Coming up next on Art Rocks.

The West Baton Rouge Parish Museum honors a talented native son.

The evolving sounds of jazz and reconstructing identity through art.

These stories up next on Art Rocks Art Rocks is made possible by the Foundation for Excellence in Louis's Public Broadcasting and by viewers like you Hello.

And thank you for joining us for Art Rocks.

With me, James Fox Smith from Country Roads magazine, the painter and sculptor Ronald Trahan has spent decades creating musically inspired mixed metal sculpture in the place of his birth.

Port Allen, Louisiana.

Port Allen is not a large town.

It lies right across the Mississippi River from downtown Baton Rouge.

But it's one where Trahan traces deep roots.

Now, the West Baton Rouge Parish Museum is honoring tradition for both the inherent musicality of his sculptural work and for his enduring commitment to the place that he calls home.

Let's watch and so we feature different artists in the rotating exhibits.

But for our permanent exhibits, we're very pleased to feature Mr. Ronald Trahan, our favorite son of the Portland Cultural District.

And also Angela Gregory Exhibit, who has worked all over Louisiana, including a monument here in Port Allen.

We have enjoyed Mr. Ronald's work for decades.

Here at the museum.

Our director of programs has worked with him over the years with art in the schools and different exhibits.

He's been featured in several exhibits, but to have a room that is dedicated to his art here, it's really an honor I started real young.

I started at age 18.

My mother always took us to New Orleans to do my work.

He took me to the French bar, and I seen a live three there with making it work.

Where was brought on And I couldn't do any of it.

So I went to my uncle.

He's a mechanic, and he showed me the technique of breathing.

And I came back to my shop.

And after I met and I got the selling can't again.

I hasn't told what you do.

You burn the mill and everyone's on the floor.

And you get bored.

It took me about a couple of months and gradually got to take me where I would stay on a mill.

You have to watch the mill.

And when the cops start to sweat.

We're in a cooler and it flows on to the cup It's a real thing.

You have to kind of create a picture in your mind.

What are you doing?

We're going to start with do it out of clay.

I'm take him so clay and form things.

But once I got to doing it a lot.

I create my mind, and I'll just work on it until they start taking shape or what you want.

So it's a combination of focusing I thought, why are you working it?

Come out of my shape and build a mill, give you more freedom.

I usually do work with what you could work on.

You can't put it back on it.

But with the mill, I can twist to shape and then I take the touch and tack.

If I don't like the shape, I own tack and twist to where again until I feel the rhythm and the movement and what I want to create and listen to jazz music help me a lot to help clear out some of the powers that come from where I come from.

The edge of town They have a lot of club.

On the occasions where Beck and Clem have hope within a club he was playing oh man.

Need a woman, a woman, need a man.

And here you very well.

Wrap up the blues blues.

Let me take Horace and the band was playing.

He didn't have a lot look like he had to mediation where he was playing the piano for a brother.

Play saxophone Gus.

He was named after my dad and he played the band.

And I guess the saxophone always had a closer connection to me.

By him.

I remember him practicing with the track phone.

I picked it up, but I'm more like playing with it.

I got one in my shop.

I got one from a pawn shop, but the idea of playing it, I listen to jazz.

A lot of jazz music.

I play around with it, and I dance with Detective Paul I had a lady.

I did a piece on the caller.

Mama, Mama, Lucy should get on a table and stand up.

And she had a can opener strapped to her wrist where he used to open you here, show cans of beer and drink.

What I was doing at our club, I was picking up the frustration those people had from working for other people in the plantation.

And not having an identity of the CEO.

And I put our record in there and the dancing and the music and the part I remember at a club in New Orleans might have been a relative of my my somebody asked him and he say he would independently hope.

And I thought about it, and I think I'm in that category because what I did, I would make it on no money on a job.

I hurt my kid at work.

I was paying them and I paid my bill.

That would be but my artwork gave me freedom and I, I couldn't do people in the club do my work I think they were free.

Yes.

For a minute or two.

They were free.

I spent a lot of time but some time with Frank.

Hey, and he expressed some of the same feeling about his work, giving me the freedom.

But freedom was limited, not limited by you see, you see, you can stay out so much, but they won't give you the big money to side with you.

You're free.

Why are you doing it?

What was the word get out for?

To get into high pressure you're black.

Don't.

Don't get it.

Alvin Margolin.

He connected to someone to pieces because his son was a promoter of a jazz band.

He bought two pieces when I did saxophone play Kenny G. And I took a piece of my hair, and I put it on that track phone player, and he connected with that.

He paid me.

I think we're 1500 dollar thousand out now.

We're a lot of money.

But he recognized my work and what went to in that piece.

Yeah, what?

The piece itself.

It was a part of me and happy to do.

My father, he used to drink in a nightclub.

You come in in the morning or an evening.

