Coming up next on Art Rocks, a Louisiana artist who crafts exquisite sculptures from salvaged wood.

Wood is so diverse you can't discover all the woods in the world.

There are so many of them.

A conversation about body language.

I really love the way people hold them selves.

Characteristically.

That's a gesture.

That's a gesture.

A look at a unique musical training program.

You have orchestra rehearsals almost every day of the week.

Most of us are in Chamber Group, a visual artist who loves to be hated.

I always thought it was one of the biggest compliment an artist can receive to be condemned by your work, in a way.

And a tour of Monroe's beaten horn house and gardens.

That's all Next on Art Rock.

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.

With me, James Fox Smith, publisher of Country Roads magazine.

We begin today in a hand-built studio deep in the Saint Tammany Parish woods not far from Covington.

Although Rick Brunner is renowned for the striking sculptures he creates, he does not see himself as an inventor of forms, but rather as a discoverer of things that are already there, he says of his work.

You can't ask for a better designer than Mother Nature.

In his own words.

Here's Rick Storey.

I went to LSU in Baton Rouge and got a bachelors of Fine Arts degree and shifted while I was there from Clay into kind of more mixed media pieces.

Applied to graduate schools, got into Notre Dame, and when I got out of school, expected to get a teaching job, didn't get a teaching job.

So what is an artist?

Do you open up a studio and start working?

And I never look back.

I actually started out in clay in ceramics and started made a living as a painter for a couple of years and then started doing more sculptural pieces and got frustrated with the clay and started introducing wood into the clay sculpture.

And after a year or two of that just decided wood was the material I needed to be working with.

And it just kind of it took off on me.

Wood is so diverse you can't discover all the woods in the world.

There's so many of them.

So many of them, and it's such an organic material, such a rich material.

You can cut one cherry tree and that's going to look one way and cut another cherry tree, and it's going to look a different way.

Their cousins, but they're different.

And that's what I love about it.

Every single board, every single piece you ever picked up has a different personality in it.

Building a sculpture, it's kind of like taking a group of singers and creating a choir out of them.

Like, how do you put this and this and this together?

And this can be one beautiful piece of wood and one beautiful piece of wood.

And sometimes they work and sometimes they don't work together.

Much like two singers might be able to harmonize or maybe not harmonize.

Favorite pieces are usually the pieces that I had the least control over.

The trick to doing the best quality work is to get all the fluff away from your head and let something else take over, whatever that is.

It's like a wave starts happening.

I usually start out with some kind of a sketch.

I normally start out with some physical piece or some idea of how things are going to look.

But more often than not, the better pieces are the pieces that happen on their own.

The Shield series started about 15 years ago.

There is, in my mind, no more universal form than a shield.

Native Americans had it.

Africans had it.

New Zealanders had it.

Orientals had it.

Everybody has used the shield as certain areas of the world became more, quote, civilized.

Shields became family crest.

The shields became just a blank canvas for me.

I can tell a story on a shield.

More often than not, my work is around a phrase, and I like the double meanings in titles.

The piece you're just looking at is called A Bit of the Heart.

The piece across that is a bit a horse bit the shape because a shield, a lot of shields are shaped like we as children draw hearts.

It was always kind of that interesting play for me, that a shield was a sense of self-protection, but it also kind of represented the heart.

So depending on the woods that I use or the other pigments or other materials that I add to it, that's when the full personality can can evolve and come out.

The newer series for me is called The Vibration Series, and that was based on movement vibration.

Like the way we throw a rock into a pond and watch the pebbles move the way motion photography film something as it progresses.

And a lot of people look at my work and think I am a musician because of how I fabricate things.

I love music, but I can't play any kind of musical instruments.

My instrument is the sculpture that I'm doing.

I suppose.

But the forms formally, what I reference oftentimes or musical instruments like a guitar, that shape is beautiful.

Other things that are reference are weaponry, historical weaponry, knives and shields and bows.

I mean, another passion of mine is archery.

Traditional archery.

So that's a lot of where my shapes come from as well.

