(soft piano music) - Creating art out of found objects, or the things we typically see or use, can make art accessible to us.

On this episode of "The Arts Page," watch how one woman has modernized the art of crochet.

Step inside the creative design process of an avant-garde architect.

See how an artist gives Caribbean folk art a unique home.

And discover how junk meets imagination for one sculptor.

That's all coming up on this edition of "The Arts Page."

(bright jazzy music) (bright jazzy music continues) Welcome to "The Arts Page."

I'm Sandy Maxx.

An art can be made from the most familiar objects: glass, paint, paper, and even string.

Jo Hamilton took her grandmother's lessons and channeled them into her art, turning an activity that's often associated with an older generation into a fun, hip, colorful activity by putting a face to a ball of yarn.

Mike Midlo tells us more.

(bright ethereal music) - [Mike] This is Jo Hamilton's studio.

- Cat's paradise in here.

(light bouncy music) - [Mike] It's filled with yarn, yarn of every color you can think of.

(light bouncy music) She uses all this yarn to crochet stuff.

That's what she does, crochets, all day long.

(light bouncy music) How'd you learn to do that?

- My gran taught me when I was about six years old.

Thereabouts.

The first thing I learned to crochet was a granny square, which is, I would say the most commonly seen pattern in crochet.

If you know how to make a granny square, then you can pretty much make anything.

(light bouncy music) - [Mike] One day, Jo got a big idea.

She took some yarn and her hook and began to crochet something that no one had ever tried before.

She started to crochet a landscape of Portland.

(light bouncy music) (light bouncy music continues) - This brown stripe here represents Burnside.

All the blue across here represents the river.

The Big Pink, City Hall, the Hawthorne Bridge, Broadway, as I envisioned it.

The Steel Bridge, the Convention Center, the two glass towers.

One granny square for my gran, which I turned into a little building.

At the time that I was working on it was when a lot of loft buildings were going up in northwest Portland.

So there were just cranes everywhere.

(light bouncy music) This side of the piece is meant to be more old school, established Portland, lots of trees, Victorian, kind of warmer, more natural colors as opposed to the kind of new brash side of Portland as it's being built.

(light bouncy music) I was working in a restaurant, and my coworkers, I'd shown them what I was doing, and, you know, the start of the cityscape when it was still only, you know, a couple of feet.

And they were good-naturedly making fun of me for, you know, crocheting Portland, and, "You're going to crochet all the way to Gresham," and that sort of thing.

And so as a joke, I said: "Well, you know, shut up, I'll crochet you."

- [Mike] And that's just what she did.

(light bouncy music) By now, Jo knew she had crossed a line.

She was using her grandma's traditional craft to make fine art.

- You know, I began to realize that really I could pretty much crochet anything at all, you know, no limitations.

And I could get amazing likenesses.

Not just likenesses of people, but really capture people's spirits in yarn in a way that even kind of now still amazes me.

This is the Amish Turk.

He was a chef at the restaurant where I worked.

(light bouncy music) This is Cory Hopper, another chef.

This is my friend Bryon Adams-Harford.

(light bouncy music) This is Shreddy, AKA Aaron, who was a dishwasher at the restaurant.

(light bouncy music) This is Siobhan who waited tables with me.

This is a portrait of Grant, who was a waiter.

He was a really good subject.

I kind of really like the expression on this one, this little half smile.

And his blue hair.

(Jo laughs) This is Elisa.

She was a host and server.

She has a lot of hair, as you can see.

(light bouncy music) This is my self-portrait.

Ended up being a really strangely fast piece that only took a little bit over a week.

(light bouncy music) Whenever I start a portrait, I always start with the left eye.

So I start right in the middle of the left eye with the pupil surrounded by the iris, and then I build it out from there.

And the reason it works really well with crochet is because I can change direction any time I want.

And if you know how to crochet, you can see what I'm doing by the direction of the stitches.

So anytime you see a line in crochet, that is the direction that I'm going in.

So I basically circle the eye, and that gives me the structure of the eye socket and then below that the cheekbones.

And then usually I'll do the other eye and then figure out what I need to do in the middle to join them.

