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

>> The veena is an ancient Southern Indian acoustic instrument.

This is considered almost timeless to the point of where it's actually revered.

The sound of the veena is supposed to be something that creates good energy within us.

(bright upbeat music) >> Joan: It's very rewarding to be a part of the community and to be able to give back through quilting.

I can tell you that a lot of the people that come into the shop this is like a second home for them, help them stay creative.

>> And I was looking for more color in my life and ironically or miraculously one day there happened to be a couple of pastels that were sitting on my kitchen table and the light was shining on them and I started drawing with them and I couldn't believe how I felt.

>> I really want people to have a really profound experience of the world around them.

That's my hope and goal with most of the work is to get people outside and be like this is an amazing place, I am just gonna sit under this apple tree.

I'm not gonna pull my phone out.

(laughs) (bright upbeat music) >> Advertiser: "Eye on the Arts" is made possible in part by South Shore Arts, the Indiana Arts Commission, the National Endowment for the Arts of federal agency and Viewers Like You, thank you, for the support provided by the Legacy Foundation.

(bright upbeat music) >> Narrator: Support for programming in 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 formed, inspired and entertained for years to come.

>> 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 results.

(veena music) >> The veena is an ancient Southern Indian acoustic instrument.

This is considered almost timeless to the point of where it's actually revered the sound of the veena is supposed to be something that creates good energy within us.

And it has like scalloped frets, unlike a guitar, if you were to compare it to a guitar it has flat frets.

This one has scalloped frets so you can kinda bend.

And then this part of the veena is where we have the dragon head So the interesting part of the dragon hand is that if you were to visit temples across Southern India, or maybe even in ancient Greece you would find these gargoyles that are guarding the deity.

So this is sort of like the gargoyle of the veena guarding the veena.

(veena music) What I do is I... To me I look at raag as this transcendental universe and how I try to get that universality and transcending nature of raag to connect with people irrespective of their backgrounds.

That's how I try to immerse myself in it and get it through.

So what raag means is it's essentially it reflects emotion, it reflects feeling, passion, and that which gives joy.

If you look at it those are actually universal, our emotion, feelings, feelings of joy, feelings of happiness, being sad, being stressed out, being weighed down and raag it's not essentially a sound that you hear from an instrument or through vocalizing raag is something that we experience around us every day.

The rossling of the wind is the raag, the sound of a child saying mommy for the first time is music to the parent's ears, so that's raag.

In our everyday life like I was mentioning, there is so much of chaos that we forget that good energy is actually there within us so when we put all of that aside and kind of take a deep breath in and allow ourselves for the good sounds to permeate us then we can hear some joy in that stillness.

So that's stillness, very fine joy is where the raag flows out of.

So that's what I try to interpret in my music, in my artistic interpretations, that's what I try to do.

That deep joy is actually how we can connect to anyone.

You don't need any knowledge of music.

There's no predict music.

So you can connect with that joy, with that emotion, with that passion, with anyone across cultures.

That's what I intend to do, that's my interpretation of my music.

(veena music) So I'm gonna play raag Brindabani.

So Brindabani is sort of like a raag that gives you balance it's light and pleasant.

So I wanna do a classical interpretation of that.

(veena music) Through my experiences in this country, I've found that there really is no boundary to whatever we practice any type of music that we practice.

So my experience has been so beautiful that every time when I'm able to connect to people and then they are like, Oh there's an instrumental like this and it's called the veena.

And they are so happy to experience a sound of it they allow themselves to receive these sounds.

Which is exactly what I would like to do.

So because this is something very different that they have not seen before and in addition to hearing these sounds what I'm also demonstrating is a slice of some of the language that I speak or the attire that I wear or something that speaks to the culture that I am from.

A lot of what is happening around the world is because people don't know.

It's just something that they perceive but it's actually not.

So that leads to fear and a lot of hate.

So my goal is less fear, less hate, so there's more love.

So as artists, we have at least that responsibility in this society that we carry through in whatever way we can and then bring on board that little light energy we share that with everyone.

So that's my mission, less fear, less hate, more love so we can live as one family.

(veena music) (piano music) >> I've probably been quilting for almost 30 years now.

I started when my son was born, my oldest, a lot of quilters do, they wanna make a quilt for their baby when they're expecting.

My grandmother quilted, she liked to do appliqué quilts.

And those are quilts where you have like flowers or different designs or motifs on like a background fabric.

And I saw those as I was growing up mostly when I was probably like a teenager that I had seen her quilt, and I liked seeing the colors and everything.

I think it was really her personal way of being creative and just being able to express herself.

And she made every one of her children a quilt and she made every one of her 17 grandchildren a quilt.

And she even made some quilts for the great grandchildren too.

