(upbeat music) - In this edition of WLIW Arts Beat, art vending machines.

- I really wanted art to become accessible.

I wanted to activate space and I wanted people to feel good, feel value, feel nostalgia, feel joy.

Jolly, gingerbread houses.

They're beautiful.

I can't imagine the effort that went into these gingerbread houses.

I can't imagine how much time, just the thought process.

(upbeat music) - The adventures of a bass player.

- I've come a long way with music and I'm satisfied.

It doesn't mean I feel like I'm done.

There's still things I want to do.

- It's all ahead in this edition of WLIW Artsbeat.

Funding for WLIW Artsbeat is made possible by viewers like you.

Thank you.

Welcome to WLIW Artsbeat.

I'm Diane Masciale.

In West Palm Beach, Florida, one will come across vending machines that are stocked with affordable local art.

The first of its kind in the area, Flamango Vending activates spaces and gives artists a special opportunity to share their work with the public.

Let's find out more.

Hi, my name is Meghan McKenna and I am an entrepreneur in West Palm Beach and I'm the founder of Flamango Vending, an affordable art vending machine featuring local artists.

I really wanted art to become accessible.

I wanted to activate space and I wanted people to feel good, feel value, feel nostalgia, feel joy.

And I feel like art is the best way to make that connection.

It also supports local artists, so that was a big draw for me there.

These are actually hand-painted canvas magnets from a local artist named Jess Kirby.

So she's a surrealist.

So these are two-inch canvases, and these are citrus butterflies.

We have strawberry jellyfish.

So you can have your art gallery wherever you go, on your mini fridge or wherever you need it.

When I first started, I had a list of art that I wanted to own.

And I approached them and I said, "Look, I'm a huge fan.

I'm working on this project.

I'd love for you to be involved."

and they kind of took a leap of faith with me.

Since then, since we've grown and people got word of it, people have been filling out an application on my website, and then I curate from that list folks that are interested.

Currently I have, I think, 51 artists, so I either have a piece of their art on consignment, or it might be in one of the machines, or we're working on it.

These are prints done on canvas of hand-painted art by a local artist, Melissa.

She does a lot of Florida scenes, the Jupiter Lighthouse, underwater creatures.

She's really inspired by our local sea life.

Some artists have the tiny art already.

They might make something small that they would like to put in the machine.

But a lot of times we work directly with the artist to curate something special, something unique, just for the art vending machine.

With the affordable art in the vending machine, we're really trying to have people feel the joy, the emotional connection of art within their budget, within their time.

It's available to everybody.

It's right here.

Learn more at flamangoBending.com.

>> And now, the artist quote of the week.

>> Up next, we get a behind-the-scenes look at an annual gingerbread competition in Columbus, Ohio.

Hosted by the Franklin Park Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, this holiday tradition allows participants to get creative as they bake and decorate festive gingerbread houses.

They're beautiful.

I can't imagine the effort that went into these gingerbread houses.

I can't imagine how much time, just the thought process of what kind of a gingerbread house am I going to make?

And, you know, they probably threw a bunch of ideas out at the dinner table with their family and they say, "Oh, Mom, why don't you make a beach scene?"

I love bakings.

I love gingerbread houses.

I love all that stuff that there's sort of like this like, how did that happen?

So I think from that standpoint, I was just super excited and honored.

I love people who give a tribute to their dogs.

So what I'm trying not to include on my judging is the heartfelt stories behind why people built what they built.

They were so sweet that easily could have swayed me.

But what I really tried to look for is, did they follow what the theme was supposed to be?

Did they use a variety of medium, I guess, is a great word for it.

There was some folks who used cereal in theirs and some people who used candies.

And I love to see just kind of the creativity behind what people chose to include.

♪ ♪ And this is just genius because they clearly built a structure under it, but the saltines are so much lighter.

That's the hardest thing about gingerbread is it's so heavy.

We did this last year for the first time and this year and my kids are little so any extra tradition that we start is just really special for our families.

There's a couple different tries, I can tell you that.

There's one previous one that collapsed and is in the trash now.

But decorating it was fun.

I got to play with ISO mount, which I've never used before.

And it turns into the glass.

So that was new this year and fun.

We'll be doing it for as long as we can now.

Source is something to look forward to every year.

I really like art.

And it's like something that I can really express myself with.

And I love adding like the little details and adding like a new little trick or tip to it.

So we started doing marzipan things like three years ago.

And I love that stuff.

It tastes really good.

I end up eating like half the stuff that I make.

