Coming up next on Art Rocks, a young ceramicist who brought groundbreaking techniques and brilliant colors to New Orleans.

Famous Newcomb College and the craft of working up a thirst with beer labels.

These stories up next on Up Rocks Art 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 another episode of Art Rocks.

With me, James Fox Smith of Country Roads magazine, New College has long been associated with beautiful American arts and crafts style pottery items created in New Orleans at the women's college from the late 1800s through the 1940s, you can pottery often featured Louisiana flora rendered in blue, green and yellow high glazes beginning in the 1950s, though, Newcomb College had a young, highly regarded director who began introducing students to a brave new world of form, color and design.

Here's Mel Buchanan, curator of decorative arts and design at the New Orleans Museum of Art, to tell Kathryn Choi's story.

Kathryn Choi was born in China, but she came to the United States in the late 1940s for her education.

She was educated at some of the best schools working in craft and arts and design.

In the early 1950s, she was at Mills College in California, and then she was at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, outside of Detroit, Michigan, at the early age of 24.

She was already a rising star in American craft.

She got her first professional job in New Orleans.

She was hired at age 24 to be the director of ceramics at the Newcomb College.

The Newcomb Pottery here in New Orleans has a long tradition in art.

It was founded in 1895 with a radical mission of its own that was to educate Southern women to have a useful skill where they could support themselves.

And that's the classic era of Newcomb Pottery.

The beautiful moss draped trees in greens and blues sort of the arts and crafts movement of pottery.

And that was what Newcomb was known for, about 1900, all the way up to the American Depression around the 1930s.

Things in the 1940s with World War Two attention shifts away from the arts in many ways as we're coming out of that era.

In the early 1950s, the Newcomb Pottery Long term director Sadie Irvine retired in 1952.

So the school was looking to make a shift from those traditions of Newcomb College pottery And that's when they hired the 24 year old Katharine Choi, who would have come to the school thinking about pottery in an entirely different way.

That might mean whereas Newcomb before or really ceramics across the country before you were thinking about them more in terms of useful wares, teapots, vases, they may have intended to be beautiful or decorative, but they had to use.

There was a moment here and artists like Katherine Choi are an important part of this, of shifting clay to being something that is art.

So here we're seeing an artist that, like a painter or a sculptor is using clay as a medium to express an idea or to express a point of view or to express maybe an emotion through clay.

That was a very new idea, a radical idea in ceramics in the 1950s.

So Katherine Choi, though, she's there running kilns and doing the really complicated work of glaze chemistry and keeping the Potters wheels all up and running.

What they're really doing is making artwork, so they're communicating with painters and sculptors.

She was also a weaver.

There's a lot more multidisciplinary or talking across different medium than there would have been in the production years of the pottery.

They were artists first and foremost, rather than salesmen.

Trying to sell their work.

They were about producing ideas in clay.

So when you look at this era of pottery in the 1950s, it's a combination of training yourself to understand and know traditions in ceramic, so how to throw a beautiful form, how to do the glaze chemistry.

But then also while you're learning something that's been centuries old and is kind of universal, but also make it your own in looking at ceramic forms and colors of Catherine Choi, you see that she was well trained in Asian ceramic traditions to start.

Yes, she was born in China, but really this education she was getting as a young American student in the early 1950s, these schools were looking at Japanese folk traditions.

This was very popular in the early 1950s to look at Asian ceramics, and they were learning timeless forms, applying calligraphy like brush strokes, using different glazes that had thousands of years of history.

However, what we see with Catherine Choi is subverting or changing those traditions.

This hots are getting big and heavy and abstract, so you'll see bases that have three different openings at the top or a picture that might have two spouts coming out, multiple handles.

But really, it's the scale.

Like these are really big, extraordinarily large pots.

This is no longer something where you're thinking, I can use this picture to serve lemonade.

That is not what we're looking at here.

We're looking at a picture that's oversize because it's more about expression.

And then you look at other pieces where it's not even recognizable as a clay historic form at all.

It's not really a vase.

It's not really a picture.

It's certainly not a teapot.

It is a sculpture made out of clay.

So you'll see that in the shapes and the forms in the scale.

She's getting really big.

And if you start to think of what the labor behind that was, this was a very physical process to make a pot like this.

And then you can also look at details like the glaze.

She was essentially trained to do the difficult science, the chemical science of glaze.

She knew how to master glazes.

She also would have known how to make a glaze perfectly fit your vessel.

But then you look at her work and suddenly the glaze is not covering all the clay.

That in itself in the 1950s was radical.

You can see the raw dirt underneath the glaze.

So that is a choice that she was making.

That's kind of telling you a little bit about the honesty of the material and how it's made.

