(drums rolling) - [Mark] In this edition of "Artistic Horizons," underwater portraits.

- [Daryl] His work's very creative.

He's thinking innovatively outside the box, so to speak, or maybe inside the pool.

- [Mark] Exploring our textile heritage.

- Weaving is a really important thing to show people, especially young people, but communities in general, because we've really lost the awareness of how fabric is made.

- [Mark] The reinvention of Pueblo pottery.

- Her artworks, specifically works in blackware and black-in-black, are just incredibly innovative.

- [Mark] Embracing American fashion.

- [Steven] If you've got a good idea and you're driven and you put forth the energy and the commitment to it, you can make it.

- It's all ahead on this edition of "Artistic Horizons."

(upbeat jazz music) (upbeat jazz music ending) Hello, I'm Mark Cernero and this is "Artistic Horizons."

Florida-based photographer, Scott Audette, captures portraits underwater.

Behind each image is careful thought and attention, leading to an end product rich with vibrancy and meaning.

Take a look.

- Hey, I'm Scott Audette and I'm an underwater portrait photographer here in Lakeland, Florida.

(lively music) Photography is what I've done my entire life.

I was probably in seventh or eighth grade when I picked up a camera and I had a teacher in middle school who had a dark room and showed me how to process and print my first black and white pictures.

And once the bug hit, it stuck with me my entire life.

So, I've worked in primarily pro sports, but also in the news business.

So, I've worked for Reuters news service, the Associated Press News service, still do some work for the Tampa Bay Rays.

I was with the Tampa Bay Lightning for 21 years, and I've kinda covered and seen it all.

I've been to Super Bowl, I've been to the World Series, I've been to the Olympics.

You name it, I've probably have been there.

(serene music) The underwater photography is an evolution of a relationship between me and my father.

He was a firefighter, but he fancied himself as a photographer with underwater stuff.

And so, really, I picked up a camera first underwater, just so that he and I had something in common to do.

And then realized not too long into it that I really wanted to do more with it and explore further in the field and in the genre.

Underwater photography gives me the opportunity to create something that's not necessarily part of my everyday life as a sports photographer.

This allows me to go back to when I was a 13, 14-year-old kid and first picked up a camera, right?

That's where the excitement is, that's where the magic is, and the passion is creating something that you're thinking about in your head and then taking it and putting it then on a piece of film.

Now, we're putting it in a digital file.

So that's what drives me to do this.

- It's not as easy as it looks, because you've got a combination of artistic skill and technical skill that he's combining to create finished images that give him the product that he wants to have.

- I do the sets, I bring all the clothes, I pick out all the fabrics, like the makeup that Coral is wearing today.

I picked out the makeup that I wanted her to wear.

I helped her design the headpiece.

Like, that's part of the creative process.

It's not just what happens in the water.

95% of what I do happens on land before we ever touch the water.

(upbeat music) My pool in the backyard, it's the ideal location for this.

We keep it 90 degrees year round.

What we do underwater isn't like shooting a portrait above water, like, a lot of stuff has to be adapted and even sometimes created.

So, we're using Canon series DSLR still.

The downside to underwater photography is kind of the cost of entry.

The housings that you put these cameras in typically cost a lot more than the cameras do.

And then we do something unique, which is where we're using strobes above water and in the water, and then we connected with fiber optics and radio slaves and specially made cables and boxes we've created.

And so, it's a little bit of a process, but it just kind of comes together now.

- Wow!

Being photographed underwater is very calming.

It's very relaxing.

You slip under the water and everything just goes away.

It's like meditation.

- Once you kinda get into it and you figure it out, it becomes pretty natural pretty quickly.

I mean, we were born in a sack of water.

- Deep breaths, you know.

Like, you could work on breath work if you want to, especially in the professional space.

You know, a lot of us are free dive certified and things like that.

But for just, like, your first time, just relax and trust yourself.

It's fun.

- We're in an Instagram-driven world, right?

In a TikTok-driven world, and this really lends itself to that.

So, we tend to see a lot of younger women, but as my business has changed and to where I'm working to try to create more gallery-oriented stuff, I work with a lot of gay men and gay women.

And their openness tends to make this a lot easier in the water, because they're trying to express themselves.

