[Narrator] "Art Loft" is brought to you by... [Announcer] Where there is freedom, there is expression.

The Florida Keys & Key West.

[Narrator] And the Friends of South Florida PBS.

"Art Loft."

It's the pulse of what's happening in our own backyard, as well as a taste of the arts across the United States.

In this episode, "The Functional and the Fantastical," we meet painter Jared McGriff as he brings the everyday to life; 3D artist Ruth Patir brings relics to life; and we connect with Mindy Shrago, artist and arts administrator on her latest retrospective.

Our partners at the ICA Miami introduce us to painter Jared McGriff as he explores Miami's bustling streets via bike.

Back in the studio, McGriff reflects on his artistic process and the details he pulls from both memory and imagination.

My name is Jared McGriff.

I'm a painter based in Miami.

There's a lot to see between the beach and Allapattah.

The social stratification and the physical environment changes quite a bit.

I love being a passerby, and just a people watcher, and riding a bike through the city.

It's like the ultimate point of view.

I came to painting from drawing.

Throughout my life, I've always worked on drawings on a daily basis, doing a lot of sketches, from memory sketches, from life sketches, from imagination.

My process is really spontaneous.

It starts off with mark making, and abstract lines, and from there figures kind of become apparent.

I love the tactile nature of watercolor paper and going into memory and imagination and letting one mark and form the next.

I think a lot of that style transfers to how I treat oil on canvas.

There's definitely works that come from specific captures where I'm like, "Oh, wow," like I see something and it really makes me think of a certain sentiment.

It might be somebody waiting for a bus, or it might be two people talking to each other, and I'm like, "Oh, wow, that whole scene really captures something that I want to convey."

When it comes to creating work that connects with people, the face allows the viewer to make specific assumptions, cognitive leaps, whatever you wanna call it, in terms of their understanding of the work.

Work like mine, it's abstract in nature in that there's no specific stopping point.

Maybe the figure is faint or unclear, and maybe there's some distortion still, but presenting an essence of an individual or an essence of a environment, that's why I feel like a work is taught in.

In my journey there was a lot of like leaving things behind.

I used my art practice as a way to be familiar with myself in a path that was unfamiliar.

The art practice was a consistent thing throughout all of those vicissitudes of life.

Using art to help me move forward, spend time with my memories, even people in a way, kind of the way I get through the world.

[Narrator] In Little River, a show that's both retrospective and new works.

It's from the artist and arts administrator, Mindy Shrago.

She built a legacy with Broward Young At Art Museum, and here, we see her works are as whimsical as ever.

This show is by an artist named Mindy Shrago and is called "Wish You Were Here."

She is an established arts administrator who's been working in South Florida for 40 years.

She founded the Young at Arts Museum, which is a children's art museum in Fort Lauderdale, in the late '80s and at the same time has been making work as a living working artist.

I knew her through the amount of artists that she has worked with, have all spoken to me about working with Mindy, being mentored by Mindy, supported by Mindy, and had opportunities brought to them because of Mindy Shrago.

So she is, to me, an inspirational figure in the local art community and really taking on creating a community.

I'm Amanda Baker.

I am the curator and director of Club Gallery in Miami.

The show came about because I'm friends with her son who curated this exhibition and mentioned that Mindy has been working and has a body of work, and I was so interested to see what it was.

The works start from the beginning of her professional ceramic career, which is the mid'70s, all the way up until works that she was making a few weeks before the show.

So we have from 1974 to 2024, which I... Yeah, it's 50 years of work.

I'm Mindy Shrago, and I am making art all the time.

My name is Zach Spechler.

First and foremost, I'm a proud son, a curator, and art fabricator.

So I started with the ice creams with Howard Johnson and just kept on going.

Howard Johnson wanted me to make 28 flavors of ice cream.

Now, I'm making postcards, I'm making big ones, and just keep on going.

A big part of Mindy's work is manipulating the 2D and the 3D plane and shadow as well, so the viewer can go through a full exhibition of her work and maybe not pay attention to certain details.

So it's like these hidden gems and these hidden details that are... Maybe so much more important that they are hidden, and it takes a moment, but it's a lot of illusion, a lot of color and shadow play, to have the viewer not sure about what they're looking at.

She is a funny lady.

Everything she does, she brings a bit of humor and energy.

And what's in the show now, there was a million more pieces that she made throughout her career, and I think Zach's creating a catalog, and I'm excited to see sort of everything pulled together that she's ever done 'cause this is just a taste of her long career.

Growing up, I was told thousands and thousands of times her mantra, "Tacky is beautiful."

So a lot of the work that is here today, but also a lot of the work that is in different collectors' homes are pop art, very Florida, for the lack of better words, tacky things that you're used to, like an ice cream cone display.

It's very pop and like very colorful and simple in a way.

But that idea of using Florida colors and familiar items kind of goes along with that mantra, "Tacky is beautiful."

So you'll see within the postcards, like what's more tacky than a Florida postcard?

Some of the artists that have had significant exhibitions at Young At Art have gone on to do amazing things after that point.

