Coming up next on Rocks.

The reason private citizens in New Orleans line up to spend millions on Mardi Gras.

Year after year where anthropology and art intersect and the superheated skills behind glass blowing all that 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.

Thanks for joining us for Art Rocks with me.

James Fox Smith from Country Roads magazine.

New Orleans is a town where you can find people partying just about any day of the year.

But there ain't no party like Mardi Gras, which has been a constant fact of life in the city since at least the early 1840s.

With very few exceptions, the COVID pandemic being one of them.

But there are two major reasons why Louisiana's city wide party goes on and on and on.

Mardi Gras is part of the city's and the state's collective identity.

And the money that Mardi Gras drives constitutes a considerable part of New Orleans economy.

We sat down with the historic New Orleans collection's Lydia Blackmore to learn about a new exhibit they've developed called Making Mardi Gras We learned a lot, and you will, to Mardi Gras day is one day.

Carnival season is just a few weeks, spanning from January 6th until Fat Tuesday.

But working on Mardi Gras, creating Mardi Gras happens throughout the year.

This float in the center of the gallery that pulls you into the exhibition so large mask with a big tongue on it.

And it's decorated with foil.

It's carved Styrofoam, covered in papier maché and paint is made by Mardi Gras world current artists.

And it has been used by the crews of Hermes and Orpheus in their night parades, parades, like Orpheus or Endymion that have 40 something units to them that are all connected together with lights and sound and moving parts.

It costs $100,000 at least, to build these types of parades.

Some crews do rent their floats so they don't have to own the floats, but it still costs tens of thousands of dollars to have a parade.

And that's why you have many, many crew members.

And each crew member pays their dues and that's how they fund their parades.

In many aspects.

Making Mardi Gras is a full time job for artisans throughout the city.

There are specialty float builders such as Crane Studios or Royal Artists or other float builders.

There are professional costume makers, professional artists who do the paintings and everything.

Every float starts with the design.

You don't just go attack a float, create something, you have to draw it out first.

And crews work with professional designers and have worked with professional designers for over 150 years to create these rolling works of art.

These little environments that tell stories These crews are social clubs.

They're largely closed groups.

There's a professional group there are crews that are largely family based.

So the same genealogy.

Their grandmothers partied with their grandfathers, and now the granddaughters are fighting with the grandsons.

There's somewhat of a closed set for many of these traditional crews, but then now in the 21st century.

Crews are really changing with the advent of super crews and other organizations like that.

Mardi Gras crew costumes start with the theme for the parade every crew.

Each year they come up with a theme that they're going to depict in their public parade and in their private tableau, which is a play that they put on at their ball.

And then all of the costumes for the crew are designed around that theme as characters in the play or as examples of a motif or something like that.

Queens and Kings costumes are usually a little set apart from the theme.

The Queens costume is more of a couture gown.

If she is a debutante queen, it often looks like a wedding dress, and they are designed to show off the grandeur, the elegance, the grace of the woman who is the queen, and also the wealth of her family and the wealth of the crew.

It's not just your costume.

It's not just your crown.

They're also wielding a scepter.

And then queens have a full suite of jewelry.

We have a jewelry that was worn by the queen of Combs, the mystic crew of Comas in 19 09.

And the backing of that case is the original design for that jewelry done by Jenny Wild, who was a New Orleans designer.

And then that design was sent to jewelers in Paris to make this jewelry.

And it's just rhinestones and based metal, but it is sparkly and shiny and has held up well over a century.

It's gorgeous.

It has the crown and of the necklace.

And then there's a pair of bracelets and arm cuffs.

So there's a cuff that goes on the arm that's linked by a chain to a bracelet.

And then her girdle, which goes around her very, very narrow waist with the dangling jewels on that.

The overall theme of the jewelry is the pansy, because that was her favorite flower.

We're surrounded by these queen costume designs.

We have three costume designs and then three official portraits of Queens, and then one larger one off to the side.

You have the costume design for the queen of the Mystic Crab and that queen is always a married woman.

