Coming up next on Art Rocks, the Lafayette painter whose love affair with luxury Mardi Gras literally leaps from the canvas with the majority of the people in my paintings are people that I know.

Unless I get great shots of somebody, if I don't know them, I'll turn that into a painting anyway.

We get an inside look at an edgy ballet company to have a power that lingers beyond the curtain.

I want that power to linger in them.

Musicians combining diverse talents to create a whole new sound and an artist for whom difficulty and discomfort are fundamental parts of the creative process.

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

And thank you for joining us for Art Rocks.

Since 12th Night on January the sixth, the familiar bowls and parades of the Mardi Gras season have been in full swing in the city of New Orleans.

But across a swath of rural south Louisiana, folks mock carnival season with a very different tradition.

Although a native of Kentucky artist Herb Rose is excited at a zany, born and raised Cajun to celebrate the career day Mardi Gras as it plays out in Eunice.

Not only as a participant in the traditional chase to put a chicken in the gumbo pot, but also as fodder for his striking large scale works in oil.

Rowe explains how he has become perhaps the premier painter chronicling how Mardi Gras rolls out on the Louisiana prairie out of high school and gotten a scholarship to a private school in Ohio.

We're there for a year.

Ended up meeting Robert Stafford, who was doing a big mural project in my hometown of Portsmouth, Ohio, and I started working for him that summer and then by the time I'd started school again in the fall, he convinced me to drop out of school and go to New Orleans with him and do a nine story building.

And it didn't take a whole lot of convincing.

Just, you know, a 19 year old kid in Ohio or college or run off to New Orleans for a year.

So I dropped out of school.

Herb would spend the next 15 years painting murals with Deford before settling down in his own studio in Lafayette.

Ten years ago, the move was both life and career changing.

I did a project with Robert for the Zydeco Byway Trails.

So I'm creating all these little icons and little cartoon drawings and stuff for this big cartoon man.

I had to do some research and do these little career figures.

And the more I played with them and just finally decided I would have to do this.

And about that time, a bunch of kids had grown up in in Mamou and Eunice and stuff had decided to start their own career run to try to combat against some of the loss of traditions that was going on out there.

So I went out there to go see it and run it with them and just fell in love.

The the riot of colors with everything, all the costumes.

And I at the time was doing a lot of like, costume drama stuff, pieces.

I would dress models up and light them here in my studio and then shoot them and compose these big angels in classical attire and armor, costumes, storytelling, reliant stuff.

And seeing that it was kind of similar to what I was doing because everybody is in costume and everybody's pretending to be something else and and not being self themselves for the day.

And it just felt so close to what I was already doing.

And I did have to costume and light them in the studio.

I just have to stand there and, you know, shoot pictures all day and then compose them into all my canvas later.

So it was just brilliant and I loved it.

The images Herb captured that day and near every year since would become the stuff of more than 100 paintings that reveal what has been happening on Fat Tuesday, out on the prairies of southern Louisiana, virtually unchanged for generations.

Listen, as Herb explains and watch as his paintings bring it all to life.

You get out there early in the morning because we start the run around 730, I guess.

So you have to be there well before that.

And there are eventually three, four or 500 of us there.

And to do this run, you have to be in costume.

There are no tourists on this road.

If you're not in full costume pants, shirt and mask, you don't go.

If you want music, you have to bring an instrument or open your mouth.

There's no canned music.

And we start making a circuit through the countryside.

We're going from farmhouse to farmhouse, and we have the caftan.

And it's usually a white cowboy hat and this big purple and gold brocade cloak.

And he has a little white flag, and it's part of a ritual.

He gets up to the farmhouse and everyone has to stop at the edge.

You're not allowed to rush onto the property.

And he goes up and ask for permission from the farmer if the Mardi Gras can visit his place.

But part of your thing is being part of the troupe is you're also trying to break all the rules.

He's the capitan and his is a little cohort of co-captains with their whips are there to stop you from breaking the rules.

But part of your job is to try to break as many of those rules as possible.

So you've got people trying to sneak onto the property and then one of the captains will run over and hit them with the whip and drive them back.

And while he's busy, somebody else is trying to sneak around behind him.

But once he's asked for permission, he does his white flag, which is the signal for everyone to rush up.

There are a couple of different little ritual begging motions and chants and songs that you do to try to convince the farmer to give you food for the gumbo.

