Coming up this time on our rocks, we visit a very versatile Lake Charles artist who's observer, student and teacher all at once.

Tease apart the tangled web of a weaver's work.

Gain deeper appreciation for one of jazz legends.

Love of music success means you've accomplished something.

These stories up next on Art rocks.

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

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 another Art rocks with me, James Fox Smith from Country Roads magazine.

Today we're looking southwest out to Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Their California born artist, Megan Fleming, shifts between painting and pen and ink, two dimensions and three to random, memorable landscapes, architectural and florals.

Fleming also hand makes paper to create 3D drawings and still finds time for being a professor of art at McNeese State University.

Here, Megan lays down the brushes for a moment to share how it all fits together.

I grew up in Southern California and also upstate New York, and those were very what I would call vertical landscapes, or the cliffs leading down to the ocean in Southern California and in upstate New York.

We had the Catskill Mountains that we looked at over the Hudson River.

And they're very vertical.

And so coming down here, the first time that we drove down to the Gulf, it was so flat, it was so expansive, and I thought how much I really wanted to paint that landscape because I didn't know how to paint it.

I like a problem to solve.

I first started doing landscapes when I was in college.

I took one class.

I had no idea it would be a continued thing for all these years, and I was hooked as soon as I took that class.

Working on the flat surface with the paint, there's a surface tension that I want from the paintings.

Once Hofmann, abstract painter, coined the term push and pull, and this is when you have elements in the painting that appear to be pushing forward or receding backward.

While I might be creating a depth of field to get a sense of the landscape, I'm always thinking about that surface tension.

Maybe there's something that I can pull for that is in the back, because I want you to travel over the surface of the painting.

I don't want it to just be a pictorial representation.

Depth of field is one of those fun things to play with.

It's a rule in art with atmospheric perspective where you're going to have more texture, clarity, detail in the foreground, and as things recede, you're going to have less of that in the background.

I do love a dramatic sky because I know that the light is going to shift, but also when you're painting such an expansive landscape, if you have a really dramatic sky, it creates that push pull.

Without any verticals.

I can rely on a cloud to push that space forward.

Even if the landscape is receding back.

It ties both into the beauty of the drama of the land, but also what I want from that surface of the painting.

With grasses, you always have choice.

Do you get really detailed, or do you suggest to the.

This is a clump of grass.

And that's the beauty of paint, is that you can do a lot with one brushwork.

You can suggest an entire field or a person or a structure or so I do a lot of suggesting, but then I will also, I like to think of it as more specificity than detail.

There are certain areas that I need to make really specific, so that you can feel that texture of the grasses and that you know that that texture is different than water texture or sky texture.

This painting is called passing, seeking refuge.

It has to do with that expansive space and particularly the light.

I love a cloudy sky.

I know I can't anchor that cloud in any one particular spot.

It's going to move, but cloudy skies also have a way of revealing various light patterns.

One of the things I'm drawn to in that expansive landscape is looking for maybe a strip of light that occurs in the background and the clouds are casting shadows somewhere else, and then the light is falling, and it's again that dynamic of light and dark that I find so interesting.

It just reveals the beauty of the landscape.

As I got deeper into the practice of painting landscapes, I just naturally became interested in painting in the environmental issues.

You can't really miss those issues.

I think about that term man in nature.

It tends to separate the two, but I see them as together.

Humans are a part of nature.

And so I think about the way that we are connected to the land.

I have a sense of awe of the land, a sense of reverence.

People have been drawn to my work who are naturally into conservation or just have a deep love of the land.

Even if you're out there enjoying the marshes on your boat or your hunting.

I have done a series of drawings from aerial perspective.

I hired a plane and took photographs, and anyone who's flown in from Houston to Lake Charles has seen this perspective.

It is astounding how much water surrounds the land.

When you're up in the sky and you're looking down, everything seems really fragile.

You just can't believe how much water is around there.

Some of that is just the natural way a marsh is, and some of it is from land loss.

And so the series of aerial drawings that I did, I stripped away all the color because people have associations with color, have it black and white.

And this created that positive negative space.

So the negative anywhere where I didn't have any marks, that was the water and the positive is the land.

It's pretty clear there's either land or there is not.

I think when you see it from that perspective, maybe it just brings a little bit more awareness.

I wanted to paint flowers.