Catherine Choy had work that was being shown in exhibitions across the country.

She had a gallery in New York City that was selling her work in 1957.

Ambition took Catherine Choy away from New Orleans.

She with the backing of her family and a few New Orleans patrons, she bought a pottery in Port Chester, New York, right outside of New York City.

And she and a few friends founded the Clay Art Center in fall of 1957.

It's still there today operating in her honor running as a community center dedicated to advancing art as clay.

Shockingly Catherine Choi passed away in February of 1958 She was only 30 years old and by all period accounts looking through letters of her shocked family, her shocked friends here in New Orleans.

It was unexpected She was taken at the height of her career while she was organizing this new venture at the Clay Art Center.

She had bold new work she was making that was going to go to Brussels to be in the World's Fair in Brussels in 1958.

It is incredible for such a really short period of time how she not only amassed a large body of work.

By all accounts, she worked nearly round the clock sometimes, but also in a short career of really five, six, maybe seven years after her graduation that she evolved so much as an artist.

And that's what's extraordinary to look at what she did create and try to not think of it with melancholy of the what if she had continued on if she had lived another 30, 40, 50 years of production.

But really looking at what she did accomplished in short time when we exposed ourselves to the artistic perspectives of others, we get to see the world through a different set of eyes.

So here are some of our picks for notable exhibits and events in the arts coming soon to museums and galleries in your part of the world.

For more about these and loads more events in the arts, visit help dot org slash art rocks.

While you're there, you'll find links to every episode of the program.

So to see or to share any segment again, visit LBB Daugaard writes Before Thomas Edison invented the phonograph in 1877.

If you wanted to listen to a favorite song, then someone had to play it for you.

So during the 19th and the early 20th centuries, the business of creating sheet music that is a printed document containing all of us songs, notes, and lyrics was a vibrant and creative industry.

As Professor Daniel Goldmark can explain, the history of sheet music makes for a fascinating story Here is Professor Goldmark to share a little of what he has discovered during his research Nowadays, if we want a song, we go online and we can buy it through whatever online source we might use, and we typically buy one song at a time.

Well, 120 years ago, when sheet music is the big thing, that was the way you did things as well.

You weren't buying a whole bunch of music all by one performer or one writer.

You were buying one song at a time.

And if you're looking for songs and you're living in Cleveland at the turn of the century, to go to a bunch of different places, you could come here to the arcade because you had music stores and even music publishers based here, and you could go straight in by what the latest songs were.

Maybe go look for something from their older catalog something you'd heard before, and like, Oh, can you have a copy of that song?

And you could find just about anything So in the late 19th century, the popular music industry was basically based in New York City, and the area was referred to as Tin Pan Alley.

This is on 28th Street around Broadway, and this is around where all the theaters were based before they started moving up toward Times Square.

Now, in Cleveland, a lot of the big publishers were actually based here at the Arcade And if you think about the Arcade's proximity to Playhouse Square, it makes perfect sense because you had a lot of shows coming into Cleveland.

You had shows starting here in Cleveland, and those shows would need music.

And so they would come to the publishers, ask for songs, the songs would be written, and they would put them right into the shows.

And that's the thing about shows back then.

This is before Broadway gets really big it's before Oklahoma and Showboat and before the songs are so identified with a particular show.

The turn of the 20th century.

If a song wasn't good, they check it out and you could write a new song next week.

They weren't looking at them as great art.

It was a product.

It was something they were selling to the public, something that was going to get people into the theaters and hopefully into the stores.

To buy more and more music.

Probably the most famous music publisher to ever come out of Cleveland was Sam Fox Music.

We were actually based directly above where I'm standing on the third floor on the arcade.

Sam Fox sold, but also started writing a few songs of his own.

And within a couple of years, he borrowed a couple hundred dollars and started his own music publishing company again, based right here at the arcade.

So very quickly, he kind of starts to corner the market on this kind of music, and he gets makes a name for himself, not just in Cleveland, but throughout the entire music publishing industry.

I'm going to Cleveland now, to Cleveland, Ohio.

Where I get three square meals a day and money for the show.

The sad thing about the art for sheet music covers is that a lot of these are unsigned or even the ones that are signed.

We know very very little about the people who created them because these were craftspeople, just like people who made furniture or built cars or had any other kind of nine to five job.

Nobody could have imagined that.

You know, basically a century later, folks like me would be asking, Oh, who is this person who did this amazing cover?

Or Better yet, who is this person who did 300 covers over a period of several years with such great breadth?

And you know, a skill I want to know about them.

And unfortunately, there's such little information about these folks.

So that's one of the great mysteries about the music and it's also one of the great joys, because every time you find a new piece, oh, wow.