And then two designs, one from the crew of Venus and one from the crew of high perfumes, which were female cruise they were Women's Cruise, the two Kings crowns behind me.

One is the king's breastplate and crown that was worn by Rex in 1893.

And the other one with all of the feathers is just the crown piece of a very large collar that was worn by King Zulu in 2019.

George Rainey.

Those crowns change every year because they change with the theme and the color of the crew's we have on display some early masks used by the mystic crew of comas in the 1870s their French papier maché and were made in Paris and shipped to new islands for companies to use in their parade and tableaux that year.

And then next to it are some more parade masks used in the 20th century by crews many people don't get to see what goes on at the carnival balls only the crew members and their elite guests get to see what goes on.

But it's designed around the tableau, which is a little skit put on by the members of the crew.

There are an assortment of invitations that show the artistry of these invitations that are sent out across the city.

But there's also the ball favors, which are the party favors that are given away to attendees at the bar.

They are for our invasives or serving spoons, little chat skis emblazoned with the crew emblem to remember this event that they've attended.

And we have the section on a street level Mardi Gras.

So dance groups and walking crews, we have the birthday cake from the crew of Joan of Arc that kicks off the carnival season.

We have marching band.

We have a huge section on black masking culture.

So that includes Mardi Gras Indians, Scarlet Bone gangs and baby doll traditions that are incredibly deep and beautiful traditions of the rebels as a female African-American masking tradition that started in Black Story Dolls that was started by prostitutes in the early 20th century, who on Mardi Gras day chose to match those baby dolls so they wear the frilly bloomers and the bonnets and everything, and they're smoking cigars and flashing their cash and showing their power from their femininity.

Mardi Gras Indian suits cost quite a lot of time and money to create to get all the beads and the feathers.

And then selling every night.

The Mardi Gras Indians do work year round and creating their costumes.

And you'll see the one that we have on display is ten feet tall.

It's a huge piece when you are at a Mardi Gras parade and trying to catch beads or throws or the stuffed animals or whatever they're throwing from the parade is the most valuable thing in the world to you at that moment.

That's one of the wonderful things about Mardi Gras is that we place a lot of value on these things that don't really have monetary value.

It's all about the experience and the shine and the glitter of them.

Mardi Gras beads have been thrown from parades and so at least the early 20th century, starting with glass beads and then in the 1970s, which to the Mass-produced Chinese plastic beads there's an increasing movement now to use reusable or biodegradable beads.

Mardi Gras is a huge section of New Orleans Academy that brings in a lot of money to the city and people spend a lot of money on it.

It's filling hotel rooms, it's filling restaurants.

And the service industry and tour guides and museums.

And then there's the whole sector who works to make Mardi Gras and they have their jobs fillings.

It's job building New Orleans doesn't function normally, so it's not functioning at Mardi Gras without that.

Yes, the hassle, the traffic is bad.

You can do certain things.

Some people go away on vacation during Mardi Gras, but Mardi Gras is the soul of New Orleans.

Mardi Gras shows that we will continue on and we will continue having our party.

We will continue having and creating beautiful things no matter what hurricanes come at us are pandemics.

This is how New Orleans expresses itself in our music.

It's in our ways of hosting people.

It's in our food.

Mardi Gras is the soul of New Orleans.

And our lives can be tremendously enriched by enjoying the creative energies of others.

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

For more about these and loads more events in the creative space, visit LTV Dorgan Art Rocks There you'll find links to each episode of the program.

So to see or hear any segment again, visit HLB Daugaard Rocks We're zeroing in on Grand Junction, Colorado now that's where you'll find woodworker Greg Veal drawing on his background of anthropology to make singular works of art.

Each piece is one of a kind.

So take a look I like working in wood because I like to recycle the word that's around the valley here, whether it be abstract or realism.

Art I look at my past experience and anthropology and the culture of man, whether it be cultural or physical anthropology, and then I try to incorporate that into the word, whether it be Native American images or images that project certain lifestyles of man.

That's what I create my work on.

