(upbeat music) >> Sydney: I just try to put a story into it, you know?

and that's, I think, what takes so much time is I'm carving each stroke hand by hand to get that story embedded into the clay.

>> Edwin: All these different experiences are kind of gelled and kind of like become part of the work.

That's what I'm excited about is I never know exactly what direction the work's gonna take me depending on what I come across and what inspires me.

>> Carol: Mixed media art, as I view it, is I create a story and I use anything and everything that I have and can find that could add to the piece to help tell the story.

>> Sekou: Muntu is from the Bantu language.

The word actually means man, that's what it literally means.

But when you look at what the essence of a man is, it's about humanity.

The inner joys and pains and all of the things that make up a human being.

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

(bright music) >> Announcer: "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.

>> Sydney: It's cool to see any artist put their emotion into something that a stranger could use every single day.

And I think it's just them putting their energy into the piece and transmuting that to, I mean, other people in the world.

(upbeat music) My first pottery class was in high school.

I took it just because you need an art credit.

I ended up being fairly good at it.

We were hand building, we made a coil built pot, and to my disbelief, they wanted to display it in the attendance office in like a glass cabinet.

So that made me feel pretty good about it.

But I graduated and was missing that kind of creative aspect in my life and I took pottery classes with some great people in our community, and here I am.

I see a lot of artists on social media.

Their ideas do inspire me, but at the end of the day, I think it's sometimes really hard to get, kind of like clogged with so much information and so many of other people's ideas that it's almost like creating a block.

So sometimes I do try to disconnect and look back at my own photos or I just kind of start doodling and what makes me feel good.

But at the end of the day, I really do like rustic style inspired by earthy kind of tones because clave comes from the earth.

It's a very natural feeling to be inspired by nature.

So I mean, me, myself, just my personality type, like I feel so free being out there that it's hard to not be inspired and want to bring those ideas back into the studio.

So incorporating seasonal foliage and what animals come out during certain seasons.

I'm just kind of very inspired by where I am throughout the year.

I like to think that it's an embodiment of earth's elements.

So when you break it down, you have clay, which is coming from the earth.

I'm using water, I'm using air to kind of dry it out 'cause it's very temperamental.

You have to work in stages and at certain temperatures with the clay.

And then I'm also using fire to fire my pottery and make it, make sure it's vitrified and able to use, turning it into ceramics.

As of lately, in the past couple years, I've been inspired by Celtic mythology and also Greek mythology.

So learning about that stuff, that made me feel good and that made me feel creative.

So I wanted to infuse that into what I was making.

I just try to put a story into it, you know?

And that's, I think, what takes so much time is I'm carving each stroke hand by hand to get that story embedded into the clay.

(lighthearted music) So I feel like I have this, like, I don't know how to describe it exactly, but there's like this world inside my imagination that I want to bring to life.

It's very like when you watch a fairytale movie, like in a mossy forest with animals and plants.

It's like I want to bring that to life.

Whether it's through the clay or through the design on the clay, I just feel like I need to get that out.

That's kind of what inspires the nature feel.

That's what inspires the mythology.

I like to kind of look in what season are we in?

And it just comes from that imaginary fairytale world that I feel like I would love to live in.

I wanna bring that to life.

It's really cool to have an idea in your mind that you've kind of been cooking up for a while, and then like two months down the road and you're like, "Oh shoot, I have it in my hands."

Like I thought of this and here it is.

Like it's tangible now.

And I think that's one of the coolest parts for me is to see an image of what I wanna make in my mind, and then have it in front of me.

(dramatic music) >> When I was a toddler, my grandmother had to look after me one afternoon and I don't even think she had a television at the time.

So she just pulled me up in her lap and got a book and then put a piece of paper down and I watched her draw a horse.

And it was just magical.

I knew I wanted to do something like that.

So I kept making art.

And then I didn't go to kindergarten I didn't have preschool so I had to repeat first grade.

So to kind of bump up my grades, I would do extra projects, particularly art projects and submit them to kind of improve my grade.

Then I would get positive attention for that.

So all the way through elementary and even middle school, I got a lot of positive feedback for the artworks that I was working on, particularly while I was doing sculpture, paper mache sculpture, and ceramics.

I was not much of an athlete, but I was an art nerd completely.

When I was in high school, I was making these clay figures and then I put them in settings that were kinda like about the scale of a GI Joe.

And then I was accepted at Virginia Commonwealth University and I had a phenomenal professor who was chairman of the department, Harold North.

