Coming up, this time on art rocks.

60 years spent pushing watercolors, boundaries to capture Louisiana's color and light.

I suppose maybe I avoided flowers because everybody seems to paint flowers.

A glassblowing studio that holds students feet to the fire and a Christmas lighting contest for the competitive set.

These stories coming up right now.

So stick around.

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.

Hello.

Thank you for joining us for Art Rocks.

With me, James Fox Smith from Country Roads magazine.

It's not every day that one gets to rub shoulders with an artist celebrating 60 years of creating award winning work.

But recently, we had the chance to do just that with Baton Rouge, his own Judy Betts.

During her storied career, Judy has studied with some of the finest watercolor artists in the United States, taught classes in virtually every state and all around the world, and competed in international competitions and won.

Now the subject of a major career retrospective, his Judy Betts to share her story.

With us now.

My 60 year retrospective exhibit has paintings from many years ago, and it's My Life.

There are over 100 in the exhibit that I've painted probably 2000 more paintings looking at this show after it was hung.

It was sort of like looking at an old photo album because you see these babies, so to speak, your children growing up, I almost want to use the word cute.

Oh, you're so cute.

I remember you and some I hadn't seen for so long that I would forget the size of the painting or exactly what technique I use.

But when I saw them, they would remember either the limited palette which means not using many colors, or as time went on into the late eighties and nineties and close to 2000.

Then there's more color.

I thought about special paintings that were close to here.

In other words, owned by people within 50 or 75 miles, so that if they would let us borrow them for the exhibit.

But I also thought about paintings that I especially like that I did, for example, Little Billy Goats and a painting of the back end of a horse with some cattle called Keep Moving and another big painting of horses.

If I knew who owned them and where they were, then I could ask the owners.

A few people didn't want to participate in the exhibit and I had to find people that were willing to loan the work.

My background is with farming and farms.

Also, I have an identical twin sister.

Our father's family was in the dairy business and so we didn't live on a farm, but we were around farm animals and our maternal grandparents also lived in a rural area and had horses and chickens in gardens and wagons and things like that.

I like to eat chicken and I like to draw chickens and I like the sound of them.

I like their gestures.

They have a quick movement, and I think goats are very comical.

Sheep are very beautiful and they're so fat and wooly.

Much of the time.

And of course I like cattle and cows.

Pigs to pigs to me are very funny.

In the catalog for the exhibit, I added a pig painting.

It's not in the show, but I edited it for humor.

I wanted the viewer, when they're flipping through the pages to smile when they see the big pig on the page.

Because it was fun for me to paint it.

And I think it's a happy image for others to see.

I grew up in Chicago area and the architecture is not like it is in the South.

I was very interested in the old houses and especially the sunlight and shadow, because there are many more months of it here than other places where I had lived.

I think there's a mystery about old houses also.

You kind of wonder who lives there, who has lived there.

And that led to the chairs on the porches.

Sometimes people say to me, Oh, are you tired and want to sit down?

Is that why you paint chairs?

No, I just enjoy the shapes and particularly older chairs like the wicker rockers and the wooden rocking chairs.

They're almost like human to me because I can think about seeing people in them and conversations, but I don't usually add people.

I use the geometry that the mathematical part of it.

I suppose maybe I avoid flowers because everybody seems to paint flowers and yet I love flowers.

A few years ago I had an exhibit that was just sunflowers.

I don't really care much for flowers like lilacs or azaleas, where there are several flowers to make.

A club is interesting to me.

As one big flower like the lily.

I think that's spectacular.

I really like pamphlets, palm trees and anything palm.

When my husband was living because of my husband's work in the shipping business here in Baton Rouge, wherever we traveled, whether he met me at a workshop in Canada.

Or.

Hawaii or New York or Miami or wherever it was, we always went to shipyards because he wanted to see the boats and he wanted to see all sorts of things.

So I started noticing the shapes of boats more, the hulls and how different each one was.

One summer when I was teaching at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, we were near the water and there were several boats that I thought were interesting shapes.

And of course they're higher up of the water than they are in Louisiana.

