This week on Art Rocks in Baton Rouge, a powerful exhibit remembers the campaign to integrate a public swimming pool It's also really an opportunity to look at a shared American history on point in the Nevada desert.

And the creative chops it takes to be a great barber.

Those stories this time 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.

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 an exhibit entitled And We went 60 years after the Baton Rouge swim in Baton Rouge, Gallery marks the anniversary of efforts to integrate the city parks, swimming pool on the site where that pool once lay.

Works by a dozen participating artists pay tribute to the bravery of those who took part to guide the project.

The gallery brought nationally recognized curator Janelle Logan to Baton Rouge.

So let's listen.

As curator Logan and gallery director Jason Andresen discuss how art can help illuminate inequities and spark honest conversation about progress made and not made in the six decades since.

We've been able to call City Park Home since 1984 through years of partnership with Breck that have been wonderful.

But we also are aware that it came from a not so wonderful history.

This building was once the pool house for a massive 20,000 square foot segregated pool.

The city park pool was built in the 1920s and between the 1920s and the late 1940s.

That was the only pool in Baton Rouge that was open to the public.

And between those years, you had a lot of black children who were dying because they were swimming in spaces that weren't safe.

You had people like Frank Martinez who drowned at the age of 16 in City Park Lake.

You had other kids who were swimming in drainage ditches in places where rainwater would pool, and they didn't always end well.

When black activists came to the city park pool in 1963 to try and integrate it and demonstrate the wrongs of the segregationist policies of the day.

Within a year of that date, the pool was actually closed and eventually filled in in 1990, leaving a void where there had once been a pretty pool, but a pool that not everybody had the ability to use.

The gallery has long talked about this idea of how do we recognize this past?

How do we honor the story of the pool of the swimming or the attempted swimming that happened just before its closure in the mid 1960s?

That led us to a conversation with Janelle Logan, who is the vice president and creative director at McCall's Center in Charlotte, North Carolina.

She has an impressive history of not only institutions that she's worked with, but also individual artists.

And really when she said yes, that she was willing to tackle this subject, we were incredibly excited.

It was seen as an opportunity to talk about that event, to recognize the history of this place being at the site itself of the pool.

It's also really an opportunity to look at a shared American history because segregated pools were not isolé to Baton Rouge and to Louisiana.

It was a phenomenon that happened around the country, and the impacts of that are felt by people.

Black people, especially not having access to recreational swimming, leads to entire communities of people not being able to swim.

In selecting artists for the exhibition, Charles Edward Williams has a body of work that centers around swimming.

He was raised in South Carolina.

He did not learn how to swim until an adult, and he had a number of near-drowning experiences.

And so that particular body of work really connected to the realities of black children, not learning how to swim.

There.

Kimberly Cote is an artist from New York.

And her image, particularly of two young people swimming, is actually kind of a perfect representation for the show.

Kimberly is based in New York, talks about notions of leisure space in black and brown communities and how even when underfunded or relegated to these kinds of spaces that are not ideal and perfect, that these communities find space for joy and revelry and make it work honestly.

One of the artists that we're really happy to have as part of this exhibition is more like a favorite who is kind of a Baton Rouge institution in and of herself just as a beloved artist in our community.

And it's interesting that she's a part of this exhibition in particular because she has her own history within the civil rights movement.

She was actually the first student to integrate schools in Ascension Parish.

There's certainly a history with her as an artist, recognizing that early on in her career she was unlikely to see artists who look like her in gallery spaces on museum walls.

Certainly, she has shown her work in Baton Rouge Gallery before, but when she comes in to see this show with this subject matter, she's able to not only see three different pieces of her inside of this show, but also one of those being an entire wall of 50 different pieces shown together where she's really taken over an entire wall.

All in her own.

We were trying to address a story and a moment in history through contemporary art and bringing it into a contemporary discussion.

However, part of that is rooting it in the history and giving context.

