(upbeat music) - In this edition of WLIW Arts Beat, the art of abandoned buildings.

Part of our mission is to help save things that we find and document in these buildings before they get demolished and thrown away forever.

Inside a Weaver's studio.

You learn so much every time you make something.

You see something that maybe you didn't think about before.

And it's a very satisfying journey.

A local landmark makes an impact on the arts.

It's just exciting to be able to help other artists the way that they helped me in the beginning.

And that's really what I'm looking forward to is expanding, helping local artists.

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.

The Abandoned Atlas Foundation has a mission to ensure that abandoned buildings are not forgotten but remembered.

Recognizing the beauty and history housed within these structures, the organization photographs and works to preserve these remarkable remnants of the past.

We head to Oklahoma to find out more.

When you look at historic buildings, it is the backbone of our country, and unfortunately we are losing it at a rapid pace.

It's important for these buildings to be saved because it shows us who was here before us.

It almost feels like buildings are people in a way, because they have their own stories, they have their own presence, they have their own personality.

And once it's gone, it's gone forever.

That's not something that you can get back.

Just because a building is abandoned, doesn't mean it's the end of the story.

I'm Michael Schwarz.

I'm Emily Cowan.

And I'm the president of Abandoned Atlas Foundation.

I'm the president of the Abandoned Atlas Foundation.

My goal as a co-president with Emily is to help find ways to get people interested in wanting to see these places restored, show them how it can be done, why it should be done, and to help give a voice to buildings that oftentimes get overlooked.

What started as a simple website over 15 years ago has grown into a full-fledged non-profit covering 25 different states.

We photograph the properties inside and out as thoroughly as possible as if we were to lose the building tomorrow.

We then take those photos and publish them online for free along with a full historic write-up.

I believe that research should be free and history should be free.

Every time that I walk through a new abandoned building I just, you know, it just it it speaks to me.

I enjoy talking to people and finding the first-hand stories and doing the first-hand like digging through libraries, digging through documents found inside the buildings.

That's what excites me.

It's like, you know, something's been hidden under a shelf for 60 years and it's a piece of the puzzle of what what happened there.

I am more of the behind the scenes.

I am the one that does all the research on the background.

Newspapers.com is vital.

We use Google Books a lot.

If you go on Google Books and you put in a search term, it will show you every book that has that search term.

At any given time, I'm working on over 60 articles across 25 different states.

Alright, so down here is the science lab.

I've now kind of become in charge of the YouTube channel, or like more of the documentary work to really advocate for these places.

Like, that's the beauty of YouTube.

Like, if you can create something that captures somebody's interest that may not have known about that thing before, I mean, that's so much power.

My interest in abandoned buildings actually started when I was in high school.

Back in 2019, I was freshly out of high school.

I've always wanted to be a filmmaker.

I had no idea what I wanted to do in life.

My friends and I were shooting like bang, bang, shoot 'em up movies with fake guns.

Action.

Oh!

And then I had started exploring abandoned buildings.

Michael and his friends used abandoned locations as backdrops for their action-packed short films.

So we went there to go film and then I found myself just taking pictures because I thought it was so cool.

And I was like, I wonder if there's any more of these.

I went home and I Googled it.

I found a very, very early version of the website.

Bandit Oklahoma was started by Justin Tyler Moore and Cody Cooper in 2008, 2009 area.

I contacted the owner just being a fanboy.

And to my surprise, the owner was like, "Yeah, come on in.

Join what we're doing."

Well, here we are inside the library of Dunjee Academy.

You're good?

Yep.

Joe, you got this.

You got this, man.

Michael joined the team in 2011 and contributed for many years before moving away.

During the same time, the original team moved on and the site fell dormant.

And started going on my own road trips.

I was just tagging Abandoned Oklahoma in my stuff, knowing they weren't active.

I was like, "Well, maybe one day."

So I was living out in California for a few years.

I went out there to be the next Hollywood director.

When I decided to come back to Oklahoma to try something different, the first thing I thought of was, "All right, going back to Oklahoma?

I want to be in Oklahoma."

And then I got a DM from Michael, I think it was the day before my birthday, and he had said, "Hey, Abandoned Oklahoma's back.

Would you like to join?"

And I remember fangirling a little bit.

I was like, "Oh my gosh, I've never been asked to be part of something like this."

When I started, I remember the first time that Michael and I explored together, he made me go up and knock on the next door neighbors and ask them about that building.

And I was so terrified at first.

I was not a people talker.

I did not like doing that.

But then I started listening to this person talk about their memories there.

And that was when I think the switch flipped of the passion of being able to give people these tangible memories that they can hold on forever.

Once it's on the internet it's not going anywhere even if the building comes down.

If you expose the original ceiling it'll be so much more room in here.

