This time on art rocks.

A ceramic sculptor renders the dynamic tension of mechanized processes in clay and vibrant abstract art.

These stories right now on art rocks.

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 of Country Roads magazine.

Lots of us find ourselves mesmerized by the dynamic interplay that takes place within the complex machinery of human invention.

Ceramicist and McNeese University professor of Art Kenneth Baskin certainly does.

He devotes his work to exploring the push and the pull of mechanized processes, using clay sculpture to express concepts of dominance, submission, balance, stability, tension and ease from Lake Charles.

He has Baskin to tell his tale.

Originally from Detroit, Detroit is a city that's really full of contrasts.

There is an urban landscape that's been left by the Industrial Revolution that Detroit went through.

So you have all of these old buildings that are showing their sense of the age.

We've got abandoned buildings.

We've got burned out buildings.

We have the urban decay, which is all over that city.

But inside of that, the city is being revitalized.

So you have this contrast between the urban decay and the new shiny parts of the city and then revitalized.

I find those contrast to be really interesting, intriguing and beautiful.

So my surfaces can relate to the idea of urban decay.

But the other thing that really has influenced my work probably the strongest, I spent most of my youth and part of my adult life working in a production facility outside of Detroit.

We packaged the last things swimming pool, chemicals.

Imagine what being a maintenance technician working in a place like that was like.

It was a pretty unforgiving job.

I really didn't want to be the maintenance person at this place because climbing inside of these machines that packaged bleach, the smell was really hard.

But yet I had the aptitude for it and I found my love of machinery while working inside of this warehouse.

When I look for my inspiration, I really think it's important to bring it from without.

I go to my past.

I go to the warehouse, I go to the machines that I used to work on.

The problem was the machine would break down, so I'd have to come in, diagnose the problem, and figure out how to fix it, how to make the part that needed to be replaced, etc.

in the art world.

That's the identical thinking that I used.

It's creative thought.

It's a creative thought process.

I look at the world around and I decide what's the most interesting objects?

What are the things that I really love?

So I research a lot when it comes to my artwork.

All of these little objects, each one speaks to me about something different.

When I look at this little gear repetition movement, so I find these little things and I collect them because these things can really become something that's intriguing, something that's interesting, something that speaks about action and movement.

A simple gear and how it moves, I think is fascinating.

So these little objects really convey thought.

They convey meaning, they've got shape, they've got form, all of which coalesced in my brain to come up with those ideas about what do I want to make?

I look for the little things in the machines that I find intriguing.

What action do they play?

How do they move?

What do they do?

And that is fascinating for me, and that's the starting point for my artwork.

So when I look at books, I'm looking at different actions, different movements.

What's happening in these books?

And I try to find ideas and I look for different movements that I find intriguing, whether it's a small piece that I find, whether I'm researching, whether I'm looking at television.

I was actually watching, of All Things American Pickers, and they showed a bicycle seat from a 1900s era Schwinn.

That showed an interesting part, a leaf spring that the seat had.

And from there, I extracted the elements that I thought were the most intriguing.

And six, seven, eight, nine, ten pieces of come from it.

A leaf spring or something that a car or truck has that works like a shock absorber.

But the really above for me is the idea of compression and tension.

A spring moves back and forth, absorb shock.

It can do many different tasks.

So I put the piece on the end with a knot in the belt that goes through it, that's holding it together, that's keeping it compressed.

But then the ends.

There's movement that can happen or implication of movement.

So if you want to make something that is circular in steel, it usually has three parts.

The steel goes back and forth and it keeps rolling and rolling and bending and bending.

I love that idea of the pressure it takes in order to do that.

Now, the chain links I work a lot with chain link for me chains, like in Back to when I was a child.

I oftentimes think about my old Schwinn bicycle and I'd flip the banana, see, But the little thing in the system board, I mean, I love that old bicycle.

And when I flip it over and have to work on the chain, taking it apart, putting it together and repairing it, sometimes adding a new link of a link was broken.

That's what those pieces are really like in Back to Me Nostalgia.

In time.

When I work with kids and I do work with years a lot.

Here's some slow motion.

Click, click, click.

They turn, They move.

There's an action.

I think about clocks a lot because clocks have a lot of gears in them.