So when you walk through the exhibition, not only are you experiencing the work of 11 different artists, but you're also encountering images of the city park pool, getting a sense of how big it was, getting a sense of how many people might have fit inside of this pool.

You're also encountering pictures of the activists who were involved in the Baton Rouge women.

You're encountering pictures of what the pool looked like after it was closed.

You're also encountering pictures of what Brooks Pool was, which was the pool that was built just a half a mile away from the city park pool so that black residents had a safe swimming location.

And hopefully those images, those pictures, those press clippings give everyone an opportunity to have added context and get more of the story, especially since it's a history that a lot of people, even here in our own area, have no idea existed.

We had the opening and it was amazing to see the number of people that were here and the diversity of people that were here.

I think that as an arts professional is important because often we think of cultural spaces being kind of segregated honestly.

And so to see people who would normally not possibly come to an art space was incredible.

To actually talk to members of this community who were impacted by the segregated pool, who had never stepped foot in this building before.

The actual opening was also incredibly meaningful.

We've heard a lot of stories of people coming to see the show who remember that the pool once sat here and in the decades since, it felt like this place was not for them, that they weren't welcome here.

So the legacy of exclusion kind of existed beyond the days of the pool itself.

And this exhibition seems to have brought more and more people into the space who maybe before this moment didn't feel welcome, didn't feel like it was a space that they were supposed to be in for, whatever that might mean for them.

To open the space to people who still felt that they could not have access.

I think it is really important.

It's important for the arts.

It's important for Baton Rouge.

It's important socially is important politically.

That commitment is so critical and impressive and I wish their art spaces, honestly were bold enough to do this.

Across Louisiana, museums and galleries mounted exhibitions that illustrate and illuminate this place we all call home.

So here are some standout art 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 Rocks again, visit LP dot org slash Art Rocks.

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

Now let's go to Reno, Nevada for some ballet.

But not just any ballet.

Ava Ballet Theater is a company dedicated to bringing professional grade, classical and rock ballet to Northern Nevada.

Each performance is performed alongside the Reno Philharmonic Orchestra, drawing audiences from hundreds of miles around.

So let's listen and take a look.

Aviary Ballet Theater is the resident ballet company of the Pioneer Center for the Performing Arts.

Three Hold open auditions for anybody in the community to come audition for each one of our productions about two months before a production will happen.

And we select all the dancers at that time.

And then we begin rehearsing and we try to involve as many people as we possibly can into our productions and as many students as we can.

I've been dancing with Ava for ten years and I have done around 20 ballets with a ballet and the main one that I do every year is The Nutcracker.

I started to produce The Nutcracker in 1994, and Nutcracker is very fun to do every year.

The community really looks forward to it and I really enjoy doing it.

I'm performing in the role of Clara in The Nutcracker this year, which is the lead role.

Each scene, she's a little bit different.

It's a range of emotions that you get to portray and show the audience, and it's a lot of fun to be able to do that.

You also get to wear the costume, which is very pretty, and kind of how it would help me get into the mindset of what she might be thinking.

And has got selected because she's always been dedicated to the art form of ballet.

She has always been reliable and respectful on stage and in the studio as well.

She is confident enough to be in front of the entire Reno Philharmonic and a 1500 seat house and pull it off in the rehearsals.

It's very exhausting because, you know, the dancers have had pretty much a full day already and they're trying to accomplish things at 730, 830 at night, which when you're exhausted and tired, it's kind of hard to do.

But they do it because they love it.

It's an art form that you really have to churn and it keeps getting bigger and bigger.

And that's what makes dancers love to do ballet.

Rehearsals can be long and trying.

Pointe shoes are very tough on your feet.

You get blisters and you can get overuse injuries if you're dancing too much.

Dancing on point is painful and difficult, but also extremely fun because you're turning on maybe an inch diameter of your foot because you're all the way up on your toes and you have to be able to balance there.

You have to be able to turn.

And I love doing it.

It takes them a long time to actually perfect and get into the center and do pirouettes and do develop pace on pointe and do ground rubber stays on point or to steer a peak hold arabesque in a point of view.

