(upbeat drum music) >> Music is so beautiful.

Its beauty is enhanced by the more you're exposed to it.

And if you're able to learn a little bit deeper that's almost like having a deeper love.

If you could imagine love being deeper, why wouldn't you want to keep studying and learning?

I mean, that's what life is.

(upbeat drum music continues) (light music) >> Mark: The experiments are really based on exploiting the qualities of watercolor and just letting it do what what it wants to do without trying to manipulate it too much.

And when you do that, it does some explosively cool things that no other medium can even touch.

>> Kel: Few people I know who are really, really you know, full-time artists.

it's almost like a priesthood or something.

It's a total immersion almost worshipful sort of approach that they have.

>> Nancy: It is therapeutic and it's something that we all have availability to do if we allow ourselves to not self censor.

It's through our bodies, our bodies are sensory machines.

>> Voiceover: 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.

(upbeat music) >> I have a very strong connection to other students.

Everyone makes an effort to help each other.

I'll remember the feeling of being here, the feeling that I was a part of a family.

>> Voiceover: Support for programming at Lakeshore PBS comes in part from a generous bequest of the estate of Marjorie A.

Mills, whose remarkable contribution will help us keep viewers like you informed, inspired and entertained for years to come.

(light music) (vocalize humming) >> Voiceover: Eye on the Arts is made possible in part by South Shore Arts, the Indiana Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.

Additional support for Lakeshore PBS and Eye on the Arts is provided by viewers like you.

Thank you.

(upbeat drum music) >> I've always loved music, first off.

As far as the drums, I attended a parade and the drums were so powerful.

I could feel it in my young chest as they went by.

And it just kind of, it gave me a thrill.

I just wanted to be a part of that.

I couldn't have been more than an eight or nine, but I didn't actually get a chance to play a drum till I was 12.

(upbeat drum music) (drumsticks counting in) >> Person: One, two, three, four.

(upbeat drum music) (upbeat drum music continues) (upbeat drum music continues) (upbeat drum music continues) (upbeat drum music continues) >> I grew up in Gary.

I recall before I had my drums, I had a nice polo bike.

You know those with the monkey handle bars and the banana seat.

And this guy had a set of Ludwigs back then.

Unheard of.

So I said, "man, look here, I let you ride this bike.

"You let me sit down behind your drums."

So we struck up a friendship and needless to say, I would ride by his house every day.

But the way that I actually got drums I came from a family of five siblings.

My mom and dad were divorced.

It wasn't my birthday, it, I came home from school one day and a set of drums were sitting on the living room floor.

And my siblings didn't complain about it because they knew that I was banging on everything in the house.

You know, they were happy to see me have it and I was happy to have it.

Let's say early seventies, maybe late sixties, 11th Avenue in Gary, Indiana, had at least three clubs from each side of the street within a couple of blocks.

And you could go and watch great bands playing blues, R&B, and if you could catch one set go across the street and catch someone else.

You know, that's how vibrant the scene was.

And then a couple of streets over on 15th, you had Clayman Show Lounge, where you could see national acts like B.B.

King, Bobby Blue Bland.

It was just a wonderful, wonderful time.

(upbeat drum music) I wasn't familiar how important Albert King was when I got introduced, but thank God I was in the right place at the right time and managed to get that education from Albert.

He was very nurturing.

He saw I was a little green in certain areas so he would show me how to do a Texas Shuffle or a Slow Blues the way that he wanted it and watch his cues, so I would know, you know, the dynamic range that he wanted.

But he was incredible guitar player.

I've even seen B.B.

King come to one of our performances and shared the stage and those two would go at it, and at the end of it, B.B.

would give Albert his praise.

And for a young man to witness all this, it was just incredible.

(upbeat drum music continues) Oh, listening is paramount, and if you don't listen, you're not gonna keep a job.

Simple as that.

So I've become very sensitive when I play with other people.

(upbeat drum music continues) >> Kevin: How does it feel to know you've taken something you love and shared it with another generation?

>> Well, this is the thing, Kevin, what they picked up on most of all was my love for it.

And in turn, they love it.

And from the looks of it, they taught you to love it.

So that takes care of itself.

So we're all on the same journey, on the same path and hopefully we will get to the heights that we inspire to be at.

Music is so beautiful.

Its beauty is enhanced by the more you're exposed to it.

And if you're able to learn a little bit deeper that's almost like having a deeper love.

If you could imagine love being deeper, why wouldn't you want to keep studying and learning?

I mean, that's what life is.

(upbeat drum music continues) (upbeat music) >> Got a job offer while I was still in college and I was down on Michigan Avenue doing advertising.

Absolutely awful.

And so I quit after one year and I've not worked for anyone since.

Because I didn't get that deep into advertising, I became more of an illustrator and that's the path that found me, I suppose.

(upbeat music continues) I always went to current events so that it would have to be something that couldn't be replaced by stock images.

You know, it would have to be some new story that had to be illustrated.

And that has helped me a lot.

Luckily for me, my background was in design and so I could design logos and I ended up doing lots of billboards and ads and collateral material and I really enjoy it.