So some of them, they'll throw you a bag of rice, a bag of seasonings, a bag, onions, a bag of peppers, you know, all these different ingredients for a gumbo.

But some of them will bring out a chicken and it's you know, it's Mardi Gras.

It's usually a wet time of year.

It's probably just rained if if it's not actually raining.

And the chicken is on his home turf, he knows where all the fences are and the places to hide.

So the the the farmer, he'll sometimes you'll climb up on his porch, sometimes you'll climb up on his roof, or he'll set a ladder up and climb to the top of it.

And then the good ones will they'll make a show of making you beg more and more and more for the chicken.

We have some people who are caterers, and while we're out doing the rally, they're cooking 100 gallons of gumbo.

The rest of the day is just bands and dancing.

With so many options, how does Herb decide what to paint?

Well, the majority of the people in my paintings are people that I know.

Unless I get great shots of somebody, if I don't know them, I'll turn that into a painting anyway.

I always wanted to be a figurative painter.

I love, you know, doing faces and bodies and stuff.

Faces create emotions and get you to feel like somebody was in the canvas staring back at you.

Not just a, you know, a representation of something.

But I wanted to feel like a presence in them.

For me, it's just showing it and documenting it.

This is about ten different photos composed together to make this scene.

I'll shoot continuously and then I'll pick like, I like this character.

I like his face.

I like his arm.

And I'll put them in together and compose this one shot.

But the more her experiences of Cajun culture, the more his work evolves to document it.

The last year or two, I've been focusing a little bit more on Bush Aris.

I like showing how all the different guys work together during the day, you know, killing the hog and splitting it up and then everyone cooking something different for it and everybody working, you know, slightly differently and then coming together later on in the day for this big meal for everyone.

One of the other things I'm focusing on right now is the whole plate lunch culture here.

The whole rice and gravy phenomenon really kind of hits its peak here in Acadia.

And they have different rotating specials throughout the day of the week.

So, you know, on Monday you're like, oh, I'm going here for that dish.

On Tuesday, I go there for this dish on Wednesday.

I like to be here for this dish because that's what they do the best.

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 coming up around the state.

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

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

So to see any segment again, just log on to LP v dot org.

Our nation's capital, Washington, D.C., is home to the Chamber dance Project, a contemporary ballet company.

Chamber dancers perform right alongside a live string quartet, a pairing that results in an unconventional experience for performers and audience alike.

We went behind the scenes to learn more about this unique project with Chamber Dance Project.

Our vision is to expand the audience's engagement in the process, as well as to collaborate with very high end artists and create works of contemporary resonance for them.

Once we start every morning with company class and this is where they get their bodies ready for the day, which is fairly arduous, it's five 6 hours of rehearsal for.

We've spent most of this year preparing for our second season in D.C..

I met Diane last year and she described the project and it sounded really different from anything that I had ever done before, which was to have six dancers and four musicians, all equal partners in this chamber.

Small scale, intimate kind of setting with the musicians on stage.

I like to work with the same group of dancers and musicians so that we get a real joie de vive and a true deep collaboration.

We don't just bring the musicians in at the end and put them in the pit.

They're on stage with us and they're a big part of what we do.

The fact of having the live music is pretty awesome.

Sure, the energy with the musicians and just make a sound that is special and different.

Just to see these beautiful dancers as we play is is really, really rewarding and I'm extremely grateful to Washington, D.C.

I've found it an extremely open and collaborative town.

And so now it's really my home and it's my artistic home to what we're doing is what I call ASI or structured improv.

And the corollary for the musicians.

I hand them score and parts for a piece.

They've never played together, so they are sight reading.

The dancers don't know what the heck is going to come out of the quartet, and they're doing it together.

Everybody gets nervous about it because we don't know what we're doing.

They just put new music to for the musicians and we just go and try to create something with, you know, all of us together, which is it could be very dangerous if you're you know, if you're moving in a different direction, you don't know what you're doing.

You can hurt somebody.

But it's been difficult, right?

Yeah, it's been it's been great to find out how people actually respond to to you, to your movement and around you, you know, aware with each other.

We're very used to have someone in front of us telling us what to do.

But at this moment, we have the creative process on stage with the public staring.

So like you have no choice.

You just have to, like, make it happen and make it work.

It feels very awkward onstage, but the audience love it.

So that's what we're going to do in a show.