In the cabinets, again, is in kind of an older series, but an ongoing series that I still love.

Growing up in south Louisiana because of the flooding issues.

So many homes, so many buildings are built up on stilts.

And that became kind of like an oil well, look to me.

I like the fact that a cabinet can be more than just a big box with drawers.

And I really like doing tables, but they always have to have a flat surface.

But you can do a lot of stuff around them and make them interesting and try to give them some movement as well.

I would way prefer looking at a curved line than a straight line.

I like to work with some metals.

I can work with copper and brass and lead.

I do, like I said, work with some found objects and I work with honest materials.

I don't try to make one material look like another material.

If it's a rusty piece of metal.

I want it to be a rusty piece of metal.

I love working with leather.

It's kind of a newer thing for me.

Only in the last several years.

But I think of leather as being kind of that way, a sort of iron, an honest, natural material, and it's got some characteristics in it that would doesn't do, can't do.

The flexibility of it is kind of kind of nice.

I like working with Rawhide because it can be really flexible.

My favorite thing to do is hang a new exhibition and be as anonymous as I possibly can during the exhibition and listen to the comments from viewers.

And sometimes I learn something about my own pieces from hearing people's anonymous comments and ways of looking at it that I never thought myself.

And all of a sudden they taught me how to look at something differently.

I have to say, I come away from every exhibition I've ever done, learning a little bit from it.

Every Rick Bruner sculpture is all about the wood.

In each he works to highlight, not mask the idiosyncrasy of color and grain that make each tree different from every other.

Every tree has a personality of its own, he says, just like people.

Each one is truly unique.

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 cultural treasures coming up around our state.

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

LP's.

Art Rock's website also features an archive of previous episodes.

So to see any segment again, just log on to LP B O.G.. Ohio painter Judith Carducci finds inspiration in body language using brightly colored pastel shells.

Judy captures the true essence of the people she paints by observing their gestures.

Here's a look.

I was always an artist from the time I could hold a pen or pencil or a crayon, and it consumed me.

I loved it.

And I became Judy, the artist.

Everybody knew me as the artist.

Everybody knew that that's what I was and what I was always going to be and do.

I'm not going to leave.

I always start with the gesture.

I see Kim doing this a lot.

She was sitting over there with her arms crossed like that.

And she and Kim is a little bit tentatively suspicious.

So and this this is not this is a very subtle gesture.

I always start with the gesture.

I always do now.

I hate to say always and never and this kind of thing, but almost always, probably.

Maybe there are times when I don't, but I'm interested in it.

Very interested in gesture.

So, for example, you were leaning this way and your head is back that way.

You look very comfortable.

You're not, you know, people will often sit down to have their portrait done.

And it's like fero, you know, right off.

But if you tell them, look, you know, sit the way you would in your own home if you had this chair in your home and nobody was there.

How would you sit?

And they begin to just kind of get comfortable.

And I really love the way people hold them themselves.

Characteristically, that's a gesture.

That's a gesture.

How you hold your body is gestural.

Every single person is.

I hate this word because it's so trite and over word unique.

You are you and you are.

This is the first time I've seen you.

And I immediately form a first impression about you.

I mean, isn't there an impact when you come in contact with somebody new?

Who is this person?

Are they friend or foe?

You know, how are you different from anybody else I've ever known?

How are you Like other people that I have known and so I'm already starting to get a feel about you.

And then I'm also thinking about the more I look at you, I'm thinking about I'm thinking about, let me see what shape is his head and what kind of a is he?

Does he have a sense of humor?

Is he is he pretty serious guy?

What color is he?

You know, because I love color.

I love these pastels.

They're great American artworks.

They're I believe they're the best that are made in the world.

That used to be seen here in France.

It's a beautiful medium.

And it's it's also a very forgiving medium.

It's both a drawing and a painting medium.

And you don't have the hassle of drying time and medium eyes and washing brushes and all of this stuff that you have to worry about with oil painting.

