Coming up next on Art Rocks!, a rare opportunity for artist and art lover alike, one of a kind hand-carved ceramics and an artist serenading his hometown in song.

These stories up next on art rocks.

Art rocks is made possible by the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana, public broadcasting and by viewers like you.

Hello and thank you for joining us again for art rocks with me.

James Fox Smith from Country Roads Magazine.

Each fall, just north of Lake Pontchartrain, hundreds of artists descend upon Covington from all over the country to offer their finest artistic creations for sale.

The three Rivers Art Festival is a jury event featuring both visual and performing artists from across the gamut of media and disciplines.

And it's been going on for a quarter of a century.

Covington three Rivers Art Festival is the largest juried show in the region.

We have over 200 booths.

We have artists that come from 26 different states, and it's really difficult to get into this show.

I have 500 artists that apply and only 200 places to fill.

This is not a let me just pay my bills and get in.

This is truly a jury show.

My name is Alexander Brown, and I live in Flore, Mississippi.

But my shots in a little town on the delta called Satara Mississippi festivals are how I generate really 90% of my income.

I travel the country as far as Colorado, Virginia, and it's just a nice way.

I enjoy the travel.

I enjoy meeting the people and they get to meet me.

I'm kind of old fashioned in the sense that I only work with solid blocks away.

So no glue pieces.

I don't paint work.

I don't stain one.

Everything you see is natural wood that comes from the area.

I live in Mississippi, anywhere in the South, really?

And I put a clear finish on everything.

So our country would like marble in the sense that I'm always downsizing.

I'm taking a block and I'm chipping away at it until I create the piece I had envisioned.

I've done this, first of all, about six or seven times.

I really enjoy it.

It's very well organized, but I cater to the artist and it's just wonderful and it's a great crowd here in Covington.

My name is Paul Gillam.

I'm a Blue Mountain woodworks.

I'm from Timbo, Arkansas.

We drove about 500 miles to get here, and we've heard it was a great show and that's why we're here.

I brought my cutting boards.

Pizza feels, perhaps set small tables, lazy Susans, Mike, all types of things.

It's unique, one of a kind.

He's a lot of native woods, a lot of exotic woods.

No staining, though they're all natural, so you can actually eat off these boards.

It's going good.

My name is Josh Price.

We are from Central Florida.

The Donelon is a town.

We're from near Ocala.

We have brought some scrap metal animal sculpture, so my wife and I take everyday objects from flea markets, yard sales, thrift stores, occasional dumpster and then we make animals out of them.

We traveled about two and a half hours here.

My wife has a some family here, but we stay in the campsite and then we're staying in the parking lot over here and.

This is what we do for a living.

So we do festivals all over the eastern United States.

We do about 35 to 40 a year.

So the festival circuit is our income.

My name is Terry Kennedy, I'm from Denver Springs, and I've done this three Rivers about three or four times.

I love the area.

I love the whole attitude of all the art lovers.

These are actually will from pottery that I do it with a little bit of different twist.

I like bright colors and I love flowers, so I actually throw it on a wheel and then I sit there and assemble it and I hand sculpt everything you see on the pieces being able to talk to the customers.

I think that's half the experience of buying the art is meeting the artist, and the artist really thrives off of the customers.

They get inspired to hear what the customers actually want and what they like about it.

Most artists really depend on this.

For a good portion of their sales could be 20% or more.

It depends on if they do these for a living.

The time of year that it is being right before people start buying for Christmas, that I think that this is the best show for artists because people are going to want to get their Christmas presents.

This is a carefully curated show.

So when you walk down the street, you don't see just the same thing or the same type of art, and this is really, truly a fine arts festival.

Our artists are from watercolor painting, 2D and 3D art, woodwork, metalwork and everything in between.

And I like everything here.

I like all the things the swamps every show, and I like the jewelry too.

There's a lot to choose from.

Bring money.

I love to admire the art, and I love to see where people are from.

I love that people come together like us.

We've been doing it probably about eight years.

We have a lot of talent, things that I admire that I might not have in my home, but I still love to see and look at.

