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

>> Ryan Musch: A lot of people were on board the first year so we were able to achieve some really great walls and then once other business owners saw what we were doing the following years, they wanna be part of it as well.

>> Sunghee Kim: This is a mini orchestra.

One person with ten fingers and two feet controls all the instruments.

Playing this instrument in this large space is really something special.

>> John Ryszka II: I'm not exactly sure why I'm so enthusiastic about this.

It's very much a passion of mine, and it's one of those things that I will go to bed at night and it'll just keep running through my head and I just dream about glass and I just can't seem to get enough of it.

>> Tom Torluemke: When they take that mirror and look at the image in it, it's gonna be our friend Jasmine, it's gonna be Keith or it's gonna be Billy, but it's not gonna be the person that's looking.

It's a manipulation in the simplest way, forcing you to reside in that person's shoes for a moment or two.

>> 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.

>> Narrator: Support for programming 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.

>> 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.

>> Street art is by the people for the people and that's the most important thing to recognize when it comes to art like this, is it's for everybody.

(joyful music begins) We've always wanted to have one piece of public art in Rensselaer.

It all started with the mural on the West Boulevard building here, done by Cameron Moberg from San Francisco.

During the time that he was painting, we had a little extra time to do a lot of chatting and get kind of close and just his passion for public art mimicked our passion for public art and together, we talked for a couple years about bringing more to Rensselaer.

Finally, the time came where we were able to achieve kind of a blitzkrieg of art for Rensselaer.

We just picked out a week with five more artists to come in from all around the world and that was really truly the beginning of the art walk.

It took three years to get the first mural week accomplished after that first wall but people were used to one mural by then.

A lot of people knew about it but didn't really know where they were gonna be.

We just wanted for people to see it kind of overnight and not have any fear of having spray painted walls in downtown Rensselaer.

A lot of people were on board the first year so we were able to achieve some really great walls and then once other business owners saw what we were doing the following years, they wanna be part of it as well.

It was really amazing and that really is a great attribution to some of our business leaders who wanna be part of something bigger.

So it was very important to have international, national and local representation with the art walk.

It's completely all inclusive and we want anybody with creativity and ability to be part of it.

So yeah, Royyal Dog for example, is a great representation of one of the best known street artists in the world and he has two murals in the Rensselaer art walk and people from around the country know him and when they come here, they're blown away by seeing his original work in little Rensselaer.

After the first mural came up, we've had local people practice their skill.

They wanted to learn how to spray paint and at the end of the day in 2020, we had one artist that used to be a paint runner had his own wall.

So it is fun to see the evolution of people with their creativity and ability and want to be part of an art that is underrepresented in rural communities.

We have had four mural weeks total so far.

You know, mural week is a more festive time in downtown Rensselaer where people will come in from all over the place to see the murals get completed.

We try to have some interactive displays as well where, you may see in the alley, there are hundreds of hearts on the alley.

That's just kids with a stencil spray painting their own representation of a heart on the ground.

So we want it to be anybody that wants to participate can in some capacity do so.

It is interesting to see people that maybe in the first year, wasn't really on board with it, maybe the following year, actually invite their family and give them their own little tour of it.

So people have warmed up to the art and do embrace it as well.

It's nice to have something current that when someone talks about Rensselaer, whether they're from Schererville, Merrillville, Lafayette, they can say, oh that's that little town with all that art and we love that.

(joyful music continues) (organ music begins) >> Narrator: Located in the Chapel of the Resurrection on the campus of Valparaiso University, the Reddel Memorial Organ is a sight and sound to behold.

Originally installed in 1959 and expanded in 1996, the instrument exists in harmony with the chapel, both architecturally and sonically.

Organist Sunghee Kim was kind enough to share her talents and demonstrate this magnificent instrument.

(organ music begins) >> There is not single exactly same organ in the world because the pipe organs are designed based on their space.

All the organs are different, even though you see the same name of the instrument, which is called the stop on the organ, they sound differently.

As you can see, this is a giant instrument with very massive sound, which has four different keyboards and also the pedal board, that's the fifth keyboard on this organ.

So each keyboard has its own sets of pipes.

So you can make different sounds and also for the pedal, so your feet playing some kind of melodic lines or base lines, and your 10 fingers are also playing the music on the keyboard.

Several thousand years ago, they used the water power to create the air pressure.

