This time on Art rocks.

We're remembering the Shreveport architects whose vision of modernism left an indelible mark on their city.

The way they approached design.

It was to design something that functional.

Neon signage lighting up the Nevada skyline.

Neon is like eye candy.

I couldn't get enough of it once I really got into it.

And a renowned artist residency program.

That's getting a welcoming reception.

These stories up next on Art Rocks.

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

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 Art Rocks.

With me, James Fox Smith from Country Roads magazine in Shreveport.

Major efforts are underway to preserve the legacy of the architects Samuel G. And William B Wiener.

The two brothers studied at Germany's iconic Ballet House design School in 1931.

And when they returned to the United States, they brought the lessons of the BO House esthetic to bear on many structures in their beloved Shreveport.

So let's find out more from.

The Warner Brothers.

Their work is absolute poetry.

It's remarkable, their modern work especially.

But what's interesting about them is that they were doing work in Shreveport that was significant, like Kings Highway Christian Church, which is more almost a Byzantine looking brick building.

And they did the municipal Auditorium, a World War One memorial where Elvis played for the first time.

And they're involved in that.

Samuel G. WAYNER.

His father and his uncle, Leon Loeb.

They developed the feeble man's department store here in the Feeble Man Brothers.

They were merchants from New Orleans.

So when you have a job that's that big and has that much notoriety, yeah, you can write your own ticket.

One of the premiere schools of architecture was the University of Michigan.

So the boys went up there, they matriculated and came back to Shreveport in 1923.

Materials had started to change, especially in the 19th century, to where structures didn't have to be as heavy.

They could be lighter.

And that is very, very different than classicism, which had been around and was kind of the style forever Greek and Roman style.

And that's very heavy.

Well, once the materials started changing, then it became like you could turn these things upside down.

You could have heavy things on the top.

A really early examples of the direction this was going is maybe the Crystal Palace, which was built in England as an exhibit space of a huge, huge building.

Mostly steel and glass, mostly glass.

So it was remarkable.

It burned down.

But so that's where these ideas started happening.

Both of the brothers did the grand tour in Europe.

Sam Wiener and his wife, Marion, my father.

And they met an architect, had flack for one in Europe, and they went to the Bell House to see what was going on there.

People like Walter, Gropius, Le Corbusier, Alvar Aalto.

And they formed what was called the International Congress of Modern Architecture in English.

And they would gather together and talk about ways to make the world better through architecture.

One thing is they were trying to improve the lives of workers.

They had to live in terrible conditions.

And so they were looking at ways to bring in light and air and make living space for a common worker better.

That's a philosophy that started making this architecture.

Well, we have brothers whenever we're inspired by that.

And then they interpreted for Louisiana.

What makes it look modern?

Well, it's slick, it's clean, it's devoid of detail.

It doesn't have classical moldings.

It doesn't have columns and shutters and things like that.

Mostly architects and town clientele came from architecture.

Say to them, What kind of house you want?

I might say to the old English Renaissance, whatever.

But my father and uncle didn't do it that way.

They said, What are you going to try to do in there?

Are you gonna grow your business bigger or are you going to get to a certain place and sell the building and do another one?

And the owners of the business or their children were going to stay in Freeport and continue because they always looked to the future and to try to design something that would work now.

And later, my father, my uncle, and some of the other local architects who actually came through their firms before opening their own firm, they had design philosophy.

This house and the others reflect that.

This house, they poured the slabs.

They put four columns in.

They put the roof on so the interior could be done under the shelter.

The cabinets are really a result of more than 50 years of three architects and two artists in the family working to do things correctly.

Good craftsmanship.

This one contractor here, Bob Neff.

They did all the cabinet work for all the other buildings.

They were really, really good.

And so these houses were built.

All right.

And you're looking at a house that's 70 years old.

The kitchen.

One of most important pieces to the wieners is very sleek.

As you can see, these are original countertops and stainless steel, kind of a built in drain board as part of it.

Again, you're seeing no trim, very flush wood.

