[jazzy instrumental music] [jazzy instrumental music continues] [jazzy instrumental music softens] - In this edition of WLIW Arts Beat, paintings that stir the imagination.

- [Joshua] My style is illustrative and narrative and more of a minimalist approach.

It uses a lot of allegory and metaphor.

[baroque music] - [Diane] A flower shop on wheels.

- Flowers are similar to music.

Music lifts you up.

Music changes your mood.

So do flowers.

[baroque music ends] [jazzy instrumental music] - [Diane] An exhibition that explores air.

- [Whitney] One of our goals is really to make this invisible element of air visible and just to recognize this important element that we all depend on to live.

[jazzy instrumental music continues] - [Diane] It's all ahead on this edition of WLIW Arts Beat.

Funding for WLIW Arts Beat was made possible by views like you.

Thank you.

Welcome to WLIW Arts Beat.

I'm Diane Masciale.

Artist and teacher, Joshua Chambers, creates fine art acrylic paintings.

With a minimalist approach to art-making, he encourages viewers to bring their own experiences to his works and create their own stories based on what they see.

We travel to Louisiana to find out more.

[odd chiming music] [distorted undertone music surges] - My style is illustrative and narrative and more of a minimalist approach.

It uses a lot of allegory and metaphor.

Humorous, a little absurdist.

Relationship-based.

Oftentimes when I'm drawing out, it's really tempting to put as much imagery and information into the surface as possible.

But I've found over the years doing that that it often limits the viewer from really exploring it and establishing their portion of the narrative.

'Cause ultimately, the goal is for them to have enough to begin and to get the underlining text to it but then to take it and to apply it to their own personal view.

What I've heard people say as they're deciphering it is because they don't have a plethora of information, they often have to say, "Well, based on what I know, "I think this means this," or, "based on my experience, this made me feel "like this one time," or, "this reminds me of a time when I felt like that."

And then they start to create those stories around it.

It is very difficult to pare it down to those single images.

And often, by the time the composition hits a painting or a surface of a painting, it's been filtering through and cycling through my sketch books for a year or so, trying to get down to that quintessential grouping and selection of imagery to get that right story.

Finding the imagery and deciding on the imagery, it's an extensive amount of research.

I like to read a lot, I like to find out how culturally people view different imagery.

In the piece "Hold Me", there's the ape and the crane together.

Both are images that I use regularly.

They come from different allegories but I like to pair their together.

The ape is clearly very angry and upset and holding strings that are tied to the ankles of the crane.

And the crane is struggling with being pulled on by the ape.

The text for the piece is "Hold Me" which often elicits a humorous response from the viewer because you have what appears to be a very negative, difficult situation, but then you have this declaration of need, one character to the other.

I really enjoy children's fables and stories, and fairytales and allegory, and that sort of thing.

So I like that you can use the animal as a stand-in for a person.

When I was growing up, some of my favorite movies were "Every Which Way But Loose" and like, those that included apes as like the silly, uncontrollable character.

You got character who tends to represent like, the more mischievous, silly aspect of a personality.

Oftentimes, I'll add phrases to the paintings.

They come from conversations I have with people or snippets of literature that I've read.

They morph and change as I remember them or re-remember them.

So it creates another level to this story, another layer for the viewer to sift through and decipher.

I use vinyl lettering and I put that in there.

And then paint over it and it builds up layers around it.

So as those peel out and I remove them, before the final piece, they're actually recessed into the surface.

So that gives an embossed appearance.

When reevaluating that moment where that dialog seemed to have the most impact, then that's when I'll start to recreate that scene with these allegorical characters.

And so it takes something that could be a very personal moment but turns it into something that has a broader interpretation and appeal or application to a wider audience than just myself.

"Consolation Prize for Decline" is a work in progress.

So I was reading a lot of Hans Christian Andersen and there's the story about the wild swans.

And in that story, brothers are saved from being turned into swans.

But one brother, in particular, runs out of time in the process of undoing the magic spell.

And everything but his body returns back to normal except for one wing.

Which I've always found that fascinating 'cause in a lot of old stories, in old fairytales, you have everything turned to normal.

But often, there's always one thing left that's not quite right afterwards.

I was drawn to that story because I think that's all very human.

