Coming your way on art rocks.

Capturing the building blocks of life in wildlife prints.

Something that's always important to me is for people to understand what the mission of the studio and what I do.

Is a musical career stretching half a century.

No matter how well you play or saying, even if it doesn't touch anybody, then you might as well not do it.

In your life.

That painstaking process of fine art printing and reproduction and a hotel dedicated to giving guests an immersive art experience.

These stories are next on Art Rocks.

West Baton Rouge Museum is proud to provide local support for this program on LPI, be offering diverse exhibitions throughout the year and programs that showcase art, history, music and more.

West Baton Rouge Museum Culture Cultivated.

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 Art Rocks.

With me, James Fox Smith from Country Roads magazine.

Let's begin with a South Louisiana artist whose printmaking process preserves every detail of her subjects down to the bumps, indentations and imperfections of their skin and scales.

We're talking about the artist Leslie Charleville and the ancient Japanese printmaking process of Otaku.

He has Leslie to lead us in.

Something that's always important to me is for people to understand what the mission of the studio and what I do is to elevate the natural world and the one that created it.

Some people say Guy Otaku, a Seiji Otaku and it literally means fish rubbing in Japanese.

So old Japanese art form.

That's the literal translation fish rubbing.

I came from the fishing and hunting outdoor loving family.

And then my background is in art.

I graduated from LSU in painting and drawing as well as art history.

And so those two worlds collided with whenever I found the Otaku.

And the rest is history.

I really like colorful fish, like mahi mahi or a lot of the deep water offshore fish, like red snapper or swordfish.

They've got really beautiful, vibrant colors.

When they come out the water, we say they're lit up.

So all of the bright colors come out whenever they're just coming out of the water.

So I really like bringing that life back to the fish through the process.

For some fish, I'm able to put the color directly on the fish.

Whenever a mahi mahi comes out the water and it's lit up and all the bright blues and greens and yellows and they're really vibrant.

And whenever they are on ice for a bit, they turn gray.

And so part of the process that I like using is putting the color directly on the fish.

I'll take a water based paint and I will try to copy how that fish looked as it came out.

The water with the color application on the fish.

You can do just a single color on the fish and go back and embellish it.

But some of these fish, I think it really does a lot of honor and justice to put the color directly on.

And whenever you pull that print up, you get a really good representation of what that fish actually look like.

It is literally a rubbing of that animal.

So you would imagine a leaf rubbing something that has been around for years.

Most people know how to do a leaf rubbing.

It's the same principle.

You're taking that actual specimen and you're applying paint to it and pressing it to canvas and you get that exact impression so it's able to capture the likeness of the fish or the alligator or whatever the specimen is.

Any flaws, They're documented just as intricacy.

These and the scars that they have, those are all documented through this process.

At the museum where I work, we've had different colleges come through and through conversations and they find out what I do and there's a lot of questions asked.

And it kind of opens a new world between science and art and documentation of nature and how all those worlds sort of work together here.

In the last probably five or six years, alligators have become the most popular thing.

It's something that most people here in Louisiana can relate to.

It gives a sense of time and place about where we're at in the culture.

And in some ways, I like to think that it's preserving the culture of who we are.

So I do enjoy going out on the boat on alligator hunts.

A lot of times I gather my own specimens, harvest my own alligator or my own fish.

But then a lot of times people call me to document theirs and they usually want me to go on the hunt with them.

So I'm able to be a part of that entire process and see it from beginning to end.

It is not uncommon to completely mess up a print on a pole.

I've had it where the tail still has some reflex.

Is it?

Their tails are very sincere for some reason, after a certain point and the tail will swing.

It's a little bit unsettling as I'm standing there over a giant alligator wondering, is it still moving on purpose or is this just a reflex?

So once the tail moves and the paint smears canvas is tossed, we start over.

Do it all over again.

The installation behind me had a very specific vision for this piece, where it be multiple alligators all in a row, almost like piano keys with a straight tail, but a lot of alligators.

I want it to feel like it's more natural and like, they're right out of nature how they'd be resting on the bank.

And so there might be movement like the head turned or the tail curved, the legs in different positions.

I'm not drawn to the largest or the smallest.

It's about documenting the animal and respecting the life that it had on this earth.

