(bright upbeat music) >> All these pieces are created based on memories from me learning Mexican history.

The Descending Eagle, which would be the translation of Cuauhtémoc.

Cuauhtémoc was the last emperor before Hernán Cortés finally conquered the city of Tenochtitlan, which is now known as Mexico City.

>> Madison: The saying goes, "By hammer in hand, all crafts do stand."

So, there was a point in time where if the tailor needed a pair of scissors or a needle he had to go to blacksmith.

Farmer needs a size sharpened blacksmith.

Everything was centralized around that smithy.

>> I don't want my instruments to sit on a shelf and get dusty somewhere, I want someone to play it and then pass it on to their kid and their child plays it and then their child plays it.

That to me would be the best thing that could happen to my instruments, want 'em to be loved.

>> Since you don't have the luxury of, you know, having shading and all that, so you have to be minimalistic and pick out just the defining characteristics and then people, they recognize immediately.

I don't use any stains, dyes, or tints, I only use the natural colors and the grains that are in the woods.

So, they react differently to varnish.

Once you put a final coat on 'em, they may darken up or they may do this or that.

>> 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.

>> Student 1: 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 1: 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.

(bright upbeat music) >> Announcer 2: "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.

(intricate piano music) >> Roberto: I started sort of like playing with wood since I was a kid.

Back home in Mexico, my cousin had a very modest wood shop, and I just liked all that beautiful furniture.

I have always been artistically inclined.

At some point, like from building furniture, I started leaning towards like carving and sculpting and that's where I am today.

Growing up in Mexico, churches, they're everywhere.

They're from colonial times, so you see all those paintings and sculptures and the architecture and the carvings on the wood.

I think that is how I started to develop my work based on all those memories.

(slow piano music) I would see things and wonder how it was made or how could I make it, or like how could I learn how to make that.

I was always attracted to handmade items.

One day I was driving by the side of the road and I spotted some logs and I just liked the shape of the of the trunk, and I thought, I think I can make something out of it.

I just started carving.

Once I started learning techniques, I pretty much fell in love with it.

(soft piano music) This is some of the work that I actually developed.

I call it my signature work because as far as I know, nobody was making something like this.

When I mean something like this, I'm talking about the shape.

It is a technique that involves both turning and carving.

The black part was actually burned with a wood burning pen.

The embellishment on the piece, it is called the (speaking in foreign language).

It represents the elements of life as well as the transition of life and death had in Mesoamerican cultures.

(bright music) These two pieces that you see are part of my Mesoamerican series.

They represent important aspects of Mesoamerican culture.

In this case, this is CuauhtemMc.

It has feathers carved around that represent the status of a chief.

And then the Descending Eagle, which would be the translation of CuauhtemMc.

CuauhtemMc was the last emperor before Hernán Cortés finally conquered the city of Tenochtitlan, which is now known as Mexico City.

It means, endurance, resistance, indigenous pride.

He's like a hero to us, you know, because he was the last one who actually stood his ground against the conquistadors.

(bright music) All these pieces are sort of like created based on memories from me learning Mexican history and visiting archeological sites.

You know, what I saw there was things carved on stone.

You know, it was not like marble, like really smooth, it was more like porous in a way, that is what I am trying to represent.

Both pieces that you saw, they are colored with a dry brushing technique.

The difference is that on this you see a little bit more of the natural wood, the walnut.

What I did is just to highlight the texture that I applied.

This work that you are seeing now is the development of driving by the road and saying like, oh, that piece of wood, I can make something with it.

So, you know, this is the progression of it.

I was already an adult when I set that goal for myself to develop a type of work that I could call my own.

I also think that whenever you get stuck into something, you stop growing.

Every little thing or technique that you can learn from different disciplines if you apply to your work, you can only make it grow.

(bright upbeat music) Artistry and craftsmanship are closely related, one cannot exist without the other.

You cannot make a ball, you know, like a simple ball.

You cannot embellish that pole and make it look nice if the profile of the ball is not right because your eyes will be drawn to that profile because it's a natural thing.

In order for you to apply the artistic part to the ball, you first meet the craftsmanship to create the ball and I think that holds true to just about any discipline you practice.

