[gentle music] - In this edition of "WLIW Arts Beat".

A vibrant smoke performance.

- I'm really excited to share A Purple Poem For Miami with you.

We've been working on it for a year.

- [Host] The power of the paintbrush.

- Art for me is basically my life.

It is.

To me, I believe this all my heart, that is what I'm supposed to do.

- [Host] Plein aire cottage artists.

- [Man] When you take a look at some of these works, you can't help but look at the beauty of it.

There's color in here that is amazing.

There's the scenery.

There's the architecture.

There's the plants.

- [Host] Classical music during the time of COVID.

- [Woman] Not getting limited by what we couldn't do.

We started thinking about what we could do.

What we could do was a series of chamber music concerts.

- It's all ahead, on this edition of "WLIW Arts Beat".

funding for "WLIW Arts Beat" was made possible by viewers like you, thank you.

Welcome to "WLIW Arts Beat" I'm Diane Masciale.

artist Judy Chicago's A Purple Poem For Miami is a memorable smoke performance that colors the urban scape with blues, pinks and purples.

We visit Miami Florida and get a front row seat to the event.

[upbeat music] - I'm really excited to share a purple poem for Miami with you.

We've been working on it for a year.

We're giving Miami, we hope A gift that that you will enjoy.

So please, please enjoy A Purple Poem For Miami, thank you.

[crowd cheers] [smoke sizzles] [fireworks explode] [crowd cheers] [fireworks explode] [crowd cheers] Before this is over, I need to tell you that One of my goals with these pieces was to soften, and feminize the environment and show the world what it would like if we were all kinder and more generous with each other.

[crowd cheering] - [Host] For more on her work enter Judychicago.com.

[upbeat music] And now the artists quote of the week.

In this segment we meet Russell Nelson an artist and veteran who overcame struggle and hardship to pursue his passion, painting.

We traveled to Cincinnati Ohio for this story.

[gentle music] - I take life one day at a time learned that the hard way [laughs] but, ah and never take for granted, what's given to you, always be grateful and humble about it, and make the most of what you do get and work with it and make it your own.

When I do wake up in the morning and I look around and I'm just astonished of where I was and where I am now.

And as I said, just to be grateful for what I have, and the opportunities that's coming my way you know, it's just, it's overwhelming sometimes.

I just lay there in bed and just like, wow.

[upbeat music] I really had no direction.

And you went to the army started talking to the recruiter there and they talked me into doing the Chemical Corps.

So, and they told me that, you know, all all I'd be doing is showing people how to wear their gas masks and work in a company company level and have my own office and whatnot, you know and just train people in chemical warfare.

So I was like, cool.

I ended up in a really bad situation.

I was in, I went to Europe after schooling and I ended up it's kind of classified but it was [laughs] not what they told me it was going to be.

So I spent three years in the military and mostly in Europe, in Germany.

And when my time was up, I just went ahead and got out.

The transition from military to civilian life, it was kinda hard.

And I had to go back home to mom and dad's, you know, for awhile.

And I took a mediocre jobs here and there, you know and I started drinking heavy, was more or less a chore.

You know, I wouldn't even get drunk anymore.

For the most part, like the happy-go-lucky drunk.

You know, you have your faculties about you, but it got to the point where yeah, I would drink and I'd black out.

And you know, then, then I finally realized, Hey, look you know, this is starting to be a problem.

And I need to address it as older as I got, you know, I drank more, you know and then a few times it did become a problem.

That's when I found myself homeless.

And that's the worst feeling in the world to end up with, you know the clothes on your back in a little duffel bag, that's it.

You know, what the hell am I going to do?

[gentle music] I was staying at the Goodwill, out in the tri county area, Springfield.

I was drinking there and the director leaves.

He pretty much put his foot down and was like, look you know, Russ, you're a nice guy and everything but you're heading in the wrong direction again.

Yeah, you see it.

I'm going to tell, I want to call somebody and have you go to this place I know, he was an alumni, he went there and I'm said okay, that's fine.

And that's when Joseph House came into play.

[gentle music] Joseph House, the staff, the counselors, everyone there really, and truly want to help.

I got to the Joseph House and started going to the painting classes with Sarah, the art therapist there where I actually started sitting down and got, well, you know, warmed up to painting again.

I try to make my art, my painting, my own, you know it's my style.

Yeah, I got it down now to, to a science to where, you know I can do a painting in one day.

No problem.

You know, it's just the knowing, and also it's a natural gift.

Art for me is basically my life.

It is, to me, I believe this all my heart, that its what I'm supposed to do.