(piano music) When you make a quilt, the first thing you have to decide is what pattern you're going to do.

There's the pattern, there's the cutting out of the pieces, and that can be done by rotary cutter and ruler.

Some people can cut them out by hand.

Then there's piecing it together and so that's sewing the different shapes together until they resemble a block.

And then you have your quilt blocks and you sew those together and that creates a quilt top.

Then you're going to layer that together with a batting and a backing fabric and then you're going to bast your quilt.

Some people use pins, some people use basting sprays.

Some people actually use basting stitches which are large stitches.

Then you can either stitch your quilt by hand.

You can quilt it on a regular sewing machine and there's also long arm quilting where a machine either computerized or manual will quilt the whole entire quilt.

It'll go down to a row and then you move the quilt up and then you do another row until you've quilted the whole quilt and then the final step is putting the binding on the quilt.

So binding is that edge that goes all the way around the quilt.

It acts kind of like a frame but it also finishes the edge of the quilt.

A lot of people like to put a label on the back of their quilt.

So you would put your name and the maybe the year or the date that you made the quilt maybe who you made it for, if it was a special occasion but just something to say, I made this quilt because you don't know how many generations is gonna be passed down to.

(piano music) What I'm most proud of especially the Quilt of Valor quilt that I have hanging here in the shop.

That one is going to be awarded to a veteran probably at my next Quilters Guild Quilt Show.

Each quilt was chosen from all 50 States and my quilt was the quilt that was chosen from Indiana.

So this quilt is published in a book so I'm pretty proud of that.

My favorite quilt in the shop that I've ever made is in the classroom, and there's a big giant flower that's in there.

I quilted that, I appliquéd and by machine actually instead of by hand and then I free motion quilted, all the background in it.

I work alongside my husband here at the shop.

We've been married for 30 years.

When we decided to open up a quilt shop it was great that he kind of took a break from the executive world and helped me start this business and he gets all the fun jobs really he's the accountant, he does the website, he fixes the machines and puts up with me and I get to do all the fun stuff like all the creative stuff and plan the classes.

We've always been a good balance for each other.

He's good at what he does and I'm good at what I do and combined we make a good team.

(piano music) It's very rewarding to be a part of the community and to be able to give back through quilting.

I can tell you that a lot of the people that come into the shop, this is like a second home for them and it has been, especially this year.

They come in and they visit with us and it's great to be able to have a shop like this that can help them stay creative.

Like I said, they're like family to us and it's always fun to teach a quilter from the beginning and see their creativity blossom.

And when they start taking off on their own and doing their own thing and becoming the quilter that they are, that's really great to see.

(piano music) (bright upbeat music) >> I'm Angelica Gonzalez and I am a pastel artist.

Currently a pastel artist and I've been doing it for about four years.

(bright upbeat music) I got started because I was regularly a pencil artist graphite for years since I was a child.

And I was looking for more color in my life and ironically or miraculously one day there happened to be a couple of pastels that were sitting on my kitchen table and the light was shining on them and I started drawing with them and I couldn't believe how I felt.

That day I went to Michael's and I brought a box of pastels and I couldn't stop from that moment on I painted all weekend and kept experimenting and I fell in love and I haven't stopped since.

It's been going on for about four years and I can't wait to experiment some more.

What's very exciting about this art form and medium is that it produces a painting very quickly.

Within a couple hours you have something that is so beautiful.

And one of the main points is that it has a texture a powdery form to the painting and that changes in the lighting which I find very fascinating.

(bright upbeat music) I'm typically in a point in my life where I am doing a lot of landscapes because I find nature to be very stimulating and it's natural and I think that is something that really makes your heart feel happy for any person, something about the sweetness of nature, being so giving to someone through a variety of senses, not only your eyes but smell and touch, flowers, trees, the texture is amazing, and that's what I've been painting because I feel that the response I've gotten from people is that they really fall in love with the pieces.

They see a sky and it just blows their mind and they see trees and they're like, this is so beautiful and makes me feel happy.

I ended up doing that because it makes me feel happy right now, the landscapes and trees, flowers, skies are my favorite beaches, oceans, sunsets are one of my top favorites but that is currently what I've been practicing on.

In the future I'm intending to incorporate people because that was really my major, as a child, I used to do a lot of people.

So eventually I'll get there but for now it's landscapes, flowers, trees, lakes, oceans and skies.

(bright upbeat music) The soft pastel has like little small sparkly grains and that is what produces the loveliness of the colors of the landscape, the painting that I'm working on for hours or whatever.

So then when you bring it to the light you'll see the shine.

But sometimes with soft pastels if you layer too much, it won't work out well, you won't see those colors, it'll just turn into mud, like the spark is gone.

(bright upbeat music) I capture light when I'm using soft pastels by starting with the darker colors first.