And this water is just another medium.

So, Born This Way is a really fun project that I started a year ago.

I had a 15-foot umbilical cord made that goes to a prosthetic belly button that goes on the person.

And the idea is basically that we're exploring how that I feel like everybody's predestined to be who they are in life.

And so, especially in the LGBTQ+ community wanting to embrace part of that too, and, you know, give them the opportunity to say, "Okay, this is who I am."

- So, Polk County, because we're wedged between Orlando and Tampa, right?

We don't necessarily get people thinking of us as an arts and cultural destination.

Scott's a perfect example of the type of creative artists and creative industries we have here in Polk County that may be people in some of the larger urban areas around us that aren't aware of, but his work's very creative.

He's thinking innovatively outside the box, so to speak, or maybe inside the pool.

And the fact that he's here in Polk County lends credence to what we're trying to do at the Polk Arts and Cultural Alliance, which is make Polk County a destination for arts and culture.

(singer vocalizing) - I like to say that a photograph isn't a photograph until you print it.

- As a photographer myself, I know the power of the printed image.

And to see his work blown up, he had an exhibit and there were some, you know, 10 by 20 banner-sized pieces, were just amazing to see that.

- All the pre-planning that went into it from the makeup, the clothing, the backdrop, the lighting, the finding the right model, that's the culmination.

That, for me, is when I say, "Okay, this is something I'm proud of."

- Yeah, look at the reflections.

Awesome!

I'll put it on my birthday wall.

- And now, for the artist quote of the week.

(lively jazz music) Mathilde Lind is a skilled fiber artist.

Through the act of spinning and weaving, she embraces a traditional hands-on approach to fabric making, rendering one of a kind materials.

Up next, we head to upstate New York to meet the artist and learn more about our textile heritage.

- [Mathilde] And what it's doing is it's building up twist.

- [Narrator] The process of weaving starts with spinning prepared fiber.

(audio buzzing) Scratch that, the process actually starts with carding, a task that uses boards to separate individual fibers to produce a continuous web suitable for spinning.

This is where fiber artist, Mathilde Lind, begins with 100 year old cards that she obtained in Europe.

- The last bit, I'm gonna scrape off one, scrape off the other.

- [Narrator] Then she preps her spinning wheel and spins her way to a usable fiber for the next step, weaving on a floor loom.

(loom clacking) Her tools are traditional.

One of her spinning wheels dating back to 1789, which speaks to the deep cultural significance of weaving in other cultures.

- I really like the types of weaving that have deep cultural roots in everyday life.

So, you know, I think that textiles are really exciting as a craft material because of all the materials in your world, this is the one that you're most intimately familiar with.

You spend every day wearing clothes, you spend every day enveloped in textiles.

And at night, you're laying on textiles.

When you sit on a couch, you're usually sitting on textiles.

You know, you're just constantly touching cloth.

And when these things were all handmade still, that meant that you spent all day long in physical contact with handmade things.

- [Narrator] Contrary to popular belief, weaving doesn't just happen here.

It could be done with other tools, much smaller ones, which are perfect for beginners.

- My smallest, simplest loom is this.

It's just a little wooden heddle.

And you run strings through it, tie them off to a point, and then you just have to hold them taut and you can pass another string through, and make a very simple band.

My inspiration when I'm weaving, it really comes from traditional textiles.

I do love some of the modern experimental ones, but really I just find traditional textiles to be an endless wealth of inspiration.

I spent about four years in Northeastern Europe, in Estonia, and one of the things that I loved about being there was going through the museum textiles, and there was just an endless variety of color palettes and structures, and also, like, embellishments, like embroidered details and edge finishes, and all these little bits and pieces that made their textiles so rich and so beautiful.

- [Narrator] As with any artist beginning and even with the quite seasoned, mistakes happen.

The good news is, when they do, working with fibers makes undoing the mistake quite easy.

The goal is to go places with your art that might scare you just a little bit.

- Sometimes, I do take risks when creating new pieces.

I think that you just kinda have to.

It's a really important part of any artist's process to fail sometimes.

And you shouldn't be afraid of failure.

One of the nice things about weaving also is you can really easily take apart your fabric and reuse all of that material.

