Coming up in a sec.

On Art Rocks, a brand new sculpture rises on the grounds of the Louisiana state capital.

We'll meet the woman behind it.

And one thing I really want to make sure is that all we're represented to.

A quartet with a classical mission and the art and science of photographing the life aquatic.

These stories, this time on art rocks.

West Baton Rouge Museum is proud to provide local support for this program on LPI, 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 and thank you for joining us for Art Rocks.

With me, James Fox Smith from Country Roads magazine.

If the works you're about to see look familiar, you just might have seen them before.

Large scale pieces by Louisiana sculptor Charlene Jones, a.k.a.

Queen Charlene, are installed in some of the busiest public spaces in New Orleans.

Now a new project by Jones brings the New Orleans native's works to the grounds of the Louisiana state capital in Baton Rouge.

Here's Jones talking about her subject matter, her creative process, and what she loves about working in bronze.

The most special sculpture at this point.

Is.

Called Heritage, and it is on the state Capitol Ground Veterans Memorial Park.

This particular sculpture features events from when African-Americans were allowed to participate in war from Civil War to Colin Powell, which was a stand out.

And our own General Honoré, I think they consider him to be the hero of Katrina.

So that really made him stand out.

But there were so many others that we tried to highlight because there were so many.

And one thing I really wanted to make sure is that all were represented.

The sculpture stands seven feet tall at the highest and 12 feet long at the longest.

AP To a role as my first sculpture that I created here in New Orleans as a public piece after graduate school, I came back to New Orleans and I was offered a position at Southern University of New Orleans and also in the public school system.

So I was working night and day around these another fellow artists, and also he was our chairperson at Southern University, and he asked if I want to put my name on a list of artists who would like to create sculpture for AP Touro.

My first response, of course, was I hadn't really done anything to that extent, but fortunately those seconds went by quickly and I changed my mind.

I said, Well, why not?

I went and I spoke with the community that was making a decision, and they had a lot of concepts that they wanted to create.

And since it was my first time working on a public piece, I went exactly as they want it to go, keeping the structure as my part of it and keeping the theme as their part of it.

I actually created a mic kit, a miniature exact design, and I worked with the daughter Carol to row.

She was my go to person for a likeness.

And it was wonderful because once I created the small one from all the pictures.

I invited her over to see it and it was so funny.

And the first thing she said when she saw it was, That's not my daddy.

I said, I know.

That's why I called you here.

So we can sit down here and get the details that aren't on the photograph.

Things that you can't see by looking at the flat image.

By the end of her.

Sit with me.

We had a little bitty head with the details that look the way that she wanted him to.

And then I transferred all that over to New Mexico, where the foundry that I found, which was a gray foundry.

And they created the larger scale one.

And then I went there and had to complete working on it again.

AP Tour roll should be about eight feet tall.

Reverend Avery Alexander was only my second sculpture.

I'm still at a level of that.

I'm almost telling someone else's story more than me.

During the fall research and coming out with my body of work, they explained to me what they wanted.

And then it was my job to be the artist.

Alexander was elected to the state House of Representatives to Louisiana, and he was also a activist.

He was on the ground.

He marched.

He fought.

He sat in on benches, on countertops for equal rights for everyone.

Because of this, he was actually dragged out of New Orleans City Hall and put into a paddy wagon to bring him to jail.

The sculpture was originally created specifically to point at City Hall where he was dragged from and it was a state project.

So he was on state ground, Charity Hospital facing City Hall.

The Namesake was on Charity Hospital, but later the state building was torn down and they actually moved the sculpture when they decided not to open up Charity Hospital again, they opened up LSU Hospital and they gave him an annex.

This is Reverend Avery Alexander Annex and they put his sculpture there.

I have it.

Maquette of Big Chief to the Montana stands maybe 16 inches, but the actual sculpture that was created stands ten feet tall.

It is in New Orleans.

It is a cast bronze sculpture of the actual man, slightly simplified.

It's in Armstrong Park.

Chief to the sculpture was a lot of fun to do, to be able to create the sculpture, visiting a family, taking photographs of all these different parts that are still in existence, that are now in museums and figuring out which suit represented him best that the family wanted to have.