You have one of a kind things ornaments, jewelry.

I think it's just that people put a lot of love into it.

They put their time into it, and it's just, you have a lot to choose from.

And I love that it's here in a little small town of Covington, because usually you would have to go to the French Quarter or Jackson Square to see something like this.

And we have it here and downtown Covington.

This is my myself, John Moore, Anderson.

It's the size of a church and he has beautiful pieces.

The New Orleans cemetery has the cathedral and I have a few other ones.

So I just wanted to add to the collection of this piece by Kristi butI caught my eye this beautiful, colorful alligator.

It's going to my daughter's in Seattle, Washington, to go in there rec room.

A reminder of Louisiana.

I live here in Covington, and it's great to have so many people here today.

It's beautiful.

And one thing I'm finding here, too, is that some people would shy away, maybe from an event like this, thinking the prices would be very high for a handmade gifts or art.

I don't find that to be the case at all.

This is just beautiful stuff.

And again, many of these are regional artists, so that's important to build their clientele and craft in the area.

It is just so much a gift that they have, and then this gives them an opportunity to share it with the community.

I love the art festivals.

I love seeing all the different things made.

They have a tremendous amount of booze.

There's a lot of people here, so you see a lot of different things.

Christmas shopping.

This is a cheese cutting board.

You got your cheese on it.

OK. And I have a bracelet.

These bracelets, I find it all a different art markets, and she is a Louisiana artist and I've been buying her stuff for maybe, you know, eight or nine years.

We have anywhere between 40 and 50,000 people that come through in two days, and that really varies between the Saints game and LSU.

So if the Saints game and LSU, if they're on, then that could drop us.

About 20,000 people from all over the country come here.

I've met people from Georgia, lots of places in Louisiana to Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas.

They're just from all over.

And I think that's kind of the beauty of it, too.

You get to see a lot of different people from different places and different artwork.

The crowd that we draw here, these people are true art aficionados, they know what they're looking for and there are buying crowd.

They want to get here, they want to buy and our hospitality here in Covington, the city has just adopted this festival.

And everybody just opens their doors to these artists and they make sure that they feel at home.

Now we do have artists that come from as far as California.

I've got someone from North Hollywood who drove dressed to come here.

It took him two days to get here.

We hope he does really well.

We make sure that when we walk down the street, you can see each of our businesses.

We have food trucks and local food trucks and local musicians.

Most of our businesses have the best weekend that they have all year during three Rivers.

This is definitely one of those things that is important to the city in terms of income, as well as the businesses that are here.

Our lives are enormously enriched by the creative endeavors of others.

The trick is knowing where to look.

So here are some of our picks for notable exhibits taking place at museums and galleries in our part of the world.

For more about these and loads more events in the creative space, visit LTV dot org slash across there, you'll find links to each episode of the program, so to see or share any segment again.

Visit LP or Slash.

Many homeowners are drawn to the old and the rustic look in the decorative arts, so much so that it's become big business for one family operated company, Motor City Barrels in Detroit.

Motor City barrels create unique handcrafted art pieces and furniture out of, you guessed it, well-worn whiskey and wine barrels.

Let's take a look.

I think the rustic, refurbished stuff is big, you know, people are just drawn to it.

A lot of people like the look of it, the darkness, it just kind of like pops.

I think it's a novelty.

There actually is the younger generation I've noticed over the past ten, twelve years that they've gotten into, like the bourbon and scotch and whiskey, and they've gotten away from like Bud Light and Budweiser.

So I think that's a lot of the customers they get.

I was always good with my hands and attention to detail.

That's a lot of people telling me that I always put in the extra effort to make it look nice, you know?

Rob got married and he had a bourbon bar and a cigar bar.

We use the barrels and made tables out of them.

Then we didn't know what to do with them, so we started creating different products.

And I thought it was going to be a hobby.

They're all about recycling in reusable products.

And so we started getting into that and we were the whiskey barrels.

That was probably maybe six months after we had gone.

We said, You know, there's something here, and then we were like, Wow, we are.

This is this is a functioning business now, and it's just going crazy.