Then I noticed a seaplane and the other seaplane, some were tied up at the dock.

It took a lot of photographs.

And later at home in the studio, I worked with them and had fun.

I've done a few portraits of airplanes.

One day I took a lot of photographs and drawings of boats out of the water, and I felt I needed another vertical.

And it could be a human.

So I chose to put my husband in it.

And so it's called for as long as a child with cut paper and scissors and glue would make things that were three dimensional.

So to me, if it's watercolor and it has paint and it's on watercolor paper, then and it's folded, it becomes three dimensional is sort of a step further than collage because you're gluing, but yet the images stick out.

And the exhibit is a painting of elephants of all sizes and shapes and colors called White Elephant Parade.

It's totally elephants.

And I love elephants.

I knew that when I went to college.

I wanted to study art and I really didn't know which media I might work with.

I really like the instructor in metal.

Her name was our Michelman and because I admired her, I wanted to be in her classes and enjoyed the medal.

I was required to take other things like photography and weaving and of course, life drawing using nudes.

And that was new experience for me.

A husband was transferred here temporarily in 1958, and he moved here then.

I never set up a battle studio, so I was free to work in any material that I wanted to have.

It was early sixties that I started feeling a strong pull toward watercolor, and at that time there were advertisements in the trade magazines for workshops all over the world.

But primarily I was looking at Earth America.

I decided to sign up to go to study with the best ones I could find.

And so the first California painter that I studied with was Pious Miller And that workshop was in Maine.

And at that time, most of the workshops were two weeks.

So two weeks studying with a master painter like Miller was like a semester of college and so I really jumped in, you might say feet first.

I spent about seven summers with Vice Miller, but about 12 or 15 summers with Brick's grant in Southern California.

They both had talked about Millard Sheets.

I thought I would like to study with him.

And so for several summers, I went to Southern Oregon State College, Ashland, Oregon, which is now Southern Oregon University, and studied with him.

And that was just fabulous.

And they each had different concepts.

For example, through Bash, Miller and Rex Brant, I learned how important it was in watercolor to save White Paper.

And then when I studied with Miller Cheese, one of the first things he said to the whole class was, I don't want to see any white paper.

We started with white paper, but he wanted us to get rid of it first.

Then I studied some with Ed Whitney out of New York.

He worked very wet into wet, which means wet the paper first and let the painting flow and move and so on.

I tend now to work drier than that.

And when I got home, I said to myself, What do I do?

I use a round brush, a flat brush, which colors?

I said to myself, Oh, it's like the song.

I did it my way.

Do it however you want to do it.

So from that point on which would have probably been around 1975 80, I just did what I wanted to do and my friends would see my work and they'd say, Oh, you did that and Rex Ranch class.

They'd say, Yes.

And they'd say, Well, it doesn't look like Rex Brant.

And I'd say, Good.

It's not supposed to be supposed to be like me.

And people want to know, how do you get your personality into your work?

And I say, it's like your handwriting.

Everybody learns to write or print a certain way, but after a while you develop your own handwriting and it's the same way was painting.

If you're true to yourself.

So I just love doing it my way.

And whatever the subject is and whatever process I want to use, I just do it.

I never wanted to be a teacher.

I thought anybody could be a teacher.

And yet after I graduated from college, I realized that I could make money as a teacher.

And in the Chicago suburbs, the salaries were much higher than they were After I moved to Louisiana and I started teaching fifth grade because there were no art jobs open in this area.

And then they told me they were going to build a new high school, which was Is the sentence in your high school in Kansas?

And then I could have the job.

So I was the first art teacher ever hired in the public schools in the central parish.

And I loved teaching.

When we got paid, it was like, Oh, do I get paid for all that fun I had?

And I got as much thrill out of watching the young people make things as I would myself.

My joy was multiplied by watching them and helping them and seeing their enthusiasm to watercolor.

Let's think about it.

This book is in its fourth printing.

The thinking has to do with the planning.

It's like a meal.

You don't just go in the kitchen, start pulling stuff out.

You usually have a little idea of what you're going to do.

You have to think about it ahead of time.

