[narrator] "Art Loft" is brought to you by.

[narrator] Where there is freedom, there is expression.

The Florida Keys and Key West.

[narrator] And the Friends of South Florida, PBS.

[narrator] "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, public art and graffiti.

Once an unsanctioned form of expression explore how graffiti has gained in popularity, and joins the ranks of art in the public sector.

[alan] We give context to the walls that you might see when you walk around this neighborhood.

[narrator] And learn how makers create art for all.

[melissa] If you put a little piece of colored cellophane on top of the flash only it will turn the entire piece a color.

Then you own that piece at the end.

[alan] My name is Alan Ket, and I'm the co-founder of the Museum of Graffiti.

[allison] Allison Freidin.

I'm the co-founder of the Museum of Graffiti in Miami, Florida.

The Museum of Graffiti is the only museum of its kind in the world.

We give context to the walls that you might see when you walk around this neighborhood.

One of the most important exhibitions that we currently have on display is called "Style Masters: The Birth of the Graffiti Art Movement."

And that exhibition takes you from 1970 when this was an art form started by kids tagging their names on the streets of New York City, and Philadelphia, and Los Angeles, and shows how it evolved from simple print writing on walls and on trains to an art form that started to have style.

And then we go into the emergence of these artists into the art galleries.

How did that happen?

Why did that happen?

You get to see original works of art created in the 1980s.

And we continue along this timeline to show the emergence of this art form in Miami.

And we go through the '90s, 2000s, now, as it moves out of New York City, travels across the world.

Here in America goes onto freight trains, and criss-crosses all over the country, and introduces this youthful art form to audiences everywhere.

What separates graffiti from any other art form is the desire for the mastery of letters, how to bend them and tweak them and enlarge them, and make them your own.

And so when some people talk about street art and they ask what's the difference between street art and graffiti?

Well, street art has to do more with imagery.

Graffiti is about lettering.

So what we're looking at here is a site-specific mural by Defer from Los Angeles.

What we teach about every single day at the Museum of Graffiti is how looking at each one of these walls can give you context clues to where these artists are from.

For instance, in this wall you can see how Defer incorporates inspiration of Los Angeles gang graffiti by taking something that society typically looks at as bitter, or as violent, he makes it beautiful.

And we like to compare this, or contrast it to this wall by JonOne.

JonOne was a trained painter.

He did huge pieces on the subways in New York City.

And it's so important to see how two graffiti writers who are doing the same genre of art can have such a different take.

This is the world's largest art form.

It has practitioners all over the world.

That fact that it's sort of expanding, and going around the world, and very open to anybody picking it up, and adding something to it has started to change the perception of this being purely a vandal's movement to an art form that is celebrated, and accepted globally and desired globally.

Communities have woken up.

And that's where we are today, which is that social norms, and cultural norms have shifted.

Just the way that they've done in other areas of low-level crimes, people are opening up and seeing the benefit to including this type of art form within our country.

My personal history.

I'm from New York City.

I started painting in Brooklyn, New York as a teenager in the 1980s.

I painted exclusively illegally.

I painted the trains.

I painted the walls and I've gotten arrested.

And it didn't dissuade me from being a participant in this art movement.

As a matter of fact, it made me sort of more entrenched.

And the Museum of Graffiti today is sort of the project that I dreamed of.

And I was able to convince artists that normally would not give their artwork to anybody to allow me to have it because they trusted me.

They know me as a member of the community.

This art form has not been celebrated by museums in the past.

We had to make our own museum.

[narrator] The exhibits continue outside the museum walls.

You can find the latest on their Instagram @museumofgraffiti [haiiileen] Hi, my name is Haiiileen, and welcome to Aciiid Bubble.

Aciiid Bubble has become a world outside of its own.

I was very much inspired coming out of COVID understanding there needs to be a need of distortion, a need of hope and happiness, reminiscing of other times in life.

Utilizing these materials since developing artwork during COVID, I utilized a lot of upcycling material.

All the different colored pieces, and textures and materials were all utilized from previous products, and recreated into this little bubble of happiness.

[narrator] WOSU Public Media transports us to Columbus, Ohio, where artist, Melissa Vogley Woods, creates illuminating public pieces that the viewer can actually keep.

So this was back in March when I started the work.

It's just called "Always."

I really wanted to do a piece that was in the public eye that addressed the very fresh condition of dealing with the pandemic.

And I realized that I really wanted to talk about getting past this moment.

I started to look at art from different eras after certain plagues.

And the pandemic that was the closest in relationship was the Spanish flu what they called the Spanish flu.

So I started to look at work that was made in the exact year when it ended, which was 1920.

I found a piece by Raoul Dufy that was a pattern, like a fabric pattern that he had designed, which I felt was perfect.

And it would block the window and block the view, but also accentuate the space in between public and private.

