[female announcer] "Art Loft" is brought to you by- [male announcer] Where there is freedom there is expression.

The Florida Keys and Key West.

[female announcer] And the friends of South Florida, PBS.

[female host] "Art Loft", it's the pulse of what's happening in our own backyard as well as a taste of the arts across the United States.

[mira] All of my work has burning of some kind in it and I think it does reflect both sides of creation.

[female host] In this episode, nature translated.

For some of these artists, the environment is the catalyst to create and for others, their artistic renditions of land and water immerse the viewer in a new time and space.

[sean] There's a certain beauty that their relationship with the piece is their own choice in the exploration.

When artists speak they simultaneously are using imagery.

Right?

We're translating everything we do in our minds visually, it's an automatic, we don't even think about it.

It became really clear to me that I needed to work with a moving image, right?

There's several sequences that take place underwater and there's just no, there was no other way of representing that.

One, about this, I was born in Cuba and I came with my family to the United States in 1971 through the Freedom Flights.

The exhibition is "Rest Ashore".

The idea was always to do a video in which there would be no physical bodies in the video.

I wanted the viewer who walked into the space to feel like they were occupying that space, that sort of sensation that they were part of this experience.

As a Cuban I know what it means to migrate by sea because we have been, as a community, experiencing this for the last 50 years and so I wanted to use that personal experience and that knowledge and that understanding and I wanted to take that and then open it up to the greater global crisis that is happening and especially this started to happen in 2015 in Europe because of the Syrian refugees.

When we think of migration right now, we imagine people in third world countries coming to America or even to Europe for escaping poverty, sometimes war, famine, but we are experiencing the pandemic right now that has made, like, if you are in some cities, people have chosen to leave the city and go to the country.

So, the whole idea, also partly with the video and not having an individual be represented in the video, wants to deal with that, that due to climate change or due to some other situation, any one of us at any particular time right now could or would be forced to migrate.

When you first enter the space, it's you sort of dealing with the history of what you are about to encounter.

The very first thing you encounter is a wall of palettes so you really don't know what you're entering and in that way, it kinda gets a little bit menacing and it was done intentionally because it was meant to give you the sensation that maybe you were entering the back of a shipyard, right?

And what it would be like if you were gonna be taking this kind of risky journey and you go from being a person to also being thought of as cargo and as a package, right?

In here you're seeing the contemporary artwork.

The video takes you from one day in the life, almost.

The journey begins and it takes you through the whole process of what would happen if maybe there was a capsize.

The video ends very slowly with a sort of small view that then enlarged itself of what seems like countless numbers of clothing that have washed up on the shore then slowly but surely the video begins to expand and move up and you see the ocean again and then the sun setting, you hear the motor almost very far in the distance and the journey begins again.

At Locust Projects we're a place of "Yes" for artists.

So, we let artists really realize their wildest dreams, most ambitious ideas.

We're really unique in the Miami arts ecosystem in that way.

We commission artists to create these large scale, site-specific installations so you'll never see these exhibitions in another place, only here at Locust while they're on view.

They're typically immersive and we really give artists the opportunity to experiment in new media with new ideas.

In our 2020-21 Season we're focusing on Miami women artists and turning the space over to them.

So, we've seen in this season Christina Pettersson who was able to realize a project she had been wanting to do for more than 10 years which was to create a cemetery, to cover the floors with pine needles and to fill the room with the sounds of the song called "In the Pines" and actual tombstones that memorialized really important figures from South Florida's history but also memorialized the creatures that have been lost due to development in the pine rocklands of the Everglades.

In the case of Juana Valdez, again, you're really seeing Locust Project's mission in motion.

This is the first time that Juana has had the opportunity to work in video and here she's doing it in massive, large scale.

Artists, in order to have careers have to have exhibitions and that's where Locust Projects comes in.

A lot of artists will have their very first exhibition at Locust and more established artists will be able to do something they weren't able to do before.

