Coming your way on art rocks.

A ceramicist giving customers something to smile about often at the crack of dawn, capturing the spare landscapes of the northern woods.

One man's post to collection comes into the light and getting to the heart of William Shakespeare Through what else?

The theater that's all about to happen on art.

Rough Art Rocks is made possible by the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcast starting.

And by viewers like you.

Hello, I'm James Fox Smith, publisher of Country Roads magazine.

Back with another installment of Art Rocks Breakfast amongst bees, butterflies and Water birds dangling a little bit of Louisiana from your Christmas tree.

Baton Rouge ceramicist Ghada Hannigan makes things that encourage viewers to appreciate the wild things in a different medium.

But before she could do that, this Lebanese native had to adapt to her strange new homeland and the creatures that call it home.

Here's her story.

I was born and raised in Lebanon.

It's a small and beautiful country in the Middle East, in a small village called Sidon.

I grew up in a time where the things we needed most Often they were handmade from bread to clothes to bitches, even toys sometimes.

My mother was a seamstress and she was very meticulous.

My father was a builder, but his real passion was making things softer.

He retired.

He started making small tables from collected stones and scraps of wood, and they were great.

I was making miniature furniture from used cardboard boxes, and I used to sew clothes for my doll.

So my whole world as a child was outdoors, play time or indoors crafting time.

And it was great.

It was the best.

As a child, I've never been introduced to clay or never seen clay in my life.

And after high school, I went to college and I kept switching majors until I finally graduated with a sacred art degree during my studies of sacred art.

I was introduced to Clay for the first time.

I took one course of ceramics, but I never thought I would work with clay again.

So after I graduated, I went to a 9 to 5 regular job.

Later, my sister, she's a nun and an artist.

She asked me to work with her.

She wanted to expand the embroidery studio and add ceramics.

And of course, I said yes.

I was so excited.

She knew I didn't know much about Clay, but she took the chance.

And I became a part of by chance.

The studio was only one room.

There was a big embroidery and a noisy machine, and we didn't have even a table for me.

So we put two chairs and a piece of wood.

And I worked there on that thing by a little bit at a time.

We had a game, we had a bigger studio.

I had as many tables as I want and it developed a little bit at a time and it became like a big studio.

So I worked there with her for five and a half years and I was making just items but never functional parts.

My only resource was books and experimentation, and this is how I learned.

Just reading books, experimenting and just getting better at a little bit at a time.

After I came to the United States, I was like, so surprised and fascinated by the ceramics world and how they teach it in college.

I've been here since 2006 and I established my own studio in the dining room like you see behind me since the end of 2007.

And I've been working with Clay ever since.

I had to start all over again, making functional pottery.

I started taking ceramics all my classes, and I attended the visiting artist workshop at LSU and the ceramics studio.

So those two things were really helpful in establishing my career as a partner, plus the tremendous support of my husband.

I didn't have a wheel, so I started by hand building.

Later on, my husband and brother, they got me for Christmas and I put it on the kitchen counter when I need to work on the wheel.

But since I didn't have space for the wheel all the time, just keep it there and work whenever I want to.

I started to just pan build more stuff and then I got used to it.

And now I like it more because the pace of hand building is so slow, meditative, I can't control it better.

My focus is mainly on functional parts, so I make mugs, bowls, jars, plates, but I also make some decorative things like vases.

What are then ornaments?

Most my illustrations are inspired by my childhood memories and stories from my childhood, like some of the animals that I draw.

I had like a personal connection with things from back then.

Back in Lebanon.

I also draw my inspiration from nature as forms and textures and from what I see around me and of course, from living in Louisiana.

For example, when I first started going to markets, people would ask me, Do you have any Louisiana design?

I would say, No.

I didn't feel it yet.

I was still adjusting.

And when I don't feel something, I can't make it.

So it took me eight years to live here to feel like it's really home.

And suddenly, out of nowhere, I found myself just drawing the pelicans and the bee and even the pelicans and the bees.

They have a connection to Lebanon too, and I like this oblique technique that you can like cut something.

And it's also called springs and clay terms is that you make something out of the shallow mold and then you apply it to the piece when it's still not too dry.