And he goes, "When you come into the department, you're gonna have to come up with like a different approach and let that go so you can learn other things."

In which he said very wisely.

And so that happened.

Eventually, I got the habit of going around the alleys in Richmond, Virginia and I would dumpster dive for materials.

So it didn't cost me anything and then I could put together these things I kind of discovered by chance, into getting inspired by what I was bringing back and I'd let it sit, and then all of a sudden, I'd use it and I could explore a lot of possibilities without it being really precious.

So here I am in the glory of St. Mary's Studios in a building where I can renew these, all these sculptural ideas that I've been just stating for decades.

I'm striving to make objects and sculptures and wall pieces that people haven't particularly seen before.

I mean I'm not the first artist to use found objects, but I enjoy not only the forms that I'm working with, but also I like to go back and give them a special surface treatment.

So each piece, as you can see behind me, it's kind of camouflaged because I find scraps of fabric and then I affix it to the object with wood glue.

And then sometimes I'll wrap it with upholstery thread, and then sometimes the piece will say I need some paper mache.

So I apply the paper mache.

And then sometimes glitter calls.

I apply the glitter.

Sometimes I need fake gems and I apply the gems.

So there's this dialogue going back between me and this inanimate object as I like bring it to life What I'm working on the beast's first surface treatment is the scraps of fabric.

So that covers the entire piece.

So it kind of camouflages the form.

Also, it can unify the form.

So the fabrics either have like sometimes a very amazing color or an unusual pattern.

So when I go to do something else to it, I might leave that section alone.

There might be a dull section that I need to jazz up.

So then I wanna come up with the most obnoxious colors and attention getting colors I can manage.

So that's why I lean to the fluorescent colors.

So I get the obnoxious orange and the the yellows and all those colors.

And so they're kind of, there's a contrast between the almost earth tone of the fabric and then this like electric fluorescent colors going on.

I am not concerned about the audience.

I just wanna make what I wanna make for me.

And I tap into my life experiences and I tap into memories.

All these different experiences are kind of gelled and kind of like become part of the work as it evolves.

So that's what I'm excited about is I never know exactly what direction the work's gonna take me depending on what I come across and what inspires me.

So I have a great deal of excitement about being here at this time 'cause I kind of feel like my 25-year-old is still inside, but just like housed in a 66-year-old body.

(somber music) >> I lost my husband and my mother within just months and it became difficult.

So I had to find a new fresh outlet.

And so the art became my retreat.

And I tell people that I keep moving forward for fear if I stop, I would fall into the black hole.

And the art and the creative spirit and stuff kept me moving.

(upbeat music) It kind of started with my hummingbird and the birds in my backyard and I started sharing some of my work and I ended up running into an opportunity to visit and meet at the Paul Henry Art Gallery in Hammond.

And I kind of walked in and there was an entire room full of artists and they were all open to share and do and I learned a lot and I think I was able to build my confidence.

And then as photographer, I had to teach myself everything.

As time progressed, I got to know other people and other artists and their different mediums that they've worked with and I just would like to try different things.

And then I was also starting to write poetry and things in my photography with it.

And so I was incorporating some of the angst and the creativity into one and finding that they kind of would meld into each other and be able to share and people would connect with it.

I think that I wanted to find a lane and I just wanted to be kind of travel over here and maybe travel over here.

And the only way I could do that was to try to take the photography in an odd direction, maybe less familiar and kind of something that would be surprising to many people.

Mixed media art, as I view it, is I create a story and I use anything and everything that I have and can find that could add to the piece to help tell the story.

It allows me to take the photograph, but do more than just have a picture in a frame.

In 2014, I was shooting out my back door and I just shoot hard and heavy and long when the snow is heavy because there's nothing like heavy snow and cardinals and the birds and everything against the heavy snow.

There's just, you can't compare anything to it.

That evening, I pulled my SD card out, put in the computer, and I saw the cardinals lined up on the fence and I post it Facebook and boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

And it was just crazy.

So I submitted it and it went into Birds & Blooms Magazine and also I submitted it downstate and I was named one of the Hoosier Women Artists that year.

And the photo also hung in the lieutenant governor's office for a calendar year.

I'm forever the Cardinal Lady because everybody, the shows I go to all over, the cardinal be hanging and they'll point and say, "Oh I bought that."

"I love that."

"I remember that."

"I've seen that."

I don't know if I ever realized how unique the photo is because it's a line of cardinals all facing the same way at one time and it's kind of a miracle of mother nature.

