Coming up next on Art Rocks, we meet a Shreveport sculptor who wants you to decide what his work is about.

The idea of the art that I produce is to get people to think, to really have them bring their own life experiences to the work.

An artist whose kinetic and technology based art broke new ground in the U.S. and Europe and an instructor in the fine art of playing rock and roll.

Those stories coming up next on Art Rocks West.

Baton Rouge Museum is proud to provide local support for this program on LPI, offering diverse exhibitions throughout the year and programs that showcase art, history, music and more.

West Baton Rouge Museum Culture cultivated Art Rocks is made possible by the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting and by viewers like you.

Hello.

Thank you for joining us for Art Rocks.

With me, James Fox Smith from Country Roads magazine.

First, we're off to Shreveport and the studio of an artist whose sculptures rendered in glass, cement, video, ice and steel have earned him international acclaim.

Eric His work explores life's touchstones addressing themes like death, abuse, greed and the artist's ability to take or to relinquish control, relying on the complex interplay between light and shadow.

Hess allows his subject matter to tell him which media to use.

So let's listen as Hess explains how his unique approach to creating contemplative artwork resulted in his receiving a major international award.

The award that I won was called the Stanislaw Lipinski Award.

Stanislav Lipinski was a very famous Czechoslovak, an artist.

They developed this award and American had never placed.

Few have gotten to become a finalist, but I was the first to actually win one of the top three awards with a piece for Fetus in the Ice Cube.

It hangs in the middle of a room.

It has one square light from above, illuminating it.

The base is empty, so when the ice melts, the fierce eventually falls to the ground and shatters some people with their life experience, as will come in and say, Oh, this is about life's fragility and about losing life.

Some people may come in and go, Oh, this is all about abortion.

Other people may come in and they may deal with the mother child and the ice being a womb.

And I love that about producing artwork that isn't necessarily giving away what it's about, but that allows people to think and bring their life experiences to it.

So most of the work that I produced after graduating with my MFA began dealing with conceptually based artwork.

Conceptual art is really about the idea.

It's not like basic narrative or decorative artwork where you look at it and you go, Okay, I get it.

I know what the artist is telling me.

The idea of the art that I produce is to get people to think, to really have them bring their own life experiences to the work.

My thinking process with the fetus in the ice cube I was dealing with end of life and how really fragile we are as human beings.

And how do I capture that, but at the same time bring the anxiety to people.

So for example, when a person enters the room, they will probably think it's ice and they'll think how beautiful that is, how ethereal this fetus floating kind of in this light.

And so there's a beauty to that as you approach the piece, you begin to hear the dripping water, almost like tears.

And then as you get closer, you realize that it's empty underneath.

And at some point that ice is going to melt and that fetus is going to crash to the ground.

So then the anxiety begins to build the piece that is cement is called exhale.

It has a belt embedded in it.

It's my father's belt.

It's 45 inches long by two feet by two feet.

I use a lot of shadows in my work from lights to promote what the work is about.

There.

Again, I don't want people to think it's just about abuse.

This was about stopping the use of the belt for abuse and that was going to be my story.

But I wanted to leave it open to interpretation.

Someone that was dealing with gaining weight and losing weight.

I've had people come in and that's all they saw.

They thought it was about putting to rest the battle of dealing with weight loss and dieting all the time and things like that.

Others came in and saw it as a memorial to an older gentleman.

I mainly because of the reflection that's on the ground, almost looks like one of the old shape coffins.

It's in a room all by itself.

So there is sort of a very peaceful this kind of coming in when you come in and you look at the piece.

But at the same time, it's very weighted to the ground.

So there is that emotional aspect of when you're beginning to look at the piece and you're beginning to interpret what the artist is trying to talk about.

When I taught at the university level, I showed that piece and had students lined up against the wall and talked about the work.

And I was just fascinated by all the different interpretations because of what their life experiences were and what they saw in the piece.

I've had people cry about, had abusive parents or came from abusive situations.

I don't work as an artist just in any one type of medium.

I always ask the question why?

Why glass, why cement?

Why metal?

It's very important to me that what I want to talk about as an artist will determine the types of materials I want to use.

So therefore, just like the piece that's called Mother, it is huge.

It's ten foot tall, it's spun steel.

It takes about 8 hours to install, and it also has spun glass in the work.

That piece really was dealing with how strong of a person my mother was and how she kind of kept the family together and was always very supportive and loving.

