(pensive music) >> Nicholas: It is exciting that no one's done this before, and so that's what fuels me through hours and hours of practice on this instrument.

It's a very challenging instrument, but it always pays off when you have days like this.

>> Tom: Very exciting when something new appears right then and there in the process.

Much more than the finished piece, it's that spark through the sketching or through the drawing things about where the real creativity comes from.

>> Chris: I know that for me, when I sat down a loom and I threw a shuttle, I thought, "I am home, I have arrived.

This is it for me."

And if there's any way that I can share that with someone else, that's a huge win.

>> Ryan: Really, I would say most of my art is building, whether that's wheel-thrown, pottery, build tables.

Now, my daytime business is a contractor.

So we do a lot of custom builds, but trying to do it from an artistic standpoint, not just guys with hammers.

>> 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.

(uplifting 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.

(uplifting music) >> Announcer 1: Ivy Tech offers more than 70 programs with locations in Michigan City, LaPorte, and Valparaiso.

New classes start every few weeks.

Ivy Tech, higher education at the speed of life.

To get started, visit ivytech.edu.

>> Announcer 2: Family, home, work, self.

Of all the things you take care of, make sure you are near the top of the list.

NorthShore Health Centers offers many services to keep you balanced and healthy.

So take a moment, self-assess, and put yourself first.

From medical to dental, vision, chiropractic, and mental health, NorthShore will help get you centered.

You help keep your world running, so make sure to take care of yourself.

NorthShore Health Centers, building a healthy community one patient at a time.

(lighthearted music) >> Announcer 3: "Eye On The Arts" is made possible in part by: South Shore Arts, the John W. Anderson Foundation, and the Indiana Arts Commission, making the arts happen.

Additional support for Lakeshore Public Media, and local programming is made possible by viewers like you.

Thank you.

(lighthearted music) (vaudeville music) >> I am Nicholas White and I'm a xylophone player.

(vaudeville music) The xylophone is a novelty instrument sometimes.

It was used in orchestras as early as the 1800s.

But around the turn of the century, it was a kind of a vaudeville comedy instrument.

And what made it interesting for vaudeville was it was something you'd never seen before.

That's what novelty means.

(vaudeville music) What's unique about the xylophone is it's one of the hardest instruments to play in the entire percussion family.

It is this kind of funny instrument with these rosewood bars all lined up like a piano chromatically.

And when you're playing with them with a mallet, it's not like these tiny little targets that you're supposed to be hitting.

And so it's so easy to hit the wrong one.

Everyone hears it and they kind of think of cartoons.

Although what music we're playing today is kind of before cartoons a little bit.

So it just puts a smile on people's face.

It's an instrument that sometimes makes people laugh, sometimes makes people interested.

(vaudeville music) (vaudeville music continues) (vaudeville music continues) All Star Trio is kind of like a pop band from 1919 to 1921.

They were playing these two kind of novelty, funny, comedy vaudeville instruments, which were pretty popular at that time.

And they're playing arrangements of popular songs, sometimes songs that were released two months ago.

What made them so successful is that they were recording for the Victor Record Company and they sold hundreds upon thousands of records.

And they're so common now that you can walk into any antique store and find one of their records.

I really like to call them the post-World War I pop band.

The Michael Jordan of Xylophone of all time was named George Hamilton Green, and he was one of the members of the All Star Trio, he was a xylophone player.

And he is just kind of synonymous with that instrument.

He's the only person who really made their entire life out of that instrument.

And so, because George Hamilton Green had a much younger brother, his nephew is still living today.

He's actually someone who plays cornet and performs 1920s music.

So we're actually working on an album that is gonna try to involve Lew Green, George Hamilton Green's nephew.

So we kind of have this connection between the family members who appreciate their legacy and us just trying to recreate cool music.

The kind of nerdy unique thing about this is we're literally recreating note-for-note recordings from 1919 to 1920.

We're not putting our own spin on it.

I love to do that, as a musician, you're creative, but in this case, we're recreationists.