And I call it painting in my mind at night.

If I wake up or if I'm driving the car, I have to be careful because I might be painting in my mind.

This is my second book, Painting A Quest toward Extraordinary.

I knew Charlotte Huntley.

The first half is mine.

The second half is hers.

Now, I invented the spelling of the word extraordinary, because if it's that word, then it has to be very unusual.

You can see how different her work is.

She's very loud compared to the way I talk, and she paints loudly, but that's her personal.

I'm 87.

I love to paint, and that's my favorite thing to do.

Louisiana is brimming with opportunities to get to grips with the visual and performing arts.

So here are just a few standout exhibitions coming your way in the weeks to come.

For more on these exhibitions and others, consider Country Roads magazine available in print, online or by e-newsletter to see or to share any episode of Art Rocks again, visit L.P. Dorgan, Art Ross.

There's also an archive of all our Louisiana segments at Lcvs YouTube page.

The craft of blowing glass using a long metal tube to scoop molten glass from a furnace and then shape it into anything from a drinking glass to a freestanding sculpture is as mesmerizing to watch as it is difficult to learn.

But don't despair, because two decades ago, the Zen Glass Studio was founded in Saint Petersburg, Florida, to teach students how to blow glass.

Today, the studio literally blows students away by offering a wide array of classes and workshops.

So here's how that takes shape.

My name is Joshua Paul.

I'm a glassblower and a business owner.

I moved to Saint Pete in 2002.

I took a glassblowing workshop from world renowned flame worker.

His name is Robert Mickelson.

And I met Dave at that workshop.

Dave was his studio assistant.

My name is David Walker.

I'm a co-owner and artist here at Zen Glass Studios, and I've been blowing glass for a little over 20 years.

I found glassblowing just as a job to put myself through college.

I was going to school for marine science over on the East Coast.

I started working as a job kind of right off the bat and within a very short period of time was producing professional work.

Josh and I had actually met back when I was in practicing with Robert Nicholson, and we used to do workshops and it was this very small glassblowing community back then.

And we were one of the few places that you could go to learn.

And so it just felt like he was part of what I was interested in.

He was working out of his garage and I was working out of my garage or like, Let's look for a space to Mel, you know, let's find a place where we can be creative.

There wasn't much of a business thing that we planned for.

We just were looking for a space to do our artwork.

I met Dave and Josh when I came here for the first time.

I thought that it was a really cool thing.

I'd always wanted to try blowing glass.

I did the beginners course and then I bought all the tools and materials to set up the studio at home in my garage, and eventually I quit my day job so that I could come work here.

So process of making a piece.

First you have to pick out the color that you want to use.

And as far as colors, there are so many options.

Once I have my color selected, then I turn on my torch.

Generally want to get the torch adjusted to a very neutral flame and then I get the glass and the flame and I start to heat it up and I melt the glass until it forms a little ball.

It'll start to gather up on its own.

As it heats up to make a heart pendant.

I would smoosh my little ball, flatten it out, and then I use my knife to carve a little indentation into it.

I go in heat each side of the heart pendant, let the side get nice and hot and kind of drip that way.

Get a nice, rounded, bubbly heart.

And then I hang the piece upside down, get it hot and let it drip.

And that's how it makes the cute little point.

Josh and Dave have brought in a whole other segment to the community that I don't think would really be reached any other way.

They are hitting a younger demographic, which is very, very necessary in the arts because of people that are growing up with the arts.

They won't appreciate it later on.

They bring a vitality.

They bring a newness to the art world here.

And they're very energetic.

They're always doing some kind of programing and bringing in some great artists from all over the United States.

Their impact is is strong.

And in our community, they generally are always available for a lot of things.

They're both very personable.

They're leaders.

I see them in certain events at times, and they're very hard working gentleman.

They have a very successful business that started not as as strong, and now it's just one of the best in the area for sure.

I came to St Petersburg and found an already vibrant, nurturing arts community, even back before the really revitalization of downtown had even really started.

There was still a lot of artists here.

Back then, it was a fun, easy place to live and work, and so the creative spirit was here.

