Perceptions

(gentle music) - Art is everywhere.

It might be as light as a feather or as heavy as a pile of bricks.

It might be a bond forged in fire or one cooled by the ocean breeze.

It might be something that takes you by surprise 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 perceptions.

(distorted audio) - [Narrator] If you want to know what's going on... (lively music) (lively music continues) (lively music continues) - Let's get out of the studio and into the city with an artist who knows how to leave a true impression (lively music) - On plein-air.

It's not that my French is terrible, my French doesn't exist, but I think it translates directly to in open air or outside.

So I've been to this place once before.

It's very secluded.

It's fun 'cause you can kind of exist with your thoughts a little bit more and not get like incepted by passersby being like, "Oh my gosh."

And they're like, "Oh, let me see what it looks like."

And they look at it and they're like, "Oh, it's nice."

They get that look on their face of not being so impressed.

(lively jazz music) I genuinely love it at this point.

(lively jazz music) (upbeat jazz music continues) I'm gonna try and start playing in some lights and darks to sort of find my composition and find my pallet a little bit.

(lively jazz music) I'm a huge proponent of, it's not what you paint, it's how you paint.

That's why I'm very comfortable painting next to a highway.

Well, I shouldn't say very comfortable 'cause I don't know, I think I spend most of a painting just sort of clenching my butt cheeks together hoping it's gonna turn out okay.

But one of the reasons I love painting outside so much is because it keeps you really humble.

- Being a landscape painter, it's really great.

All the time.

Wanted to feel like today, which is overcast weather.

Kind of weird out.

(lively jazz music) I have this pillar here that I see out there, this like weird, it's kinda art deco, super ugly.

And I'm trying real hard not to objectify anything.

When I see a building, I don't wanna just like put down a concrete building and lock it into place.

I wanna be able to still manipulate it and play with it as paint.

(lively jazz music) I'm not trying to complete a shape.

When I look up, I'm trying to see where my eye goes to.

And I think that one can sort of analyze later on, why did it go there?

I think I was too hard on this art deco thing earlier.

I think it might be nicer than I thought.

Some of the intrusive thoughts I might have are, "This won't sell.

This will sell," which is actually a more intrusive thought.

That's when you start to dip into your recipe book of things you know will work.

I want it to feel like a battle.

I want it to feel like a struggle.

And actually, I joke about the insecurities but I think they helped the work at the end of the day.

(jazz music) In a lot of my work, there's an absence in there because my goal isn't just to make what is present pleasant.

I'm looking for something else.

(jazz music) The gallery director at The Dryden Gallery described my work as the gateway drug into abstraction.

What does abstract mean?

I think the Latin root of it is to take from and so I like thinking about it that way.

(suspenseful music) I was lucky enough to have a show at The Dryden Gallery which was a great experience because I got to be my truest self in my work.

There was a long time where I looked at where I am now as it, but I really feel that line always moves.

I have a family and that sense of purpose is far greater than that for me as a painter.

They're the driving force behind just making it work.

Art is a verb.

It's not a thing.

You never get to the point where like, "I did it I figured it out."

You're always traveling, whatever that may be.

(lively music) (playful music) - This artist combines form and function in a way you might overlook.

Each piece, a commission sculpture for one.

(lively music) (playful music) - I am Kaylee Dougherty, I'm an anaplastologist and ocularist.

(playful music) A lot of what I'm doing is basically hyperrealistic sculpture so I do everything on the face, eyes, ears, noses, orbitals hemi facials.

Each piece is custom made for each patient.

It's hand sculpted and designed to fit them in their lifestyle and hand colored and pigmented to their skin tone.

(lively music) It's kind of the extreme commissioned piece.

(laughs) A lot of medicine is a combination of art and science and my field, it really is an intersection of the two.

I wanted to be a sculptor when I was seven.

So that's been all I've ever wanted to do.

(gentle music) I went to school for sculpture at Boston University and all of my focus was on portrait work and life size figures.

Now I do the same.

It's just parts of the portrait instead of the entire thing at any given time.

(gentle music) These prosthetics are typically thought of from a outward appearance and while that is important, all of these body parts have function that people really need beyond just looking natural.

The nose and ears all help in holding up glasses and masks.

The ears are really important for directing sound - [Narrator] Ring-like ripples spread in all directions over the surface.

- [Kaylee] The eye, when it's removed, that volume is lost.

So I'm restoring that shape to make sure that the eye is comfortable, that it has to go into the ducts for the nasal passages.

- [Narrator] Into the nose after flushing and cleaning the entire eye surface.

(playful music) (playful music continues) - Today, I'm seeing a patient, his name is Wilson, and he is here for two different prosthesis, a nasal prosthesis as well as an eye.