He had a ball in a garage.

He would go get a nip and he come back and you give him a kiss and he'd do a cup of sticks and give a few steps.

And then he would tell a story about the dip.

My mother, she didn't like the idea of him drinking.

Yeah, alcohol had saved part of it.

And the music but they would stick in for you.

The freedom of the movement and the dip, because he always would do that.

I sent an application to get into the jazz festival, and when I was accepted, I had just you and me and people started asking me what I make single pieces from all over the film.

And when I started doing that, they started selling once and they started asking me, and now you make a guitar player, a fiddle player, a trumpet player, saxophone player.

And they started collecting and it went on and on because a lot of you say, how much time it takes?

But my doing is so long, it doesn't take me a lot long time.

But I don't value my work as to why it takes me an hour or two hour to do a piece.

And like Dave, where you are.

Well, he made 50 taking it out for an hour.

But when you do a product, you not only get a part of the idea, you get in a part of me because that thought and the practice is practiced in my mind, it comes out and it's like I'm fed about the people express the feeling of being pressed for working for somebody else and not getting anything that transfer from the mind, the body and spirit.

When I was invited to review them to view what they had put up, when I stepped in and as my studio on the wall, it yes, of feeling overwhelmed me about what had happened throughout my life, had come to a moment and it gave me a feeling of relief, something that I've been doing all my life, since I've been small.

And finally see my whole life wrapped in a room to get really great joy.

The moment I've been waiting for have come for the opening of this exhibit.

It was so nice to see multi-generations of his family here.

There was a tray and family reunion and just the pride and smiles as big as day come and see and let him see how his work benefits the world.

There's no denying it.

When we surround ourselves with the creative endeavors of others, life gets that little bit richer so here are some of our picks for notable art exhibits coming soon to museums and galleries in our part of the world.

And for more about these and loads more events in the creative space.

Visit LBB dot org slash art rocks.

There you'll find links to each episode of the program.

So to see or share any segment again, visit LBB dot org slash congruence New Orleans might have a legitimate claim to being the birthplace of jazz, but the Crescent City doesn't own the locks to this iconic genre of American music.

So let's tune in to Cincinnati, Ohio, to watch as jazz musician Romell Sims puts on a show with trumpet in hand, Sims plays proudly and tells a compelling story through the intricate melodies that he waves.

Let's have a listen baby.

Jazz Everyday Life.

My earliest influence within jazz, I have to say, my grandmother and in our basement, she had this picture of the great Count Basie, phenomenal jazz pianist, arranger, just a master of the music and I'd always look at that picture like ever since I was like a boy and I'd be like, Man, who is that man?

You just see the silhouette and like, this light on him and like, sitting at the piano.

And I always thought was cool.

I didn't necessarily know at that time that that was jazz music or that he was affiliated with it.

But I felt a vibe in that picture, and it meant a lot to me.

I still have it to this day.

La la la, I don't know La la la la la la.

My primary is trumpet, and I realize in my journey with this horn is that she's very demanding in the sense that you have to respect her in a sense.

And some people say, you know, I'm battling with my horn and I realize over time that it is you.

It's just an extension of you.

But it's all our it's all freedom and it's all self-expression.

I come from great musicians Buddy Bolden, Funk Johnson, King Joe Oliver, Louis Armstrong, and Roy Eldridge, Dizzy Gillespie, Clifford Brown, Miles Davis, Fats Navarro, Ben Marsalis, Nicholas Payton.

And sad that we lost to one of my favorites, Roy Hargrove.

I'm just being mean when I make my music because it's just me.

I'm very thankful for certain mentors in my life, such as a I was lucky Craig Bailey.

While I'm okay, these men reaching out to me, Elder David saying that you can just be yourself.

I mean, Nat Irvin was never going to like it, never was going to necessarily love it too.

But you're being genuinely you.

And when it comes to the music, it's the same thing We all have emotions.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Families guess that that we're going through so that we don't tell people about.

But listen, we're going to stay together, you know, I'm going to lean on somebody's shoulder one day so you can lean on mine.

And that's how I got the connection to the melody of this ballad that I just recently wrote.

If you all love you show love even through adversity, even through people that don't show you the love that you necessarily would like.

Because it all comes back Tamara Begay is the founder of Indigenous Design Studio and Architecture, a member of the Navajo Nation.

Begay instills not only her creative talent, but also her heritage, values and culture into her innovative designs.

Let's take a look A building should represent the community.

It should also represent, you know, the identity of the individuals the community, their culture, you know, the history and the traditions Can you tell us about the spark that drives you to create?

Well, part of that process is really like the indigenous way is about including the community.

It's all about the process.

It's not about, you know, the built form yet.

And, you know, it's really exciting because you go into a community and, you know, you'll sit down with elders, you sit down with youth, and they'll talk about specifically the elders, about a memory and really this culture memory.