I need to make sure that this honors the people that we are trying to create it for.

So I need it to look like Chief Tootie Montana.

I needed to feel like Chief Tootie Montana.

So I kept researching the people around him, the people who actually knew him when he was younger and when he was older.

Without those keys, the true history of it can get lost.

Or while.

The New Orleans Brass Band was a difficult piece to almost research because maybe the timeline of it I was working with Mayor Ray Nagin, and the commission seems to come with very short timelines.

So I was working on the brass band at the same time I was working on Chief Tootie Montana.

I had to make Captain for both of them.

When it came time to do the research on the musicians.

I kept asking them to come by Powell's motto.

They were like, No, no, no.

I just come to get this at our site.

And I didn't have time because I'm working on all these pieces.

So fortunately, I had a great guy working with me, Nat Williams, who was a photographer, and he always taking pictures of New Orleans life.

And so he was able to give me so many different images that I was able to use for patterns, for holes in the clothes and instrument accuracy and movement.

That was a wonderful creation.

What I really love about it is when somebody sees not the two obvious parts of it, which is from the left or from the right, but when they see it straight up forward and they realize that is yet another sculpture, when you look at it straight forward because it has like a third dimension, because now you see in lines and circles, this becomes like an abstract.

I created something that was very unique to me, the Orishas, an African religion that is taken up here in New Orleans in different parts of the country, and the Orishas tend to hold their skirts out and they're into a particular dance with their skirts.

So I took the shape of their skirts, which was really nice, and their skirt.

They became my canvas.

And on that canvas I had to describe three different scenes.

One was the Mardi Gras Indians, the other were the skull and bones also related to the Mardi Gras season.

And the third, we're talking about the Orishas.

And it was a soft material, so it wasn't your typical clay or brass or wood.

My first three dimensional personal sculpture was probably a mud pie.

Junior high school was probably the first time that I actually had an opportunity to really hone in on some skills like woodworking.

I had a wonderful woodworking class in Junior high school.

We were actually working in wood with table saws, drills, all types of machinery and tools to make connections, even if it wasn't in wood, any material, just putting any types of materials together became very important, even down to my work.

When I went to college, I actually discovered bronze and casting and I was able to start using all those tools that I've been developing and then get even more information because in the university you have to learn all of the fields.

You just kind of decide which one works best for you.

At Xavier, my professor was Professor John Scott and I was a natural.

It was to go toward his three dimensional thinking, understanding as we went along.

He was professor for most of the courses.

He was a drawing teacher.

He was a design teacher.

He was a sculptor teacher.

We were able to really get a lot of information from him.

He was always there in his studio, was always open for his former students or present students to come by and enjoy and learn, continue with learning from him.

My process in creating the artwork that I do it all has to start with a theme, and then my theme has to go in the direction of strength, positivity, eagerness, anything that is outward bound in thinking and feeling.

There are different methods that you can use to build sculptures.

When you're finished, product is going to be bronze.

You can actually work directly with wax.

You can do a direct melt with wax and build your whole piece in wax.

You can also start in the clay building, your whole piece in clay, the form, the form that you want to use and have a mold made of that.

By clay I mean plaster, likely because it's a relief.

First you lay down the front surface, we lay down a nice thick layer of clay, which we can carve into if we need to, but we're also building on the outside of it.

When you lay down, the first lee of clay is more of a subtractive process.

So you want to be able to pull away.

And if you need to mean you probably will, you shouldn't hold yourself to any types of restrictions because the point is to get to the subject matter that you want to get to.

It is a flexible material.

I also create paintings, but I think my paintings are developing, feel like I'm developing portraits.

Always seems to be the front thing in my mind, but I do enjoy abstract as well.

I really do enjoy a lot of abstract, but it has to give me a feeling.

It has to have an emotional connection to you, spiritual or whatnot.

I am mostly focused on African-Americans, probably because that's what I identify as, and this is an easier picture to see.

I know that the need to see yourself reflected is extremely important, especially because we're still in the point of healing from traumas that were never specifically taken care of within our family unit.

