[Narrator] "Art Loft" is brought to you by... [Narrator] Where there is freedom, there is expression.

The Florida Keys and Key West.

[Narrator] The Miami-Dade County Tourist Development Council, the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, and the Cultural Affairs Council.

The Miami-Dade County Mayor, and the Board of County Commissioners, and the Friends of South Florida PBS.

[Narrator] "Art Loft".

It's the pulse of what's happening in our own backyard, as well as a taste of the arts across the United States.

In this episode, artists in paradise, we head to the Keys to meet a singer songwriter, turning sunsets into bar tunes, a photographer creating haunting images, and a Key West legend still going strong.

Sculptor John Martini.

If she's not in her studio, Natalie Placencia can be found wind foiling.

She says the physicality of the sport gives her the same rush she gets manipulating raw materials into large scale works.

The inspiration can be overwhelming sometimes.

I don't know if that makes any sense.

Sometimes I could be so overwhelmed by a desire to create something that it's like I need to take a break.

I need it to settle in.

I go for a session of wing foiling, I come back home and I can think clearer.

It almost cleanses me.

You know, any bad negative feeling, the wing foiling just breaks it apart.

My name is Natalie Placencia and I'm a sculptor.

It happens to me every time, whether it's a drawing, whether it's clay, whether it's bronze, it's like I'm faced with a soul and I have to acknowledge the fact that I'm attempting to do this.

It really truly is, I feel like, an interaction between the medium and myself.

And it blows my mind every time.

Every time I see that moment when the spirit is in that person, it's almost like I've been waiting for you and you've been been waiting for me .

The most basic human desire, I think, is to make a connection.

We're social beings so it happens.

I just have to be patient.

Sometimes it doesn't happen for months.

Fully dedicating all my efforts and my mind to my art, I really started taking myself seriously in 2013, which is when I left social work and I started going into my art.

I always try to lasso my ideas and concepts back to the idea of what is the viewer getting from this?

And so my figures will have some anguish, some sadness but the idea is the hope that you need to have to be able to get you through that hardship.

Whether it's human rights, whether it's domestic violence, whether it's immigration, we're all in that journey.

Right now, I'm currently working on a piece that has a female figure and a boat and a sail.

So it's very exciting.

It also is sight-specific.

She's gonna be very powerful.

I still can't get to where I want her hands, so the hands are gonna have a lot to say.

My deepest desire is to treat others with dignity.

And so I try to go that same route with my art pieces, whereas I want the viewer to feel compelled to sit with it, even if it's a difficult subject matter, but also I want the child to be able to relate to the dog like tobacco in tender way.

Every piece gets me so excited.

I think I'm like a little kid all over again 'cause it's like all these wonderful things are gonna happen and I get to watch it.

[Narrator] Islamorada has long been home to the sport fishing industry, but in recent years, a new industry has taken root, the arts.

And the Morada Way Arts and Cultural District's Third Thursday's Art Walk celebrates those artists.

Welcome To Morada Way Arts and Cultural District.

We have our monthly Art Walk every third Thursday of the month from six to 9:00 PM.

We have a couple of resident galleries like Jessica Ann Art and Limelight Studio and Gallery, as well as Morada Way Play behind me.

And then we have rotating visiting artists from all over the Keys, South Florida, and beyond.

We've got live music, food vendors, local craft beer, a couple of great wine and drink vendors as well, like WineCo, and it's a very fun, family-friendly event.

Every month come rain or shine, no matter what.

We even had one right after Hurricane Irma, that was more of a community potluck.

And from there we try to have events as they come up and create a space for artists to come and have affordable studio and gallery space.

So it's all about a home for artists and creation.

This is how I live and it's a lifestyle, and of course we had to make a shirt.

I only use the ones that I rescued from the sea 'cause they can't stay in the sea 'cause they're polluters.

So I get them all my friends who fish, find them for me.

Friends who live in a house by the sea.

Yeah, they come, they get washed up in storms and things.

And I'm Brazilian originally, so the cultural influence and inspiration that I use is colorful.

Colorful, colorful colorful.

So that's what I use in my work.

My name is Randy, I am a scuba instructor.