Now, the organ has the windchest and blower.

Once you press the key, the pipe valve is opened.

Then air comes through and it creates the sound and you will hear very different colors and the texture, different textures from all these different pipes.

(organ music begins) This is a mini orchestra.

What I'm saying mini is one person's orchestra.

So one person with 10 fingers and two feet, the one person controls all the instruments.

Modern synthesizer, you have only one keyboard and in organs case, you can have one, two, three, four, five synthesizers in this case.

There are many buttons.

One button is one instrument.

The fascinating thing about the organ is this instrument is so powerful as well as so humble.

So you can have the full orchestra on this organ to support like 2000 congregation with powerful sound and sometimes you have only one instrument not overpowering anyone, but it's supporting singing voices.

This is the largest college chapel in the US and I believe this is also the second largest college chapel in the world.

So playing this instrument in this large space is really something special.

The acoustic is quite alive in this hall so it's not just about playing something right under your ears or your fingertips.

So you will experience the whole sound fills this huge hall.

Playing this organ begins from coming up through the spiral staircase.

In early morning and early afternoon, you will see the direct sunlight from the oregon console and it deflect all the beautiful colors through the stained glasses and while you are playing, it's not just about playing music.

You can enjoy all the beautiful pieces of this single corner and beautiful art works.

I am so blessed and I'm so thankful to have a chance to play on this organ and to spend my personal times too on this organ.

(organ music continues) >> It's very much a passion of mine, and it's one of those things that I will go to bed at night and it'll just keep running through my head and I just dream about glass and I just can't seem to get enough of it.

You know, thankfully, some of us wind up meeting something in our lives that gives us a love affair that's not to do with any other person.

It's just something that we get to do with our own work and we get to express ourselves and show who we are and what we're most enthusiastic about in life and I think that's part of what genius is in a way, is just that fact that you found something that you love and then you're just willing to pursue it endlessly.

The torch work that I do, it's traditionally called lamp working because back in the 1800's and earlier, there were oil lamps with little foot pedals that would add the extra oxygen into your flame and create the additional heat to melt the glass rods.

With that, I'm using both propane and oxygen that are then coming in and mixing internally within the torch and then coming out to generate a flame that's around 3000 degrees Fahrenheit.

I mostly work with borosilicate glass.

One of the reasons I use that particular glass is because it is so durable and it's not necessarily as prone to cracking and fracturing while you're working with it as a lot of the softer glasses are and you're able to sculpt with it.

The torches also allow you to have more precision with where you're placing that heat and having that precision flame and heat to melt only exactly where I want things to move and nothing else really appeals to me because it allows me to do that fine work.

Whereas a lot of artists enjoy making things that are intended to be very smooth and sleek and then sat on a shelf where you never interact with it because it's a piece of glass and it's fragile, I like to make things that have a slight amount of texture to it, so you can grab onto it and you're encouraged to play with these things.

With that in mind, I intentionally add the textures and bumps and things to a lot of the paper weights so that way you can easily grab onto them and they're not likely to fall and because it's borosilicate glass, it's not likely to break either when things fall, unlike most of your other glass.

But then I'm also able to take that fine little precision work that I've created and hide it inside the things that I create, such as a series of paper weights that are filled with all of this shiny dichroic glass that's very sparkling and eye catching, but then I hide a tiny little black and white peace symbol that I've created somewhere in amongst the mix of all of the shiny distractions and the goal or the message that I'm trying to create is just that, if you can avoid getting caught up in all the shiny distractions, eventually an inner piece can be found and it's by hiding those little things to create this interactive experience that plays against some of your norms, like the fact that you're not supposed to touch glass.

You're supposed to play with my glass and the fact that you're supposed to look at it from a distance with most glass and mine, you're supposed to really go in and explore and look for all of the little nooks and crannies and all the hidden elements that aren't gonna be obvious and so I would kind of describe my glass style as both a mixture of painting and color theory mixed with a sense of exploration and play.

As far as my journey with glass and why I am still doing that and what kind of took hold, it really was from the very beginning almost like there were like... like these heavenly lights that shown down upon me.

I don't wanna necessarily equate it to that but every time I've tried to step away from glass, it's been headache after headache and as soon as I just submit back to working with glass it has been like the road suddenly becomes smooth and everything just proceeds the way I envision and hope and dream it will.

