(upbeat music) >> Hello, I'm Chuck Roberts.

Lakeshore PBS is excited to celebrate 10 incredible seasons of "Eye on the Arts."

We've featured hundreds of artists and organizations throughout Northwest Indiana and Chicagoland, bringing you the joy of the arts and celebrating their contributions to the vibrant communities in which we live.

We are proud to be a part of commemorating creativity as an integral part of our local culture.

In this final installment of Season 10, we'll catch up with a few artists we featured and fellow arts supporters.

Enjoy.

>> Tom: Very exciting when something new appears right then and there in the process, much more than the finished piece.

It's that spark through the sketching or through the throwing things about where the real creativity comes from.

>> Roberto: All these pieces are created based on memories from me learning Mexican history.

The Descending Eagle, which would be the translation Cuauhtemoc.

Cuauhtemoc was the last emperor before Hernan Cortes finally conquered the city of Tenochtitlan, which is not known as Mexico City.

>> Sydney: I just try to put a story into it, and that's, I think, what takes so much time is I'm carving each stroke hand by hand to get that story embedded into the clay.

>> Dale: Doing as much as you can as quickly as you can is important to me.

(upbeat music) Life is short, and the earlier we get started helping our community, the better off our community will be.

>> Announcer: Family, home, work, self.

Of all the things you take care of, make sure you're near the top of the list.

North Shore Health Centers offers many services to keep you balanced and healthy.

So take a moment, self-assess, and put yourself first.

From medical to dental, vision, chiropractic and mental health, North Shore will help get you centered.

You help keep your world running, so make sure to take care of yourself.

North Shore Health Centers, building a healthy community, one patient at a time.

(upbeat music) >> Announcer: "Eye on the Arts" is made possible in part by South Shore Arts, the John W. Anderson Foundation and the Indiana Arts Commission, making the arts happen.

Additional support for Lakeshore Public Media and local programming is made possible by viewers like you.

Thank you.

(bright music) (light music) >> If you think of quality of life in an area, and even as a banker, or an economic development person, or someone involved strictly from a business or a financial perspective, the reality is, people live in an area and experience an area based on the quality of life.

And I don't think anybody can deny the impact that arts and culture and music have on attracting people to an area.

And so, to me, the one thing I think I've learned in the time I've been here is how important a role that arts and music play to bring quality of life to the region.

Part of leveraging and advocating for the arts in our community is getting, people might not know this, but we have literally probably more than 100 different arts organizations, theater, dance, music, visual arts, you name it, I mean, there's just tons of organizations and artists and creative professionals out there in our communities.

And we created a regional arts council to give voice to and provide connection and networking, if you will, within that arts community.

And quite honestly, Lakeshore Public Media has always been part of that council and a big advocate for it, through things like your "Eye on the Arts" TV and "Eye on the Arts" Radio.

But even beyond that, it's served as a connection for us in a host of ways in terms of announcing and promoting and helping us inform the community of all the things that are happening out there.

And I can't tell you, I mean, "Eye on the Arts" Radio is just one of a handful of arts-oriented programming that you all do to help, in fact, and educate the community about what's available to them.

And without Lakeshore Public Media being that broadcast voice for us to help us amplify the opportunities within the arts community, I think the arts community as a whole would be so much weaker than it would be today.

So you guys play a huge role and have always played a huge role in arts overall.

I think specific to the partnership we have with "Eye on the Arts" Radio, which compliments an extended version of your "Eye on the Arts" TV program, the reality is it's opportunity for us to specifically highlight events and the timeliness of productions and programming and things that people otherwise wouldn't even be aware of.

And we leverage our social media, all the organizations out there do, but Lakeshore Public Media gives us a broader reach, a more amplified message to really ensure the widest population hears the opportunities to come.

And quite honestly, you guys are key to driving people coming out and signing up for art classes, going to see events and festivals and concerts and everything that we do.

And without Lakeshore public media, that would, I wouldn't say dry up, but the voice would be so much quieter than it is today.

(light music) >> Very exciting when something new appears right then and there in the process, much more than the finished piece.

It's that spark through the sketching or through just throwing things about where the real creativity comes from.

I've always made things.