That is one of the rules with soft pastels that you start out with the dark colors first and you work your way up to the light because of the layers and the sparkle with the grains, that is the only way that it can work.

So you built for this light from dark to medium to light to the lightest and lay the final touches in the end, and that's where you get the sparkle from the landscapes.

(bright upbeat music) I have improved within the years within the few years of doing the medium pretty quickly I mean my goal is to do a piece faster from what used to take me... A larger piece used to take me a couple months now it only takes me a couple of hours.

So it's been a significant improvement.

What I love about soft pastels is this medium it has made me so much happier in my life.

I go to sleep thinking about it, I wake up the next morning, what am I gonna work on next, and every time I go to paint a piece it's unlike any other feeling I had never felt extremely beautiful and joyful feeling.

(bright upbeat music) (soft music) >> Storyteller: Andrea Peterson is the paper side of Hook Pottery Paper.

Walking side-by-side in nature with her husband Andrea strives to keep a connection to the land she hopes to share through her work.

>> That's what I want humans to have in nature is that magical connection that there's so much out there that they need to recycle, they need to respect, they need to feel really a part of it because they are a part of it, they are affecting it so much, we are such about what's around us.

The human relationship to the environment I mean that's where everything stems from, and part of my own passion is living with a space where I'm really reducing our carbon impact.

So this line of papers that I created are really about fibers that are either one, a by-product from the agricultural industry, or I'm growing them myself.

I like that, I like having a serious connection to everything that I touch, just because it seems to have much more impact for me it has meaning.

(soft music) Drawing has led me to everything that I do.

It's the basis of where everything comes from, when you pick up that pencil and put it to paper that's where you can actually have those ideas pour out.

I work in many different forms.

I'm a print artist, I make paper arts, which is a form of using pulp as a drawing medium.

I do a little bit of painting.

The idea dictates where the work is going to go.

I've been doing this a long time I think when your creative process starts you start to understand it through the years and you're like, this is what I like, this is what I don't like, this is where I see this going, and it's gonna count, it's gonna be easy or it's gonna be interesting for me.

Not necessarily I don't mean to sound easy it's not that it's easy, it's what you wanna do.

So it seems easy cause it's like that's where I wanna go with this, so it seems natural.

When I started this series of prints on botanical ideas they were gonna be prints because they needed to have this sort of rigid shape.

They needed to have this sort of individuality that comes with printmaking.

So, when I look at what the subject matter is and kind of how I want people to really take it in if I want them to have an intimate experience, I'll make it into a book like this should be taken individually and it really should be something, one person looks at a time and then closes and then the next person can approach it or this needs to be shown on a wall with like a huge panel and it should go beyond your periphery.

(soft music) In the arts field, besides making paper to work on as a substrate, there's also using the pulp itself as a drawing medium and it really just takes a mastery of the material.

It's just a different look and it's also a different method process.

It's kind of a cross between drawing and painting.

It's very fluid like paint maybe but it's also a very graphic and the way that it appears, and you also are kind of almost one step away from that material because you're using a plastic spoon and you're using the squeeze bottle and some of those tools aren't very comfortable.

I mean most of us use a squeeze bottle with ketchup and mustard, and that's about as good as we are as putting it on our hotdog.

So when you're trying to actually make a flower or an image it can be tricky.

So it's a medium though that I really love because of those characteristics, because it's so fluid.

(bright upbeat music) I wanna be outside because that's what brings my ideas.

When I'm outside I wanna be wholeheartedly exposed to what's going on because I think that's the best place to learn.

I think it's the best place to discover because that's what's happened for me.

I think everybody thinks clearer when they're out digging potatoes, but I think just being there makes us see things that we hadn't seen before.

(bright upbeat music) I really want people to have a really profound experience of the world around them.

That's my hope and goal with most of the work is to get people outside and be like this is an amazing place, I am just gonna sit under this apple tree, I'm not gonna pull my phone out.

(laughs) We are a product of our environment.

We are part of it and I don't think we're separate.

So I think we have so much to learn from it.

I feel like I've spent my childhood like most kids do.

I think understanding how to sit well and not talk out loud and do all these proper things but not really engage in the world about us as much as we could, and I feel like that's what I'm trying to unlearn.

(bright upbeat music) >> Advertiser: "Eye on the Arts" has made possible in part by South Shore Arts, the Indiana Arts Commission, the National Endowment for the Arts of federal agency and Viewers Like You, thank you, for the support provided by the Legacy Foundation.

(bright upbeat music) >> Narrator: Support for programming in 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.

>> 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.

(upbeat music) >> I have a very strong connection to other students.

Everyone makes an effort to help each other.

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

(upbeat music) (bright upbeat music) (dramatic music)