>> Narrator: This week on "Eye on the Arts"- >> Charles: Inevitably, you're creating art for people to enjoy and admire in their own homes.

It's fulfilling that somebody appreciates what you're doing too.

My whole family, we've all been blessed with the ability to do what we love.

Not a lot of people get to do that in life.

>> Something and nothing become a dialogue with each other and so in some sense, then I'm going back to the idea of I'm a landscape painter because when you're looking through that Vista, it's a landscape that will allow a viewer to look through that world in a way that is different than any other view that they'll have.

>> Corey: One of the reasons that I truly love woodcut is because of its simplicity.

It's very direct and basic.

Not only is it direct in terms of the process, but also the image is very bold and it really stands out.

>> Brianna: I'm trying to cater to the art that I like, and that's what I'm attracted to, that's what I like to do.

It's neat that people come back to me with their own unique ideas, which is like they don't feel bad asking me to do something a little crazy because I'm gonna enjoy doing every bit of it.

>> Advertiser: 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.

>> Advertiser: 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.

(cheery upbeat music) >> "Eye on the Art" 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.

(slow ambient music) >> David: Lilly Nassau was the biggest Tiffany dealer probably in the world.

She opened up doors for my father that no one else could have opened up.

In the a gallery world as well as the Smithsonian while he was still alive, which is pretty rare.

We were brought up being around some of the best art ever created in this country.

I mean, that alone was a blessing.

>> David: He started from nothing and literally within two to three years rose to the very top echelon of glass in New York.

And of course, if you are an artist and you're received in New York, you're received.

Lillian took my dad's glass and she said, "This is what I consider to be the new Tiffany."

>> I remember doing a show with my father out on the East Coast when I was 23, 24 and I met this other artist and he was telling me how long he's been blowing glass.

And he's like, "Well, how long you been blowing glass?"

"I've been blowing glass for about, oh, 14 years already."

And he looks at me, he's like, "No way."

I was like, "Oh yeah."

He's like, "Who are you?"

And it clicked in my head, it's like, yeah, most people, they don't have that ability and me and my brothers just fell into it because of my father.

My brother, Dave, my brother, John, we all worked with my father in the shop.

We helped build the shop, we built the tools, we built the furnaces.

I mean, ground up, the kneeling ovens, everything in our shops we built because they weren't available like they are now.

(moderate ambient music continues) Our level of quality, my father taught us is at the top.

That's what's different between our glass and a lot of other artists, we never sell seconds.

>> We developed our colors from the ground up and we're still developing color as we speak right now.

That's probably the biggest difference.

We learned a lot of it from scratch.

>> Charles: We feed off each other and we fed off my father and my father fed off What he saw.

>> The weird thing is that what is a lot in style.

You wanna make what your dad's making 'cause it's cool and he's famous and he is making really nice stuff.

But if you're an artist, you have to know that you've gotta come up with your own things.

And I told each one of the boys in the back there that are working, they will start out most likely doing copies of what we did.

Like an eagle kicks the babies out of the nest, I had to kick my boys away from making my stuff and they each came up with their own style and that's the best way to have a good legacy.

(upbeat music continues) People that are collecting art, they wanna know that the people that they're buying from are artists and they're moving forward.

I'm 61 now, so it's like, I'm not making stuff like I was when I was 25, and I don't even really want to.

>> Charles: My father would always talk to us and let us know what it takes and don't fall short.

You always gotta recreate yourself so people have something different.

>> The hard thing is that you're selling things that people don't have to have, number one.

So you have to come up with some ideas that are so tempting that people buy them, that they turn loose of their money and say, "I just gotta have one of them."

And my dad, one of his little lines was, somebody'd be sitting there looking at something and he'd say something like, "Now why would you deprive yourself of owning that when you want it?"

(David laughs) >> Charles: He was sincere about making something that somebody could appreciate and love as much as he did.

>> And he made glass all the way up until he died.

He was like 85, 86 and he really did make glass all the way to the, he didn't fall over it, but it wouldn't have surprised me if he did.

>> We thought he was going to.

To be gifted just to go from one thing to another, as a kid, you seeing something like that is pretty heavy on you and to make something so beautiful for somebody's home, 'cause inevitably, you're creating art for people to enjoy and admire in their own homes.

It's fulfilling that somebody appreciates what you're doing too.

My whole family, we've all been blessed with the ability to do what we love.

Not a lot of people get to do that in life.

If you're gonna put it all together in a glass shop and be an artist, I mean the hats are many.

>> The old-school artists were artists, craftsmen and the craftsmen part is so that you could replicate the cool that you just did, 'cause if you did it once, that's one thing, but if you wanna sell it, you gotta replicate it.

And then the next thing is that you have to be an inventor and you have to be chemist.

It's just a lot of things that go into it.

I had a kid walk into my place when I was at the studio and he was watching me and he's like, "I could do that," and I'm like, "Well, I'm glad that you feel so good watching me that you feel like you could do that."