As a child, I loved making things, starting with models, model airplanes, and all the things that kids make as plastic models and wood balsa models and all those.

I just like working with materials and manipulating materials and have worked with weaving and painting through the years.

About 1974, there was a renaissance in stain glass going on.

It had been out of favor in the art world for decades, and then, for some reason, in the early '70s, it sparked and really took off, manufacturers started making more sheet glass around the country and became aware of that and started doing stained glass.

Later discovered fusing, which was an offshoot of the stained-glass work that people wanted to have more freedom, more ability to work like painters rather than craftsmen assembling pieces.

When I became aware of it, I started doing that, and that switched me from stain glass to diffusing completely.

Twila is a much more determined craftsman that is gonna get that piece done and get it done right.

And she brought a whole level of improvement into craftsmanship of our pieces.

At that time, we were doing stained glass.

There's more craftsmanship required in that than there is in fusing.

Fusing is more quick ideas, like painting, it happens fast, whereas the stained-glass pieces are built slowly.

She can put in 60 to 200 hours into one piece.

My mind could not allow that.

I couldn't finish a piece that took that long.

And now, what Twila has shifted to is building what we call components, the smaller, tiniest pieces, she'll make them outta powders, whether they're leaves, or petals, or stems, or whatever we are working on.

She builds most of those, and then I store them and put them together in a finished piece by assembling them and working on what I call a sketch board, which is a light table where light comes from beneath through a clear piece of glass.

And I will sprinkle pieces about and shift them, move them to where I start to get an idea, and then build off of that.

(uplifting music) I cannot duplicate a piece, it just doesn't work for me.

(laughing) It takes control to duplicate something, and control in art is, I would say, a bad thing for the most part.

As soon as I started controlling it and making it the way I think it ought to be, becomes so uninteresting.

Being too literal or too controlled, you lose spontaneity, the fantasy, that spark in a person when they look at something, they're not quite sure what it is and they need to examine it further and get a better feel for it.

And that's hard to do.

It's difficult to know where to stop with a line.

(Tom laughing) It's part of the process.

And I can't tell you how many pieces I've thrown away or just they were so bad.

(laughing) And it can't be fixed because you can't, again, if an area is too dark, you're not gonna lighten it, so it's gone.

(light music) I think many artists will tell you that they overworked the piece and wish they could go back to five minutes ago or whatever the timeframe is because they had it and they didn't realize it, and then, I'll say ruin the piece for them and they're not happy with it.

That's happened to me many times.

And there, again, lies a problem, where do you stop?

Because you'll get so many times, get to a place where I think I'm done with something, and then I realize, "No, it needs something else."

And that can be days later, weeks later, months later, minutes later.

You never know.

It's just part of that whole, it's really a wonderful experience.

I mean, completely exhilarating.

It's exciting.

And it lasts for days even, it depends, yeah.

Left glass for as long as two years throughout that time span, just because of the shift in my interest and the way ideas come to me and my needs is to make different things in different ways.

It's just something I have to do.

(upbeat music) In a nutshell, you really made me look good.

(laughing) Yeah, I really appreciate it.

Your editing and your overlays of me working while I was explaining the process.

When I was explaining it to you on camera, I wasn't thinking about the piece that you put in for the video, but it worked beautifully, it was perfect.

I was very comfortable, as I am now.

Your interviews are excellent.

The questions are to point, they really built a story.

It was a very comfortable experience.

And I was worried about it beforehand, (laughing) "How much am I gonna stumble through this?"

A wonderful program, a wonderful series.

I'm stunned by the talent that is in Northwest Indiana, the people, as we are here at this show for the schools, these ninth, 10th, and 11th graders, (laughing) many of them (laughing) are way ahead of me.

I mean, it's shocking when I look at how good they are.

I've never met a child that didn't like to draw.

My grandkids, that's all they do, they're drawing all the time.

It's just, it's in people.

It's too bad that it doesn't have the favoritism or whatever of the public as much as it should.

It doesn't have the proper support.

It should be in the schools more.

It exercises the mind in ways that, what I would call hard academics, math and reading and writing, don't.

I think it's essential to a human's development.

(upbeat music) >> I started sort of like playing with wood since I was a kid.