If I didn't do all that stuff, I wouldn't have survived.

Be it teaching, designing, posters, illustrating or selling commissioned work, you know, fine art paintings, all of those things contribute to my income.

If I just focused on one, would it blossom?

I don't know.

(chuckles) You know, it's the risk I'll probably take.

My favorite stuff that's commercial is certainly like the Jewish Review of Books for like nine years now I've been doing the covers.

It's important editorial work.

I feel good about it.

It sort of bridges the gap between fine art and illustration.

It's always topical and it's pen and ink and watercolor.

And I enjoy that and I get paid well for it.

(mellow music) I'm not one of those guys that someone would hire for my style and said that's a one of a kind style guy.

I'm the guy that has 20 styles.

I approach every scenario like a new project.

(mellow music continues) Oftentimes my favorite work is when I have no subject matter at all.

It is kind of expressionistic, but it's also... the experiments are really based on exploiting the qualities of watercolor and just letting it do what what it wants to do without trying to manipulate it too much.

And when you do that, it does some explosively cool things that no other medium can even touch.

My favorite pieces are when the watercolor did something really cool and I just had to sort of coax it and not overdo it and leave it alone, and tilt the paper a little bit and let it do something cool.

That's always cooler than anything I've ever painted.

I like the spontaneity of watercolor and the ability to just experiment to no end with different, you know, with salt and spritzing water and mixing it with acrylic inks where they repel each other and create this sort of granular effect.

It's really cool, all the textures and stuff you can get outta watercolor, get to know it a little bit, and then it's so fun.

And it's a transparent medium so you can see everything that you've done.

You can't erase you can't paint over something in watercolor.

You make the most out of a mistake is what it is.

I mean, if you can just think about it really simply, like okay, you want me to do a portrait of you?

Okay, you want it to look like you, you know so I've already got some really strict rules.

When you've got those stipulations, it's hard to stay loose, and watercolor when it's used boldly, yet loosely is when it explodes.

(light music) If somebody's timid when they're singing a song, it's like, "boo!"

♪ Like the way it smells in the country ♪ >> If you're painting with that same hesitation it's gonna look like that.

It's a strange thing.

Yeah.

What does artistic life bring me?

It feeds me in a lot of ways, you know and if all I had was a paycheck, like a lot of people, like I would, I don't care about money that much, you know?

Like I don't wanna freeze to death in the, in a, you know, living in a cardboard box.

It's, yeah, I don't know, you gotta do it.

You get their life the way you get their life.

♪ On a good day we sang too-da-la-too ♪ ♪ Oh lets go down to lake (indistinct) ♪ Certainly my goal is the next 20 years to just paint a lot.

See where it get, call me in 15.

(chuckles) ♪ Just as soon as I can break free ♪ ♪ From the lives in the city ♪ ♪ I guess I'm going to the countryside ♪ >> My father taught me to paint when I was quite little.

He built me my first easel and sculpted with me.

You know, I used to do still life at the house and that sort of thing when I was very young.

And I won the Bicycle Safety Poster Contest when I was in third grade, which was kind of a leg up.

(chuckles) I got a lot of recognition for that.

And after high school, I took five years off and I just traveled and found myself in Alaska and New York.

And then I wound up in Seattle at the Center for Visual Arts.

My major study was printmaking.

So I'm trained as a lithographer and that's what I taught in Manhattan later on for seven years.

So, and that's a very, you know none of this has really great applicability in the larger world except in fine arts.

But everything wonderful and mystical about art happens in printmaking.

You need a big industrial press for litho.

(light music) So when we came here, I just started painting full-time.

Prior to the 15th century, everybody used egg yolk, that was it.

You just using the yolk and you're mixing it with water, that's your medium.

And then you just mix it with water-based pigments.

That's it, and it'll last hundreds of years, you know?

Egg tempers translucent, so, and it's always translucent, when you do sort of a monochromatic painting and you start glazing transparent veils over what you have there and you get the optical mixing.

You're actually looking through all of the veils at the end of the exercise.

I like the magic of that.

I just call it a somber palette.

It's a green umber toning.

There is a certain something that's coming up from underneath, providing that sort of radiant feeling.

It's just evocative.

I have a couple of pieces that I use the gilding on.

It's a beautiful effect, and you can use not only gold, but you can use silver and copper.

I happen to like copper quite a bit.

It's very warm and kind of pink gold.

I think it gives you, in a certain sense, a leg up because it's sort of an arcane tool for your tool chest.

(mellow music) I think freedom is just something that has to be in your mind.

You know, I'm not interested anymore in gallivanting around it, being free in space as much, but I want to be free in my head.

I think you can be free in your head through reading, painting, composing music.

People have to find ways to be free.

Few people I know who are really, really you know, full-time artist, it's almost like a priesthood.

It's a total immersion, almost worshipful sort of approach that they have.

And people can find a bit of that if they're doing it as a hobby too.

It's a very austere writing as well.

You're going deep, deep, deep into whatever space and you're mining something that's really kind of metaphysical.

(uplifting music) Why does anybody like anything, you know?

