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

>> My great-grandfather established a business in 1887, it was a hardware and a tin shop, his name was Paul Henry Mueller.

You don't last for 130 years without making some significant change and that happened every single generation and the way I looked at it, it's my turn.

>> I think it was something about the enigmatic quality of just really being mysterious and wanting to learn and tryna figure out and I think to this day, that still is something that drives us with our work.

>> Anything I get interested in, anything I study or observe, I can bring into it.

If I get interested in flowers, I'll bring it into the carving or if I'm doing carving, I've gotta go and study flowers.

There's ways to incorporate whatever I encounter in the carving and to learn from it and have it feed the work.

>> I would say anywhere between 30 and 40 students is what I have now.

I try to introduce some realistic techniques but I want them to try their own styles and all that because it is about them finding their own way, it's just, first you have to know some basics.

>> Doing as much as you can as quickly as you can is important to me.

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

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

Everyone makes an effort to help each other.

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

(bright 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.

(bright music) >> "Eye on the Arts" is made possible in part by South Shore Arts, the Indiana Arts Commission, and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.

Additional support for Lakeshore PBS and "Eye on the Arts" is provided by viewers like you, thank you.

(bright music) >> My name's Dave Mueller and we're here at Paul Henry's Art Gallery in the heart of Downtown Hammond, Indiana.

(calm music) Well, the building is the product of the effort of my great-grandfather who established a business on Hohman Avenue in 1887, it was a hardware and a tin shop.

By 1902, apparently he had done well enough to be able to build this building.

(calm music) It's been in the family through four generations now.

I essentially became manager of the business in the late 1990s.

We had some pretty significant structures here on Hohman Avenue in our Downtown area.

(calm music) At Christmas time, you couldn't walk down the sidewalk without getting practically jostled into the street, they were so crowded, just a dynamo of activity and commerce.

(calm music) Starting in about 1965, different factors came into play and it went downhill very fast.

By 1975, it was a shell of itself and by 85, they're starting to knock the buildings down.

People come today, they just shake their heads and they wonder, "Well, what used to be here?"

Well, you're only looking at maybe 1/10 of it.

(calm music) You don't last for 130 years without making some significant change, you just don't, and that happened every single generation and the way I looked at it, it's my turn to do something with it.

So now what do you do with a old, hard-worn building in the middle of Downtown Hammond?

I mean, man, if we had just walked away, it would be another parking lot right now, no question in my mind.

I didn't wanna take the rusticness out of the building, that's kind of the unique attraction that we have.

We've got this history that's ingrained through tens of thousands of days of hard work.

Why did we become an art gallery?

Why did I have that idea?

Well, there aren't too many businesses that you can get inventory in without having to pay for it but art happens to be one of them and so when we opened up, I had managed to (Dave chuckling) talk 68 artists when we first opened in October of 2008 to consign their work here.

Now at this time, there's well over 150.

(calm music) My great-grandfather, his name was Paul Henry Mueller.

So it became Paul Henry's Art Gallery.

I don't know how he feels about me turning his nice sweat shop into a place of fine arts but it's done now.

I had it mentioned to me that an open mic concept, was a good idea to bring people in.

Well at that point in time, big crowd would be 15 and it went that way for about, oh, I don't know, a month and a half.

(bright music) ♪ Sure there's lots of problems ♪ ♪ Big surprise, we've always had a few ♪ (bright music) >> Something changed, what changed?

I'm not exactly sure but we started getting people coming down from Chicago and we started getting people coming over from Valpo and it just, the word got out and so by the end of that first year, we were up to crowds of 40 to 50 people, it grew fast, that became a regular source of visitors and cash flow, it really did, it saved this, I could not have existed beyond that second year if it weren't for the Thursday night acoustic jam.

♪ I've been on my own ♪ >> Like our crowd here, it's all ages and that's no lie, on any given Thursday, you got grade school kids up to 90 year olds, you know, and they all get along great together and they enjoy it together and that's the key, I mean, that really is the key, you don't wanna cut anybody out of the picture.

We've all known people that take family photos and cut out cousin Johnny or whatever and we don't wanna do that, we wanna include Johnny in the picture, so that's the key to me, is to be inclusive and invite everybody in.

