- Art is everywhere.

It might be a dance with your favorite partner, or the dance of a butterfly's wings.

It might be a delicate fragrance, or a delicate orb made of glass.

It might be something you've never even imagined, because art is incorporated into almost everything.

And we're excited to share that everything with you.

Welcome to "Art Inc." In this episode, we're exploring connection.

- [Announcer] If you want to know what's going on- (lively music) (audience applauds) (lively music continues) - This is a story about preserving history, brick by colorful brick.

(light music) (driving music) - I'm on a strange mission.

I make Lego models of underappreciated buildings to get people to reevaluate what they think of as a landmark.

My name's Andrew Grover, and I'm a Rhode Island Lego artist.

I lived in Pawtuxet Village for a while.

You know, one of the best little villages in Rhode Island.

And when you go out Pawtuxet Village on Post Road, there's that beautiful old school building, Aldrich.

And I lived in Warwick at the time when they were going through the whole school consolidation.

- Well, Mike, we've known these closures were coming for quite some time, and reality has finally hit at two junior highs, Gorton and Aldrich.

- I remember thinking when that happened, I was disappointed.

Aldrich and Gorton are beautiful buildings.

They're gorgeous buildings, they're culturally important, and that was the thing I noticed is that in all the discussions of what should be opened and closed, cultural heritage and aesthetic value of the structures was never factored in.

Now I'm not saying that's the only thing.

Of course not.

You talk about school buildings, they have to be functional at a certain level.

It has to make sense for your populations.

But those other things should not not be included in the conversation.

And they never are.

Not in Warwick, not anywhere.

And that bothered me.

That bothered me a lot.

Why did it suddenly jump in me one day that, you know what?

I'm gonna take Aldrich, 'cause Aldrich was my first one.

I'm gonna build it outta Lego.

(Andrew laughs) I'm that, I hate to say, I'm not really totally sure of.

It's a kooky idea that got in my head one day.

I knew I had them back at my parents' house, and I started to put it together.

(inspiring music) What I'm doing is there's a serious message here, like I'm serious about how I wanna change the conversation about public buildings, but I also like to do things in kind of a mirthful way, I suppose you could say.

And Lego is most definitely it.

It's also pretty powerful.

There's really nobody that doesn't want to take a look at some neat Lego thing.

The buildings that I always wanna build are ones that are interesting to the Rhode Island story, that are aesthetically interesting in some way.

When it's my choice, I do tend to gravitate toward the public school buildings, 'cause that's my home turf.

When Art and Tourism's like, "Pick one that you want," I did Mount Pleasant.

What a landmark building.

What an absolute landmark building.

And then I did the Messer Street School, and it's a giant hulking brick building.

It's post-Civil War.

It's a very distinctive period in Providence architectural history.

And it's one of the last public school buildings from that era.

And it's gorgeous!

And you know, whenever you say to people, "It's a post-Civil War," the first reaction people always have is, "That's a public school build- "But, but, but, but that's way too, too old."

And I stop people like right there.

That's big absorbed classism there.

Nobody says that about the Moses Brown buildings.

There's a lot of old buildings there.

Nobody says that about University Hall at Brown University.

That's something we just reserved for public school buildings.

There is no reason that a beautiful piece of cultural history that's a beautiful building that that is not suitable for people to work and learn it.

Not at all.

That's just, that's totally a choice that we've made to take that away from the public sphere.

(light music) I got a building, I'm gonna make it outta Lego, all right?

The first thing I do is I go out and I take my own set of pictures of it.

I need a picture of each face of the building.

That doesn't mean four, by the way.

It means no, like every little, like that they have.

Any artistic representation of something shouldn't be going for absolutely every detail.

It's the choice, realizing that there's certain things that this is what makes this structure, this structure, and then whatever that is, that's the thing that you really have to go for.

And sometimes it's a certain distinctive architectural detail.

Like again, when I was looking at Union Station, that's got a very prominent entranceway there, and then the rest of the building kind of rectangles out.

You use pretty regular bricks.

There are not a lot of specialized bricks in my models.

I had to buy a lot in bulk.

I'll need like, you know, a thousand just like standard like red one by sixes, or something like that.