When I was scuba diving and catching lionfish, I was like we need to do something more with the lionfish spines.

We need to do something more interesting.

So I was like, "Well, I'm gonna take this on, and see if I can make something that appeals to more people."

That, you know, love of the ocean comes out in what we wear, and that's what the whole purpose is.

Make it so people wear it, talk about it, teach more people about it.

Get everybody underwater and teach them about lionfish.

[Mariano] I retired after 43 years of teaching and stuff.

I retired here in the Keys and I started picking up pallettes and scrap woods and stuff, and I made furniture and I make furniture, still make furniture and stuff, and I paint all the sea creatures, all the birds and everything here in the Keys.

The sailfish broke water and when he did, the sun hit him, and you could see the silvers and you could see the golds, and you could see all the blues and stuff.

So it was kind of like somebody's showing you a snapshot.

All of a sudden you got that kind of, you know in your mind, that was it.

My name is Keith Ousley and I go by keef_paints, but I try to focus on marine conservation artwork here in the Keys.

I learned to paint from painting graffiti when I was younger and when I moved to the Keys, I had to change it to something more professional, so I kind of transitioned into canvas work, and it still has the inspiration with a little bit of street art behind it.

I love the daylight, but there's a magical undercurrent that happens at night here for sure.

High chroma is something that I've always really been interested in.

Kind of a trend similar to looking at that kind of like tarpon light at night growing up here.

The tropical nature, the plants, the flowers, the fish.

You look at a fish on a reef and it has the most neon colors.

I don't think you really find colors like that anywhere else in the world, other than kind of these tropical regions, you know?

So yeah, here is the best.

[Narrator] Brad Bertelli has made a name for himself telling stories of the Florida Keys for years writing a weekly local history column and now putting those tales into print.

My name is Brad Bertelli, and I'm a local historian and author.

I'm a fiction writer by trade and I went to the University of Miami and got my MFA and graduated in 2001.

I moved down here to work on my novel and I got a book deal with the University Press of Florida Snorkeling guide to Florida, and as I was doing research for this book, every dive captain and every mate had his own story about how this reef got its name or how that reef got its name.

And I got curious and started looking into the histories, the local histories, and got really intrigued with what was going on down here in the Florida Keys and the road forked, and I kind of turned off my fiction tap and opened up the non-fiction.

And I've been working on non-fiction ever since, and history.

The history down here is amazing and I was really taken in by it, and 20 years later, I'm a local historian.

I've done eight books total.

3, 4, 5, 6, 6 and a half on history.

I count one.

I have a book called "The Florida Keys Skunk Ape Files" which is, it's fiction but it's historical fiction, but the history is good and I worked really hard on getting the history right, but I did insert the Florida's Bigfoot, the Skunk Ape, in with a lot of real people like John James Audubon, and Ponce de Leon and Thomas Edison, just to have a little fun.

But I hadn't worked on fiction in 15 years and, after writing so much history, I just wanted to have fun with words again and not have to worry about, you know, all the details.

People don't realize the stunning array of history that's happened down here and I think it's all telling stories and writing fiction or writing history, it's all, how do you present the information so it's palatable and people who might not otherwise pick up a history book, you know, can get the information, absorb it, and hopefully be entertained.

My favorite Florida Keys story was always Indian Key, which is now Indian Key Historic State Park.

It's an amazing little island.

Millions of people have driven past it on the overseas highway and never even known this little 11 acre mangrove island out in the Atlantic about a mile offshore between Upper Matta Combi and Lower Matta Combi Key was once the most important island in the Florida Keys not named Key West.

And in 1835, it had a hotel and a restaurant and a bowling alley and it was this thriving wrecking community.

My latest book, which I call "Florida Keys History with Brad Bertelli, Volume 1."

It's really helped me to define my history voice so I can tell these stories, make them fun, get people interested, and you know, if you can make history of page-turner, that's great, and that's what I'm trying to do.

[Narrator] Anthony "Tony" Manfredi is also telling tales.

The singer songwriter entertains weekly at the Overseas Pub and Grill, singing songs about life in the Keys, and why he hopes to never leave.

