 44 because he fought.

He managed to stay with us until he was 48.

During that time, he choreographed and toured and he fully intended to perform that November, but he left us instead.

We did a dance bench at his memorial at the Joyce Grill.

That was tough.

yeah.

My relationship with the dancers has really changed since Danny died.

I found it really difficult to just be by myself, making decisions, searching for imagery.

So I have more and more been inviting the dancers to participate in that process.

The height of that energy.

Okay.

Where you might go next.

It's an improvization.

She sees our unique strengths and the things that really challenge us, and she always strives to show us in our best light or in a light that challenges us.

Fantastic.

Which is a gift as an artist working for a choreographer.

What was so great is it just was like so smooth coming down.

They enjoy that a lot.

They really enjoy contributing.

Sometimes they improvise.

Sometimes they bring in something that they say, look at this.

Isn't this an interesting idea?

I love that there's the excitement and the energy in the room.

We also have regular guests all the time.

This year, Sally Ruess will be guesting with us.

We've had Judith Howard, Aaron Thompson.

That's an interesting way to sort of expand who the company is to bring in these very particular voices.

We want to kind of smooth through there.

We're interested in finding the unique gesture.

If I actually pay attention to the weight and the time and the shape of my hand, and if I add to that the effort of it, now I'm dancing.

And it's different than just this gesture because I paid attention to time shape Space Force energy.

And that's what dance does.

And it's just with that consciousness, because I'm paying attention to the motion, the emotion is it part of the pleasure of viewing good art?

Is asking the question, how did they do that?

Well, artists in Cleveland, Ohio, have the answer.

They're staging a monthly event named Watch it Wednesday, where the public is invited to sit in as works progress, ask questions of the working artists, and provide instant feedback to Dan Steckler has a heat gun in one hand and a brush in the other.

While visitors pass through her studio, she demonstrates how to paint with hot wax with each crop of onlookers.

She says the response is often the same.

Wow, that's wax.

I didn't know you could paint with wax.

That one I get or how long does it take to dry?

And I liken it to like when you knock a candle over, it cools.

So to keep the paint or wax from cooling, she has cups of different colors keeping warm on pancake griddles.

The process has been around since between 103 hundred A.D. Sackler is one of about a dozen artists working on a warm Wednesday evening inside a former industrial complex, now a space for artists of many genres.

I use a palette knife instead of a traditional brush to do my oil paintings.

While the artists work on their latest projects, members of the public meander by, and if they want, ask questions.

It's a new entertainment concept dubbed Watch it Wednesday.

Frankly, artists are used to paying an entry fee, right, to go to be a part of something.

And so we're turning that model on end and saying, no, we should be paying the artists who offer the service to offer this experience.

It came from customers wandering through the art walk nights and asking dozens and dozens of us, Where do you do your work?

Those nights are free and often crowded, so for a cover charge, visitors pay for a quasi behind the scenes visit.

I wanted to see a cool, creative space in Cleveland and see some art by local artists.

Just kind of admiring what people can take from a vision and then making it reality and manifesting in cool.

Another visitor, Jeff Woodard, admires an artist's ocean painting quickly coming together.

When did you start this?

at five.

So now it's 630.

So.

And now?

Yeah.

Yeah.

If you check back in an hour, it'll be.

Yeah, I know, I know.

Because I want to paint what I feel now.

Even Wolf says it's helpful.

Not annoying to have someone watching over your shoulder while you paint.

This way, I understand that it's not only a pleasure for me to paint this, but people have and feel this calming effect.

So it's nice for everybody.

With a few feet away, artist Jonathan Giddy works on political portraits.

On a previous evening, he brought his abstract paintings.

I had more people come and talk to me about the paintings this time around than the last time.

The abstracts are a little bit harder to approach, whereas the political figures are much easier to talk about and recognize.

He sees this as educational for the public and the artist.

I feel like any exposure for arts and artists, especially with an ear to the public, has to demonstrate how we work and to discuss processes is beneficial not only to the public but to the artists, because it gives them an opportunity to work out that language themselves and figure out how they need to talk about things.

Watch it.

Wednesdays started in February of this year and they come around monthly on the first Wednesday of okay.

So that is that for this edition of Art Rocks.

But you can always see or share episodes of the show at LP PB dot org slash art rocks and if you're wondering what else you might be missing.

Country Roads magazine makes a great resource for finding out what's going on in the arts and culture out and about in the Bayou State.

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

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