Back home in Mexico, my cousin had a very modest wood shop and I just liked all that beautiful furniture.

I have always been artistically inclined.

At some point, like from building furniture, I started leaning towards like carving and sculpting, and that's where I am today.

Growing up in Mexico, churches, they are everywhere.

They're from colonial times, so you see all those paintings and sculptures and the architecture and the carvings on the wood.

I think that is how I started to develop my work, based on all those memories.

I would see things and wonder how it was made, or how could I make it, or like how could I learn how to make that.

I was always attracted to handmade items.

One day, I was driving by the side of the road and I spotted some logs and I just liked the shape of the trunk and I thought, "I think I can make something out of it."

I just started carving it.

Once I started learning techniques, I pretty much fell in love with it.

(upbeat music) This is some of the work that I actually developed.

I call it my signature work because as far as I know, nobody was making something like this.

When I mean something like this, I'm talking about the shape.

It is a technique that involves both turning and carving.

The black part was actually burned with a wood-burning pen.

The embellishment on the piece, it is called the Quinto Sol.

It represents the elements of life, as well as the transition of life and death had in Mesoamerican cultures.

These two pieces that you see are part of my Mesoamerican series.

They represent important aspects of Mesoamerican culture.

In this case, this is "Cuauhtemoc."

It has feathers carved around that represent the status of a chief.

And then the Descending Eagle, which would be the translation of Cuauhtemoc.

Cuauhtemoc was the last emperor before Hernan Cortes finally conquered the city of Tenochtitlan, which is now known as Mexico City.

It means endurance, resistance, indigenous pride.

He's like a hero to us because he was the last one who actually stood his ground against the conquistadors.

All these pieces sort of like are created based on memories from me learning Mexican history and visiting archeological sites.

What I saw there was things carved in stone, it was not like marble, like really smooth, it was more like porous.

In a way, that is what I am trying to represent.

(upbeat music) Both pieces that you saw, they are colored with a dry-brushing technique, the differences that, on this, you see a little bit more of the natural wood, the walnut.

What I did is just to highlight the texture that I applied.

This work that you';re seeing now is the development of driving by the road and seeing like, "Oh, that piece of wood, I can make something with it."

So this is the progression of it.

I was already an adult when I set that goal for myself, to develop a type of work that I could call my own.

I also think that whenever you get stuck into something, you stop growing.

Every little thing or technique that you can learn from different disciplines, if you apply to your work, you can only make it grow.

Artistry and craftsmanship are closely related, one cannot exist without the other.

You cannot make a bowl, like a simple bowl, you cannot embellish that bowl and make it look nice if the profile of the bowl is not right, because your eyes will be drawn to that profile, because it's a natural thing.

In order for you to apply the artistic part to the bowl, you first meet the craftsmanship to create the bowl.

And I think that holds true to just about any discipline you practice.

(bright music) What people saw on TV was only a few minutes, but we were there for the whole day.

(laughing) I am in my shop every day, so I kind of stop noticing certain things.

But the way the camera was focusing on certain things, I'm like looking at my space from a different perspective, It was just nice (laughing) to see.

As a maker, I'm always interested on seeing how other people's studios, or shops, or creative spaces are, just because it's interesting to me.

So yeah, I started watching some of the episodes on YouTube.

Now I follow some of the artists that were featured in other episodes.

It's nice to see, as a person who makes a living out of doing what I like to do, I enjoy seeing others do the same work.

During the summers, I do art shows around the Chicagoland area and some other states, and a couple who saw the episode came to one of the shows.

And we just started talking and they mentioned they found out about my work through the show.

During the conversation, they asked about the Mesoamerican series.

So we started talking about it.

And well, they like them and now those pieces have a new home.

(laughing) >> It's cool to see any artist put their emotion into something that a stranger could use every single day.

And I think it's just them putting their energy into the piece and transmuting that to, I mean, other people in the world.

(upbeat music) My first pottery class was in high school.

I took it just because you need an art credit.

I ended up being fairly good at it.

We were hand building, we made a coil-built pot.

And to my disbelief, they wanted to display it in the attendance office in like a glass cabinet.

So that made me feel pretty good about it.

But I graduated and was missing that kind of creative aspect in my life.

And I took pottery classes with some great people in our community, and here I am.