(light music) I was commissioned to do the build of the Providence Public Library the summer of 2019, because as they were going through their big renovation, they were thinking about what sort of artwork do we want to anchor the gallery space in there?

And I pitched them a medium and a big size, and I'm really happy that they went for big.

(Andrew laughs) I got that over there in like the three or four days before the world shut down due to Covid, and like we knew that was gonna happen.

And so we got it together, you know?

But then still, it was some months before anybody could see that.

(bright music) I think that your school, all right, is one of the most beautiful buildings in the city of Providence.

I really do!

The Carl Lauro School is so far to date the only time that a public school has been able to commission some work for me, because, you know, I guess it's my own kind of fault, but here I am trying to make art out of like by definition some of the places that can like least afford to do that thing.

You know, it's not like I decided to go out and do Lego models of the Newport Mansions, you know?

Or houses on Blackstone Boulevard or something.

But sure, it worked, and I was happy to do that just to be able to say finally a school could support some artwork that celebrated itself.

And I love all of these brick details near the roof!

Have you ever, when you go outside, have you ever looked up and seen all of those little brick details?

Ooh, you've gotta look.

They're very nice.

All right, they're very, very, very, very nice.

I wanna see these buildings celebrated in art.

Isn't that what we do in this country?

How do we send the message that a structure is important?

We depict it in art, and it becomes tougher to neglect those buildings.

So to me, my, you know, my mission is to build as many as these as possible, just get as many people to see them as possible.

You know, it's kind of as simple as that.

And yes, we can have lots of conversations about it, but to me, every time a Rhode Islander lays eyes on a beautiful building, but neglected, you know, or just not celebrated, every time they lay eyes on a piece of art, it just inches it up a little bit.

(flowing music) (light music) - Let's take in a show at the Everett Stage to learn how building from a painful past can lead to a blissful present.

(bright music) - [Aaron] Who am I?

What am I doing?

What do I need?

- 1, 2, 3.

- [All] "Bliss Body!"

- Hi, I'm Aaron Jungels.

I'm co-artistic director here at Everett.

Everett's been around for 36 years now.

We started out sort of as a family company, my mom and my two sisters, and then we quickly grew from there.

So Everett's work is a mix of dance and theater and video projection, and we wanted to create a place for diversity, a place where anybody could come from any social background, any economic background, any cultural background, and bring what they love to do, and just have a place where kind of joy could spring up.

And I think it's been that for a long time.

So "Bliss Body" kind of, the idea came out of work we had done previously.

The piece was kind of about how you heal from developmental trauma, but all of that work made us feel like we needed to explore the other side of things.

(gentle music) - With sort of the content of the piece, it forces you to look at yourself for real, and look at yourself on a much more honest level.

(gentle music) We were definitely looking at our traumas much more in the beginning to kind of clear up the air, so we can find our bliss, and to get to what the piece is about.

- It's like you are the moon.

It's like everything is revolving around you in that moment.

It's been growth.

The healing part actually comes in taking what we do here and incorporating it into our regular lives.

And that's where the healing comes.

Learning not to be angry, learning to keep, you know, to walk away from situations that are not productive.

Yes, it's been healing for me, you know, taking what I have here and incorporating it into the real world.

- One of the challenges when we started the rehearsal process was being a new mom, but at this point it's like, feels so natural, and especially doing a piece related to bliss and being present and finding your center and feeling like that's invaluable with raising a child and being present was like an interesting challenge, and I think a very positive one.

(light jazz music) - The process of not just healing, but understanding like that I'm, that I'm worthy of healing, and healing is success, I think we try to measure success as in like an object or materialism, materialistic things, and we forget that just waking up in the morning is successful.

(upbeat music) - For me, for example, like I, you know, I suffered, you know, from abuse, and I wasn't sure where some of my anger was coming from, but when I sat down and I dealt with it, and I started to deal with it, I realized, you know, at 29, I'm dealing with anger that I've had since I was 15.

You know, and then you start to realize how old it is.

See, you're trying to get to that, you know, that finish line, and become the better you, become a better version of yourself, you know?

And each day is progress, too, so it's not something that's gonna happen overnight, but that's the first step, you know?

- [Christopher] I think all art has the power to change the world.

I think that Aaron specializes in creating works that change people.