You know, I like to think they're really on the edge and the audience will experience that, and it is shockingly profound and fun to have a certain visceral resonance, to have a power that lingers beyond the curtain.

I want that power to linger in them when I think a purpose is to give them something away from what the daily routine is.

So they should just take away a piece of art in their hearts.

Like we just want to give them a little motivation for something else and just make them fly and dream.

This story is about what happens when classical and jazz musicians join forces to create a sound that borrows the best from both worlds.

We recently dropped in on a group from Saint Louis, Missouri, named the 440 Twos during rehearsal.

Let's take a listen.

The hardest thing about about categorizing this music, everybody likes categories.

You know, you've got iTunes and you've got your classical favorites and your top 40 favorites and your R&B favorites.

The 440 twos are so hard to categorize because we delve into so many different areas of inspiration and so we have not been able to find an easy moniker to kind of codify what we are.

And that's tricky, and it's also freeing.

It's hard when you're trying to explain to people what you do and who you are, but you just tell them, Come in and hear us.

Just listen to it, and that'll explain it.

The name of the 442 is comes from the standard tuning of of A is 442 hertz and that's what the oboist in the symphony plays to tune the orchestra before each concert.

And that's kind of where we got that name and yeah, because it's going to break down soon again anyway so it can feel like walking off the cliff.

Well, I kind of in the utility men in the group, I do a little bit of of everything.

I do guitar and accordion and some percussion, some glockenspiel.

I do I do all those things and kind of running around on each tune.

And I also compose most of the music that Adam writes so well for all of us.

And each time we've come to the rehearsal, he's brought a new element of things that he's wanted to try and see, and we'll discuss it and we'll talk about it, and he'll have us come over to his place individually, sometimes in between rehearsals and say, Well, what sits well and what works?

Does this work?

Is this good?

What can you do here?

Each opportunity that we have to kind of stretch ourselves as musicians kind of goes into the source.

You know, that adds a complexity to us as musicians.

Whatever genre playing, classical, jazz, pop, whatever my tastes, my entire life have been really, really diverse.

And I've always been a big fan of every kind of music you can imagine.

For Sean and I being a part of the symphony, you know, you're there and you're playing the notes and you're following the direction of the conductor and you're you're creating music in a way, but it's not your impetus.

You're not the one who's calling the artistic shots.

And when you have a group like this, we are that artistic impetus.

We are the ones who are making that the decisions and the voices and we can change things.

And I think for me that's the most fun element of the 442 is just getting a chance to play completely outside my comfort zone and outside the box.

And one thing that's nice about the 442 is, is that not only do we have, you know, through composed pieces that we are all playing together, what is written on the page, but we also have times where we're improvising as well.

And so for Sean and I think from the symphony, that's really rare.

You know, classical musicians are never encouraged or taught to improvise and to create music on the spot.

And for us, I think it's it's a challenge.

It's a thrill.

It is nerve wracking.

It's scary, but it's so fun.

Ultimately, you know, it's kind of like classical acting versus improvizational stuff like Saturday Night Live.

You have we're very much interpretive in our classical lives, and here we're able to both be interpretive and improvisatory and it's unchartered waters for me.

But but the audience, Sean, have a very strong pop sensibility and they understand a feel of jazz.

So it was really quite easy that that, that made my job so much easier because they, they have an inherent feel for groove and, and they, they understand that other styles.

I mean, Sean knows more about pop jazz music and you name it than most people that I've ever met.

And Bjorn is very open to pop music and he's quite funky, as you hear on the on some of the some of the songs because it's kind of everybody's second pursuit.

We get to be very picky about what we do and where we play and how we're presented, and I think that's a huge advantage for us.

And I think everybody who comes to our concerts can feel that we're we're very happy with the situation, you know, that we're that we're playing in right there.

And we don't have to do anything we don't want to do it.

We start with what Adam writes, and it's a great product and we want to perform it in the most convincing way and really take it to where it needs to be, which is something that we kind of get together ahead of time and then we'll we'll go in and just kind of let it fly in our concerts.

And a lot of times things will happen in a show that never could have really happened in a rehearsal just because of the energy that we get from the audience.

I view this as another form of chamber music, and I'm very, very busy outside of Power hall filling myself up with other things and other experiences.

And I think we could all say that this group is another facet of our life where we can push ourselves into something completely different.

So it's not difficult to transition.