I see a lot of artists on social media, their ideas do inspire me, but at the end of the day, I think it's sometimes really hard to get kind of like clogged with so much information and so many of other people's ideas that it's almost like creating a block.

So sometimes I do try to disconnect and look back at my own photos or I just kind of start doodling, and what makes me feel good.

But at the end of the day, I really do like rustic style inspired by earthy kind of tones.

Because clay comes from the earth, it's a very natural feeling to be inspired by nature.

So I mean, me, myself, just my personality type, like I feel so free being out there that it's hard to not be inspired and want to bring those ideas back into the studio.

So incorporating seasonal foliage and what animals come out during certain seasons, I'm just kind of very inspired by where I am throughout the year.

I like to think that it's an embodiment of Earth's elements.

So when you break it down, you have clay, which is coming from the earth, I'm using water, I'm using air to kind of dry it out.

'Cause it's very temperamental, you have to work in stages and at certain temperatures with the clay.

And then I'm also using fire to fire my pottery and make sure it's vitrified and able to use turning it into ceramics.

As of lately, in the past couple years, I've been inspired by Celtic mythology and also Greek mythology.

So learning about that stuff, that made me feel good and that made me feel creative.

So I wanted to infuse that into what I was making.

I just try to put a story into it.

And that's, I think, what takes so much time is I'm carving each stroke hand by hand to get that story embedded into the clay.

So I feel like I have this like, I don't know how to describe it exactly, but there's like this world inside my imagination that I want to bring to life.

It's very like when you watch a fairytale movie, like (laughing) in a mossy forest with animals and with plants, it's like, I want to bring that to life.

Whether it's through the clay or through the design on the clay, I just feel like I need to get that out.

That's kind of what inspires the nature feel, that's what inspires the mythology.

I like to kind of look, and what season are we in?

And it just comes from that imaginary fairytale world, that I feel like (laughing) I would love to live in.

Wanna bring that to life.

It's really cool to have an idea in your mind that you've kind of been cooking up for a while, and then like two months down the road, and you're like, "Oh, shoot, I have it in my hands.

Like I thought of this and here it is.

Like it's tangible now."

And I think that's one of the coolest parts for me is to see an image of what I wanna make in my mind and then have it in front of me.

>> Dale: Doing as much as you can as quickly as you can is important to me.

Life is short, and the earlier we get started helping our community, the better off our community will be.

>> Announcer: Family, home, work, self.

Of all the things you take care of, make sure you're near the top of the list.

North Shore Health Centers offers many services to keep you balanced and healthy.

So take a moment, self-assess, and put yourself first.

From medical to dental, vision, chiropractic and mental health, North Shore will help get you centered.

You help keep your world running, so make sure to take care of yourself.

North Shore Health Centers, building a healthy community, one patient at a time.

(upbeat music) >> Announcer: "Eye on the Arts" is made possible in part by South Shore Arts, the John W. Anderson Foundation, and the Indiana Arts Commission, making the arts happen.

Additional support for Lakeshore Public Media and local programming is made possible by viewers like you.

Thank you.

(upbeat music) >> You really have to think about how do you support a child through all the developmental aspects of life?

>> When we have those positive relational experiences and we learn that we're worthy and it's a safe place to be and that there's hope in the world, well, we take that with us.

>> It is really a learning process between two people.

And that's what building a relationship is all about.

That's such a satisfying and bonding thing for you and your child.

You feel it and your child feels it too.

And if a child receives comfort, support, assurance and protections, then they learn safety, security, trust and hope.

And think about what a world we would live in.

(uplifting music) >> Announcer: A $100,000 matching grant generously provided by the Legacy Foundation will double your contribution today.

Building Blocks, a community investment with everlasting returns.

>> Announcer: Across Northwest Indiana, stories are told, shared and sought after.

Tune into Lakeshore Public Media 89.1 FM to hear these stories about Northwest Indiana and your community.

Streaming online at lakeshorepublicmedia.org.

(upbeat music) >> Announcer: Did you know that you can find all your favorite Lakeshore PBS shows online?

By visiting video.lakeshorepbs.org, you can stream a large selection of shows, including "Eye on the Arts."

>> To me, it's always about music.

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