>> They're a little vicariously through you 'cause they watch you do it and it looks so easy.

It's like... (Charles laughs) >> David: Well, we're here to produce something that's gonna bring a little joy in somebody else's life.

>> I mean my father become a glass artist out of pure desire.

He'd sit there and tell us how beautiful something was and how much he liked it and that didn't come out that often though.

And he did it to Dave or me or my brother, John, he'd sit there and tell us how beautiful something was and how much he liked it.

And I just looked up at him when he said that, I was like, I said, "Well, dad, we all learned that from you."

(upbeat music continues) (moderate ambient music) >> You have 10 good minutes of being a sculptor.

You have five minutes when you come up with the idea and you figure out something and this is really an interesting model after maybe like hundreds of models.

You say, "Well, this is teaching me something."

And then you have five good minutes when you install it and it's done.

And then the two years in between are just labor.

So when you're done with the piece, you get to have this question about whether your first five minutes led to the correct last five minutes and whether your ideas were right and you got to question your assumption and to see whether you achieved what you were looking for with this particular piece and that's the artistic experience.

(moderate ambient music continues) The void area itself when you're looking through it is that the piece has a quiet twist to it.

So the piece was based upon the idea of a diagonal cut and two planes that slightly counterbalance each other with basically a hole, a void cut in the middle.

Now that void has the same dimensionality that it actually bends.

So that really what I'm doing is I'm bending the nothing so that I'm creating volume with something that is not there.

So when you look through the piece, the idea of something and nothing become a dialogue with each other and you'll see that that void space actually creates almost like a diagonal plane, which is what the piece is about, framing the landscape.

And so in some sense then I'm going back to the idea of I'm a landscape painter because when you're looking through that Vista, it's a landscape that will allow a viewer to look through that world in a way that is different than any other view that they will have.

And you're gonna find generations of people that are gonna stand right behind that open Vista with the view of that piece in relationship to the chapel and the other grounds and they're gonna have that sweet spot.

They'll be curious how that actually evolves for the campus and the community.

Sculptures have these curious kinds of questions that'll pop up and we'll see how the piece works for the campus.

It will create its own dialogue over the course of time, and remember first thoughts are not second thoughts, and it's fun to discuss things too, as somebody says, "Look, I don't know, what is this thing?"

And somebody else will say, "Well, I think it's that or that."

That's interesting and it doesn't hurt anybody.

Let's say it makes for the ability to have a conversation about something that is different than other kinds of conversations.

We're so pragmatic in the sense that we're trying to figure out like what we need, where we need to go, what we need to do, who we need to pay, that kind of thing that just the sheer pleasure of taking a moment and just saying, "Well, we're here, we're looking at the world.

Let me just change this moment of looking for a second or two seconds for you."

And that's how we look at the world through the eyes of an artist and rather than the eyes of how you're supposed to function in life and so I'm hoping that that's what I achieved.

If the piece has an essential rightness about it, eventually the human mind starts to feel comfortable with the language and will say, "Oh, I enjoy looking at it."

And you'll find that if you walk by the piece and you say, "It's fun to look at.

It's an neat view, I like it."

That's pretty gush darn good.

(upbeat music continues) >> One of the reasons that I truly love woodcut is because of its simplicity.

It's very direct and basic.

Not only is it direct in terms of the process, but also the image is very bold and it really stands out.

I prefer to use wood 'cause it's more traditional.

I feel like you can see the character of the wood.

So you carve your image.

For most of my works, the larger details generally come in and I'll carve those and then it's more of an improv process where I will add the smaller details in relationship to the image to try to create things like balance with emphasize or de-emphasize focal points, really think about how it's engaging the viewer.

Every material has strength and weaknesses to see either the jaggedness or the smoothness of the cutter's hand, to see the grain of the wood, I think is really important to me.

Relief printmaking is really the oldest printmaking form.

Printmaking moved to Europe and became very important at that time, really being the fastest way to spread information around in a mass format.

So in many ways, at that time it was like the internet.

So I consider myself a social practice artist and a social practice artist doesn't necessarily think of art as being separate from life, but as something that's embedded into the various social practices.

My wood cuts are a major part of what I do, but they're often in service to something else.

Help to make people aware of various issues and even hope to create solutions or suggest solutions to some of the problems that we have.

(water burbling) The headwaters of the Grand Kame River originate from a small lagoon in the pristine dunes near the Southern shore of Lake Michigan.

The word Kame means pipe and refers to the one, like the Indian smoked with the French missionary, Father Marquette, as a universal sign of peace.

Today near the site of this historic ceremony, where the river enters into an area of heavy industry, the Grand Kame disappears into a pipe.

Over time, my work has changed and I have learned a lot, I think.

Early on, a lot of the wood cuts that I made were of trees honoring the material wood, which I'm carving.

Over time, I think my work's become much more direct.

My work still honors the beauty of nature or the presence of nature.