Your body weight is distributed completely differently from on flat when they just wear their flat shoes.

And it's just a completely different experience for the dancer's body.

I think the artists and the community and the parents and the students really look forward to bringing their daughter or son to actually dance with a live production with an orchestra.

And I think that only enhances the experience of seeing a ballet production because it brings the level of the company up.

It brings the level of the dancers up because they really enjoy the orchestra as well.

And I think it's a really wonderful thing for the community since Reno has grown so much.

My company has to grow as well, and it has been growing every single year that I've been on these productions.

It's just coming to a whole different level now.

It's far more professional than it was before.

Years ago, a lot of more dedicated dancers and artists and volunteers.

And Reno expects that.

The community expects really good culture here now, and they're getting it.

So it's my job as an artistic director to give the community what they need to see on stage and have them be proud of being here in Reno, Nevada, and proud to be part of the arts scene in Reno.

above Massachusetts there float say vision in silver, a 100 foot tall, mirrored hot air balloon that shines by day and glitters with LED lights by night.

Californian artist Doug Aiken conceived his New Horizons balloon as a flying sculpture, one that would literally reflect back the landscapes as it passed overhead Good morning, Lawrence.

Traffic hot air.

Balloon, 869.

Uniforms, zero.

Do you have any this.

Morning for this story will begin at the end on Monday.

We've been taking a pretty serene ride over and over, floating above the treetops in a hot air balloon designed by artist Doug Aiken, a shimmering inflatable sculpture.

He's titled New Horizon.

I see New Horizons is really kind of a sculpture of time.

It's something which is it's temporary.

It's changing continuously.

When it stops, we can have this kind of incredible communal moments.

But on this flight we got communal, fast, the wind picked up and we had to touch down.

After two failed attempts, our pilot spotted a make do landing strip, this small grassy median at the intersection of two busy routes at rush hour.

Engineers did not like at their home.

Suddenly, new horizon was on the ground, its silvery skin collapsing in a tired exhale.

Cars stopped.

The state police rushed in behind us.

There's cars pulling over, driving in, helping.

You know, I think it's just it's miraculous.

We had an exhilarating landing.

Pedro Alonzo is the guest curator of Art and the Landscape, an effort by the trustees of reservations to disrupt the group's historic sites.

Not with art that's ornamental, but art that engages.

Yep.

Hinds mirrored Labyrinth at World's End in Hingham.

Sam Durant's meeting house at the Old Manse in Concord and Alicia Cortez.

Exploration of reality at the Crane estate in Ipswich.

I'm convinced that the public wants art.

They just don't want to feel intimidated or uninformed when they look at it.

And this is the kind of artwork that people will be surprised.

That was.

Art.

Alonzo also takes a devilish glee in the element of surprise.

Remember the photograph that mysteriously appeared on Boston's former Hancock Tower one day?

That was Alonzo teaming with French artist J.R..

They did it again two years ago, installing an image of a child peering over a mexican border wall into the U.S.. That kind of surprise is, for me, much more valuable than a programed event.

Well, what does it do to the.

Plunk of sculpture down in the middle of rush hour traffic?

Literally in the middle of rush hour traffic?

Oh, it's it's well, first people take notice.

You know, people definitely take notice.

And I think it's the kind of thing that just changes your day.

You're going to think very differently about how your day went.

In a world where everything is so homogenized, so repetitious, you know, we need disruption.

We we need moments of kind of a crack in our daily reality.

Hundreds of feet up in the air before our sudden landing.

Artist Doug Aiken says when Alonzo commissioned him to create a piece for art and the landscape, he knew zero about hot air balloons.

So he used the idea of the classic American road trip as a point of departure.

It's kind of baked into our DNA, this idea of the other this idea of you disappear currents are kind of moving into the landscape, a landscape that we don't know.

You know, I think there's an aspect of this project is intensely physical, and I couldn't have said it better than that sound.

The California based artist and filmmaker is a big thinker and creator.

