- [Announcer] This is a production of WEDU PBS, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota.

- [Dalia] Funding for "WEDU Arts Plus" is provided by the Community Foundation Tampa Bay.

In this addition of "WEDU Arts Plus," on location at the Sarasota Art Museum, a local jazz legend.

- [Kitty] I prefer performing in front of live audiences.

I like to see the reaction of the people when I play.

- [Dalia] An artist through the years.

- [Yvette] In retiring, I always said I want to go back to being an artist.

I started with acrylics, and I like doing acrylics.

And I started doing collages.

- [Dalia] The wonders of sculpting ice.

- [Charles] In this industry, water, the most basic ingredient, we take water and bring it to its highest art form.

- [Dalia] And portraiture through the camera lens.

- [Caleb] I like photographs the most when a person kind of forgets everything around them, and it's just about them.

You know what I mean?

So I want to tell your story in that photograph - It's all coming up next on "WEDU Arts Plus."

(upbeat music) Hello, I'm Dalia Colon, and this is "WEDU Arts Plus."

87-year-old award-winning jazz pianist and singer, Kitty Daniels, helped shape jazz during the heyday of Harlem on Central Avenue.

She continues to write music and perform with drummer partner, Majid Shabazz.

See how she's inspiring other musicians in Tampa Bay.

(jazz music) ♪ I see you in all my dreams ♪ ♪ And so I'm happy when the day is through ♪ - [Kitty] I was told that I was eight months old when I started playing piano.

I started taking piano lessons when I was six, but I was playing the piano before then.

♪ I know I'll see you a little later on ♪ Mom used to talk a lot about the fact that I could play the piano.

She was very proud of her little girl.

♪ Felt like I'd bet the bank ♪ So one lady from our church who played piano came to our house one day, and she put one of the songs in front of me out of one of the hymnals, and she told me to play it.

So I played it just like they play it in church, but I played it in a different key, and that's when they found out that I was playing by ear.

I was playing it like I heard it.

I learned to read music when I went to high school instead of just playing it by ear.

(piano playing) I started writing music maybe a year ago.

I will play something when I write music, and I'll write that down.

And when I write it down, I try to think of a melody, and I start humming.

(Kitty humming and playing piano) (Kitty singing) That's usually how I start writing music.

(Kitty singing) - [John] She's a fixture of jazz and blues here in the Tampa Bay area, and we're super excited to have the opportunity to present her here.

(audience applauding) - Thank you.

Thank you so much.

This first little song is called "In Shore, Off, Shore," and it was written by the drummer that usually plays with me.

His name is Majid.

(Kitty playing piano) I prefer performing in front of live audiences.

I like to see the reaction of the people when I play.

♪ In shore, off shore ♪ - Kitty is just extraordinary with her own approach to the piano and a beautiful vocal style.

Some hear Billie Holiday.

Everything she does is really, really her own approach.

She's largely self-taught at the piano and just a remarkable person to have in our lives in Tampa.

Kitty Daniels started by working as a bartender at the Cotton Club on Tampa's fabled Central Avenue in the 1960s.

It was owned by Henry Joiner.

Kitty would play the piano when the band took a break.

Singer, Jackie Wilson, wanted her to go on the road.

She had a number of other offers too, but Kitty's husband at the time didn't want her to travel.

- I was invited to go on the road with several people, but I didn't like to fly.

I wanted to stay with the children, and my boss didn't want me to leave the place where I was playing.

- [Bob] In the late sixties.

B.B.

King was in Club Rowls when Kitty was playing "The Nearness of You," which she'd changed the chords.

- [Kitty] So he sent his arranger out to my house, and I wrote it out for him.

One night, Etta James' piano player got sick, and they called up and said they needed a piano player so I went over and played with her.

I played in her book, and she liked my arrangements better than she liked the arrangements in her book.

Dizzy Gillespie played at Ruth Eckerd Hall.

He wanted me to play the pre-show before.

And so I played the pre-show for about an hour.

- [Bob] Kitty challenged discrimination practices that were prevalent in the musicians union.

- We'd get little jobs, you know, little private things, but we couldn't get into the clubs that paid the most money, and they wanted to hire us, but they were afraid to hire us because we weren't in the musicians union.