And I don't think it was necessarily because of Young At Art because these artists are phenomenal, and I think that all their success is due to what they've done, but at the same time, you can't help but see like how Young At Art did help them at a certain point in their career.

The first question I ask is like, "Should I get a professional installer?"

And Zach's like, "No, no.

We have we are nice'n easy coming, the Castro coming, Raul Santos coming, they're gonna help install the show."

And I'm like, "Wow, I'm pretty sure some of those artists haven't even installed their own shows.

Like, that's pretty incredible that they're gonna come out and help plan out this show."

Every single one of the artists really wanted to make sure they gave back to Mindy and thought of how to showcase her work in the best way.

And it was a pleasure to have everyone in the gallery.

I really enjoy this piece that I think was one of her first pieces in the '70s.

And it's a series that has bagels, plates, salmon, cream cheese, and at the same time in New York, like Claes Oldenburg was doing his soft sculptures of readymade objects.

And I think it's just so fitting that she was also creating something that was of interest in different parts of the country, like New York.

And even in her series with Howard Johnson, with the ice cream cones, the trick of the eye to immortalize ice cream with ceramic.

It's quite contemporary.

I just think it's very fresh and kind of ahead of her time or even very much of her time, but very, very important now to how artists work.

[Narrator] WOSU Public Media takes us to Groveport, Ohio to meet artists Sandra Lang and Walter Weil.

From mugs to Clay Vessels, this talented pair creates unique pottery that's made by hand.

People don't see exactly what you're seeing unless you go ahead and carry it through.

And that's what your job is as an artist is to bring that what you're seeing, make it possible for other people to see it.

We met in art school.

CCAD started out in painting and drawing, but found clay, so I moved into that, and actually it's been... this gradual sort of getting to where we are.

It was just a, I guess, a natural evolution, but with always that being a goal of making our living as artisans.

I went to learn to paint and draw.

I met Sandy and kind of hung out with her in the clay studio.

I was just sitting there talking.

She was working.

I should have been home doing homework or something.

When we decided to do this as a business, it was hard, it was a struggle.

So you just make little tweaks constantly to see what's going to sell, what's going to keep us alive.

I never thought I would be doing functional ceramics when I was in school, but it's good living.

So many people say they don't see how you can work with your spouse, and we've never had any problem working together.

I think we both grew up with that really deeply ingrained blue-collar kind of values of work.

I can't imagine not working.

I do love physical labor.

That's part of that whole experience of the 3D visceral living.

And I think that, for us, we are not afraid of sweat and we're not afraid of getting in it, in the dirt, and exhausting hard work.

Raku's a traditional firing from Japan, which actually came from Korea.

They usually take the pot out red hot and let it cool naturally or quench it.

They brought Raku back from Japan and were playing with it and they were carrying a pot.

They were carrying pots down to a creek.

And somebody dropped one of them, and they said, "Oh, just leave it," and they kept going.

And then when they came back to it, it had smoldered in the leaves and the dry stuff and got some lusters and some cool things.

And so that's where the postfire reduction came in.

So it's pretty new to ceramics.

With the Raku, it's the temperature of the day, the humidity, the length of time it's in the can, how hot the kiln fired to, and how long it takes to get from the kiln to the can.

Just every little thing can change, and it's just so unpredictable that it's kind of cool that way.

You have to let things go.

You can't be perfect.

It might be, but you can't expect it to be, and you can never recreate the same thing twice.

And this is just what fits into our space and what we have.

[Sandra] The way we chose to live is the reason that we can do what we do.

So it's so completely entwined.

It's a way of living.

You do what it takes to...

It kind of just kind of fits together.

We're not big consumers.

We're more likely to buy a piece of art probably than we are to go out and buy the latest and newest stuff, and so we really consider that kind of thing.

And there, again, the idea of pottery going into your life.

It's meant to last you your life.

It's not a throwaway thing.

We make the clay and all the glazes, it's from scratch as you can get it.

People come into a booth and just pick up mug after mug, go, "Oh, this is the one.

It feels just right."

Maybe it might inspire them, maybe it'll just be something that comforts them.

Something, yeah, just fun.

It's just such a joy to be able to pick something up, and hold it, and use it, and appreciate it.

People will come in to a booth and say, "Oh, well, I would buy this, but my mother's a potter."

And it's like, "Well..." We have cupboards full of everybody else's pots, and it's just so nice to have a different pot every morning to drink coffee out of.

Everyone feels different, and it gives you a different feeling, different joy.

I feel like the hand of the person that made it makes it an individual piece, that a piece of them kind of goes with it or a bit of their energy, their spirit.

Art for life is how we think about it.

[Narrator] The Fountainhead Residency brings artists from around the globe to Miami for an intensive monthlong stay, both working in and connecting with the Miami art scene.

Fountainhead has been documenting the monthlong residencies on film.

Here, we meet artists, Ruth Patir, Joaquin Segura, and Rashawn Griffin from their stay in September of 2023.