And for me that represents time passing.

But also that idea of motion and movement.

It's really important that the frequency, meaning the distance between the teeth, matches, it has to be the same because if it's not there, we're not interlocked with each other.

When I'm working on a large piece, I'll do the math and I'll figure things out and I'll get the spacing and I'll set the spacing and I'll make all the individual parts and they'll attach them together.

So when I work on small gears, 1380s, it's just so hard to do that without creating a mode.

So what I did years ago is I you to take this off and I cut out and I made this sheet of teeth so that way I could take this and make a plaster mold of it.

So now that I have the plaster mold of it with something like this, I can pat Clay into it, let the clay stiffen, pull it out, and then I'm able to bend it and make the shapes that I want.

So that keeps the frequency.

Remember the sequences, the distance between the teeth, the same so that when I make the pieces, we all line up, they all fit together and I can get the same thing again and again and again.

I'm going to roll slabs of cloud.

I let the slabs stiffen to the stiffness that I like to work out so that it has some body to it.

Then I can stand the pieces up.

I can cut the pieces out, and I can attach them together to make whatever form that I want to.

I think a lot of people are also startled to realize that almost everything that I make is hollow.

Nothing is solid.

So ceramics does not like to fire when it's really thick.

It can cause cracks in the pieces.

It's not easy to fire really thick things.

So when I'm working everything you see is hollow.

So the way that I make this work is with slabs so that I can make the hollow enclosed spaces and create the forms that you're seeing.

Oftentimes, some of these pieces can be stand ins for interpersonal relationships, or even to some degree, I think about myself and how I'm feeling when I put a piece that's balanced, that's precariously balanced.

I try to find balance in my life, right?

And I think everybody does.

But then we have some flywheel on top of a piece that implies the idea of motion and movement.

So I'm seeking balance.

I'm looking for balance.

I use that element in my artwork as well.

Years ago, I was invited to show with a group of artists and what we decided to use was the idea of the Crucible as our starting point for our artwork.

While Crucible is made for melting metal.

So the idea of melting metal and then casting it into forms and objects was basically the premise for four or five different artists that were working with this topic.

I looked at all this work and I'm like, Wow, how can I plug it into this group?

What can I add to the scenario?

So I went back and I decided, Well, the thing I'm most interested in is movement with pieces.

Anyways.

So I decided that when I attacked the idea of The Crucible first, I like time and age.

So I wanted surfaces that are indicative, a crucible that has been used for years, that has built up that idea of a slide type surface on it that really speaks of time and age when people are introduced to my work.

There's an assumption that they make that it is something that I found in a scrap yard and found interesting objects that brought it out of the scrap yard and put it on the pedestal, said, Look, this is interesting work.

Here's what I found and the world we've created.

They're shocked to find that my pieces are all made of clay.

Clay is a great mimic, or you can make clay look like any surface, and if you work long enough and develop your glazes, you can make it look like anything.

I have certain glazes that I've been using for years that really look like metal.

I'm interested in the idea of Trump Floyd.

Trump Floyd basically just means for the I.

Why do I want to fool the eye?

What am I doing with this?

Why am I making people question Is this really steel?

The irony for me is that I'm taking one of the oldest materials man has used and making hard edged sculptures of an industrial nature out of them.

Obviously, these pieces aren't meant to perform the intended function that they're modeled after.

Instead, they're really meant to make commentary on the fragility of life, human connection, and how we relate to it.

Kenneth says his largest creation is about 14 feet long.

Louisiana is awash in opportunities to get to grips with the arts.

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

For more on these exhibitions and others, consider Country Road magazine available in print online or by enewsletter.

To watch or rewatch any episode of Art Rocks again, just visit lp dot org slash from there you'll also find all of the Louisiana segments available on LP's YouTube channel.

For decades, Wisconsin residents have been treated to a steady stream of world class performances, thanks to the vision and the generosity of a major philanthropic effort.

So let's look at the Distinguished Guests concert series that the Koehler Foundation has been delivering to audiences in America's Dairyland over the last 70 years.

Among them are international stars like Renee Fleming and Yo-Yo Ma.

So let's have a listen.

It's difficult in today's environment when there are so many entertainment opportunities to be relevant.