I can't imagine how my life and how I would have come out of my own deep hole without the pull of the creation.

I really think that it probably saved me as much as I got from it.

There may have been some of that inside that allowed it to be released, but I had no idea what level it was going to be.

And that's why I encourage people sometimes just do it.

There's no reason that I create some of this stuff.

I just do because the idea comes, I just have to do it and have to release, and then it's like I look at it and think, oh my gosh, I just, it just amazes me where I have been able to come and do and be.

So... (ambient music) (bouncy music) >> Muntu Dance Theater is a organization that was created to preserve, as well as to show the beauty of African culture through dance and through storytelling.

And we've been in existence since 1972.

The organization started out of a period of time where it was a struggle for African Americans to relate to who they are as a people.

And Muntu was used as a way of connecting us back to our home in Africa.

>> So to piggyback off of that, we're a dance theater.

So our main focus is dances of the African diaspora.

But we perform all sorts of different dances or different genres.

There's West African, there's Caribbean, traditional dances of Jamaica, Trinidad.

So there are a lot of lanes that we focus on, but our main, what I would call our juss is West African Dance.

>> Muntu is from the Bantu language.

The word actually means man.

That's what it literally means.

But when you look at what the essence of a man is, it's about humanity, the inner joys and pains and all of the things that make up a human being.

And with our presentations and with the learning that we do with all of the dances from the African diaspora, we make sure that we exude those great essences that we were born with.

And the essence of humanity is about us working together, coming together, being, loving one another, sharing with each other.

Even though she has a different way, I do things different, but we share with each other.

That's the essence of humanity.

(bouncy music) >> Regina: And we say, usually, at each performance, we strive to celebrate our similarities instead of focusing on our differences.

So when we speak of humanity, we speak of all humanity.

You know, when the sun shines, it shines on us all.

(chuckles) So that's literally the theme of each and every single solitary performance.

Each dance that's done has a meaning and has a purpose.

So they experience the emotions that come along with seeing a dance that might be done for the birth of a baby or they will hear a rhythm that's for celebrating the initiation of a young woman or a young man coming into adulthood.

>> Sekou: What I think we pride ourselves on is that within the arts and the presentations that we share, we wanna make sure, for one, that people understand that Africa is very important to the world no matter who you are on the planet and the resources that have been given to the world from Africa are important.

So a lot of times, in our presentations, that's what you're seeing like Regina was sharing, is that you are experiencing a ceremony a lot of times.

So when you see our choreography or the choreography that she's put together on particular pieces, the choreography is set around, a scene is set around an occasion, which is very important and that gives the the visual that you're seeing much more importance because it's not just a flat stage show.

You're actually seeing what will actually happen in a village during this occasion.

>> A lot of the times our concerts or performances are interactive.

So we don't do all the work.

We want people to get up and move and experience and learn steps.

So we have an entertainment component.

I affectionately call it edutainment because we want everyone to walk away with understanding what they just saw, learning songs and experiencing a different language and such things like that.

So we always wanna make sure that everyone is informed when they walk away from our performances.

I think that sometimes we are not even fully aware of the impact of how people feel when they come into the space and then they leave 'cause it's second nature to us.

And usually, we get like, oh my god, like thank you.

And it's been so many times where people thank us, like thank you for doing this because it feeds people on another level.

You know, it feeds the spirit, it feeds the spirit.

So we're not a religious organization by any stretch of the imagination, but when people walk away spiritually fed or mentally fed or you rebuild the person through music, art, and dance, it is necessary.

Dance and music is the universal language.

So I would think that that's one of the most awesome ways to tie into humanity and to get a connector where someone will say, "I understand you because when I move right to left or when I clap, you clap."

We just communicated.

Even though we may not speak the same language, I always like to think that the drum and the dance, no matter what, sparks something of a connector in that universal language of the groove.

You know, I like that.

>> Yeah.

>> One nation under a group.

>> Dale: 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 and a book versus physically doing it and seeing the results.

(upbeat music) >> Announcer: 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.

(bright music) >> Announcer: "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.

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

Visit video.lakeshorepbs.org.

You can stream a large selection of shows including "Eye the Arts," "In Studio," and "Friends & Neighbors."

Missed the last night's episode?

No problem.

Lakeshore PBS has got you covered.

Search for your show and find your episode ready to watch at any time.

Visit video.lakeshorepbs.org to stream your favorite local shows.

(upbeat music) (ambient music)