- [Group] It's The Infinite Arthunt.

- Ty, I think I just had a brainwave of inspiration for what Grandma Tilly's birthday present should be.

I'm gonna make her a picture of the last time that we were all together at Boathouse Row with the twinkly lights.

- Freddie.

- Oh no, do you not like it?

- Oh, of course I like it.

It's my idea, I even have the reference picture.

- Oh no, we had the same idea.

Ty, how did this happen?

My inspiration brain is out-spiration.

- Maybe you are overthinking it.

- Tillyphone.

- Greetings, grandchildren.

Seems pretty tiny to me.

You caught me babies.

I'm just too excited for your art hunt at the Grounds for Sculpture.

It made me think a lot about perspective, your personal point of view.

I put this little model in front of the camera.

From your perspective, you saw a ginormous figure but now you know it's itty bitty.

Artists love to challenge your perspective, the way you look at something.

Grounds for Sculpture is a wonderful place to get your own perspective shaken up a bit.

I told my friend Gary you were going and he wanted to send you a little message.

- Hi Freddie, I'm Gary Schneider.

I'm the executive director here at Grounds for Sculpture.

I get to work with so many people every day to help make our guests have the most incredible experience with art in nature.

I also get to work with artists who make incredible new artwork and some of that you'll get to see when you're here.

Grounds for Sculpture is an incredible place.

It's 300 sculptures, 42 acres of gardens.

There's so much here for you to see.

You're gonna have a great time today.

- The museum is also home to an exhibit of my other friend Roberto Lugo.

Now he's a world famous artist but he started as a Philly kid, like you and Ty.

He couldn't make it to the museum in time to meet you but I know you will love his exhibit.

Go view the sculptures.

Check out Roberto Lugo's exhibit.

Challenge your Perspective.

Bye my babies.

(playful music) (playful music) (playful music) (playful music) (playful music) - Ugh, okay, how many was that?

- I think almost 10.

Wait, how is that possible?

- All right, all right, let's just calm down.

Just take a moment and maybe I'll take a look at the list and we'll see if we can save some time by, my list.

- We're coming right behind you.

- Actually, we'll wait for you right here.

Freddie, I think that's the artist Roberto Lugo.

I think this is his exhibit.

We should check it out.

- Hey, are you Roberto Lugo And this is all your art?

- Yes I am and yes, this is my work.

Are you Freddie and Ty?

Grandma Tilly told me you'd come to visit.

- You came to see us?

- Yes, I did.

- So is it okay if we ask you a few questions?

- Yes, it is.

- Is it okay if we ask you too many questions?

- Sure.

- It is time for too many questions with Freddie.

- And Ty.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Why do you like pottery?

- I like pottery 'cause I think it's one of the few things I've felt like I'm good at.. - Why do you call yourself the "Village Potter?"

- I love that old adage that it takes a village to raise a person.

And so I think there's so many people that have taken part in raising me as a potter.

- How do you describe your art to strangers?

- I describe my art as pottery that combines a lot of different cultures and represents people that have been underrepresented throughout history.

- What's a fun fact about pottery?

- Pottery has been used by anthropology to tell us about cultures in the past.

- Where are you from?

- I'm from a neighborhood in Philadelphia called Kensington.

- English or Espanol?

(speaking foreign language) - I noticed Celia Cruz.

Do you use salsa?

- I do salsa, but only by myself.

I don't want anybody else to see me.

- So you won't show us?

- No.

- What made you decide to become an artist?

- I would say that I was always artistically inclined but I didn't figure that out until my mid twenties.

- What's the first art you made as a professional?

- I put it together an exhibition in Massachusetts right after I finished graduate school.

I was really scared about it because all the critics, but it went well.

- What is your artistic process?

- My artistic process is I throw pottery on the potter's wheel.

Now when I say throw, I don't mean like across the room, it's just a term we use to take a lump of clay and shape it into the shape that you want and then I paint it.

- What's your favorite thing about working with clay?

- I would say my favorite part about working with clay is the painting part.

It's the part that I feel the most confident and it's the least messy.

- What makes you excited about work?

- I would say the fact that I get to be an artist, I never thought I'd be able to do this when I was younger but every day I get to be creative and it's just such a blessing.

- Any advice for young artists?

- I would say for young artists, that feeling that you have that what you're making isn't good enough is something that everyone has.

And I think it's a challenge, but at the same time you get to overcome that challenge and that feeling is something really special.

- Big question.

What's that?