And I like to use different kind of technique for decorating because my process is mostly about decorating and about illustration and about texture.

But after a few years of using different glazes, I finally settled on those translucent, bright coral glazes because they show the texture and all the drawings that I put underneath so I can at the same time draw, put texture, highlight the texture and use those translucent glazes to show everything that I drew, all the texture I put on my parts.

And I like that.

The ceramic process for me doesn't get easier to process from making decorating, drawing, firing, then glazing, then firing again.

Plus, working with clay has a lot of possibilities, so I'm always learning and making something new.

However, I'm more experienced now, so I learn how to manage my time.

I, I how to manage my creative blocks.

I also learned how to solve problems.

I go back home to Lebanon every other year, and I usually stay for six weeks.

I like to give something I made, especially because I work here and everybody lives there and they don't get to see or use my work.

I learned how to bag efficiently, how to use cardboards, and I put them between clothes and I fill my backpack as much as like with handle.

My hope is that the people who have a connection to my work, my piece of work will brightens their day a little bit more.

Accomplished artists from near and far are showcasing work in communities near you.

Here are some of our picks for notable exhibits coming soon to museums and galleries in your neck of the woods.

For more about these and many more events in the arts, subscribe to Arts Monthly.

The new Free E-Newsletter from the editors at LP and Country Roads Magazine.

What's more, the Art Rocks website features every episode of this program.

So to see or share any episode again, log on to LP dot org and navigate to art rocks.

Now here's a chance to go into the woods of Wisconsin through the eyes of celebrated landscape painter Tom, Utah.

Tom Secret Stealth.

The Wisconsin native chooses to slow things down, traveling by canoe and on foot to make sure he doesn't miss a thing.

The Folly.

A gallery in Milwaukee, has long been inspired by UTC's work, and he's exhibited there many times.

Painting itself in the act of painting is not a goal or an inspiration.

It is instead a means to an end.

It will permit me to create an image which can transport me and whoever hopefully is looking at it into a state of mind that I really, really like.

My name is Tom Utah, and I'm trying to be an artist.

The art that I do is physically it's paintings and photography.

They are allegorical or metaphoric Northwoods landscapes.

But we're sitting here in Trafalgar Gallery at a solo show that I currently have, and we have decided to call it The Spirit of the Forest.

The works in this exhibition are a continuation of a body of work that I have done now for all of my mature life, and most of them are things that are landscapes like this, which are based upon my experience of walking and paddling my canoe around in the northern Wisconsin, Minnesota and Ontario.

They are large paintings that are small paintings.

They are different subject matters to some extent within that, within that chosen range.

They're definitely on the same track of work that I have been doing for a long time.

I go back to the North Country for the inspiration, probably for a lot of reasons.

One of them is that's where I grew up and that is in my blood, basically genetically.

All of my family has lived up there in the way back in the woods when they came from Germany.

They came from a part of Germany that was similar.

So it may be something that you just inherited.

The characteristics of the place that I have identified as home are important ingredients that create that sense.

I think starting with the glacial evidence of the large amounts of bedrock that are exposed, the large glacial, erratic rocks that are laying around the woods, sometimes as big as a house, the evergreen trees, the moss that grows on the ground.

The magic of hearing wolves howling at night, the light.

It all wraps up into a single thing.

This is just an extra special hole in this.

That is the combination of all of that stuff.

And I really discover when I show these paintings and there's a lot of people and share that that same need.

These paintings are not ever paintings about any specific place or any specific time.

They're instead a fictional recreation out of representations of real components.

Since I'm not using any kind of references, I start with a piece of charcoal on the canvas, on the bare canvas, and just start looking for what the painting is all about.

It usually emerges.

It's a lot of work, and these drawings are most of the time are elaborated upon, altered, removed, started over and so forth.

It's a very open experience.

Then I have to arrange it in such a way so that the design itself carries most of the meaning that I'm trying to accomplish.

And then it's a question of starting to paint and painting it over and over and over again.

You know, many layers.

And finally, there will be a moment when you realize that you've got the complete package in front of yourself.

Somehow it happens.

You just know it when it's there.

I won't could if I just sort of feel like, well, I've got to get something out there and I have learned I can just keep doing it over and over again until I get it right.

