- In this edition of Artistic Horizons, the Art of Throwing Clay, - I would say the most important tool that you need to create pottery are your hands, - Intricate Judaica.

- My work is so rewarding to me because I'm able to bring meaning and bring awareness to a larger audience.

- Site specific works that are one of a kind.

Our work is made fully in your living room and your bedroom, in your hallway in the foyer, or a lobby of a hotel.

It's meant to be shared.

It's all ahead - On this edition of Artistic Horizons.

Hello, I'm Mark Ro, and this is Artistic Horizons retired art teacher.

Roxanne Loey loves to throw clay so much that she has been making pottery since 1979.

In this segment, we take a trip to her studio in Canton, New York to learn more about her artistic journey and the colorful, whimsical pieces she creates.

- I hid it, which helps to align the clay particles.

- Roxanne Loey, a retired art teacher from Belleville, Henderson Central Schools loves throwing things.

It happens in clay form, of course, and she's been throwing clay on a pottery wheel for nearly five decades.

Her interest started at home when she was a child.

- Pottery is a form of art where you use clay to make functional or non-functional works of art.

And I became interested in pottery through a lot of different sources.

One being my mom.

She took an adult ed class in ceramics and she brought the clay home and we got to play with it, and I just loved it.

And then when I went to college, I took ceramics at SUNY Potsdam and I just really, really fell in love with learning a new skill, how to throw, how to manipulate the clay.

And it just was a wonderful, happy place for me to work.

- The art form became so intriguing.

She made the decision to study it in college and with such deep cultural significance, it made, creating these works even more intriguing.

And pottery - Throughout the years has really changed how we live our lives because pottery back then was mainly function.

People used it to store their food, to carry water, to eat out of, and then throughout the years, all the different cultures around the world develop their own personal style and they just, it just kept building and building until it's like what we see today.

Every artist brings something new to their, to their work, and it just expands that way - For anyone looking to get into the craft.

Roxanne shares some tools that are quite useful, and the most important one is right at your fingertips.

- I would say the most important tool that you need to create pottery are your hands.

Those are the most important things.

You need your hands.

You can hand build anything you want out of clay.

You don't need a wheel.

There's tools that artists use now they have, it's called a needle tool.

It's got a very sharp point on it.

There's something called a fiddling knife.

It's, it cuts through clay, but it doesn't cut your hands.

And then we use a little round sponge and a wooden rib calipers, which measures the diameter of a piece.

Water buckets, paint brushes for afterwards.

And so those are the basic tools that you need to create pottery.

I get my inspiration from a lot of places, but nature being the biggest, because I grew up on a farm and I was exposed to animals, plants, gardens, flowers.

My parents would always take us to the Adirondacks.

So the Adirondacks is a big inspiration for me too.

And when you grow up in a rural area, there's not a lot of places that a big farm family can go that's, that doesn't cost a lot of money.

So our parents always took us to the mountains and it was a special treat.

So those experiences end up in my work.

- Like most artists, Roxanne likes to take risks moving out of her comfort zone to create very unique pieces.

- I had an art instructor who wanted me to get outta my comfort zone, and that's a good thing.

You don't always wanna make the same thing over and over and over.

So he had me create these huge big jars that were like three feet tall and I struggled.

I just didn't like hand building.

Hated it.

I love it now.

And they, I was using a different clay body, an earthenware clay body, which is a low fire clay body.

And I just really didn't like what I was making.

And after I had the three forms made, I hated them so much.

I smashed 'em all before they got fired.

And then I walked on the shards, and after that it got me to use earth and wear clay and got me into creating my own voice and what I wanted to paint on my pottery.

I hope that my audience will take away when they look at my work or buy my work, that they will enjoy it, that it brings them some kind of joy or a memory from their own childhood that they, if they come in and they see a piece in the, and it reminds them of, of their mother or reminds them of a place that they went, you know, especially when I do Adirondack themed pieces on my work, you know?

So I want that.

I want those feelings to be brought out and shared with my audience.

- After years of creating her work is recognized in art galleries and within the community.

That's a win for any artist.

And Roxanne is here for it.