I've also begun to think about solutions to where we're at.

My work as in my wood cuts really supports a larger social practice.

Thinking about climate change, go back and embrace the natural world.

I grew up in Gary, I was really surrounded by people that were invested in working on environmental problems.

I think it's quite obvious that we have a lot of issues to solve.

For me very much, I am a product of my environment and not just in becoming environmentally engaged, but also as artists.

Gary is a place with an immense creative history.

A lot of my prints have a play on words, a nursery-rhyme type feel.

One of the phrases would be, Think Fast, Nature Will Bury The Past.

I try to grab people with the rhyme, but then oftentimes it will set in and people will be taken aback.

I spent a fair amount of time with these things cycling through of my head.

You always wonder how you're gonna capture the attention of your audience.

And now I seek a straightforward depiction of the situation at hand.

Yeah, I'm trying to create a bold image that catches people's eye.

The idea of what does your art do when it's put out into the world has always been a major question for me and when you put out a piece of art about a specific issue and you don't see that issue changing at all, I think it always raises questions for the artist or it should.

We're building community gardens to address food justice and climate change at the same time.

A lot of people are struggling to meet their daily needs.

So it's something we also struggle with is food security.

So what my work, at this point, is doing is trying to think about those things as the same issue.

(upbeat country music) >> I'm trying to cater to the art that I like and that's what I'm attracted to, that's what I like to do.

It's neat that people come back to me with their own unique ideas, which is they don't feel bad asking me to do something a little crazy because I'm gonna enjoy doing every bit of it.

(upbeat country music continues) I got into art, I've been doing it since, as long as I can remember.

I started doing stuff like this a long time ago, it was like elementary school.

I had an art box, I had markers, I had glue.

So I would color the art boxes, pour glue into it, mix it up to make a design similar to what I'm doing now.

I ended up getting a, I'm in an Amazon deals group and it said beginner kit for resin.

I was like, "That sounds fun.

Like I could do something to do with COVID."

I wasn't working, so I was like, "This is something I could do."

So I got that and then I made my first piece, which was this ring.

It's coming a long way from that.

I ended up buying molds and spending my whole life savings on all the different supplies and just fell in love with it almost immediately.

So resin is a two-part epoxy.

It starts as epoxy, you mix it together and it becomes, some people call it plastic, but it's proper term is just resin, but in its pure form of the A and B there's hardener and then there is the resin itself or the epoxy itself and then when you mix them together, it creates a chemical reaction and it'll harden up and it does different things based on what you put in it.

If you put Mica Powder in it, it could take longer to cure, it'll cure harder and stronger if it's just clear.

So it just depends how much you put in it.

So like if I'm putting Mica Powder in, I can't go overboard 'cause the piece might be a little flimsy.

Resin's come a long way and I know people will use it for working, for tool, they're five-minute cure resin, there's all kinds of different ways to use it, fixing things, it's great at fixing things.

There's also UV resin.

It cures immediately with a UV light or you put it in the sun.

So I use that for my pops sockets.

I'll put a design or an air sticker in it and I will be able to cure it in 30 seconds and then I can touch it and work around it so like if I make a piece with regular resin, it has a little bubble in it, I'm able to have it fixed in seconds which is awesome.

I use two different things for colors.

I started in the beginning because I didn't know anything about this.

I had a lot of makeup that I didn't really play with anymore.

So I would scrape off eye powder or shadows just to make different pigments.

Then I realized that after joining a lot of resin groups and actually getting into it that you can use alcohol ink.

It's just alcohol-based ink and that makes stuff more opaque, you can see through.

The Mica Powder, which I fell in love with it's more of a texture, like there's color shift, there's glow in the dark, there's UV, or it'll change in the sun.

There's just so many different variables that you can play with there.

I usually end up resorting to those 'cause they just give it such a unique texture.

So this is the velvet method that I use.

Basically, I pour a clear layer and I put the foil in.

I have to wait about four hours, which I always do the stuff at night.

So I have to wake up at like 2:00 AM and come put plastic over it and then crinkle it to make that method.

In the morning, I'll peel it off and then I get to dust it with the Mica Powder.

They're just like different pigments that can make it the shine here and then I put black behind it which makes it look like it's fabric.

So that's been something I've been experiment a lot with and those pieces take about, they're three layers each, so those pieces take about 24 hours to make if I were to make them just straight out.

Yeah, I pretty much just used art as just an escape from things and it just stayed with me.

It made a good time out of it and it's a lot of fun and my daughter gets to help me pick out colors and stuff and I never really expected people to want it.

I just made it and started posting it and people were like, "Can you make me something?"

"Can you put like flowers from a funeral in here?"

And like, "Can you put special pictures?"

And it just turned into something way bigger than I ever imagined.

(moderate ambient music continues) >> Advertiser: 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.

(upbeat music continues) >> Narrator: 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.

(cheerful upbeat music) >> Narrator: "Eye on the Arts" has 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.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music)