So there's no loss even if you use, like, really expensive material and a lot of it.

You can undo it for the most part.

- [Narrator] Mathilde is passionate about her art and loves sharing her knowledge with others.

As the director of programs and research at TAUNY, or Traditional Arts in Upstate New York, she gets the opportunity quite often.

Not just with curious customers at TAUNY, but with interested artists in local communities.

- I think that weaving is a really important thing to show people, especially young people, but communities in general, because we've really lost the awareness of how fabric is made.

And, you know, as I was saying before, we're draped in it every day, we wear fabric every day, and most people don't know how it works.

So, when you're out there in public as a weaver and you're showing, "Yes, I can make this fabric by hand and look at how fabulous it is."

It puts people back in touch with something that is an essential part of our common human heritage.

This is one of the most time-consuming things that we did as human beings for thousands of years, was producing the cloth that we needed for everyday life.

And somehow, suddenly, we're all totally unfamiliar with it.

So, it's so important for us, especially with young people, to bring the weaving out into the public, show them how it works, and help them to kind of reclaim that part of what it is to be a human in the world.

- [Narrator] If this deeply cultural craft interests you, here's what this artist says you should do to get started.

- If you're an artist and you wanna learn how to weave, usually, there is some sort of weaving group near you.

I would start out by contacting them and see if you can have an opportunity to use a loom before you actually invest in one.

After you've done that, then I would say start looking around on, like, used furniture listings.

You'll find some looms out there.

And they're really, really big, so most people end up selling them for not too much money.

So you can find a really beautiful old loom that works really well for not too much of an investment, and that's how I would start out.

You can get a folding loom if you don't have a lot of space so that can fold up against a wall and be fairly, you know, easy to store, or you can get a table loom as well.

So, there are a lot of ways to get started, but I would say, you know, first thing you wanna do is reach out to your community.

- Now, here's a look at this month's fun fact.

(lively jazz music) (lively jazz music fades) Maria Martinez was a groundbreaking ceramicist who redefined Pueblo pottery.

Through the exhibit (speaks in foreign language) at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, we find out more about her powerful legacy as an American modernist.

(relaxing music) (relaxing music continues) - The Maria Modernism exhibit at the Heard Museum in Phoenix brings new light to Maria Martinez's role in American modernism through her celebrated potteries.

So, to start, I wanted to know, why do you consider Maria a modernist?

- Her artworks, specifically works in blackware and black-in-black, are just incredibly innovative and experimental and modern.

Her lustrous pottery is really a reflection of the period, and that's why I would consider her an American modernist.

- How does this exhibit challenge traditional narratives about American Indian artists and their contributions to major art movements, - Native American artists in American modernism and other western artistic movements, they haven't been considered in the art historical canon or in museum studies, prominently just because there are stereotypes related to Native American art, and this exhibition and among other significant exhibitions happening within this lens challenges the visitor to think about Maria Martinez in a different perspective.

That gives context to the changing social and cultural environment in the United States, and frames Maria as a cultural innovator and an artist of that movement who was making the same artistic challenges as any other American artist during that period.

- So, how does the exhibit draw parallels between Maria's pottery designs and other elements of modernist designs, like such as architecture and industrial design?

So, kinda getting more into, like, the inspiration behind Maria's work.

- So, we have examples of Streamline Design, Art Deco design, thinking about these architectural motifs that Maria was experiencing and looking at during her travels to Chicago, New York, San Diego.

And it's very apparent that those aspects of art and architecture and culture are expressed in her vessels themselves.

- [Faith] What's your favorite piece?

- I was always so taken by Maria's collaborations with her son, Popovi.

They have accomplished a gunmetal finish that is unlike anything that I've ever seen before.

And their work in firing and thinking about how to create a specific finish, like the gunmetal on the jar, which is just like it's almost like a mirrored surface.

And I think that range of work between Maria and her son is just really incredible.

- [Faith] How did those collaborative dynamics with, you know, her husband and her family and her community contribute to the evolution of the pottery?

- Yeah, I would say that it's their Tewa values.

And Maria, while she's definitely considered the focus of the exhibition, we acknowledge all of the collaborative effort it takes to create a vessel.