With their powers combined and with the help of photojournalists across the country, Emily and Michael expanded to the Abandoned Atlas Foundation, a nationwide nonprofit dedicating to preserving history all over the country.

I think that is a part of our mission is to help save things that we find and document in these buildings before they get demolished and thrown away forever.

That is the reason why I do it is it's not just for the buildings and giving them a voice, but it's also for the people that have memories here.

I found it!

Emily!

What?

Seminole Chieftain football 2005.

No way.

Oh my gosh, Seminole Chieftain's 2001 football highlight video.

Oh gosh, we found it.

We found the jackpot.

I found kind of a new passion recently.

It's the VHS tapes.

Sometimes there's old VHS tapes laying around.

I'm not really interested in the mass-produced ones.

I'm talking about the ones that are unique, one of a kind, that are specific to either that building or that town, that city, that has been forgotten about and there's only one copy of it.

Those moments that might be special to somebody that live on those VHS tapes will now not lose it.

Right now you can buy an abandoned home in Pine Bluff, Arkansas for as low as $400.

When it comes to YouTube, ultimately our goal is to get people to be more actively interested in what buildings we're talking about, the history behind them, and most importantly the advocacy.

This iconic church was featured in Time Magazine in 1955.

I dive deep into the analytics, the retention rate, to figure out, all right, where am I losing people?

Where do they stop watching?

And I try to figure out why they're stopping watching and how can I create more interest?

[wind] Abandoned Atlas now partners with preservationists, property developers, and activists to create videos for at-risk buildings.

I'm 74 years old.

I can remember laying on pews looking up out of the windows up top.

I had a dream and so anyway in that dream I felt like the Lord said that he wanted this restored and so that's been purpose in my life for over 20 years now.

Well you know I've just gotten to know Michael and their heart seems really good because it's been one of the most encouraging things that someone is really has the same heart towards these buildings and these type of projects that we do.

This is not a field that you get many wins in.

And when we do get wins, like this building here, it's something that we shot from the rooftop.

Seminole High School is going to be restored into affordable housing apartments.

This is a huge win for the community in this neighborhood, but we're having a huge housing crisis in America right now, and being able to turn this building into affordable housing, rather than just sitting here being vandalized, I think is a lot more of a better purpose.

We have a huge success story in Topeka, Kansas, of the Minerger Clock Tower that was actually slated for demolition.

So we came in and we actually, it was very nerve-wracking, had to sign a contract with their attorney that if we were not successful in finding a buyer within 90 days that they would have grounds to demolish the building.

We put together a developer search video saying like, "Hey, this building's about to be demolished.

This is the time to buy it."

And they were willing to donate the property.

It was within maybe a week or two of putting out a developer search video that found a buyer out of Kansas City, Missouri, and they are underway to restore that now.

Oh, I don't think we've been in here before.

Okay.

Especially the weather.

My mom was like, you know, you need to get a real job.

If you're ever going to move out, you need to get a job.

And I was just like, no, I have to stick this out.

I know it's going to pay off.

Like, it just needs time.

The way that I've changed through this is realizing that I don't need to be in Hollywood to make a difference.

I don't need to be in Hollywood to do something I'm passionate about.

It is just incredible.

And I love doing what I do every day and just being able to again follow that passion.

For more information, check out abandonedatlas.com.

>> And now, the Artist Quote of the Week.

[ Music ] >> In this segment, we take a trip to Ohio to meet textile artist Janice Lessman Moss.

While creating, she embraces a technological and hands-on approach to weaving, combining the two to render detailed, abstract work.

Here's her story.

When I say that I'm a weaver, people generally assume that I am making garments or that I am making fabric for function.

And it takes a while for me to convince them that in fact it is a medium, just like painting, that allows you to create abstract images for the wall for contemplation, for visual enjoyment.

And it usually doesn't resonate so well until they see them.

And then it makes sense because they recognize that I can do all of the things that other people can do with other mediums, with color and with form and with texture, but it happens with that intersection of thread.

I work digitally.

I do all my designs digitally.

And I am interested in the kind of the mathematical aspects of working with geometric forms and the count of threads in both directions.

And I like that right brain, left brain kind of intersection that weaving allows.

They allude to my interest in walking.

And walking is a very linear movement.

And weaving is a very linear process.

Walking allows you to kind of move forward but also to kind of linger.

It's a slow movement.

Weaving is a slow process.

I always call it a slow art.

It's a very slow art.

And when I am designing, I'm actually thinking of that same notion of movement, kind of following a path.

So I create a path on a template of circles within squares, and I create these paths, and those paths end up being the kind of the contours or the outlines of shapes, and they create sometimes they're just lines, and sometimes they establish shapes, and I put other patterns within those shapes.

