Coming up in a moment on Art Rocks, an artist who has spent decades rendering Louisiana's architecture and landscapes in pen and ink, Iberville Parish asked me to go through their parish and sketch landmarks.

Bel air bubbles up from an unusual source and the colorful craft of circus life.

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 Art rocks with Me.

James Fox Smith from Country Roads magazine.

Come meet an artist who has spent decades traveling Louisiana, making illustrations of the buildings and landscapes that caught his artist's eye.

While many are iconic places that will be instantly familiar to Louisianans, others are now vanished or else have changed dramatically.

For many viewers, that's the combination that makes stand Ruth's work more precious than ever.

So here's Stan putting his pens aside for a moment to speak with us about his work.

I studied a little bit of art as an architect.

I have master's degree in architecture, University of Illinois.

And, one, traveling fellowship.

Or.

I graduated from college for six months in Europe sketching landmarks.

I went everywhere from below.

Naples, Italy, up to Helsinki, Finland and Scotland and England.

And I was going to Hungary.

But, the Russians were running tanks and to Hungary at the time.

Then I came back after the army a couple of times to Baton Rouge.

That's where I grew up and went into architecture, and I was doing house designs and a couple of churches for about 20 years.

And then the Imperial Parish Bicentennial Commission asked me to go through their parish and sketch landmarks.

Then they printed those sketches and sold them in a folio to raise money for that nice park that they have on, them.

It was a Bicentennial Commission project back in 1975, so that got me back in the habit of every afternoon.

We had, my wife and I would take off and go through Evansville parish doing sketches of old barns and churches, whatever I thought had architectural significance.

And that kind of was the beginning of what now?

She gave the name Places People Remember.

That's the name of our collection.

It's 50 years old now, and we've got like 4000 sketches all over the Southeastern United States where we've done shows.

Many of the places that I've done sketches of don't exist anymore.

And I'm glad that I did the sketch, because it's of an artistic record of that particular building structure, street scene, whatever.

Colfax, Louisiana is an example where there was a big fire in the town and my street scene that I did as part of a poster project for the first festival that they have there every year.

That drawing of the downtown of Colfax is a record of the way it used to look before the fire.

The Wakefield post office used to be down on the Mississippi River bank at Bussorah, but after many, many floods, year after year, when biospheres community moved up to Saint Francis, fell on the bluff.

The post office that became the Wakefield Post Office.

That building was moved from Bussorah up to Wakefield, and now it's been replaced in that same area, the hardwood store.

That was a very important part of that community for decades, and it's gone well.

I can make a list of old stores all over the state.

Churches survive unless there was a fire or.

Same thing with schools.

Basically, either progress or a fire will take whatever it's missing.

And I'm glad I got a drawing of it, because it is church.

They'll come up and say, well, my grandma was born there, buried there and buried there.

And so it's really important when I get a commission of my grandmother's house, they'll say, well, when we gave it to her, she cried because she remembered details that the chair thought about for a long time.

So that's the real meaning to me, is people's response to whatever I'm doing.

The challenge should do in churches is the detail, which is often very ornate.

My favorite as an architect are the Episcopal churches.

The craftsmanship, whether they're built in masonry, brickwork or whether it's a wood frame thing, the carpentry, the masonry work is just really perfect that you can make it in making a drawing and having studied architecture and having to look.

My master's degree is in architectural history and design and having that background of study of detail.

If I'm doing a subject for parts or missing the director of the Army River basin deep Moore.

Right.

Sure.

It's a little boy, three years old.

When Winston Churchill paid Hitler back with a carpet bombing of Dresden, Germany, he was led out of Dresden by his mother during the bombing.

They went up into the hills where the families form was migrated to Venezuela.

They went to high school there.

Came to the United States.

What the hell are you?

Now he's the retired director of.

They meet River basin.

Well, he goes back to Germany all the time to visit family.

He asked me to do an illustration of the cathedral in Dresden.

And the design of the poster is Dresden in its state of being destroyed by the carpet bombing.

In the drawing is an illustration of the restored cathedral, and there are little black specks all over that part of the illustration, and those are actual stones.

They were able to relocate in the original location of the original structure.

Well, when they completed the reconstruction in 2005, the Queen of England sent them a solid gold cross about ten feet high to put up on top of the highest part of the cathedral, and it was built in a English metalworking community that had been obliterated by the German bombing during the Second World War.

It's planning back on the wall as a panorama of city Park.

Lake, with the house on the lower left hand corner.

It's for Charles Spruce of the spruce family.

And this is their home built of 1938.

This panoramic view is what he remembers growing up living in this house.

This is what he remembers seeing from the very front porch by the front door of the house.

Looking towards the look ahead.

We put everything in there we can both come up with that has meaning to him.

There's a fire hydrant up by the road.

He used to sit around when he was a little boy and watched ducks.

You see a little bunch of ducks here.

They're not prominent because they shouldn't be in a drawing like this.

But the mama is leading her ducklings to the lake.

