Coming up next on Art rocks, a Lafayette man who sees the art in recycled wooden deer antlers.

I definitely work with wood.

My father was in the lumber business and we always had wood around the house.

We meet one of the biggest names in film fashion, the conservative, aspect of her clothes.

The classic timelessness defines her.

Try on a backpack program that helps families engage with art work.

The backpacks, in a sense, give us those tools to be able to go in deeper and have a deeper experience with the artworks in our collection, and sit in as a group of musicians, wring a whole new sound from their stringed instruments.

Some people are shocked that it's wait, wait, that's a classical instrument.

How dare you play rock music on it?

That's all ahead on Art rocks.

Art rocks is made possible by the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting and by viewers like you.

Hello, and thank you for joining us for Art rocks.

I'm James Fox Smith, publisher of Country Roads magazine.

Now, artists tell us that incorporating nontraditional objects into their work can be a powerful source of inspiration.

You'll be amazed to see what one Lafayette artist is doing with the items he finds in the woods and along the roadsides of his home state.

Brian Frederick loves working with his hands.

By day, he runs his own salon, helping his customers look good.

When Frederick comes home, his creativity continues with reclaimed wood or fallen trees.

I definitely work with wood.

my father was in the lumber business and so we always had wood around the house.

Growing up in rural Louisiana, Brian loved being outdoors.

I love fishing, I love fish, and I always wanted to do fish.

I finally decided to start doing fish.

By doing fish, Brian means carving fish from wood.

I'm always picking up wood whenever I see it, and if it's on the side of the road of I've actually asked actually a barn just up the street they tore down that long ago, and I got wood from that.

I don't like to buy it.

To recycle it is what's, you know, that's why I like doing.

I usually start out, cut it with a chainsaw and get it to a basic, the, you know, with them thickness the links that I have.

And from there, I'll cut a basic shape.

And then I have a belt sander that I use to shape the fish.

I when I first started doing the fish, they were very flat and kind of, lifelike, you know?

So I, I started cutting them thirds or whatever it might be, cutting them into two and then sanding it to where you can get a bend out of the fish.

Also take, different types of chisels.

Curved chisels make scales, you know, just pop it, you know, just to make different textures on it.

Sometimes you I don't I don't want to mess with the wood of the woods really pretty.

You know, I don't want to mess with it, but, you know, to get different textures, you got to, you know, change the surface a bit.

The artist isn't happy with just wooden fish.

He makes antler fish with real antlers from deer for their sheds.

Every year they drop their sheds.

I've found some myself, but most of them come from, people that I know that, you know, they have ranches or hunting areas out in Texas or where it might be.

I'll bleach them, you know, scrub them, kind of wash them.

don't like to overdo the cleaning of them.

I like them a little raw, sand them a bit.

Don't want to sand them too much.

And then.

Yeah, when I finish the fish, I finish it with, urethane.

The next step is to determine which antlers work best with which fish.

It's, you know, depends on how I turn the wood and how it goes.

All the antlers have got a curve to them.

Some of them have more.

Some, have less.

So it's a matter of picking the antler to curve with the wood.

The more curvature, the more you know it has a bend.

You know, once antlers are selected by and wants to make sure they are securely attached to the wood, a dowel, all the pieces so that they can't come loose, darling.

Meaning like a dowel rod, a piece of wood.

I would, you know, drill this way, drill this way and stick it in.

And then.

Yep, you know, you put it in like, you know, you would attach it like that.

And then over time, I've, started using metal because, some of my clients, they're kids, get on the fish and try to.

Right.

And snap off the fence.

If you look closely at some fish, you'll notice a silver line across them.

Brian uses a special tool to drill a slit along the side of the fish.

He then fills the slit with aluminum foil and then sends the foil down.

Now, if you think this artist has his hands full with doing hair and making fish, think again.

He's also a musician.

He's a real.

Go on bass.

Hit the road.

she doesn't say, oh, I see you take me home.

Oh.

I think I know.

Time has taken its toll.

You can see more of Brian's work at Antler fish.com.

No matter where you live in Louisiana, opportunities to connect with the arts are everywhere.