I had a big mess to it.

So I got the hydrangeas and then as soon as I started looking at them, I saw that they had all these little tiny flowers.

I worked with the mass of the whole form first, and then started to work with the darker values, to push in underneath the little flowers and then to pull out the light on top of them.

So I'm always looking at that relationship between dark and light or the color, how I can articulate something without describing every single leaf.

It goes back to that suggestion of the same with the marsh grasses.

How can I suggest that within this ball of the hydrangea, there are also smaller elements in it?

I'm always looking at that relationship of color and light and tone.

I tell my students all the time, painting is the language of color and light, so that's ultimately what I'm thinking of all the time in the studio.

Those patches of paint that our next to each other, the color, the light, the tone, and how they are going to harmonize with each other.

I do like to have architecture in there, because it brings that push and pull right up to the surface.

The paintings that have houses in them tend to be places that I know.

So it might be from my backyard or my neighborhood or a family's house.

There are more intimate spaces.

I did a whole series of just the trees in my backyard, and for anyone else, they could have looked like trees anywhere.

But they were trees that I was deeply familiar with.

The way that the branches criss over and the density of foliage.

There is a method of working with handmade paper that is called pop painting.

And so there are people that make very descriptive, highly detailed pulp paintings.

They look like painting with pigment.

I like that method of handmade paper, but I have only done handmade paper for about the past ten years.

So with a new medium, I wanted to work with it completely differently.

So three dimensionally.

And I think of them as three dimensional drawings.

So this work with handmade paper is called title patterns.

And so I'm thinking about the ebb and flow of the tides.

Having grown up in Southern California, I'm feeling very connected to the ocean, having the Gulf pretty close by here.

I'm always thinking about the tide coming in and coming out.

So we have a baby coming in, going out, coming in, and that movement that you'll see in nature.

And so I don't think of this as a landscape, but more like a gestural, three dimensional drawing where you get that movement that happens, being able to have a studio and to paint and being able to teach healing and joy and papermaking, they talk to each other.

When I'm in the studio and I'm working, I'm also thinking about how can I bring this back to the classroom and things that come up in the classroom.

My students inspire me all the time, so they might say something or do something, or ask a question that I then bring back to the studio.

It's such an amazing career.

It's not always easy, but ultimately you want your students to find their own personal expression.

You don't want them to paint like you.

You want them to find their way in the world.

And that's such a rewarding experience.

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For more on these exhibitions and others, consider Country Roads Magazine available in print, online, or by e-newsletter.

Ever been curious about the process of weaving a design onto fabric?

If so, here comes a treat for the senses.

Kent, Ohio is where you need to go to find fiber artist Janice Lessman Moss, head of the textile arts program at Kent State University.

Janice embraces technological and hands on approaches to weaving, combining both to render detailed and abstract works of fabric art.

Here's her story.

When I say that I'm a weaver, people generally assume that I am making garments, or that I am making fabric for function, and it takes a while for me to convince them that, in fact, it is a medium.

Just like painting, that allows you to create abstract images for the wall, for contemplation, for, you know, visual enjoyment.

And it usually doesn't resonate so well until they see them.

And then it makes sense because they recognize that I can do all of the things that other people can do with other mediums, with color and with form and with texture.

But it happens with that intersection of thread.

I work digitally, I do all my designs digitally, and I am interested in the kind of the mathematical aspects of working with geometric forms and the count of threads in both directions, you know, like that right brain, left brain kind of intersection that weaving allows.

They allude to my interest in walking.

And walking is a very linear movement.

And weaving is a very linear process.

Walking allows you to kind of move forward, but also to kind of linger.

It's a slow movement.

Weaving is a slow process.

I always call it a slow art.

It's a very slow art.

And when I am designing, I'm actually thinking of that same notion of movement, kind of following a path.

So I create a path on a template of circles within squares, and I create these paths, and those paths end up being the kind of the contours or the outlines of shapes, and they create.

Sometimes they're just lines and sometimes they establish shapes.

And I put other patterns within those shapes.

So everything kind of builds in that same systematic way, in the kind of ordered way, and yet deviates from any kind of real plan.

It's just that it it is ordered because of the nature of the structure.

Once I've done the design, the weaving process itself is really following through on that plan.

I feed it to the loom and then the loom reads it, and then I press a button and the threads are raised according to what I have programed, however.

