Art and Community

(pulp music) - Art is everywhere.

It might be a bee on a flower or one on a Renaissance tapestry.

It might be the cut of a beautiful dress or one made by a pair of scissors.

It might be something that makes you stop and wonder because art is incorporated into almost everything, and we're excited to share that everything with you.

Welcome to "Art Inc." In this episode, we're exploring community.

(static hissing) - [Announcer] If you want to know what's going on.

(upbeat funky music) (plane buzzing) (water splashing) (cat meowing) (birds calling) (audience applauds) (cars honking) (static hissing) - Let's take a trip to Newport for a family portrait of sorts.

A father who celebrates everyday faces and a daughter who asks us to face the truth.

(upbeat pulp music) (boat horn blowing) (seagulls calling) (crowds chattering) (lively music) (people laughing) (funky jazz music) - The people here all have a story to tell, and I try to tell their story.

To me, they're all important.

(funky jazz music continues) This is just my little time capsule of when I'm here.

This is Newport at this period of time, going through, and this is what I'm celebrating.

(funky jazz music continues) When I went to RISD, I majored in the discipline of printmaking, etching and engraving.

So after graduating from RISD, I packed my bags and went to Paris, and I lived there for two years.

The early etchings had to do with fantasy circus people, characters, but they were all made up of my imagination.

After that, I came back and RISD offered me a job teaching at printmaking.

So I taught at RISD, I taught at Massachusetts College of Art, but then when I got married and had kids, I started moving away from the etching thing and getting into painting and photography.

I did a lot of photography.

(lively jazz music) From my early etchings to the paintings I'm doing now, I try to put a sense of humor into all my work, and even the cover of my book "Working Newport" is everyone from Stop & Shop on strike.

So they're all holding strike signs, but says, "Working Newport."

So I try to get a sense of humor in everything I can do because life too serious, you know?

The book came about because the collection grew to over 450 portraits, and it became obvious that this was kind of the working Newport book of different people that are just here in Newport working.

So I've just added 12 new portraits to the book.

- [Tracy] Do you think you'll ever be done?

- (laughs) I'm 72 now, yes.

So I think within the next 10 years, it'll definitely be done, but I would like to make as many as possible.

(lively jazz music) (lively jazz music continues) (lively jazz music continues) - [Tracy] It's funny that you're not in the book "Working Newport."

- Oh, yeah, no, because I am not a fan of looking at me.

Sometimes when I paint people, they're like, "Well, thank you, I guess."

It's funny because it's something that I enjoy doing for them because I make them commit to letting me do it, but I'm not sure they would seek me out normally to have the portrait done.

In fact, I can tell you they wouldn't seek me out to have the portrait done.

(bell chimes) (old time folk music) Creativity is a family value.

My oldest daughter's an artist, and she is driven like I've never seen anybody driven before.

She's been a great influence, and hopefully I've been an influence on her.

- My dad's work and my work, outside of possibly the palette, couldn't really be more different in every aspect.

I mean, like he literally is a portrait artist, and I removed the faces from my women.

(hard rock music) My dad is a really talented artist.

I don't think I would be where I'm at if it wasn't for his influence on me, even though our work couldn't be any more different.

(upbeat music) Art is a reflection of and reaction to society as much as it is just a insight into like the artist's mind.

You know, because everything's subjective at the end of the day.

You know, this is my reaction to the world around me.

(upbeat music continues) So Kitch was a pandemic project.

It was sort of born out of needing to stay sane, and I have like no business sense, like everything was going out of business, and I was like, "Hmm, sounds like great time to like open a business."

So I opened Kitch.

I didn't really have anything.

I don't even know what my thinking was when I opened it.

It was initially meant to be temporary.

I really like it.

So for now, I'm keeping it.

My interest in art was sparked at an early age.

When I was 18 finishing high school in India, I started photographing.

Then I moved on to do media and gender studies and then finally went back and went back to photography, and it was the only degree I ended up using.

When I came out of university in New York, I opened up a photo studio called Jane Street Studios in meat-packing district of Manhattan, and I had it open for a few years.

So I left the media machine, and I went to Australia and started doing work on the mining industry there.

After that, I went to New Zealand and documented the deforestation, and then shortly after that, I was an Iceland doing a project, and I was in a motorbike accident, and the motorbike accident left my bedridden for months.

In that time, I realized, A, that photography really has no connection to truth, and that was also when I began, yeah, sourcing recycled material.