Like, we grow and we change, and we improve and we go through things, and things are repaired and we come out better.

But often, we have those scars that are left behind.

And there's something I find very interesting about that fairytale taking something that we would normally think as negative but almost making this beautiful aspect to it.

But it's still awkward and distorted at the same time.

The piece "A Friend is a Friend" is part of a series of pieces of work that I've done on paper, using that same cutting and embossing type approach to get the text in there.

It's much more subtle than the white paper but I was playing around with patterning.

And I like the imagery of the two crows together and how they're tied and joined.

And you're not sure if it's a good situation or a negative situation, but I like that idea of playing around with the relationships we have with other people, and sometimes what and who we connect ourselves with and how sometimes that can be really appreciated and fun, and sometimes it has its negative aspects.

The color field is really my opportunity to play 'cause so much of the composition is planned ahead of time.

I know a lot of it's mapped up and deliberately placed in the composition and all planned out in my sketch book.

And so when it comes to the color fields, that's the opportunity I get just to kind of have fun with the paint.

And sometimes it results in gradients and color changes.

And sometimes it's a little bit more subtle and solid throughout the piece.

But usually, almost always, it's an attempt to evoke some sort of mood, be it one of unease or comfort, or just curiosity.

The paintings are all on a hard wood that's couched on either a birch or a pine support.

So it's all painted on wood.

I've started off painting on canvas a long time ago but given the inclusion of the text and how many layers of paint that takes and the reworking of the surface and all that sort of stuff wood just holds up better to that amount of effort and reworking.

And I find that I enjoy the wood because it's a lot more sturdy.

You can get that smoother surface quality at the end.

I teach for the Acadia Parish Talented Art Program.

I was really fortunate through all levels of my education to always have teachers and mentors who didn't want to see work that looked like theirs.

They wanted to see work that looked like mine, and work that came from me and my voice.

And so I try to recreate those experiences with my students so they too, can find their individual voice.

I still want them to make the best work they can make as far as skill and technique and things like that, but ultimately, I want their artwork to look like their artwork, just my artwork looks like my artwork.

[odd chiming music continues] [odd chiming music continues] - [Diane] Discover more at JoshuaChambers.net.

[jazzy instrumental music] And now, thee Artist Quote of the Week.

[jazzy instrumental music continues] In this segment, we head to Nevada to meet the team behind Emmy's Flower Truck.

Launched in 2020 by Emily MacPherson, members of the Reno Sparks Community can visit this flower shop on wheels and take home one-of-a-kind arrangements.

Here's the story.

[baroque music] - Flowers can be given any time.

You don't need a special holiday to give flowers.

You can give flowers to lift you up any time for yourself, for your friends, for your kids.

Flowers have a very, very strong effect on people.

Very similar to music, it lifts you up, it makes you happy, it changes your mood.

And just giving them to someone brings a smile and makes their day.

[baroque music continues] My name is Emily MacPherson and I'm the owner of Emmy's Flower Truck.

We are based in Reno, Nevada.

Emmy's Flower Truck is a mobile flower truck that travels around town.

We are invited by different businesses to come and park at their business, setting up in specific locations and selling flowers and bouquets.

[baroque music ends] And this is a mum.

And this is a Gerber daisy.

Before Emmy's Flower Truck, I was a flight attendant with Southwest Airlines for 25 years.

[playful salsa music] When the pandemic happened, Southwest gave us the option to opt out and that meant for the people that were interested in retiring, this was the time to do it.

And they were offering a monetary amount for however long you had worked there.

The money I received I decided to buy this Volkswagen truck.

[city vibe organ music] It's a 1965 Volkswagen Kombi Transporter.

I found it in New Jersey and this one was interesting to me because of the ability to fold down the sides and fold the sides back up.

- She's absolutely adorable and fun to drive.

We named her Daisy.

She has a vintage-looking license plate with the name Flower Truck and she only goes 40 miles an hour.

We do not go on the freeway.

We only go on side streets.

So it's very fun driving her around town.

She gets a lot of attention.

- I saw people around, not necessarily in Reno, but in other towns that had, you know, different kinds of trucks with flowers.

I've always loved flowers so it's perfect.

And here we are now.

[city vibe music ends] At Emmy's Flower Truck, we work with hundreds of varieties of flowers.