Before I started gingerbread thing, I always like to do a bit of like research on the side of looking at other people's gingerbread and other people's art and stuff.

So before I start, I always draw a picture of what I want it to look like or an idea of like the basics of what it should look like.

And then I just go from there and cut out all the gingerbread parts and start constructing it.

And then it just sort of turns out.

One of my favorite ones was one of the original ones that I did.

Maybe my first one.

It was a monkey tree house.

And it was when I was like a little, little kid.

I took my handprint and traced it, and those were the branches on the sides.

And I've always loved monkeys, and I got actual monkey food treats from my grandpa who works at the zoo.

And we put them on the roof as tiles.

The first one we did was like a family design.

And it was really bad.

We were little kids and we didn't know what we were doing.

And we were kind of gluing things on and just doing whatever the heck we wanted to do.

But then like after a while we developed like the type of gingerbread that we needed to use.

And the ways that you put it together and how to make it like look professional and good.

We found a really good recipe one year and then we just continued to use it every single year.

Well it's not actually edible.

It would taste terrible if you ate it.

It tastes like cardboard.

So it's a very structural gingerbread that we use and I mean if you dropped it it would shatter.

Like it doesn't bend.

We dry it out so that it's like rock hard and then stays up.

So I'm just gonna take the gingerbread out and we're gonna form it into a big ball so that I can roll it out into a flat slab.

But I gotta use these things because it's gotta be the same thickness all around.

♪ ♪ To me, it reminds me of my childhood.

You know, mom making gingerbread houses, which she did.

It was very simple.

There wasn't anything fancy about it.

A little white frosting on the roofs and that.

But she did do them with the seven kids.

We appreciated that.

And I think that you look at these things, it's an art what they've done.

See more at fpconservatory.org.

Now here's a look at this month's fun fact.

[theme music] Five-time Grammy winner Victor Wooten is considered one of the best bassists in the world.

In this segment, we travel to Virginia to learn more about his illustrious career and the amazing journey that's made him who he is today.

[music] Coming home is always more special, especially when you've been away for a while.

I get to be a hometown hero.

And that's not what I'm in it for, but I'm going to use it for everything I got.

Because I want you to succeed.

I want you to know that you're worthy, you're enough.

You can achieve your dreams and I'm proof.

I'm from Newport News and I'm the youngest of five brothers.

Music has played a big part in my life probably before I was born because my brothers were already playing and they needed a bass player.

My earliest memory of playing was right around two years old and because I was literally learning to speak music at the same time as I was learning to speak English, music became very natural.

I was on stage by kindergarten, if not before, and we're opening for war and Curtis Mayfield, The Temptations, we didn't know any better.

It's just what it was.

And my older brothers who are superheroes to me, they're treating me like an equal.

I'm the baby brother, no one's beating me up, instead they're holding me up, giving me all the credit.

We did a lot of gigs and we caught the attention of a lot of different people.

A guy named Kashif brought us brothers in to Arista Records, big record company.

The record deal didn't go so well.

It was the cause of the five of us brothers not playing together.

And all we know is music.

So we find out about Busch Gardens.

And my life has never been the same.

[applause] Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Canadian Palladium.

At this time, would you please put your hands together and welcome Busch Gardens to the Good Time Country.

- They announced Busch Gardens, welcome to the Good Time Country show.

And then four black guys walk out, cowboy hat.

And it's like, that quiet.

But when the music started, oh my goodness, it was great.

(upbeat music) At the time, I was too young to work in the live entertainment department.

But they were about to open in a couple of weeks or so, and they needed a bluegrass fiddle player.

And then one of my brothers says, "Well, I got another brother "who could probably play fiddle."

I'd never played fiddle in my life.

So I researched and found three of the top fiddle songs.

And I went in and I won the audition.

For us, music is music, a string is a string.

We can make a sound out of it.

We had a lot of people tell us back then, "Hey, y'all need to move to Nashville."

And at the time, I'm like, "Man, I ain't going to Nashville."

Never say never, 'til all of us move to Nashville.

In '87, my friend introduced me to Bela Fleck, and we just hit it off.

Bela asked me to be a part of a television show called the Lonesome Pines Specials.

They were going to give Bela a full hour long special to play his music.

He said, "I just need a drummer."

And I said, "Oh, well, you got to check out my brother."

Bela told me, "I met this guy named Howard Levy."

Whoa, I don't know if I've ever met a musician like this guy.

He can play anything.

It was definitely Bela Fleck and the Flecktones that put me on the global map.