I mean, it's like an architect, you know, you have some design, you know, you can visualize and you can see from your design this is what's going to happen.

What actually happens is sometimes different.

And the whole experience of coming in contact with this material and having it grow before your very eyes is amazing.

I've been working with metal introduced into the weaving for years, minimally work that I did in the spring of 2020.

At the beginning of the pandemic, I started to put more and more metal into the weaving, which adds an element of shine.

And I felt, you know, in thinking about it, that it was this attempt to kind of create a sense of hope, you know, just have some little bright spots in my weaving.

They appear as you move around the weaving.

You see this, the shine kind of emanating, and then it'll tuck back behind.

So it's it's this sense of almost shadow and light.

And I like that, that kind of surprise, that mystery.

And I started working with those smaller kind of orbs of, or circles of, metal.

And then I introduced this one as I went kind of crazy with the introduction of the metal, because I just felt like I really wanted some light in there.

And I really love in this piece, they almost look like little trails of, like, slug trails.

That kind of a wet, trail that is illuminated depending on what the lighting is like.

And I love that it it's so imperfect that it has that sense of organic movement that is more like nature.

You learn so much every time you make something, you see something that that maybe you didn't think about before.

And it's a very satisfying journey.

I mean, you're you're going through life and you're able to make these visual statements, pieces that you hope other people enjoy looking at and finding meaning in.

Whether they see what I see in it isn't totally relevant.

The the work is directed by it, personal, you know, interest and inspiration.

But people may look at it, they bring other histories to the engagement with the colors and the engagement with the relationship of lines.

And they might say, oh, it looks like this.

It looks like that.

It reminds me of that.

So that's okay.

If you're looking at it and you're taking the time to think about it, I, I'm happy about that.

I'm grateful for that.

When he was well into his 80s, Louisianas Little Jimmy Reed told us that it was continuing to play music that kept him young.

The same philosophy seems to be working for Saint Petersburg, Florida jazz legend John Lamb, now in his 90s, this talented double bassist, who was once a member of Duke Ellington's orchestra, shows no signs of slowing down.

Here's the story of John Lamb's long and melodious career.

How did I get interested in music?

Oh yeah, we had to go to church and all the ladies and men were involved in singing every Sunday.

And I was a kid sitting on the second row, and I learned from that how to get into the music and feel.

I think that's where it started.

So after high school, I went in the military.

They took me into the Air Force as a tuba player.

I stayed in the military about 8 or 9 years and got out.

That's when I met Duke Ellington.

John was a wonderful player and got recruited in the 60s to play for Duke Ellington, and he kind of thought Duke was a little bit, over the hill at that point.

He was more interested in Miles Davis.

His wife said, take that gig.

And it turned out to be the greatest gig.

Of his life.

They toured all over the world.

They won Grammys.

At first one, they said they were going overseas.

I said, no, I can't, I don't want to do that.

Then Mercer came.

Lindsey's.

Try it anyway.

You might like it.

So I continued on.

I said, okay, I'll try it for a month.

So I went over, sort of fell into the musicians habit.

He and Buster Cooper, who's a trombone player with Ellington.

At that same time, Buster moved here in Saint Petersburg, and John and his wife followed.

They were educators.

John in particular, I know, mentored a lot of the young jazz talent that we have here, and he continues to do that.

John has got a real spark to him, and it's kind of hard to explain what that star quality is.

He'll be out in the audience.

He comes to a lot of music and before long they're going to have him on stage because they hey, John's here, everyone's excited that he shows up, and I think it's that star quality that he brings and the presence that he has and the talent that he continues to show off to the world.

And he's from here.

Well, I've known John for the better part of nearly 40 years.

I took bass lessons when I got out of high school from him originally.

That's how I met him.

But over the years we've worked together on the music scene and musically, he's always been a huge inspiration.

You know, playing with Duke Ellington.

He learned all these great tricks over the years and fun things on stage.

He'll come in here and say, hey, let's play something, you know, slow and melancholy, and he'll start.

He'll stomp it off.

Other times he's going to sit down at the piano with us and say, hey, let's play some blues and let's go.

Everyone loves to play with John because they never know, like I said, what to expect.

He can take that song and push it a certain way and make a singer or a trumpet player or whatever kind of follow his his lead.