I'm playing at a place on Dale Mabry in Tampa called Donatello.

I've been playing there for 22 years.

- At Donatello, we have a deep tradition in hospitality, and our hospitality is a big part of our approach towards a customer, making people feel at home in our restaurant.

And Miss Kitty has an amazing approach to her customers, to her clients, to the people that she knows.

Her approach to what she does is the same as what we try to do here at Donatello.

(jazz music playing) - [Bob] Kitty's nurtured other singers, including Pete Caldera, the New York area sports writer who started singing with Kitty at Donatello just for fun and is now heard regularly in New York City nightclubs.

♪ But each day when she walks to the sea ♪ - [Kitty] And he sounded just like Frank Sinatra, and I started calling him Pete Sinatra.

(Kitty laughing) (jazz music playing) I hope I helped others when I spoke at places like Coleman Middle School and HCC College.

(Nicole singing) And some of the kids to the restaurants that I've worked in and said that they were inspired, and they liked my playing.

All that kind stuff makes you feel good, you know, when the kids like what you do.

♪ While I'm alone and blue as can be ♪ ♪ Dream a little dream of me ♪ (Kitty and crowd applauding) (soft music) - [Dalia] To hear more, visit kittydaniels.com.

From a very young age, Yvette Walker Dalton from Dayton, Ohio has been an artist.

Up next, learn about her long and significant career and how her art continues to thrive in her retirement.

(upbeat music) - [Yvette] In retiring, I always said, I want to go back to being an artist.

I started with acrylics, and I like doing acrylics.

And I start doing collages.

I have a piece that I'm working on right now.

I can't decide whether I'm going to do it in acrylics, or if I'm going to do a collage, but that's where I am right now.

I am Yvette Walker Dalton.

I'm a Daytonian, and I'm also an artist.

I have always been an artist.

Even when I was a little child, I was an artist.

My parents didn't know that, not until I was six years old, and I had to have a visiting nurse.

Her name was Maddie Lao.

She was the first African American visiting nurse here in Dayton, Ohio.

And she told my mother and father that I think this child has some art skills.

And so ever since then, mother, dad made sure I had paper, pencils, crayons.

I started out being a art teacher.

I turned out to be a graphic designer.

When my youngest daughter was born as a preemie, she weighed two pounds, 12 ounces.

That meant that when she came home at five pounds, somebody had to be there to take care of her, and I could not go back teaching.

So I started designing cards for friends.

There weren't any Black greeting cards that we could go into stores and buy.

So I started designing cards, and that just took off.

It absolutely took off.

We started with Christmas cards, and then we got into the long cards, the funny cards.

We used like slogans from Flip Wilson, things that were sort of out there in the sixties and in the early seventies.

Then we started designing Black greeting cards for Gibson Greeting Cards.

We used all the people that we knew.

Took pictures of our family, our friends.

Those went over very well.

Then pretty soon a recession came along, and some of our distributors went bankrupt, and we had to go bankrupt.

So that ended the card business.

We also did work for Proctor and Gamble, things like salesman ads, tear packets, shelf signs.

In '76, my husband and I got a divorce.

I moved to Lancaster, Ohio, and I was able to work for Anchor Hocking Incorporation and designing glassware for them.

One Christmas, Christmas, 1979, the director came in and says, Okay, who in this art department's not doing anything for Christmas?"

And I raised my hand.

I said, "what is it that you want me to do?"

And he said, "Well, 'Star Wars' wants you basically to to do a line of glassware for them.

And so can you go home and make up some type of sketches for at least four glasses?"

And so they gave me photographs of what they wanted on these particular glasses.

They also had me sign a paper saying that I would not, not, not tell about the Yoda at that particular time that was coming up for "The Empire Strikes Back."

And so I went home, and that's what I did, and I just loved making those glasses.

That was really a fun job.

In the meantime, I had been going back and forth from Cincinnati to Lancaster, Ohio, because my church was in Cincinnati.

The pastor there had been talking to me, "How about going into the ministry, Yvette?"

And I thought he was absolutely crazy 'cause I had never seen a woman pastor in my entire life.

And I said, "Well, if I'm going into the ministry.

I'm not becoming a minister.

I'm going to combine my art experience with a theological education."

That was my whole reason for going into seminary.

My first church was in Louisville, Shawnee Presbyterian Church.