And so utilizing steel for that really kind of focused on that strength.

But yet there was still spun glass in the piece because there was a fragile side of her.

My father had hit her and there was that that I had to deal with.

As far as an issue.

Other people will come in and they will see it as an image of hair.

My mother's hair was always beautiful and that's why that piece was developed in that way, because I always see her brushing through her hair and that kind of imagery and basically that whole concept of hair and beauty and feminine qualities and so that's how that piece really developed and that's how I decided I would use steel and glass.

I did a piece that had hanging leaves, so I did all the sculpting of the leaves, and it was the piece that really dealt with how we are destroying our environment.

It's all these leaves that are beautifully hanging from recycled metal, and that is all glass sculpted.

I think a lot of artists will tell you they're just amazed.

Oh my God, look what I just created.

This is really lovely.

I did a piece called Resurrection.

It's the same casted artwork.

It's two sided.

On one side, you can kind of see that relationship of heaven and hell, but on the other side, it's very ethereal.

You have this single copper figure floating in kind of this beautiful blue space.

It's very peaceful.

That piece I'll never part with.

It's mainly because it was very significant at the time.

It was the first sandcastle.

The piece I did when I'm doing the demonstration, I'm doing the piece where I have bread that is cooked inside of the glass.

So I'm just making the glass today.

The bread will be cooked in it later.

The piece really relates to the significance of bread in religion and in our lives and how significant bread is to individuals.

It's a staple, but this piece really deals with the bread being baked in the glass, and then it sits for months and how it decays over time.

And that relevance about the significance of bread in religion and in our lives and really how it deteriorates over time.

So we're actually going to be able to create the glass work that that bread is placed in because of my background and working in nonprofits and dealing with philanthropy, it's always a sense that I need to give back.

I started working for a television news station in New Orleans and started working my way off, but sort of felt that really wasn't for me.

I worked for the ballet because I had taken ballet classes.

I played like Drops Meyer in The Nutcracker, you know, small stuff and became executive director of the ballet that lasted four or five years.

And then left that position and went to the advertising firm and then became the vice president of that firm.

And then I decided I could just have my own firm and I left then for my own firm, which became a very large firm in New Orleans, and then did that for 20 years.

And then at that point, I really wanted to be an artist.

I had always done art on the side, mixed media, small shows, selling a few pieces here and there.

So basically sold the advertising agency, went back to school at Tulane University in New Orleans and got a accumulation of enough credits to have a third degree.

What's lovely about being an artist, it's a very individualized pursuit in glassblowing.

You're always working with someone, but in the end, the work's very individual.

As you're with the piece and a 24 seven, you're developing it out all the way from the beginning to the end.

So what I loved about it is all my careers in the past dealt with groups of people.

There's a lot of compromise, whereas being an individual artist and creating your own work, there really isn't a lot of compromise because of my background and working in nonprofits and dealing with philanthropy, it's always a sense that I need to give back, that I think it's important that artists can be working towards helping people heal, to educate, to bring joy to the community, and the concept of what you see.

Oh my.

Sure.

To your sanctuary art school Glass Studio came to be and we have since reached over 6000 children, elderly and military with PTSD and on and on a year we try to reach the underserved community, people at risk, people that really need to utilize free art classes and artwork as a way to help them work through issues that they're dealing with.

For example, the Children's from Shriners Hospital came before their surgery.

It keeps their mind off of, I'm going to have surgery tomorrow.

That brings some joy into their art.

We have ongoing classes for military with PTSD.

We work with the therapists on base.

Being an artist is that I look at that as three things you can bring joy to people, you can educate people and you can heal people and you can utilize art to do all of those three things.

And that's the same with me.

Being an artist and producing my artwork is you can allow people to emote and to have an experience with your artwork.

And I think that is really important.

Sanctuary Glass Studio.

Of course, we sell glass and it's mostly decorative work.

People can come in and actually make work.

It takes about 15 minutes per person.

It's called Create Your Own.

But we also create art that we can sell to the community.

So we're constantly experiment, ending and developing new work.

That's not primarily my work as an artist.

You're always working as a team.

In the hot shop, we have Ryan, Pepe and some other artists that will work with you and Louisiana.

Thought provoking art is all around.

The trick is knowing where to find it.

So here are some of our picks for standout exhibits coming soon to your part of the world.

For more on these exhibits and scores more cultural attractions, consult Country Roads magazine available in hardcopy or online, or to see or to share any episode of art rocks.