I don't know, I guess reverence, respect for the past.

I'm sort of a, a neo medievalist, so I just, I just like the look of it.

So I had to do a whole lot of research on my own and reading and looking at various people's work.

I'm gonna be looking for an agent for a manuscript, a medieval manuscript, a neo medieval manuscript called, "Mechtild's Medieval Adventures: An Adult Fairy Tale," which I think is magical.

It involves gypsies and Dominican clerics and the plague.

And, and so it's all of a piece.

But I think narrative is what connects all of it.

A lot of this stuff that I've done in the last five years is really, they're meant to be included in the novella.

It's all of a piece.

They could be standalones, but I think, 'Cause I, because again, I like the story and so it will, you know, it would sort of give people extra background to read the book.

Some people don't care about a story.

I happen to really want the story.

I'd like it to be more provocative in terms of a tale.

(uplifting music continues) (upbeat music) >> I started drawing and painting young, when I was a kid.

I've always enjoyed it and had an affinity for it.

And when I went to college, I got my degree, my bachelor's degree in art and painting.

And then I was a graphic designer and did a lot of illustrations.

I think one of the more interesting things that I did in art school was I had a color class with, I forget, I wish I could remember the instructor's name.

He was from New York.

He would make us try to visualize the color and imagine what colors go into each color.

So if you see a purple, What is that made out of?

And you have to kind of visualize it.

You had to explain what you thought it was.

So much of this color, so much of that, so much of this.

And then you could try it out.

And it was really interesting because I started to be able to see color that was within color, if that makes any sense.

So where most people would look at something and go, "oh, it's gray."

Well, you know, gray is a mix of colors and so what really are, what is it?

What is that gray?

And so I started to be able to see colors really deeply and I've carried that through for I think my whole life now.

It's, it was fascinating.

(upbeat music) I've always been a dancer.

I've just, I just move.

I always have, I'm very rarely just still.

When I'm walking in the woods, for example, I will see trees or all the organic shapes, the bushes, the trees, the leaves.

And I'll often grab a stick and I'll kind of wield it and trace the shapes of the trees with my arm.

And the stick extends my reach, sometimes six feet, three feet, six feet.

And it feels really organic because, you know, most of us, when we're sitting, we get a little stiff.

We're at a computer, whatever we're doing.

And I feel like I need to have my body free and fluid to have fluid motion and fluid movement in my art.

And so I'll just move.

It's not, I don't know that I would call it dance necessarily.

And almost sometimes I think it looks more like Tai Chi or chi gung or something else, but I just move whatever my body feels like it needs to do.

And sometimes I trace the shapes of the tree.

Sometimes I just do what my body feels that it needs.

Sometimes to music, but oftentimes just to the sound of birds.

I love that feeling of having the world in my body and being able to express that through my arms.

And I feel like then what translates onto the canvas is that movement.

(mellow music) The other thing that I've gotten really interested in are phosphine.

Which are, when you're outside and you close your eyes, and you look up at the sun and you pretty much have to be really looking right at the sun, but you get all of these really cool patterns behind your eyes.

Most people don't pay too much attention to 'em.

But I think they're so cool.

It's like watching a movie.

It's like them watching this crazy, almost psychedelic, patterns and textures and colors, and things that are constantly changing.

I'm like, "that is incredible!"

That we have that, we, all of us have that available to us all the time.

And you can even get it, like sometimes I, if you go into, like, you turn a light on then go into a dark room, you'll get all of these patterns and colors.

And so I'm like, "I need to try to "put some of that down and see."

So I hope that people can look at some of this crazy stuff that I do and kind of have that sort of memory experience of like, "wow, that's really crazy, but it's really cool."

And take it back in their own brain and go, "oh wait a minute.

I've sort of seen this before."

It is therapeutic and it's something that we all have availability to do if we allow ourselves to not self censor.

And just go, it's our bodies.

Our bodies are sensory machines and we pull in all of this stuff and especially things that we see, things that we hear.

So however it channels through, everybody's different.

You know, some people comes out through words through music, although music is also physical.

You're playing the piano, you're drumming you're playing guitar, whatever it is, it's through our bodies.

Our bodies are sensory machines.

So if we allow ourselves to pay attention then it's kind of unlimited.

(mellow music continues) >> Voiceover: 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 the better off our community will be.

>> Almost every single professor I've had I'm on a first name basis.

By building that relationship with faculty I was able to get involved with research.

It's one thing to read about an idea in a book versus physically doing it and seeing the results.

(upbeat music) >> Voiceover: Support for programming at Lakeshore PBS comes in part from a generous bequest of the estate of Marjorie A.

Mills, whose remarkable contribution will help us keep viewers like you informed, inspired and entertained for years to come.

(light music) (vocalize humming) >> Voiceover: Eye on the Arts is made possible in part by South Shore Arts, the Indiana Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.

Additional support for Lakeshore PBS and Eye on the Arts is provided by viewers like you.

Thank you.

>> Voiceover: Did you know that you can find all of your favorite Lakeshore PBS shows online?

By visiting "video.lakeshore.PBS.org."

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(energetic music) (light piano music)