If only you know where to look.

So here's a list of some of the goings on in the arts around our state.

To learn more about these and other events in Louisiana, visit lpb.org/art rocks or pick up a free copy of Country Roads magazine.

LPB Art rocks website also features an archive of previous episodes, so to see any segment again, just log on to LPB ecology.

We're traveling now to Lancaster, Ohio to open the doors on a wardrobe collection created by one of the most recognizable names in film fashion history, Edith Head.

During her 60 year career, Edith Head worked on more than a thousand films and garnered 35 Academy Award nominations.

She spent 43 years at Paramount Pictures, where she designed many of the iconic costumes worn by some of Hollywood's biggest stars.

I grew up in Lancaster in the 40s, and I loved the movies.

When?

Every Saturday.

And the names I remember are Wally Westmoreland, who did the makeup and costume design, was always Edith Head.

She was at Paramount for 34 years, which is a disadvantage.

And it's it's definitely not just us, a show of evening gowns, but of all of the genres of the films that she worked on and her other interests.

She was one of the first women to brand herself.

So we talk about her creating dress patterns in the book, she wrote, in addition to the costumes that she designed.

Her name, I think, was the most well known of all of the, costume designers in Hollywood.

And her name is she's been she's been dead since 19 one, and her name still comes up, I think in The Incredibles, she's she's referred to.

People, especially in front of.

Stop at stupid.

The conservative, aspect of her clothes.

The classic timelessness defines her.

A movie could be, kept for, released for a couple of months, sometimes a year, even two years after it was made, before it was released.

So she strictly avoided any fads in clothing because when the movie was released, it would look dated.

One of the most recognizable would be the the wedding dress.

It's, it's very elaborate and in remarkable condition for its age.

And it reminds me that all of these costumes in this exhibition were once in the rental stock of Paramount Pictures until 2006.

Anyone could go in and rent these costumes.

These clothes haven't traveled except for one exhibition in El Paso, Texas, and that was a town that had a film festival.

And for their 100th anniversary, they reached out to Paramount, for Native Head Collection.

And so all of these costumes were, restored.

some of them had been very badly damaged, but they've been restored beautifully.

So they were on exhibition there in 2012 and went back to Paramount.

And when our application was approved, they they are here and this is just the second time that they've ever left Hollywood.

We have a little bit of everything, from Bing Crosby's jacket and, Martha Rae's cape when she was a matador in a movie for something like 30s and, Bob Hope's circus costume.

There are some very sophisticated, evening dresses.

There's a negligee, and there are some performance costumes, like the Jane Russell.

outfit.

That and a Betty Hutton outfit that.

Sequins that were used.

Performance scenes in the movie.

Her personal style, and this was her career persona was conservative suits, usually gray.

The, schoolmarm, sort of old fashioned schoolmarm, bangs and hair she adopted in 1938 when she became chief designer at Paramount.

She created this look.

It was the bangs, the chignon and the glasses.

The blue lenses in her glasses, she said, enabled her to see what the others would look like in black and white film.

And as soon as they started making more color pictures, she switched to gray.

The biggest secret of her success was she studied the scripts.

She knew exactly what the storyline was and she wanted the costumes to advance the storyline.

She also asked the artists about their preferences.

Some of them wouldn't wear prints.

Some of them had what they considered figure flaws, which we never noticed because Edith was such a genius at covering them up.

For instance, she said Betty Davis had a thick neck and she had a very big bust which was suffering from the effects of gravity.

And Betty would wear an underwire bra because she thought they caused cancer.

So she was a genius, she said.

Except for Grace Kelly, every actress had something that needed disguise.

Seeing them in the movies is one thing, and we even have clips from the movies here.

But to see the fabrics and the incredible handwork, the beading and the suit bashing, it just defies description.

And you.

It's not something you see in the mall or a department store anywhere.

This is the only place.

And these are incredible works of art.

They truly are.

Curators at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts have created a program aimed at helping families to engage more deeply with the works in the collection.

In a creative new program, visitors are equipped with backpacks stocked with supplies chosen to reveal more about the works on display.