[female host] Locust Projects also provides monetary awards to artists through their WaveMaker Grants along with legal assistance through their LegalARTLink.

Head to locustprojects.org.

for more.

Next up, we travel to Colorado where Rocky Mountain PBS presents an immersive, nature focused arts experience where the viewer creates their own adventure.

Immersive art to me is an experience that completely envelops the viewer.

It's multilayered, there's visual, obviously, there could be audio, there could be scent.

Working with Prismajic we knew we wanted to do an immersive project, we knew we wanted it to be around nature so we partnered with them in addition to about 30 other artists in total.

Prismajic is a immersive art company whose mission is to harness the power of art, to transform how people look at themselves and the world.

"Natura Obscura" is big, it's about 6,000 square feet.

You want to manage the space above so we have paid as much attention as possible to installing art above as well as on the floor so now you're sort of physically, completely surrounded and then we'll layer other sensory inputs on top of that.

We had to use a variety of techniques, a lot of projection mapping.

There's also Arduino technology, sensor based technology so if you move in front of the sensor, it'll trigger a reaction.

The augmented reality application that compliments the exhibit, it had to be quick to understand, it had to be intuitive because, in all honesty, we don't want people searching through menus when they should be taking in the space.

So augmented reality data's an awesome opportunity to allow these characters that otherwise couldn't have a dialogue with the visitor to be able to speak.

[eric] And since most great journeys are performed inwards, that's where we focus our attention.

What makes this exhibit so compelling is it allows you and it facilitates exploration.

There's a certain beauty that their relationship with the piece is their own choice in the exploration.

So, some people will find certain things that others won't.

It brings that sense of play back.

Technology will really play a monster role in the future of the arts.

when it's done right- It's going to surprise a lot of people- They'll feel a sense of wonder that they didn't have before.

The beauty is very important to me but I have to take the bloom off the rose.

I'm Mira Lehr, I'm an artist.

All of my work has burning of some kind in it and I think it does reflect both sides of creation, creation and destruction and that's what nature is all about.

It's always related to the environment.

I always drew when I was a little kid, I never really knew I would be a professional artist.

As I grew older, I decided I was gonna study art history in college.

I was so lucky because at the time I graduated, the Abstract Expressionists were holding forth in New York and it was a major movement so I was right in the middle of this really wonderful scene.

So, from then on I did art and I was not really into the environment as much in the beginning.

I just did nature, a lot of nature studies, but eventually I heard of Buckminster Fuller, a man who was very much about the planet and I saw an opportunity to work with him.

In 1969 I went to New York and I worked with him on something called "The World Game" and that was about how to make the world work in the most efficient way and doing more with less.

So, from then on I was hooked.

I'm feeling two urgencies.

One, I'm getting older, that's an urgency.

You know, how many years do I have left?

And the other urgency is how many years does the planet have left?

So, we've converged.

Every day I get up raring to go.

In the Orlando exhibit, it was called "High Water Mark" because that's where we're at and that's where they felt my career was at.

So, that show had very, very large sculptures of mangroves and you could walk through the mangroves and feel you were encased in the roots, the root system.

There's something about being enclosed in the space that makes the viewer very much more attentive to what's happening and so I watched people walking through the mangroves and they were all moved by it.

So, that's really the first time I've done that kind of large scale sculpture.

I loved doing it, it's a big...

The smaller I get, the older I get, the bigger the work becomes, it seems to me.

And so now I'm back in the studio and I'm turning to something I'm calling "Planetary Visions" because I'm doing images of earth masses.

I've also added writing, which some of it is from Bucky Fuller, about the planet, some of it is just poetry about nature.

I've always felt abstraction is the highest form even though I like, I like representation, but to me, abstraction gets the essence, the essence of everything and you can take it and go on with it and it's more spiritual to me.

I think, like, Cezanne at the end of his life, his paintings became kind of dissolved in light, like light entities.

At the end of Rembrandt's life, also, his work became less literal and more also dissolved in light, so light is very important and that to me is the height of it.

