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State of the arts explores how "childhood" fuels the artistic imagination. From a dancer who spent his youth on the streets to a photographer who has a fascination with dolls, childhood is the key to understanding the work of these artists.
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rosanne
cash
 Rosanne Cash grew up in the spotlight of her father, the legendary singer Johnny Cash. She was exposed to great talent in her childhood, but also to drugs, alcohol, and endless travel. Rosanne reflects on her upbringing, her artistic development, and her own emergence as one of America's best known singer/songwriters. She talks about her own approach to motherhood (she has four children) and her children's book, "Penelope Jane," which she wrote for her own daughter. We see Rosanne in performance with her husband and producer John Leventhal in Montclair, New Jersey at the Outpost in the Burbs. They perform songs from Rosanne's Grammy-nominated CD, "Rules of Travel."
 
Read "The Arc of Loneliness" from Bodies
of Water: Short Fiction by Rosanne Cash. © 1996 Hyperion,
New York.
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afterlife
of dolls
 Montclair
photographer and noted psychoanalyst Donna
Bassin considers childhood overrated: idealized
as an innocent idyll but more often a realm
of fear and loss. The very act of thinking
about one's childhood involves remembering--and
mourning--something that has been lost in
adulthood. It's no accident then, that Dr.
Bassin--who was asked by the Giuliani administration
to advise New York City on how to help the
families of September 11th victims cope
with their trauma--makes art about memory
and loss, using the accessories of childhood.
For her series "The Afterlife of Dolls" she set up miniature worlds inside a 1950s
dollhouse in her consulting room, placed
a pinhole camera inside, and opened the
shutter for 45 minutes (the length of a
psychoanalytic session). Dr. Bassin is the
first to admit that her patients would be
surprised to see her sitting on the floor
of her living room, surrounded by dolls,
doll houses, and tiny furniture and accessories,
but she has a sense of humor about the process.
She even has a freud doll, who sometimes
is put on the couch.
Hear
Donna Bassin's "memories ascending/descending" - an audio collage which incorporates children
reading quotes from Freud and Baudelaire
about the role of memory and an 1887 recording
of Thomas Edison reciting "Mary had
a little lamb," which Bassin considers
the "childhood" of recorded sound.
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amelia
bedelia
 Some
books teach children, some books make children
laugh, and some books do both. In 1963,
the first "Amelia Bedelia" book
by Peggy Parish was published. The story
of a wacky maid who took even the simplest
instructions literally (when asked to draw
the curtains, she got out paper and pencil;
when asked to dress the turkey, she found
doll clothes that would fit) was an instant
hit with children. More than forty years
later, the Amelia Bedelia series continues
its popularity with its current author,
Princeton resident Herman Parish, the nephew
of Peggy.
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dancing
with d'amboise
 "How do you prove that children learn something from being involved in the arts?" asks Jacques d'Amboise, world-renowned dancer and founder of the National Dance Institute (NDI). State of the Arts explore the impact of dance on three lives, from the inspiring life story of d'Amboise, to Dufftin Garcia, the young artistic director of the Trenton Education Dance Institute (TEDI), to a Trenton elementary school student who is being introduced to dance for the very first time through TEDI, an affiliate of d'Amboise's NDI.
Watch
a 1991 story from the early days of the
Trenton Education Dance Institute.
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