Here's a look at how it all works.

The backpack program creates an opportunity for kids to engage with the works of art in our collection, in our galleries, in a way that they may not get to otherwise.

The backpacks are actually backpacks that are filled with objects and curriculum and activities that kids can do with parents that allow them to interact with the art in a way that they can't.

By just looking.

Part of what the backpack tries to do is to also encourage learning to to be visual thinkers and critical thinkers.

For instance, one of the backpacks has a, a telescope that where kids can be on an opposite side of the museum and, you know, and zoom in on through a telescope across the other side of the great hall here and discover a work kids can sketch and draw and write their own ideas and their own research.

And so depending on the backpack and depending on the adventure, we'll have different types of, educational tools, to get people to, to really think about, the art that they're looking at.

Kids and adults learn in many different ways, and that just absorbing knowledge is not sufficient.

you can learn through visual, or you can learn through auditory by listening, to learn by movement, which is kind of static.

There's several musical instruments in some of the backpacks, a lot of things that you can touch and feel the backpacks really try to incorporate all of this.

This experience, as well as the idea of involving all of your senses just to really engage all of the senses.

So that the learning is much more, is deeper and richer and makes many more connections to what the children have in their lives.

I think it just allows the kids to interact on a deeper level with the exhibits, and it makes them question what's around them and just kind of more interaction with all those different pieces and kind of fits together as a puzzle and allows them to experience more than just just seeing it and walking past it.

I think it's important for children to learn about art.

It expands their horizons.

I think that it gives them the opportunity to learn and know that it doesn't matter where you come from, you still can be an artist.

Learning about art is necessary because it's the wonderful way to learn about the history of the world, to learn about our place in the world.

It celebrates our humanity and it celebrates our intelligence, our creativity.

I think it's just one of the best things that we can do as humans.

So I think the backpack program supports, this need to learn about art.

We've learned through art education that you can go in deeper.

I mean, you can come into a museum and sit in front of a painting and stare at it for, you know, two hours and you can come back next week and do the same thing and discover all kinds of things about that artwork.

Right.

And so the backpacks, in a sense, give us those tools to be able to go in deeper and have a deeper experience with the artworks in our collection.

So it helps us interpret those artworks and look at them and ask questions about them and try to, you know, to spark our curiosity about how they were made, where they come from.

Why are they significant?

You know, what is their relevance?

And so, that's I think I think backpacks, too, are just a wonderful way of drawing out a curiosity and making education fun.

We're returning home now for another Louisiana treasure stand at the steps of the Louisiana State Capitol building, and you can't help but be impressed by the sculptures and reliefs carved into the Alabama Limestone that lines the exterior walls.

The models for many of the figures that watch from those walls were sculpted by Louisiana artist Angela Gregory.

Those models are now in the collection of Port Allen's.

West Baton Rouge Parish Museum director Julie Rose tells us all about them.

Angela Gregory was a Louisiana artist, and she trained at the Newcomb School at Tulane University, and she also studied in Paris.

Her sculptures are widely known throughout Louisiana.

Here at the West Baton Rouge Museum, we have a collection of Angela Gregory portraits.

These are the plaster models that Angela designed for the new state Capitol.

In 1931.

She was one of eight artists who were selected to, design the portraits of well-known, distinguished Louisiana figures from history, and she chose Thomas Jefferson, James Audubon Hall, Tulane.

You can see them now on the exterior sides of the new state Capitol building.

They're on the fourth floor, at least the fourth level, looking up on the exterior on the southeast portion of the building.

So Angela chose, humanitarians.

She chose artists, musicians and, some political figures as well.

To see those carvings in the stone, so to speak, look up at the Capitol facade around the level of the fourth floor via electric is in Orlando, Florida, a group that captures the energy and irreverence of rock n roll.

But does it using a surprising ensemble of violins and violas.

The result is electric music unlike any you've heard before.

By electric is a seven piece rock band that is comprised of a string quintet, which is the five string instruments two violins, viola, cello, upright bass.

But we've also added keys and live acoustic drums.