And I don't have to.

I don't spend any time at all worrying about destroying something that's good in the process of fixing the whole thing.

These paintings are the product of the experience of being in the woods.

And one thing that has interested me from the very beginning of my canoe travels is the appearance of and the quality of reflections in the water.

It's just a real neat visual thing to see that, and I am able to simultaneously see this landscape that I love so much that interest me so much up here.

And then down at the bottom in the water, I see the same landscape upside down.

There is really something incredible and magical about seeing the mirrored landscape.

These paintings have often encouraged people to stand and look at them for a long time, and I take that single thing as the best compliment that an artist could get.

My biggest wish is that they would come here and look at these paintings and want to get the hell out of the gallery as fast as they could, go out in the woods someplace and sit down and experience it themselves.

I think of these paintings as having an important environmental political message that isn't overt.

I really do look at them as as invitations to go out and become involved with and active in natural causes that you can engage if you are for a long time.

That's what's that's rewarding.

A visit to the Massachusetts College of Art and Design during a recent exhibit celebrating the art of poster making will be a trip down memory lane for many focusing on trends and fads.

The exhibit shines a light on the changing face of pop culture.

How intoxicating to sip Campari to glide over country roads in your fiat, or to take your leopard out for a stroll.

It's all the stuff of style and daring design.

The public was slowly being sold.

This idea that they could do more with their life.

Life was not just about work.

Life was about enjoying the finer things in life.

So they really are selling everything here, including zoos and animals.

Yes, there were zoos and previously there were zoos that only had European animals.

But with the new technology, new transportation methods.

Now we see three zoo posters that are very, very proud of their collections because now they're branching out and they have exotic animals.

Lisa Tung is the curator of the new Mass art exhibition A Century of Style, featuring 100 years of posters that pop.

It's all the collection of one Massachusetts man with a poster predilection.

This is just a fraction of his 500 poster collection.

He said that if the hair on the back of his neck stood up, he knew that was a good one.

The proliferation of posters began in the late 1800s.

They were all the rage in Paris as they advertise the city's swirling nightlife scenes for artists like Toulouse-Lautrec and Gustav Klimt.

It was a chance to break out.

It really gave a lot of fine artists, and at that time, fine artists were mainly painters.

The freedom to create what they were doing on canvas also for the masses.

And so they were able to create beautifully drawn forms and lines.

They were the stewards of the Florid Art Nouveau movement.

But barreling behind was art deco, bold and bright, sleek and shimmering.

After the First World War, we have a lot of new technological developments.

We have planes.

We have trains, we have automobiles.

And all of these are bigger and stronger and faster.

As much as it was about how to get there, Art Deco showed us where to go to the slopes of San Moritz to historic Dunkirk on the North Sea or to the far reaches of exotic Africa.

There is now a leisured middle class, a white colored worker who does have time off.

And now, with these innovative means of travel, can go to this destination that we see on the poster where all the beautiful people are gathering, watching tennis in their tennis whites.

But what to wear at night?

How about something with a sultry silhouette?

Or for the gentleman?

Imagine yourself sporting well-tailored tweed.

There was a company called Pixie based out of Zurich.

They actually held competitions where they would send out a call and anyone could design something for their product.

They start having a fox, you know, with a little canvas bag or clothes that look like there's a body in them.

But hanging on hangers that is very contemporary back then and even holds up now.

They have a particular flavor, whether it's art Deco or Art Nouveau or sixties psychedelic pop guy.

I think it's probably the sixties psychedelic pop guy.

Yeah, I grew up around that time and so I think I have a funny affection for that actually.

David Nelson is the new president of Mass Art, which is one of only two publicly funded arts colleges in the country.

Nelson came here from the other one in North Carolina.

Students who are not just exposed to art, but who are engaged in art have doors of opportunity opened for them.

I was that kid.

I grew up in a family that wasn't artistic, especially, and I begged my parents for a piano.

I got a trumpet instead, but I got my hands on that instrument and began playing.

And it opened up a new world for me that really shaped the way I've lived my life.

The college, which has undergone a campus wide enhancement over the last six years, is now fundraising to fully renovate its exhibition space to expand its programing.

