>> Women are still being looked at and I mean, you look at fashion and magazines, they're just, they're objects.

They're not real people.

So I wanted to make a point about that.

>> I want people to enjoy them.

I mean, yeah, they're they're brutal in some aspects, but they're also light.

They may be in peril according to what's on their body but they're not frightened, they're blase.

So it's not scary.

So it should be a pleasant experience.

It should be something that you look at the words and you look at the images and you absorb it.

I mean, without it, you have nothing.

Without it, there is really no life for me.

I mean, I have to do it.

My back was bad and I shouldn't be standing up and I stand up to do these.

So I don't really care about my back when I'm doing them.

I'll just deal with it later and put a heating pad on, because I'm gonna stand and I'm gonna do what I have to do.

Nothing's gonna stop me from doing it.

>> Porter County was kind of a, a desert land in terms of students having an opportunity to study art outside of their classroom.

There were no art camps going on here.

(upbeat music) >> When I was in fourth grade Patricia Cummings was my elementary school art teacher and she was telling us about all about art camp.

and I wanted to sign up for it and I did.

I just remember having such a wonderful experience.

>> Nathan used to be my art student in kindergarten on through fifth grade.

And he was an artist from when he was a baby and he was one of our very first art students in our art camp.

(cheerful music) We had had art camp for 19 years and then we were thinking, well, you know maybe we should go on to other things.

But we wanted art camp to keep going.

>> Patricia Jane reached out to me and asked, could you, would you like to take over the camp?

And I thought, what an honor.

Yes, absolutely.

Let's keep up the legacy.

>> It, it just seemed like a very natural transition.

He was familiar with the camp, he's a great artist.

He's, he was giving lessons for, well as long as he's had the studio here.

>> We see it as just an excellent opportunity to continue the legacy of um one of the greatest art teachers in my life.

I feel like it needs to continue because in school you're introduced to a taste of art but you're not open to the whole art experience.

Having a camp during the summer uh opens up a kid's um idea to art and also helps them use their imagination.

They learn how to use materials.

It's a more hands-on approach and they're being introduced a little bit to art history and also different art styles.

The art camp is divided into two different age groups third through fifth graders, and then six through eight.

And each day we're looking at the same artist and then we're doing a project based off of that artist.

We started up with Arcimboldo, we did Paul Saison, the father of Modern Art Vincent Van Gogh, Andy Warhol, the pop artist.

We did plan air painting outside of the building and we did still life.

So we set up still lives of candy, cookies, uh toys and they drew in chalk pastel, these still lifes and oh my gosh, what they created with that was amazing.

The colors were nice and bright and how they got details was awesome.

I think the impact is definitely a good one.

I've had parents say thank you so much for keeping this going because the art camp has had a little reputation for having a place for kids to go during the summer, doing something other than sports.

To me, art is the way that we show our souls to the world, our imaginations.

and it shows the good and the bad, but also art has a responsibility to bring ideas to other people.

>> A lot of kids just need art?

They need to have a creative way to express themselves.

And that's one thing that art helps you do.

>> Art is to be appreciated and there's a whole lot of variety of art that they can create and um think of.

And also that there's a whole history with art that they should explore.

>> 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 cuz 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'll, 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, rhythm, you know emphasize or de-emphasize focal points.

You know, really think about how it's engaging the viewer.

Every material has strengths 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.

Though printmaking sort of went, 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 kind of 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 woodcuts are a major part of what I do, but they're often sort of 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.

The headwaters of the Grand Calumet River originate from a small lagoon in the pristine dunes, near the southern shore of Lake Michigan.

The word Calumet means pipe and refers to the one the Illiniwek Indian smoked with the French missionary father Marquette, as a universal sign of peace.

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

You know, over time my work has changed and I've learned a lot, I think.

Early on, a lot of the woodcuts 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 sort of solutions to where we're at.

My work, as in my woodcuts, really supports a larger social practice.

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

I grew up in Gary.

You know 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 sort of have a play on words, sort of a nursery rhyme type feel.

One of the phrases would be think fast, nature will bury the past.

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

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

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

And you know, now I sort of 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 you know, 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 artists, or it should.

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

You know, a lot of people are, you know struggling to meet their daily needs.

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

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

>> 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 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.

>> 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.

>> 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.

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Visit video.LakeshorePBS.org.

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