And it's a it's a fun it's a fun time to watch that happen.

He's teaching how to.

He has a strength still.

He is a force.

He has the ability, the knowledge.

It's all there.

It's all clear.

And we're always happy to see him and and have him join us on stage.

He's kind of like this wise elder.

If he feels like I need to hear it, he'll pull me aside.

If I feel like I need something, I'll pull him aside.

He's been a, a constant supporting figure, not only for me, but for a lot of local musicians.

It's it's incredible.

But it's just more than just that knowledge.

You can't.

There's some people, you can't talk to you about the education.

They will never know what you're talking about.

You have to be able to communicate it to them in a different way.

And music taught me how to do that.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

We've been celebrating his birthday since he turned 80.

We did 80, we did 85, and the last one for 90.

We had 600 people in the audience to see John perform.

But what we really had was every jazz musician in the area wanted to be part of that show.

And we had the best and the brightest, all who were influenced and loved John.

And we're happy to be on the stage.

Success means you accomplished something, you know?

But to me, I suppose I had to keep doing, to survive.

I mean, I had enough, you know, keep me going.

But I wanted to survive.

You know, I wasn't trying to get rich.

I was already rich already from inside.

The circle around it will always be there.

It's a whole being.

Everything, man.

You feel it?

It's there.

All you have to do is just tune in.

I really been a great a great influence, not only in my life, but I know in so many other people's lives.

He's always touched people.

And I've never had somebody say anything bad.

They've always said, John Lamb.

Oh, I love John Lamb.

Everybody I know has said, I love John.

So I love John.

And John's impact on this community is not that hard to measure.

It's in every jazz performer that I know of his, he's inside them because he's inspired them.

And you're going to feel his legacy for decades to come, because all these guys have learned from him, and they're going to take that out into the world.

That's it.

Lots of artists look to specific places to find inspiration.

The sculptor John Martini discovered the landscapes, the atmosphere and the community.

He needs to keep his creative juices flowing in Key West, Florida.

So let's sail away and visit John in his studio.

My name is John Martini.

I'm a sculptor and printmaker.

I've been in Key West since 1976.

I've been working in this studio since about 1983.

There's a really tight community, people really supportive.

When I first got here, there was two.

There was two galleries, and there was an influx of of hippies and gay, big, big gay input, at that time.

And they kind of began to rebuild Key West in a, in a really nice way with lots of small business, locally owned businesses.

They like to kind of water the restaurants, the bars.

When Aids hit, we were hit really, really hard.

The arts community and especially we lost so many, so many, so many good, good artists.

And I've never really recovered from that.

The work is sort of not traditionally dimensional in terms of sculpture, but I feel like that the color and the edges create a sense of volume and also a sense of kind of timelessness.

I try to make the work look like you can't place it in time that it's been.

It's been there or it was there before.

It will be thereafter.

And also I'm going to make prints, which I love to do.

And it's, always modern prints and it's very, very immediate process.

And it finishes.

I was never much of a painter because I was always full of regrets.

So a lot of print is finished and it's a surprise.

You just you pull the print off the press and you have what you have and you're really not sure what you're going to get.

And it's real, real immediate and it's real fast as opposed to, you know, my work now is pretty much done when the sketches decided upon, you know, just kind of scale it up and there's not much change in the pieces in the process.

Any changes are done in the sketches.

So the Monroe prints are, are really direct, which is what I would prefer.

I mean, which I really give me pleasure, as it were, you know, to, to, to pull something from wherever it comes from.

I don't know.

I'm not a particularly ambitious or driven.

I've given up that, you know, you realize that not you think that things are going to change your life.

You know, you get a show in Paris or New York or something that somehow your life is going to be all different, but nothing ever changes, you know?

I mean, it doesn't really change.

You just continue on.

I'm very lucky I've been able to continue to work and support myself, which is an amazing, amazing, really.

Once you're actually working, then, then it's coming.

You know, the next things appearing.

And that is that for this edition of Art rocks.

But never mind because more episodes of the show are always available at lpb.org/art rocks.

And if you love stories like these, consider Country Roads.

The magazine makes a vital guide for learning what's taking shape in Louisiana's cultural life all across the state.

Until next week.

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

West Baton Rouge Museum is proud to provide local support for this program on LPB, 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.