>> Announcer: This week on "Eye on the Arts."

>> Peter: I'm a muralist by trade, the last 21 years full time, and I start from anything, canvas size to walls 200 and some feet long sometimes.

>> I love the fact that copper is considered a sacred element.

I love the feeling of copper, I love the way it looks, and I love the unpredictability of it.

Like when you pull it out of the bath, it could be bright and shiny, sometimes you get weird texture.

I love that.

I love the way it looks.

(upbeat music) >> Adam: That's the personal touch that I wanted to do.

I've done so many cars over the years, I've done so many motorcycles over the years, and everything was like perfect and pristine, and the edges were nice and sharp and tight and everything, and that's what I prided myself on was doing stuff that looks perfect.

Well, I wanted something that was so wild that didn't have to be perfect.

>> We are always interested in the quality of light and spaces.

So we also have hard time finding the fixtures that we like.

And we started just creating our own.

(acoustic guitar music) >> Announcer: "Eye on the Arts" is made possible in part by South Shore Arts, the Indiana Arts Commission, the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency, and viewers like you, thank you.

Further support provided by the Legacy Foundation.

>> Announcer: Support for programming at Lakeshore PBS comes in part from a generous bequest of the Estate of Marjorie A.

Mills, whose remarkable contribution will help us keep viewers like you informed, inspired, and entertained for years to come.

>> Woman: 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.

>> Almost every single professor I've had I'm on a first name basis.

By building that relationship with faculty, I was able to get involved with research.

It's one thing to read about an idea in a book versus physically doing it and seeing the results.

(inspiring music) >> I'm a muralist by trade, the last 21 years full time, and I start from anything, canvas sized to walls 200 and some feet long sometimes.

(inspiring music) Actually, my mom let me draw on my walls when I was eight and nine years old.

My first thing I ever drew as a mural was the seven dwarves, and I did it in pencil on my wall.

To this day, I still own that house, I bought it from my parents.

I wish I could remove the paint and see what it looked like.

But that's when I started, when I was real little.

She was an artist, and she got me hooked up in the Hobart Art League when I was 13.

I went on from there and went to the American Academy of Art in Chicago.

Graduated in '76, got married, children came, and I got a real job.

But I always painted.

I've been painting for 50 years.

I started with oils, and I was too impatient for oils, because it takes so long to dry.

And then I went to watercolors in college.

You can't paint watercolors on walls.

So I went to the acrylics, and I love them.

I've been using the same kind of acrylics for 30-some years.

You know, it's very forgiving.

So you can make a mistake and go right over it, dries instantly, and you can work opposite.

As I was trained to work with watercolors, I was trained to work light to dark, in acrylics you can go dark to light.

It's all what you want to do.

(inspiring music) Originally, coming out of college, I wanted to be a wildlife artist.

I wasn't thinking anything else.

You can make it as a wildlife artist, but I thought, man, I want to do everything.

So to do everything, you have to learn a lot of things.

Plus it gives you a variety for everybody.

I mean, I paint from flowers out of my own garden, which I raise my own flowers in my hot house, to mermaids to underwater.

There's not anything that I really haven't painted, I don't think.

It's a different style when you're doing murals compared to doing a canvas, where your detail's completely different.

You can't get bogged down on one little object because you'll never finish a wall 200 feet long.

But I enjoy it.

You'll be able to tell my style once you start seeing my stuff in the restaurants and stuff.

I call it like a checkerboard, 'cause it's the lights and darks, you're matching.

You only really need three values.

If you can master light, medium, and dark, you're doing well.

But when I'm doing portraits, it's blue, green, purple, beige.

I mix them all, as you can see in the murals down the hallway here.

There's a lot of color in it.

You have to get your own style.

I mean, I love watching everybody's painting.

Everybody's got talent.

I mean, it's just different, you know.

I just like a certain style.

I hope people can recognize it forever.

(inspiring music) Well, I was asked to do, this is veterans of Mundell, and we tried to research some veterans from the city of Hobart, who also went to the original Mundell school.

And actually, one of the first boys that died in the war in Afghanistan was from Hobart, Indiana and went to Mundell.

