AOTA-240517 - Loran Bohall, Lauren Connelly, Dune Arts classes, Dorothy Graden

This week on Out of the Air, they feature furniture maker Lauren Bohal and scuba dive professional and photographer Lauren Conley. The spotlight is on the Dune Arts Foundation Summer Youth Theater Classes with instructors Danielle Kerr and Michael Fallon. The theater program focuses on solo and group numbers, storytelling, and mentorship. The final performance is open to the public. For more information, visit dunesarts.org. Also, artist Dorothy Graydon will have a new exhibit at the Renaissance Court Gallery in Chicago. Loren Bohal, a fourth-generation furniture maker, is also featured on the show. This week on Out of the Air features fourth-generation furniture maker Lauren Bohal, whose small team of hard-working craftspeople design and fabricate pieces that last generations. Next, scuba dive professional, drone, and professional photographer Lauren Conley shares her love for painting pet portraits. Our spotlight is the Dune Arts Foundation Summer Youth Theater Classes with instructors Danielle Kerr and Michael Fallon. Express yourself you are, and show the world your heart. Express yourself you are, and show the world your heart. You're in the know with Esther and Larry, we're out on the air today. Stay in the know with Larry and Esther, we're out on the air our way. Express yourself you are, and show the world your heart. Express yourself you are, and show the world your heart. Welcome, you're listening to Art on the Air on Lakeshore Public Media, 89.1 FM, WVLP, 103.1 FM, our weekly program covering the arts and arts events throughout Northwest Indiana and beyond. I'm Larry Breckner of New Perspectives Photography right alongside here with Esther Golden of The Nest in Michigan City. Aloha everyone. We're your hosts for Art on the Air. Art on the Air is supported by an Indiana Arts Commission Arts Project Grant, South Shore Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Art on the Air is heard every Sunday at 7 p.m. on Lakeshore Public Media, 89.1 FM, also streaming live at lakeshorepublicmedia.org and is available on Lakeshore Public Media's website as a podcast. Also heard on Friday at 11 a.m. and Monday at 5 p.m. on WVLP, 103.1 FM, streaming live at wvlp.org. Our spotlight interviews are also heard Wednesdays on Lakeshore Public Media. Information about Art on the Air is available at our website, breck.com, slash, A-O-T-A. That includes a complete show archive, spotlight interviews, plus our show is available on multiple podcast platforms, including NPR One. Please like us on Facebook, Art on the Air, WVLP, for information about upcoming shows and interviews. I'd like to welcome to Art on the Air Spotlight from the Dunes Arts Foundation, Dunes Summer Theater. But they have a whole bunch of things going on, especially with their youth theater program, and they're going to tell you all about it. But we'd like to welcome two of the people that are going to be involved with that, Michael Fallon and Danielle Kerr. And, of course, Elyse Kamani is there to kind of corral everybody into place if they need more information. All of you, welcome to Art on the Air Spotlight. Thank you very much. Thank you. Yeah, nice meeting all of you, and nice to see you again, Elyse. Good to see you. We'll start with Danielle and tell us a little bit about what you have planned for the theater program. Yeah, so I have the privilege of working directly with Michael this summer. So we will be co-teaching the music theater class starting on July 9th. It runs to July 25th, and it's a three-day-a-week program for two hours, so slightly more intensive than last year. It's open to ages 8 through 18, so come one, come all. If you have an elementary schooler, a middle schooler, or a high schooler who's interested, we'd love to have you. We're going to focus on solo and group numbers. As musical theater is a multidisciplinary art form, we will have components of the class that focus on vocal technique and singing and acting the song, doing scenes as well, and also a movement component. So it'll be a really fun, intense but fun is what I'll call it, course for a lot of different age groups. Sure. The big thing is we want to focus on repertory that is a little bit more contemporary, a little bit more current, although we'll not be adverse to reaching back for things. Our main focus is to find stuff that meets the needs of the students that we get. One of the things that I'm very proud of that we do is that instead of putting – we do do a final performance on the 27th of July. The main focus of what we're trying to do is to meet the needs of the kids. So the students come in, we evaluate where they're at, we talk to them about what kind of things they want to work on, what kind of things they're looking forward to doing, and then we will help them pick repertoire that's appropriate to their age or experience level that will help them grow, and then we'll give them that opportunity in the showcase performance at the end of the three weeks to show everybody what they've learned and kind of grown. So really kind of like a demonstration of what they've done, not really a final performance per se. Yeah. I mean, we're going to try to polish it to the best of our ability. Yeah. It will be on the June stage. So we're in the middle of doing Bridges of Madison County, so we will just push back the set and the kids will be right on the set of Bridges. That's wonderful. Good experience that way. I like that you added storytelling to the creative drama and improv. That was really, because then you find, you know, people will find what they're the most happy with and comfortable with. So that was very thoughtful. Will you be dividing the groups up? Like I see you have like eight to 18. My wife and I taught theater classes for years, and we found that there was a certain break in age that you could deal with one group or another. So are you going to kind of work it that way, maybe divide them into small groups that are more age appropriate? Yeah, that is the plan. We'll kind of see where they're at, both age and experience appropriate, because occasionally you'll get those kids who have had multiple opportunities to perform in a community theater setting or something like that, who maybe have a little bit more experience. But we'll definitely be kind of finding which, you know, which niche they fit into better. And right now we've got at least, I think, 20, Elise, is that about right? Yes. And a really nice spread of age ranges, pretty much eight to 16 at this point in time, very solidly, a few of almost every age in between there. So it's a nice, the kids will have kids about their own age to kind of work with and kind of