I study the word first, and then I create a sculpture that will enhance it.

And it creates my pieces.

I, I love it.

A lot of times when I do start with a piece of wood, such as a block or a log or ash or whatever, the type of wood it may be, and I start to work the wood into the sculpture, and then I figure out later on there is an imperfection in the wood, whether it be a knot or split in the middle of the wood.

I just make that part of the sculpture and work with it.

Sometimes imperfections in a piece of wood enhances my sculpture.

I don't use any liquid stains.

I like to use the more natural stains, and I like a more natural finish to enhance the wood grain and also the wood.

And then when I do finish the work as far as waxing, it it's all hand waxed and hand polished I always been interested in the arts, but later on I develop that interest into more of the museum field, and now that I'm retired, I can go back into the art field and share it with my fellow artists and with the community here in the Valley.

Fine Art Murals.

Clothing Design, Patent Creation.

Florida artist Chad Myers works across multiple forms and genres and there are no limits to his bold ideas.

Watch My name is Chad Myers.

I'm 34 years old.

I've been an artist my whole life.

Growing up, I was always known as the art kid in school.

And so I would always like draw cartoons of the teachers and my friends and then my family was reluctant in terms of me having a job and our CEO didn't really know that.

My mom was a school teacher and my dad was an engineer.

So they really wanted me to go into like a business degree and my dad died before I did my first mural.

And my dad always made me work very hard growing up.

And he was one that would make me get up on a ladder and, like, yell at me like when I'd be scared and was like, No, get up.

So you got to do it.

He would be so proud of me doing the mirror work for him and and did for me.

And I've been working for myself since 2001 so I like going on 18 years now and being self-employed and this will if it well, in terms of styles I have for my art, I work and my do the style, which is my most natural form.

So it's like a cartoon based on art from what I've been doing since I was 12.

And that's kind of what I'm trying to focus on recently.

I'm realizing that that is my most natural form and people recognize my work that way.

When I see Chad's artwork, it reminds me of a time when I was in high school when I would do the on my homework and my teachers would tell me not.

So looking at his style, all I can see is like his not so much childish, but let's hear it for you Playful side, I guess.

And so in terms of the work I do and I do like design work on the computer I do T-shirts, I have a T-shirt line and a product line, which is which is a trademarked brand that I've created.

I do my murals and then I run the gallery.

My gallery it's like I find that my success has come from me not being pigeonholed in a certain style or medium or type of work by doing a whole bunch of different things.

So when something so the other stuff is paying the bills, I remember one day seeing somebody wearing a shirt that had the list of all the cities, what he calls the world for sure.

And that's like.

That's right.

Saint Pete is a great city.

So I went up to the post and said, you know, where did you get the shirt?

And so I found out there was this guy, Chad Myers, Chad and I met through his first gallery, Blue Sea, which was on Central Avenue.

And we just stayed in touch through that and through I it's just been a hard worker.

He's always worked hard to get through school, said Gallery.

Take time off, focus on his own artwork, and then to come back, just a hardworking, dedicated just leave your mark on a daily and I try to help people out.

You know, that's something I try to do with the art gallery is like opening it up to other artists.

I strive myself in finding new, fresh talent, people that are new to the scene, young artists and then giving people a space where it's all inclusive I think St Petersburg, without the arts and the artist is like the opening of the visitor laws.

And I think Saint Petersburg with the art and the artists that are here is like when she walks out into the Moscow land and it's all color and tat completely gets that it's probably a little OCD, you know, the fact that I am always creating stuff, I was posting something or but I feel like it's just that idea of keeping things fresh and knowing that one day we will be gone and what are you going to do with your life?

Like what have you done?

How much have you given his personality matches his art?

Very colorful, very energetic.

He's an awesome guy.

We are lucky to have Chad.

And as a matter of fact, if I was going to make a shirt, it would say the following Dali Warhol Keith Haring and Chad Myers.

That would be the shirt I would make to show how wonderful I think Chad Myers is for our city.