Again, visit LTV dot org slash Art Rocks.

There's also an archive of all the Louisiana segments of the show available on LP B's YouTube page.

We're off to Massachusetts now to consider the work of German American artist Otto Pina, who created groundbreaking kinetic and technology based art while serving as a fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and in his native Dusseldorf in Germany.

While at MIT, Pina collaborated with many artists, scientists and engineers, creating public installation works that amazed by their sheer size and complexity.

Although Otto Pina died in 2014, his work remains on exhibition at Massachusetts Fitchburg Art Museum.

Let's take a look at the closing of the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich.

A 1500 foot long rainbow reached across the landscape, a parade and polythene.

It was the work of German artist Otto Pina, a pioneer of what he called sky art.

He always was sort of like looking at spaces around him and thinking about how by inserting art into it, you might re-experience these spaces in different ways.

It was a point of pride for Pina, who died in 2014 to redesign the sky.

However briefly, he set it ablaze, populated it with a desert blossom, and filled it with a floating cellist among it was really at the forefront of pushing art and technology and experimentation, sort of pushing beyond the bounds and limits of painting.

Lisa Crossman is the curator of this retrospective at the Fitchburg Art Museum.

It spans the last 30 years of Pina's life.

We find the sketchbooks he carried and filled religiously.

We enter into his proliferation of the sun, which fills an entire gallery and hasn't been seen in this country in more than 50 years.

And we are audience to a light ballet choreographed by his light robots.

And Pina's work.

You can see a lot of energy light.

Had fascinated Pina since childhood.

And later as he watched menacing lights dominate the sky during World War Two.

His work, Crossman says, was a way to reorder that chaos.

When I look at his work, I think that there's an optimism to it that comes across in the way that technology is used as a way to sort of create a harmonious kind of experience for people who enter into it.

He did say that a blue sky meant bombs and danger.

Poet Elizabeth Goldring Pina is Otto's widow.

His skylark that could flourish and flower in a blue sky.

What's really, really significant to him?

The couple moved here to this bucolic farmhouse in Groton in 1985.

It was a landscape rich for making.

And today, their home brims with photos, paintings, ceramics and sculpture.

Tell me what this space meant to your husband.

He worked here for decades.

He did.

He wanted to move out of Boston and Cambridge to the big sky and a lot of land.

To a place where he knew no one.

He could just walk.

He was drawn to the property for its two silos, one of which now houses a light sculpture.

He titled Star of David, a dazzling light ballet featuring a recurring spider motif.

It seems as though he was always pushing forward, finding new ways to make new ways to look.

Yes, he was, because he was really curious.

He he wasn't so interested in what he'd heard a thousand times before.

It was always he was always fascinated by somebody who started something he didn't know.

He was a co-founder of Group Zero, a small collection of artists in the 1950s and sixties who had little use for traditional art making.

Instead, Pina was making work like electronic light ballet, which aired on WGBH in 1969.

One of his criticisms of some of the postwar art movements was that they weren't sort of thinking about light beyond the sort of limitations of the canvas.

But Pina was he was willing to play with fire.

Pina produced fire paintings for decades, igniting adhesive he'd sprayed on the canvas.

He then manually control the flame as if it were a brush.

There are some where they are from one year.

There are other paintings that will, you'll see, have are dated as multiple years because he came back to them in different years to sort of rework them.

So I think that process is key in a body of work that was paramount.

Drama and music educator Chad.

Chad Zella Johnson teaches the art of rock and roll.

How?

Let's sit in on one of his classes, which he holds in Denver, Colorado, to find out more about Johnson's past, his methods, and what he hopes his students will take away from his School of Rock.

So he's very energetic, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

He kind of shows you how you're supposed to play a certain part.

He's very relaxed.

But make sure you get the work done.

Okay, Dude?

Yeah, I'm having a really fun time.

He's the perfect leader for newcomers to the band scene.

It's just really fun to play with the band if you haven't had any band experience before.

He's the unique staple, the Swallow.

He'll music Association House of Rock Music Camps since 2007.

Yeah, I like to call myself a musician and a music educator.

It's an educator with flair.

When I fill out census forms or whatever, or even tax forms, I say I'm a music educator because I think musician is a red flag, right?

Immediately.

Yeah.

And even worse, if you put drummer.

I play guitar and bass and keyboard and sing and write music and play a lot of percussion instruments too.