practice with and that type of thing. Will the final performance allow for the public to be there, or is it just? It's free to the public for parents and friends, but also, you know, people just want to see what we're up to. Other parents, maybe their kids didn't get in this summer, they can come see what we do and maybe sign up next year. So I just want to say we are up to 20, but we're keeping this open. And if we have to, we'll hire more teachers. So we want as many kids as possible that want to learn. So we're keeping it open. Well, we don't have to worry about closing the doors yet. Something else that will be a cool opportunity this summer with the combination of ages, as Michael was talking about, is we get this opportunity for, of course, split off into different age groups and different experience levels so kids can be in their zone of proximal development and be appropriately challenged and appropriately supported. But it also gives the younger kids a chance in the showcase to watch and perform with the older kids and learn from older, more experienced students. And it gives those older students the opportunity for mentorship, which I think is really engaging and important for those older students to start stepping into a leadership role. And it's so important to, like, build that spirit of collaboration and ensemble with kids, starting at a really young age, and get them supporting and learning from each other as well. And performing on a professional stage, like at the Dunes Summer Theater, I think is such a cool opportunity for young artists that are interested in pursuing this professionally and working with me and working with Michael and potentially working with some of the other professional actors or getting to watch some of the other professional actors who will be around at the Dunes, I think will be a really great opportunity for kids to get a little bit of a preview into the professional theater world. How can they find out about the information on doing the classes? Yeah, just go to our website. It's dunesarts.org. D-U-N-E-S-A-R-T-S dot O-R-G. And you should be able to sign up right there. Just hit the education button. Great. That's Danielle O'Kare, Michael Fallon, and, of course, Lise Kamani from Dunes Arts Foundation and their musical theater class. Thank you so much for coming on Art in the Air Spotlight. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. That's a great offering. And a spotlight extra. Northwest Indiana contemporary artist Dorothy Graydon will have a new exhibit at the Renaissance Court Gallery in the Cultural Center of Chicago. It is located in the Loop at the corner of Randolph Street and Michigan Avenue, 78 West Washington Street. Art in the Air Spotlight and the complete one-hour program on Lakeshore Public Media is brought to you by Macaulay Real Estate in Valparaiso, Ola Patrician, Senior Broker. And as a reminder, if you'd like to have your event on Art in the Air Spotlight or have a longer feature interview, email us at aotaatbrek.com. That's aotaatbrek, B-R-E-C-H, dot com. Hi there. This is public radio theme composer B.J. Liederman, and you're listening to Art on the Air on Lakeshore Public Radio 89.1 FM and on WBLP 103.1 FM. We would like to welcome Loren Bohal to Art on the Air. Loren is a fourth-generation furniture maker and founded Bohal Designs and Fabrication in 2016, collaborating with the community and employing a small team of craftspeople. Based in Indianapolis, Loren designs and builds elegant pieces for residential and corporate clients across the country. Thank you for joining us on Art on the Air. Aloha and welcome, Loren. It's very nice to meet you. Yes, nice to meet you, too. Thanks for having me. Well, Loren, how we always like to start our show off is an introduction to our audience. We want to know about your origin story, where you grew up. I always like to say, how do you get from where you were to where you are now? So tell us all about Loren. Well, I grew up outside of Columbus, Indiana, which is kind of a big architectural city in the Midwest. But I grew up in Westport, which is about 25 minutes outside of that. And the Bohal side of the family are horse breeders and trainers. So I grew up on a farm with, you know, all of us were pretty close together. And my father and grandfather were woodworkers. And so that was already a big kind of like staple in everybody's lives. And my aunts and uncles kind of all lived within like four or five miles of each other. So we would ride horses up and down the road and go back and forth to see everybody. And everybody had their own woodshop. And so when I was really young, I spent a lot of time with not only my dad and his twin brother in their woodshops, but with my aunts, who were really beautiful woodcarvers and toy makers. So I feel like I got a lot of the like freedom of creativity from spending time with them because I feel like my father was, you know, they did a lot of arts and crafts and shaker style furniture, which has a lot of like rules to it, you know. And so being able to have that exposure to like a very loose, fun type of woodworking was really impactful for me when I was a lot younger. To see my aunts do that work, too. And to see, you know, just to be around these women that were already, you know, in the workplace and craftspeople. Constantly creating, it sounds like. Yeah, yeah. I think I feel that in myself a lot. There's almost this feeling of like compulsive urge to create sometimes, you know. But, you know, younger years I spent time in the woodshop a lot with them and I gleaned a decent amount of information. But as I grew up, I became really, really deeply involved in the bike industry. And so for a large part of like my early years, I was working in bike shops and working with bike mechanics and in bike non-profits. And my first venture was actually a non-profit in Columbus that's still open today, actually. It's called the Columbus Bike Co-op. I think I started that in 2004 or something. Motorbikes or pedal bikes? Pedal bikes, pedal bikes. Okay. It was a really big part of my life for a long time. So I would take tours every year. And a good friend of mine, who was an engineer at the time, said, Hey, I'm tired of my job. I need to go do something else. I'd really love to study yoga. In India, do you want to go? And I said, Yeah. Do you want to ride bikes? And we'll try to ride to Vietnam. Because I'd always wanted to go to Vietnam. So we went on this really long bike trip. We were on the road for four or five months. And during that trip, I was game planning how I would come back and leave the bike industry and be full-time in the art and woodwork industry and furniture industry. It had always been part-time for