(surf rock music) Even though like my discipline and medium has changed quite a bit over the time, the focus of my work hasn't.

Whether it be the exploitation of the natural world or the exploitation of like the female body, that idea just sort of continued into my collage work.

My work is very much separated from myself.

Unlike, I feel like a lot of other female artists are usually the subject of their art, and I feel like that just kind of plays into like the tradition of women always being the subject of art, even when they're the creator.

And now that we have the opportunity to be the creators of it, it doesn't make sense to me to still stay as the subject.

So, you know, I try to like break free from that and hopefully create new avenues for other young female artists to follow.

(film reel purring) (playful jazzy music) (lively lounge music) - This artist creates exquisite jewelry of the female form, a celebration of mother and daughter and of community, past and present.

(lively lounge music continues) (gentle lounge music) - Jewelry is an exciting medium for me because it is a drawing that you can wear out into the world.

It's not something you just hang at home, but it's something you can actually bring with you wherever you go, and you can share it and talk about it.

The feeling behind all of my work is an attempt to help the wearer feel confident.

Hi, I'm Julius Sullivan.

I am a jeweler in Providence.

So much of my life growing up was surrounded by my mother and my mother working and having an art practice that was really important to her and also being successful, and I was always just part of it.

That was such a joyful, positive, strong way to grow up, and I really hope that I can give my daughter something similar to it.

My favorite thing is to just have like a bunch of ladies at my booth all just trying things on.

(both laughing) (gentle lounge music continues) When I'm bending wire to make the earrings, I use either sterling silver or 14 karat gold fill wire.

I work with a template that I've made.

It's just a pattern that I essentially trace in three dimensions.

I consider drawing and wire bending to be the same practice.

It's manipulating a line in a way that can convey the feeling or the idea that I'm trying to embody.

(machine humming) When I'm designing new pieces, a lot of it is just in my head, marinating ideas.

I'll just doodle for a while and play around with wire and see what feels good because often an idea I have doesn't translate at all.

I'll realize that it's totally not an earring (laughs), but maybe it's a necklace.

I've always found that most of my best work has come from trying to fix something.

So my first design where these monster earrings that I'm wearing here.

I have the Nazca earrings that are inspired by the Nazca lines in Peru.

I have some palm earrings, continuing with this botanical theme.

I have Picasso acrobats, and then I have the full body form the lady earrings.

I think it's important to have the female form be out in the world in a less stigmatized way.

It's an important thing to celebrate, especially, especially now as a mother.

They are like little sculptures.

I mean, jewelry is just small art that you can wear.

(funky jazz music) - [Tracy] Let's visit the steel yard for a lesson in art's power to provoke, inspire and heal.

(static hisses) (calm music) (torch sparking) - I am Diana Garlington.

I'm the mother of Essence T Crystal who unfortunately I lost in a drive-by shooting in 2011.

(calm music continues) Once this happened, they gave her a number on a list as a unsolved murder homicide.

She's not just a number.

Her name is Essence.

- I'm Scott Lapham.

I'm an artist and an educator.

Four of my students were lost to gun violence.

One Gun Gone came about as positive response to the idea that so many people were taken out of our lives by gun violence.

So I wanted to have a space that literally and figuratively could talk about how we felt about gun violence.

Since I'm an artist and a visual artist, the idea of having an art project made the most sense because having an art project is a way to have a conversation.

We wanted to make a project where the art is more valuable than the gun.

And then also to have Diana Garlington, an anti-gun violence activist, now involved in the programming itself.

She was learning welding.

She was there every week talking to young people.

- It took an unfortunate circumstance in order for me to change my lifestyle.

Unfortunately, that changed November 26th, 2011.

- The only rules that we have in One Gun Gone is that we don't glorify guns or gun violence, and when we hold the sculptures, we hold them with two hands open.

When you hold it like this, you can have a different relationship with it.

Now we can look at it, we can think about it.

We're not acting as we're conditioned to.

We're conditioned to pick this up, and use it as a weapon.

- I already know it's a firearm.

I already know it's a dangerous instrument.

But like to have that in the steel shop and to present it and pass it between each other in that way just reminds me of in a sobering to what we really are holding.

- Before the students even see one of these weapons, it's decommissioned.

And that starting point then has the culmination of them being used in a sculpture, a metal sculpture, metal fabrication and welding where that weapon then becomes a part of that sculptural piece so that it has a different function.

Art is a different use.