Pottery - Has helped me be a more confident woman and a artist because it is hard, I think, for a lot of women to have a business and to make a name for themselves in the community.

I know I've always been passionate.

I've been a hard worker.

I spend hours and hours in my studio and I know it's paid off because I have people who come to the studio collecting my work.

And I have a gallery that always said, Roxanne, we need to come get some pieces.

And so I know my work is going to a lot of places.

I know some of my ex students that I taught that live in Utah have bought my work through Tawny.

And I just like so amazed that these students that I taught are collecting my work.

So I think it brings a lot to the community and to me as an artist.

- And now for the artist quote of the week, Nancy Schwartz Katz specializes in Judaic art for over 30 years.

She has been creating works that bring together history, tradition, ancient Jewish texts and people's stories.

We travel to Ohio to find out more.

- I grew up in University Heights, Ohio, and I'm one of five girls.

And I think I always drew, I liked functional art and Jewish art, like what I do now is a functional art.

I wanted to really explore being able to draw.

So I transferred to Parsons, which had the best drawing program.

My dad convinced me to take a year out of New York.

So I moved to Cleveland.

I received three phone calls in one week, three completely different people had phoned me who had seen my sisters, my cousins, and my girlfriends Coutu boat, which are Jewish marriage contracts that I had created in my early twenties as gifts.

And I thought three people one week who did not know each other, there's a job here.

So I got a $500 loan, which was a lot of money back then to pay for advertising.

And I started my business creating Jewish art.

What I think draws my katu boat apart from other people's ketubah, is that I really work with the couple to create something that's uniquely all about them.

So I'm illustrating the story of their life.

It's that moment right now where they are when they're getting married.

When I meet with them, I take the information of what their interests are, what symbolism do they want, a paper cut?

Do they wanna painting?

What shape, what size do they wanna square?

Do they want a rectangle?

And then I stop them and I say, okay, so tell me what you'd wanna incorporate in your katuba.

So we have an idea of the design.

So let's figure out what we're gonna tell in your story.

Paper cutting's, very interesting.

It's like drawing paper.

Cutting has been going around for centuries, you know, invented by the Chinese.

And I have my papers made for me.

So I'm able to cut on one side where it's a little smoother and the other side is more porous, so it has more texture to it.

I do a drawing and then I interpret the drawing for a paper cut.

So the lines are continuous and then thicker and thinner depending on how it's gonna be cut.

And I coordinate the imagery from one thing to the next, which is actually similar to my wash. Gache is an interesting material to use.

It's a crossover between an acrylic and a watercolor.

So you can get a little thicker and you can really kind of move the paint in a way you can't with watercolor, and you can layer it.

I love that layering effect.

Over the years I've been creating social commentaries.

And so every year I try and create something about what's going on in today's world.

Fairmont temple had caught fire.

So Fairmont Temple knows who I am, and they asked me if I could brainstorm with them for something further windows.

And I said, well, why don't we take this imagery?

I can make this painting and we could put it on the windows.

And simultaneously, while that is being put up, I won this amazing award a day and a half after I received this amazing honor.

The war in Israel breaks out the brutal murdering of people and the kidnapping of all the hostages.

And I felt such an obligation in my heart to do something to make a difference.

So my friend texted me saying, Hey, the Jewish Federation wants me to work on this, but I told them I'd only wanna work on it with you because you're the idea, girl.

I said, great.

So I thought of the ribbon would be an easy way to do this.

And on the ribbon should have all the faces of the hostages and it, so it needs to be a really big ribbon.

And then bring them home now, which is the, the statement of that is being used over and over again because they need to be brought home.

I mean, they're being abused, they're, it's just such a horrific thing going on that I needed to bring that awareness.

So I wanted the face of the individuals to really be in a person's face.

I made the children's faces larger.

And next to the children's you'll see a lot of the elderly.

And so because these people, these, these are like our family members.

Well, to start talking about the letter project, I have to talk about my mobile.

I was asked to be a mentor to the Jewish Arts and Cultural Lab.

So they were discussing creation and the meaning of the Hebrew alphabet, which is the safe area, Sarah, the pairing of the letters.