But really, I have a career in the music industry because of my drumming.

Chad Johnson, a.k.a.

Chad Zila breaks the You Thin with rock and Roll.

This week is we call it the first band.

Then I like to call it First Band because it's first for students.

We've got kids from 12 to 16 years old in this camp that this is their first band.

The whole purpose of this is to like, help kids understand what it's like to be in a band.

What better way to learn rock and roll than from a rock and roll veteran?

I've played every big venue, really, in Colorado from Red Rocks and Fiddler's Green and the Fillmore Boulder Theater, who's got stories galore.

And one of the best stories for me, when I knew really when I knew that I wanted to do this for the rest of my life, I was playing a college frat party in Greeley, and there I was, 13 years old, playing a frat party.

I could get all the free Dr. Pepper I wanted.

I had Doritos, any kind of chip I wanted there.

All the college girls thought I was so cute and so cute, and I got paid 50 bucks.

Girls chips and drag.

I started an eighties cover band and we did the film on the Rocks at Red Rocks, and we did that on a Thursday.

And then on Sunday we dressed in drag to play the Lion's Lair, the same band for like a thing to come back.

Domestic violence.

Those were the days.

But things changed.

Well, sort of.

I don't drink Dr. Pepper anymore.

I don't really need Doritos anymore.

But I don't make much more than 50 bucks for a gig anymore.

But from his heart.

Yeah.

It's really about the kids now.

My really, my deep down, 100% focus is to help them become themselves as musicians and to make their own band and to go out and be part of the music community in Denver.

You got it, bro.

I am for them what I wanted when I was their age.

Shad Zilla has the personality, and when you play this song with this band, we will worship you.

Coupled with a special way of connecting to the students.

It's kind of something that I'm pretty proud of, actually.

We develop a really good relationship.

You know, the students kind of right off the bat.

He's definitely connects with us and tries to create a good family and make us really a band, because before we were just some people and now we're together, working together and creating music.

I treat them as people.

I treat them as musicians that are just a little bit closer to the beginning of their musical journey.

And I love to tell them that I'm I'm just the same as you.

I'm just older and more experienced, but I'm just a musician just further down the line, just like you and that knack for generating interest in learning.

At first I really, really didn't want to be here.

I my mom signed me up for this and I didn't want to go, but I learned that it was better and better.

And I eventually actually really enjoy coming here.

Our piano player this week, Charlotte's the first thing she said when she walked in the door.

I was like, asked her what she plays.

She said she plays triangle.

I was like, Good, Right on.

Where are you going to play the Rectangle two?

It's the keyboard and the circle, which is it's every and above all, it's just fun.

Like the bucket of what?

Bucket of fish?

Yeah.

I go, I'm going to fish out of this.

I love to use little toddler references to help kids remember certain things, especially drummers.

It's kind of fun to get these things in your in your head to remember what they sound like and how to play them.

You learning how to count as a musician and learning how to read music is very important in that process of them.

Learning how to read music and learning the theory and learning the techniques of their instrument.

Just these things that can get in their brain that just can help them remember.

The bucket of fish is this cool little thing that if you go and you see, you see a live band play.

Once the drummer gets done with a song, you'll hear them go, That's a bucket of fish.

That was with your head.

Yeah.

And so it's funny to just remind Eli at the end of the song, Bucket of Fish Boom.

Yeah.

And in the end, to leave his mark of joy like only he and music can.

I really hope that they can, more than anything, have confidence in themselves to.

To find themselves, to find themselves musically.

And really, more than anything, just that, like music will bring you joy.

And when you're in dark times in your life and, you know, like strange stuff is happening with your family or with your friends or whatever, that you can pick up your guitar or you can sit at your drums and in 10 minutes you'll feel better.

That's that's really what it's about for me and you just holding back to the camera.

I think.

And that'll be that for this edition of Art Rocks.

But that's okay, because you can always see and share episodes of the show and help B dot or slash rocks.

And if you love these sorts of stories, remember that Country Roads magazine is a useful companion for getting to grips with Louisiana's boundless cultural treasures each and every month.

So until next week, I've been James Fox Smith And thank you for watching.

West Baton Rouge Museum is proud to provide local support for this program on LP, offering diverse exhibitions throughout the year and programs that showcase art, history, music and more.

West Baton Rouge Museum Culture Cultivated Art Rocks is made possible by the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting and by viewers like you.