Coming up next on Art rocks, a Baton Rouge liturgical sculptor who's touching spirits nationwide.

An Ohio sculptor whose works loom very, very large and holding a mirror up to society's insatiable appetites.

These stories up next on up rocks.

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Hello.

Thank you for joining us for Art rocks with Me.

James Smith, publisher of Country Roads magazine, one of the most highly sought after liturgical sculptors in the United States.

Lives and works right here in Baton Rouge.

In the 70s, Deborah Lute got her early training in three dimensional art at Saint Mary Dominican College in New Orleans, where she took classes under the world renowned sculptor Angela Gregory.

She shares her story now with us.

I drew portraits from an early age.

Anybody who would sit still for me, I tended to draw.

That was as early as high school.

When I went to Dominican College, I was an English major.

But I met Angela Gregory, who became my teacher and mentor.

And I guess it was at that point I must have been 19 when I realized how much I loved sculpting.

Gregory was in her 70s when she was on the faculty at Dominican College.

I think the first class I might have taken with her was an art history class, and she was just as excited about work she had done in her 50s and 40s and communicated that joy to her students.

I took a couple of sculpture class that took a portrait class.

Primarily it was modeling and clay.

Our first class was to do a portrait bust, and so I got to handle all the traditional tools in terms of plaster piece molds, which aren't made anymore because of the advent of rubber and all the other more modern materials.

But I learned a lot of the classical techniques and practices from Miss Gregory because she studied in Paris in the 20s with Antoine Berdahl, who was one of the most well-known students of Rodin.

The enthusiasm that she had for her career was so great, some of that filtered down to me.

She had several pieces of stone that the students could work on.

I got to learn basically modeling and carving, which are the two traditional types of sculpture, and I loved both of them.

And I remember loving the fact that I would go into a three hour studio class, and before I knew it, the three hours were up.

It was just a tremendously different kind of experience that I'd never had, that getting lost in an activity.

The Christ Victoria's piece.

It's one of my favorites because it represents the evolution of a work of art over time.

The original piece, which gave birth to the larger piece, came from me just looking at a fourth branch in my yard and seeing the body of Christ on that forked branch, and it took on new life each time I was challenged to make another one.

I made both a smaller one, and I made the eight foot one.

In response to the needs of a particular Jesuit community in Philadelphia.

To be able.

I'm also very fond of a piece I did for a church in Arizona and Phoenix called the Franciscan Renewal Center, and that piece is called the Resurrection.

And it represents, again, the evolution of a piece of work that I did many years prior based on the Gospel of John.

I was working on themes from the Gospel of John, and I did a large relief that's over my fireplace called The Angels Ascending and Descending, and it's an image of Christ on the cross, but not looking crucified, looking resurrected.

And so when I was approached about a seven foot relief sculpture for this church in Phoenix, I immediately went back to that image because I've always thought it was an image of the resurrection.

And even though it came directly from the Gospel of John, those two pieces are two of my favorite works because they've lasted through time in terms of my own development as an artist.

I worked both on commission and I do my own private work as well, which finds its way into homes, schools, hospitals.

My most recent large commission here in Baton Rouge was Our Lady of the Lake Children's Hospital.

I did a large triptych in a hallway leading to the chapel that is called Canticle of the sun, because the hospital had themes for the various floors.

The first floor where this work was intended for the theme was the River and my husband.

I spent a lot of time kayaking on the Louisiana rivers, and so since it was a Franciscan establishment, I immediately thought of Saint Francis and AP Rock.

And another reason for that was I wanted to do something whimsical as a children's hospital.

I didn't want to do anything overly somber.

Most of my work as a religious artist has rather somber themes, but the opportunity to do work at a children's hospital enabled me to pursue a more whimsical path and yet give honor to Christ.

Saint Francis, the Blessed Mother of three, are contained in this composition.

I have clients all over the United States in the early part of this century.

From 2001 to 2000 and 8 or 9, there was a tremendous boon in the building of new churches and the renovation of old churches.

So there was a real market for objects that most Catholic in some Protestant churches have, like stations of the cross, mysteries of the Rosary.

And I was able to make some connections in that decade that have served me well since then.

I gradually, over the years developed a national network of liturgical design consultants and people in the community, the building community.

In 2006, I did a large scale bronze for Saint Aloysius Catholic Church.

It's called the Gentle Hands Memorial, and it memorializes children lost to miscarriage or sudden infant death.

And it gives their mothers a place to go to remember their children and feel like they're in the presence of their children.

I also have, from my earlier days as a portrait sculptor, several pieces in Baton Rouge.