So we put him on one of the paintings, and a Vietnam veteran we put on that passed away in Vietnam was at the school too.

We tried to work the Hobart history, and the Mundell family, who donated the land to the school, we tried to put their family and their roots of where they came from and all that.

When we had the open house, a lot of veterans came early in the morning, and it meant a lot to them.

And to me, to mean something to people, that's what I try to push.

Well, I learned to appreciate all types of art.

Every piece of art is good to me.

There are so many different styles.

I love going to the art galleries and looking at the different styles and all that, how they went about getting to that point.

I think you learn a lot of respect of the whole art world if you want to stay in it.

There's some artists, if I could sit next to 'em and paint, I would love to.

(inspiring music) (upbeat music) >> Electroforming is taking a natural item and plating it in copper.

And how that happens is you take the item and you give it a protective coating of usually enamel lacquer, so it's gonna stand up to the harsh acid of the bath.

Once it's kind of stabilized with its enamel coating, you apply a glue-based graphite solution so it'll be conductive.

So everywhere I want copper to grow gets painted with a conductive material.

If I don't want copper to grow, I cover it with latex, and that will keep it from growing.

And then it goes into an acid bath, which is filled with copper sulfate, distilled water, some battery acid, and magic, and it hangs from a copper bar with an electric current, and over time, low and slow, copper will grow wherever the graphite is.

(upbeat music) This crazy journey of mine started in 2010.

We moved here from Illinois, and I was combing the beach for rocks, 'cause I've always been a stoner.

(laughs) When I found this rock on the beach, she was a plain looking rock with a crystal center that's called a vug.

It's an awful name for a naturally occurring thing where it's like a cavern of crystal.

I found it on the beach, and so I wanted to make her into a necklace, but it was really expensive when I priced it out, and justifiably so.

But I thought, "I can do this myself."

I had a background in art, my mom was an artist and a jewelry maker, so I was familiar with the process.

What I didn't know was how much waste and swearing there would be as you burn through wire trying to make it right.

So I remade her probably six times, but I finally settled on a design I liked, and then I really was comfortable with the tools and I had all these other rocks laying around, so I just started making things.

So I started out originally as a wire wrapper.

I was a wrapper, I was a stoner, but arthritis has had other ideas, and using tools and doing that kind of stuff over and over again takes its toll.

So three years ago, I decided to dive into this process, which I didn't know was called electroforming.

I knew I had seen crystals with copper tops, and so I was Googling copper top, and if you do that, you're gonna get a zillion pictures of batteries.

I didn't know what the process was called, but I met an artist at a show, and she was doing it, and I said, "What is your process called?"

And she said, "You mean electroforming?"

And I said, "That's it!"

That's the word I was looking for, and once I had the terminology, there were very few people doing it at that time, and there was just a little bit of information, but it was enough.

And because I have a science background, I didn't feel intimidated by the chemicals and the electricity and all the cool, dangerous stuff.

So it was really just trial and error.

(upbeat music) I make what they call raw earthy jewelry for hippies.

(laughs) But yeah, just natural jewelry.

Just about it being raw and earthy, not overproduced, not synthetic, but just as close to nature as you can be.

To be able to create something that's like a talisman of what we should be doing more of, which is getting outside, feels really good to me.

I do like my metaphysics.

We've been called woo-woos.

(laughs) I do like that, but you can't deny the science of things being made out of molecules, and molecules give off energy, and they vibrate as electrons transform things, so we talk about vibrational energy.

I talk about crystals being used as a tool for wellness.

A lot of people are attracted to crystals because of how they look, or their properties, or they just feel good to hold.

And that's because you're drawn to the energy.

Sometimes people will say, "I really like that rock.

I don't know why, I just do," and I think, "I know why," 'cause I know what that rock can do for you.

But just go with it, take it home and set it next to your bed and enjoy the energy it gives you.

(upbeat music) I love the fact that copper is considered a sacred element.

I love the feeling of copper, I love the way it looks, and I love the unpredictability of it.

Like when you pull it out of the bath, it could be bright and shiny, sometimes you get weird texture.

I love that.

I love the way it looks.

I imagine it's kind of like a potter pulling something out of a kiln.