It's the largest free gallery space in New England.

But along with that, there's a special part of that public mission, which is to do outreach to youth and families.

And what this does for us is it enables them to see art in an active environment.

It's mass art offering designs on the past and the future.

And lastly, a behind the scenes look at a musical comedy that dares to imagine the writing life and times of the Bard himself, William Shakespeare.

Let's meet the brothers responsible for the music and the lyrics that drive the much loved musical Something Rotten.

Well, that's a weird way.

Welcome to 1595.

There is a dark force in the arts.

He happens to be a blockbuster playwright crowding out all others, and he has the magnetism of Mick Jagger.

William Shakespeare.

We hardly knew you.

I am the well and the scoundrel you with my quill.

I am the hard working bard.

You got the rollicking musical Something Rotten racked up ten Tony nominations on Broadway.

It centers on the Bottom Brothers playwriting duo Desperate for a hit outside Shakespeare's shadow.

Quoting Romeo and Juliet Prosthetic.

So you've seen it then?

Who hasn't?

I wanted to see your last few plays, but they just don't seem to stay in the theaters long enough.

One of our first joke ideas was that these two writers went to their agents, William and Maurice, and said, Hey, you just signed Shakespeare.

You know, how are we going to compete with this guy?

He just wrote Romeo and Juliet and the agents that, you're right, we're dropping you something rotten ripened as an idea between brothers Wayne and Kerry Kirkpatrick, who wrote the music and lyrics.

We just started running with that idea of what's it like to be in the shadow of Lin-Manuel Miranda?

Both Kirkpatrick's are longtime writers who'd never created a musical before.

Wayne is a Nashville based songwriter who won a Grammy for co-writing Eric Clapton's hit Changed the World by J.

When I go to theater, I like to leave the theater and be able to sing the songs that I just heard, you know?

And not every approach to theater is like that.

But for me, that that's what I like.

I like to look at the program and I can hum that that song.

Kerry is a songwriter and screenwriter of a slew of animated hits including Chicken Run.

I Don't Want to Be a Pie, Don't Grab it and plays.

You can be more a little bit more dialog driven, and it's more about conversations between people.

And you're less dependent on visual storytelling as you are in movies.

The brothers tested their comedic edge in something rotten in which the bottom brother is trying to outdo Shakespeare, search out a soothsayer to clue them in to theater's next big hit musical.

What the hell?

Our musical need appears to be a play where the dialog stops and the plot is conveyed through song.

Through song?

Yes.

So.

So an actor is saying his lines.

And then out of nowhere, he just starts singing.

Yeah, well, that is the stupidest thing that I have ever heard.

Do you love musicals or do you hate musicals?

I love musicals, Yes.

Yeah, We grew up.

We both grew up.

I was in theater all through high school, so it was scary.

And yeah, we have a deep love and appreciation for it.

I get why some people don't get it.

The whole breaking into song in the middle of the conversation.

Some people don't do that.

We do that in every part of my dinner every day.

Joining the brothers in writing the show's book is Kerry's chicken run collaborator John O'Farrell, a British author who found himself cooped up with the Kirkpatrick's 7:00 6:00.

We went to the pub and I thought, Great, we've done a day's work and had a pint of Guinness, another pint of Guinness.

And then they went.

So this bit in Act two?

Oh, no, we're still working.

I thought.

I thought we'd stop.

I'm having a drink now because it's hard to believe Braveheart is actually my star.

People were coming to our show not really knowing what it was, and they it crept up on them.

You know, this show is going to go out all across America and people are going to discover it in all these great cities.

And, you know, our mission and 2017 is to make America laugh again.

The fraternity has been a fruitful one.

The show is a rarity, an original musical written by first timers that went directly to Broadway and became a hit.

Then again, maybe a soothsayer saw it for them to the top guy on top of you.

Wow.

And that'll do it for another edition of Art Rocks.

But as you know, you can always find, watch and share episodes of the show at LTB dot org slash rocks.

And if you want to know more about the culture that surrounds you.

Country Roads magazine makes a great resource for finding out what's going on in the arts all across the state.

So until next week, I've been James Fox Smith and thanks to you for watching.