And so I envisioned this whole mobile of the letters coming off and being out of like glass or plastic or something and having it then be on a mobile.

And it turns.

So a few years later, I'm sitting in my family room where we have a ton of books and I'm looking around and I'm like, oh, what am I gonna do?

So I'm like, you know what?

I'm gonna illustrate Lawrence Kushner's book of letters.

So much comes from the Hebrew alphabet.

The Hebrew alphabet builds, the letters build on one another.

So each letter is about living life and about building your life and what do you want in your life?

And it's okay to make mistakes and move back and try and fix it as anybody.

So they're really for everybody.

You don't say anything when you say olive, that's the first letter of the alphabet.

So I illustrated it as like messy around it with all the letters behind it.

And then olive stands out and, and be is but but beginning, that's the second letter.

So you're beginning to go somewhere and then Gimel is going, it's like the waves, the water carrying you to ded, which is the next letter, which is the door ded or, and you're peeking from which door in life do you wanna go through to make a difference?

And then, hey is the fifth letter.

And that, what's interesting about hay is that it starts, it, it talks about the different kinds of people in the world.

- Nancy's a born storyteller.

She loves going back into history and especially Jewish culture and especially writings from the Torah.

The letters have intrigued her always.

And when each of the letters tell a different story, - I became fascinated and I fell down this rabbit hole.

I created the series more as like for the layman, for everybody to understand.

And then through teaching, I'm able to help people grow and learn.

I had such great mentors, and so if I can inspire and help people grow and learn and something, then how great is that?

- So Nancy is really a born educator.

She connects with people on so many levels.

So she, in terms of her own paper cutting and her craft, she creates beautiful pieces that are made out of such intricate papers.

Many of them, she selects from all over the world and she likes to share that the, the joy of paper cutting with the community.

This is a time where we really need to be speaking together and understanding each other's cultures, understanding each other's histories, and realizing that we need to talk and have a discussion.

And I think Nancy's pieces really beckon that - My work is so rewarding to me because I'm able to bring meaning and bring awareness to a larger audience.

It's so important on so many levels to bring awareness of different diverse groups and, and what they're all about.

If you bring awareness, you're bringing respect and acceptance is important when you have such a melting pot of people as we do in America, and maybe we could all live together in peace and be supportive of one another and respectful of where we come from.

- Now here's a look at this month's fun fact across 12 iconic Miami Beach hotels in Florida, artists have been given the opportunity to create temporary site-specific works for the public to experience.

Up next, we hear from some of the artists who participated.

- As you can imagine, these are different spaces that you wouldn't normally walk in and see contemporary arts.

- Sure.

Any passerby here that come across this piece, they're gonna look up and be like, whoa, what is this?

- This is like, I think it's the role of an artist to show the work or is narrative everywhere you can, - A project like this, it gives me a reason to walk into 12 different hotels to see what it's like in their lobby.

So no vacancy is that doing a, an extra bonus for, for even for someone who lives here.

- No.

Vacancy is a program from the city of Miami Beach that fits culture and tourism.

Together we commissioned 12 artists to create new works at 12 hotel properties throughout the city.

The no vacancy program is open to Miami and Miami Dade County artists.

We really want to be able to have the opportunity for the artists to show their work during the most iconic time of the year.

For us, obviously we have our Basel Miami Beach.

The artists are not aware of the spaces that they will be paired with, and that's the job of our curatorial team matching these specific works of art and these specific sites.

My name is Allison Matherly.

- I'm Jeffrey Noble, and we are nice.

We're nice and easy.

So this work above us here titled Soft Squeeze is comprised of collection of custom made inflatables.

They take the form of pool floats, flamingos, gators, turtles, a lot of the sort of cliche wildlife that you find here in South Florida.

We're interested in human production and how we're always imprinting it with nature.

- What is interesting that you would kind of have to apply without knowing where you're going.

We did have that in the application, wanting it to be outdoors instead of indoors.

- We thought this was a unique location where we could utilize this alleyway, have the work suspended overhead kind of wedged in here, almost as a metaphor for how development civilization sort of, you know, encroaches upon nature and sort of, you know, squeezes it.