All the things that meant something to him in his childhood, and he's having this done for himself and to survive.

He sisters.

We've got like, 4000 sketches all over the southeastern United States where we've done shows.

That's what our focus is now.

When we select subjects for me to make a sketch of, I'm always interested or what's unique about the design and the craftsmanship of the people that built the building.

So that's what I focus on trying to capture.

But I want the drawing to be as I see it at that time in history.

So I'll put in cars and lamp post and different things that you would say a photographer might want to screen out.

I want to have in there, but because it dates the time that I did the drawing and the way it was when I did the drawing.

I'm looking at it as a, a historian with a pencil or a pen, because I want to record the way the location was at the time I saw it to make available to whoever is interested, whoever would appreciate that particular town, that particular landmark.

My wife legally is more than half of our partnership.

The art and the architecture.

She helps me decide what things are worth making the drawing of.

She selects matte colors.

She handles all the books, all the paperwork I just focus on.

Oh, drawing or painting?

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There.

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

When many folks hear the name Risa, they might think of Rihanna and Aset Rocky's oldest son, but that Risa was actually named after the iconic rapper, record producer and composer, and founding member of the New York hip hop collective Wu-Tang clan.

What fewer people know, though, is that Risa is also a creator of ballet and classical music.

In this segment, the artist discusses his first classical record, entitled A Ballet Through Mud.

Let's look and listen.

Mud is love to do dirty.

Yeah.

Out of the mud goes the lotus goes.

Life.

But for this album here, I think I started jotting down a lot of the ideas in 2020.

And I have found a book of old lyrics and these old lyrics.

I read them, and these are things that go back to when I was like 15, 16 years old.

And so I started writing music to kind of help tell the story of my youth.

But as the music saw it, developing, developing, taking a life of its own, it became more obvious.

And this is more of a ballet that I was writing.

It could be its own thing.

It didn't need all these lyrics that I planned to play with it.

Instead, I opted to have it expressed through just music and dance.

Tony Pierce and Dustin, we had talked about, me becoming part of the Imagination Artist series.

The thing was, I told them in the beginning that know the first year would be this would be that, but I want to do something original.

So I don't want to just do much music and things that I create.

I want to create something new and original.

And I said, okay, when you're ready.

And in this ballet became it.

And I was ready.

And I took it to them.

And we performed it with dances and orchestras and, visuals.

It was a of great personal achievement.

NAS, Busta, Wu-Tang.

And we always like having such a bodily moment.

All talked about recording some music together.

And we were like, yo, we should have a studio bust.

So in the second half of the tour, we paid for a studio bus to come, and it happens to be the John Lennon Educational Bus.

And Dobie had just put in this whole new Atmos system into this bus.

Nobody came in and made a song.

When I realized that it was a chance that that wasn't going to happen, I was like, you know what?

No matter what.

I'll come here every night.

And if anybody else come, we'll do hip hop.

If nobody else come, we want to mix this album in Dolby Atmos.

When you do an orchestra, an orchestra has a certain lady sit and the music comes at you from a certain dynamic.

Based on that, that setting and the mix and studio is based upon that kind of stereophonic sound you're hoping to get as the orchestra projects itself throughout the room.

But in Dolby Atmos, you could break all those rules.

If the horn player is here at the beginning of the song.

Can we put them over here by the end?

Now, in a real orchestra, a horn player will never get up and walk over to there.

Okay.

But in Dolby Atmos mics we was out was able to do that.

So this album, which I think is special, that's mixed not only in Dolby Atmos, but actually using Dolby Atmos as a creative tool.

No, we're actually moving the instruments and moving the players throughout the mix to make you go like this.

You know what I mean?

And that was something that came about without plan.

You didn't plan that?

The first thing that enamored me about music was hip hop itself.

Hip hop has found this way to aspire to world.

I would advise young people to take the path that hip hop gives you.

Pick up your drum machine, pick up your Fruity Loops or your Pro Tools or whatever you're doing, but pick up an instrument because I understand the end of the instrument is going to help you understand the creativity of what you're doing.

It's going to take you to a level of creativity that can be uniquely yours.

This album is no samples.

It's all musicians playing this music.

The recording that we released is not the same recording that we first tried, because each time we played it, there's something different happening because the human hand move different is a different amplitude.

There's a different expression and a different embellishment, a flourish.

There's also something in the stimulation of your own brain that instruments gives us.

You know that self-expression.

And so this is a ballet through mud.

Like, yeah, maybe even my own past has been muddy.

Starting in the streets of Staten Island, Brooklyn, living the, you know, the street life as we did, bringing in ruckus and, you know, Wu-Tang clan and and going through that mud but then evolving now to a Lotus, you know, and the thing about a lotus is that even though it goes with so many things that could be considered the sound around it, it maintains to keep this quality.

We're off to Cleveland, Ohio now to meet the group of aerialists, acrobats and prop manipulators behind crooked River circus.

This dynamic collective of movement artists collaborates to teach new performance skills through workshops and gym classes.