♪ It's my my grand finale ♪ ♪ As I go out with a smile from whichever mile ♪ ♪ Just as long as it's south of Miami ♪ My music's about having a good time, and it's about living your best life and having fun.

And in the end, you know, tomorrow doesn't belong to any of us yet, so you better have a good time today, and I wanna sing to you about that.

♪ To ever again break people ♪ My name's Tony Manfredi and I play music in the Keys, and I write songs about people that live in the Keys.

Sometimes it sounds like country, sometimes it sounds like rock and roll, sometimes it just sounds like my stuff.

A friend of mine told me it sounds like drinking music.

How's everybody doing tonight?

I love writing songs.

My mom says I don't write any sad songs and I told her it's because the songs I write are quite catchy and I don't want something sad being stuck in somebody's head.

So I try to write stuff that's happy, that people can relate to, or just about regular life, and that seems to be where I have the success in it because it's hard to write something about that I don't understand.

And I understand everybody's struggling and getting through their normal life and it's easy for me to write songs about that 'cause I live it.

I play two days a week here at Overseas, Wednesdays and Fridays, and I play over at Dockside on Sundays and I do a lot of private parties ♪ Seizing my day ♪ ♪ I'm just glad ♪ I always try to feel out how the crowd is and all the crowds are different and some of them are looking to hear something that they're very familiar with.

So you have to throw a lot of cover songs inside the mix and then you start hitting them with some originals that they've never heard before.

And if you can catch 'em where they're singing it by the second verse and you know you can stay on that, and that's how it happens most nights.

I started playing the guitar when I was 31 and picked it up pretty quick.

I think I wrote my first song about six months after that, and I moved down to the Keys three years ago, and we're trying to do this exclusively.

♪ From out Morada over a marathon ♪ ♪ From Key West Key ♪ ♪ You can't go wrong, just let the ocean ♪ It's a 10-song album.

Seven of the songs are about the Keys in Florida.

Three of the songs are about life in general.

One of the songs on it is the first song I wrote.

I figured if I was gonna write a first album, my first song should possibly be on that one.

♪ When they're lonely ♪ ♪ The Florida Keys ♪ It's the easiest thing in the world being Keysie, but yeah, it's kind of a song where we just kind of poke fun at what a great life you have down here.

And I do love living in the Keys.

I even wrote a song called I'm Gonna Die in The Keys and I mean every word of it 'cause I can't think of any place else I'd rather.

♪ I'm going to die in Keys, Lord ♪ ♪ I sure hope ♪ And I wrote a song called "The Florida Keys" which is the one everyone really likes to sing along with.

♪ Oh I believe we will never wanna leave ♪ ♪ The Florida Keys ♪ [Narrator] With 40 years in the Lower Keys and Key West, photographer and printer, Carol Munder, is exacting in her work.

She uses a painstaking printing process that dates back to the late 1800s called photographer to achieve her haunting images.

My name's Carol Munder, a photographer and I use the process photogravure.

It's a 19th century process where I've taken image that I've photographed and through a process it's transferred to a copper plate, the copper plate is etched and then you print on a gravure press to get the final image.

It's a long process, it takes many days.

There's different stages of the process that have to be done days ahead of time, things I have to cure.

I work with raw chemistry, so that's mixed together.

So normally I soak it, you know, 24 hours ahead of time, because the water, I don't know, slowly goes into the paper, and it's absorbed and I can kind of pull it out and almost put it on the press right away.

It's a slow process and I love it 'cause it keeps me outta trouble .

The softness comes through a camera that I use.

I photographed with a Diana camera, and it was originally manufactured in the 70s as a toy.

You could buy it for $3,95 cents at the Dime Store.

It was sort of like the images were soft edged and it was something that spoke to me.

My father was a commercial lithographer, so that whole printing world maybe runs in my blood or something, I'm not sure.

But I had in my library of books a chapter in a book on photo gravure and happenstance, I had even highlighted part of the process in there years and years ago.

So if you're gonna do it, you have to be dedicated.

And I taught myself and I made every mistake in the book and then some.

So for some reason the first time you sort of ink a plate, it needs a second time around to really start grabbing the ink properly.

I don't know why that is.

Today, you can go online, you can watch videos, you can do workshops.