But I think the Distinguished Guests series has flourished, as evidenced by our programing.

Marie-Christine Kobler started the Women's Club and that's sort of then activated in the 1940 Cola Foundation.

The women's club was focused on providing a better life for young people.

The Komen Foundation was focused on the arts and education, and that was created by Marie Evangeline Lilly Cola, their brother Edward V Cola, who was my father, and Oleg Kroes, who was a senior executive at Coleman.

That's how the foundation began.

It was really considered an investment in the community because when you think about it, in those days in rural communities in Wisconsin, there was very little opportunity for arts and education, particularly in the performing arts.

Both your father and your mother were so committed to the community.

She was an activist in the best sense of the word, whether it be politically, whether it be for the arts, education or for history.

She herself was an historian, so quite some note.

And she took over, didn't she?

The the color women's group and started bringing in authors because of her interest in literature.

And then then that morphed into musicians and performers Then.

You got it.

Do you have a better memory than mine?

Well, we're part of this Distinguished Guests series.

We join a long list of some of my favorite performers to entertain the good people of Wisconsin, where we, of course, do stuff that's in the Broadway tradition, you know, in the Broadway style.

We've put out two records since I left Hamilton and put out an album of jazz standards, and I put out a Christmas album.

And so I go always is to make sure that an audience leaves happy that people leave with a smile on their face.

We make something site specific for those folks.

I love performing the the Hamilton songs out of context because I get to be a fan as well.

You know, I get to share what it was like to hear those songs for the first time and what it was like to be one of the performers that got to introduce that original material to the world for the very first time.

It's always fun to get to peel back the curtain a little bit and explain why you choose the material that you do, why you gravitate toward the song choices that you do.

I always want to be better than our last show.

I want them to have a great time and I want them to be moved.

He's beautiful and he has a beautiful voice and he's a fabulous actor.

It's as exciting for me as it is for the rest of the audience.

I love this.

I love to see if their reactions are any different than my own.

It becomes more important that there's that memorable moment where you touch somebody in a very real way that should be and will be the legacy of the Distinguished Guest series.

Not to be outdone by America's Dairyland, the Nevada Transportation Department is responsible not just for maintaining Nevada's highway network.

It takes responsibility for creating esthetically pleasing vistas along those highways, too.

To that end, the department recruits artists, architects and designers to develop large scale installations, including multiple sculptures that reflect, interpret and celebrate their surroundings.

Let's go for a drive.

Imagine driving through the Nevada desert and you reach an area where you see beautiful cultural symbols rising from the roadside.

You see a windmill representing the ranching history in this area of South Reno.

Perhaps you on the Carson City freeway and you see symbols that are symbolic of the Native American culture there.

It's really a beautiful thing to see our community's culture and history represented right there as you're driving.

You can find this landscaping esthetics, features on many of the highways and many of the on and off ramps maintained by and across Nevada.

Our end, our mission is ultimately to keep Nevadans safe and connected, and landscaping esthetics is a vital part of that, and our Landscape and esthetics program is a long standing program to bring both the esthetic and environmental and cultural benefits of landscape anesthetics to our highways.

We'll start with analysis of the site.

Where are we designing and what are we designing for?

We look at the environment.

There might be some environmental challenges, like a lot of stormwater runoff erosion.

So we'll look at all these things as well as the culture and the history.

And that's what we're really after, is to develop this theme that is suitable for the area and they're looking for that inspiration through culture and history and the stories that we hear from people in the community.

The next steps are getting help from landscape architects.

That takes the theme and the idea.

It's in our heads and then can translate that into a drawing and a plan.

Besides the esthetic value of highway landscaping, there's also really tangible benefits, including economic benefits.

The landscaping can help pique interest of visitors, driving them to stay longer to visit our communities, helping enhance our community's tourism value, but also highway landscaping can help employ those who might otherwise not be employed on public works projects such as highway projects.

That includes landscape architects, landscape fabricators and so many more who really come together to not only provide this valuable artwork, but help produce an economic value from that as well.

We built five state monuments that are at the intersections of all the interstates.

Those were so, so fun to make.

I was just driving down through 95 a couple of weeks ago with my wife, and every time I do it, there's a couple of car to minimum pulled over and people taking photos of themselves or their family in front of the monument that we made at Topaz.