That's a theme that's repeated all over beautiful stainless steel over here in the cooking area.

Again, good detailing, easy to clean, working with a site that's very sloped.

But you've got great light coming in from the east to your kitchen.

We do have obscuring glass up top, takes away some glare.

And I do want to point out one of these really fun details from the fifties is a built in clock That's in the kitchen.

So coming from the kitchen into the breakfast room, there is one thing that I want you to note.

It's like all of the other rooms have windows to the outside.

But this room, because it's in the center of a square, didn't have the opportunity for an outside window.

But what we do have is that the atrium, which is so important to this house, is giving light to this room.

And these are sliding glass doors that are original to the house.

That's really remarkably large.

The floor is original.

It's caulk.

It's worn beautifully.

It's a little bit resilient.

This piece of built in millwork is something that you're going to find in several winter houses.

Again, the space will transition straight over it.

So the room feels very large.

But this piece is acting as a partition between the breakfast space and the bedroom space.

So you'll notice that this is lifted off the ground.

And so it gives this impression of hovering or floating.

But it's also it needs that space because, again, finally telling you, follow me around.

The return air for the HVAC is built in underneath this floating piece.

So it's very subtly done hidden, you know, just looking at the mechanics of the space, it's all about beauty.

The Warner Brothers would talk intimately with their clients and gather information, and sometimes they would add their personal experiences and inject that into the house.

A good example would be William B Weiner would place game rooms and almost all of his designs.

This Simon Harold House being one of them.

His house has a game room, and the Dr. William B Weiner house has a game room.

This notion of living together and playing together as a family was important.

If a space needed to be a certain with like a dining room, you figure, okay, well, the table is this big and I need room to scoot away from the table and I need circulation space around it.

And that defines the size of the room.

Well, is the breakfast room and kitchen kind of nestles up against it.

Then you start to see it pushing and pulling away from the exterior wall, the Sam Weiner house.

What's interesting is he had designed this and there's a little protruding element at the breakfast room.

His wife, Marian, is the one that wanted that feature added because it made a little bay window that brought more light in.

So he would listen to his spouse.

He would get a lot of ideas from his clients.

The combination living room, dining room is very congruent with the way they thought about architecture after World War Two.

Before the war, there were discreet rooms, but a good example of saying all the interior functions shapes the exterior is that niche with the serving tables that pokes out of the this square or small rectangle.

And it's quiet and copper.

It's a beautifully detailed element.

They put all the windows on the north of the south side because they can troll the sunlight coming in on the south side, an overhang.

You can see this overhang, it allows the winter sun to come in, but not the summer sun.

You never put windows on the west.

Look out for the afternoon heat in the sun, a hillside, the sun nearby.

The windows on the north are 15 degrees to the east, so it gives early morning sunlight into the living room and dining area.

But no windows on the west and practically none on the east.

Before World War two houses were generally two stories in height.

It allowed the heat stratified and it allowed you to zone the house vertically so the public and semipublic areas would be on the ground floor and then the private areas would be on the second floor well after the war World War two, then air conditioning became reasonably available to the public at large.

The price had dropped significantly.

So this idea of well, let's take the house and spread it out on a single floor, it's easier to air condition that way.

When you have a two storey house, you've got to get the air moving from the equipment room, wherever that is at the flush house, it's in the basement and move it up vertically.

And you have to make that is unobtrusive as possible.

The houses were expensive not because of the complex layout, they were expensive because of the level of finish.

So they would use when the budget allowed terrazzo, which you put two and three quarters of an inch of cement, just tapping on top of a structural slab.

That's two pause that adds cost.

If you don't have the terrazzo, then you have just that four or five inch structural slab.

And because of the expensive soils, the the entire structure was placed on drilled reinforced concrete caissons that were placed every six feet, which is in contradistinction to driven piles.

So again, not at all inexpensive, but it made the houses more durable over time.

Nobody else did terrazzo floors in the house.

The maintenance is just there is basically no maintenance before you come.

And they tried to create a view.