We were stuck at home.

I had to deal with what I had at my house, and I just happened to have this high-reflective vinyl that I had used on a similar project in 2010.

The vinyl itself is just like a very neutral gray, and you can't really see it unless you use a flash.

So the work itself can be seen in the daylight, but it's most effective at night when you bring your cell phone and turn on the flash.

Now because it's high-density reflective vinyl, it flashes back the equal intensity of the light.

So when you do use a flash on your camera on your phone all of the pattern lights back at you.

And so that just came naturally.

It was like the vinyl, the windows, the pattern, the reflection, the interaction.

People can see the work without having to be near anyone.

You can activate it from your car.

So over my shoulder is a really exciting piece by Melissa Vogley Woods, and it's called "Always CMA."

And it's actually a piece that has a pattern that was extrapolated from a work from our collection.

It's Louis Bouche's "Still Life with Flowers" that was painted in 1919 during the Spanish influenza.

Melissa had the wonderful idea to kind of remind everybody that we are in a very difficult moment, but that it will pass.

With this work it was the same concept to make the same point, but it really leveraged art history in a different way because it is at an institution.

And she took the pattern from this more traditional looking still life with a big, beautiful, energetic grouping of flowers.

And she made a very abstract geometric pattern, which she then tiled into this beautiful wallpaper to cover this whole glass canopy.

This is the first piece that I've made that I didn't make with my hands.

It's been really, really collaborative.

The museum did a lot of work to find this vinyl, and I believe it's 130 feet.

It's something that you're gonna be able to experience in any different kind of condition.

If there's a second wave, if it's cold, if it's rainy, if you can't see the museum, if it's off hours, it's just it's always gonna be there.

And it creates a really beautiful entranceway to the museum, especially, as we'll be reopening after a long period of closure.

[melissa] Also, If you put a little piece of colored cellophane on top of the flash only, it will turn the entire piece a color.

Then you own that piece at the end.

This museum which was founded in 1878 has survived two world wars, the Great Depression, the Spanish influenza pandemic, and we will survive this too.

And that basically was the message that Melissa's piece was also reflecting at the same time.

Something about the light being brought to the piece from within that you have that light on you.

And this piece is just a reflection of what you already hold in yourself.

And I felt that was really important shining this kind of beacon of hope back to the people who came to see the work.

[narrator] Next up, PBS Reno profiles artist, Nicole Ashton, who creates large-scale interactive pieces.

She says her inspiration hits when she's asleep.

I certainly am an artist who works in all mediums, but over the years I have come to realize that my passion truly lies in interactive public art.

It can reach the masses.

It is there and lives on, will outlive me, and will still be making an impact.

Interactive public art is something as small as a little painting on a wall.

Something that grabs your attention, draws you into it, or something as large as a monument.

Something that you can go touch, feel, get inside of, be a part of it, move things around, and anything that makes you feel like you are a piece of the art.

Public art doesn't work without people.

Curiosity kind of opens up to their own dreams, gets the mind going, and, hopefully, sparks something creative in all the people that go to see it.

All of my sculptures, they always start with a dream, and it's more like they're a machine instead of art.

If I don't take the time to sketch it out, write things down when I wake up, I'll have the same dream the next night.

That gets repetition.

So, I finally just gave in and I was like, all right, I'm gonna follow this.

I'm gonna do this every morning.

And that's how "Transcendent Souls" came about.

That was my first solo piece that I worked on that was that large of a scale.

It was a crash course in structural engineering.

How to figure out taking a model that's this big to something that's 28 feet tall, and thinking about all of the structural engineering needs and wind load.

"Transcendent Souls" really is about the progression of our own souls.

Going through the steps and acknowledging our faults, our strengths, and doing everything in a manner of grace.

As long as you believe in what you're doing, and just keep going, do it step-by-step that's the process that's worked for me.

"As You Wish" was the project after "Transcendent Souls."

And it is all about going in with the intention knowing what your heart's desire is what your wish is.

In that I was kind of pulling from myself all my doubts.

The fear of not having funds to buy the materials, and how it's gonna work, but when you're in that process and you've gone that far you'll do anything you can to make it happen.

"Dreamcaster" is an opportunity to look into all of the what what-ifs.

It's really important when you're doing a large-scale piece to do a maquette so you can get a better idea of what your build process is going to be.

I've become the person that thinks about things like shipping and building.

So how do you make it fit into a box?

Where are you gonna separate it?

How's it gonna get loaded?

That part of the process is really a good place to start.

The pieces are going to be all reclaimed with the exception of structural steel.

Inside the framework of those hexagons of the dome will be individual dreamcasters.

They're meant to all be different.

The top of the dome will have another crystal, and this time we're gonna go dig it out ourself.

Anybody can do this.