me, and it was something that I was still making furniture for small businesses locally in Columbus, but it was always peripheral. And when I got back from that trip, I decided to just commit to it 100% and do that. My first thought was that I needed to move to Indianapolis or a bigger place where the business was. I joined a metal sculptor who was just commissioned for a large project. And so he hired me on as his kind of primary fabricator, and he and I worked together for the first couple of years, and I gleaned a lot of metalwork experience from that, which became something that I integrated into my furniture as well. And metalwork is a big part of what we do now, too. So we do a lot of woodwork and metalwork. But once I started to build a clientele in Indianapolis, I think people connected with me genuinely and just me staying true to what I was doing, and eventually it just grew into what it is today. So your business is located in Indianapolis. I noticed from your biography and your website that you also have expanded beyond that, that you have national and I even think international clients. So tell us about how that expansion occurred. Well, for us, some of our pieces are pretty expensive, and I think one of the big things that we realized we needed to do was to market just out to as wide an audience as we could. And we actually work and help produce for a couple of different designers. And so we kind of connected with their clients as well. That took us down to Texas and over to the East Coast and over to the West Coast. And we sell internationally through First Dibs. So that is a platform that designers and people who find collectibles sell on. And so that's our platform for that right now. But, yeah, some of our work is really nice to have you here, but some of those pieces are really more sought after farther away. So what was the inspiration between marrying the metal with the wood and the components, the way you do the components? It's like so innovative and it's, I don't know, it's really gorgeous. Oh, thank you. I think for me, woodwork had just become something that I was so familiar with, but also something that was so frustrating because wood is a lot like a living, moving element. It just really, there's no way to contain that. And I think the appeal of metal was the level of precision that you could start to integrate into things with metalwork, since you could get down to a measurement that wood wouldn't really allow for, because you could measure wood to a thousandth of an inch, but it wouldn't really matter because in a month it's going to change a little bit and it's not going to be the same. So marrying the two together was a challenge because of the fact that one moves and one doesn't. But I love the idea of being able to have that precision in metalwork and the ability to engineer something that's really, really refined and then bring it together with the material that maybe it wouldn't normally want to marry with really harmoniously, unless you really think about how it's engineered together. So I think that challenge just inspired me to want to do it more. And then I saw something that I thought I could be really good at because I feel like it's something I can be really thoughtful about. Complement each other so well. You know, the hard, modern metal and then the wood just warms it up in such a, you know, such a beautiful way. One really benefits from the other quite a bit. So they're, they're nice, nice together. You know, looking at your offerings on the website, and I see your projects are not just like home furnishings. So tell us about some of the projects you do that are beyond like what we would think in typical furnishing. I mean, there's a whole commercial section. So, Joe, tell us about the expansion of that. Yeah. Well, our metalwork side of the shop became a really, really big part of the work we do. And so the metal shop grew into something where we started to do and offer what we call architectural installation. So those are pieces that would be designed and outfitted in your house to be these really unique statements. Like we do ceiling glass doors, ceiling glass room dividers, handrails, staircases, things like that. And again, it just, to me, it felt like this element of furniture because it does, like, tell the person's story who's, you know, whose home it is. And it's, it's so, they're so dynamic, those pieces, they just can make an entire space. So, yeah, we've embarked on some of that larger scale metalwork as well. And it's something that we can make and ship or we can make and install. It's just another thing where we can have the privilege to be able to have creative control. I see you even have, like, storefronts and a couple things like that. And how do you approach a project like that with someone with storefronts? Yeah, for a while we would do, we would manage whole designs, interior designs and build out. And that way we could create basically a furniture package that was really cohesive. We did that and still do it with a team of, like, a team of people most of the time. But, so that is definitely not a lone venture, you know, for me. But we, we have a small core group that we go in and design with the clients and then we come up with color palettes. And then we digitally design the furniture pieces so that we can explore what, you know, what they want in the space. There's just a nice way to be able to give the clients a deeper control over every story that their space is telling, you know. And down to those furniture elements and those little architectural elements. It just makes for a really dynamic space. So, I'm wondering about your design sensibility. Growing up as a, you know, the fourth generation now of furniture makers, how much of your design sensibility has been passed along? Or, you know, because yours is very lacking any ornamentation. It's really just elegant, clean lines, minimalist, you know, perfection of simplicity, really. You know, and then I remember, like, I read that your father did the furniture, but he also made hammered dulcimers. Which, you know, so you've had a lot of, and you've had basket weavers, and so there's a lot of different, different information coming in. Yeah. There's a lot of heritage, and, like, the Bohol basket weavers of Brown County are, like, a big thing that people kind of come back to. And it's a neat heritage to see, because there's all these images of, like, great-grandfathers and old relatives. But, for me, the design elements that I like have really leaned towards stem from, I think, that sort of shaker style initially. Or that the arts and crafts style of, like, I was really into and focused on hand-cut joinery. I studied at Mark Adams School of