I want to document as many as I can, regardless of the size, because that alligator now lives on forever, on a canvas or on a piece of linen, its DNA is pressed to it.

The most popular sizes are between four and six feet.

Most people have a wall that they can put a four or a six foot alligator on.

But again, it's not what drives the printing process for me.

I get all sizes during alligator season.

It's not uncommon to print between 60 and 100 alligators in one month.

Multiple from the same gator might get five foals from one.

Sometimes I only get one pole.

It just depends on the circumstances and the conditions from printing.

But there's usually a pretty good stack of all sizes.

I've done a 13 foot alligator before.

It's pretty doggone big.

Also done £800 blue marlin.

Once it was all said and done, the canvas was about 14 feet long.

That's pretty large.

And then the smallest I've done, minnows from the ditch.

So are shrimp.

Everybody wants these pieces.

At first I thought the market would be hunting camps, maybe upscale hunting camps, but that is a far cry from the reality of it.

People from all over, from the nicest neighborhoods, mansions, as well as the Hunting Lodge Grow seven.

There's a couple of them there.

It's a really nice upscale hunting lodge.

I already do it with other stuff.

I will occasionally do some botanicals, some large leaves.

I recently got into trying to document spider webs.

It's a completely different process.

Duck's feathers.

I've done a pretty wide variety in my mind.

I feel like I can document anything, and with this process I just have to have a different approach to it that requires connecting with people.

I've had the great fortune of connecting with people from all walks of life, all over the state, really all over the country.

People that have a love for Louisiana will call and just want to talk about their roots here.

The landscape enables me to do what I do.

The swamp.

Without the swamp, I wouldn't have alligators.

The landscape is just as much of a part of the process as the animal itself, because the landscape gives life to the animal.

So of course, it's beautiful.

We know that.

But even on a deeper connection, the landscape and the water and the cypress trees, that's what breathes life to what I do.

And I get to enjoy it and then share that with other people.

Louisiana is awash in opportunities to get to grips with the arts.

Here are just a few coming your way in the weeks to come.

For more on these exhibits and others, pick up a copy of Country Roads magazine to watch or rewatch any episode of Art Rocks Again, just visit LP be called Slash Art Ross.

You'll also find all of the Louisiana segments on LP B's YouTube page.

Pianist John Paul Moore has been immersed in making music for half a century and counting with a recognized keyboard.

Mastery and a vast songbook.

Palmore keeps audiences coming back.

So we're off to Sparks, Nevada, to find out about Paul Moore's creative journey.

I do love the blues.

It's another one of those genres.

It just touches everybody.

If you want to dance, there's some blues for that.

If you want to feel sad and cry and your beard is a blues for that.

If you love, there's blues for that.

All the music genres have an element of the blues in it.

My name is John Palmore and I'm a professional musician.

I grew up in in a small town called Mabon, Alabama, in junior high school.

Some guy put a pair drumsticks in my hand, so I became a drummer.

My last year in high school, I became a trombone player, got lucky, got a partial scholarship to a small school outside of Birmingham called Miles College.

I ended up taking orchestration and arranging, which meant you had to learn to play the piano or the guitar and being on scholarship, I couldn't drop the class.

So there was trying to figure out how to play piano.

I learned to play by ear.

So I just played everything I heard on radio.

After I got out of the Army in 69, I got into a house band and every weekend this club would have different artists come in and we had to learn our music and play for them.

The Drifters came through there.

The Drifters was a hit making group out of the late fifties and through the sixties.

Later on, I got a call from Bill Pinckney, who was the leader of the Drifters at that time.

He's, Hey, well, you ought to go out on the road.

I said, What is it?

Bill Pinkney, I'm with The Drifters.

You ready to go out on the road?

I was a year.

I was on tour with the Drifters for about 13 years, and we played Vegas a lot.

I left the Drifters in 89, and I thought I was going to be living in Vegas, but I was getting more gigs in Reno, so I moved to Reno.

At that time, I wasn't a vocalist, so I called my brother to join because he could play and saying anything.

So we played together as the Palma brothers.

We were like matinee idols in this town from like 91 till the late nineties.

My brother got sick and passed away and he was the bass player and the lead singer, so I had to do a lot of the singing myself.

Well, the Paramore remix band came up.

I had remixed everything, so I created a way I call sequencing.