Yeah.

- The moment I knew that I'll be here at Surf Comer, I knew I had a chance to make it work.

That falls within what I tend to think about when I think about South Florida.

The work I'm displaying is titled Object Landscapes and Things is this sort of gathering of textures, objects, and even views of landscape that I've made into three works, a photograph, a sculpture, and a painting.

This painting is made of multiple images that begins with a view of a citrus plant.

There's a Mockingbird, there's a view of pine rock, forest, a street, and it sort of ends with an orchid in the bottom.

This is the painting of which I speak of how do we organize landscape, how do we organize place?

And paintings tend to be one of these places where we organize according to value.

This sculpture has to do more with the textures of actual landscape.

It repeats the sort of plants that are outside.

So we have some orchids here.

We have a piece of wood that is mangrove, and then the fabric, which is the more dominant part is folded on itself.

And the last piece is a photograph of a steel life made of various flowers arranged for the camera.

I think this work is as much as for someone who lived here.

As for someone who's visiting, I think there's something for both.

- This year I was fortunate enough to do a project within the Casa Faina.

This work is a representation of whimsical portrayals of Floridian wildlife that are suspended in this room.

They are made of mirrored rose gold plexi, which are adequately suspended within the space.

The feeling when you walked into Casa Faina, you feel this kind of old Florida style and you can see kind of in the details of the architecture and to bring something that felt contemporary in the space felt like a good juxtaposition.

The delicate nature of the materials kind of suspended, felt similar to the kind of the delicate nature that we exist in and our relationship to it.

I also feel like within that, the reflection of the mirror kind of asks us what our responsibility to that environment is as well.

- The title of this piece that I created specifically for the Cardiac Hotel is titled Rapsody for a Beloved World.

So I think everything is in the title.

I am talking about love.

I am talking about sharing ideas, sharing concept to create a better world.

The piece is on backlight because I wanted to highlight the good part of the world.

As you can see, a little white girl and a little black boy, they are playing together.

What I love in this connection between both of them, it's no care about people, no care about the world.

We are there, but we are enjoying the world.

And I think that that it's what we should do every day.

- This is literally the first time I've shown anything in Miami.

I've been showing internationally for four or five years, but this is my hometown debut.

I began to draw these marks and this mark that's in the drawings is this thing we call the ray in the studio.

It's just a weird squiggly ray that I literally have been drawing now for 35 years.

We call these do decagon drawings, and they're multicolored and they're always different and they're always freehand, and so they look almost alike, but not quite.

A lot of my practice is about memory, collective memory that we all share.

And so the Do Decagon represents the hours on a clock, the months in a year, the Zodiac, in essence, the passage of time.

I've taken the ray that I've been drawing forever, making the ray 12 times in a 12 sided figure, and that integrates the Ray drawings into the practice in which I'm always trying to think about and talk about the passage of time.

When I ask somebody what their most vivid collective memory is, they immediately go to it and it takes them to a place they haven't been in a very long time.

If I can do that with a piece of art, I'm pretty happy.

No vacancy is an incredible example of how my city, the city of Miami Beach, has stepped up and begun to lead when it comes to culture in our South Florida community.

- The great thing about it is that it runs much longer than art week, and it gives the opportunity for our residents and our visitors to kind of make a day out of it.

Like a scavenger hunt.

We have maps available, you can grab a bike and spend the day with your friends visiting each of the 12 locations.

- Miami came to existence with South Beach and then art Deco.

And I feel like just to kind of be a part of that lineage of kind of the art in the city is, is important to me, but also like I think it's important to bring it outside of the galleries to the public so they can see it as well.

- Artwork is made to be lived with.

Artwork is not necessarily made to exist in a museum.

Artwork is made to be in your living room, in your bedroom, in your hallway, in the foyer, or a lobby of a hotel.

It's meant to be shared.

- And now here's a look at a few notable dates in art history, and that wraps it up for this edition of Artistic Horizons.

For more arts and culture, visit wpbstv.org.

Until next time, I'm Mark Ro.

Thanks for watching.