It is continually malleable and can be reconstructed into something new over and over again, which is really exciting in part to me, just because of that and the fact that, yeah, your imagination is your limitation.

(gentle music continues) (piano music begins) >> I've been making art for as long as I can remember.

I was babysat a lot by my great-uncle Freddy, he was deaf and mute and he didn't read lips or do sign language or anything and neither did I.

So we had to communicate through drawing pictures back and forth to one another, you know, like what we were gonna do today, what was of interest to me, you know?

If I had to go to the bathroom or something, whatever, we would draw pictures.

So that was, I learned how to communicate with images at a very early age.

I have a desire and propensity to always be learning something when I'm making the art.

It requires experimentation and embracing different mediums and embracing different ways to look at art or different ways to try to see the world.

That's a responsibility I have as an artist.

I try to make a new body of work that's gonna surprise the viewers.

Some people spend an hour to drive to a gallery or something like that.

I want 'em to go through the doors and be surprised, totally surprised and worth the effort that they're making to come view the work.

The exhibition was designed so that in a long gallery, one wall would be filled with landscapes and then the other wall would be filled with portraits that are framed in what would look like a handheld mirror.

So when they take that mirror and look at the image in it it's gonna be our friend Jasmine, it's gonna be Keith or it's gonna be Billy but it's not gonna be the person that's looking.

It's a manipulation in the simplest way, forcing you to reside in that person's shoes for a moment or two.

So that in itself is a moving thing but then they're gonna be all looking at people, people.

They're gonna be ignoring the landscape.

We have to have empathy for the people and we have to care for our environment and it's an interactive show with a very traditional means of expression and I wanted to show love to these people.

I had to do a good job on their portraits, some I had to do over several times because you don't want somebody you care about to look at themselves and like, "Oh my God, is that what he really thinks about me?"

That kind of thing.

Frankly, I didn't even think I could make them that realistic like I was, but I felt an obligation to do that.

I mean, I could have made 'em stylized, semi-abstract or whatever, but it wouldn't have had that impact.

So I had to put all that love into painting the paintings and then I wanted to do the same for the mirrors.

I wanted to carve the mirrors and touch everything and make 'em precious as a symbol for that's how we should treat people, just in general, like they're precious.

I caught myself tearing up, painting the paintings.

It was sort of new to me and I didn't think I could do it.

I'm glad I went through with it.

You don't wanna get preachy or anything like that because we're all human, we're all doing this stuff.

You know, we should be able to discuss those things.

Because my work can be, not always, very sociopolitical work, I don't want to alienate people with a word or an idea or a notion because it's better off that that person entertains and engages with the work without me making 'em put up their guards and I try to make the work a little bit like that too, I make the work be entertaining enough and maybe funny enough that they wanna engage with it, even if it's a topic that's contentious for them.

Whatever the workings of our life here is, whatever we do as human beings, good or bad, all a messiness of life, I'm interested in that.

Art itself, formally, just colors and shapes or whatever can evoke emotions from people and mysterious ideas about the world, then that again is about us.

Through making artwork and then paying close attention to how people receive that artwork, how they come to the artwork with ideas and stuff and I'll make artwork and I'll think it means this and then somebody else will view it and they'll get something completely different out of that piece.

So then that really inspires the notion that the art has a really rich life after you create it and then sometimes the more mysterious it is, the richer the piece gets.

Once it's done, it sits on the wall.

If it goes in a museum, it gets sitting on the wall for hundreds of years.

It's like Buddha, it just sits there, seemingly does nothing but it's supposed to do something really special.

It's supposed to entertain for its lifetime, for the eternity, it's supposed to entertain.

So mystery's really important.

It has to have that afterlife.

Otherwise, you know, if people have seen everything there is to see or feel everything there is to feel for the piece, they're just gonna get bored of it.

They're gonna take it down, it's gonna end up in a garage sale or something, which is like, my nightmare.

So yeah, I embrace that notion of drawing from multiple experiences, multiple ideas, just then make your art work and then it'll resonate, hopefully, with people.

Imagination and empathy are like one and the same, 'cause if you can't imagine yourself there, well you can't create something, you know?

So imagination, without imagination, there's no empathy so far an artist, I think that it's tightly entwined.

>> 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.

>> Narrator: Support for programming 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.

>> 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.

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

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(calm music begins) (piano music begins)