My father, he didn't sit down and teach me anything.

I studied architecture at Cornell.

I graduated first in my class the last term and I understood history, what I learned from up there to not do the wrong thing, to analyze what you were trying to do and look at the options.

That's one against the other.

Look at the future or figure to grow or shrink or what?

And to write a program.

You could say what your charge was to do.

In Louisiana, arresting R is all around.

The trick is knowing where to find it.

So here are some standout exhibits coming soon to our part of the world.

For more on these exhibits and scores, more cultural attractions, consult Country Roads magazine available in hardcopy or online or to see or to share any episode of art rocks.

Again, visit LTV dot org slash Art Rocks.

There's also an archive of all the Louisiana segments of the show available on LP B's YouTube page.

Few things draw the eye and capture the attention better than a really good neon sign.

Ken Hines is in the business of creating eye catching neon signage, offering an illuminated rainbow of colors, designs and styles for customers to choose between Ken Benz tubes at his workshop.

Where else but in Reno, Nevada.

So let's drop in to learn how Ken makes the lights Come on.

My art is hot glass electrodes and neon gas and fire is my paintbrush.

My name is Kenneth Hines, and I am a neon tube vendor.

I've been doing neon in the Reno area for 38 years.

I am the last full time neon tube bender in northern Nevada.

Neon tube bender is the craft that you take blast tube and you shape it to a specific pattern.

Then you put called cathode electrodes on each end, pull a vacuum on it and backfill it with neon or argon gas.

The term neon is the red neon gas.

The majority of red's pinks oranges are neon gas mixed in with other colored phosphorus in the tubes.

Argon is a blue.

A little drop of mercury goes in and there's fluorescent phosphorus in the tubes.

And that's what makes the colors with the argon and a little drop of mercury vapor.

I have a fire that's adjustable up to 16 inches, and I have a blue hose that I keep in my mouth at all times.

So make a tight bend.

It collapses, and then you just give it a little puff of air and blow it back out to the original diameter.

Glass looks cold, so you've got to be very careful with that hot glass because it burns down to the bone and getting cut with glass.

It really bleeds a lot because it makes such a clean cut.

We do deal with high voltage as well.

Pretty serious things, but you get used to it.

You you mindful of it all the time.

It's about 10,000.

Our process to really learn it, to really get it good, where you can do anything that comes in the shop.

When we go to create a neon sign, the first step is design.

Somebody says, Hey, I'm interested in neon sign.

So what we do is we put them in contact with the designer Dennis and Dennis is an old sign painter that started in the vinyl business when the computers came out and I went to him to make patterns for me years ago.

And we've been good friends for the last 25 years.

I will make a pattern for Ken in reverse.

You will bend all the tubes.

I will create a cabinet out of acrylic or whatever we are doing.

The cabinet from when the neon is completed.

Ken and I will put everything together on the cabinet and then we will wire in the transformers to complete the project.

Nowadays we've been actually including remotes for the neon so people can actually turn them on remotely without having to go up to the sign.

We not only create new neon signs, we do restorations as well.

This sign right here, the dice, they're a flag mount, which means that they're hanging out over the sidewalk.

You can see it from both sides.

They were originally displayed on the Paradise Motel in Sparks across from the Plantation Casino.

It got taken down, so I stripped them and had them powder coated and totally rebuilt all the neon new transformers, put it on that piece of expanded metal and hung it on the wall.

And it's been a quite the conversation piece for a couple of years now.

I've been a graphic designer for about 40 years now, and Neon is my passion these days.

I love designing neon and seeing it come to fruition.

Working with neon is quite unique because it takes me to a place where I'm really happy with what I'm doing.

It's not like work.

I enjoy the creativity and the finished product and the satisfaction of creating these beautiful pieces that people will have in their homes or in their businesses for years to come.

I think people expect to see it, especially in downtown Reno or downtown Las Vegas.

It's just part of the overall ah, when you're driving down a highway or an old road and you see a bright neon sign in the distance, it's kind of alluring and it kind of attracts you.

