Coming up next on, rocks, a Shreveport artist whose portraits offer connection and self-discovery for artists and subject alike.

My style is more a blend and style.

I'm a less impressionistic and much more subtly blended in my painting.

Plus, a taste of what you'll discover during a visit with Alexandria's historical society.

That's all.

Coming up next on Art rocks.

Like the impulse that drives an artist's creativity.

Georgia Pacific's 850 Louisiana employees are driven to produce quality paper products for your home.

And business.

Georgia Pacific is proud to support LPB and Art rocks and by Lamar Advertising Company.

Proud to support the arts and Art rocks.

Headquartered in Baton Rouge, Lamar is 461 Louisiana employees have been helping brands and businesses reach their customers creatively for over 100 years.

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

Hello, Art lover, and thank you for joining us for Art Rocks with Me.

James Fox Smith, publisher of Country Roads magazine.

Shreveport portraitist Talbert Hopkins Trudeau has spent three decades capturing the likeness and personality of his subjects in pencil, chalk and watercolor.

Though a proficient painter of landscapes and still lifes, Hopkins first love remains portraiture, which, as a painfully shy child she found, was a means of connecting with and talking to people.

Talbot shares her story, which leads right back to famed Louisiana artist Clyde Connell.

Growing up, some of my inspirations for my art were my grandmother, who was born in Belcher, Louisiana, on a plantation North of Shreveport, as well as her sister, Clyde Connell, who is my great aunt, and that was my grandmother's sister.

Clyde was a great artist who went on to get national and international acclaim with her art.

She mostly drew and assembled collages as well as created much sculpture, and she made it out of typically a wood base with a lot of paper maché to cover them.

I started drawing and painting as a young child, just six and seven and eight, but I kind of got really interested in portraits when I was about ten at Southfield School in Shreveport.

My art teacher, Camille Hirsch, taught me how to draw faces, and I kind of became obsessed with drawing faces.

And that's what started my portrait career.

I didn't get a degree in art.

I got a degree in English from Centenary College, but I was an art major one year at Tulane and took a couple of drawing courses.

But I'm really self-taught, and after college I thought, well, I could do things, but I really wanted to do more.

So I've done portraits on commission since about 1987.

I've drawn I started in pencil and started in, charcoal and sanguine or thinking contact crayon, just drawing portraits.

Kind of.

Then I moved into, watercolor portraits and pastel portraits and finally oil.

And in these, last ten years, I've mostly been doing oil paintings.

I've used photography to capture people and expressions and trying to get the best pose.

Working from life is certainly wonderful.

And the light you see and the colors you see are true.

But photography is such a great medium to capture people's faces and you have a lot of choices.

So that's the way I've worked, and picking those optimal poses is really one of the keys and the lighting and figuring out what medium you want to do the portrait in.

So all of those factors kind of combine to try to get the most ideal rendering and portrait of my subject, and especially children photography helps to capture them because they're always moving around the pencil and the charcoal and the pastel and watercolor will all endure and last much longer under glass and not facing direct sunlight and more very indirect sunlight.

And of course, oil is very permanent, but you still don't want it in a lot of direct sunlight, and it doesn't need any glass over it for long lasting notes.

And also, the paper should be our archival, and that's what I use also.

My style is more a blend and style.

I'm a less impressionistic, much more subtly blended in my painting, and that's my realistic style of drawing and painting.

I'm very detail oriented.

I try to be as true to the person in every aspect, whether strands of hair, and that's part of my portraiture, is trying to be as true and exact as I can.

Light is very important to me.

It is crucial in everything, and especially in art and in portraits and in my own paintings.

To me it is the crux.

It is the key to excellent, striking dramatic images.

And that's what I aim for.

I mostly use my own photography to paint my paintings and to draw my drawings, so having that, it is just something I love.

So a lot of my work has strong light and shadow.

Just because I love it.

I do love monochromatic things that just have one color, whether it's sepia, brown, watercolor, or whether it's the reddish brown sanguine content crayon, which is like chalk.

Just there's something classical about one color.

So I decided after seeing these beautiful black and white oil portraits in the National Gallery of Art and Washington, that I would try it.

So my first one was my son at age eight, which is him kind of looking off into the distance.

And it's in black and white and shades of gray.