If you have a light entity in your work, I think it's profound and meaningful.

The light on the big sculpture, yeah, those are special lights that grow corals in the laboratory and the sculpture, it's a shape of a wave and it's mesmerizing.

You know, if the world pulls apart and people are concerned just with their little everyday existence, I don't see a great future but I'm hoping there's still time.

The clock is definitely ticking and I'm not a politician and I'm not a scientist, the way I can express it is through my art and that's what I'm trying to do along with having a wonderful experience making it.

[female host] Immerse yourself in even more of Mira's environmental work by visiting her website, MiraLehr.com.

We head back out West to meet indigenous designer, Teresa Melendez.

Since the age of 15, she's practiced the art of Native American beadwork, an art form very much in the present.

PBS Reno takes us there.

My favorite form of indigenous artwork is beadwork.

I really enjoy beading, I find it relaxing.

I enjoy thinking about the designs and the type of materials that I wanna use, the look that I wanna create.

I also really enjoy making beadwork because it's functional artwork.

Beadwork is a form of traditional Native American artwork.

So, anywhere around the country, as you visit different tribal nations, you'll see different styles of beadwork.

I've been making beadwork since I was about 15 and usually when I design beadwork and I create beadwork it's for use for cultural events or ceremonies or pow-wows.

So, I'm a pow-wow dancer, I'm a fancy shawl dancer.

I like to dance jingle and traditional from time to time, too, but my kids and I, we pow-wow dance and so a lot of the beadwork that I make is for our pow-wow outfits or regalia.

So, when I'm coming up with beadwork designs I often first start with the essence of the piece.

So, I'm really thinking about the person that I'm designing for and then the use of the final product and the look that I wanna create.

I like to lay everything out on graph paper, and then I'll translate that paper to material and I'll sew it down to the material so that I have a pattern to work with and then I just start beading.

Beadwork is incredibly time-consuming.

As you look at these different beaded pieces, you know that each one of those beads was handsewn on.

Different artists will have their own techniques and so I like to put on four beads and then go back through two.

Every single bead is touched by the artist at least once but sometimes multiple times depending how they tack it down and so the larger pieces, they could have hundreds of hours of man time.

I would say one of my favorite parts about beading is watching a piece come together cause you have this vision and lots of times your vision is pretty true to the final product but sometimes it's not and so it's fun watching the piece come together.

Actually seeing the colors come together and the designs come together, it's really exciting and it provides me a lot of motivation.

So, I'll be like, "Two more hours and I can have this piece complete and I can finally see what it's gonna look like".

When I make beadwork, I make it for really specific purposes.

So, my husband and I got married about seven years ago.

I wore a traditional Woodland outfit for our wedding and then my husband wore a traditional Paiute outfit for the wedding and then our daughters, they wore some beaded pieces, also.

My 14 year old, her name is Siyabi, which means wild rose and so you'll see in those pieces that there's a image of a rose and then Pasitiva, our little one, her name is wild iris, and so there's iris beaded into her hair ties and then in my bandolier bag there's several different flowers that are beaded in that.

You know, there's a flower that represents me, what's my favorite flower and then my husband's favorite flower and there's a hummingbird which symbolizes love and then going up the straps are the flowers of our kids.

So, Busceppi, his name is red earth, I beaded a red star-like flower for him.

One of the pieces I brought was the medallion I made when I graduated with my bachelor's degree, I went to Michigan State University.

The medallion's in the shape of the Spartan "S" with a little sash across with the abbreviation "SOC" for sociology and then the year I graduated because I graduated with a bachelor's degree in sociology.

So, it's common in indigenous artwork to see things like that, that are symbols that are very specific to the individual or specific to that ceremony.

All my beadwork that I create has a lot of symbolism.

It feels good to wear our traditional artwork because I know it comes from a special place, I know that there's a lot of meaning behind the pieces but I also think it's important as Americans, that we see the indigenous people who live here and who've always lived here.