My name is Rashawn and I'm an artist.

Every time I make a work of art, it's a process of discovery.

So I'm sort of discovering what the work is while making it.

There's a layer of history that goes into the works.

I start with an image, or an idea, or a thing.

And through the process of taking something and changing something, it becomes abstracted.

I have vitiligo, so my body is always kind of in flux, and I was interested in that destabilized relationship to your own image or your own idea of yourself.

And that's how I use abstraction as a way to sort of put yourself out there.

In a way, I have a record of myself over a course of time as things are shifting, and as I am sort of having these destabilized relationship both with my body, but also with the world and also with things around and finding a way to sort of communicate through that.

If there is a way, I'm not even sure there is.

My work is about the interplay between memory, how truth is constructed, radical thought, and how that interacts with the social and political body in our present.

I work a lot with propaganda materials.

This archive, I have been keeping for the past 20 years.

It's printed matter, but it's also comprised by objects and paraphernalia that mostly has to do with political history of the 20th century.

I believe the presence of these objects and their agencies speak a lot about how ideological framework and ideological superstructure is constructed and how our political identity is shaped.

It's quite dear now that culture can also be warfare.

I think my interests are the consequences of a time I came of age.

So in the end, my relationship to these materials is a way to understand myself within my identity as a Latin American individual more than an artist.

I am a digital artist.

I work with computer-generated images, in which I appropriate readymade relics to create sort of new, complicated images that portray an alternative history.

My work comes from documentary practices, and the work often deals with gender paradigms, the history of objectification, and the unraveling of power dynamics.

I wanted to use real women and their real body movement in order to activate these objects and give them subjectivity.

We live in a moment in which not only do we program technology, but technology programs us.

This sort of happy marriage between new technologies and archeology asks whether we can get out of the dynamic of objectification.

[Narrator] Next, we head to Tampa to meet an artist carrying on the tradition of hand-painting signs.

As we learn from WEDU, Jeff Williams is working hard to keep the art alive.

So I've always sort of dabbled in making art and painting.

I painted houses for work for a while and found myself coming home, and wanted to get creative, and use the leftover paint to make art.

It was pretty tricky, difficult to sell the art.

So I found signs, and it was a more practical means of keeping a paintbrush in my hand.

I saw a documentary called "Sign Painters" in 2012.

That really opened my eyes to the world of sign painting and that there is a larger community out there than I thought.

It was viewed as a once dying trade, and I think that movie coming out, it really sparked the interest of a lot of people like myself.

Took a lot of practice, a lot of painting alphabets that never saw the light of day, and you just kind of have to go through the motions of trying and failing to figure out the right way of going about it.

I really like pulling from old sign books or just old signs that you find around town.

Whenever I'm traveling, I try to take photos and have a little collection that I can refer back to.

Majority of the signs that I make are hand-painted in reverse glass, so they're on windows and done in reverse, meaning that they're painted on the inside of the glass.

These could be painted or a gold leaf, and those are our main specialties.

We also offer aframe signage, fascia signs, wall signs, vehicle lettering, truck lettering.

We could really paint anything that we can get to sit still long enough, but our main interest is windows.

We generally would start with a design on paper, whether it be hand drawn or printed reference.

From that point, I use a machine called an electro pounce, which is grounded to a metal easel.

And it's a perforating machine.

So as I trace over the design with this stylus, it's electrocuting a small hole, which I can then pass charcoal or chalk powder through.

And that's the means of transferring the design onto the surface, whether it be a wall or a wooden panel sign.

So when I'm not working in the studio on a sign that could be made here and then delivered to the client, and I'm working on site, I generally show up.

If we're working on glass, there's a lot of cleaning to prepare the surface, then I'll apply the patterns, stick those up.

From there, I can start lettering.

I'll generally spend one to three days with the client or in the business.

So it's nice to sort of get to know the people that work there and get a feel for it all.

I came across Jeff originally on Instagram and that was kind of like my first introduction to hand-painted signs.

It's really just an art that can't be replicated digitally.

You're taking just a few simple words or information related to your business and being able to make it really stand out and make somebody who's just walking by see it.

I think, really, any art that's in the public eye is important.

And art that's accessible to the community, I think, makes the community a better place overall.

I get a lot of remarks from passerby's.

A lot of, "You spelled that wrong," "You missed the spots," but I've come to grow some thick skin, get used to those comments and those remarks.

Yeah, pack up, head home, call it a day.

It's probably about 5050 that I'm in the studio as opposed to working on site.

I just sort of pick and choose what I'm gonna take on and know I can only do so much.

Try to bring some help on if the job is big enough.

But for the most part, it's just me out there little by little connecting the dots and piecing things together.

[Narrator] "Art Loft" is on Instagram @artloftsfl.

Tag us on your art adventures.

Find full episodes, segments, and more at artloftsfl.org and on YouTube at South Florida PBS.

"Art Loft" is brought to you by... [Announcer] Where there is freedom, there is expression.

The Florida Keys & Key West.

[Narrator] And the Friends of South Florida PBS.