And I thank Bela for that because Bela understood that the band would be better if he allowed every musician to have freedom.

Bass Player Magazine was just hitting the scene, so I wound up in Bass Player Magazine a lot.

We did the Tonight Show five times.

>> Bela Fleck and the Fleck Torn.

[applause] [music] Arsenio Hall is a big bass fanatic.

So we get on Arsenio Hall, we do this song called Sinister Minister, which is a bass feature.

[music] Spinning the bass around my neck, Arsenio Hall is going crazy.

And so things worked out for Bela Freck and Infected.

Two and two and then these two would make a four bar kind of phrase, right?

Exactly.

So then it would be out here.

[Beatboxing] Yeah.

That's nice.

I think so.

Backside of it's a little longer with a four bar.

It's whatever helps solidify that rhythm.

I'm improvising.

I'm rarely reading.

But if I put my head here, I start playing this rather than playing this.

It's so flavorful, that whole section.

It's really neat.

Thank you very much.

[ music ] I have a lot of respect for a symphony.

As a child I played in orchestras.

But in being asked to write a piece, I have an idea that they want classical, but they want something different.

The main thing that I wanted to do was not leave me as I was writing.

The instrumentation is going to make it different than I. To hear people playing something that I wrote, wow, amazing.

Right now it's my first time sitting out and listening to it.

Oh yeah?

Yeah, I can't listen because I'm, you know, I've got a packed case of focal dystonia.

I hate to even say it, but my hands curl up trying to play.

So it's a huge struggle for me to play simple things.

I didn't write anything hard for me in this piece, just because of that.

But it's gotten a little worse, so I'm gonna be scratching and clawing at this whole thing.

Y'all make me sound good.

- Oh, yeah.

(laughing) - Thank you all.

- Awesome.

- You too.

(guitar music) Over 20 years ago, I just noticed that my hands were slowing down.

Didn't know why, I just felt I need to practice.

So I start working on stuff, running scales, all the stuff people say, warming up and all this stuff that I never did.

It's not getting better, it's kind of getting worse.

Now it is so difficult for me to play.

For one, it's kind of taking over my brain, and I'm having to do all the things I tell students-- how to relax, breathe, don't think about that, think about this.

As a saying I heard, we teach what we most need to learn.

So all that stuff I say, I'm working on it.

guitar plays softly Right now I'm playing this concerto that I wrote... that I can barely play.

Fortunately, I have a symphony around me that I can hide behind.

(organ music) - I wrote a book called The Music Lesson.

At the beginning of each chapter of the book is a measure of music.

So if you read all the chapters, put the music together, and you get a song called "The Lesson."

And then when I thought about writing a concerto, I wanted to really flesh it out with real instruments.

[playing a slow, slow, slow melody] If anyone knows that song, you'll hear bits and pieces broken up and spread out between movements, as well as spread out between the instruments.

I wanted a bass that I could bow, and nobody made one.

So I asked Vinny Fodera if he could get a bow bass made, and he said, "I think I can."

And the easiest way to think of it is a cello on its side.

It's fun for me to get to play because it's a one of a kind.

I think of a concerto as a musician out front, virtuoso, playing a lot of stuff and the orchestra is back behind.

And I like that idea, but I didn't really want to do just that.

I want the audience to see what a bass does, but also see what a bass can do.

So there are times in the symphony where I'm supporting the oboe, supporting the violins, and doing what the bass does with the bass section.

But then I'll step out front and let you see that the bass can play chords, the bass can play melodies, the bass can solo.

So that is an education for all of us.

As I heard a friend of mine say, "Playing music is like trying to count to infinity."

It doesn't matter how far you count, you don't get any closer to the end.

But you do get further from the beginning.

So yeah, I've come a long way with music, and I'm satisfied.

It doesn't mean I feel like I'm done.

There's still things I want to do.

My focus has changed to what I can help others do.

If I can inspire you to do anything, it's to be the best version of you possible.

If you continue to pursue your dreams and just don't quit, you will live them.

It may take longer than you took, it may be harder than you think, but if it was easy, it wouldn't mean as much.

Music is about sharing it and giving it to other people, living our dream with us.

[applause] And that's a beautiful, a beautiful life.

[applause] Discover more at victorwooten.com [music] And here's a look at this week's Art History.

[music] That wraps it up for this edition of WLIW Artsbeat.

Visit our webpage to watch more episodes of the show.

We hope to see you next time.

I'm Diane Masciale.

Thank you for watching.

Funding for WLIW Artsbeat was made possible by viewers like you.

Thank you.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