Woodworking for a while just to be able to refine how I'm using hand tools. Which, for production, is not super common, but I feel like for the way I'm trying to design most work, it's based around the construction, less about the ornamentation. And the ornamentation is the construction, if I can, you know, if I can make that work. So, having exposed joinery, having people see a piece. Because, internally, woodwork tends to be more elaborate than it looks like from the outside. And people ornament the outside. But the truth is, like, some of the most amazing parts of wood construction is happening internally. You can't see it. So, I like the idea of bringing that to the forefront. We do a small coffee table called the Hallie Table. And it has pegs exposed at the top, and it has the joinery exposed at the side. And it starts to tell a little bit of the story of, like, why that table is made the way it is. And it's just enough for people to ask about it. And then, that way, I feel like, if I'm around, I'd love to be able to explain, like, why it's built this way. To keep the wood flat. To keep, you know, things from being able to expand or keep them expanding and contracting so they can't crack. So, I think that most of my design is coming from a place where, like, simplicity is the key. Because that allows you to see the finer details of things. I don't know if you know Krista Bermeo. She's an Indianapolis glass jewelry artist. And she would be, like, your complementary person in her craft. And her work is just so spare and so dynamic, you know. So, when I saw your work, she popped up in my head right away as being your sister complement. She was in the show just not too long ago. Oh, really? So, I've run close to her for a while. Yeah, she was part of an old collective that I was a part of back in the day. So, we see each other occasionally. Her work is really beautiful. It is beautiful. Do you have, like, showroom pieces, like, existing pieces that are there? Like, I mean, do you even have a showroom per se? But it seems like most of the stuff you do is custom. But do you have some, like, if I'd walk down there and say, okay, well, here's this, this, this. Tell us about that. And also, tell us a little bit about your design process. You touched on it a little bit. But, you know, when you approach someone and someone approaches you, how does that all work? Yeah. So, we do have a showroom. We actually have a 3,000-square-foot space at the front of our production facility that we branded as Appaloosa. So, that's kind of a throwback to growing up with all my siblings. Like, everybody had a horse they thought they would have when they got older, and I always thought I'd have this, like, Appaloosa. And so, I branded the storefront Appaloosa, and it was basically a platform for us to be able to show our studio furniture. But it has actually kind of evolved into a retail space as well. So, our furniture is there on display, and we also have, like, complimentary retail that we sell with that. And then as far as design process goes with when it's with a client, I usually try to just sit and walk them through a series of questions and listen to what they have to say to me and just take rough notes. Then I can go back and begin a 3D modeling phase with. It's a little bit trickier. Working with clients is wonderful, but being creative on demand, if it's not going in the direction that feels really natural to you, is tough. And you always have to kind of bring people back and say, Hey, you know, if this is a style you want to go with, maybe you've got this other designer that might be a better way to go. We do a lot of digital work these days, so we bring a lot of visuals to the clients to be able to make choices from there. Studio furniture design for me, if it's my own work, is almost always pencil to paper to start. I keep a sketch pad by the bed, and if an idea pops in my head, I just have a larger grid, and I'll just quickly scribble something into that grid. And then as that builds up, I'll start picking out the ones I like more, get a little bit better sketch on paper and then take it to the 3D world. Because digital designing can be tricky. It can curb how you design something because of your knowledge of how to design it in 3D. I feel like it makes way more sense to do it on paper and pencil and then take it to the 3D world. You know what I really love? I love the blackened steel with the bronze and brass. That is like the ultimate. Yeah, yeah. So what about the origins of that? That particular piece started out as a small sculptural piece. Derek Crocker, he was one of our main metal fabricators for a really long time. He's an incredibly talented guy. He actually designed a small sculptural piece like that that he had just made as sort of like a paperweight or just a little display. And he so beautifully joins metals like that with using bronze in the steel. And as we looked at it, we thought, you know, like, what do you think about blowing this up and actually making something that's a little bit more faceted and a little bit larger size and make it into a functional sculptural piece? And so we modeled and designed that in a series of different sizes and then went through and welded them out with bronze and blackened the steel. And it just is a it's really like a really cool take on, I think, like Kintsugi, like the Japanese form of like fixing something that was broken with gold, you know? With gold, yes. That was our thought behind, you know, bringing that bronze in and trying to make those seams be like the focus, like focus on the actual joint, you know, and I think it's neat. And then the blackened patina, that texture is so beautiful. So it just it doesn't look super. I mean, it does look super dynamic, but there's not much to it. You know, it's just beautiful to stare at up close. I see you here in a partnership with what's called Batch, which does small. Tell us a little bit about that. And is that still going on? And, you know, those are smaller pieces that are much more, I would say, decorative. Yeah. And so Batch has retired or Chelsea, who runs Batch, is retired. She actually lives in Georgia overseas now. And she's wonderful. But she did start us on a path of like creating small goods. And that's one of those things that we actually offer in our storefront in Appaloosa, because, you know, people aren't going to walk in off the street very often and buy a $2,000 chair. But we are like very into the tradition of like coffee ritual stuff and incense and home rituals. And so we create these pieces that are like we work with a ceramicist who makes a mug and then we make a serving tray that goes with that mug. It's like a complimentary piece. We make incense