Together, they are learning to entertain audiences while also building a supportive family environment.

Check it out!

First off, I like to describe crooked River circus as meaning that none of us took a direct path here.

We took a very crooked path to get to the circus.

So there is the crooked River, as well as, of course, Cleveland's Crooked River.

That long, winding path was formed more than a decade ago.

It began here on Broadway Avenue at so-called Greater Cleveland.

We have been working in this space for about 12 years.

I'm started with aerial silks classes that we were holding twice a week, and we were both students here for a while and then became instructors.

It was their own curiosity that led co-founders Vanessa Lange and Jan Bouvier to give aerial Arts a try.

Little did either know at the time they'd stumbled upon their passion.

I started when I was 39 years old.

I'm now 50 and I never would have started, but I had a friend who was a few years older than me who did it, and I thought, oh, I'll try it.

And I tried it and I was terrible at it.

It was really hard, but really, really, really fun.

And for a long time, it was something that I allowed myself to pursue, even though I was not at all naturally good at it.

I came from a gymnastics background growing up, and then, you know, I went way to college and then in my 20s, I really did find a physical activity that I really enjoyed doing.

And then I saw a performance.

It was called Cleveland Cirque, and I was like, well, that's what I want to do.

The circus encompasses a wide variety of human centered tricks performed on equipment like the trapeze, lira or aerial hoop, aerial rope and aerial silks.

Al silks is pretty simple.

It's just two strings of fabric, and we basically use those fabrics to manipulate, climb up to positions, strap ourselves in it in various ways to secure ourselves, harness ourselves, and make beautiful poses in the air.

We're able to drop out of those poses as long as are tied in appropriately and go from there to compliment the range of performing that goes on in the air.

Acrobatics draw attention back to the ground in partner acrobatics.

The only equipment needed is other people, so you can combine acro into a couple of different categories.

So there's like basing which is where like the base is laying on the ground and you're flowing through some sort of like movement and patterns.

There's a lot of inversions, but also just like counterbalances and strength holding poses.

Focusing on collaboration as a group rather than individual performances.

The circus wanted to step out by blending their usual human tricks with theatrical elements to create a full scale production.

Their first foray resulted in 2019 The Science, an immersive theatrical circus show that combined a narrative and live music with aerial and ground acrobatics.

And Jen has a theater background too, which I don't have.

And so when we started doing performances, she brought this amazing theatrical aspect to everything that I was like, oh, we don't just have to go up there and look pretty.

We can be angry on the silks, or we can be funny, or we can tell a story.

To people in the theater world think it's crazy.

Our process under the process is based on the people we have and what they can do, and what they love to do and what their fantasies are.

Right?

You've got a cool idea.

How can we fit it into the show, rather than us coming up with, this is what the show is.

We need to have people that can do these things.

Three years after the science, the circus will be hitting the stage again with its second full length show, How the Circus Stole Christmas.

We are so blessed to have an amazing composer making music for us, and I really appreciate having original music as part of the show.

We are blessed to work with a professional circus rigger.

We also have an amazing aerialist who's a costume designer, and she's helping to put together the costumes for us.

We are just so blessed with so many people of such high level of talent and drive, and I'm just excited.

I think circus is very different from dance.

It's very different from theater, and that a circus artist might spend years trying to master a trick that might last for a half a second.

And so you put together a show in a much different way.

The rehearsal is different.

The creation is different.

We're featuring the circus skills, and then we're building a fun, interactive show around that.

For its members, the crooked River circus provides much more than a space to perform.

It's about building trust, building relationships, and building a sense of community.

I'm a big gifter in many ways.

That's my favorite thing to do.

So the gift of performance is really, like, freeing and amazing for me to do.

So.

Being able to go off there kind of put together a piece and show it to my best friends and say like, this is what I do.

And like, I'm really glad it brings you that joy as well to see us do it, see me do it.

I personally, definitely enjoy performing the most, but I love it all.

They're all my best friends.

There's a lot of like, trust and communication that gets built through acro.

So you become friends and you get close to everyone really quickly.

I consider them my family.

Yeah.

But we wanted people to see it as an acceptable thing, because we enjoyed teaching it to people.

And we love when people say that.

I saw you guys perform and I wanted to take a class that's really, really.

I think we put on a great show.

We have a lot of really incredibly talented performers.

We all do this for love, you know, because we literally love doing what we do.

We do this for fun.

This is our hobby.

This is our avocation.

We've created a really wonderful group of people who are supportive of each and every performance and of everybody's performance, and that's just a lovely thing to be a part of.

And I think it's also a lovely thing to witness.

And that is that for this edition of Art rocks!

As always, each episode showcases original work by a Louisiana artist, and you'll find every one of those archived online at lpb.org/art rocks.

And if you appreciate stories like these, consider subscribing to Country Roads magazine.

It's a vital guide for getting to grips with Louisiana's vibrant cultural life all around the state.

Until next week, I've been James Fox Smith.

Stay curious and thanks 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.

Can.