Like you kind of think what's gonna happen, but it's always a surprise when you open the door.

It's always a surprise when I lift them out of the bath too.

I've been asked to recreate for people.

"I really like the feather she walked away with.

Can I have one like that?"

You can have a feather that's plated in copper, but it's not gonna look like that.

And it'll look similar, but never perfectly the same.

I'm a Sagittarius, so I get bored easily, and I like the unpredictable nature of what I do.

I also like the fact that people have given me leaves from special vacations.

I had one girl that brought me a leaf from a tree her parents planted when they first got married, and her mom had passed away, so she wanted me to make the leaf into something to help remember them and remember that tree.

So there's more than just the beauty of it.

There's also some good memories and things that can happen too.

(upbeat music) (rock music) >> AMP Custom Paint and Collision is a regular body shop that does a little bit more stuff.

We do custom paint work, everything from a minor fender-bender, a door ding, key scratch, to something that's been absolutely smashed by something.

And then with the custom paint part of the things, we do cars, motorcycles, boats, you name it, pretty much anything.

Custom paint to a lot of people is the fancy, bright hot rods, the restoration stuff, motorcycles, but the custom part of it can get more into just off the wall stuff.

I've painted refrigerators, the Yeti tumbler cups that we talked about.

I just painted a guy's entry door on his house the other day, at his house, on his house.

We really don't turn down much.

I mean, we try to do anything we can.

It keeps us versatile and keeps us busy.

(rock music) As a kid, I grew up around my dad.

He fixed cars on the side.

Starting off with him fixing cars when I was real young, but my grandma actually was an artist, and she taught art classes in schools in all over South Bend area, stuff like that.

She had a ton of grandkids.

She taught all of us art.

That was just what she liked, and so I did a lot of actual art when I was a kid, paintings, drawings, stuff like that.

Just enjoyed that kind of stuff.

And then as I started getting older, I was probably 10, maybe 12, I got an airbrush, and we'd like airbrush models, cars, and t-shirts, and stuff like that.

As I got a little bit older, I started changing of model cars and t-shirts to actual cars and bikes, helmets.

I painted a lot of stuff for people for next to nothing just to start getting your name out there and everything.

Because like with motorcycles, you take somebody's Harley, that's a $25,000 motorcycle, and if you don't have a portfolio or something, how do you tell somebody, "Hey, I'm good enough to do this to your motorcycle," you know what I mean?

They're gonna be like, "This guy's crazy."

I would've made more money bagging groceries, you know, by far, but that was one of those things where I felt like I had to do to build a reputation, and quality's always been the thing.

If you don't do quality, there's no sense in doing it at all.

(rock music) My car is a 2006 Corvette Z06.

Back when those cars first came out, I was in my mid-20s.

They were probably the neatest, fastest Corvette ever made, in my opinion.

It was something that I had always wanted.

I didn't necessarily want to custom paint it at first, but I bought a yellow one.

I'm not a fan of yellow, so I was like, well, I'll paint it, I'll use it for the business type thing.

I'll make something cool of it.

Wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to do with it, I just wanted it to be different, I wanted it to be bright, and I wanted some people to love it, and I wanted some people to go, "This guy has absolutely ruined this car."

Because that's the personal touch that I wanted to do.

I've done so many cars over the years, I've done so many motorcycles over the years, and everything was like perfect and pristine, and the edges were nice and sharp and tight and everything.

And that's what I've prided myself on was doing stuff that looked perfect.

Well, I wanted something that was so wild that didn't have to be perfect.

Over the process of painting the car, over the eight months it took to do it, at different stages you have different thoughts and different processes and so on and so forth.

So that's why the car looks so different from one side to the other.

I did the passenger side first, and then I did the driver's side, and then I did the hood and then the back, and then just kind of put it all together and then blended everything together so as you walk around the car, it kind of changes almost as you go, and it was just kind of a fun thing.

I pretty much did everything that you're not supposed to do with paint, sanded it while it was still wet, used my hands in it, finger painted it, blew it around with thinner.

I mean, it reacted in some places, and it turned out really cool.

There's stuff on it that even my paint manufacturer guy that comes in, he's one of the reps, he's looked at it and he said, "I've never seen anything look like this."