And that really inspires us because when we come up with a design you know, at IDSA, you know, we don't just come with a, you know, a plan and say, this is what you guys should use in your community as a masterplan or a building.

We don't do that.

You know, it's all about sitting down and really listening to them.

And that's how we sculpt, you know, their, you know, their design, their vision and mission.

What types of challenges do you experience in this process?

Everyone talks about having a consensus.

How do you draw a consensus You know, when you're meeting with community members, that's the biggest challenge for us.

But what we do is we really have to take on this you know, indigenous aspect.

And the indigenous aspect is just really being calm, you know, with, you know, the community sitting there you know, you know, being one with, you know, the nature.

And I think that's part of it is, you know, having that consensus as part of the design process is that then we can draw consensus with it.

And pretty much everybody at the end they'll say, Yeah, you nailed it.

That was the concept, that was the vision.

And this is what we want, you know, for our community.

So what drives you personally?

What drives you every day?

What do you love about the art form?

What drives me today is working with my people.

You know, being a Navajo woman and going back to my community, you know, brings joy in me because that's who I that's who I am.

And this is these are my people.

And working with them is something I like to do because I learned some every day from, you know, these individuals from different communities and also learning different cultures because we don't just specifically work for Navajo.

We also work for other, you know, other tribes and, you know, learning their culture.

And what I've learned is that a lot of these different tribes and, you know, indigenous people really actually say they actually share the same values of the this indigenous worldview.

And and that's what inspires me.

It's like, well, we can make our communities better.

You know, we can really design a building, you know, that really is going to be influenced by our people and how we can save our culture and our language and our traditions.

I love working with my staff.

I love working with the communities.

And, you know, really listening to the stories and those stories is what drives our concepts.

And it's so important for the communities and the individuals to tell their story, and sometimes they don't get to tell their story.

I want to make sure that we do something in the design that preserves that within the community.

Yeah.

And just working with the people, I mean, it's it's great.

I think being an architect, you definitely have to be a people person.

You got to listen to them visual artists are frequently trained to work with different materials.

Some spend a career focusing their efforts with one or two, but delete a Martin loves exploring different media techniques and processes, from printmaking to layering, drawing and painting and installation art and sometimes the artist even combines all those processes into a single piece.

So we're going to Texas to find out how printmaking is this energy, this anticipation.

I can't wait to pull the print off the press I'm just a conduit.

You know, whatever happens in the studio, I'm allowing the work to work through me.

And I've been creating art since I was like five, six years old.

I don't ever remember not creating I was in undergraduate school and I saw printmaking.

I really didn't know what it was.

It was just this magical experience is really the best way that I can describe it.

So I decided, you know, one day I'm actually going to do that.

I work in a lot of different processes.

I work with drawing and I work with painting.

I work with printmaking.

There's sewing many elements in my work as well.

And so I bring all of these different energies together in order to create a piece of artwork.

Layering is very important in my work.

The layering references time, it references history and all of these different things just laid on together in my work.

I also use a lot of symbols, and a symbol for me is a circle.

You'll see that shape throughout my work it's a symbol of the moon and the moon and a lot of different cultures, particularly in African culture.

It represents the female, the women, in my work are wearing hoop earrings, and majority of the work so that's another way of bringing in that symbol my work started off really being about reconstructing the identity of African-American women when you look at me, of course, you have the stereotypes of, you know, the angry black women or, you know, for the club it's just type one.

You know, media has set the tone for our identity of who we are or who we're supposed to be.

I feel like it's my responsibility to offer a different narrative of who we could be, of where we came from and the dynamic women that we are so there are 300 plates in the series.

They're drawn directly on the plates.

I used little crayons to draw with, so I wanted to stay within the material.

The plates vary because they are actually plates that were given to me, donated to me, or, you know, they were found that everything had to have a history.

And these women had so much personality and so much life.

I didn't want to just walk into a store and buy a box of plates they are lawyers, their mothers, their teachers, their activists, their artists.

There's so many amazing women in the world.

I couldn't draw them all, but I want all of them to be a part of this installation.

So for me, the table allowed me to be able to bring the viewer in so that they can sit down and enjoy the work and talk and just have conversations you know, who are these women and what are they about?

What contributions are they making to society?

Those are the conversations that need to be heard.

My love for what I do is what drives me.

I love art and I think I'll be exploring different mediums.

I plan on bringing other mediums into my work.

I don't know how or when, but I always believe and I'm always open to it happening I refuse to believe that I can't do something I think that allows me room to grow and that is that for this edition of Art Rocks.

But you can always find watch and share episodes of the show at LP B dot org slash art rocks.

And if you're left wanting more, Country Roads magazine makes a great resource for discovering more inspiring stories in the arts events and destinations all across the state.

So until next week, I've been 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