Another little piece of the puzzle slides into place.

You know, the 10% of music that was published in Cleveland, that means the rest of the United States.

There's that other 90% that's in people's attics and basements and in thrift stores and on eBay.

And other places just waiting to be found.

And so I started just collecting.

Any time I would run into someone, I would say, you know, if you have any sheet music in the basement, if you know someone who's giving rid of it, please don't let them trash it.

Come find me.

I'll take it off your hands.

Even even if I have to, you know, find an eventual home for it, because it's not what I'm looking for.

I'm more interested in seeing the stuff not be destroyed.

I think ultimately what I want to do is be able to tell a story of how popular music was a part of life in Cleveland, particularly before rock and roll.

And visually, it's so rich.

I'm really looking forward to having the chance to help fill in this gap of what a strong part Cleveland had in the music industry in shaping musical tastes in the United States during the late 19th and, you know, through the 20th century, in Cincinnati, Ohio, Tigerlily Press has been making its mark for more than 40 years, providing a space where folks come to learn the exquisite craft of printmaking from silkscreen to etching to let a press tigerlily teaches the cornerstone techniques of the printmaking process.

Let's head to the Queen City then to see how they go about it.

Tigerlily presses a group of volunteer printmakers, and I want to stress that the volunteer, because we've been around for 40 years and we've maintained the fine art of printmaking for all those years with the volunteer group.

We're located at the Dunham Recreation Center in Cincinnati.

And we've been here since 2001 and they've been very generous to us.

And the campus is beautiful.

The mission of Tigerlily Press is to promote, to preserve and to print fine art.

Hand-pulled prints were unique in that way.

And that we're we're preserving this old art.

Art classes are taught by our members, so we have silkscreen, we have calligraphy we have etching, we have relief printing, we have letterpress classes.

So people can take a class and come in and print and learn.

And if you really enjoy it, then you can become a member and learn more.

I would highly recommend it if you have any interest in printmaking to take a class.

I think people often think that they have to know how to draw or they have to be an artist to take a class.

But that's the beauty of printmaking, is that you can have no drawing ability and you can still make incredible work.

One thing that's really nice is that printmaking is a varied art.

There are a lot of different ways to go about printmaking.

I think it's a great way for people to figure out what they like and I think there's probably some form of printmaking for everybody.

I first became aware of Tigerlily Press when I was in graduate school at DAP.

I was first drawn to the organization by just the love of printmaking and knowing that there were common minded people that enjoyed the same thing.

I think what sets Tigerlily apart from other printmaking studios is, is that it is a fine art printmaking studio.

You can go to other printmaking studios and maybe do silkscreen, but you'd have to go to another institution to maybe learn in Toledo and then another institution to maybe learn relief.

Well, here at Tigerlily we have all aspects of printmaking.

Not only do we have classes here that you can sign up and take part in, but we've done outreach classes to local communities in high schools that might have a smaller arts department or arts funding.

So I think we fulfill our mission that way by trying to bring printmaking out to the wider audience.

One thing that really helps Tigerlily be an integral part of the community and something that I think in general is lacking when you're an artist and you get out of school, places like this I think are very integral in that transition period.

You can come here and work in our studio and have access to the presses here at Tigerlily, we do the Working Artist program and it basically lasts a year and there's a little bit of a monthly stipend to it, but it's mostly about having complete and utter access to the facilities and the Working Artist program.

For me, it was a really nice way to dove deep back into printmaking.

It really helps to give you that dedicated and supported time to explore your work.

Almost all the inspiration for my work comes from my walks.

I take photos when I'm out and usually it's of a weed or a plant, and so I usually work from a photograph that I've taken, and I'll blow the photograph up pretty big.

Because I like to work large.

And then I usually do a pencil drawing from my big photo, and once I've done a giant pencil drawing, I transfer it to my plate.

And then once I have the image transferred to the plate, I start carving.

And the carving can take me anywhere from two weeks to six weeks.

And then once I have it carved, I prints I remember when I would pull the print up for the first time, like the very first time, even though it wasn't a perfect print, I was like, I love this.

It's kind of a magical moment that only really happens in printmaking because it's a surprise.

You don't really know what you're going to get until you lift that paper up for the first time.

It's a magical moment.

It's really fun.

We're having our 40th anniversary show at Kennedy Heights Art Center.

We will show our history in a timeline so that you can see when we began with some of the portfolios that were developed over time.

And we also have what we call a working artist program.

So we'll have those artists work on a wall and then the other rooms will be filled with the current members artwork.

Tigerlily has been here for 40 years, which is credit to them.

That's a long time to be a volunteer.

Ran organization.

Tigerlily has been such a great influence on me.