(bright upbeat music) >> Madison: I had been watching blacksmith inc videos and I found this piece of rail track.

I'd known that people would use these things for anvils, I'm like, that's it, that's my first piece.

I carried that thing around in the backpack, like as I walked around to actually remind me to continue to pursue this thing.

So yeah, I did that for like a year.

I actually ended up building my first forage out of an eight inch frying pan.

So I got some plumbing parts, put it together in a fan from a bathroom and made my first forage.

I would go out to the tracks on the east side of Chicago where they barge in coal, but there would always be spillovers of coal, so I'd go out there and collect buckets of coal.

I went for about a year learning how to start a fire and run a fire, 'cause you just have to know it, and you start realizing how to make mistakes with fire.

(upbeat music) I enjoy having the capabilities of not so much doing things, but knowing how to figure out how to do things, that's the real draw.

As a blacksmith, everything is shared.

It's always seems like an equitable arrangement between you and the people that do this.

Everybody wants you to know you're capable.

And if you're not capable right now, lemme show you how to be capable.

There's a saying that there's honesty in accuracy.

There's a lot of truth in knowing that you're in a craft, that you have a bucket of screw ups.

You know, and every single one of us have it, you know, so, I don't know, it's nice, it's humbling.

20 years ago, my dad built a house right across the street and I used to work with my dad.

I heard bang, bang, bang one night and like, what is that?

And I'd drive by and I'd drive by and I'd drive by and I'd hear finally I'd pulled in here and I'd met Roger 20 years ago.

I joined the IVBA and I got a newsletter in the mail, this was almost seven years ago.

With this guy's address in it, Roger Carlson, who was my mentor, came by the next day, got to talking with him.

He says, well, yeah, I could use a little help around here.

We hit it off and it was just one of those things where everything felt right in the place for me to be here at Ephraim Forge.

He can't get rid of me.

Oddly enough, his wife was my teacher, my freshman year in high school.

But me and Roger kind of attached to hip.

We're probably more family now than anything.

It was a fast track.

It really was a fast track.

I walked into this.

I'm the luckiest boy in the world, I really truly am.

I feel like a brat a lot of times 'cause when I get down, I talk to people, I'm like, oh, in my shop we would do it this way.

I'm like, well, nah, not everybody's as fortunate as you are.

So, you know, I had to realize I'm gonna shut up and listen to these guys 'cause they got more information than I do, truly.

More tools, they have way more information.

Roger, you know, my mentor, the guy's been doing this for 40 years.

His work is just astounding.

(bright music) A lot of guys that I know exist with that anvil, that hammer, that coal forge, some of them are lucky enough to have a propane forge.

Nothing is inexpensive.

The saying goes, "By hammer in hand, all crafts do stand."

So there was a point in time where if the tailor needed a pair of scissors or a needle, he had to go to blacksmith.

Farmer needs a size sharpened blacksmith.

Everything was centralized around that smithy.

That smithy didn't want to do all those things, so he started doing, oh, I'm gonna mechanize this, I'm gonna make a tool for this.

Bend it, cut it, you weld it.

It's a limited amount of things you can do with this material.

But the things that you see that have been done with that material from the discovery of it and the discovery of the manipulation of it, we have the industrial revolution to everything that we do to this day.

You know, aerospace technology uses forging.

It's as rudimentary as it gets.

It's just a hammer, it's an air hammer, but it's just a hammer.

(bright upbeat music) Now some of the things that we make are heirloom quality.

We made a table here one time.

I wanna say that thing was nearly nine feet long.

Two benches that went with it.

That to me says, there's gonna be a large family sitting around.

That's cool.

You know, I really like that.

Like man, this is gonna have good times you know, around it for its existence.

And when those people, you know, pass on or decide to downsize, somebody's gonna want that 'cause they're gonna see the same thing that I saw when I made it, they're gonna see longer tables are good times.

The wine cellar gate that we made for the guy, it's an award-winning piece.

A great sense of good on you, man.

Everybody's capable of doing what it is they do.

I started this thing off when I was walking around.

I had an idea.

I just held onto the idea, you know?

(upbeat music) >> Luke: My parents let me take this job after school that was in a cabinet shop, and I started working there and anything that was detailed and kind of immaculate, I really liked that kind of work.

Then I started at my brother-in-law's violin shop.

I just wanted something that would challenge me a little more and repairing violins and I did really well at it.

And pretty quickly I was doing the majority of the repairs in the shop, and then I've been here now eight plus years doing this stuff, so.

I'm into violin making a lot more as an engineer than a performer, obviously.

I like music, but I like listening to music.

We're dealing in a margin of era that's a couple of points of a millimeter.

So, it's a lot more engineering than you might think.

You take this piece of wood and figuring out what it's going to sound like at the end of crafting it into an instrument.

You have to be very, very specific with your measurements.

For the most part, we're copying the greatest sounding violins on the planet.

The violin, as we know it was made by, Andrea Amati, in the mid 1500s.

And then the name that everybody knows, Antonius Stradivarius, is kind of the one that perfected violin.

Since Antonius Stradivarius, the violin really hasn't changed.

There are other makers that have made after Strad that are very, very good makers, but since he has that kind of label as the the maker for royalty, he's kind of captured that title, and he was alive at a very important era for violin making.

His craftsmanship was very, very clean for the day.

He pushed the design of the violin to an extraordinary amount.

Antonius Stradivarius, they estimate, made about 1,000 instruments.

That is a very happening maker in today's terms.

(soft violin music) There are a lot of other really competent players here.

Every time I finish an instrument, the moment of truth is when you walk out in the main room and you have someone play your instrument for the first time and you string it up, all the varnish is dried, you hand it to this person.

(bright violin music) When I'm making an instrument, I am tapping on the pieces of wood and tuning them to certain notes.

I'm looking for sound travel through the wood to be very fast.

So we measure the speed of sound.

How you make the arching really, really affects how it's going to sound.

How much air mass you make inside the instrument is usually in relation to how big this instrument will sound.

And there's not really one right thing because I'll have a performer come in here and they'll play 15, 20 different instruments before deciding what instrument they like.

Everyone's looking for something different, so it kind of works out regardless of what you make.

Sooner or later there's going to be someone that really connects with that instrument.

Some of the instruments I make are a commission.

Usually they'll show me pictures of something they've seen and say, I want the color this or that.

More commonly than a commission job, I just make the instrument however I like and I kind of like making the instrument just however I like because it gives me full creative license.

And I would say that's really what differentiates modern violins.

We're copying the outlines and the shapes of Stradivarius, but as far as the aesthetic and as far as the carving you do on it, it's all in your hand, it's all up to you.

If there's no customer saying I want it specifically this way, I try to use my full creative license on instruments, pushing myself kind of to my limit on what I can do.

I don't want my instruments to sit on a shelf and get dusty somewhere.

I want someone to play it and then pass it on to their kid and their child plays it and then their child plays it.

That to me would be the best thing that could happen to my instruments.

I want them to be played and I want them to be used.

I want them to be loved.

If these instruments that I make are taken care of, they can last three, four, maybe more generations.

It does make me want to make my instruments very, very well because you know that this is going to be cherished and loved by somebody, and maybe even for more than the fact that I made it, they might love it just because it's grandpa's.

And you want grandpa's violin to be something special, that's kind of an honor in a way.

I think there's something special about starting with raw chunks of wood, and by the end you have this intricately carved beautiful sounding, beautiful looking violin or instrument and there's no substitute for that.

There are a lot of very good makers that have poured time into me, and that's part of what makes me to the level I'm at today.

I started this when I was 16 years old.

I would like to make instruments that have never been seen before, especially in their aesthetic and their sound.

Now that I'm into violin making, I want to be one of the best.

So, the pursuit is gonna be, make a lot of instruments, get my name out there, get my instruments out there.

(bright violin music) >> Narrator 1: Craftsmanship and artistry harmonize in Chris Klocek's intarsias.

While working with wood may seem limiting, he manages to capture the essence of his subjects, distilling recognizable icons down to their eyes, aloof sneer or childlike whimsy.