So that obviously impacted us.

You know, it makes other artists want to be here.

It's a fun place to create and bounce ideas.

So, you know, we moved here and quickly we're kind of assimilated into this arts community and have been active participants ever since.

You know, we've been trying to build it and do it through building our business and making our connections and just trying to build this art scene.

You know, it's all a cumulative effort.

We have an army of tens of thousands of people who have never done glassblowing before, give it a shot and are spreading a gospel of sand glass from coast to coast, even overseas.

It's momentum.

It's you know, it's really it's is it's on its own.

You know, once Dave and I have got this thing started, it definitely has a lot of momentum of its own.

I feel that there's so much opportunity in what we do here, which is offering experiences that people will never forget.

The annual Griswold challenge in Sparks, Nevada, encourages members of that very well lit community to join forces to create dazzling holiday light displays that everyone can enjoy.

So let's flip the switch on that story.

The Griswold challenge started as a part of the 39 North Pole Village.

We created this challenge to bring the community together, both businesses and families, to have a little stake in the game of the North Pole Village.

It's all based on the infamous Mr. Clark Griswold, who overly decorated his home.

And we just wanted to pay homage to him in our 39 North Pole event.

Unfortunately, the pandemic has stopped that.

We just need to help do our part to keep the community safe.

So this year, what we've had to do is take a step back from the North Pole Village and focus solely on the Griswold challenge, allowing us to have a virtual event where people can enter their homes or their businesses for a donation of $20 or more, if you would like.

And that goes to the community food pantry, which is local and sparks.

The community food pantry is here to serve those people who are having to make a decision between paying rent, buying medicine, putting shoes on their kids feet, getting gas to get to work.

We're here to help them fill that food gap that they are experiencing really, really hard right now.

We do pick and choose what events that we like to benefit the community, and we go wholeheartedly.

Especially this time of the year.

It's been a really hard year for many people and the proceeds going towards helping the food pantry for Christmas is going to be an excellent cause.

Every dollar donated through the Griswold challenge, through the entry fees, every dollar will buy three meals for someone in, you know, in the line, in the pantry.

And that dollar is really stretching a long ways.

Your family decorate your home together, creating those memories safely.

Your businesses can have a team building exercise for the holidays instead of going out to maybe a party or something, you get together and you decorate your business.

What we notice about the staff, they love to decorate just like we do.

They have the same focus as us and they want to win.

The prizes that we're offering is first place is the Clark Griswold Award and you can win $500 whether you're a business or a resident.

Those are two different categories.

The second places, that Cousin Eddie Award, and that is for $250.

The creativity we get to see from the individual contestants is really cool.

Obviously, everybody's different and everybody brings something to the table.

So seeing all the displays together really make it a unique experience because you're going from one which might be beautiful and white and pretty.

Then you're going to the next display, which is quirky and fun and super charismatic and crazy.

This year it's going to be cool because you can drive around to the residents and individual businesses and see that same effect just on a much larger scale.

So that's going to be fun to see how everybody's businesses do things or not do themes.

Just got to get up with lights.

I mean, that's what Clark Griswold did.

I'd say we're going to channel our inner Griswold by bringing out Mr. Griswold himself.

We have a lot of lights up right now.

And so this morning we bought another 2000 lights.

Look, we're going to be going back up on the on the building behind us.

So I would say close to about 10,000 lights are going to go up.

I think a lot of people can relate to National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation because it was kind of one of the main holiday funny movies that that existed actually ever.

Clark Griswold really kind of helped create the fun side of the holidays and showcasing that you can be wild with your decorations and it's okay.

And that'll do it for this edition of Trucks.

But never mind, because there are loads more episodes of the show available for your delectation at LP dot org slash art rocks and if you find yourself inspired.

Country roads Magazine makes a useful guide for discovering more about what's afoot in Louisiana's sparkling cultural economy all across the state.

So pick up a copy.

You might be surprised what's out there.

Until next week I've been James fuk Smith and thanks to you for watching.

West Baton Rouge Museum is proud to provide local support for this program on LPI be 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.