His story as it's been relayed to me is that he worked as a camp counselor in Honduras and when he was bringing the children to a festival, there was a group that detonated explosives as a form of protest and he was injured in the process of trying to protect the children.

(gentle music) So right now, I'm mixing some silicones to press into his nasal mold.

So I've mixed the two parts with a Thixo Agen to get the right consistency and then I'll be mixing in the colors to have it match his skin tone.

(gentle music) So the veins are the only piece that are not just pigments.

I wanna make sure that this anatomy is restored in a way that he feels good about how he looks and how this works in his life.

(gentle music) He came previously for a fitting appointment and today, he's coming back with his mother.

(gentle music) I look at my process as the design process.

So when I'm creating these products, they are for my patients.

Let's see what Dr. Bay says.

They need to be something that they can wear, that they can live with, that can meld right into their day-to-day life.

(gentle music) I design prosthetics really to give that control back to my patients.

If you wanna tell your story, you absolutely can and should if you choose to see.

Yeah, so for now...

But just by virtue of existing and and missing an eye or missing a nose, that does not mean that now, you need to become this poster person for that existence.

(gentle music) I love making individual connections.

So it starts to disappear whereas that side, you really- If I get to sculpt and do something that I love to do when it's helping someone else, then that's wonderful.

(gentle music) I prefer that the work that I do is (laughs) not what's front and center.

I want it to just support them to then live their lives the way that they choose to.

(lively music) - This artist work across mediums to deliver his message.

Sometimes, in unexpected places.

(playful music) (gentle music) - Contemporary art is not just painting, it's not just installation art it can be dance, it can be performance on the street, it can be even activism, building a community garden.

Hi, I'm Natalie Cohen.

I'm the director at Central Contemporary Arts.

Central Contemporary Arts is a nonprofit arts organization which focuses on expanding access to the arts in Providence and in Greater Rhode Island in general.

We recognize that sometimes people won't be able to come into our building and see our gallery shows but we wanna make art accessible to people all around Providence.

So one way is having a public art program beginning with billboards by Andrew Moon Bain.

(gentle music) Bain's work explores the ideas of the environment and living in a community and questioning identity and connectivity in a very broad sense.

(upbeat music) He allows people to come to their own conclusions about what those mean to them.

(upbeat music) - Sometimes I feel like delivering work that's beautiful and palatable, but if you look closer, there's a deeper message that is agitating and connecting and representing culture where it may not have been represented before.

Greetings.

I'm Andrew Moon Bain, visual artist, record producer, musician, songwriter, designer.

I added songwriter this time so that's the one I want you to use.

(laughs) Yeah.

Making art and being inspired, it's really a lifestyle.

It's like a part of practice and passion and vision.

I've been very blessed to travel and been curious about other cultures and they just naturally gravitated to the Caribbean when I was young.

Those experiences, those people, those colors all bleed into the visual artwork I'm creating.

A lot of my work is inspired and honoring and related to the natural world.

I'll feel a set of colors are innately African and I'll use that in in a series of paintings that I'm feeling a ancestral pull or retention being expressed in my work at that time.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) I grew up in Seattle.

(gentle music) When I was younger I got bit by inspiration with music and went from classical music into guitar and into hip hop and started writing rhymes.

And then that evolved into songwriting that led into me producing records, not just for myself but for other people.

And I had a good mate that I grew up with who had gone to Jamaica to teach school.

He came back with a 45 final that he produced when he was there.

That kind of set us on the trend.

The Lustre Kings Productions.

We started a record label and really stayed at it in the early 2000s and then started networking with other artists in Jamaica.

Going back to Jamaica often and recording a whole stable of artists and releasing seven-inch records all over the world.

♪ We wanna know what it's like to be free ♪ - Not only do I produce records, I do a lot of the graphic design and album art.

So I've done over 100 album art covers easily.

Part of what drove me to music is that kind of elitist mentality of having understanding of what is being applauded in the art world even to appreciate it.

(gentle music) Public art and a project like adspace is so meaningful 'cause you don't have to jump over any type of hurdle or social classist barrier to access it.

A lot of the billboards that came down, it was kind of dense onslaught of advertising services.

- He has a really great way of connecting his individual works in an exhibition and also in speaking to people directly through his artwork.

One piece that he has shown on Broad Street that's says, "Love Thy Neighbor."

And so what does it mean to love your neighbor in terms of occupying, I guess, space in a community and occupying that with art rather than with advertisements.

- I tried to keep some of that messaging as simple as, "Can you see that we're all made of carbon?"

"Interconnectivity."

Things like that.

You hope that you're doing something in a positive way for the passerby or for somebody in community transit or riding their bike or even walking or playing.

It's like a chance to share oversell.

- So I hope the billboards just inspire conversation between people in Providence.