Consider the mesmerizing craft of glassblowing silhouetted against the hot glow of a blast furnace.

A glass blower must demonstrate tremendous skill and control.

Since college night, Freeland has been doing exactly that.

Refining his techniques to render sinuous and vivre and custom pieces that are as beautiful as they are delicate.

From Cincinnati, Ohio, here's his story.

The type of glassblowing that I specialize in is furnace work or offhand glass blowing.

It's basically we start with a fresh ball of molten glass on the end of a blow pipe or a solid rod that we can transform into many different forms.

We can add colors.

We can add designs.

Actually, the possibilities are probably limitless.

And what we can do where just limited to our skill sets and we're limited to the equipment and tools that we have on hand I got started in glassblowing in college.

I got interested in glassblowing as a teenager, solid on public television.

Yeah, I found a university that that talked glassblowing and moved to Cincinnati.

It's unlike any other any other art form.

And it's not something that you can just start a piece, put it down, go to lunch, come back.

You kind of have to get everything you need to get done within that one setting, done within that one setting.

Not to say that you can't revisit pieces later under certain techniques, but really the idea of getting that one, one shot at it.

One shot.

I like glass has its own fluidity, its own motion.

And one of the biggest misconceptions with Glass is that it's kind of a testosterone driven event.

You need to be strong.

You need to be manly, when in fact, if you get the glass at the right heat, it's a finesse game and it can almost turn into a very, almost poetic dance with the glass.

And you see someone just the motion of that glass swinging around as they are as they're making their move.

You have to have a lot of finesse, a lot of finesse to handle this material.

You can't can't really let it control you.

Oftentimes the glass will control you, and you need to take charge and control that glass.

And glass has been dated back.

You know, they've found they found examples of it in ancient Egypt.

Mesopotamia became kind of a lost art form.

And while the bulk of everything that was being made historically had some sort of a function to it, we saw glass, you know, late 19th, early 20th century, and it was a lot of manufacturing.

And it wasn't until the sixties or seventies right here in Ohio that the studio glass our studio glass movement started.

And it was just an experimental it was an experimental thing.

Started in a garage.

Some of the things that I really like to incorporate into production work or any of my own everyday work is just old Venetian techniques that had been kept secret for hundreds and hundreds of years.

And, and, you know, somebody leaked the secrets and in these, uh, these United States artists are picking up on it and really capitalizing on these techniques and kind of tweaking them and making them there.

But when we deal with color, we often, we often have to consider the light source in which this is going to be viewed under that is possible to make something that doesn't resemble glass that you don't have to be concerned about.

Like something I'm attracted to is how the light reflects refracts penetrates, shines back through pieces, can reflect these colors on the walls, on the surfaces.

I find that a very, very dynamic and a very appealing aspect to glass.

It's an art form unlike any other.

And there's there's a very calculated process to making your pieces.

And each piece is different.

It's a surprise to a lot of people.

It's a surprise to a lot of people about what really goes into making a piece of glass for the bulk of our business here in so is community education.

So we we teach workshops seven days a week and the process is allowing as much Hands-On possible to that client.

We want to make them feel like they get the most out of their money.

So we do offer them a chance to hold those blow pipes to walk around, feel that pipe in their hand with liquid glass on the end.

It's a team effort.

Even when we get into the production of pieces, glassblowing is not a solo sport.

You need people around you that you trust you need people around you that that you trust their skill sets.

I never make anything with less than one assist them.

Very rarely will I work solo and I've worked on production teams of ten plus people to make the piece.

Most satisfying thing people take away for me is when they see the price of the glass and wow I that cost so much.

And then they do it and they realize this isn't four cups for $4 from the superstore.

You know this isn't machine made glass and that there is a there is a craft behind it.

There's there's definitely a craft definitely a skill set that it takes to to achieve a final product.

And that is that for this edition of Art Rocks.

But as always you can see or share episodes of the show at LPI, the dot org slash art rock.

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 thanks to you for watching Art Rocks is made possible by the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting and by viewers like you can