holders. And that's really mostly spurred from the first small pieces that we made with Batch. Are they available online? Because I didn't find those online. I mean, I saw that you produced them, but I didn't see that they could be purchased online. Are available online under the Appaloosa tab. But I would say that it's likely that the website might be down because they're about to relaunch it in like the next couple of days. So, yeah, maybe a couple of days, but they should have a new one up. I'm going to ask you about COVID and the pandemic and how did that impact you? Obviously, you would have trouble working together, I think. And, you know, but tell us about the impact of COVID and the pandemic. It was sort of interesting for us. We were busy through the whole thing. And we had to have some really serious conversations with our employees. We had a couple of employees that were in the food industry. And they were part-time in the shop and they were part-time in the food industry. And they all got let go. And they wanted to keep working. And so we had to sit down and say, okay, like we need to be really responsible for each other if we're going to do this. But if you guys want to keep working, this is going to be like masks on. Everybody keeps track of what's going on. And I think four or five of us were there all the time. And we took on all the people that left the food industry full-time. And it just happened that we were lucky enough to glean a little bit of support, but mostly that we just were able to stay. People really still wanted to work. I don't know. People were sitting in their house staring at the wall. They decided they wanted pieces of furniture. So we were in a unique position. And, luckily, in a unique position to be able to take some people on that were losing their jobs. Yeah, suppose where you design things digitally and you can render a concept that might help, and especially a distance format like that and everything. So I guess that would work really well. Is there anything creative, artistically, that you personally would like to do outside of what you're doing right now? Well, that's something I almost have an issue with. I have a really hard time not doing something new all the time. And so I love what I'm doing right now. But we've recently embarked a lot on leather work, which I took on myself. Now we have somebody that does it. But I love to sew. Actually, it was something I used to do a lot when I was younger. I used to love making clothing. So, anyways, we took on leather work, and recently we've taken on concrete casting more, which, again, is something that I've just found that I really love the texture of concrete. I love the ability to be able to make this mold that you can reproduce something with, too. It's awesome. Concrete furniture, the texture is just so glorious. Anything that has that deep texture, I love it. And so, yeah, I'm doing some more of that right now, too. Leather is like all the bridles and saddles and all that leather work. All the leather work, we did kind of base around what would be an attack room. So it is kind of all a kickback to that early life for me. Do you still do any kind of cycling in your spare time? Oh, I still cycle a little bit. I play music in a band, too, and so I feel like I still have quite a few hobbies. Our workload has always been pretty big, so I try to get it when I can. But I love mountain biking and cycling. Well, we've got only about a minute left. Can you tell us, first of all, how we can find out information about your business, if you have a website, things like that? Yeah, yeah. Well, if you go on the website for Bohal Design and Fabrication, that's bohaldf.com. You can keep up with anything we have going on there. We have classes in the holiday times, and then we have both our furniture and our storefront items on there. Find us on Instagram at bohaldf. And if you want to listen to any of our music, you can get on Spotify and check out Bigfoot Yancey. I play banjo in that band. Well, we appreciate you coming on Art in the Air. Lauren Bohal. You can find them at bohaldf.com in Indianapolis and Brookside Avenue. Thank you so much for coming on Art in the Air and sharing your artistic journey. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. Yeah, it's been a complete pleasure. Thank you. Yeah, it was great to meet you, too. Art in the Air listeners, do you have a suggestion for a possible guest on our show, whether it's an artist, musician, author, gallery, theater, concert, or some other artistic endeavor that you are aware of or a topic of interest to our listeners? Email us at aota.brech.com. That's aota.brech.com. Art in the Air is supported by an Indiana Arts Commission Arts Project Grant, South Shore Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Did you know that you can also listen to Art in the Air anytime as a podcast at Lakeshore Public Media's website through Lakeshore's app or from NPR? Plus, it's available on demand from your favorite podcast website, including TuneIn, Spotify, Amazon Music, Pandora, Apple Music, iHeartRadio, and many more. If you have a smart speaker like Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, or Apple Siri, just tell to play Art in the Air to hear the latest episode. This is Curtis L. Crisler, poet laureate of Indiana, and you're listening to Art on the Air on Lakeshore Public Media 89.1 FM and on WVLP 103.1 FM. We would like to welcome Lauren Connolly to Art on the Air. Lauren is involved and engaged in many varied types of enterprises. Previously a dive professional, she is a certified drone pilot for JL Aerial Views, also a certified interpretive guide, volunteer naturalist, and she holds a career diploma in wildlife and forestry conservation and is a master herpetologist. In other arts, she paints pet portraits under Elsie Aqua Arts and is a photographer, especially from a kayak. Thank you for joining us on Art on the Air. Aloha and welcome, Lauren. It's nice to have you here. Thank you very much for having me. We share the kayak photography. I do a lot of that for my kayak in the Lakeland where I live and shoot a lot of wildlife from it, so it's kind of interesting. Well, we always like to get to know our guests a little bit about their background. I always like to say how they got from where they were to where they are now. So tell us all about Lauren. Oh, my goodness. How much time do you guys have? Well, we have 23 minutes, so how much do you want to give us? That's right. So I grew up in New York and I, gosh, my favorite toy was Play-Doh. I was always creating and I loved nature magazines. And when it got to be around high school, you know, kids and trying to figure out what they want to do, I thought I