And it feels good, you know, And that monument is really well designed.

Steve Johnson from the DOT designed it.

He did a great job.

I think the public art, at the end of the day, I think it grounds people.

I think it gives people a sense of place.

I think it also just, you know, like we're going through some pretty rough stuff.

Just being able to look at something to is sort of give you the ability to take a breath.

I mean, maybe the wagon doesn't resonate with you, but maybe it resonates with the other guy.

And I feel that there's something about that.

I think inherently art music, it is crucial to the well-being of our soul.

We are venturing out to Columbus, Ohio, to spend some time with abstract artist Brendan Spivey.

His canvases are rich with color, shape and texture, and each creation is filled with life.

So let's take a look.

I've never really given myself, like a label.

A lot of people say that I paint with joy energy, so those who know me know that I can be very energetic.

And I think a lot of that personality comes out in some of the colors that I use, shapes that I use.

There's never going to be anything overly doll or dramatic.

I like action.

So you'll see large swipes, bright colors, texture.

So that's kind of how I view my work.

So I'm a big fan of abstract art, which is kind of ironic cause that's what I do.

It was more about the I didn't like the literal interpretation necessarily of like skylines or barns and trees.

I liked being able to have my own vision of what the art piece met because I think abstract painters paint with intention, but we also paint with intuition.

So I found it really kind of fascinating just to see, like, what?

What do I see going into the piece versus like what they said that they saw?

2017 I was looking for something a little more productive to do as far as stress relief.

You know, I used to write and left and that's not productive.

It just takes a lot of time and dedication.

But I wanted something a little more.

So I think for me, looking at artwork was always kind of therapeutic.

So I wanted to give that a shot.

And not being trained to do this was kind of it was different.

This is the Hailey Gallery for me.

This place is very homey.

And what I like about it is I can find everything that I want.

So if I'm looking for abstract art and if I'm looking for glass, I'll be able to find that here.

So it's not just a gallery to me, it's like a home.

So I will have locations of artwork, and so I typically will have between 3 to 5 pieces at a time.

And this one is called Rise Up.

So this kind of all goes back to some of the movements that we were.

We're really going through social unrest and all that stuff.

So I wanted to give something.

If you look at the tones of browns and earth tones.

So it's it's kind of pushing you a certain direction without necessarily taking you all the way there.

We wanted to kind of get involved in the whole Black Lives Matter movement necessarily through protest and those means.

But how can we use our artists voices to make a very strongly stated message without saying words and the tools that we did?

The first one was at the Ohio Theater, and it was a compilation of fields of flowers and young, young children that were black.

And she was picking flowers and the young boy had a paintbrush.

And then I came in as the artistic, abstract sky of shapes and color and, well, came in with the cityscape.

And it just I think it was a really great fusion of all of our talents together, because normally you would not have an abstract painter mixed with two more traditionally trained artists.

But I think that to me was just that's what made the work so powerful.

All right.

Spencer That's all for Close Buddies.

So Spencer is my double doodle preferred.

You know, he's another reason I do a lot of the things that I do.

I get all the treats.

I get joy out of seeing him enjoy things in life.

And it's the money that comes in from art sales helps put him in the daycare, pays for his vet bills that are so expensive and just overall, just everyday things for him.

Like that's my buddy and you lay flower.

He just gave joy.

And I think having more joy in my life I think has also probably helped my artwork transcend.

Didn't see or hear your.

I think another thing that kind of drove me to want to become a painter was being told that painters are born this way, artists are born artists, and they're artists their entire lives.

That, for me, was a personal challenge.

So not only was I wanting to like, get out there and paint and find a way to relax, I wanted to prove somebody wrong.

And then I had so far as so I was right.

You you don't know what you're capable of until you do it.

And I live my life that way.

And then I want to get out there and just try it.

And that is that for this edition of Art Rocks.

But remember, there are always more episodes of the show to be found at LP B dot org slash art, right?

And if you can't get enough of stories like these, Country Roads magazine makes a useful guide for discovering what's taking shape in Louisiana's cultural life all across the state, Look closer and discover more.

Until next week I've been James Fox Smith and thank you for watching.

Art Rocks is made possible by the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting.