[announcer 1] Art Loft is brought to you by: [announcer 2] Where there is freedom, There is expression.

The Florida Keys and Key West.

[announcer 1] The Miami-Dade County Tourist Development Council, the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, and The Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor, and The Board of County Commissioners, and The Friends of South Florida PBS.

Art Loft.

It's the pulse of what's happening in our own backyard, as well as a taste of the arts across the United States.

In this episode: Mixing Mediums.

We meet a classically trained print maker, an artist painting with glass, and a program giving new dance graduates a leg up.

[adele myers] There is an electricity in our community right now in Miami.

And especially in the dance community.

There are these different generations that are coming up, that are inventing new ways of presenting work.

Very fresh ways of creating art.

When the public comes to the performance tonight, what they can expect is to wander from one gallery to the next, and to watch the performers execute these exquisite solos, duets, ensemble works, that are inspired by the visual art that it is on exhibit at the P rez.

And so you get this beautiful connection of the visual art, and the live art, and an intimate experience for the audience as they watch the dancers.

I think programs like Miami Dance Makers, provide patrons of the museum and visitors, with a way to experience not only the art on the walls, but other artists responding to that work.

And it really makes the experience of being at a museum come even that much more alive.

[adele myers] What we wanna do is help support them by connecting them with personal connections, to professional performing arts networks throughout Miami.

The way we do it is we partner each of the Miami Dance Makers with a creative development partner, and the creative development partners are theaters throughout Miami, and they include South Miami Dade Cultural Arts Center, Miami Light Project, Live Arts Miami, and Young Arts.

I got placed with Live Arts Miami.

I really like their organization, and it's been super cool learning from what they do.

We have been able to make connections with people who are already working in the industry.

I got paired with South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center.

So, I was able to use their facilities and their dance studios to rehearse, and create my own work inspired by artwork from P rez Art Museum.

[adele myers] You can imagine what it's like being a student trying to graduate in dance during this time, during this pandemic.

It's been really tough on them.

It's been an opportunity of a lifetime.

I think it was a big like chunk of stone that we all needed to just step onto to help us get out into the real world.

Now it just feels very official.

Like we're here.

We're part of the real dance world, and it just it's a lot of feelings, but I feel very, very lucky.

Being commissioned in a more professional setting was very exciting and very rewarding for this performance.

And it's like, it was an easy transition from student life to professional.

And it's like very helpful to be able to get these connections right out of college, which is usually very difficult.

A lot of people, I feel don't think that there's a lot of opportunity in Miami compared to New York.

But there really is a lot of opportunity here and it's beautiful, and artists are very grateful, and it's a very inspiring community.

It has been wonderful.

Actually, wanted to start and bring back more so the arts to Miami, once you graduate, because a lot of dancers think, and artists all over, to move to New York and move to LA and move all these places, but to keep it here in Miami because we have such a beautiful thing here.

So, it's been awesome being a part of this and able to rebuild and maintain, and hopefully realize that whoever is graduating next, that they can stay here and still have opportunities and make something for themselves.

This moment is more than just a debut.

I can see their hearts are full.

I see they have hope.

I see that they feel supported and loved by their community.

They've made so many brave choices as artists.

It marks I think, a point of departure for them that is extremely positive, and I think is going to fill them with a lot of hope and bravery moving forward.

[announcer] Follow the Miami Dance Maker's Community Engagement Initiative online at AdeleMyersAndDancers.com.

Louisiana Public Broadcasting brings us the story of printmaker Brian Kelly, a fine artist and teacher at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

I'm a printmaker, and I work on the four disciplines: woodcut, lithography, but also etching, and silkscreen.

Lithography is probably my main process, and lithography is a printing process that utilizes limestone, or aluminum plate, or photo plates.

And the artist generates an image on one of those matrices.

And, then once the image is completed, it is processed using gum Arabic, nitric acid, and sometimes phosphoric acid.

And then ink is applied to that surface, and then that ink is then transferred to paper.

So, it's a planographic printing process, that really embraces drawing, draftsmanship, which is a core of what my work is about.

And woodcut is a process in which you utilize a piece of wood, or a piece of linoleum.

A drawing is executed on that matrix, and then you use gouges to remove material.

Material that's removed does not accept ink.

Material that's left does accept ink.

Silk screen is a printing process that utilizes a mesh that is stretched onto a wooden frame.

And you draw on that mesh.

You can draw with screen filler or drawing fluid, or you can coat the screen with a photo sensitive emulsion, and you can shoot to that screen a photographic image.

Then once the images are processed, whether it's photo, photo emulsion or whether it's screen fill or drawing fluid, there are areas that are stencil or blocked out.

Areas that are open, ink is then spread across the screen.

The areas that are open ink will pass through onto the printing paper.

All the printing processes have the ability to make multiples.

I enjoy the idea of making multiples of an image.

I've always been interested in pattern, line, texture.

Those are things that are part of my drawing vocabulary.

And I've always been interested in balance, symmetry, and asymmetry.

And even I play asymmetry within a composition that forces symmetry within it.

So, I I've always had that and always thought that way.

The current body of work certainly is more of a visual representation of that.

All my prints start out in my head as a visual black and white kind of image.

I conceive them that way as I'm drawing.

So color really is kind of a a secondary element to the image.

It supports the main image.

When I do shift into using color, it really is more of a organic thing.

It creeps in.

And sometimes it creeps in with just one color.

Other times it creeps in, it's two, and it just sort of grows from there.

I didn't use a lot of color until I came down to Louisiana.

When I was up in Illinois, it was really black and white.

The color is very different here, and it's acidic.

It's bright, it's saturated.

My work is autobiographical.

It's always been that way.

My work is about my experiences going all the way back to when I was a child, and my earliest memories, all the way through current day.

It's a reflection and documentation of all my experiences in the landscape, experiences between myself and other people.

And sometimes the characters and the elements within the work take the form of animals.

Sometimes I take the forms of people, but I'm also thinking about universality, meaning experiences that we all have and we all can connect to.

And I think that's really important.

Will the viewer or ever know my language completely or how I'm personifying something?

Probably not.

And that's okay.

My personal experiences, although unique for me, they're similar to a lot of people.

We all have early memories.

We all have death in the family.

We all go through struggles.

We all have that our favorite dog who passes away.

I have dyslexia, and I have learning disabilities in comprehension and retention.

When I was diagnosed, I was in first grade.

Back then, if you were labeled learning disabled, you went to a special classroom for maybe the whole day, or maybe a few hours, until you went back to your classroom for the subjects that you were handling.

So for me, I was removed from the class in the morning.

And I was gone a big part of the day.

It would happen at about 9:30, and I would get up and I would walk out the classroom door into a hallway.

And as I walked in the hallway, other kids would leave their classrooms, and they would show up in the hallway, and we would all walk to the special-ed room.

And this went through high school.

One of the things that's always in the work, and it's connected to that, is borders, frames.

The, the frame of the hallway, walking down that, all of those years, has stuck in the work.

The disabilities was challenging for sure.

At the same time, it was a blessing, because it taught me a lot about perseverance.

It also taught me a lot about how to be an artist.

It's given me fuel and things to draw from that that have shown up in the work for years.

Illinois is very different when it comes to art education.

Even when I was a student, back in the early seventies, I think there were pretty progressive.

So, so art was a mandated subject, K through 12.

I remember drawing in kindergarten, and I've drawn since.

My name's GeoVanna Gonzalez, and I'm from Los Angeles, California.

What brought me to Miami was really random.

I was living in Berlin at the time, and kind of felt like I needed to come back home in some form or fashion.

And not necessarily LA home, but back to the states.

And so, I started to just do some research on like different residency programs, or artist programs, that I can maybe apply to that would help to determine like where I would land.

And one of them was here in Miami, which is now Oolite.

I got accepted into that and decided, why not?

And I moved here.