Started out just to people.

Now it's, you know, seven people with me in the life, my nephew and he's married to my niece, you know, so it's everyone's pretty much a family.

Darrell and Nancy have literally been my second parents since I was about ten years old.

So creative and cool to be around, and you learn so much.

When we started, like just some of the stuff we were attempting to make, I was like, I don't know how we're going to do that because, you know, working with wood and things that are square and level and flush and plumb, it's a lot different working with the barrel, even just getting the right barrel, making sure the bands are lined up.

Like some bands, they might be off.

We're a half inch and you want it to line up and be uniform.

We make our A-frame wine rack and we take the whiskey and we put wine bottles on it.

And then there's bottle openers.

We make a Stav bottle opener with a magnet that's behind the opener.

So when you open your bottle, it sticks out that you can't see it.

It's buried underneath the wood, but it sticks to the piece of wood when you open your bottle.

So kind of creative, you know, people were like that and we got the half barrel hideaway and then we got the hallway table and they have staves with laser like bourbon.

Maybe do it on it and different sayings of the dog dishes.

We can make them any size, any height.

But if you have a cat, we've made some for cats and then we make a half barrel quarter barrel for pet toys and we made dog beds.

There's a lot of things it's that's never ending.

We do wedding barrels with the cards and that slit at the top and we make a door on the side and we made a dancing barrel for like Irish dancing.

And we put like hardwood tops on the barrels and they danced on top of the barrels and stuff like that.

And we made grape crushing barrels.

We make the wine bottles that hold the thing with the glasses fit, and it's a nice centerpiece and like a lot of women have been buying those and putting them right in their table.

The best part about working with these products is it's one of a kind handmade.

There's no patterns when you make it that you made that in.

The worst part about it is it's one of a kind handmade.

There's no pattern, you know, so it's a catch 22 there.

There is a good process.

first, we take a barrel apart and then that's always a mess.

So we clean that up and then take it in here and we mark what we have to make and how many we have to make of it.

And then I usually fill in all the cracks, like drilling the holes and kind of prepping it for the sanding process.

It's a ton of fun.

It really is like when you get done with it, like no one else has done that and you take a lot of pride.

You walk out of here, sense of fulfillment.

It makes it special to make it and see how it goes and then telling you that it worked out perfectly and it just makes everyone happy.

We all want to make everything as good as it can be.

When I'm building stuff, I always think, well, I put this in my house, like with this go right by my front door.

And if it wouldn't, then we'll take it apart and reuse it for something else or, you know, try to make it better.

And so that's kind of my 100% guarantee that the customer will be satisfied with their product.

You know, we all kind of look at each other and say, Hey, you know, do this, do that or whatever trying to make a better product.

We've got to make it work, you know, because you're trying to support everybody and take care of everybody.

So, you know, it's it's something that drives you because you don't want to fail.

And, you know, have everybody else failed along with you?

So that's the drive right there.

It makes me proud proud to do this.

You know, finally, you know, after doing a job so long, this is like giving me more of an enjoyment.

Up in Cincinnati, Ohio, is where you'll find the oddest Nancy Hopkins offering a whimsical take on ceramics.

Her unusual technique, which combines glaze and a glaze and acrylic paint, ensures that every piece emerges from her kiln as one of a kind.

one of the reasons I got into clay is I really enjoy the feel of the clay.

There's something really satisfying about carving away parts of the clay to reveal the image beneath it, so I'll usually throw out a slab before making a tile, and I'll add some clay to that.

Maybe it'll be trees or birds or whatever, and then I'll subtract from that to kind of carve.

The way I got interested in working with Clay is that I got a job at a local shop.

I'm just a part time job where they.

It was just filled with handmade things.

I had gone to school for graphic design and illustration, so I had never taken a single clay class in college, but I was fascinated by it.

Since then about carving Clay, I think until you've done it, it's hard to describe.

You know, there's just this, this really.

You get a satisfaction of.

Pulling the image out of the clay, you know, whatever you had in your mind.

You know, it's it's great in two dimensions, it's like, oh, that's nice.