wanted to do something in science, but art really inspired me. I signed up for all the art classes. And when it was time to go to college, I thought I would do graphic design. And I decided pretty early on that I did not like other people telling me what kind of art I should be doing. And I rerouted and tried doing science for a little bit. It took me about 17 years to finally get my degree just because I was going part-time, I had a son, and I was also working at an aquarium. And just from being in that environment, I ended up being a dive professional for about – I was a dive professional for five years. I was at the aquarium for about 16. And I did not enjoy a lot of the technical aspects of diving. I enjoyed being so close to the animals and I loved creating. I got to create the newsletter for the volunteers and conservation trips where I would focus all my creative energies on different activities for people to do to connect with the outdoors and inspire conservation. We would do beach cleanups, lionfish derbies, coral restoration. And so that was kind of my origin story. I was in a career that I thought was really my – I thought it was my dream job for a while. And, you know, 2020 happened and things all shooken up. Oh, that's for sure. And in diving, you actually are certified in open water, open sea dive for scuba. Is that correct? Yeah, I'm a certified PADI instructor. I've not renewed all the insurance and all that paperwork, so I'd have to go through all that. But I did take the test. That was one of the biggest and most stressful tests I've ever had to take in my life. But I did pass, thankfully. Tell us a little bit about now that you're doing drone photography with your husband. Tell us about the transition in that and also learning that. I should say that I'm an actual pilot, so a lot of the stuff I've shot was from an airplane, but I do have a drone. I haven't taken my 107. They call it an extension to your pilot's license. I know the rules, but I don't do it commercially yet. So as a photographer, I do that. But, yeah, it's still kind of a challenge to fly the thing and concentrate on the photography. And the drone I have lasts about 20-some minutes in the air, and then it's down for a hot swap. But tell us how you got into it. Certainly. So in 2020, when I got furloughed from my job, I realized just how bad of a situation I was in. I was burnt out 50 to 60 hours a week, and I was missing time with my family. So I decided to take a step back from that career, and my husband was also retiring from the military. And we're both in that spot at the same time. We're like, what do we do now? Which is kind of weird. We're in our 40s. We thought we'd have everything figured out and made, and here we are having to completely figure things out again. So I love photography, and my husband, his original passion was in geography and in maps. So I'm like, why don't we create a business where we combine our talents? And I kept seeing on, I guess it's Craigslist or the job ads, they were looking for drone pilots for real estate. I'm like, let's give it a try. And he had a program where when military people retire, they get a stipend to help them transition from military life to civilian life. And it paid for him to get his 107 for our website and all sorts of things, and it really helped us get up on our feet with that business to take off, so to speak, with the drone piloting. And that's how JL Aerial Views got started. And we've been doing that for about four years now, and he's gotten into the FPV, which is the first-person view where you wear the goggles and you fly through really tight corners and things. So we've been focusing on doing that and also some thermal photography where we go and try and find missing animals. What type of clients do you have? You started with real estate, but then what other things do you do with your drone photography? So we still do a lot with real estate. We've got a company, EXP Realty in Loveland, that has been amazing for us, and we work very closely with them. And we are trying to get started with PhytoTracker, and that's a new project that's going on where we will be in charge of a certain area. If somebody has a missing pet, we'll use a thermal drone to find the animal where time is of the essence. And we'll be able to quickly recover the animal. So you also do paint pet portraits. Did you paint in elementary, high school at all? Was that something you were interested in, or how did that come about? I did do a lot of painting in high school with my art classes there. I'm not classically trained to go to college for painting. In 2020, when I did step back from what I thought was my dream career with the aquarium, I spent a lot of time outdoors and a lot of time doing watercolor and learning more and more about watercolor. And I had been doing acrylic painting before then, and to me it always felt very flat. And it felt like I was getting frustrated with the paint drying out, and I couldn't just kind of pick up and restart a project. So when I discovered watercolor beyond the Crayola 8-pack that they give us in high school, I was blown away by the depth of the painting with the layering and the portability. I have this little, it's like a gum packet-sized watercolor palette and a little 5x5-inch sketchbook, and I can throw that in my purse and I can go into the woods and I can spend some time in nature drawing a bird or a piece of fungus that I find or anything. So I do that a lot, and I do, see behind me there, I've got a picture of a dog. I really got into going beyond natural colors, and I do a lot of, instead of browns, I'll do oranges, and instead of blacks, I'll do blues. And I do lots of splashes and splatters, and it's a lot of fun. In 2022, a local vet hired me to do pet portraits for all of her vet techs, and I ended up painting about 100 total animals in 2022. So it was a lot of fun. My husband says I have a talent for making people cry or a superpower for making people cry. They'll see a picture of their pet, and they'll just break down into tears, like happy tears. But it's a lot of stress to paint somebody's pet. I spend a lot more time painting the pet than I would, like, say, the cardinal that's behind me, because you want to make sure that you're getting every single detail and nuance in that animal, in the dog or cat, so that somebody can look at it and know that that's their buddy. So do you primarily do dogs and cats for people, or have you done lizards and birds and rabbits and skinny pigs? I have done some lizards and a hog-nosed snake for people's pet portraits. I've done horses before, and as far as people's pets, mostly people have the cats and dogs that I focus on. And, again, it's a lot of stress, but