But I think the idea started way back when, and I won't say what year, but I will say that my dad was listening to vinyl records, specifically LED Zeppelin, Physical Graffiti, and on that is a song called cashmere, and they used live strings on.

Needless to say, I was hooked from that point on, and I think I always knew from that point on that I wanted to do rock music as a violinist.

It is definitely neat for strings to be in a rock genre, but yet it's actually been happening for at least the last 50 years or so.

There's always been the infusion.

The question is, though, has it been mainstream where the violin or the cello or one of those instruments that's considered a traditional accompanying instrument to a rock band has taken the lead and taken the melody?

And that's what I think that sets us apart from many of the other groups.

When you take something like a violin, people might think it's classical and you do something unique.

Oh, we're going to take that particular instrument, but we're going to play rock music or classic rock music.

Music for a lot of us is interchangeable.

Just because you play a certain style or a certain instrument, really, you could do so many different things.

And that's one thing that Fire Electric has tapped into and definitely makes it unique.

I started playing a lot of classical music in school and in college.

But then, you know, I like listening to this kind of music, this classic rock that, you know, my dad loved listening to.

And it was like, well, you know, why not play something that I like to listen to as well?

It's a different take on the original, but it's still, you know, it still reminds people of the song.

People's reactions go from everything to, that's so cool.

all the way to that string players, they they're there is everything in between.

Some people are shocked that it's wait, wait, that's a classical instrument.

How dare you play rock music on it?

all the way to.

How do I learn how to do this?

We're having a good time.

And when we're having a good time, the audience feeds off of that.

So everyone has a good time.

I feel fortunate enough to play with, really good musicians, but they're really good people, so that mix kind of comes together in what makes for electric.

Electric and when you realize that there's 11 lines there, 11 lines is the mapping of the human voice from the lowest voice that I can't do to the highest.

I think I was born a teacher, we have electric education programs that range everywhere, from the youngest students, all the university level.

we definitely love the opportunity to give back to our community.

For example, for our youngest students, we like to go into an existing class of students where we will work with them and show them not only that rock music is an option for music and a lot of times they're not even at the point yet where they're using the bow on the string.

They're just plucking the strings.

So what we do is we like to go in and help the teacher, help the instructors, and that's from the younger students.

And then again, we like to play for them.

And so they can hear that.

Wow, I didn't know you could play that on a violin.

People think, oh, you know, that's guitar music, girl.

That's vocal music.

And yet here we are playing it on traditional stringed instruments that they're used to seeing in a symphony or with the opera and ballet.

I think it's an amazing opportunity to have artists such as Violin Electric in this Central Florida community willing to come into the Doctor Phillips Center School of the Arts, because I think it motivates us to be able to see professionals who are working in their field and have one on one access with them by electric works all over the world.

And, you know, if I was a ten year old violin student and I had Michelle Jones helping me learn fingering on my violin, it would be very impactful and meaningful.

I can see that they enjoy what they're doing, and it's this freedom for them that it is crucial to have this opportunity.

I don't know where I would be if I didn't have this opportunity to play, if I didn't know these colors were in life.

I think I'd be living in a black and white world.

Maybe one day they'll be doctors and lawyers, but they'll still love musically.

it's really fun having them here because yet to know, like how to do it and they help us.

They helped us a lot and let us learn new things.

We learned how to use the bow a little bit more, how to like, hold it and put it on the violin.

And I was around a lot of musicians when I was younger, but never stringed instruments, so it just seems like magic to me that they can move their hands up and down and hit the right notes.

And it was great to actually ask somebody, wait, is this magic?

How are you doing that?

I love playing, but I certainly hope that what we are creating carries on, and that's what I always want it to be.

I want it to be a place that people want to be a part of the ensemble.

Because as long as there are groups out there making music, we want to be one of those groups making music to.

That's going to do it for this edition of Art rocks.

But remember, you can always watch episodes of the show at LPB.

Dot org slash art rocks, and you can keep track of what's going on around our state by picking up a free issue of Country Roads magazine, or by visiting us online at Country Roads mag.

Com.

Until next time, I'm James Fox Smith and thanks for watching.