It was pretty limited back then on what was available, and I had out of print books that I taught myself and you're much better off taking workshops if you can because there's a lot of things they don't talk about.

The humidity is a real important factor for it, and they sort of didn't mention that in the books .

I used to photograph in museums a lot.

I was photographing Etruscan sculptures a lot, really close up through glass, so you would get refractions, you know, you go through a lot of different phases.

But now I'm photographing just with these wooden sculptures that we've been finding in flea markets that are anonymously carved almost like outsider art, anatomically incorrect sculptures that are just so soulful.

And I started photographing them 'cause I just loved them and it evolved over the years.

But now I montage an image because with my camera, it's limitations are, it's a plastic lens.

I'm limited by the size of something.

So I will photograph something that's, you know, six inches big and have to put it into a different environment.

And, you know, you have to adjust those to sort of play some sort of game of making it.

I mean, it's an unusual world that I'm creating.

[Narrator] Sculptor, John Martini, landed in Key West decades ago, and he's seen it all since.

Here, we visit the artist in his one-of-a-kind studio.

My name is John Martini, I'm a sculptor and printmaker.

I've been in Key West since 1976.

I've been working in this studio since about 1983.

There's a really tight community, people are really supportive.

When I first got here, there was two galleries and there was an influx of hippies and gay, big, big gay input at that time.

And that kind of began to rebuild Key West in a in a really nice way, with lots of small business, locally owned businesses.

When AIDS hit, we were hit really, really hard.

The arts community and especially.

We lost so many, so many, so many good artists, and they've never really recovered from that.

And my process is pretty industrial.

It's a lot of heavy lifting and moving and when I first started, I worked with Scrap that I found around Key West.

And I would try to work intuitively.

So I would come in, try to come into the studio blank, and look at a piece and then see what I saw or what it kind of fed to me.

I fed off of the material, and I was very direct.

I'd do a drawing real quick, a real fast drawing, which I love to do, and then I would just cut it out with a torch.

Now the works are a little bit more engineered, so I work pretty much from sketchbooks.

So again, I try to come into my sketchbook.

It's more or less blank.

I mean, a lot of my work, I'd been spending a lot of time in museums and doing a lot of sketches in museums, and that was really my art's education.

So now, I think that through those processes, I've evolved into my own kind of little alley where I am.

And my work has become a conglomeration of everything that I've experienced before.

And hopefully it's changing in time.

Although it maintains its same sort of kind of manner and form.

The work is sort of not traditionally dimensional, in terms of sculpture, but I feel like the color and the edges create a sense of volume and also a sense of kind of timelessness.

I try to make the work look like you can't place it in time, that it's been there or it was there before, it'll be thereafter.

And also I've gotten to make prints, which I love to do.

And it's always monoprints, and it's very, very immediate process and it finishes.

I was never much of a painter 'cause I was always full of regrets.

So monoprint is finished and it's a surprise.

You pull the print off the press, and you have what you have, and you're really not sure what you're gonna get.

And it's real, real immediate and it's real fast, as opposed to, you know... My work now is pretty much done when the sketch is decided upon.

You know, I just kind of scale it up and there's not much change in the pieces, in the process.

Any changes are done in the sketches.

So the monoprints are really direct, which is what I would prefer.

I mean, which I really...

Gives me pleasure as it were, you know, to pull something from wherever it comes from, I don't know.

I'm not a particularly ambitious or driven.

I've given up that, you know.

You realize that you think that things are gonna change your life, you know, you get a show in Paris or in New York, or something that somehow your life is gonna be all different, but nothing ever change, you know, I mean it doesn't really change, you just continue on.

I'm very lucky I've been able to continue to work and support myself, which is an amazing, amazing really.

Once you're actually working, then it's coming.

You know, the next thing's appearing.

[Narrator] Find full episode, segments, and more@artloftsfl.org and on YouTube at South Florida PBS.

[Narrator] ""Art Loft"" is brought to you by... [Narrator] Where there is freedom, there is expression.

The Florida Keys and Key West.

[Narrator] The Miami-Dade County Tourist Development Council, the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council.

The Miami-Dade County Mayor, and the Board of County Commissioners and the Friends of South Florida PBS.