The first day that I landed here, I immediately felt at home.

There's huge Caribbean communities here, Latin America, Central America.

And, this is where like my peoples come from.

So, you know?

Even though I'm not at my family's house, I'm still at home, and that's everything from going to LaGuardia and picking out produce, to walking down the street, to riding my bike throughout the city, to meeting people.

Hey!

My artistic practice has different elements to it.

So it's partially, you know, making work, then partially being a curator, and partially working within the community.

And I don't separate any of those things.

I kind of just came to the realization that it was kind of all intertwined.

And once I started to do that, I really think that the overall work became better.

I already had had this idea kind of breaking down the barrier that there's this notion of who art is for?

Supplement Projects engages with the public and community.

I would print flyers, go door-to-door, tell people what I was doing, and then invite them over.

And so, you kind of have a variety of people that are coming, everything from like Abuelita, to the little kids, to like other family members, to just my neighbors across the street.

For some of them, it was their first time kind of engaging with art.

For a lot of them, they never necessarily went to a museum.

Supplement Projects also is like primarily working within a sort of "group show" idea.

And for me, that's a beautiful opportunity for people to grow larger in community, right?

And kind of see the connections that they have with their peers around them.

Come here.

And so, in some way, the art community is also showing up in my work, and vice versa.

Hey.

So for the sort of making of the work I'm definitely interested in material, and I'm interested in how the material can carry a narrative.

How do other people perceive you?

And how do you perceive yourself?

Identity representation, and thinking about perception, right?

Working with certain materials can achieve that narrative.

You're not seeing an actual representation of what those things can look like, but you're seeing a sort of abstract representation of how those things can be communicated.

Working with metal has allowed me to think about the sort of fluidity that it has, and how malleable it is.

It has such a strong association with it being a male practice, just even that in itself, you know, shifts, maybe the notions of representation, and who you think maybe this work is by, and what it means.

And so I'm still kind of pushing that and figuring out ways in which I can still communicate those same narratives within the work.

I think it's important to have this sort of support, like as in Commissioner.

Not only does it allow you to be encouraged to continue going, but I think, also in terms of the people that are collecting the work, are able to then follow you along your journey, right?

We, as individuals, and also artists develop obviously as time goes on.

So they have something of yours early on, in some way.

it's encouraging as an artist, you know?

To keep on going forward.

[announcer] To learn more about GeoVanna's work, check out her website at Geo-Vanna.com We head to Shreveport, Louisiana to meet fiber artist, Sherry Tamburo.

From a very young age, I was always involved in some type of material, or a fiber.

My mother sewed, and thought it would be a good idea for me to learn.

In the seventies, I got involved with the Expansion Arts Program in Florida.

So I learned how to weave.

So I have a couple of looms.

I learned how to spin.

I mainly work in wool, silk, sometimes bamboo fibers.

And sometimes I get the fleece, that is, that I have to take, and wash and card, and dye.

So, it's all sustainable materials.

Nothing has to die.

Recently, I was in a workshop in Austin, by a woman from the Netherlands, and she taught a class on making coats, and it's I made a coat and it's just, it's all one piece.

You have to make it so large, five times as big as the coat.

Because wool shrinks.

And then we laid the fiber on there, and we had to add different pieces, so we'd get the fullness.

And then we have the sleeves, no glue, no sewing.

It's all manipulated.

Wool has scales in it.

And when it's warmed up, and there's friction, the scales open, and then they connect to each other.

So the scarves with the silk, I have a silk base, which I dye all my silk.

And then I lay the wool on the silk.

Now, I have to use cold water, because, I don't want the wool to felt before it goes through the silk.

There's no sewing on these.

It's a piece of silk and it's wool.

By slowly massaging the fibers, they go through the silk and connect on the other side, and it becomes one continuous piece of fabric.

I'm experimenting with doing a lot of pods.

It's kind of like magic, because you put the fibers down, and then you wet them with warm, soapy water.