When somebody sees what we do here, nobody walks out the same they walked in.

I've been influenced by that.

He influenced me to want to be more like that.

I feel like putting this out there, reminding people to follow their bliss, that, you know, everything that we go through, the hustle and bustle of whatever our lives are, it doesn't have to be all pain.

We can find those three or four seconds of joy and focus on that instead of everything else.

(gentle music) - Popular culture is the heartbeat of art.

Let's meet a printmaker who loves bringing his art of the people to the people.

(light music) (jazz music) - My name's Jeff Palmer.

I'm an artist and a media maker.

I would never consider myself sort of a formally trained artist.

I guess you could say I'm self-taught.

Painting, colors, abstractions.

I think it was also what I called the pandemic pivot.

I had been doing a lot of media, a lot of filmmaking up to that point.

And then our lives were put on pause, but I needed to stay busy doing some artwork.

Creating things, making things really became my outlet for creativity.

I started to see some things on Instagram about printmaking, and I started to get curious about it, because when you make a original piece of artwork and sell that, it's gone.

And that's a good thing.

But I got curious about printmaking, because you can create a negative image, a plate that you can ink and make copies of, and you can not just sell one or 10, but as many as people want to buy.

I mean, I always tell people we're born with our own block print, and it's our fingerprint.

So you, basically that's what it is.

And there's ink that lands on a surface and you press it.

That's what makes those lines.

If we didn't have a fingerprint, it would just be all black, right?

(rock music) I've always been kind of into chaos, which kind of spirals into, you know, making art, taking things apart, putting them back together again.

And I think maybe in my head there's, you know, a lot of ideas that need to get out.

It's messy.

I guess maybe that's more of it.

It's like creativity to me, it spills all over the place.

I love music, I love movies.

You know, acting, artists, Frida Kahlo, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Debbie Harry, Keith Haring, Alice Cooper.

I love portraits.

I love capturing sort of the essence of a face.

And then sometimes I'll incorporate little, little snippets of lyrics from their songs, you know?

Or just something like Prince, "Let's go crazy!"

(upbeat music) I think my graphic design experience over the years really started to play into how I thought of Rhode Island.

And I was just starting to think of it in terms of catchy phrases.

I have three cats, so cats are a really big part of the content that I create.

(cat purrs) What I do is I try to, you know, I find those folks that have really touched me and influenced me, the people, the musicians, the politicians, the, you know, the big thinkers of a moment in time, right?

A point in history that are influencing us, that are affecting us.

But what I love most, I think, is like really bringing the artwork to the people, you know, to the folk.

Folk art, right?

It's always a trip.

You never know who you're gonna connect with.

You never know who you're gonna meet.

(upbeat music continues) - All right.

Well, why don't you show me what you do.

- All right, let's do some carving.

- So what have you got going on over here?

- So this is a blank block, all right?

This is four by six, and it's like a really hard eraser.

You wanna talk about the tools?

- Yeah, let's talk about the tools.

- All right.

Here's some blades.

95% of what I carve, I use this number one blade.

Mostly moving the material under the blade, as opposed to moving the blade.

- Then we gotta put the ink.

- That's what we're going for, hopefully.

The ink on the inc.

I like that.

(tools tap) - [Tracy] So how did the first one turn out?

- I knew it wasn't gonna be perfect and it never is.

There's this whole strip here against the A, so I've gotta get back in there.

- You said typically you'll do three proofs.

- Sometimes more.

(tool taps) All right, so here we are, take two.

Ah, let's take a look here.

- Oh, it's looking good.

Looking sharp.

- Yeah.

Right?

- Pretty sharp.

Art sharp.

- Art sharp.

Well, Tracy, you tell me what you think is- It's okay, this is when you've gotta be critical.

What do you think?

What do you think?

- [Tracy] Maybe like here, there's a little bit on that I still.

This looks sharp.

- I think that'll do the trick.

Three time's the charm, right?

- Three time's the charm.

- All right.

(tool rapidly taps) Okay, this should be good to go.

All right, Tracy.

Art Inc. in color.

- I love it!

It's perfect.

(light music) Let's take a ferry ride to the Vineyard for a spin on the nation's oldest carousel.