[soft instrumental music] Tulips are very big right now and we're doing lots of roses and lots of greenery.

So we do with a lot of Eucalyptus.

We have, it's called Italian Ruscus.

So whatever we choose, the freshest that we can find, and the most current that we can find.

We trim 'em and make sure we have no bacteria anywhere.

Our flowers last a long time because we do take care of them the way we do.

We do process them in a certain way.

- Creating an arrangement involves working with color palates and color schemes, as well as different textures and flowers.

We want something that's intriguing, has little pops of color or a little flower sticking out every now and then.

And I like to call it very whimsical or very boho.

And that tends to be our style that we lean towards.

- When we are arranging a bouquet for a client, we take into account the different colors that they love, where they're going to use it, how big they want it.

And from that, we just do our magic.

[bright music] We have certain ways that we cut our flowers to certain heights so you can see all of your beautiful focal flowers.

The people that actually build their own, they spend about 15, 20 minutes.

And that to them is their piece of art.

So it's an art from that they've kind of given to me to perfect.

- I love creating an arrangement or a bouquet.

I find that I can pour my creativity into it.

And I love seeing the people's faces when I turn it around, especially out on the truck.

- When I started Emmy's Flower Truck, I never envisioned just how much I would learn about flowers and just how much I would learn from the people that purchase flowers.

Just the love that people bring and the support that people have for the different small businesses and the different business owners.

It's quite incredible, it really is.

I never knew Reno like I know Reno now.

And I wouldn't be anywhere else.

[bright music fades] - [Diane] For more information, go to EmmysFlowerTruck.com and Instagram.com/emmysflowertruck.

[jazzy instrumental music] Now here's a look at this month's fun fact.

[jazzy instrumental music continues] [jazzy instrumental music continues] At the Utah Museum of Fine Arts in Salt Lake City, air is made visible in a contemporary art exhibition that underscores its importance.

The work of 16 artists, poets, engineers, and designers is shown, as well as posters by 16 student artists.

Take a look.

[air flowing] [air continues flowing] [soft pulsing music] - Air is a contemporary art exhibition focused on air as a subject matter and a material.

It has 16 artists from around the world, also a number of regional artists from the American West, as well as local artists from Salt Lake City.

It also incorporates work by 16 student artists from Utah.

And additionally, it has artwork made by members of our own community.

[soft instrumental music] The human phase working on this exhibition for a while.

When I moved to Utah 10 years ago, I wasn't really aware of what inversion was or the health impacts of breathing in large amounts of particulate matter on a daily basis.

And the longer I lived here and became familiar with that reality and saw artists making work about that and our community talking about it, it became really apparent that the UFMA could support that community conversation and that we could show the work being made by artists.

So over the years, we've been studying and researching working made and looking at artists all over the world who are also impacted by issues of air quality and put together this exhibition to contribute to that conversation.

[quiet upbeat music] - One of the reasons why we wanted to have the posters as part of this exhibition is we were really interested in exhibition empowering people to use their voice and tell people in positions of power about how they feel about air.

And whatever is important to them in this kind of invisible element that means so much to all of us that we need.

And so we really wanted to engage young voices and the youth to help us think through that and hopefully make people want to enact some change within their own lives and how what they do impacts the air.

So kind of knowing that what they do every day, whether it's driving a car or other things, really affect all of us.

We're excited to include them.

There're 16 posters in the exhibition and they all are the state-wide winners from 2020.

So I think 800 students participated in the program throughout that year.

And the 16 winners are here and on view.

And we're really excited to have them.

- I work with Dr. Roslynn Brain McCann and she and I together created the Utah High School Clean Air Marketing Contest.

Was stemmed from a conference that was held at Utah State University by the Cache Clean Air Consortium.

And there were a number of issues that were talked about at that conference.

But one of them was is that there weren't a lot of education outreach programs engaging kids about air pollution.

So we decided to develop a contest so that way we could make it exciting.

You know, I think kids don't want to be preached to so we wanted to create an education program that would spark their imagination and spark their creativity.

And so we piloted the project in 2015 at Logan High School.

And then from there, it gradually grew.

What we find is is that contests spark joy for a learning that you really can't replicate in the classroom.