And also, once again, it gets back to color is is lovely and beautiful.

But there's something very classical about black and white and one color or monochrome.

I love nature, I love rocks, I love leaves and insects, and I certainly do love animals.

I haven't painted them as much.

I'm constantly taking pictures and from those pictures, whether it leaves or bowls and beautiful things and well lighted things for magically lighted things, but especially beautiful things light I love, and especially things found in nature.

I've been doing some mountain scenes from my, father's home in Virginia.

I've done some interior scenes and some abstract painting, so I've been expanding my repertoire.

No matter where you live in Louisiana, opportunities to connect with the arts are everywhere.

The trick is knowing where to look.

So here's a list of some cool exhibits, festivals, concerts, tours, and dining opportunities coming up around our state.

To learn more about these and other events in Louisiana, keep your eyes peeled for a copy of Country Roads Magazine.

And while we're at it, Lpv Rock's website features an archive of previous episodes, so to see any episode again, just log on to lpb.org.

Step to the beat.

Now, because we're off to Ohio to spend some time with a jazz pianist who has shared the stage with some of the world's best musicians.

Khalid Moss is not only a widely acclaimed musician, he's also a renowned teacher.

Here's his story.

I began playing the piano when I was about 5 or 6, but before that, my mother, when she was caring, she always concentrated on music and wanted her offspring to be musically talented.

So when I came out of the womb, I was already marked and I didn't really discover my true gift until much later.

When I went to high school, I went to play football, and my mother said I couldn't play football, so I had to join the band.

And that's the single most angry at her I'd ever been in my life.

So I joined a band, and it was a good thing because I played clarinet and it taught me how to read when I went to college, I really didn't know what I wanted to do.

I majored in psychology, sociology, things like that at Ohio University.

In that period of time, they had a piano in every dorm.

And just for fun, I used to go out and play and people would gather around and listen, and it got to the point where my first gig, $10, and I was so happy I called my mother.

I mean, it was $10 and a light went off and said, well, maybe I can make some money doing this and just progressed from there.

I joined the Ohio University Jazz Band, and I was chosen over several other pianists, and I really kind of got serious about it then.

And one year I said, well, I'm just going to take a year off from college and dedicate myself learning what I want to learn on piano.

And that's when jazz really came in.

John Coltrane, Miles Davis, people like that really caught my ear, and that was something I wanted to replicate.

I began practicing that.

And a few years later, my girlfriend and I, we decided we want to make moves in New York.

I started practicing with Pharoah Sanders.

He's another pretty renowned musician, and eventually I got the gig with him.

And from there on, the rest is kind of history.

I work with Yusef Lateef and Betty Carter and people like that.

I've traveled.

I've been to Europe over a dozen times in Africa.

All the provinces in Canada, and most of the states in the United States.

Khalid has played at Carnegie Hall and at the Kennedy Center as part of the white House tribute to jazz legend Lionel Hampton.

I was working with Betty Carter and the artists were there were amazing.

Dave Brubeck was there with Charley Pride was there, Pearl Bailey was there.

And just to hang out with all these people was just great.

When I was working steadily with the other bands, I was on an airplane one time and I read this article about these two pianos, and they had developed a condition in their hand that made their fingers curl back.

And later I found out it was called focal dystonia.

But I said, well, that never happened to me.

And it started happening to me.

My fingers started curling back and I could only use these two fingers.

They still haven't really figured out what it is because there's no real treatment.

You have to kind of mentally conquer it, which is what I did.

But I came back today because I couldn't make a living as a musician anymore.

In New York, if you're making money, it's fabulous.

But if you're not making any money, it can be horrible.

So I came back to my roots where my mom and people were.

It was devastating.

I didn't really know what was happening because I was always a piano player who never missed a note, never had a flub or anything.

I started missing notes and I was wondering what was happening.

For six months, I didn't touch a piano.

I didn't want to look at a piano.

And then when I got back to Dayton, I didn't even know if I could play.

I didn't lose my passion.

I lost my technique.

It was very humbling.

Something happens to just about everybody that's devastating.

And and I had to learn to deal with it.

And I think I dealt with a pretty girl.

So I gradually figured out certain things that I could do and apply them to my technique.

And within a year, I was back.

All the way back my spiritual resurrection when I realized I could play again is something.