It's all about just having the drive and the will to do it.

And I hope that that's what everybody who experiences it walks away with.

Public art for me, it's meant to inspire.

It's meant to excite.

It can even be meant to get you angry, meant to push you to make a change.

Hopefully, it just gets their wheels turning, and they go off and they do amazing things.

[narrator] See more of these guerrilla style dance performances at themiamisitesminiseries.com My name is Craig Gray, and I'm a sculptor here in Stock Island, Florida.

For about 15 years, I carved gravestones.

I did granite countertops, and then I also carved other artist's sculptures.

And so that's how I kind of backed into the arts.

Then I got inspiration and decided to pursue my own work.

I had a residency at The Studios of Key West, a great organization, six years ago, and then six months later, my family and I moved to Florida.

Up north I was primarily a stone carver, and I did a little bit of metal work.

And then I came down here, and the only stone available was coral rock, which doesn't lend itself very well to carving.

It's a very soft stone, not durable over the long-term.

So I started searching for another medium.

In South Florida, the exteriors of buildings are stucco.

So, this piece is a set of orange slices.

I haven't finished painting the yellow yet.

And usually I define it some.

It's hollow.

It's made of masonry backer board, metal lath, and stucco.

And then I carve the stucco to give the slices definition.

This is one of the pieces that's up in Jacksonville, Florida.

The highway into creating public art, which I specifically moved to Florida is there is close to 100 public art programs, all shapes and sizes, all different types of communities.

And the great thing about Florida, and a few other states is they lease art.

This is a set of candy hearts.

This one here I'm refurbing.

It was out on display in Hyattsville, Maryland for about two years, winter environment.

And then when I brought it down here, brought it back home.

I brought it back in December and the frost heaves, which we don't have in Florida beat it really bad.

So I'm recovering it again with a second layer of metal lath, which you can see here.

And then stucco.

I've put large scale pieces for anywhere from a year to two years in about 25 communities in the state of Florida alone.

And that kind of started me on that path.

And then you get the piece back.

So then, again, you can lease it out again.

And from Florida, that kind of acted as a springboard.

So then I went to Chicago, I went to Jackson, Wyoming, all these places.

Right now I have 22 large-scale pieces of art around the United States.

It's a great program where a lot of communities are a bit uncomfortable.

They want to feel out the waters, basically, and say, is this gonna be something that people are gonna like?

And a lot of the public art calls that I do, they're looking for a temporary installation of sometimes a year to two years, and then I can come back and do touch-up work if somebody tagged it, or something like that.

A lot of cities are bringing in pieces.

They'll display them for a limited amount of time.

They may move them around within the city, and then they come off display.

They're trying to keep it fresh.

This one just came off display from Rosemary Beach out on the Panhandle of Florida.

It's kind of a fun piece because you can reach through it.

A lot of this rebar, the steel, was salvaged off of Route One.

At the last installation when I came and picked it up there were probably a dozen locks on it.

I'm only guessing that people had made some promises, and decided instead of locking to a bridge, they locked to my sculpture, which was kind of fun, you know?

And then I had it in another town, and it was in a kind of a green space.

It turned into a giant chia pet.

Vines had grown all through it.

I'm always open to how the art evolves.

The great advantage of working in South Florida here on Stock Island is the fact that I can work outside.

The cement dries within a couple of days.

I could of never done this if I was working up north.

I mean, it would take a week, and I'd have to have it inside a heated building.

If you're driving by, which is the fun thing about this large-scale artwork you'll notice immediately the shape and you'll be like, oh, I know what that is, but then as you come up closer you'll see that there's still kind of a texture to it.

It's a little bit on the abstract edge.

I get selfies daily of somebody standing up in Kalamazoo, Michigan, shivering in the cold next to a set of popsicles.

I mean, I had one outside Baltimore in Hyattsville, Maryland, a set of giant candy hearts.

And I have tons of pictures of these kids hugging candy hearts.

I mean, that's a little bit of a political piece.

I made that after the election, and it says "I love you, embrace," but it's subtle.

I usually don't do political pieces.

I just do friendly art.

You get a pretty decent group of tourists coming down here, specifically for the arts.

They're already interested in the arts.

They're interested in culture and they're open to that.

It's cultural tourism, which is really nice.

I have people just randomly stop by who see our little sign out beside the road, I love it.

[narrator] Artist, Craig Gray, has been carving stone for over 25 years.

To check out his pieces head to his website at crgray.com Continue the conversation online.

"Art Loft" is on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @artloftsfl Find full episodes and segments on a brand new website, artloftsfl.org and on YouTube at South Florida PBS.

[narrator] "Art Loft" is brought to you by.

[narrator] Where there is freedom, there is expression.

The Florida Keys and Key West.

[narrator] And the Friends of South Florida PBS.