Being able to do what I do and having other people enjoy what I do, that's I don't want to sound and make it sound like it's self-serving but in a way, it is.

In my own mind, you know the dark recesses of my studio, you know, I'm happy.

The world gives, you give back not only in what you do in life, but you personally, as a person, you know you have to be able to love people first you gotta love yourself, but you have to get back to humanity in this world.

Be fully whole.

And to be kind.

I'm fortunate enough.

My art therapy helped me.

It got me back on track, you know and got me to where I'm going now.

But you have to find what you're looking for.

You can't find it in a bottle.

You can't find it in a needle, in a crack pipe, whatever.

That's not you, that's just an outside influence.

That's holding you back.

You know, if you care enough about yourself, you will not have an outside force tell you how you feel.

You just can't do it.

You need to be a contributing factor in society nowadays you know, it's sink or swim.

So the choice is up to you but you have to make that choice.

- [Host] Now here's a look at this month's fun fact.

[gentle music] Up next, we traveled to Florida to meet Helen Tilston and Mary Rose Holmes.

They are too Plein aire cottage artists working to preserve the history and architecture of their city through their paintings.

Take a look.

[upbeat music] - You can take a look around Indian Rocks Beach and see that it is very different from other communities around.

- Indian Rocks Beach prides itself on preserving the best of the past.

- The island there was really nothing here in the '20s.

I mean, there were just a mile without any cottages.

So it really wasn't until after world war two then people started building cottages and mostly people from Tampa.

And this was the second home.

- Here is a, a place that you can time travel back to the 1950s and feel what it was like.

- Indian Rocks Beach uniquely has managed to maintain a small town character.

And there's a strong local desire to protect and retain that character.

- Our Plein aire cottage artist took the plight.

And instead of tearing down those old homes to create a sense of what yesteryear was like and refurbished those homes back to the way they are today.

- Not only is the artwork incredible, but the story and the advocacy, it is a story in and of itself if.

- If you've probably seen them but they wear these glorious dresses and they're very free spirits.

And they're basically our Hollywood.

- Gotcha.

- My name is Helen Tilston and I was born in Ireland and have been painting since I was young.

- Mary Rose Holmes.

I'm one of the Plein aire cottage artist and enjoyed art all through my childhood and through college.

We moved here approximately 22 years ago.

We came only for one night and we never left.

- And then met Mary Rose both 18, 19 years ago.

So we met at a course, an art course and just got along famously, it was life drawing and we both agreed.

We loved painting outdoors.

So we took our easels outdoors and great comradery and painting daily.

- We'll paint in the morning, we'll come in and have lunch go back out because of the shadows.

We love the shadows in the late morning.

Great shadows in the late afternoon.

- Plein aire painting is a painting Institute or on location.

- Plein aire is painting outside.

You see the light, you see the shadows so much better.

If you paint from inside, you're usually painting from a photograph and a photograph makes the painting flat.

You don't see around the tree.

You don't see around the cottage.

- Once you paint outdoors, it's very difficult to go back to the studio because there's reflected lights when you're outdoors.

You're aware of the sights, the sounds, the smell, the mood.

And I think as an artist, you put that into the painting.

- When you take a look at some of these works, you can't help but look at the beauty of it.

There's color in here that is amazing.

There's this scenery, there's the architecture.

There's the plants.

It's absolutely stunning.

And then when you actually see it in person, you're like this is just amazing.

- We love them.

- They really are our royalty.

- Many paintings capture my sight but not all capture my heart.

And we only paint originals.

We do not duplicate our work.

So then when the painting goes on to you some of you is also included in that oil painting.

- We're often approached while painting, and we love it.

We can paint and talk at the same time.

And it's really neat because as we're painting they are noticing these wonderful cottages.

Also they're noticing our paintings.

And a lot of times they buy them right off the easel.

- They take photos, because they're curious it is not often that people see Plein aire painters.

So people are quite surprised when they see us.

And some say, we're like the dolphins it's going to be a good day if they see us out thing painting because it's a rare day that you see dolphins too.

- We adore them, they are treasurers.

They really connected with the cottages.

- I think the Plein aire artists have had a tremendous impact in raising general public awareness not just in Indian Rocks Beach, but in the surrounding area about the nature of the cottages and the fact that they're threatened.

- What started all of this was the fact that developers are starting to tear down cottages and old places along here.

- Places that have been ruined and have been destroyed forever by the large concrete condominium buildings.

- Great wall of Florida.

- Just wall to wall condominiums.

And so they wanted to recognize the need to keep those places.

And so they've painted a lot of them.