Across Louisiana, museums and galleries are presenting exhibitions with the power to illuminate our home state with entirely new light.

So here are some standout exhibitions coming soon to a museum or a gallery near you.

For more on these exhibitions and others, consider Country Roads magazine available in print, online or by e-newsletter to see or to share any episode of Art Roxx again, visit LP dot org slash Art Rocks.

There's also an archive of all our Louisiana segments at LP B's YouTube page.

We can all agree that music is good for the soul.

Well, there's plenty of research to suggest that it's good for developing minds to the musician.

Members of the Harlem Quartet strive to ensure that high school students are exposed to and develop an appreciation for the finer points of classical music.

Let's sit in while they share skills and techniques with Masterclass students in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and.

I feel music has so many influence from math, from history, from all sorts of things.

That is just a little excuse to to dig deeper into many other aspects of life and that.

Is.

We play the greatest composers because they already have something to say that transcends nationalities.

A professional orchestra that's coming to engage us and to teach.

So of course, I want to take the class.

Because I remember being that kid that for the first time heard Beethoven for the first time, heard the Mozart for the first time had any kind of music.

And I will be amazed.

And I always had that curiosity to to know how all violin, how you actually are able to make that music possible.

They have a lot of expression and they're really fun people.

They're just like outgoing and like loud and obnoxious.

And so, like, people think that if you play classical music, you're just kind of serious and like, uptight.

And they were it was like just hanging out with your friends, but playing instruments.

We're excited to hear you.

You're ready whenever you're ready.

Yep.

You starting out as a musician?

I don't think it's a totally rational decision.

I think you need to have a certain level of obsession.

I believe music and the arts are so incredibly important because they express something that honestly, sometimes we as humans have difficulty coming up with the words to express, whether it's a feeling or an emotion character.

And also with our specific medium, the string quartet, basically what we do in concert and when we work with students is we have a conversation on stage, borrowed on, borrowed on, borrowed on, borrowed them.

But you know, Don bom bom, bom, bom, bom.

And then occasionally one person, you, for instance, would have borrowed them, borrowed them more or borrowed them.

It's a it's a dialog back and forth.

And for us to translate that into actual playing, you want to make sure your bow always has more on the main beat.

So every time you see a bar line display with more bow and right after that play with a little bit less bow and a little bit less weight.

Okay, So before we get started, if we're going to try this without a conductor who becomes our initiator of show.

Yes.

Have you practice this already?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So music really has a way of like making me express myself because I'm not so good at expressing feelings or anything or talking to people.

And that's how I, like, communicate and socialize with other people through music.

Okay, very nice.

Where we stop, that's the end of the phrase from where you start.

So in theory, around that, around there, around that.

Around 30 grand.

Da da da da da da.

It's like you're reading a paragraph.

So even if I was with my ears close, the bow is describing the hierarchy.

So more bow less, less and more, less, less.

Can you throw.

A down bow?

Can we try just the violas once?

Okay.

So 1 to 1 and I'm more or less.

Less on more or less?

Less and less.

And I say, You got it.

That's what I want.

Q was great.

I learned that since I'm the first violin, I kind of have to be the leader of the group.

And so in the piece that we worked with, with the Harlem Quartet, like whenever I count off, it's like a nod.

And then and you do that.

And then in another one of our songs, we have a long note.

Then it's the same thing with like a nod.

You play the note and.

So when you have to go more, you actually need to play with the same amount of bow, the same amount, because you need to come back to the same place, right?

So way less, you almost come down so that.

But if you come back with the same way, this is the result.

So I don't really understand which one is more important and for them is always like the notes are less, more.

You see, I do the same amount of bow, but a little lighter.

I never really worked with a professional orchestra before, not even a little school.

So it was really like an understandable and more learning and more experience with them to.

Remember music is mathematics, so.

To go.

Deep down bom bom.

So.

So Devi would listen to them and then you play the music or your part with the line.

Okay, one more time.

I love working with students because now that I'm a little bit older, I, I recognize that they really are the future.

And it's fun to know that we're getting to sculpt a way that they can identify themselves, perhaps as a musician, if it's going to be or just one day being a leader, but embracing their voice and being confident in what their voices and knowing that they have the power to influence people and affect people, which is what we do as musicians.