It really makes me laugh sometimes when I see, you know, the glint in somebody's eye that I know is there in real life, you know?

Or somebody who's surly, you know, I've got their expression down.

I'm sure a lot of crafters are horrified by what I do.

Rules are there to be broken, as any artist knows.

(bright ethereal music) I get a lot of emails from people saying: "I've been crocheting for 40 years, "and I've never seen anything like this.

"And it's really amazing and I'm really inspired."

And that's really cool that, you know, little old ladies all over the world are taking the time to write to me and, you know, they're enjoying what I do.

(bright ethereal music) - In addition to crochet art, Hamilton also does traditional drawing and painting.

To see more of her work, visit johamiltonart.com.

On a larger scale than yarn art, there are the buildings we see each day.

Architect Antoine Predock describes his design process as a poetic encounter with a given location.

He draws inspiration from the geology, the landscape conditions, the culture, and personal experience to create avant-garde structures that have amazed visitors around the world.

(light jazzy music) - It's really hard to articulate where so-called design comes from.

I mean, architecture is an art.

It's a poetic encounter every time out with a client, with site, cultural power.

You never know.

It's always kind of a roll of a dice in terms of what's going to happen.

So I just sort of look through the rear-view mirror or trust peripheral vision rather than a head-on idea about something.

And I let things sum up in my feelings.

You live your life, and you get filled up with stuff in life.

Then there's some kind of poetic filter that selectively releases that experience.

Architecture is mysterious.

And if it's really architecture, then it's not about, "Hey, where are the bathrooms?

"How many square feet?"

All that.

You know, that's so boring.

You can do that in two seconds.

You can figure that out.

But the other deeper, deeper thing, way deeper thing, is what defines architecture.

(light bouncy music) It's the first national museum out of Ottawa.

It's the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

So it's a very, very important building for the Canadian culture.

So a human rights museum, you know, what do you do with that?

But I thought of roots engaging the earth, like the building clutches the earth.

So these pieces that come out, I call 'em roots.

So they establish a connection to the earth, the power of this place, the forks where the Red River meets the Assiniboine River.

A place of rendezvous for everyone from the earliest First Nations peoples, where there was great dispute resolution here without turning to violence, on that very site of the building.

So it's got this anchorage in a human rights endeavor.

So then the building aspires to the sky, to hope and optimism, and acknowledgement of the struggles.

(light bouncy music) (light bouncy music continues) So the cloud that wraps the building is a glass cloud.

Cloud-like, maybe you could read dove's wings into it if you wanted to, you know, extrapolate the building to a human rights narrative.

And a tower of hope, maybe, you know, at the top.

The aspiration to sky, to the sky that we all kind of have.

And with our feet in the ground.

The aesthetic of the building just kind of happens.

You know, there's no point where you say, "I'm going to put some aesthetics on it now."

It's either there or it isn't.

But the process starts from a lot of research.

I mean, that's an example, that collage back there is an example of my research process.

I was an action painter at UNM art school.

And it was paralleling architecture, so the idea of collage and physicality and the gesture, literally the gesture in making something, the gestural aspect, the research aspect is in the mix that you're stirring up all the time.

(light jazzy music) When I travel all around to do projects all around this country or internationally, the question arises, "Well, how do you tune in "to these different places?"

And how do you empathize and do the things I've been talking about when you're kind of coming out of nowhere?

New Mexico is the place to start.

Because I've been working here for, I don't know, 50 years or more.

I've lost count.

And it's just so much in my system.

You know, the awareness of wind direction, of sun, the importance of cultural diversity.

This is a laboratory for an architect, for an artist, for anybody.

(light bouncy music) (light bouncy music continues) I did the American Heritage Center and Art Museum in Laramie, Wyoming.

And the lessons I've been talking about applied there, how you look at the place.

And there's a geologic phenomenon called the Laramide orogeny, which means that the mountains, instead of wearing down and diminishing like the Rockies are doing, mountains are coming up.

There's some kind of upheaval that went on.

So I thought, "Well, let's make a mountain.

"Let's think about making a new mountain for that horizon."