(light music continues) (upbeat music) - And there's always been a fight between Watch Hill and Rhode Island and this carousel is who is the oldest continuously running carousel.

We won.

My name is John C. Anderson.

I'm a painting and restoration contractor here at Martha's Vineyard, and I've been doing that since 1981, and I have worked for the preservation trust who owns The Flying Horses since 1982, painting all the historic buildings.

And then I started to restore the historic buildings, and that brought me into working on The Flying Horses.

(bell rings) When the trust bought it, they did research on restoring the horses.

Finding again, old black and white photographs from different people on the island that collected photographs of that.

This is 1884 color, original color.

Very little touch up was done.

These carousels, when they were built, were vibrant, vibrantly colorful.

They were always kept up, so they were bright and cheerful for the kids or kids of heart.

This is a representation of color from 1884, and we got back some of the blanket details.

It's a little finial thing on the on the saddle.

The teeth were more exaggerated.

They looked like teeth, instead of just a rounded piece of wood.

In the carousel business, so to speak, there's websites that you can find that you can find all the parts and pieces if you need it.

So I found a lady who got manes and tails from the culled herds of wild horses in our southwest.

So these are from wild Mustangs from the southwest of America.

Another great feature of the horses are the glass eyes.

They're called shooters, from the game marbles.

Inside the eyes are little lead animals.

These panels' paintings were restored.

Some of the original panel paintings left the carousel as it got sold from owner to owner, because these are irreplaceable pieces of art.

So this is a true representation of what I was told was the Hudson River School of Art.

They were just mass produced, quick strokes, no going back.

The carousel closes Labor Day.

The first thing that happens to the carousel is the trust people come in, and they clean everything above the carousel.

That takes about a week.

Then we come in and set up.

We take all the tails, manes, and tack off, so they're stripped relatively down to bear horse.

I work leather, I work wood, work the paint, fix the tails, fix the manes.

So every year we've done that since 1986.

Anyways, I just take pride that I do this.

I would love to see these behind glass and never have another rider on it, just have it go round and round and round.

But because it's living art, historic living art, it brings character and it always has had character for the Vineyard, and especially the town of Oak Bluffs.

And this island cannot be without The Flying Horses.

(gentle music) - I was born on the Vineyard.

Carousel is part of my life.

And when I got to see it from the inside, as the first year of my management, it was like, "Oh yeah, this is where I'm supposed to be," and I love it.

This past winter, I was in the hospital, and a nurse came in and she asked me, "Where are you from?"

And I said, "Martha's Vineyard."

And she says, "My favorite place is The Flying Horses."

And I was like, "That's me.

"I'm the manager.

"Been there 34 years."

She's like, "Oh my God," in amazement.

And I realized how important The Flying Horses is to so many people, but to actually have somebody present it that way, you're like, "Dang, it is a special place."

It's magical.

- I think my role here is sort of like the jokester, the jester.

I talk to the young kids.

If you'll notice, each horse has a spike on the top for the rings.

The young girls now think those are unicorns.

And I tell 'em, "Let your imaginations go, guys."

I'll tell them, "Oh, we have to buckle you on really good."

"Why?

I won't fall off."

"No, because the horses might jump the fences "and go to the beach."

I imagine that the horses are coming alive, going around the island.

These children who are in some kind of pain for something, emotional pain, and I imagine maybe Duke or Martha or Maggie Bell are there to console them and say, "Hey, it's all right.

"Life goes on."

I love the people that walk in here and go, "Oh my God, it's beautiful.

"It's beautiful."

It's what keeps me going, and my hope for the future of this, woman that approached me about 10 or 12 years ago.

She told me she first rode this in 1928 when she was two years old.

She was back with her great-granddaughters.

- Since 1912, my grandmother was born on the Vineyard.

She rode it, my parents rode it, my kids rode it, I rode it.

Now my grandchildren are riding it.

There's your art.

You know, it's priceless.

(lively music) - Sometimes it's a childhood connection, or a way to build something new.

Sometimes it's a face you've always loved, or a place you'll never forget.

But wherever we find ourselves, we'll find art.

Thanks for being here, and we'll catch you next time on "Art Inc." - [Announcer] If you want to know what's going on.

(upbeat music)