(intense music) >> He's been super supportive, he makes us coffee, he gives us cookies, and we play punk in his art space, so.

>> They had a gig set up in another venue and those guys got cold feet and canceled them and they came to me and said, "Hey, can you see fit to host this event?"

I knew nothing about it, I'd heard the bad rumors and all this and it was great, it was great the first time and it's been great every single time since.

They all have a good time, they're very respectful of the facility, and they always have a remarkable turnout regardless of the weather or anything else.

(intense music) That's kinda the idea, hopefully develop a vibrant community.

However, I've gotta say the punk crowd is not my Thursday night crowd.

♪ For auld lang syne my dear ♪ ♪ For auld lang syne ♪ And the jazz crowd is not the art crowd necessarily, there's lot of space available for weddings, funerals, and baby showers, wedding showers, all kinds of things that we do here, we've had aerial dancing, we've had co-ed arm wrestling, we've had native dancers on a given night.

(calm music) Well, I'm trying my best here, I could use a few visitors, all of us that are here in Downtown, we have to deal with that, we have to tell our stories of what we're doing today, I mean, I'll talk to you about the past but please give a look at what we're doing today because there are people up here that are really trying to make a change and make a go of it again, will that grow?

It's a hard process, well all I can say is people are trying.

I've managed to last 11 years with a pie in the sky dream of having an art gallery in Downtown Hammond and I can tell you that absolutely no one when I asked him if it's a good idea said yes, nobody, tell anyone who desires to try anything new, whether it's here or anywhere else, you know, you can get advice but nobody's gonna see it like you do.

(calm music) (bright music) >> Heart and bone is a reference from back in the day for reggae music actually, referring to the drums and the bass as the heart and the bone and so she's the heart, I'm the bone and we're Heart & Bone signs.

(Andrew chuckling) (bright music) We're originally from Denver, Colorado, and we had painted some signs out there without really knowing what we were doing, we had just been asked by some different businesses to paint some signs for 'em, so we had that little bit of experience.

Then we moved out here for grad school and we noticed downtown all of the amazing gold leaf signs everywhere and I think seeing these gold leaf signs really blew our mind because we just had no idea how they were made, seeing that mirror gold on that glass, not knowing how they were able to get those shapes or make it so bright, I think it was something about the enigmatic quality of just really being mysterious and wanting to learn and tryna figure out and I think to this day that still is something that drives us with our work.

There is really no one way to make signs and gold leaf signs are no exception but kind of a standard way or in the Chicago style, you would put your outlines up first and then you would put in your centers or matte effects on the gold and then once that's all finished up and dried up, you will water size over the outlines and the centers, and that is a small amount of gelatin dissolved into water and so the water size is flooded onto the glass and then using a special brush called a gilder's tip, the gold leaf is carefully picked up and applied onto the glass, few other magic steps and you got a gold leaf sign.

>> We were really fascinated with gold leaf in particular so we wanted to learn more about that and found Robert's business online, so reached out to him and he invited us over and we all really got along and he is our gold father.

(woman chuckling) >> Definitely.

>> So now we're just friends.

He has about over 30 years of experience so we were able to really navigate learning how to do gold leafs through his support.

We really are a reflection of our mentor and what he's learned and what he's taken from his mentors and we are just the direct lineage of those generations of mentorship.

(calm music) >> My biggest thing is I wanted to pass this on to another generation, this craft, and when I first started actually at Carlson, there was probably 12 good artisans that used to gild throughout the city, different companies, and now we're down to pretty much three or four of us, which is Kelsey and Andrew and I and this other gentleman that we know, Sean Michael Felix, that's pretty, that's it, that's a bit all, that's the only people that are actually still practicing and keeping that tradition alive.

Gold leaf was like, everybody had gold leaf windows because it was cheap, labor was cheap, it predated electricity so it was the only thing that really got people's attention, you know, it just was flashy and it was really the way that everybody, it was just the mainstay, especially in the big cities, Chicago, Boston, New York, but fortunately, Chicago has actually maintained that style much longer than most of the other cities and in Chicago, we're really known for our gold leaf throughout the world.