There's such a community at Tigerlily Press.

When I first started, I had so many questions How do I clean my instruments when I'm done?

What's the best paper to use?

I just had a million questions.

And there's such a community here.

People who I can ask.

It's amazing to watch people in classes when they actually pull their first print.

I mean, the look on their face is amazing because it chills just thinking to think about it.

I think by taking classes, people are able to find out how to go through the process of making art and just finding what makes you happy.

I think everybody has some kind of talent and we just have to find it.

Tigerlily is one of those little hidden gems, and I think right now we're transferring out of that into like a five to one C3 and being more public.

Our role is only going to increase in Cincinnati and how we help the community at large I think in general, if you kind of look at your arts, community is like a tapestry, right?

And the more design in the more detail, the more color, the more interesting it is to look at arts institutions are and travel to the community just to expand what we see is beauty and to bring maybe disparate groups together that necessarily wouldn't meet and hang out.

You know, art does that sometimes, like we're all here to make a print.

But, you know, in essence, we're getting to learn about each other and being that community We're off to Durango, Colorado now to check out Scott Brewing Company founded in 1995.

This spirited music inspired brewery is recognized far and wide for the creative design of its beer labels.

So see if this works up a thirst for you Sky is a type of music that originated in Jamaica in the late fifties.

It's a very danceable, upbeat kind of blend of traditional Caribbean rhythms and some Western music.

My name is David Thibodeau and I'm president and co-founder of Scotch Brewing.

My brewing experience came out of high school and when we were in high school, we were punk-Rock kids and kind of started getting really into ska music.

It kind of became our thing.

So when we were at home brewing, we weren't listening to Scott and the Homebrew wouldn't turn out gigs.

So when we actually came to starting the brewery, we thought, Hey, you know, what are we going to call it?

We went with what we loved, and while we were passionate about an Alaskan music, it was comic books and of course, beer.

And I think a beer needs a story to want to do the story is our battle against Rock Hudson International Beverage Corporation.

And you can decide what brewery or giant brewery conglomerate that means to you.

So it became an epic battle of good versus evil in Scotch versus Rock Hudson.

And that's the story in the comic book.

When we first started, this is mid eighties, there wasn't digital printing yet, so we did everything because it was all on a press.

So it was really cheap to do things in one color, which is the cool thing about the second wave of ska music is that also known as the Two-Tone era, and it was all about black and white checkers.

The two tone was a record label in England.

The idea was that there was working class white kids and black kids that were forming these bands together.

So the black and white and the checkers represented the unity between the races.

Then they were these guys performing these bands.

And fortunately, for us at the time when we had no money and we were starting this brewery, it was a lot cheaper to just print black on white paper.

I think my favorite label is our modus operandi at its pinstripe.

Once again, the CEO of Rock Hudson, and he's walking down Main Street in Durango, two other and his thugs side by side.

You know, it's weird because there's a skeleton with two humans.

You have to know that there's something more there when you look at it.

No one would just draw that for no reason.

The characters that are in the comic book are the characters in the names of our beers, all showing kind of like piecemeal parts of our comic book.

That's just been our marketing platform.

Mr. Pinstripe is the CEO of Rock Hudson, and he's the skeleton you see everywhere.

And his lead thug is Buster.

And so it's in not brown ale, so it's Buster, not Brown.

Obviously, the name ties to the beer.

It also ties it has some sky music ties.

Buster Blood Vessel is the name of the lead singer of one of our favorite bands, Bad Manners.

We tie everything together.

So it's it's a SCOBY band.

It's the beer style.

It's the lead thug in our story.

And the guy that developed our logo, our Scotch Brewing Checkered logo, and our first true blond logo and pinstripe logo is a local tattoo artist here in Durango.

His name is Matt Russo.

Your flesh tattoo is this tattoo studio.

I think my approach was more just coming up with something represented there concept and kind of just what I thought would look cool because back then there were many other cool beer labels and they wanted to do something unique and creative that was totally unlike anything else that the beer industry was doing.

And so I think that kind of gave me the freedom to really try and just do what I was into and what I thought would be stoked on artists might not want to be associated with a giant corporation.

I think you're seeing an evolution of this where artists are working more with brands because they're like minded people.

Business, if like minded, might be the type like a young artist wants to associate themselves with.

And they can provide a platform for this artist to really show their work and being able to integrate it through different sorts of media It's the only way now I think we overthink it.

Well, that'll be that for this edition of Art Rocks.

But remember, there are plenty more episodes of the show to be found at LP B dot org slash rocks.

And if it's arts and culture that you're after, Country Roads magazine makes a great resource for discovering inspiring stories in the arts events and destinations all across the state.

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

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