And I think if you look around, you look at my website, you'll see that many of my pastels are drawings and many of them that you have to get up close to them to see that they're not oil paintings.

You know, because I paint the same way, it's the same pigment.

It's just a different delivery system as the paint that you get in oils and watercolor.

I don't want to paint just a generic person.

I want to paint you.

And so I need to know who you are and what you're like and how do you and I relate to each other?

Because after all, I'm the one who's doing the painting.

See, this is one reason why I don't do portraits from photographs.

I no longer do posthumous portraits, and I don't do portraits from Florida because I'm a people person.

I want to be with that person.

I want us to have something going on.

I want to get to know you.

I make friends that way.

I've I've made some wonderful friends that remain my friends.

It's a portraiture is a people thing.

I'm not just sculpting.

I'm not just reporting a a likeness.

I'm.

I'm trying to give other people a picture of who this person is.

Each year, the Aspen Music Festival and school in Colorado invites over 500 students to study and perform alongside distinguished classical musicians from orchestras throughout the country.

We speak with violin student Usha Kapoor, who explains how she has grown both musically and professionally During the program.

I was five when I started.

I'm not sure I really chose the violin.

My mom, she would recognize that it had a social element.

Being in a youth orchestra, you met 20 other kids who play the same instrument as you did from an early age.

That's what really spurred me to do it.

And then, you know, the older I got, the more I started to like the instrument itself and how many career opportunities it has.

This is my fifth summer here at the Aspen Music Festival is very intense.

You have orchestra rehearsals almost every day of the week.

Most of us are in chamber groups.

And then on top of that, we have our solo work to do and we have lessons.

I'm on a mentor fellowship.

It's unique in that the faculty here hand-selected two mentors per string section.

One of us sits principal and one of us sits in the back of this section every week, and then we rotate.

Our job is to mentor these kids around us, and most of them have not played in orchestra that much.

They're very good players.

They don't know some of orchestra etiquette.

My first summer here, they didn't have the mentorship program.

I remember how difficult it was for me to blend in an orchestra.

And I remember thinking, Wow, wouldn't it be great if we had older students or faculty sitting in with us?

Now, six years later, here I am being one of these people.

So definitely all about giving back teacher and student.

First and foremost, it's built on trust.

It's a tremendous one on one effort and labor.

A student has to believe in you because many times you ask very difficult things of them, things that in their mind they may not think that they're capable of or that are even possible.

And you you need to foster that as a teacher.

Mr. LEWIS It is a unique kind of guy.

He flies a plane.

He loves motorcycles.

I haven't had many students that told me on a Friday, I think I'll ride my bicycle to Mexico tomorrow.

I think we have a lot of common, believe it or not.

We both are very into the violin, but we both have so many hobbies outside of the violin.

So I think it's nice to be able to share that with someone.

He's always very supportive of my music making, but also supportive of the backpacking trips I go on or the 14 hours I've climbed.

The normal fears that people have in life don't impress her.

That's not a bad thing to have on the concert stage, to be fearless.

She has kind of a God given confidence in herself.

I remember my freshman year we'd start my lesson talking about boxing and then finish playing scales.

My lessons are a mix of learning the violin, but also learning how to balance things in life.

Lucia is very, very bright.

She's not afraid of hard work.

She's daring.

Lucia will bring something more to classical music and more to the violin than is the status quo.

You work so hard in the weeks prior to a concert so that when you get on stage, you're not worrying about the notes you didn't learn.

You're not worrying about what part of the show to be in.

You get to really focus on the emotions you want to achieve for yourself when you're playing and what emotions you want the audience to feel.

Back here in Louisiana, Coca-Cola, Butler, Joseph Baden, hand and family built a stately home surrounded by a truly spectacular garden.

It's a must see for any visitor to the northeast Louisiana town of Monroe.

The man responsible for maintaining house and garden, Ralph Calhoun, tells us more.

Joe Biden can't move his Coca-Cola operations to Monroe and built this home, which at the time was on the outskirts of Monroe.

Now is pretty much in the city.