But to be able to realize it in three dimensions is probably the best part.

Take a knife and cut away at something is, you know, I'm sure wood carvers have the same feeling, you know, with their tools, but you can use a lot of different things to carve with, you know, I've used chopsticks and, you know, you can press everyday items into things, and that's that's a really fun way to get, you know, interesting textures.

Well, pretty much everything that I do is inspired by nature and animals.

The thing I make the most, and it's sort of my bread and butter item that I create, I call him match dishes.

They're cute little dishes with big possibilities as my corny, corny phrase.

But really, they're just dishes that people use for jewelry and soap dishes.

Spoonerize candle holders just a little catchall, and they're just little colorful.

Some of them are heart shaped flower shapes, pumpkins, owls.

The way I come up with those shapes, I just, you know, again, I'm inspired by nature.

I love color.

So, you know, I like to think of, you know what?

What would I want on my dresser?

You know this colorful thing to put my rings and.

I glazed those with 22 colors, and then I just literally set a child's marble in the center of the dish and then put that in with the glaze fire and it just melts melts with the glaze layer.

My favorite part of the process is really opening the kiln and seeing all the color, you know, with the marble matches, it's to see what happened because the marbles interact with whatever glaze is underneath them.

So there's an element of surprise.

Even if I've used those same color combinations over and over, just depending on what else is in the kiln, you know, the variations of the temperature.

It's always a surprise.

Come on.

Come on.

Hello again.

Got your order here.

Guys, with my new studio assistant, Colin.

Colin is really tired.

one of the things that I love about what I do, in addition to creating the art, I really enjoy the relationship that I have with my customers, whether they're online or in person.

And here in town, I have several stores that I sell to, so I'm able to hand-deliver those to my customers.

I can help you guys.

These are perfectly packaged.

How many kiddies?

I didn't have any bigger titties done just yet, so I thought I'd bring in the times.

And it's just a it's just great to, you know, have that connection with people they see who created the art and then I see the environment that it's going to be sold in.

And it's just a really, really nice relationship.

I don't know when you're an artist, you just have to create things.

It's just it's a drive.

It is hard to explain sometimes.

And then I frankly love the lifestyle of, you know, being my own boss.

I mean, I literally can, you know, sell to, you know, almost anyone.

You know, I'm not creating 10,000 dollar paintings, you know, everyone can purchase my artwork.

There's there's a range.

And that's really rewarding to be able to share my art with everybody.

Not everyone loves their hometown quite so much as musician Johnny Mayo.

Maya thinks so fondly of Tampa, Florida that he's going all out to create a catchy, national award winning music video that shines a spotlight on his city.

You'll want to look and listen for this one.

You know, the place to go, the place where you belong.

This year, my hometown, where everybody plays my song.

I got connections here to be directions here, just driving on the right side, looking on the bright side like a living in the very best place, I know just saying hello and nothing's going to get me down because it's my hometown.

Oh yeah, the lights are green.

I got a from me making the scene at a the good times sticking around.

My hometown.

Jamming to the radio.

Hanging with my friends in all the hot.

Since all the trips I got my hometown coffee joint, the atmosphere don't disappoint, just driving on.

Looking on the bright side like a.

Living in very please, I don't just say.

It's going to get me down.

Agreeing to go to Nairobi, the the in the world.

Sticking around town.

Other place I'd rather go.

Want to go away?

In the place where I been.

Everybody plays.

The good times are here to stay.

Go away.

You're in the place where all the good times are going to stay.

The goal of living in the very best place in the world, just saying this is going to get me down.

Because it's my hometown.

Oh, yeah, the lights are green and got eleven people making the scene in a world where all the good times are sticking around a down.

Please, I know just tuning in.

This is my hometown.

You know, my degree in a guy might be able to in the scene in the world, sticking around in my hometown.

Hey.

And that is that for this edition of art.

But as we're fond of saying about this time, you can see or share any segment again at LPV Dorgi Rocks.

And if all this creativity leaves you curious for more.

Remember that Country Roads magazine makes a useful resource for discovering cultural adventures all across the state.

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

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