This was a gun, but now it's a sculpture, and when you guys transform it into a sculpture, it's gonna talk about how you feel about gun violence.

- Losing Essence shattered my home.

(machines humming) Those windows broke.

(wood thudding) Pieces of the floor began to fall apart.

And that is what led us to my project.

(torch sparking) These young men are prospering from this program just by being here.

They could be anywhere right now.

They could be out on the streets doing whatever, but they choose to be here.

- The youth is just us, over and over again.

We are reflections.

We see them, and they see us.

Without these kinds of outlets, I don't see peace being very viable.

- It definitely helps someone like her to see that there is something in the world that isn't just all wrong.

(torches sparking) - I think it's changed like my perspective a bit more from hearing like Diana's story and Scott's story about like how gun violence affected their lives.

- I've always just thought of art, like you take a crayon or a marker, and you draw something.

You know, I never would've thought that you can take an actual piece of something metal that affected lives and then bring it up to a beautiful work of art.

Essence's legacy is to change lives.

It's just, you know, the beauty of knowing that people understand.

- Art is a different way of communicating, and it's a language.

Sometimes it's about beauty, and sometimes it's also about other things that need to be confronted to then understand beauty.

- Art is healing.

It's healing.

"Wake up, little Providence.

Don't get caught slipping or taking that ride because you may be added to that number and labeled unsolved homicide."

(silence) (funky retro music) - Let's take an "Art Inc." look back.

(static hissing) (upbeat jazzy percussion music) - My name is Charles Clarkson, and I am the director of Avian Research for the Audubon Society of Rhode Island.

(upbeat jazzy percussion music continues) The Audubon Society is a large, national conservation organization that is devoted to conserving birds and the habitats that they rely on.

(jazzy lounge music) - So is natural perfumery an art, science, alchemy?

How would you describe it?

- I would say it's all three.

I would definitely classify it as an art because for me it's a creative endeavor.

- The first time I walked into Skylight Studios to meet Robert, I was just struck.

It feels like an 19th century artist studio with works of art and sculpture everywhere.

(lively classic piano music) Robert typically is sitting, doing his work underneath a massive skylight, and you're just surrounded by sculpture.

- There's a wide variety of personalities in the becorn world.

They tend to be gentle.

They're almost always curious and up to something.

There are warriors that are defending against squirrels.

They definitely are nurturers.

They feed the wildlife and care for them.

- Hals was really a renowned portraitist.

This is his late style.

This is what he did at the very end of his life, and it's much freer brushwork than he did at the beginning of his career.

And art historians began to embrace this kind of painterly style of his.

And if you think about why, it was about this time that we're seeing beginnings of Impressionism.

You know, Mane did not paint fingernails because Frans Hals did not paint them.

Apparently Degas said that.

I don't know if it's a real quote, but it is attributed to him.

- What I do is I try to, you know, I find those folks that have really touched me and influenced me.

The people, the musicians, the politicians, you know, the big thinkers of a moment in time, right?

A point in history that are influencing us, that are affecting us.

But what I love most, I think, is like really bringing the artwork to the people, you know, to the folk, folk art right?

It's always a trip.

(funky dance music) - For me, for example, like, you know, I suffered, you know, from abuse, and I wasn't sure where some of my anger was coming from, but when I sat down, and I dealt with it, and I started to deal with it, I realized, you know, at 29 I'm dealing with anger that I've had since I was 15.

You know, and then you start to realize how old it is.

See, you're trying to get to, you know, that finish line and become the better you, become a better version of yourself, you know?

And each day is progress too.

So it's not something that's gonna happen overnight, but that's the first step.

- [Tracy] It's so beautiful.

- It's all beautiful?

Sure.

Oh, they're almost like snowflakes.

Each are somewhat different in a way, but more so where the salt, or I should say where the water is sourced from, the trace minerals will differ from location to location.

Salt is all sodium chloride, yes.

But the trace minerals from location to location will differ and therefore giving it a different flavor.

(gentle guitar music) (funky retro music) - Sometimes, it's a familiar face or one crafted from golden wire.

Sometimes, it's a bond you forged or the people you admire.

But wherever we find ourselves, we'll find art.

Thanks for joining us.

And we'll catch you next time on "Art Inc." (static hissing) - [Announcer] If you want to know what's going on.

(upbeat funky music) (plane buzzing) (water splashing) (cat meowing) (birds calling) (audience applauds) (cars honking) (static hissing)