I do enjoy it. It's a lot of fun, and it's always nerve-wracking until I give it to them, and they're so happy. I see a blue ribbon on a hippo behind you. Is that what I'm looking at, a hippo? Yes, that is. If you're familiar with Cincinnati and Fiona the hippo, she was pretty popular, I believe, in 2020. She was a preemie baby, and she made national headlines. But I got a picture of her when I went to visit the zoo, and I turned that into a painting, and that got Best of Show in first place at the Hamilton County Fair in 2022. Congratulations. Very good. So what kind of photography do you do? I focus on wildlife photography. Yesterday, it was a solar eclipse photography, which was unlike anything I've ever seen in my life. It was fantastic. But I go to Cades Cove once a year, at least, and film bears. I've got that barred owl behind me. It's also available. Oh, that was a blue ribbon, right? Yeah, that was Best in Show in 2023. And I use a lot of my photography as inspiration for my paintings. Just out of curiosity, because we do have a lot of photographers on the show, what equipment do you use? I have been shooting with a Sony, I believe it's the A1. And my favorite lens is my 600 millimeter, which can be kind of a pain when you're out in the wild, but I do have a chest harness that I use to help me carry that around. And when I travel, I use my 210 millimeter lens. And that's primarily what I use. I also have a Nikon that I'll use every once in a while. That was the 900. And my Olympus Tough is my favorite for underwater photography. Okay. And also, what do you do for post-processing? Oh, gosh. Well, don't ask me about organization, because I'm still working on that. I use Lightroom, and thank goodness, they are really good at, you can search by. If I'm looking for an owl, I can type owl, and it'll help me find it. But I use Lightroom primarily. Sometimes I'll use Topaz if I'm trying to eliminate noise reduction. I want to know what is involved in being a master herpetologist, and how do you put it into practice now? Oh, goodness. So that was a class that I took in, I believe it was 2020, and I was just, I was taking all the classes. I still take a lot of classes. I am always in the process of learning, and I think that's good for people. But, so, it was, how do I explain it? Do you have lizards and snakes and all of that, or what drew you to herpetology? I am a huge sea turtle lover. That is my favorite animal by far, and I do have a lizard. I have a bearded dragon, and also my son has a Herman's tortoise, and I'm currently rehabbing two eastern box turtles that have a total of six legs between the two of them. They are almost ready for release, so the weather's been getting warmer, so they'll go back out into the wild. And, yeah, so the class is kind of like a college level class on all sorts of different reptiles. You do a slideshow at the end and present it to your classmates, and I use the knowledge to help me with, well, rehabbing animals, and we also, it's salamander season, getting towards the end of salamander season, so when it's a rainy night, you can go out into the vernal pool areas, and you can watch the salamanders making their way to the vernal pools, which is a really cool experience. You're listening to Art on the Air on Lakeshore Public Media, 89.1 FM, on WVLP, 103.1 FM. So, do you miss the diving? Just even for recreation, I mean, obviously working for the Aquarium, you had a more specific mission, but do you ever want to slap the gear on and go out and dive? Yeah, we still go out with the entire family. It's a family of divers, so my son, as soon as he turned, I believe it was 11 or 12 years old, as soon as he was of age, we went down to Florida at Blue Grotto, and he got certified there. It's one of my favorite places to dive. The water is crystal clear, and they have a soft-shelled turtle named Virgil that will come right up to the divers, and it's just a ton of fun. My son loves turtles, too. And so we get to go there. We've gone to St. Croix, and unfortunately, my son and I both had sinus infection going on, and we couldn't go diving because it would be really hard to equalize and things like that. So we were really bummed out, and we finally just were like, you know what, let's just put on our snorkel gear, and we got to go out. And one of my favorite pictures, I've got the sea turtle that's coming up for a breath of air right next to my son holding his GoPro, and he's just over the moon. It was just an incredible experience. So if he's got a GoPro, it sounds like he likes to do photography also. He does. He is into art as well. His favorite class is his digital design class, and he also has a 3-D printer, so he spends a lot of time creating things and lots of trial and error. And, you know, for kids when they are so determined and they keep failing and they keep trying different things, that's how I know he really loves it, because otherwise he's just like, oh, I'll just give up and go do something else. But he is so determined and is just into experimenting and trying and seeing what works. That's so exciting. Is there anything you have not done that you'd like to do? You know, you've had a wide career of being a dive professional and working in an aquarium and doing that, and now the drone pilot and doing art. Is there something that you think, gee, you know, after, of course, like I guess the first part of that question I'll say is how did COVID influence you? Obviously you lost your job, but then it's like, now is there something else you want to do? Well, at the beginning of the show you guys were talking about Elsie Aqua Arts, but it has shifted a little bit. It's Wild Development Studio, where I've combined the photography and the nature journaling and watercolor art all into one mission and really kind of cleaned up the goal. And the goal is using wildlife arts and adventure to inspire people to get outside and explore. Everything I do is focused on nature and wildlife, and I really want to inspire other people to get outside because it was such a healing journey for me in 2020, being outside and connecting with paint and just being in the moment in unlike a way that I've ever been before. I feel like adults really struggle with connecting with nature. It's so easy for kids to just go outside and play. There's no right or wrong. They don't worry about how they look or, you know, I've got to do this for the Instagram or whatever. Kids don't care. Adults, I feel like we're a little bit more critical, and I want to, through my podcast and through Wild Development Studio, inspire people to try and find different ways to get outside and connect with nature. So I'm really focusing on the podcast and doing nature journaling. I