It's never been done before, so that's one of the cooler parts of it, is that no one's ever done this before for the All Star Trio.

(vaudeville music) (vaudeville music continues) I stay motivated just because I love history.

It's exciting that no one's done this before, and so that's what fuels me through hours and hours of practice on this instrument.

It's not something that I can just work up a few days and then play one of these songs.

Each song you hear today kind of took me months to prepare.

So it's a very challenging instrument, but it always pays off when you have days like this.

(vaudeville music) (mellow music) >> Very exciting when something new appears right then and there in the process, much more than the finished piece.

It's that spark through the sketching or through the... Just throwing things about that where the real creativity comes from.

(mellow music) I've always made things.

As a child, I loved making things, starting with models, model airplanes, and all the things that kids make as plastic models, and wood balsa models, and all those.

(mellow music) I just like working with materials and manipulating materials, and have worked with weaving and painting through the years.

About 1974, there was a Renaissance in stained glass going on.

It had been out of favor in the art world for decades, and then for some reason in the early '70s, it sparked and really took off.

Manufacturers started making more chic glass around the country, and became aware of that, and started doing stained glass.

Later discovered fusing, which was an offshoot of the stained glass work that people wanted to have more freedom, more ability to work like painters, rather than craftsmen assembling pieces.

When I became aware of it, I started doing that, and that switched me from stained glass to diffusing completely.

Twila is a much more determined craftsman that is gonna get that piece done and get it done right, and she brought a whole level of improvement in the craftsmanship of our pieces.

At that time, we were doing stained glass.

There's more craftsmanship required in that than there is in fusing.

Fusing is more quick ideas, like painting, it happens fast.

Whereas the stained glass pieces are built slowly.

She can put in 60 to 200 hours into one piece.

My mind could not allow that.

I couldn't finish a piece that took that long.

And now, what Twila has shifted to is building what I would call components, the smaller, tiniest pieces, she'll make them out of powders, whether they're leaves, or petals, or stems, or whatever we are working on.

She build most of those, and then I store them and put them together in a finished piece by assembling them and working on what I call a sketch board, which is a light table where light comes from beneath through a clear piece of glass.

And I will sprinkle pieces about and shift them, move them to where I start to get an idea and then build off of that.

(uplifting music) I cannot duplicate a piece.

It just doesn't work for me.

(Tom chuckles) It takes control to duplicate something.

And control in art is, I would say, a bad thing, for the most part.

As soon as I started controlling it and making it the way I think it ought to be becomes so uninteresting.

Being too literal or too controlled, you lose spontaneity.

The fantasy, that spark in a person when they look at something, they're not quite sure what it is, and they need to examine it further and get a better feel for it.

And it's hard to do.

It's difficult to know where to stop with a line, you know?

It's part of the process.

And I can't tell you how many pieces I've thrown away or just...

They were so bad.

(Tom chuckles) And it can't be fixed because you can't.

Again, if an area is too dark, you're not gonna lighten it.

So it's gone.

I think many artists will tell you that they overworked the piece and wished they could go back to five minutes ago or whatever the timeframe is because they had it and they didn't realize it, and then it, I'll say, ruined the peace for them, and they're not happy with it.

That's happened to me many times.

And there, again, lies a problem.

Where do you stop?

Because you'll get, so many times, get to a place where I think, "I'm done with something," and then I realize, "No, it needs something else."

And that can be days later, weeks later, months later, minutes later.

You never know.

It's just part of that whole.

It's really the wonderful experience.

I mean, completely exhilarating.

It's...

Exciting and it lasts.

It lasts for the days, for days even.

It depends, yeah.

Left glass for as long as two years throughout that time span, just because of the shift in my interest, and the way ideas come to me, and my needs is to make different things in different ways.

It's just something I have to do.

(uplifting music) (lighthearted guitar music) >> Hi, my name is Chris, and I'm a weaver and beginning weaver instructor.

(lighthearted guitar music) I grew up in a family of very creative people.