When it comes to getting clay from the Earth and processing it, and then Maria working in collaboration with her husband and her family, Popovi, Adam, Santana, those members of her family are essential to the process.

It really does take a community to create.

And I don't think some of those aspects are acknowledged when talking about Maria and her artwork, just because I think that there's this mentality in Western art that it's all about the individual.

And so, with Maria, family was and is incredibly important.

(calm music) It is really important to us that we acknowledge Maria's practice within American modernism, acknowledge her as an incredible business woman.

But that doesn't mean that her values as a Tewa woman wasn't important to her.

And to really reflect on the vast legacy of her work just as Maria.

- And now, here's a look at a few notable dates in art history.

(lively jazz music) (lively jazz music continues) (lively jazz music ends) For decades, New York Fashion Week has been spotlighting the timeless beauty of American fashion.

We take a trip to the Big Apple to get a backstage look at the iconic 2024 event that featured established and up-and-coming designers.

(upbeat music) - It's classic Americana and it's future meeting traditionalism.

And I love that aesthetic.

I love when there's a balance, a foot in the past and a foot in the future.

And Ralph does that better than anyone.

- American fashion is scrappy.

We don't have an LVMH or Richemont or a Kering.

We're a network of independent brands, right?

We don't have this big conglomerate.

There is also a real entry into American fashion that's probably a little bit easier than other fashion capitals, Paris, Milan, London, because of the entrepreneurial American spirit, right?

If you've got a good idea and you're driven and you put forth the energy and the commitment to it, you can make it.

We have our iconic designers, Tory, Michael, Coach, Tommy Hilfiger, Carolina Herrera, Wes Gordon, Ralph last night.

These are really quintessential American brands, and they really anchor the week, New York Fashion Week, and CFDA's role as the official organizer of New York Fashion Week to the world.

- Ralph is aspirational.

He's classically American.

Everything you love about American tailoring to feel effortlessly luxurious.

- Now, whether it's in New York City, you know, and you're wearing some, you know, just a pair of suede boots or whether it's out in the Hamptons and you're wearing some blue jeans, like, you know, you can wear his stuff anywhere.

- This season, we'll see a lot of CFDA Vogue fashion plan designers on the schedule.

- It was just such an amazing first show.

It went better than I could have imagined.

The energy from the team and the brand coming through and I having this different point of view of not growing up in fashion and getting into it just a couple years ago, I didn't have this kind of preconceived idea of how things had to be done or even how the fashion industry worked.

And so, I think just winging it and doing it how I want and how I think is right, has worked.

And it's felt very organic.

- There's a playfulness that you see with her accessories.

There's something amazing in using metallic materials, but they flow like water.

- It felt like a breath of fresh air, for sure and very, like, glowy and sunshiny, you know.

Like, the room just feels bright and I feel like all day has just been very happy.

- It was very elegant and intimate and nice, and I was actually honestly super impressed with the designs and the wearability, but also, there felt like a very clear brand.

I didn't even know that was her first show.

What a great first showing.

I'm excited to see where she goes from here.

We've got great representation from underrepresented communities.

About half the brands are led by a woman.

And you don't really see that same level of diversity in other cities, because that is really the thread of American culture in New York City.

- This is the culture, this is fashion.

I love the energy of New York.

Even though I'm a Florida girl, I love being here.

There's no place like New York.

- I love that anytime that would just walking on the street, you just get to, like, feel all the fashion energy, and that people really, really like and enjoy fashion here.

- Look out here and you see so many different people, so many different walks of life, so many different cultures all coming together.

- I think it's all art.

The one thing we can do as artists that limits us the most is decide we are one thing or another.

You know, I absolutely love fashion, because I feel like it's a complete experience.

I think it's immersive.

I think it transports you.

- In industry, that can contain someone who's really starting out doing so great and then is able to build a legacy brand over so many decades, and in doing so, defines the culture- - Thank you.

- Of this country that we live in.

And I think it's really, really, really important.

- And that wraps it up for this edition of "Artistic Horizons."

For more arts and culture, visit wpbstv.org.

Until next time, I'm Mark Cernero.

Thanks for watching.

(lively jazz music) (lively jazz music continues) (lively jazz music fades) (gentle music)