If I hear a song I want to do, first of all, I listen to it and I write a chord chart and then I have to write chord sharp.

I figured that time and all that set all that up.

I play the drums on the keyboard.

All of me.

And mixed that, make sure I got all of the parts of a drum kit happen, and then I'll play the piano along with it.

I'm no good without you.

Then I'll add the bass, then I'll have the guitar, and then I'll let the horns and the strings and mix it to make it sound like a band.

Ding dong.

I've never used a keyboard as my baby, but I love organ more than any other keyboard because the organ is such a big sound.

I play for the Second Baptist Church.

The service there is like electric.

The feeling that gospel music gives is you can't get that in any other kind of music.

I've been so busy that I rarely have two days in a.

Row of days.

I work with Pat Stolz, who's a phenomenal female vocalist.

We have a duo called The Velvet Duo because I play a lot of facilities by myself.

So you jump in on this.

I played two or three of assisted living places a week.

I play for people who they say have dementia, Alzheimer's, and you play a song that maybe from 1947 or something and they sing all the words along with you.

Oh, that that is so joyful to see that the music touches those people.

It means everything to me because no matter how well you play or sang, even if it doesn't touch anybody, you might as well not do it in your life.

If you do something you love, you'll never work a day in your life.

I haven't worked a day since 1969.

When high price or limited demand put original artwork out of reach.

Many art lovers go in search of a well-made reproduction instead, Pixels and Ink is a print shop in Reno, Nevada, dedicated to making fine art reproductions.

Let's take a look inside to find out about the technical and artistic processes at work.

My name is Hunter Howitt and the owner of Pixels in Ink, and we cater to photographers and artists for their fine art work and everything that helps the artist along in their venture.

At the heart of it, it is an art reproduction facility.

Reproduction is the process of reproducing an original artwork, whether it's a photograph or a painting, whether on paper, canvas, etc.

As far as photographers go, an image will live on a computer forever.

But printing is one of the most important things for a photographer to get it out there in the world.

So my job really is to capture an artist's work and reproduce it in the best way possible will shine back on.

And so when we when we reproduce, are being able to see color and translated digitally, mechanically, and kind of engineer a final product.

I'm bringing a lot of elements together, and I do see myself as a technician often, but I think there is an art to not only reproducing the the color and getting it right, but also in working with our clientele.

I think the whole thing is kind of a dance, so I can see some artwork in there to put this relief through here.

When they drop an original off, they're dropping off their baby.

A lot of them say, This is my baby, take care of it.

And they've spent hours, days, months, years on this piece.

And so there is a trust level and a kind of a bond that happens when an artist brings something to me and it's tepid at first.

Often because you're just getting to know each other.

But usually after the first round of reproducing artwork or even just imaging it, we're friends for life.

I've been working with Hunter for about five years and it was really important for me to find a good photographer.

When an artist does a painting and if they sell their painting, it's gone.

The collector might put it.

In their home and no.

One ever sees it again.

And so I felt it was really important for me to not only archive my work for myself, but also as an artist.

You know, we have to make a living and in many cases, if I have a popular painting that I've done, I can generate more money by selling the reproductions.

Photo prints Claes than I did ever on the original G. Clay is a French term to spurting of ink on canvas.

That's what everyone has come to know is a glaze canvas.

But in the process of our reproduction, everything we print with pigment, prints on our absence, etc.

technically, everything is a uniquely.

There can are two schools of thought in the art world.

One would be for a painting.

For instance, some artists like to only sell their originals and then the other artists may want to sell prints of their originals or have their painting image so that they can put it on greeting cards and that kind of thing.

Our reproduction and the process of GLAZE has a large impact on the art world because it's given access to art work where before you weren't able to maybe obtain an original, you can now bring art into your home at a much more affordable price.

And so that's a really great way that our reproduction has come into the fold.

I feel that art should be accessible.

People come to me and they so appreciate that they can afford what I have to share with them.

And I think it's all right for an artist to decide that that's not their way of operating.

But for many of us it is.

And it's wonderful that we have this technology that we can take advantage of.

If you think of a hotel as just a place to lay your head, you might be missing half the story.

The Art of Nation Hotel in Sarasota, Florida, delivers guests an elevated experience, flooding the senses with arresting visual art, live performances and music in suites, lobby and gallery spaces, too.