My grandmother was a home ec teacher and my mom was an elementary teacher.

My Aunt Laura owned a craft store, so I was always surrounded by really creative people.

Grew up really just always making things, always something with your hands, like craft was important.

We made Christmas gifts, all of that kind of stuff.

After college, I got a job in the corporate world doing the design part of it.

The corporate job was fine, but I just didn't love it.

Like, it just wasn't doing it for me.

So I thought, "Well, I really just wanna make things.

I just wanna make stuff with my hands."

And took a weaving class completely randomly.

I had tried other fiber things before, but it was the first time I had tried weaving, and it was love at first sight.

It was really...

I just remember sitting there at the loom thinking, "I could do this all day long."

And so a couple years after I took my first class, I jumped ship from the corporate world, and I moved to Indiana in with family, and been weaving ever since.

(lighthearted guitar music) (floor loom clicking) So today, I am sitting at a floor loom.

This is a 36-inch wide four-shaft floor loom.

These frames right in the middle here are shafts, and each one lifts and lowers, and they have their own set of yarns assigned to it.

This piece here is the beater bar, which basically comes forward and back just to squish all the yarns appropriately.

So what's so fun is that down below then, I have pedals, which are called treadles, and each treadle is connected to the shafts.

So that's part of how I'm always creating the pattern for whatever fabric that I'm working on.

So today, I have a crackle fabric that I am working on, and I'm working with two shuttles I have.

This is a boat shuttle, kinda looks like a canoe, right?

And then this is a rag shuttle, and you'll notice that the yarn is wound directly onto this one versus this one has a little bobbin that just kind of unwinds from.

But between the two shuttles in, I can create this kind of complicated-looking pattern.

Here's what it looks like.

(lighthearted guitar music) (floor loom clicking) (bright music) I think what's so fun about weaving is that ultimately, you're making fabric.

No matter what your project is, you're making fabric.

And I think that's just really magical.

The teaching has been so much fun, I have to say.

And I'm really, really loving it.

Every week, I create a video in my library, it's called a Handwoven Experience, is the whole series of videos.

And they're hardly ever more than seven, eight minutes, so it's a very short video.

I take one tiny little topic and I break it down, so that basically anybody can follow it.

I try to really make sure that my beginners understand the terms, and the techniques, and all those kind of things.

Like, for me, any video that starts with, "This is a loom," is a good video.

Like, I really love that demographic working with that person who's just starting out, and is so excited, and they just wanna make all the things.

That's really who I love to speak to.

Because weavers, when you think about it, they're almost always solo artists because you just don't take a loom with you very easily.

So when you think about someone who's a weaver, you're probably in your house by yourself.

You might be able to travel somewhere to take a class, but for the most part, so much of the learning that you're gonna do is gonna be in your own setting with your loom at your house.

So this whole online vehicle has been just amazing because that's a easy way for me to reach them and help them get to their goals as a weaver.

So it's been a game-changer.

(bright music) What drives me is I know how weaving changed my life.

I know that for me, when I sat down at a loom and I threw a shuttle, I thought, "I am home, I have arrived.

This is it for me."

And if there's any way that I can share that with someone else and help them just be introduced to that is... Talk about a thrill, talk about an amazing opportunity.

If I can share a couple things that makes it easier for them to get into it, that's a huge win.

(lighthearted guitar music) (upbeat music) >> I would say it goes back to high school.

I would skip that on other classes and take my every study hall, and go to the art room, and throw on a wheel, and really enjoyed it.

And then in college, I figured out very quickly that I didn't belong anywhere but the art program.

Got my degree in art education.

Also was doing construction while in school, so I kind of bounced between both of those worlds for a while, while always trying to make and find opportunities.

I would say that my focus is three-dimensional objects, physicality, and just I'm a builder.

(rock music) Really, I would say most of my art is buildings, whether that's wheel-thrown pottery, build tables.

Now, my daytime business is a contractor.

So we do a lot of custom builds and home remodeling, home additions, all kinds of things.

