(bright music) >> Kuhn: Radiology is actually dealing with the pictures, images of the body.

As a radiologist I can see through, I can recognize the bones in each person in different setting.

So it was very natural for me.

>> Toni: It is an experience, it is a true cultural event that this community and Lake County has never seen before.

>> Art: Ironically, I was trained to do art.

I did my career, made the money I had to make, and now I'm doing my training, so it's a flip flop thing.

>> Roberto: All these pieces are created based on memories from me learning Mexican history.

The descending ego, which would be the translation of Cuauhtemoc.

Cuauhtemoc was the last emperor before Hernan Cortes finally conquered the city of Tenochtitlan, which is now known as Mexico City.

>> Narrator 1: Doing as much as you can, as quickly as you can is important to me.

Life is short and the earlier we get started helping our community, the the better off our community will be.

>> Narrator 2: Family, home, work, self, of all the things you take care of, make sure you are near the top of the list.

North Shore Health Centers offers many services to keep you balanced and healthy.

So take a moment, self-assess and put yourself first, from medical to dental, vision, chiropractic and mental health.

North Shore will help get you centered.

You help keep your world running, so make sure to take care of yourself.

North Shore Health Centers, building a healthy community, one patient at a time.

>> Announcer 1: "Eye On the Arts" is made possible in part by South Shore Arts, the John W. Anderson Foundation, and the Indiana Arts Commission, making the arts happen.

Additional support for Lakeshore public media and local programming is made possible by viewers like you.

Thank you.

(bright music) (classical music) >> I was born in Korea, just average family.

But when I was five years old, we had a Korean War, north Korean communist army invaded, and we had to flee for our life because they were killing right and left.

At that time, we did not have any place to go, we had no food, and no clothing, so forth.

Fortunately, my mother was a school teacher and so she was able to earn some income to feed our family.

And when she was working in the school, she brought me some of the used papers, which has a blank backside and gave me pen and pencil.

So I spent my time doodling in the back page of the newspaper and she realized that I was good at a drawing.

(ambient music) Korean War ended, we were able to go back to our home in Seoul, capital city.

Found out the home was gone, so we had to rebuild our life there.

My parents were supporting me the idea of continuously pursuing the art in my high school age until the last minute when I was asking my parents that, can I go to art school for college?

And my father said, "No."

At that time, artists and the magicians could not make a living in poor country of Korea.

So he advised me to go some professional school.

So I studied hard and I went to medical school as a second choice.

But when I went to the medical school, I found out they had an art club in medical college also.

We gathered together on weekends to paint together and we had a annual exhibition of our artwork.

So I had some experience of how to prepare the painting the last minute before put a frame and then hang on the gallery and so forth.

Graduated from medical school successfully, came to America for a better living, at that time without any place to go.

I was fortunate to get an internship and residency training and fellowship.

So I finished my training in radiology.

Radiology is actually dealing with the pictures, images of the body.

So it was very natural for me to understand the pictures and interpret it to make a diagnosis, things like that.

As a radiologist, I can see through, I can recognize the bones in each person in different setting.

I can follow the boney structures even though it is hidden behind the clothing.

So I have a great advantage of knowledge of the anatomy by the clinical experience of the radiology.

So you have to figure out in your brain the disease of the body, somehow figure out how deeply dislocated by looking at from the front and from the side.

To me, it was very easy from the day one, I enjoyed being a radiologist because of I was good in imaging, and now I enjoyed painting with the knowledge of the anatomy and the pathology from the x-ray practice.

(ambient music) (classical music) While I was practicing radiology, I heard about medical mission.

Usually they were looking for surgeons or internal medicine or pediatrician.

But one day I got a call from one of the organization said, "They need a one spot for the physician.

Can you see the patient with a stethoscope without x-ray equipment?"

I said, well, I haven't done that much, but let me try.

So when I signed up expedition to Amazon River in Peru, I brought a small sketchbook with me.

Every year I signed up different country, different expeditions.

So for next about 20 years, I've been visiting so many different countries as a short-term medical mission, continuously doing sketches.

(classical music) I like to challenge the young people in America, I was discouraged pursue my career as an artist.

But if any young person is asking me a question, Dr. Hong, can you give me advice?

I'll say this, if you have heart, go for it.

Even your parents may not agree you a hundred percent, but go for it.

If you don't think that art is as a career, then that's different story.

You can enjoy art and music as your hobby, but continue to study and practice of music and art and enjoy your life.

Your life will be more enriched because you have such a capacity of enjoy your musical instruments, or drawing pictures, or making the sculptures.

So all I can say to young people, if you do love it, like it and good at it, go for it.

(ambient music) >> What is the Gary International Black Film Festival?

It is an experience, it is a true cultural event that this community and Lake County has never seen before.

(bright music) We curate independent film, black film, film of color, and across the diaspora actually.

And it was born from a need, especially here because there were no movie theaters here in the city of Gary.

Wanting the citizens to be up close and personal, first and foremost with filmmakers that tell stories of individuals that look like themselves.