So come check in for a moment and take a look.

Just as soon as you enter the hotel, you already have the feeling that something different is going on here.

I'm Lisa Differenza and I'm the cultural curator at the Art Ovation Hotel in downtown Sarasota.

The art of Asian hotel is an art hotel that's right in the heart of Sarasota, and it features contemporary art, visual art, performing arts, media, arts.

And as cultural curator, I invite guests into the creative process and also invite artists into what we hope is an artistic home away from home for them.

So when you enter the Art of Asian hotel and you'll receive a signature cocktail and you'll go up to your room which has inside of it a ukulele for you to play and enjoy a sketchbook with many colored pencils for you to work with, and also to look at the sketches of the people who came before you.

Every week we have a ukulele lesson in the lobby, so if those people who check into the room really have the burning desire to learn more about their ukulele, they can come down.

We also have an instrument loan program.

If you check into the art of Asian hotel and you have a hankering to play the cello, for example, we can bring one to your room or a banjo or a guitar or a violin.

We have them, and it's very exciting to see a person check in and ask for a cello.

I mean, there's something just fabulous about that.

We also have a lot of small workshops in the lobby.

So for example, we'll have Ovation Origami in the afternoon or paint your own wine glass.

We've had portrait painting workshops and we also every night at 5 p.m., we do an art and wine tour for hotel guests, so we pour them a glass of wine and tour them around the whole exhibit and tell them a little bit about the inside scoop, a little bit about the stories behind the work.

And we've found that's been wonderfully successful and engaging for us.

We know more about our guests and they know more about the hotel and about the art.

We have several galleries in the hotel.

We have a lobby gallery.

Every elevator landing has a gallery.

And this crescendo gallery is on our first floor near our ballroom.

All of our spaces have art exhibits.

Right now we're featuring the Florida Watercolor Society, and we're doing a collaboration with Olmstead and Contemporary Gallery.

I've gotten telephone calls about this show.

Many people who have seen it are just really pleased we were here and first Friday with the Palm Avenue Art Walk.

This is right here on Palm Avenue.

So many of the people came in here and were really excited to see the works that are here.

Artists are always looking for places to show and to share their work.

And this art ovation hotel just opens that possibility up.

Also, we have music, a wide variety of music, a lot of jazz, a lot of music in the lobby.

Most of the time I go out and gig.

I play electric guitar with bands, and this is one of the few places where I can really go out and play classical guitar music.

It's classical guitar, you know, It's kind of understated, I guess.

So I don't usually get, you know, foam fingers or noisemakers or things like that.

But as an artist myself, one of the things that I really strive to do is, you know, I guess if I were to have a tag line, it would try to be a D snob, a fine classical music.

And my goal behind this whole thing that I'm doing here is just to prove that classical music is not obsolete and it's accessible to everybody.

And being able to do so in a in a really cool public space like this, I feel like it helps me realize my own artistic vision.

We have artists in our artists studio in the evenings, painting or sculpting or creating glass sculptures or this week we have poets in the studio, so we invite you to get involved not just as a spectator, but really participate in the creative process.

Well, we're smack dab in the middle of the arts community here, not just the visual arts community.

We're right here on Palm Avenue with all the Palm Avenue galleries, but also the performing arts community.

We're right across the street from Florida, Studio Theater.

We're right down the street from the Oslo.

So we have a lot of partnerships going on.

Sometimes we even have pop up performances.

It is a work inspired by Georgia O'Keeffe.

I get to work and dance among the people, which is such a different experience than being on the stage and being detached from the audience.

I feel like I'm bringing dance to the people and it's just one of the most beautiful experiences I've ever been a part of.

Hospitality is changing.

People are really interested in immersive experiences.

One of a kind experiences.

So I think it's an adventure when you come to Art Ovation Hotel and it's very particularly Sarasota.

And that is that for this edition of Art Rocks.

But remember, there are always more episodes of the show to be found at LP B Dawgs Art Rocks.

And if you can't get enough culture.

Country Roads magazine makes a useful guide to what's happening in the arts events and at destinations all across this state.

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

West Baton Rouge Museum is proud to provide local support for this program on LPI be offering diverse exhibitions throughout the year and programs that showcase art, history, music and more.

West Baton Rouge Museum Culture Cultivated.

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