But trying to do it from an artistic standpoint, not just guys with hammers.

I employ other artists as well.

And yeah, we build, we do the construction, we'll do the framing, drywall, all that stuff.

We're great with paint colors and working in color schemes, trying to make sure everything's working in unity.

And yeah, if they elect to, "Hey, can I get a plate or a bowl set when we're done with this kitchen?"

"Yeah, sure."

Trying to make sure that we're pulling the same color palette, and as well as forms that fit or fit the way that they cook or use their kitchen.

I'm making these decisions and setting up my composition in this way, thinking about rooms, and thinking about renovations and how we interact with the space on a level of just color pairings and what's in our visual frame, as well as how we're touching things, and moving through the space, and using it, and just all those things that are creating that balance for you that it just feels good.

We're trying to approach things from the standpoint of, "Yeah, it's not just a space."

We're gonna design this all the way through and be here all the way through to make sure that it is what we talk about, and fitting the client's wants that maybe just...

If they just want a building put on, we're not your guy.

If they want something that has more thought behind it and is thinking about aesthetics, then that's where we're kind of geared towards.

(uplifting music) I like the dealing with the objects, and the limitations with interacting with gravity, and types of unions, and how these things meet and putting them together, and all the different media that's involved with three-dimensional stuff.

(upbeat music) It took me a while to realize the connection between the pottery, three-dimensional, I guess kind of sculptural things, and how that tied into the building that I was doing.

It's like, "Oh, I just like working with materials."

And seeing those two line up.

(upbeat music) I really like things that function, studying mid-century modern design and things like that and as well as like the history of pottery and all the different cultures, and how it was vital to their existence and was used in daily life, studying all those things.

So I pull and sample from that, but also just trying to alter things and have fun.

I don't know what it's like to wake up and not wanna make something and not want to create something.

To me, creating and changing spaces, changing people's lives because of those spaces and how they interact, and use them, and making quality of life better.

That's how to build a legacy and leave something behind for the next generation and the next generation.

Yeah, so I think that that's probably at my core, what pushes me is to have something beyond my lifetime that is lasting.

(uplifting music) The thing I love about the mural painting is if you got something right down to here that's accessible and a kid's there watching and asking about stuff, "Here you go, man.

Fill that in right there with that color."

And then now, they have ownership in their community.

Now, "Hey, I painted that.

When I was a little kid, I painted that."

And I got to see that I was still teaching when some of the first murals came to town.

And I got to see that change in these middle-school kids and their attitude towards their town.

Like, they had so much pride because they were able to go out, and do a workshop, and help, and so, yeah.

So teaching is still very much a part of what I do and even in running my company, and I'm teaching guys how to do, how to think like I am, and make an impact that way.

So yeah, community reach, as well as steering adults and raising good adults that will raise good children.

(upbeat music) >> 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.

(uplifting music) >> 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.

(uplifting music) >> Announcer 1: Ivy Tech offers more than 70 programs with locations in Michigan City, LaPorte, and Valparaiso.

New classes start every few weeks.

Ivy Tech, higher education at the speed of life.

To get started, visit ivytech.edu.

>> Announcer 2: Family, home, work, self.

Of all the things you take care of, make sure you are near the top of the list.

NorthShore Health Centers offers many services to keep you balanced and healthy.

So take a moment, self-assess, and put yourself first.

From medical to dental, vision, chiropractic, and mental health, NorthShore will help get you centered.

You help keep your world running, so make sure to take care of yourself.

NorthShore Health Centers, building a healthy community one patient at a time.

(lighthearted music) >> Announcer 3: "Eye On The Arts" is made possible in part by: South Shore Arts, the John W. Anderson Foundation, and the Indiana Arts Commission, making the arts happen.

Additional support for Lakeshore Public Media, and local programming is made possible by viewers like you.

Thank you.

(lighthearted music) >> Announcer 4: 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."

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.lakeshore.org to stream your favorite local shows.

(pensive music) (pensive music continues) (bright music)