It's kind of profound.

I don't know why it happened or what happened, but it happened and I'm over it.

I've overcome it, I relearned everything.

I got a gig at the bears for next five years.

I was playing there five nights a week.

I joined the band Standard Time, which featured Mike Michael Wade on trumpet.

And, we had a ball, you know, we traveled and recorded and did a lot of things.

After that.

I was fortunate enough to be the singer Kathy Wade.

She's from Cincinnati.

I was her music director for ten years, so.

And we traveled Montreal.

We traveled to Louisiana.

We've traveled all over.

He has taught piano, was the jazz columnist for the Dayton Daily News, and is playing more.

It's my moment is and it's really is that allows me not to think about any problems.

I don't have any worries and not thinking about anything.

And sometimes I get so involved in it.

I actually sometimes forget I'm a piano player until I sit back down and then I hear this music coming out and I don't even know where it's coming from.

Here, the music coming out, and it gives me peace, and I want to just take it further and further.

You can never reach a peak, but you can always try for it.

Go west, young man, to San Antonio, Texas, where the Guadalupe Arts and Cultural Center has been creating programing that celebrates Mexico's independence for almost two decades.

The center offers a wide range of arts and educational activities that reflect, interpret, and build upon San Antonio's rich history.

Let's take a look.

At the weather to the Cultural Arts Center.

We have amazing programing all year round.

You know, we have our weather theater and that's where we present the major, musicians.

Plays performances.

But in addition to that, we have an academy where we teach everything from mariachi music to folklorico dance.

I'm so we have something for for everyone and for all ages.

My name is Belinda Bean Shaka.

And I am the director of education for the Weather Loop and Cultural Arts Center.

So I've actually been with the Guadalupe, the cultural arts center, for 24 years.

A year prior to my employment, I was on the advisory council for the Weather Loop Dance Company.

So we are passing a wonderful milestone, 25 years as a as a dance company.

Which to us is very, very symbolic.

To be able to stay together this long and to actually have one of our original dance company members is still part of the program.

She is now the dance program director.

My name is Jeanette Chavez, and I am the dance program director for the Weatherly Cultural Arts Center.

From a very early age, I have known and always have known that I wanted to become a dancer.

They knew very early on that once I was in rehearsal, once I was in, the dance studio, once I was in class or on stage.

There is no other place that I would rather be.

Something just magical seems to happen when the music is on and you and your performing energy completely changes.

And when our dance company gets together again, there's something magical that happens.

We almost seem to have like a telepathic communication that happens that everybody knows what we're supposed to accomplish in that in that time that we're there, and even on stage.

In.

The Luba Cultural Arts Center has a great significance in our life because they've provided us a very safe and creative environment for us as a dance company, for our creative work, for allowing us to bring some of the best instructors from Mexico, from Spain, because we also perform flamenco dance, Spanish dance.

It's our families that nourish us and motivate us and that inspire us.

The children and the families that that we teach, that are learning from us.

And we hope that we're providing great role models for for our students and their families.

We're connecting them to culture, and we're connecting them to music.

We're connecting them, through something that's culturally significant and very, very rich.

So that's that's for the benefit of our work, is that we get to share it with with others, with our students, but also with our audience members.

And we pass along all of our knowledge and information to our academy students.

To our academy is the foundation of our of our work.

It's the Academy, that actually provides our future.

They are our future dancers.

And so by sharing that information, we hope that that we're going to have another 25 years to celebrate, as as a dance company.

Back to the Bayou State.

Now for our Louisiana Treasures segment.

It comes to us from the Alexandria museum of Art, a facility that, in addition to its magnificent permanent collection, also brings national and international traveling exhibits to central Louisiana.

Catherine Piers is here to tell us more.

The Alexandria museum of Art is a fine art museum.

Our collection scope is modern and contemporary.

Louisiana, Southern and American artists in that order of importance.

In 1998, they did a capital campaign called the Jewel on the Red, and they raised the money to build this modern addition onto the historic bank building that had been the museum previously.

So now our building is a beautiful combination of a historic building and a modern, contemporary building, kind of like our collection that starts at early 20th century and comes right into contemporary artwork.

We've been celebrating the 40th anniversary this year, and one of the ways that we've been celebrating it is we're putting in our first permanent collection gallery that will be installed on the third floor.