I have two pieces at the Royal Life Museum, one bust of steel Bourdon and one bust of I unburden and I have a bust of Bishop Stanley Joseph at the Catholic Life Center.

I did that portrait of him as a gift.

He and my mother both were suffering from cancer, and I had the idea that I would offer to do a bust of him if he would meet with my mother and do some praying with her.

And so that worked out.

What you see in the back of me is a plaster cast of a bust.

I did of Julian Poythress.

Julian portraits was a well-known figure in the 1700s, and in fact there are many places, institutions, streets named after him in the New Orleans area.

And I was commissioned to do a bust of him for a arts center in New Romes by Heckel.

Lynd, who was very important in that area.

He was a member of the community and a promoter of the arts.

The pressure of making portraits is tremendous because everyone has a different view of what you look like.

Your husband has a view of you that would not match my view of you, and the portrait is a particularly demanding line of work, and I think about often what Miss Gregory said when she was a teacher.

She said, in 100 years nobody's going to care if it's a likeness, but everybody's going to care if it's a good work of art.

But it's very difficult to convey that to the client, because the client has his own idea of what the person looks like.

I always try to keep in mind what she said, that art is for the ages, and it's good for the artist to keep that in mind and to be as diplomatic as he can about dealing with the client.

It's a portrait of another person, but it's your art work.

This piece is a three dimensional mold which consists basically of the three materials.

The rubber, which was applied directly to the clay model, and then this rigid plastic mother mold.

It's called the mother mold because it holds the rubber in place.

And then it also actually is for materials you need bolts.

This is a two part mother mold.

So you need bolts to lock it in place.

And then these wooden pieces were added so that when you stand it up it will be level.

And it because it couldn't stand, you know, on this little point here, the large pieces tend to be more challenging emotionally because there's more at stake.

If you mess up a small piece, it's not a huge ordeal to change it.

If you mess up a large piece or if you're unhappy with the direction of a large piece, it's more involved in terms of going back.

I remember I did a commission in 2011 for Brother Martin High School in New Orleans, and I was commissioned to cast a set of stations of the cross and to do two life sized bronzes in less than a year.

I think I had about ten months, and the first part of the project went great.

The Holy Family I loved it was just a joy to do.

But the second one I was asked to do a piece based on a piece of sculpture in France called The Teaching Jesus, which was at the motherhouse of the brothers of the Sacred Heart.

And that piece I tore down three times from start to finish before I was happy with the final product, so the large pieces can keep me up at night, the armatures that have to be built.

I've always been very challenged when working with armatures.

The conception and the inspiration.

That's more of a right brain activity.

Whereas armature construction modeled, making balancing large objects, that's a left brain activity.

And fortunately, my husband has more of a left brain and I have more of a right brain dominance.

He'll tackle just about anything.

I guess.

In some senses, he's a jack of all trades when it comes to mechanics, and he actually engineered my first foundry on Highland Road in 1977.

We were both very young and I knew I wanted to pursue sculpture seriously, and he actually engineered the whole foundry from the casting equipment to the kilns and it worked beautifully.

I've done a few new pieces that we were in the process of casting in bronze right now, based on animals in the New Testament, particularly pigs.

So this is quite a departure for me to go from a more traditional sacred imagery to a little more whimsical pursuit.

There's a scripture Psalm I shall dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.

And sometimes I've thought, well, my art is going to be in those churches long after I'm gone.

And it's something my children, my grandchildren can see as a testament to more than just me as an artist, but to me as a faithful person, a believer.

And so it is a tremendous joy to think that this work will outlast me and will bring others, hopefully, to experience Christ in a way that I experienced Christ, or at least to appreciate the beauty of sacred imagery that.

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We want to introduce you to another sculptor.

Now John Barlow Hudson creates large scale works of art that grace public spaces worldwide, working with materials that include granite, steel, bronze, wood, water, light and glass.

Hudson sculptures tell stories, generate feelings, and demonstrate dramatic and diverse technique.

Take a look.

My professional label would be Public Sculptor, and I've wanted to do that for a long time because you reach more people by making work for public places.

Of course.

I just started out making small sculptures.

That was great fun, but it's like a dollhouse.

It's so fine to make a dollhouse, but that's for dolls.

You need to make a big, real house in order to use it to live in it.

So same with sculpture.

A little sculpture is fine for a maquette or sitting on a table, but to experience it with your whole being, you need it to be of a scale that you can relate to it with.

Climb on it.

I'm into it.

I've got public sculptures throughout the States, from Maine to California.

I have public sculptures in 27 different countries, and there are at least 22 throughout China.

Each different project has a different geography environment, plants, architecture function.

So maybe in one context stone would be most appropriate.