They called me to be pastor.

It was a great experience, being a pastor.

I enjoyed working with the people.

I enjoyed seeing people grow.

I enjoyed working with the children.

They became my family, and hopefully I became one of theirs as well.

I'm very excited about exhibiting at Grace Methodist Church here in Dayton.

These pieces are all pieces I have worked on since retirement.

What's next for me?

I'm not quite sure.

I'm just living in the moment right now.

Someone said, "Oh, you're just like Grandma Moses."

Well, I know that I'm close to her age.

I'm 75, and she basically started at 76, and she, oh, she painted up until she died, 101.

So I don't wanna think ahead too far.

I still wanna deal with where I am right now.

It's just absolutely great to think about my next project, and I don't wanna get too far ahead of that - [Dalia] To learn more about Dayton, Ohio artists, visit essentialartistsdayton.org.

Ice can come in many different shapes and sizes.

Just ask Charles Jones, the owner of The Ice Man.

Based in Hudson Falls, New York, Jones and his team of artists create memorable ice sculptures.

(soft music) - [Charles] My name is Charles Jones.

I am the owner of The Ice Man.

It is an art studio, and we create ice displays for major hotels and restaurants in the upstate area of New York.

I am a chef by trade.

I am a certified executive chef.

I've been teaching culinary arts for 27 years.

I've just recently retired to just focus on teaching of ice sculpting and working with the artists that I have employed with me.

In this industry, water, the most basic ingredient, we take water and bring it to its highest art form, a sculpture.

And that is truly a passion that every one of the people that work with me, these artists work with me, they understand that.

(upbeat music) It starts out with a vision.

Our clients have a vision of what they'd like to see.

They work hand in hand with our graphic designer, and we work with a graphic designer whose name is my wife.

We would be nothing without Amy.

So she works with the clients and really gets an idea for a design.

They put that on a two dimensional; it's a piece of paper.

And from that point on, we work with computers to understand how we're going to create the sculpture, sizes, dimensions.

Now that we're ready to make the sculpture, we start with making of the blocks.

You got it?

We make the blocks of ice.

They're 300 pounds.

They're 20 inches wide, 10 inches deep, and 40 inches long.

They are going to be completely clear, and it's in the way that we make 'em, the technology that we use.

- [Patrick] These pumps keep the water circulating, and it keeps the water circulating to keep the ice very clear as it freezes from the bottom up.

We don't want it to freeze at the top until the very last minute of the harvesting.

When we take our little stick here, and you put it in, you can see that it's at 11.

11 inches of very clean, clear ice.

- From that point, we bring them into our studio, and we decide what we're going to do with them, what particular use they're going to have.

We then slice the ices the appropriate thicknesses depending on what we're going to do because our sculptures are not just confined to that 20 by 40 by 10 piece.

They may have a wing sticking out.

They may be taller.

They may be wider.

And we want to be able to make sure that we can configure these pieces together.

So at that point, they're sliced, and we have a special machine that we use.

It was created by a local a CNC machinist, and it gives us the opportunity to slice our ice within a quarter inch tolerance.

(upbeat music) - [Man] And then what this machine gives us is a perfectly sliced two and a half inch all the way down.

- [Charles] From that point, we bring the slice of ice into one our freezers and our computers.

And we will tell the computer to help us with a CNC machine to cut the ice into certain shapes or sizes.

It does a lot of our work that we would've taken hours to do by standing over the piece of ice and engraving it, and I did it for you years and years and years.

Now I can ask Timmy, the computer, to do that work while I'm creating other things or designing other things we do.

So from that point, it goes into our studio where one of our technicians and artists will work with a piece of ice.

Possibly we'll be at adding color to it by adding sand, possibly adding snow to engrave into it, to pack into it, possibly drilling it, working on final details, getting it texture.

So when we take the ice and begin to melt it, it becomes shiny, and it's melted.

Now, when I take this piece, and I do the same thing, and then I put these two together, they actually form one piece of ice.

You can't pull this apart.

It's now together, and it's our gears.

Pretty cool, huh?

And that's the idea of fusing and how we fuse ice together.

I've been doing it for 25 years, and I tell people a lot the ice hasn't gotten any lighter.