At its base, think of the notion of rendezvous, crossroads.

So there's some encampment or maybe a village at its base.

So there's this big mountainous form, and, at its base, the fragmented art museum.

So that's kind of the big idea but working from within.

So the mountain notion had to work at the same time with programmatic investigation into what they were presenting there and storing there.

You know, when you talk about place, it's kind of slippery.

What defines place?

I mean, what is it?

In the information age, it's so easy to even out cultural sensibility, to even out how things look.

So that's all the more reason to pay attention to the specifics of place.

And this is a good example of it.

When I went to work on my project in Qatar, an educational facility in Qatar for Her Highness Sheikha Moza.

And she really controls kind of the cultural message.

Qatar's special, you know, Al Jazeera's there.

They said, "Okay, you got to go to the desert."

And I found this Pepsi can, and I noticed that it was embedded in the sand.

It's been really messed with, like somebody took a sandblast machine and blasted one side of it off.

Well, that's the desert sand doing it.

I really had to think about the wind direction for my project and how to defend against it.

(light bouncy music) (light bouncy music continues) Architecture with a capital A is a poetic encounter with a client, with a site, with a place, with a people, a collective people.

So what's the role of an architect?

What's the mission supposed to be?

I think, as with anyone, any individual in any endeavor is to have your inner content, your deepest inner content made visible.

So then when you make your work, if you happen to be an architect and you let that be a kind of guide, you trust that inner place.

And you have to find that inner place.

I mean, that's up to... How do you figure that out?

I don't know.

Everybody's got their own way of doing it.

So then the role then is to be true to that.

The role of an architect?

Be true to that.

And see what happens, you know, in your work.

I don't think there's some master of vision, "Oh, I'm going to do buildings "that are going to change society or any of that."

Architects have done that too often and really screwed things up drastically by thinking they're masters of the universe and they're going to shape society and all that stuff.

Problem in architecture is, what you put out there, that's not going away, you know?

It's not like a poem that's sort of in the air, in a book or in the air.

It's out there to mess with people.

So some other impulse in that building should last, almost superseding its physicality.

I think a great piece of work, a building, a poem, a novel, music, a green enchilada is a gift to mankind if it's coming from a special place.

- Predock's building designs can be seen worldwide and even locally.

He designed the Indian Community School of Milwaukee in nearby Franklin, Wisconsin.

To see all of Predock's over 200 projects around the world, visit predock.com.

When we travel, we often bring home souvenirs.

But what do you get when a Sacramento artist combs the Caribbean for unique art and adds her own touch?

Rob Stewart tells us more.

(upbeat music) - And we're celebrating the world of art today at the Kuumba Collective Art Gallery in Sacramento with Sacramento artist, Adele James.

Good to see you, Adele.

- Thank you for coming to Kuumba.

- [Rob] It's a beautiful place here.

What I love about your work is that you've teamed up with an artist in Trinidad, and you capture his art and you bring it to America and give it a whole new life.

Tell me about that.

- Well, I was inspired by the work of a folk artist in Trinidad and Tobago, and I had bought his work.

But what that's evolved into really is this idea of Caribbean art promotion as a way to really promote and bring awareness to folk art of the Caribbean.

And it's a collaborative effort.

So what I do is I photograph the work, but also photograph different images that I layer to create these pieces.

And then, when the items are sold, share the profits with the artist.

But it also helps to create a new form of the work.

So I create, she glaze.

I put the work on different items, from functional art baskets.

Really thinking about work that is affordable, that's functional, that's also beautiful.

And at the same time, it shares the culture and the history of the Caribbean.

- [Rob] Interesting.

- [Adele] And to think about: how can these artists be supported in continuing to do what they do and also creating other forms that can extend the value of the work?

- Where do you get your inspiration from?

- You know, I think that, for me, when I look at the pieces, they tell a story, and the story of a lot of the pieces shares the history of the region.

(bright music) - [Rob] And it's giving the artist in Trinidad new life here in America.

- [Adele] It's a collaborative effort.

And, you know, for me, that's how I like to work.

- [Rob] You're a new artist.

You've been doing this about a year, correct?