My hope for the future is for it to be continued which it has been and fortunately with Instagram and the new generation, they've really embraced it and they've exceeded my expectations, believe me.

I mean, they're taking it to even another level that I've taken it to, you know, so I'm really proud of 'em, it's been great.

>> Oftentimes people get confused between real gold leaf and vinyl and so it's really important that we educate customers and let them know what the difference is and continue to do it and I think sometimes if we step back and we think about, that we're continuing that and maybe if we weren't doing it, nobody would be doing it, there is a little bit of pressure, we want to do the best we can and sometimes we face different challenges, but for us, I think it's really important that the city of Chicago continues to have gold leaf signs into the future.

(bright music) (upbeat music) >> Stone carver is one of the oldest trades in the world, it's where we get much of our history and it's been around in all different cultures wherever there's stone and people have built with stone or created art with it.

Anything with an elaborate or complex or innate shape in stone, whether it's gravestones or gargoyles or statues, they needed to shape it and carve it.

(machine buzzing) (bright music) My parents exposed me to all forms of the arts and it was three-dimensional work particularly in stone that grabbed me very early and it helped that I grew up near the University of Chicago and I'd ride my bicycle around campus looking at the gargoyles, wanting to do that, so I started dragging home bits of stone from torn down buildings, it was during the urban renewal period when a lot was being torn down in the South Side and there were a lot of old brick and stone buildings, so I could go with a wagon, grab a piece of limestone, bring it home, and then try to figure out what to use for tools and how to work it.

(bright music) (machine buzzing) (bright music) When I was first getting interested, I was told this was a dead art, partly because tastes had changed.

In the year 1900, there were around 100 stone mills in the Chicago area and each one employed carvers.

You walk around any old neighborhood and look up and you see all kinds of fantastic carvings, all different stuff.

But it was considered normal to spend 3, 4, 5% of the budget of the building on ornamentation whereas now if we spend 1% on the arts, that's considered extravagant.

(bright music) I knew that's what I was gonna do and I didn't have a plan B in there.

All through my teenage years, I was doing different carvings, carving portraits of friends, things like that but I realized I was just trying to reinvent the wheel, I had to find people who really knew how to do it.

I first tried going to the National Cathedral when I was 16, you know, longhaired kid in torn jeans walking up to the old Italian carvers and trying to tug his way in and that didn't work.

But when I was 20, I got over, I found out where in Italy there was still carving going on, I got over there and was able to get in a shop initially with two carvers who between the two of them had 110 years experience, both had been working as carvers since they were about 11 years old, basically learned it from working alongside people who'd learned it from their grandfathers.

(machine buzzing) (bright music) Right now, I've got a couple projects in the shop, I always have multiple things going on and at the moment both are gravestones.

One is a tree stump tombstone, the tree stump tombstones are an old tradition, they were very popular, especially 1890s to 1930s.

I love carving them, it's a wonderful genre to work in, it allows a lot of expression and personalization and creativity.

One thing with the tree stumps is, there are all different types of trees and often there'll be a reason to do one that fits in the environment, I did one last year that went to Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah, Georgia, so the clients specifically requested that it be southern live oak bark so I had to sort of study pictures of it, had to do three or four sample panels till I got the sequence down for carving it to look like southern live oak.

This one that I'm doing now, the family has two, old tree stumps in the same cemetery so they sent me photos and it's a different type of bark than I've done before but I've worked on figuring out a way to make it fit in and match the bark that they had.

There are ways with anything with bark, there are ways you can just rip right through it and there are ways you can sit there and doodle around on all the details for hours and hours depending on what you're trying to achieve.

(bright music) I like having a mix, I like the fact that it's never the same thing twice, it's always new problems to solve and new things to learn and figure out.

Anything I get interested in, anything I study or observe, I can bring into it, you know, if I get interested in flowers, I'll bring it into the carving or if I'm doing carving, I've gotta go and study flowers.

There's ways to incorporate whatever I encounter in the carving and to learn from it and have it feed the work.