I hope that people are more reflective about what they see in their neighborhoods and I really hope that it connects different parts of Providence and though it's very different that everything can can come together to form this one whole, this one artwork, this one exhibition.

Now the city itself.

(gentle music) (playful music) - This photographer creates images that reflect the world just as she sees it.

Nostalgic, familiar and mesmerizing.

(playful music) - I would say my work centers around both domesticity and/or identity through relationships.

And I try to bring a sense of wonderment to my work, looking through the camera because that's where all of my imaginary worlds took place.

One of the newest things that I've been incorporating into my artwork is this idea of exploring my identity as an artist that's visually impaired because I don't find it to be the only part of me that is important as an artist.

That does have an impact on how I make my work.

But I don't see myself as a visually impaired artist most of the time.

I forget that I have these challenges in front of me.

When I'm working with a subject I'm thinking about first and foremost, how do I let their personality shine through?

How do I get the essence of the person so that when they look at the photograph, they feel it's an accurate representation of who they are but also is it authentic for me?

And that's a challenge.

Because anyone can be self-conscious or have an off day whether it's on my end or the subject's end.

(gentle music) When I began the series Home Manicured, it was all about documenting the space, the color, the geometric design of the different rooms and objects in the room, and how much sentiment and memory went into that space.

But then once you start to place people in the spaces, it becomes that much more vulnerable because now, you can associate the people with that environment.

The Nostalgia Series portraits where I was taking black and white photographs in a space that was reminiscent of an earlier time whether it was 1950s or the early '60s with a lot of different analog technologies.

I had one of my friends interact with a Victrola and sort of dust off, blow off the dust off of a vinyl record.

Another friend was using a typewriter and he's a writer in real life.

And so being able to tie in their hobbies or interests to those series.

I myself have a self-portrait in front of a chalkboard and I have a book and an old eight-millimeter projector up front because I teach film studies.

My film work is very diverse.

I go between working on narrative pieces as well as experimental videos and films.

It depends on what I'm interested in exploring at the moment.

A lot of my movies center around relationships whether those relationships are about friendship or romantic relationships.

For this current series with the fabric portraits, I wanted to include my mom because like her, I have this visual impairment.

It's genetic and runs through my family and I happen to be the only one in my immediate family other than her that has the optic atrophy or visual impairment.

We went out in the morning early one day when the sun was just coming up in the backyard and I was able to get her to stand in front of one of the garden areas and take her portrait, which was really precious for me.

So I asked her to wear a bright color that would contrast the background which there was a lot of green foliage.

So the orange really allows to be visible through the fabric and to have our shirt pop and also sort of the white slacks to be able to stand out against the darker trees and rocks that are part of that background.

(gentle music) Because I wanted to figure out a way to work with depth perception and most photographs are two-dimensional on paper.

I had to find a material that I could actually create layers and hang them such so that we could get additional layer of dimension and space to the photos.

And so fabric ended up being my way of being able to do that by having these three layers of fabric and where you can sort of see the person materialize the closer you get to that artwork, the better it is in terms of explaining how I see.

(gentle music) And stereo cards were initially a parlor pastime in the 1800s that people used for entertainment to look at photographs and they would create three-dimensional images.

These particular stereo cards have the two images from the left and right that we would normally see are swapped so that it affects your depth perception where normally what you would see in the foreground moves to the back and what it is is in the background moves to the front.

And because it's that exploratory moment that you're trying to find your perfect spot of vision which also happens with my fabric portraits of trying to find that perfect moment where everything lines up for your vision in particular and just your vision.

(gentle music) Illuminated is part of the series that I've been working on with the fabric portraits and these still images.

The series is called Blind Blend, where I took a bunch of footage from going to carnivals and going to holiday display shows and anything that had a lot of lights in movement and was thinking about, "Okay, so if I take off my glasses and I am using my naked eye, how do I see the world?"

If it's blurry or it looks unfamiliar, can that still be interesting?

Can that still be beautiful on its own?

Do I have to always negotiate what I'm given naturally?

Or do I always have to try to perfect my vision to be this ideal image that we've created for ourselves?

So Illuminated looks at all the different lights that are happening from this uncorrected visual perspective.

And I've used the camera to create that.

And so even though some of my work is now about navigating the world through this different way of seeing, it's not the only aspect to my work.

I feel like I'm constantly negotiating between these two different sides of my work or myself as I view myself.

My name is Brittany Severance, and I'm a photographer and filmmaker.

(gentle music) (techno music) - Sometimes, it's a moment captured in time or a vision that's yours alone.

Sometimes, it's a message for everyone or sculpture made just for one.

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

Thanks for being here and we'll catch you next time on Art Inc. - [Narrator] If you want to know what's going on... (lively music) (lively music continues) (lively music continues)