would love to be a public speaker and go around and tell people how they can implement some of these things into their life and to experience reduction in stress, being present in the moment, and just overall health benefits. And I'd love to write a book, and eventually I would love to maybe do conservation trips again, but kind of add my own spin to it where it's a little bit different than when it was at the aquarium. And what about JL Aerial Views? Is there a dream client you would like to work with, or what's the next step for that? What's the next growth step? Goodness. So locally we are working with Loveland Shorts. It's a brand-new film festival that's going to be going on here in Loveland, Ohio. So we're going to be teaching a class on drone photography for film. My husband and I did a fun documentary called Finding Frogman, where we were featuring some of our drone photography. It talked a lot about nature and the different things that you can see in the Loveland, Ohio area. So that's what we're currently working on. Our dream client would be Josh Gates. We love watching Expedition Unknown and episodes like that, and we're always pointing out, oh, that's drone photo, that's drone video. And it would be a dream to be watching TV or a movie and see our footage up on the big screen. Well, it sounds like you've got a lot set up. Now tell us about your podcast a little bit, what topics you cover and how people can find it. The podcast is called Wild Developments, and it is all about wildlife art and adventure to inspire a desire to explore outside. And I believe anybody could be on the show. If you had a really cool moment outside and you want to share it with somebody, I welcome them to be on the show. I've had authors on. I've had the Golden State Naturalist. She's a naturalist from California. She has a pretty big following on TikTok. I've had a woman who visits graves, and if there is a recipe on the gravestone, she will recreate the recipe and bring it to the tombstone. And it's kind of a unique way to get outside in a way that I've never thought of before. So there are all sorts of different people and different ideas for the podcast. I've had photographers. I've had watercolor artists. So anybody and everybody, as long as we are talking about nature. And it sounds like even you go beyond nature kind of with some of your topics. It's a broad thing. So we talked a little bit about what maybe goals you have and everything like that, and we maybe didn't touch on the COVID thing, but tell us briefly how COVID really seems like it was a life-changing event for both you and your husband. But was it a time that you were kind of down, or did it kind of inspire you? I would say both. It was a very difficult transition. It was very hard. And I was very upset with things that went on with work and in my personal life. And it was also very healing and inspiring. I realized how much time I was spending away from my family. I realized how much I love to take photographs and be out on the water and just sit and be present and observe a beaver that is swimming across and slapping its tail and all these things that I thought were only available inside of an aquarium, a whole world I can explore. And I had been missing out on that. So it was, I guess you can kind of say it was like a Phoenix moment. It was very hard and painful, but then something beautiful blossomed from it. And I wouldn't trade that experience for anything. I value the time that I had, and it has put me on the path to where I am now. And I think it's a beautiful thing that is being created. We want to give you the opportunity, you know, you have several websites and everything, and we will have a link on your picture on our website. But tell us about how people can find you and look at both of your photography and your drone endeavors and everything like that. So for Wild Development Studio, that's for the podcast, the wildlife photography, and the watercoloring, that's all wilddevelopmentsstudio.com and wilddevelopmentsstudio on Facebook, Instagram, X, all the things. And YouTube. And then for JL Aerial Views and the drone photography, it's jlarialviews.com. Well, we appreciate you coming on Art on the Air. That's Lauren Conley, dive professional, retired somewhat, now a drone pilot and artist and photographer. We appreciate you sharing your... Photologist. And that, too. Thank you so much for coming on Art on the Air and sharing your entire life journey. Thank you very much. Thank you. We'd like to thank our guests this week on Art on the Air, our weekly program covering the arts and arts events throughout Northwest Indiana and beyond. Art on the Air is heard Sunday at 7 p.m. on Lakeshore Public Media, 89.1 FM, also streaming live at lakeshorepublicmedia.org and is available on Lakeshore Public Media's website as a podcast. Art on the Air is also heard Friday at 11 a.m. and Monday at 5 p.m. on WVLP, 103.1 FM, streaming live at wvlp.org. If you have a smart speaker like Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, or Apple Siri, just tell to play Art on the Air to hear the latest episode. Our spotlight interviews are heard every Wednesday on Lakeshore Public Media. Thanks to Tom Maloney, vice president of radio operation for Lakeshore Public Media, and Greg Kovach, WVLP's station manager. Our theme music is by Billy Foster with a vocal by Renee Foster. Art on the Air is supported by the Indiana Arts Commission, Arts Project Grant, South Shore Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. We'd like to thank our current underwriters for Lakeshore Public Media, Macaulay Real Estate and Valparaiso, Olga Patrician, Senior Broker, and for WVLP, Walt Redinger of Paragon Investments. So we may continue to bring you Art on the Air. We rely on you, our listeners and underwriters, for ongoing financial support. If you're looking to support Art on the Air, we have information on our website at breck.com slash aota, where you can find out how to become a supporter or underwriter of our program in whatever amount you are able. And like I say every week, don't give till it hurts. Give till it feels good. You'll feel so good about supporting Art on the Air. If you're interested in being a guest or send us information about your arts, arts-related event or exhibit, please email us at aota at breck.com. That's aota at breck, B-R-E-C-H, dot com, or contact us through our Facebook page. Your hosts were Larry Breckner and Esther Golden, and we invite you back next week for another episode of Art on the Air. Aloha, everyone. Have a splendid week. Art on the Air, our way. Express yourself in art and show the world your art. Express yourself in art and show the world your art. Express yourself in art.