Gary is a predominantly African American community, and things were shifting in the film world and many of the stories about us have not been by us.

And so that was appealing to us in this community.

From the fellowship perspective, that I've been able to see newer and younger high school students wanting to tell their experiences.

And the fact that art imitates life and life imitates art, whichever way you look at it, it's been fascinating watching their interest and their process.

These up and coming emerging creatives as I like to call them, they have their eye on the pulse of things.

(jazz music) >> I wanted to tell stories and act out things my whole life.

And then when I was around 15, I realized I wanted to make movies and I was really influenced by my dad.

And my dad's a huge film buff.

He's a scientist though, he worked at Inland Steel for many years, so he's not a filmmaker, but he just showed me so many movies from all different countries.

And I just realized like, oh, this is the one medium that you can really touch people in a way, because I've been touched so much by movies.

It's like the thing that gets me the most are films.

Your home is completely tied to who you are.

Northwest, Indiana, Gary, Highland, Schererville, these towns are like, the people in them completely make up how I understand the world.

How you understand the world is shaped by how you were brought up.

And so I think as an artist I'm like just kind of constantly turning that around and I had to go home to ask questions, to figure things out.

And I'm the child of Indian immigrants, so it's like I have Indian parents who came to this part of town and how has that shaped my understanding of the world and what do I see, and what can I kind of reflect back as the truth as I know it.

(jazz music) >> Gary is unique, but it is also our hometown.

And when we think about what makes the quality of life in a hometown, you know, you have your first place where you work, your second place where you pray, play or heal, and your third place, and there's not a lot of third places, cultural place spaces, cultural activities in Gary.

And so we wanted to be just one of those little nuggets that make up the culture of Gary that makes life better in Gary.

But Gary's not necessarily unique, every town needs that.

And that is kind of the niche that we think we're filling.

We grow deeper every year for sure, and yet our programming expands 'cause we get all excited about things and then audiences grow as we have grown.

And I don't know, when we first started 14 years ago, we didn't think anyone would come.

We held the festival in February, which is Black History Month, Lake County had the third largest snowstorm in the history of Lake County, but we sold out.

Nobody was more shocked than us.

And that let us know that people in this town are hungry for cultural arts that are based on people that look like them.

Anybody can see a blockbuster film, there's multiplexes and Cineplex all over, but do you get to talk to the director after?

Do you have a conversation in the community about what you just saw?

Do you talk about how relevant it is to you?

No.

We buy our popcorn, we consume the content, and we walk away, and it's sort of like a cycle of arrested development.

And what film festivals provide is an opportunity for people to process just what they saw.

>> Starting in grade school I sort of gravitated toward art.

When the teacher would select a piece that you did, I had that happen to me a couple of times growing up, and that's like planted a seed in my head, wow, this might be something I can do.

That's where I got that kernel going on, on the art in grade school and high school, and then I was thinking ahead to college.

My parents were entrepreneurs.

They had a business in East Chicago, and it was in electronics.

That thing evolved, that business, Acro electronics evolved into a industrial supplier.

So I literally grew up in that business.

I slept on the shelf when I was a kid.

I don't know by osmosis, I guess, I got a training and an apprenticeship in that type of distribution business.

So now I'm getting outta high school, I like art, I like what I'm doing, and Art logic would say, well, I should try to get an MBA or I should try to get an electronic engineer degree.

I didn't, I wanted to go to art school.

And to my parents' dismay.

And so I did, I went to Indiana State in Terre Haute.

So I'm graduating from college, now the reality kicks in.

The right thing for me to do would be to go back.

And I obviously I grew up in that business, so I stayed there for 26 years and I never went to grad school.

I got married, I had two kids, I had a fancy house in Chesterton.

And all this time, I'm running at 60 miles an hour every day, morning till way late, and I'm not doing any art.

Eventually I retired, I retired in 2018.

My partner Lori, Laura Kittle is my partner in crime.

We're upstairs on the couch and the sun's coming through the window, I'm looking at the blinds over there where it cast a shadow and I picked up the corner of the cable TV box and I grabbed my phone and I took a photo of it.

That was the image that created COVID cable box.

And wow, it was like riding a bike.

All of a sudden, I'm back, I'm getting the rust off, Things are happening.

And it was COVID, we were all locked in our houses, nobody went anywhere.

And it was the perfect time to get those things flowing again.

And so that's when I started to get back into my art.

(upbeat music) Ironically, I was trained to do art.

I did my career made, made the money I had to make, and now I'm doing my training, so it's a flip flop thing.

But at my age I can handle critics better, my skin is much thicker.

You know, somebody says, my work sucks.

Maybe it does, maybe I should take a second look at it.

My feelings don't get hurt like they did when I was a young man.

Even though you're not a working artist you're still looking at stuff and you still see things when you drive by.

And some of those jobs I had I spent a lot of time in bad hotel rooms, but in a lot of towns with small galleries and stuff, I would always find a way to take a quick tour if I could, if I had time.