Built it in 1913, 1914, moved his family here, and he lived here until his passing.

And in his daughter, Amy Lou, remained in this house until 1984, when she passed away.

And during that time she converted what had been a garden with with pigs and chickens and a tomato plants, things like that.

She converted it into a formal English garden, which is what we have today.

We've got five large statues that she purchased in New Orleans.

Mr. Baytown Horne said that New York only needed one statue of Liberty, but Amy Lou had to have five.

And there are some similarities in these statues in the Statue of Liberty.

And then she just continued to build her garden over a number of years.

Some of the strong points of it are we have very nice azaleas.

And then she's also had come in with hydrangeas, which were a nice bush that maintains its bloom for many months.

So it's a it's a very colorful garden.

We're not your typical historic house museum.

We start you out in a room called the Fountain Room that has a large cast down fountain in the room, not outside.

And it depicts different Louisiana wildlife, herons, turtles, things like that.

We've got a music room that has a 1923 Steinway grand piano, and I think most museums you go to folks who say, don't touch the piano.

But here we feel that Emmylou loved music and that piano was to be played.

So if you're a child, they can play chopsticks.

We'll let you play chopsticks.

If you're a maestro, that can play something else.

We let you play on the piano and we, Emmylou very much wanted to share what she had seen in Europe, share some of the finer things in her life with other people there, Stories where she saw children and on the sidewalk, she would have them come in her house and give them peppermints.

And we've kind of carry on that tradition.

Now, at the end of our tour, everybody gets a peppermint as they go out.

So we I think we try to embody her spirit, her her love of the garden, her love of music, and then just her love of people as you come through the house.

The furniture that really stands out to most people is in the parents bedroom.

There's a large taster bed, one of those big canopy beds and just some massive cabinets, chest of drawers, that kind of thing, that they actually when they built this house, the second floor ceilings are higher than the first floor ceilings to accommodate the furniture that they were going to put up there.

And Liguria is a visual artist who believes that one of the biggest compliments an artist can receive is to be condemned for his or her work that is the inspiration for his show.

Formulating a plot is the story.

My name is Adler Gary and I am a visual artist.

I make artwork with various media photography, some printmaking techniques, sculpture, video.

This show is titled Formulating a Plot, which stick its inspiration from an historical incident relating to Amiri Baraka.

He was, in essence, condemned by a judge with that particular phrase that he was found to be formulating a plot to incite a riot, seeing how Baraka was playwright and a poet, formulating plots is what he does by as a profession to be to be found guilty of doing.

That is an interesting turn of phrase in a way.

I always thought it was one of the biggest compliment an artist can receive to be condemned by your work.

In a way, the idea of plot and making the idea of plot both references storytelling and in the case of Baraka, but also actually references place.

Places in themselves are kind of empty vessels that actually require inhabitant people us to actually make them worthwhile, give them value, but so formulating a plot is as much about telling stories as this, as much as to actually make place worthwhile.

So the works thus in the exhibition are taking different strategies that underline the complexity of place.

90 something percent of all these images are of South Florida, and I work where I live at quite literally.

Some of these work are in my backyard and a lot of my work is actually attempting to both to play to both audience, those who can recognize the specific ness of places, specific neighborhoods, downtown Miami, South Miami, Little Haiti, or Hollywood, Florida, and those with that know the name of those places.

But see palm trees and fruit trees in the background or and actually recognize spaces that they I hope they want to engage or I hope they can project their own narrative or even sense of self within this frame or within within the what the image proposal.

Cities, by definition, involve this shared communal idea.

And that's also this idea of of plot, right?

Because we have many there's many stories that we tell aren't so bounded to the individual, but as cities it's a story that seem to hover around somewhere and through the generations a time everyone's tend to tell the same stories.

And that's that for this edition of Art Rocks.

But remember, you can always watch episodes of the show with LP dot org slash rock.

And meanwhile, Country Roads magazine is another great place to find out about what's going on in the arts all across the States.

So until next week, I'm James Fox Smith and thanks for watching.