And so a competition is really effective in terms of getting kids to be interested in a topic that air pollution is not something that people would naturally think is a really exciting topic.

But if you can create a competition and the competition centers around creating public service announcements, so the students learn not just air pollution, you know, strategies, things such as not idling and taking the bus and car pooling, and using an app rather than going through the drive-thru when you go to your favorite restaurant, those are things that we teach in the program.

But we also teach marketing communication strategies.

So we teach them about parity: how to make fun of your favorite movie.

We also teach them humor, fear tactics, all these different types of strategies for communicating.

So the students have to deal with two issues.

One is what is the clean air action that you want to talk about, and then how are you going to communicate that in your public service announcement.

And then the winners of the contests are then used for education outreach across the state.

- The message that I was trying to convey was something that I felt like not a lot of people were addressing.

So one important aspect that Ed taught to us while he was giving a presentation was the idea of idling in drive-thrus and just idling in general.

I feel like not a lot of people specifically focus on one topic.

And that was one that was really interesting to me because I feel like that affects a large population.

And like, the entirety of like, the United States, everywhere, they go through drive-thrus.

And so I try to come up with like, a catchy slogan for my piece, and I came up the idea of drive-thru to the parking lot.

And I wanted to create a poster that was more humorous and could kind of like, be a catchy slogan so that it would stick in peoples' heads.

So with my piece, I wanted to capture the essence of old newspaper clippings, like cartoons that you would see in like, "The New York Times" and stuff like that.

And I also really love "Charlie Brown" and "Peanuts" so that was something that we really like, inspiring to me.

- It's important to feature students in this contest because some of the feedback that we got early on was that this was the only education that the teams were getting about Utah air pollution.

We actually conducted a study and it was published just this past month.

And we found that most students said that this was the only exposure to air pollution that they've had in terms of, you know, formal education.

And so for us, it was kind of surprising that no one was really educating them about the pollution.

And so we believe that the contest does it in a way that sparks joy, makes it exciting to talk about air pollution, that you really couldn't do in a traditional lecture in a class.

[gentle music] - [Annie] One of our goals is really to make this invisible element of air visible and just to recognize this important element that we all depend on to live that we all share in many ways.

And so I hope that when people leave the exhibition, they'll notice the wind blowing through the trees and seeing air in more visual ways or the ways that there's a wind chime or the noise that it makes.

We also hope that they'll realize that they matter and that their voice matters in issues around air that they'll take some action, they'll speak up.

Whatever their point of view is, that they'll know that they can talk about that with other people.

So we're hoping that this exhibition will really start lots of conversations and getting people to talk about this thing that's so important to all of us.

- [Edwin] So what I'm hoping is is that people will see this artwork, be inspired by it, and next time they can think about then when we have a red air day that they can think about, "Hey, what are "some alternative ways that I can drive "or move myself so that way I can try "to preserve air quality?"

- I'm hopeful that visitors will learn about air and different issues.

I suspect that many residents from Utah and Salt Lake will be aware of the inversion and ozone issues.

But maybe they're not aware of ways in which they can make changes in their daily life.

So we've put a big effort into creating interactive or hands-on stations where we can think about this or we've supplied avenues to enact your civic duty to respond and communicate with your representatives.

So, sharing information, information about specific issues, but also about how you can make change as a citizen.

And then I think there will be issues that aren't as familiar to our community.

And raising awareness is the first place to start to make change.

I do hope that it will have an impact beyond these walls.

It has impacted the UFMA.

I know it's inspired us to change the way that we work and think about the footprints that the UFMA has on air quality and on the environment more broadly.

[gentle music continues] [jazzy instrumental music] - Learn more at UMFA.Utah.edu.

And here's a look at this week's art history.

[jazzy instrumental music continues] [jazzy instrumental music continues] [jazzy instrumental music continues] 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 on Twitter, and visit our webpage for features and to watch episodes of the show.

We hope to see you next time.

I'm Diana Masciale.

Thank you for watching WLIW Arts Beat.

[jazzy instrumental music continues] Funding for WLIW Arts Beat was made possible by viewers like you.

Thank you.

[jazzy instrumental music continues] [jazzy instrumental music continues] [jazzy instrumental music continues] [jazzy instrumental music continues]