- I think by preserving some of these beautiful cottages and allowing future generations to see what old Florida really was and how beautiful and quaint and just absolutely drop dead gorgeous old Florida was.

- We want to capture the essence of the cottages and beauty of these little cottages.

Just get their memory on a canvas.

- Each cottage that was demolished and each condo that went up, got a variance.

So Sydney Hall and planning and zoning had to give out a variance.

So we were telling people, as we painted this acquire they're pulling down this cottage.

Well, you could do something about it.

If you went up to city hall and objected to the variances and people started to do this.

- But to be able to encourage others to fix them up and rehab them and preserve them and keep them so that there isn't some big concrete wall that goes up between beautiful shell road and the Gulf of Mexico.

- Once you smash a tree, you can plant another tree.

Once you smash a cottage, you'll never get it back, it's gone.

- Well, I think they've been a great asset as far as letting folks know that, okay this is something unique to our community and we need to do everything possible to preserve these structures.

And can't think of a better way to get that message out than through what the Plein aire artists have done.

- [Host] To find out more, head to helentilstonpainter.blogspot.com And here's a look at this week's art history.

[gentle music] Since 2012, the music festival classical Tahoe has been presenting orchestra, concerts, chamber music programs and more to eager audiences in Nevada.

Up next, we hear how it was possible for the festival to continue during the COVID-19 pandemic.

[gentle music] - Classical Tahoe started in 2012 as a vision of building community at lake Tahoe.

Some of the finest musicians in the world have made Lake Tahoe their summer home under the auspices of classical Tahoe or three week classical music festival.

It takes place on the campus of Sierra Nevada university.

And it's in a pop-up pavilion seats about 400 people, full orchestra about 60 and audience of about 400 in these incredible acoustics in the forest.

And we do about a dozen concerts over three weeks.

Every night is different.

Joel Revson who was our founding artistic director and conductor, he, through a group, of people assembled this incredible orchestra and put together the orchestra concerts.

So it's intense, it's fabulous.

And it's a really great opportunity to have music at the highest level community building in a way that people at the end of three weeks have made lifetime friends and feel embedded in the community.

While the pandemics unfolding in March and April and Joel got sick at the very beginning maybe the third week in March came down with COVID and fought it for the better part of 60 days, maybe 70 in and out of the hospital.

But even as he was getting sicker, and we knew we couldn't have the orchestra festival, I think the piece that became more and more important with that, Joel loved this orchestra more than I think more than anything, besides his wife Cindy in the world, it seemed more important than ever in honor of Joel, before he died.

But then more important after he passed was to gather this group together to make music because that's what he would have wanted more than anything.

And that's what all of us wanted.

Organizations are canceling [finger snaps] spring, summer, we weren't going to be able to gather.

It didn't make sense to build a pop-up pavilion that held 400 people.

How do you space an orchestra on a stage if they all have to be six feet apart, what do you do with an audience that can sit with their husband or wife or partner or family, but not near anybody else.

Not getting limited by what we couldn't do, we started thinking about what we could do.

What we could do was a series of chamber music concerts.

We started imagining places in the forest and on the lake where you could gather and create a concert setting in a venue.

So we had to break down what's normally about 60 people to groups of 10 coming each week.

That's how we began to build probably version C plus of what was possible.

We put together three weeks of 10 musicians and we had to address a number of things.

We wanted everyone to get COVID tests before they came.

We had a medical advisor that worked with us.

We were studying the best practices about how far the winds and the vocalist should be.

We had wind tapes.

So we knew which way we were singing and sitting.

We had positioned our French horn so that the horn was away from anybody to the back.

So we actually had done a ton of research and consultations to find out the safest ways to make music possible.

[gentle music] The arts are transformative in that they have held people up in the hardest times.

And they're always what give you a reason to get back together when the hardest times have passed.

I think had we stepped back and waited, I don't know that that joy of what Joel created for this festival could be kindled in the same way that it absolutely became a beacon this summer and something that will never be lost.

Everybody has been asking, please let's do chamber music in the forest again.

I think the one thing that comes out of something as complicated as a year of a pandemic and losing your founding artistic director is you can treat it as a tragedy and roll it up.

Or you can look at it as an opportunity to say, what could we be.

- [Host] For more information, visit classicaltahoe.org.

That wraps it up for this edition of "WLIW Arts Beat".

We'd like to hear what you think.

So like us on Facebook, join the conversation join Twitter and visit our webpage for features and to watch episodes of the show.

We hope to see you next time.

I'm Diane Masciale.

Thank you for watching "WLIW Arts" Funding for "WLIW Arts Beat" was made possible by viewers like you, thank you.

[gentle music]