Our museum has about 40 300ft█ of exhibition space, half in the third floor galleries and half on the first floor galleries.

When we started investigating the collection, the very first pieces that were assembled in the collection.

One was a piece by Rodrigue called steamboat.

Another was a piece by a local art educator.

So we knew that education was important to those people who founded this museum.

A few years back, our school system here, Bolton High School, discovered that they had these two paintings that had been hanging in the library forever.

And as it turned out, they were paintings by Ellsworth Woodward, one of the founders of Louisiana Art, who started the Newcomb School of Art at Tulane, in the early part of that century.

And so we hold those pieces and they're very precious to us.

Recently we purchased a work by Megalopolis.

He had donated a piece to us, but we recently purchased a work that's from his early works that signed by his name, Mitchell.

Now, he didn't start as a Mitchell.

They came as Megalopolis to America.

They Americanized their name to Mitchell, and after he became an artist, he went back to his original name.

Of course, we have works by Clementine Hunter.

Our museum is close to Melrose, and, we have several of her works in the collection as well as, some other self-taught artists.

We're way out in Reno, Nevada now, where Tia Flores intricately embellished God's Express, a creative interaction with Mother Nature and the rich artistic traditions of the Great Basin peoples.

Take a look.

My name is Tia Flores, and I do graphic, gourd sculptures or Calabasas sculptures.

Calabasas art is actually.

It's a fancy name for gourd.

I use gourds as my canvas, and from then I do wood burning on it, which is also known as biography.

Pornography is an ancient art form of drawing or writing with fire.

And there are different types of hot tools that you can use to burn on a particular surface.

And because the hard shell gourd is very much like, the surface of a wood, it takes really, really well to wood burning or the biography.

The gourd is one of those natural organic units that's been found on nearly every continent around the world.

It's been used by every culture in the world.

In fact, it predates pottery.

In some countries, it was used for ceremonial purposes.

That's what the Native Americans used for.

I started working with gourds in the in the 90s, the late 90s.

I was going through sort of a transition in my life, a career transition, trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life.

And, and I also wanted to get in touch with my heritage.

The pieces that I create and design, their reflection of my family history.

I'm a fourth generation Nevadan.

And so from my mom's side of the family, they were settlers that came across very stoic, hard Nevadans, you know, worked in the mines and stuff.

And then on my dad's side of the family, that's the Aztec and Navajo and, my grandma was a healer.

So a lot of my work reflects either side of the family there.

Either it's, like, you know, Navajo, teachings on that or Aztec symbolism or something that's reflective of the Nevada desert, or the Great Basin.

Growing up in Nevada, I've always been drawn to the creatures and the animals and the habitat.

And I love the symbolism and, the vast beauty of the desert.

And I try to reflect that in a lot of my pieces.

I've always been fascinated with snakes and the the pattern and the texture and just the beauty of that snake, the Navajo, the butterfly represents transformation that we're always growing and evolving into something, you know, more beautiful.

If you take a look at the tortoise, the tortoise shell represents the birth of earth and it represents Mother nature.

So you're putting beautiful images on there, but at the same time, you're able to tell a story and and the meaning behind it.

I like to surround myself with the gods in my studio.

Let's say I find the perfect.

Or sometimes I'll look at it and I'll see something come out of it.

There's an image that needs to be put on it.

Then I clean it and it's got a nice, smooth, smooth surface that's really conducive to the wood burning.

And I sketch out my designs on it, and then once I sketch it, then I start to burn it and just lightly burning it, just to give it a light touch and to see how it goes.

When I'm making my art, there's nothing that separates me from the gore.

Because I'm.

I have to hold it.

I have to cradle it the whole time I'm working on it.

There's just this nice connection.

You almost go into a different state as you're burning it.

The smell almost reminds you of sitting around a campfire.

It's very meditative and very relaxing.

Your mind can go off in the different corners, especially when you're sitting around your room embracing.

The Gordon was just that, that earthy connection that I just love to work with.

And that is that for this edition of Art rocks.

But remember, you can always watch episodes of the show at lpb.org/uh, rocks.

And if you want more, Country Roads magazine makes a great resource for enriching your cultural life with art, cuisine, escapes, and events all across the state.

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