Or stainless steel or like downtown Dayton, the yellow piece that's powder coated aluminum.

That street used to be a canal for the water use, transport good energy and so on.

So today the street is a canal for vehicles which create eddies in the air as they race.

By so fluid dynamics seem the appropriate concept for that location.

Public projects tend to take a lot of time, in particular because you've got committees and regulations and all that stuff, and you put a whole package together.

It ends up being six months or a year or two years or some such thing.

Let's go to the common good.

For example.

I spent a good two years on that project and that wasn't that big.

I had the stone, a very large granite service plate from right pad for a space.

I got it for the cost to get it over here, and it's set for almost 20 years.

I think.

Well, that's pretty good.

I waited until this opportunity came that I could give it a home.

The impetus for the common good sculpture was Tim Reardon, the city manager for Dayton.

Also, Cincinnati.

And after he retired, Tim got to thinking that he wanted to honor the public servants that he had worked with over his career.

There's a committee we came up with the idea of a bunch of quotes, and we decided to run the quotes around the stone so that you have to walk around the stone to read it.

So it's to engage the viewer.

And then the seats, of course, engage you.

There's quotes inside, and then you see that you can sit in it.

And because there's an interconnecting hole, you can talk through the stone, which is the idea of communicating, breaking through walls in public service.

It's all about communication and coming together.

It's not a environmental sculpture, it's more about communicating an idea to the people in the community.

My name is Tim Reardon, and this is a project it worked on for a couple of years.

The name of the piece is The Common Good.

We had a lot of discussion about what we should name the piece, and it really just felt this is what we work for.

This is what we do.

We do the common good.

And I want to start it out just by saying a thank you to all the public servants who do such good work for our city, schools, county, state and country and the world.

And I just think it's important.

I think, like, you're welcome.

Why is public art important?

I think it's important because it's a way of embodying energies of that time, which is then communicated with people down through time.

So, you know, you have Roman period, the Greeks or the Egyptians, all these different energies of that time we get to see because of the sculpture, creative works that were made.

And it enriches our experience of being human, our history in the world.

It shows how our culture got to be what it is.

And those people are communicating with us today, and I want to do that with my work.

So that's why I like to build big sculpture.

Let's wrap things up now with a visit to New Mexico artist Scott Greene.

Greene's detailed paintings examine the impact that humans are having on our natural world, and challenge his viewers to reflect upon our society's rampant consumerism.

There's chaos in your work.

Who or what is at the heart of that chaos?

We are.

We are at the heart of the chaos.

And things have gotten to the point now that there's a lot more chaos than there ever was.

And.

There's a lot of artists that we will try to eliminate the, the, the human element in their landscapes.

I kind of go the other way.

I'm.

I'm painting everything that people do and throw away and human activity as part of the landscape.

And it's a way to make a statement about what we're doing to the land and what we're doing to the environment.

Doesn't seem like a good idea, since we're trying to live here.

The that we totally polluted.

And deluge the painting.

There's a lot of pink insulation.

And I'm thinking about, well, insulation from what, insulating us from the environment.

We've spent a lot of time insulating ourselves from the environment to protect ourselves, but now it's all exposed.

Could you tell us about the events or decisions that led you to have this focus on where we're at with the environment, or living and working in New Mexico for nearly 30 years has greatly influenced my work.

You really see the correlation between poverty and exploitation of the land.

And, you know, we bury the nuclear waste here.

We have the underground plumes of jet fuel and and dry cleaning that's going to take over our aquifer.

And we're trying to do something about it.

But it's but it's very slow.

I think it sticks out in this landscape, you know, you see it more.

With obstacles have you faced in trying to communicate to your audiences?

Some people see it and and they see the objects in a mountain of computer parts or whatever.

And it's it's not what they want to see.

It's a beautiful sky, but it's it's a big pile of crap.

I do try to make that garbage look as beautiful as I can.

So that is the challenge really.

In in a lot of ways.

There's times when life just doesn't seem real.

It's almost as if the paintings have become the reality.

And I think that that does inspire a certain feeling that I have in the studio.

It's beyond, what I can accept.

And I'll try to make that a real interpretation or realistic interpretation of this idea of something not being real.

There's a lot of humor in in my work, and I, I hope that that comes through in a way that makes people not turn away from the uglier aspects of it, or the more confrontational aspects, as a way to get more perspective on it and to get some distance on, these issues that are that, that we're all facing.

We.

And that is that for this edition of Art rocks.

But remember, you can always see or share episodes of the show@lpb.org slash, rocks.

And if you're wondering what else you might be missing, Country Roads Magazine makes a great resource for finding out what's going on in the arts and culture out and about in the Bayou State.

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

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