>> What intarsia is, is taking separate pieces of wood, you cut them to fit mosaic-like into a picture by using their colors, their grain patterns, and darkness and light, just like in photography My first one, I made it for my grandmother who loved owls and I made her a little owl in a tree.

It was a pattern in the magazine and I cut it out with a handheld jigsaw.

Not this, you know, but a actual like a skillsoft, you know, each piece individually with pine and cedar and, you know, nominal domestic lumber.

I signed it and dated it and it was August of '88 that I made that first one.

So it's 30 years this year.

What's great about the fact that I've grown in it is that the creativity aspect of it has grown more and more.

Always problem-solving to be done with each layout.

You know, how will this piece work here?

Can I make that into one piece?

Do I need to break it up into two?

Where's the best place to break that into two?

That's all part of the tricky part of laying something out.

Sergeant Peppers had 333 pieces.

I don't have the luxury of using shading, I can only use like a line drawing, specific delineations of color and arc.

So I have to take a drawing and turn it into a line drawing.

I'll use an opaque projector to give it the right size and just for proportion, just for a sense of the eyes should go here, the mouth should go here.

Basically, a coloring book with wood, you know, so you have lines in each one's of color.

The more constraints or limitations you have, the more you have to exercise creativity.

Using enchanted is very limiting.

You have to be minimalistic and pick out just the defining characteristics.

And then people they recognize immediately.

(bright music) I don't use any stains, dyes or tints, I only use the natural colors and the grains that are in the woods.

So they react differently to varnish.

Once you put a final coat on 'em, they may darken up or they may do this or that.

It's a series of problem-solving.

What's the most elegant way to get from point A to point B, setting up and preparation is about 60, 70% of every project.

You're thinking of the other parts in the process.

The whole time you're doing it, you're thinking of past mistakes, you try not to redo those, but at any point you gonna have to start over again.

I see the ending from the beginning.

So when I show my family I'll go in, you know, and show 'em a drawing that I just did, (indistinct), you know, it's like, yeah, that's really nice, but me, I'm seeing it in wood already.

I'm already seeing five steps down the line.

So I get really excited when I get a good pattern.

You know, it's like, oh, this is gonna be great, you know?

And that's the thing, you have to have a lot of patience 'cause you say, I can't wait to see how this is gonna turn out.

But you don't until the final coat of varnish is on and it's assembled.

You don't know, you know.

So, it's like waiting for Christmas, you know, every time you're doing it, that anticipation, that keeps you going too 'cause when you're cutting 200, 300 pieces at a time, that's tedious.

And not to see progress, you know, not to see the result, it's an exercise in patience, you know, but it's always fun.

If I were doing enchanted of you I already gotta it figured out, you know?

A lot of times, I'll see a person or a picture and yeah, I'm breaking it down.

They're like children to me, you know, they're like when I make one, I put a lot of myself in it.

The great thing is I never am let down by seeing one 10 years later, I'm like, wow, that really turned out... You know, I'm always like really excited to see them again, you know?

Where have you been?

I'm never disappointed, you know, which is great 'cause I won't give it to somebody unless I know they're gonna love it and that's a good thing.

You feel like you're giving a gift to...

Even though they're paying for it, you feel like you're giving 'em something valuable you know, they're individual, they're unique.

I want these things to last like 100 years, you know.

They're like heirloom pieces.

If you do it for the pay, it doesn't pay.

It's that rewarding feeling you have when you light somebody else's eyes up.

It has to be a relaxing activity or you'd never do it because it's so time intensive and labor intensive.

You're working by the sweaty (indistinct), but you're just putting in a lot of hours.

So I don't stress out when I'm working with my hands.

It's relaxing, it's palliative, you know, it takes away pain.

You have to love it.

You have to love it because it's for mad men and passionate people, I guess.

(bright music) I'm always learning, you know, every step to everything you do, even if it doesn't sell, you've learned something.

You have to love what you're doing, I guess, whether it pays or not.

And if you do it for the pay, it doesn't pay, you know.

But if you do it for the passion and the love a lot of times it does, surprisingly.

(bright music) >> 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.

>> Student 2: 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.

(bright upbeat music) >> Announcer 2: "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?

Visit video.LakeshorePBS.org.

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

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(bright music)