So everything kind of builds in that same systematic way, in a kind of ordered way, and yet deviates from any kind of real plan.

It's just that it is ordered because of the nature of the structure.

Once I've done the design, the weaving process itself is really following through on that plan.

I feed it to the loom and then the loom reads it and then I press a button and the threads are raised according to what I have programmed.

However, I mean it's like an architect, you know, you have some design you know you can visualize and you can see from your design this is what's going to happen.

What actually happens is sometimes different and the whole experience of coming in contact with this material and having it grow before your very eyes is amazing.

I've been working with metal introduced into the weaving for years, minimally.

Work that I did in the spring of 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic, I started to put more and more metal into the weaving, which adds an element of shine.

And I felt, you know, in thinking about it, that it was this attempt to kind of create a sense of hope, you know, just have some little bright spots in my weaving.

They appear as you move around the weaving.

You see this, the shine kind of emanating, and then it'll tuck back behind.

So it's this sense of almost shadow and light.

And I like that kind of surprise, that mystery.

And I started working with those smaller kind of orbs of, or circles of metal.

And then I, this one is, I went kind of crazy with the introduction of the metal because I just felt like I really wanted some light in there.

And I really love in this piece, they almost look like little trails of, like slug trails, that kind of a wet trail that is illuminated depending on what the lighting is like.

And I love that it's so imperfect that it has that sense of organic movement that is more like nature.

You learn so much every time you make something, you see something that maybe you didn't think about before and it's a very satisfying journey.

I mean you're going through life and you're able to make these visual statements, pieces that you hope other people enjoy looking at and finding meaning in.

Whether they see what I see in it isn't totally relevant.

The work is directed by a personal interest and inspiration, but people may look at it, they bring other histories to the engagement with the colors and the engagement with the relationship of lines, and they might say, "Oh, it looks like this, it looks like that, it reminds me of this."

And I say, "Okay, good.

If you're looking at it and you're taking the time to think about it, I'm happy about that.

I'm grateful for that.

See more at janicelessman-moss.com.

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

The Shady Palm Art Gallery is a staple in the Florida Keys.

[ music ] The Shady Palm Art Gallery is a staple in the Florida Keys.

In addition to featuring the work of over 50 local artists, the gallery hosts a variety of art classes and events.

We visit Marathon Florida to learn more.

Every day is a new palette outside in our environment.

The colors change every single day.

The water is a different color every single day.

The colors are just spectacular.

Our sunrises and our sunsets are amazing.

Colors underneath the waters of our fish, our birds, our skies.

And it shows in all of our artists work and that's where they get their inspiration from.

Janice Nagel and I am an artist and the owner of Shady Palm Art Gallery and live in a local color art gallery.

They're both located in this same building.

So Shady Palm has been around for quite a while and I had my artwork here at Shady Palm Art Gallery and when the owner decided to retire she came to me and said Janice, do you want to buy Shady Palm Art Gallery?

So here I am and it is a dream come true.

It's just exciting to be able to help other artists the way that they helped me in the beginning and that's really what I'm looking forward to is expanding, helping local artists.

This was actually the first piece that I've ever painted.

It was out of boredom after Hurricane Irma.

This was a photograph that I took of my husband's charter boat.

And I found a tin with my grandmother's paints and the photo on the floor of my garage after cleaning up a little bit.

And my grandma spoke to me and said, "Paint."

So I did.

So that was originally the first painting that I started and ultimately finished after a while.

And this is where all of this began.

All the local artists just said, "Don't stop painting.

Keep going."

And I did.

I tried different mediums.

I started with acrylic, then I went to watercolors and batik, and I just kept going.

And it's really been a lot of fun for me.

And fun watching myself grow, and that's what I want to instill in other artists here, is watching them grow and giving them the opportunity to just become wonderful artists.

And that's why I'm here.

We have 57 local Florida Keys artists.

Everybody is here in the Keys, so everything has originated here.

We have a wide variety of artists.

We have metal artists, we have multimedia recycling artists, we have acrylics, we have wood artists.

Some of our artists work with oils and acrylics and it's just a large display of art that we have here and everyone is just a little bit different.

Our visitors spend a lot of time here.

We have our classroom, we've repainted the outside, we've added about a thousand square feet to the art section of the gallery.

We've moved our custom frame shop and we added my art gallery, Live in a Local Color, here as well.

So we're really two beautiful galleries for our visitors and locals to explore.

We're trying to bring more attention to Marathon for the art community.

We want to expand on those art classes and we're inviting, you know, artists from the Keys, not just our art gallery to come and do classes for us as well.

We want to do some events and also let everybody know that our artists are here and to support the local art because it's really important.

They're one of the smallest businesses and they do so much from their heart that they deserve that attention.

Find out more at shadypalmartgallery.com.

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.

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