(twinkling noise) - Let me tell you more about it.

So this piece is called "Put Yourself in the Picture."

And like many of my pieces have a portrait inside of them, I thought it'd be really cool to make it so that people that are visiting can actually put themselves inside of it and take a picture of themselves inside of the artwork.

- That's amazing.

- It's so big.

- How long did it take to make this?

- It took about three months to make this and we made it next door at a place called The Atelier and it's a sculpture studio and they made it at a foam, steel, and something called resin, which is like plastic.

- So I really like how there's more bright and colorful things on the outside.

And then on the inside it's more blues and whites.

Can you explain why you chose to do that?

- Yeah so blue and white is used in a lot of different cultures for their ceramics.

Primarily known in Chinese porcelain, blue and white, but also in Spanish and Portuguese tile, they use a lot of blue and white.

And so I really wanted something that looked like ceramic when you look at it immediately.

So looking at a blue and shiny object regardless of your experience with ceramics might immediately give you that sense of this is made outta clay.

- When you started, what was in your brain?

Like did it become what you thought of when you started out the project?

- Well that's one of the really cool things about art is you don't have to know everything ahead of time.

You can start with an idea and little by little you can progress it to be something else.

I love this idea by an artist named Elizabeth King and she says, "That process saves us from the poverty of our own intentions."

And I love that idea because what it means is that if you just wind up with the thing you initially thought of, it's not gonna be as good as if you along the way make different decisions and are able to change.

- Right.

- So what do you want people's perspective to be when they're in this or when they see this?

- Well, I think perspective is a really interesting part of making art because at the end of the day, I don't want anybody's mind to change and I don't wanna affect someone's ideas that they have in the world.

But what I do wanna do is I want them to walk away with some questions or maybe for them to have their perspective challenged in a way.

So one of the things that I'm doing here is I'm looking at patterns from all over the world and including patterns from my culture which is a culture that often doesn't get represented.

And so one of the things that I hope to achieve with that is I hope for them, their perspective to be able to see how including cultures like mine can be really important and how it can produce really beautiful things.

- So the title of the piece, what is it again?

- It's called "Put Yourself in the Picture."

- And why is it that?

- Well, I'm a really big fan of hiphop music and one of my favorite musicians of all time is called KRS-One.

And he once did this poem on Def Poetry Jam where he says, "Visualize wealth and put yourself in the picture."

And I love that idea because it's like thinking about where you wanna be and just putting yourself in that.

And if you can see yourself in that, then you can make it come to life.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Wow.

- Whoa.

- So lemme tell you about this piece.

This is Jean-Michel Basquiat which is my favorite artist of all time.

That's what the portrait is on it.

And the piece itself has a lot of different patterns from all over the world including some that represent the community that I grew up in.

- Wow, I like the fist as the handle.

Why did you put that there?

- I think the fist is a symbol of empowerment.

And so I like to think that these people that I'm portraying on my pieces have empowered me in some way, so it's symbolic of that.

- I noticed some animals.

Does that have anything to do with?

- I was really inspired by where I was making it at here Grounds for Sculpture.

See, I didn't grow up around a lot of animals.

And so here they have a lot of animals like peacocks and birds walking through the grounds.

And so I wanted to include some of those 'cause I was looking at them every day.

- Why did you choose to do all the different patterns everywhere and especially on the portrait?

- I like to show how all these different patterns from all over the world can exist on one piece and how they can look harmonious together.

For me, it's symbolic of how we can as people be so different and live in the same place.

And it works so well together.

So this is now Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

And one of the things that I try to do in pottery is I try to document things that are happening today because pottery lasts thousands of years.

And so something that might seem like obvious today might not be so important years and years later.

And so do you recognize anything on here?

- I recognize a peacock and all the different feathers.

- Peacock, right?

Because they have peacocks here on the grounds.

And so I started off thinking about making this piece and I looked up the different ways that peacocks are used throughout history.

And it's also used to describe the word honorable or honor.

And so I thought that was a really great way to show her.

- That's awesome.

- Well, why did you choose this shape?

- I really like this shape.

I was thinking a bit about something that looked really regal or royal and really kind of accentuated what I wanted to show her in this place of honor.

- Is that Hamilton?

- Yes, that's Lin-Manuel Miranda, which is one of my biggest idols and icons.

And just the things that he does in music and Broadway are really inspirational to me because they're representing a culture that's not been represented much in Broadway in this context.

And that's really what I'm trying to do with pottery.

- I totally agree, that's amazing.