And that was the goal I was after.

I wanted it to be one of a kind, something different, something that not everybody else had.

(rock music) Well, you know, future plans, this one took me 10 times as long as I had hoped it would.

I've always sold the other car in order to fund the next project type of thing.

This one, I'll probably sell it anyway, 'cause I don't really keep anything.

I'm always on to the next.

I'm actually thinking about possibly doing a raffle and raffling the car off.

When I posted those pictures, it blew up everywhere.

I mean, different pages were sharing it and stuff, so it's getting a ton of exposure.

So somebody is gonna want it, so I think the raffle is a great idea.

And then, if I do that, then I'll do another one.

You always want to one-up what you've done last.

I'm not sure exactly how I'm gonna one-up this, but it'll be something newer and just kind of keep going and keep going on it.

(rock music) (delicate music) >> Mark: I'm Mark Bruzan.

>> Young: Young Hee Han.

>> And we're Han Bruzan Studio.

We design and make custom light fixtures that are functional art and meant to inspire.

(intense music) >> Young: We are always interested in the quality of light in spaces.

We also have hard time finding the fixtures that we like, and we started just creating our own a few years ago.

Started with prototypes, and it took a long time to develop to this point with our materials, techniques, and the components.

A lot of research have gone into it, and we continue to evolve.

I started out as a painter, and my first degree was getting Masters in Fine Arts from Pratt Institute in New York before I went into architecture.

And as a painter, I experimented a lot with different materials, and not just canvas, but screens.

And I also did weaving with screens and natural materials.

Those pea pods that you see out on the street, that was one of my early pieces.

And kind of looking back, some of that came through here, painting the screens and using acrylics.

You stretch in the same way as you do as a canvas, and when you lay down the paint, some of it fills the screens and some of it doesn't, creates void, and kind of creating this pixellating effect, and the light pass through those void areas in the screen.

And then early kind of phase of the process, we started incorporating natural vegetation, flowers, leaves, and whatnot, and these screens that you see over here were some of the early panels that we create using actual flowers.

(delicate music) (intense music) >> One of the things about the screen too is when you have layers of it, the layers of screen do special things to the light and special things to the light projecting through.

One of the things that we do is we don't try to make an object.

We're trying to use a light source and the screens to define the piece itself.

We don't want to get caught up in making forms, although form is always important as architects and artists, but that's really not our ultimate goal.

The ultimate goal is the light itself and the texture of light.

The screen gives light this incredible texture as it's going through it.

>> We might start out with a very kind of a simple notion of a concept of what this piece might be.

But through the process, it kind of changes.

There's a lot of transformation that happens in the process.

And I think you have to be open to what the piece wants to be and what you want that to be, and there is kind of a dialogue that happens.

For an example, we're working on this piece right now, and last night, we're both working on it, and we said, "Oh, we kind of like this where it's at."

And we have a sketch where it started, and then we said, "But it's becoming a little different path that we were taking."

And we said, "But this is okay."

But there were parts of it that we're struggling with, and in order to resolve that, we ended up just completely undoing it all.

So now we're gonna have to start all over again.

So there is that kind of dialogue that happens with the piece.

We're not always set, you know, from A to Z.

(intense music) One of our clients, they commissioned the piece, and they're ordering multiple pieces.

And something that they said to us that was so gratifying was that they said that when they get our pieces, they feel like they're not just buying light fixtures, they're buying works of art.

And I think that speaks a lot about what we're doing.

(delicate music) (acoustic guitar music) >> Announcer: "Eye on the Arts" is made possible in part by South Shore Arts, the Indiana Arts Commission, the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency, and viewers like you, thank you.

Further support provided by the Legacy Foundation.

>> Announcer: Support for programming at Lakeshore PBS comes in part from a generous bequest of the Estate of Marjorie A.

Mills, whose remarkable contribution will help us keep viewers like you informed, inspired, and entertained for years to come.

>> Woman: 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.

>> I have a very strong connection to other students.

Everyone makes an effort to help each other.

I'll remember the feeling of being here, the feeling that I was a part of a family.

(inspiring music) >> Announcer: 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 the music.

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(inspiring music)