I'll probably stay around for quite a while.

and watch from the background, the continuation of The Ice Man.

It's going to be brought to the next level.

I am quite confident of that.

- [Dalia] For more information, visit facebook.com/theicemancustomicesculptures.

In Colorado, Caleb Alvarado wishes to create connections through portrait photography.

With his camera, he interacts with individuals and tells their story.

(soft music) - [Sebastian] Through technology, we are more connected globally than we have ever been, sometimes at the expense of people right next to us.

However, it seems artistic expression, music, paintings, sculptures are appreciated by people across the world and become a means for commonality.

(camera shutter clicking) One man chose is to tell stories of connection and create human interaction.

His name is Caleb Alvarado.

A first generation Mexican American who grew up with Spanish as his only language shares with us how photography became his interpreter.

- [Caleb] My dad used to always take photographs of us, and we grew up in a pretty poor family, so we'd get a lot of stuff at garage sales.

Most people get rid of film cameras 'cause they don't want them, right.

My dad bought me one one day, and he was like, figure it out.

I couldn't afford the film, so a lot of times I would just look through the viewfinder as a kid and just like, you know, act like I'm taking photos, but I would like, in my head, I like, oh, I took that photo.

I took that photo.

So I started to learn to see things - [Sebastian] After moving to Denver from Phoenix, Arizona, Caleb was immediately drawn to the diverse patrons of Wittier Cafe, a community driven African espresso bar nestled in a historically diverse part of our city.

- Of all the places I'd been in Denver, it is a true place of social exchange.

And when you walk in there, you see all walks of life, right.

And I would just go in there, I'd be fascinating with just the people that would go in there.

So that's when I approached Millete, and I asked her, I was like, hey, would you let me do a portrait series outside of you're building?

Outside the little patio and by the mural that's there, set up like two lights, brought a camera, and then just people walking down the sidewalk, people inside of the coffee shop.

(camera shutter clicking) I would say like, hey, I've seen you come here before.

I would love to shoot a portrait of you.

- [Millete] Caleb is really special because he's doing something that is lacking in our culture right now I feel like.

You know, we have Facebook and all these different forms of social media that make you feel like you know people, but you really know no one.

You know, there's a lack of interaction.

There's a lack of depth to the relationships.

So what Caleb did was, you know, take these portraits of folks where you can't help but look in their eyes and wonder what's his story or what's her story, and it sparked people to have conversations about their neighbors or the regulars who see each other all the time and maybe don't have conversations.

So we need the connection.

I think people are yearning for connection.

So it was a very deep, deep show.

- As a society, what we can do to better our interactions is honestly just listen to each other, like be vulnerable to other people, be self-aware of other people, be mindful of the people.

- You know, photography is powerful like that.

And especially when you're someone like Caleb who can draw out that story in an image, I don't think that's an easy thing to do, and it's causing us to really dig deep.

- [Sebastian] His favorite camera to use for his portraits is the 1922 Korona Gundlach, a four by five wooden camera.

It allows him the ability to slow down his process and truly focus on the story being told through the lens.

- I like photographs the most when a person kind of forgets everything around them, and it's just about them.

You know what I mean?

So I want to tell your story in that photograph.

- [Sebastian] Caleb's portraits force you to look deep into the eyes of his subjects and listen to the story within the photographs themselves.

- [Charles] When I've been open to learning from other people, that has helped me grow exponentially.

- [Sebastian] For Caleb Alvarado, photography was his medium for cultural connection, but if you ask him, Caleb will tell you it's more than just taking pictures.

- Photography can be used as a way to communicate and connect with others.

I personally don't consider myself to be a photographer.

I see my camera as just a tool to tell stories.

So I consider myself a lot more of a storyteller rather than a photographer.

- [Sebastian] We all have a story to tell, and if we're able to listen to each other, learn from one another, and love our neighbors, those lines of separation begin to go out of focus.

For Arts District, I'm Sebastian Powell.

- [Dalia] Check out more of Alvarado's work at calebalvarado.com.

And that wraps it up for this edition of "WEDU Arts Plus."

For more arts and culture, visit wedu.org/artsplus.

Until next time, I'm Dalia Colon.

Thanks for watching.

(dramatic music) Funding for "WEDU Arts Plus" is provided by the Community Foundation Tampa Bay.

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