It's just part of kind of being that complete musician and finding so many different areas that make up your your whole life.

And I think the more we do things and the more we push this and the further we can see this goes, the more we realize that it's all part of the same big sonic realm of what it is we all do.

Now it's time for our Louisiana Treasures segment.

The era before the Civil War was a time of charm or horror in Louisiana history, depending on your vantage point.

But the plantation economy undeniably produced some astonishing achievements in both architecture and landscaping.

Both are evident at rows down Plantation in West Feliciana Parish, The home created for Daniel and Martha Turnbull, Martha quickly began landscaping, planting dozens of live oak trees 35 feet apart as Martha's trees took root designs were drawn up for this two story mansion, complete with 12 huge columns and two small ones.

The Cypress columns were reportedly harvested from the grounds at Rosedale Farm and then hand turned by slaves.

The house would have six bedrooms and three porches, two out front, one upstairs and one downstairs.

A third porch would be built out back.

Observers believe the couple designed the house themselves because of similarities between rose down and Martha's childhood home, Highland Plantation.

Rose Town has a very unusual plan in that it doesn't have a central hallway that extends front to back through the entire width of the home.

That was a very standard plan for this time because of the cross ventilation that the hallway would provide.

That was their air conditioning rose down, has a formal entry hall backed by a very formal dining room, which in effect cuts that central space in half.

But if you been to Highland, you see that they have that same plan.

Daniel did make arrangements for the air circulation.

There's a half window that you can raise and a half door underneath the window that you can open.

In most of the rooms they have fireside cupboards on either side of the chimney.

There is also a pair of built in bookcases in one of the rooms.

And these are features you don't normally see in houses from that time period.

The Turnbull's hired a builder to turn their blueprints into reality.

The vast majority of the construction was done by slaves.

They built a sawmill when they first began construction on the house so they could mill their own lumber.

Most of the lumber that went into the construction of the house was taken from the rose down acreage.

Well, they had their own brick foundry.

Most of the bricks that were used to build the foundations of the houses and the outbuildings were all made here.

The Turnbull's added, built in China cabinets.

They added a kitchen behind their home, just as most homeowners of their generation did.

Family records show the Daniel and Martha spent $13,109 on building supplies alone.

Confronted with challenging tasks, most of us start looking around for a shortcut.

But for Florida artist Enrique Celaya difficulty and discomfort, a fundamental part of the artistic process.

Every piece, as he explains, entails a battle to achieve the greatest artistic authenticity.

I create environments for galleries and museums that consists of paintings, sculptures, photographs, writings.

But I also work on something like videos or performance, anything that gives me the opportunity to to work in the material that I'm interested in working with, and also something that makes me feel uncomfortable while working, which is part of my interest.

I set out to do this, do my work always without a plan, only based on writings, and the writings are not really for the content, but rather from from the ethical space in which I'm going to work.

So these new works, you know, are are uncomfortable and difficult.

I'm working on a painting right now that is a difficult painting because I'm setting it up from the beginning to be a difficult painting, a difficult painting to realize in any kind of sophistication.

And I like that program not to be cute, but because in the struggle with that kind of problems, I can discover something about the work itself, what I'm after, and wrestle out of that problem a certain authentic discovery.

Discovery that feels new to me and in which I recognize something basic about that encounter between myself and the work is very hard to know when you can walk away from from my work, when it's done.

I'm always afraid that when I see my work in a museum, a collector's house or something, that I will have thought this needed more work, that needed more there, particularly because I paint over my paintings all the time and change them constantly.

So that fear has been there.

But it has never happened.

Every time I've seen a work, it has had that sense of recognition, resolution and resonance that I used to determine where that work is finished or not.

I think that my trajectory as an artist have been a trajectory from the inside to the outside of what I am when I was a teenager and when I really started to paint a lot and do a lot of work, I think my preoccupations are mostly the inner world, the world that we feel and perceive to be emotion, the emotions of the world and so on.

And slowly, as time has moved, I find myself going outwards to to the world.

I recognize this kind of I don't want to call them objective truth, because in a really objective, but they have a certain quality of being outside of yourself in otherness, something that you cannot completely hold within yourself, and you have to respond to it in some manner.

I became an artist to try to understand the world better, and that's the reason why I'm an artist, and that's that for this edition of Art Rocks.

But remember, you can always watch episodes of the show at LP FB dot on Slash Rocks.

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

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