And then you wrap them in a pool noodle, and you use bubble wrap, and then you roll.

It's labor intensive, but you get a good workout.

When it starts coming together, it takes a form of its own.

You have to sculpt it, because wool has a memory.

I have an idea, I have a sketchbook.

So, I try and sketch everything out before I do it.

It doesn't always come out like my sketch, but it is close.

Wool is so durable.

They last forever.

Hats.

I do hats.

I love making hats, and I'm doing some jewelry.

Some necklaces.

The bases I make using a resist.

It's called a resist, and it's floor underlayment.

You know, if you're putting down pergo or something, there's that white base that you put down before you put it on there?

Well I use that for my resist.

So you cut a shape out.

Everything starts out flat, and you put fiber on one side, then you flip it, put fiber on the other side.

And you do that, usually usually do four or five layers, so that you can get a really nice, thick belt.

And then you cut a hole, and you pull your resist out.

And then you start to get your shape.

This is five layers of wool on here.

But then this is eucalyptus here, and then I have some roses in here, rose peddles, and rose leaves, which give a nice green.

And the whole thing was eco printed.

[announcer] Follow Sherry on Instagram @sttamburo.

My name is Donna Coffin, and I do glass frit painting.

It's not really paint.

It's painting with colored glass.

And I take crushed glass called frit, and I make art with it.

And that's what I've been doing for about seven years now.

The steps in this kind of work involve mixing up powdered black glass, crushed glass, into a goo, that you can put into a squeeze bottle, and using a very fine tip, you do your drawing on a piece of clear glass.

The next stage, is to start layering on your colors.

So, I have a little scooper, and this is this is a fine crushed glass.

It's a little bit coarser than the powdered glass.

I take that and I start making my layers of color on the glass.

Then I take the paintbrush, and you gently push it back into the area that you want to be in this case, orange.

Okay, the next color I wanna put on is a little bit of red.

I wanna create a sense of shadow in, in the, the wing areas.

So I'm gonna put a little red in here.

This is opal glass.

It's going to fire.

You're not gonna be able to see through it, but I want some opal areas in here.

Basically, I'm just building up my glass layers.

I'm gonna add a little white.

Through trial and error, I've learned what works and what doesn't work.

What colors will go together, and what colors won't.

And that's just simply done by practice.

When I'm happy with it, I'll take.

This is a mix of three, four different colors of red.

And I'll just sort of scatter them around.

When I'm all ready and done with it, and it's ready to go in the kiln, I very gently, carefully sit it over in the kiln.

Here's one that I've got of a puffer fish.

There's my drawing.

Here's the puffer fish, ready to go in the kiln.

A firing takes eight hours, and it has to cool down overnight so that you don't shock the glass.

If you heat glass too fast, or cool it too quickly, it will crack.

And it will create stress inside.

The crack might be right then when you could see it, or it might happen a week later.

After it comes out, it might look like this.

Or like this, and then I can take it and drill holes and hang it, or mount it, or, or I can fire it again and add more color to it.

Glass can be anything.

You can do anything you want with glass.

So, you know, there's other things you can do with it.

Turn it into bowls, turn it into, you know, vessels.

I like to be able to see through the glass and have a feeling that it is glass.

I could paint on canvas as well, but that doesn't give you the same feeling of transparency and light.

And down here in The Keys, were surrounded by so much light, and the colors bouncing off the water, and the sky and, and everything.

There's such a, a great feeling of light down here, that that's what I try to capture in my glass, is that feeling of glass, and light, and transparency.

[announcer] Find more about Donna Coffin's work at artistsinparadise.com.

And continue the arts conversation on Instagram, @artloftsfl.

Find full episodes, segments, and more at artloftsfl.org and on YouTube at South Florida PBS.

[announcer 1] Art Loft is brought to you by: [announcer 2] Where there is freedom, there is expression.

The Florida Keys and Key West.

The Miami-Dade County Tourist Development Council, the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, and The Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor, and The Board of County Commissioners, and the Friends of South Florida PBS.