Neon has been around for about 100 years and Ken and I are working hard to keep that art form alive and well in Reno.

We just want to keep it going.

In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the Pfister Artist in Residence program has been giving artists opportunities to introduce their work to receptive audiences for more than a decade now.

The program operates out of a studio in gallery space, located on the first floor of the Pfister Hotel.

As guests come and go, they get to watch participating artists at work and see completed pieces to both the artists and visitors say that they appreciate the connections the program facilitates.

Artists generally rely on products.

But what artists are doing with the visitor residency program is they're providing a service, a professional service.

Their product is what they bring along with the experience.

For the last ten years, the historic Pfister Hotel has transformed their lobby studio into an artistic experience for all who wander in.

Being in the Pfister Hotel.

It's just a beautiful place.

As an artist, I felt welcome, and it felt that everyone on the the Pfister family constantly treated us like guests.

As the very first Pfister artist in residence in 2009.

Milwaukee native Reginald Baylor painted works inspired by the hotel's Victorian art collection, with his unique style of color and lines.

As time has passed.

The work has changed and I produce all my work digitally.

Now I do no longer hand paint artwork.

To me it's the same act of being artistic.

It's just the materials are different.

The result of being in the program, I think, elevated my level of professionalism as an artist when it comes to staying with my art and what experience of my providing.

In 2010, portrait artist Katie Muse of was inspired by the Pfister employees, especially renowned concert pianist Dr. Jeffrey Hollander.

Since completing her residency means life has evolved, her painting style to focus on local flora and fauna.

Her detailed watercolors are studies of the plants and animals, she observes near her Studdard Wisconsin home painter Shelby Keith took over the artist's studio in 2011.

But intrigued me about having my residency at the Pfister was that it was downtown, and that was my favorite subject matter was painting downtown urban landscape scenes, the artist and residency program that really opened up my career as an artist here in Milwaukee.

So many people walk through the Pfister and they are so intrigued by what's going on in that little room there.

They wanted to see how you did what you did.

They may want it so bad that they have to have a painting or whatever it is that you make.

And so I've been doing custom work for people who remembered meeting me at the Pfister.

In 2012.

Sustainable fiber artist Timothy Westbrook transformed the studio into an eco conscious fashion house, combining Victorian era weaving and sewing techniques with disposable materials like plastic bags and cassette tapes.

While I was the artist in residence at the Pfister, this is the first piece that I created there.

This is wool with the cassette tape, and because it was the first piece and it was a sample dress, I worked with all demo tapes.

Since his residency, Westbrook competed on the reality show Project Runway and moved to New York City.

He's the founder of Tilbrook, a sustainable fashion line of clothing created by repurposing discarded umbrellas.

In 2013, Stephanie Barron's focused her residency on the stories of the people who traveled and stayed at the hotel.

She also collaborated with the sisters narrator Mollie Schneider to create a book about their shared experiences.

Today, Barron's lives and works in Shanghai, China, teaching art and creating artworks about encounters in her new location.

In a new series titled The Transient Pause.

Multimedia artist Niki Johnson spent her 2014 residency creating sculptures shaped like Victorian bathtubs and decorated with illustrations from fairy tales.

People come into my space and look at these child size bathtubs I was making.

The conversation would go something like, Oh, so these aren't functional though.

And this is the point where I got to answer.

But they do function because it gets you to think about the way that we understand our world through this Victorian lens, even today.

The Pfister was an excellent training ground for knowing how to remain present with people who are in the moment of experiencing something for the first time.

Niki Johnson is currently creating thought provoking, expressive art made from unconventional materials like an AR 15 assault rifle and metal fencing.

Well, we've arrived at the pointy end of another edition of Art Rocks, but never mind, because you can see and share episodes of the show and help the dot org slash art rocks any time.

And if these sorts of stories leave you hungry for more, remember, Country Roads magazine is a great resource for making the most of Louisiana's boundless cultural treasures.

Each and every month until next week, I've been James Fox Smith.

And thanks to you for watching.

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