Smile.

Yeah.

Thanks.

Have everybody okay, Stand up and take a bite.

I love getting together with a bunch of other people that also love music and then creating music altogether.

Because when you're with a bunch of people that also love music, you can create something beautiful.

Stephen Frink is one of the most prolific and frequently published underwater photographers with four decades experience creating captivating images of life beneath the sea.

When he's on dry land, Frank calls Key Largo, Florida, home.

So that's where we'll go to meet him.

So take a deep breath.

I can't tell you how many Queen angelfish I've photographed over the years, but this is the one that of all of them resonates more.

And I think it's.

It is because the fish has personality.

My name is Stephen Frank.

I'm an underwater photographer from Key Largo, Florida.

I travel the world for underwater photography, but this is my hometown.

I'm also the publisher of Alert Diver magazine.

The fish was just turning into me and I had 100 millimeter macro lens on it and it was able to lock into focus.

And the eye contact is is really good, too.

It's not like I had to chase this animal.

I was there.

He came to me.

We had a moment when he was gone for marine life photography.

I think proximity is one of the most important things and I think you have to be able to project a benign presence.

You have to approach the animal in a in a fashion so they're not threatened.

So that means not moving too fast so that you don't push a big force field of water.

They have to believe in you.

And we also have to think know a little bit about behavior so that we know that a butterfly fish, for example, is probably going to be looking for a little crevice to find little crustaceans and things of that nature.

You know a little bit about the fish you can predict where they may be and you can place yourself in that position.

There is an area where a fish may flee the field of flight.

So I said everything before I enter the field of flight.

So I'll set the aperture of the shutter speed.

I'll think in my mind's eye, How is this photo meant to look worse of my strobes?

So I try to do all of those things hypothetically from about six feet away.

So I'm not inside that field of flight.

You know, people I think maybe think that I dive all the time.

I don't, but I dive.

I dive a lot in chunks of time.

You know, I'll get on an airplane and I'll I'll go somewhere and I'll dive real heavy for two weeks.

I typically pick destinations by what it's particularly good for.

For example, if I want to shoot great white sharks, I would either go to Guadalupe in Mexico or South Australia.

I think I spent many years looking at the photography of other people and looking at the composition and I think, you know, how how do they do that so long as you have a, I think a good camera and and good lights because color doesn't really exist underwater in the absence of artificial light.

Once you have the tools, you can get a serviceable photograph.

I think what what transcends a serviceable photograph into art is composition and the eye of the artist.

I teach underwater photo seminars, and that's probably the hardest thing.

And what about color awareness that we try to bring to my students at the outset that that no photograph is worth damaging the marine environment?

It should be no surprise to anybody that the oceans of the world are in trouble.

You know, there are just so many things that are affecting the ocean that are visual, communicate or can bring to editorial awareness.

One of the things that I think is really brilliant about the whole Florida Keys, particularly the upper Keys, when you have a marine protected area, the fish trust, the divers, you know, they know that we're not here to spear them.

We're not here to pull them kicking and screaming out of the water to a dinner plate.

I think in terms of the future of underwater photography, I think we're kind of at a threshold.

So what's going to happen to make underwater photography better for as heavy and bulky as these housings are?

If it got smaller, that would be good.

I think it's become far more democratic.

One of the reasons that when I opened my studio here, I did well running cameras was because nobody had them in the morning I would rent my camera and if nobody rented it, I'd go diving.

So that's that's kind of how I started here.

It's exciting.

If if it were not for underwater photography, I wouldn't be a diver today because I'd be bored.

But I'm never, ever bored diving because even though it's, I don't know, let's say a French angel and I've shot 12,000 French angel fish in my life.

This one's different, but they're still really, really inspiring things.

And that is that for this edition of Artworks.

But don't worry, you can find more episodes of the show at LP, the dot org slash rocks.

And if you just can't get enough of stories like these Country Roads magazine makes a useful guide for learning what's taking shape in Louisiana's cultural life all across this state.

So until next week I've been James Cook Smith and thank you for watching.

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