So even though I wasn't a working artist, I was still looking.

Picasso was prolific until he was like 85, so it's never too late.

(upbeat music) (ambient music) >> I started sort of like playing with wood since I was a kid.

Back home in Mexico my cousin had a very modest wood shop, and I just liked all that beautiful furniture.

I have always been artistically inclined at some point, like from building furniture, I started leaning towards like carving and sculpting, and that's where I am today.

Growing up in Mexico, churches they're everywhere.

They're from colonial times, so you see all those paintings and sculptures and the architecture and the carvings on the wood.

I think that is how I started to develop my work, based on all those memories.

I would see things and wonder how it was made or how could I make it, or like, how could I learn how to make that?

I was always attracted to handmade items.

One day I was driving by the side of the road and I spotted some logs and I just like the shape of the trunk, and I thought, I think I can make something out of it.

I just started carving it.

Once I started learning techniques, I pretty much fell in love with it.

This is some of the work that I actually developed.

I call it my signature work because as far as I know, nobody was making something like this.

When I mean something like this, I'm talking about the shape.

It is a technique that involves both turning and carving.

The black part was actually burned with a wood burning pin.

The embellishment on the piece, it is called the "Quinto Sol."

It represents the elements of life, as well as the transition of life, and they had in Mesoamerican cultures.

(ambient music) These two pieces that you see are part of my Mesoamerican series.

They represent important aspects of Mesoamerican culture.

In this case, this is a Cuauhtemoc.

It has feathers carved around that represent the status of a chief, and then the descending eagle, which would be the translation of Cuauhtemoc.

Cuauhtemoc was the last emperor before Hernan Cortes finally conquered the city of Tenochtitlan, which is now known as Mexico City.

It means endurance, resistance, indigenous pride.

He's like a hero to us because he was the last one who actually stood his ground against the conquistadors.

(ambient music) All these pieces are sort of like created based on memories from me learning Mexican history and visiting archeological sites.

You know, what I saw there was things carved on in stone, it was not like marble, like really smooth, it was more like porous in a way that is what I am trying to represent.

(upbeat music) Both pieces that you saw, they are colored with the dry brushing technique.

The differences that on this you see a little bit more of the natural wood, the walnut.

What I did is just to highlight the texture that I applied.

(upbeat music) This work that you are seeing now is the development of driving by the road and seeing like, oh, that piece of wood, I can make something with it.

So this is the progression of it.

I was already an adult when I set that goal for myself to develop a type of work that I could call my own.

I also think that whenever you get stuck into something, you stop growing.

Every little thing or technique that you can learn from different disciplines if you apply to your work, you can only make it grow.

(upbeat music) Artistry and craftsmanship are closely related, one cannot exist without the other.

You cannot make a bowl, like a simple bowl, you cannot embellish that bowl and make it look nice if the profile of the bowl is not right, because your eyes will be drawn to that profile because it's a natural thing.

In order for you to apply the artistic part to the bowl, you first meet the craftsmanship to create the bowl.

And I think that holds true to just about any discipline you practice.

(upbeat music) >> Narrator 1: Doing as much as you can, as quickly as you can is important to me.

Life is short, and the earlier we get started helping our community, the better off our community will be.

>> Narrator 2: Family, home, work, self, of all the things you take care of, make sure you are near the top of the list.

North Shore Health Centers offers many services to keep you balanced and healthy.

So take a moment, self-assess and put yourself first, from medical to dental, vision, chiropractic and mental health.

North Shore will help get you centered.

You help keep your world running, so make sure to take care of yourself.

North Shore Health Centers, building a healthy community, one patient at a time.

>> Announcer 1: "Eye On the Arts" is made possible in part by South Shore Arts, the John W. Anderson Foundation, and the Indiana Arts Commission, making the arts happen.

Additional support for Lake Shore public media and local programming is made possible by viewers like you.

Thank you.

(bright music) >> You really have to think about how do you support a child through all the developmental aspects of life.

>> When we have those positive relational experiences and we learn that we're worthy, and it's a safe place to be, and that there's hope in the world, well we take that with us.

>> It is really a learning process between two people, and that's what building a relationship is all about.

That's such a satisfying and bonding thing for you and your child.

You feel it and your child feels it too.

And if a child receives comfort, support, assurance and protections, then they learn safety, security, trust, and hope, and think about what a world we would live in.

>> Announcer 2: A $100,000 matching grant generously provided by the Legacy Foundation will double your contribution today.

Building Blocks, a community investment with everlasting returns.

>> Announcer 1: Across Northwest Indiana, stories are told, shared, and sought after.

Tune into Lakeshore Public Media, 89.1 FM to hear these stories about Northwest Indiana and your community, streaming online at lakeshorepublicmedia.org.

>> Announcer 3: Did you know that you can find all your favorite Lakeshore PBS shows online?

By visiting video.lakeshorePBS.org you can stream a large selection of shows including "Eye On the Arts."

>> To me, it's always about music.

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(upbeat music)