(machine buzzing) (bright music) As I mentioned, I went to the cathedral when I was 16 to try to get hired and didn't, I went back there after I'd returned from Italy and I met with Vincent Palumbo, the master carver, inquiring if there were any openings and he talked to me for a while, he really wasn't interested at all in pictures of the work I'd done or anything else, then he took me and showed me in his workshop, showed me, you know, opened the cabinet with all his tools and said, "Here, take a look, pick 'em up."

So I picked up a chisel, real nice chisel, picked it up, looked at it, set it down, and it was something at the moment when I did it, I paid absolutely no attention, that my interest was in the chisel, was a nice chisel, I wanted to look at it.

Six months after I'd been working there, he told me the reason I was hired is the way my hand picked up the chisel and the way the chisel fell into my fingers, that told him more than any pictures I could show him or anything else I could tell him, it showed that my hand knew how to hold the tool.

(speaking in foreign language) The boy is of the material, meaning he's got stone in his blood.

(bright music) >> I teach drawing and painting, I love both of them because it's like the idea that you can create something two-dimensionally on a flat surface and then bring a new life to it, is amazing to me.

(bright music) When I was younger, I was very much into people, I love drawing people because I'm an only child, so I would just draw peoples, people from Disney movies, from life and all that, people I would see and it just started from there.

(bright music) And my parents were definitely a big influence because my mother's also an artist.

My dad, he used to be an art teacher in Gary, he got me started a lot on the artistic pathway.

He also did freelance art and he had a studio down in the basement of our old house and he would paint and all that, we would make little Disney figures, bake 'em, and then we still have 'em, my mom still has 'em in her room.

(bright music) My mom definitely helps me with organizing the business together and also she tells me what something lacks or is good in my work whether it's a commission or my own personal thing, so it's like, she's my go-to person to say like, "Does this look good to you?

What needs change?"

Sometimes she'll say, "Don't touch it," and then other times she'll say, "It's not working."

(bright music) I toyed with the idea of being an art teacher in middle school and then it was like an idea that hung with me throughout high school.

In college, I thought about becoming a high school art teacher and all that but I felt like I could reach out more in a college setting, so I toyed with the idea of getting a masters, becoming an art professor but I figured I needed to work more and discover my own artistic style and all that, so as a graduation present, I was given a space here in this building to have as my own private studio instead of working downstairs in our basement.

It's just the feeling of it, just having more space and also the ability to invite people in for lessons pretty much opened me up as an artist.

(bright music) I would say anywhere between 30 and 40 students is what I have now.

When I'm giving them advice and all that, I want them to understand like, you wanna try and make it look like round, you want it to look like this image can come right off the canvas or the drawing because of having that depth or that realness, you know, it just makes the image more lifelike.

I try to introduce some realistic techniques but I want them to try their own styles and all that because it is about them finding their own way, it's just, first you have to know some basics.

(calm music) When I was 17, I started my own caricature business, I would go around to different parties and events and fundraisers and draw people there and those were just like quick, sharpie drawings.

(bright music) My idea of caricature is, you know, it's like, just have fun with the person's face, don't be mean with it, just have some fun so that way they can laugh about it and also have pride in themselves.

(bright music) What started off with surrealism for me was, I don't have any deep dream analysis like Dali had, whenever I'm sitting down to do something surrealistic, I sit down and the first thing that pops into my head, it could be a giant pink donut.

So you start with a giant pink donut and then it's like, there's a hole in that donut, let's fill it with something, you put a big eye in there.

I just try to make it as vibrant, colorful, and interesting as possible.

(bright music) I personally just love to paint and draw, I'm not into like, big theories or what things represent, that might happen later in my artistic career but it's like right now, I'm just into creating amazing images that anybody can enjoy and make their interpretation of this image because it's important that we have something that's interesting to look at, that invites you to come in to look at because, like in my work, it's like it stands out, it's like you want it to stand out and be different.

(bright music) >> Doing as much as you can as quickly as you can is important to me.

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

(calm music) >> 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 and a book versus physically doing it and seeing results.

(bright 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.

(bright music) >> Narrator: "Eye on the Arts" is made possible in part by, South Shore Arts, the Indiana Arts Commission, and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.

Additional support for Lakeshore PBS and "Eye on the Arts" is provided by viewers like you, thank you.

(bright music) (upbeat music) (calm music)