Here in Nevada there are 27 federally recognized tribes.

That's a lot of tribes.

It's a lot of tribes, most states don't have 27 federally recognized tribes.

Sometimes when we think about indigenous cultures and indigenous arts, we think about them as history, something that's in the past and something that's not current.

There's all kinds of beautiful work that's being done by artists around the country where they're capitalizing on contemporary materials, themes.

It's beautiful to see art evolving, even indigenous art cause what's indigenous is also contemporary.

I can't tell you how many queen angelfish I've photographed over the years but this is the one that, of all of them, resonates more and I think it is because the fish has personality.

My name is Stephen Frink, I'm an underwater photographer from Key Largo, Florida.

I travel the world for underwater photography but this is my hometown.

The fish was just turning into me and I had a a hundred millimeter macro lens on it and, you know, it was able to lock into focus and the eye contact is really good, too.

It's not like I had to chase this animal.

I was there, he came to me, we had a moment and he was gone.

For marine life photography, I think proximity is one of the most important things and I think you have to be able to project a benign presence, you have to approach the animal in a fashion so they're not threatened, so that means not moving too fast so that you don't push a big force field of water.

They have to believe in you and we also have to think, you know, a little bit about the behavior so that we know that a butterfly fish, for example, is probably gonna be looking for a little crevice to find little crustaceans and things of that nature.

If you know a little bit about the fish you can predict where they may be and you can place yourself in that position.

There's an area where a fish may flee, the field of flight, so I set everything before I enter the field of flight.

So, I'll set the aperture or the shutter speed, I'll think in my mind's eye, "How is this photo meant to look?

Where should my strobes be?"

so I try to do all of those things, hypothetically, from about six feet away so I'm not inside that field of flight.

You know, people, I think, maybe think that I dive all the time.

I don't but I dive, I dive a lot in chunks of time.

You know, I'll get on an airplane and I'll go somewhere and I'll dive real heavy for two weeks.

I typically pick destinations by what it's particularly good for.

For example, if I want to shoot great white sharks, I would either go to Guadalupe in Mexico or South Australia.

I think I spent many years looking at the photography of other people and looking at the composition and I think, you know, "How did they do that?"

So long as you have a, I think, a good camera and good lights because color doesn't really exist underwater in the absence of artificial light, once you have the tools you can get a serviceable photograph.

I think what transcends a serviceable photograph into art is composition and the eye of the artist.

I teach underwater photo seminars, and that's probably the hardest thing.

And what about color?

Awareness that we try to bring to my students at the outset that no photograph is worth damaging the marine environment.

It should be no surprise to anybody that the oceans of the world are in trouble.

There's just so many things that are affecting the ocean that a visual communicator can bring to editorial awareness.

One of the things that I think is really brilliant about the whole Florida Keys, particularly the Upper Keys, when you have a marine protected area, the fish trust the divers, you know, they know that we're not here to spear 'em, we're not here to pull them kicking and screaming out of the water to a dinner plate.

I think, in terms of the future of underwater photography, I think we're kind of at a threshold so, what's gonna happen to make underwater photography better for as heavy and bulky as these housings are, if it got smaller, that would be good.

I think it's become far more democratic.

One of the reasons that, when I opened my studio here, I did well renting cameras was because nobody had them.

In the morning I would rent my camera and if nobody rented it I'd go diving, so that's kinda how I started here.

It's exciting.

If it were not for underwater photography I wouldn't be a diver today because I'd be bored, but I'm never, ever bored diving because even though it's a, I dunno, let's say a french angel and I've shot 12,000 french angelfish in my life, this one's different but there's still really, really inspiring things.

[female host] See more of Stephen's world on his website @StephenFrink.com.

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[female announcer] "Art Loft" is brought to you by- [male announcer] Where there is freedom, there is expression.

The Florida Keys and Key West.

[female announcer] and the friends of South Florida, PBS.