- [Adele] Yes.

- [Rob] What does it mean to you to have a piece in the Crocker within one year?

- It's overwhelming.

This whole journey has been overwhelming.

So from coming to Kuumba and having them say, "We want you to show your work here," to doing the second Saturdays and then the Crocker.

You know, I have to believe that it's not about me, but that, you know, this is some of the role that I am meant to play in helping to bring attention to this work.

And I get excited about doing it as well.

- I can tell, and it's beautiful work.

It is beautiful art, Adele.

And we thank you for sharing the story with us today.

Adele James here in Sacramento at the Kuumba Collective Art Gallery.

Good to see you.

- Thank you.

- What some people see as junk sculptor Mike Rivamonte sees as treasures of childhood.

Rivamonte searches for what he considers to be antiques to create his unique sculptures.

(bright electronic music) - One of the great things about being a sculptor is that you get to spend all day with your imagination, which I think is a lot of fun.

(bright electronic music) These are some of my favorite pieces that I've been working on over the years.

They're made from staplers, old badges, old camera parts, engine parts, whatever inspires me to make something.

It's almost like these things kind of find me as much as I would like to think that I found them.

When I was a kid, my mom used to drag me to antique stores on Saturday mornings.

And so while she was looking at porcelain plates and furniture, I was always attracted to these brass pieces of metal over in some corner that was some instrument that who knows what it did.

And I think from there I was just always looking at those things, always kind of interested in history and objects that were mechanical.

(bright electronic music) Walt is like the first piece that I ever built, and I named him after Walt Disney.

I found the head first, it's from the 1920s, and then I just kind of built everything from that era.

So I really like that piece.

And then this is Scout, and he's made out of all these wonderful old pieces of tin that are all hammered on.

It takes forever to do.

But the end result is really nice, so that's why I do it.

(bright electronic music) This spider is made from old piano, parts of a piano, I think the keys.

And then the body is made from an old desktop fan.

I mean, I used chopsticks here on the end.

But I made these little cars from old cameras for a show.

Everything had to be small, and I wanted them to look like toys from the '30's.

First, I spend a lot of time finding the parts.

And then because it's a robot, there's symmetry, you know, he's got two arms, he's got legs, got a head.

So you have to kind of look for... I kind of changed my perception of how I'm looking for things, and what you might consider something strange, I would say, "That's a head," or, you know, "That's a chest," or maybe, "Those are shoulders."

All these materials are antiques.

So you have to learn a little bit about metal.

You have to learn about leather, you have to learn about polishing metal, cutting metal, wood, woodworking.

And so you have to learn all those different things, which becomes kind of challenging.

And bringing these staplers, fans, and radio parts to life where you don't even see that.

You see this creature first, and then you start to look in close and go, "Oh wow, that's a knob, that's a screw."

I think that, for myself, it adds to the believability of looking at the thing, that it's alive, if you can't see any bolts or screws.

So I try to hide all mine.

Unless it was already there, and then I kind of use it to my advantage.

♪ Rhythm ♪ There are people that come in that are retired scientists, retired engineers, workers, and they can recognize parts of some of these pieces.

Some people don't know what any of these parts are, and then the person next to them goes, "Ah, it's a drive-in speaker."

And they go, "What is that?"

It's really fun to introduce people to things that they have grown up with and have forgotten about.

And then there are other people that get to see something new that they knew nothing about.

(bright piano music) I think there's something about this golden age of being a child, maybe it's between the ages of like seven and 11, where you can see it in their eyes when they go to a movie and they're actually believing what's happening on the screen.

And I think that I was attracted to creating something like that, that was lighthearted, that would make people smile, that wouldn't scare kids.

And that was just of a time when we're innocent and we're happy.

- On the next edition of "The Arts Page," we peek into what inspires an artist.

See how a former biologist elevates nature through paper cutting.

Watch as a graduate student intersects beauty with nature and upholstery.

And take an inside look into how legendary comedic genius Mel Brooks came up with his film, "The Critic."

I'm Sandy Maxx, thanks for watching, and we'll see you on the next edition of "The Arts Page."

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