He's animated an entire Manhattan block with his piece Sleepwalkers.

He curated station to station, a train that doubled as a light sculpture as across the U.S. and in underwater pavilions.

He submerged giant sculptures off the California coast.

The idea of community, the idea of these kind of flash points across the landscape has been very provocative.

New Horizon has been popping up and in our case, floating across Massachusetts for the last two weeks, moving from Martha's Vineyard to the Berkshires in daylight.

It's a 100 foot tall beacon at night.

It's a floating light show.

And wherever the balloon goes, people gather For our final segment, we're off to Florida to meet some stylists who are raising the craft of hair care to an art in its own right with imagination, a spritz of science and some precision tools.

This barbershop duet gives hair flare that keeps customers coming back.

It's it's it's.

It's.

My name's Darryl Abercrombie.

I'm here today, introduced in my barbershop in Clearwater, Florida.

Ended up here studio.

And what introduced me to Barber and the reason why I started cutting hair is to pick up on the style and get out of the street barber and actually be a change and save my life.

Now on my own barber shop.

And I've been in business for about three years, but I've been home for 17 years.

You step right here as my body clipper I used to just was set in my bar lines.

It's these are mostly are used for edgy.

If you have real precise it's real precise line up I have some curve shears.

And one cool trick about cutting is when you cut you use a tone you know, So this is your steel blade display is not smooth and you mostly just using your body and saying, Yeah.

I'm a student at SPC working on my associates at architectural design.

What brung me to actual being an architect is the art form of being a barber.

The two go hand in hand.

The art form of being a barber relates back to, like I said, being able to give a straight edge, use a 90 degree angle.

You will be using a 45 degree angle is a lot of math skills that go involved with cutting hair that transitions overs to do geometry shapes.

The same thing goes for a rise in a run and building stairs.

So being a barber is just not about doing a good haircut, but actually knowing forms different angles, different styles, and actually being able to present those out on your client.

And I know a lot of people don't think that barbering is art, but barbering is in fact the art of defining someone's inner personality and their out of physical being.

And by doing that, you actually build someone's self-awareness and their self-confidence.

So what I'm trying to go in the next few years is just put my stamp on the world, you know, show them that I am an artist in every form and that, you know, anybody can do anything that they put their mind to.

And my name's Billy Work.

I'm the owner of the works at the barber shop.

I got into barbering probably when I was a kid, so I grew up in the projects in New Jersey.

We were very poor.

We didn't have a lot at all and we definitely couldn't afford haircuts.

So what I did was started cutting hair myself.

So what I wound up doing is it led from cutting my own hair to some friends and cousins and like my stepdad and my brother.

And it got to the point where they didn't want to go anywhere else because no one could cut someone's hair like me.

It led to me finally getting my barber degree and I decided to go to school and actually make it a career.

And it's probably the best thing I've ever done.

Once I got out, I had a goal.

I had a five year goal to make my own, to have my own barber shop.

And I wound up within four years, I was ready to get out on my own, which I think it's the best career I've ever had.

And then, you know, including like my art and stuff, I got I got started with art also at a very young age.

I was drawing people's names on their on their books for school, all their book covers, drawing their names and doing, you know, graffiti.

And then it just it just evolved from there.

I wound up having a show at the Dali Museum a few years ago.

That was really cool.

We sold out, sold everything within like an hour and a half.

Now I just I'm still doing commissions and I'm trying to just go further and in barbering and just putting everything, you know, as one.

They pretty much go hand in hand as far as art and barbering go.

And that is that for this edition of Art Rocks.

But don't worry.

You can find more episodes of the show at LP dot org slash rocks.

And if you just can't get enough of these enriching stories, Country Roads magazine makes a great guide to what's happening in the arts events and at destinations all across the state.

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 LPB, offering diverse exhibitions throughout the year and programs that showcase art, history, music and more.

West Baton Rouge Museum Culture Cultivated.

Rocks is made possible by the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting and by viewers like you.