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Art may be the mirror of the soul, but it is also a window on the world. On this episode of State of the Arts, a look at artwork that signals clearly as a “Sign of the Times.”
the new women
Before the Civil War, the ideal woman was portrayed as a faithful maiden or an industrious wife – but soon afterwards, images of strong, athletic women taking charge of their own lives began to be seen in paintings and in the popular press. State of the Arts producer Susan Wallner visited The Newark Museum’s 2006 exhibit, “Off the Pedestal: New Women in the Art of Homer, Chase and Sargent” to see firsthand rare works brought together to explore the changing image of women in late 19th century America. These croquet-playing, bloomer-wearing ladies now seem almost quaint – but an understanding of the historical context, given by the exhibit’s curators Holly Pyne Connor and Mary Kate O’Hare, makes clear that these women were charting new territory. Not only were they getting on bicycles and going out without chaperones, they were also attending college and aspiring to careers. Highlights include important paintings by Winslow Homer, William Merritt Chase, and John Singer Sargent, as well as prints by the popular illustrator Charles Dana Gibson (the “Gibson Girl”) and by one of the first female photographers, Alice Austen.
 Learn about Newark, New Jersey painter Lilly Martin Spencer (1822-1902), one of the few professional women artists in the 19th century.
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“Scribners for June”
by Charles Dana Gibson (1896)
“Mrs. Charles Thursby”
by John Singer Sargent (1897-1898)
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willie cole
Willie Cole's sensibility and abilities as an innovative form maker and imagist have made him an internationally recognized artist. State of the Arts producer Eric Schultz talked with Cole in 2006, during a major retrospective at the Montclair Art Museum of the artist’s works created since the late 1980s. Cole's works track his distinctive Newark, New Jersey heritage, movingly melding the social, political, and cultural perspectives of urban African-American experience. Many of Cole's works relate to issues of the urban experience and race in America. As a young man he studied acting, as well as drawing and painting. He has created prints, sculptures composed of found objects, paintings, and drawings. While much of his work has been inspired by African art (which Cole encountered first-hand at the Newark Museum), Cole made his first trip to Africa in the spring of 2006, shortly after taping his interview for State of the Arts.
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Artist Willie Cole at work
”GE Mask and Scarification”
by Willie Cole (1998)
Artist Willie Cole
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black maria @ 25
The Black Maria Film & Video Festival celebrated its silver anniversary in 2006: 25 years of exhibiting new independent works – most with a cutting edge sensibility. Founded in 1981 by John Columbus, the New Jersey-based festival gives over 70 screenings a year to audiences around the country and beyond. In addition, the Black Maria is an Academy Award qualifying festival for short documentary, animation, and live action films. Columbus got the name for his festival from the primitive studio Thomas Edison built on the grounds of his West Orange laboratory in 1892. Edison originally called it the "rotating photographic building," but it was given its more popular nickname by some performers who thought it looked like a police paddy wagon – or “Black Maria.” 2006’s whirlwind tour took the festival to Los Angeles, West Virginia, Alaska, and Italy to name just a few of the stops. State of the Arts producer Christopher Benincasa caught up with John Columbus to hear the festival director’s take on the last 25 years of independent filmmaking - and to experience the film festivities firsthand.
 Watch a 1996 interview with Maplewood, New Jersey animator Emily Hubley from the State of the Arts archive. Hubley's short video "Octave" is featured in the 2006 Black Maria Film/Video Festival.
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Still from “Mantis Parable” an animated film by Josh Staub, winner of The Black Maria Film & Video Festival’s Director’s Choice Award 2006
Thomas Edison’s “Black Maria” moving picture studio
John Columbus
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familiar faces: rodriguez calero
Collage artist Rodriguez Calero was born in Puerto Rico, raised in New York, and for more than 15 years she has lived and worked in New Jersey. State of the Arts producer Amber Edwards visits Calero in her Union City studio. Her collages are composed of hundreds of disparate photographic images she finds in magazines and advertisements and then decomposes and re-arranges into new images that comment on contemporary urban life. By combining and juxtaposing facial features, body parts, and clothing from so many different sources–different sexes, ages, and ethnic groups–Calero’s “Familiar Faces” look like everybody we know—and at the same time, like nothing we’ve ever seen before. According to the artist, "The collage medium is a kind of surrealist art in which I can construct my own personal expression of ideas. These compositions of the human figure create a puzzle of sorts, which is as complex and fascinating as human nature itself."
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“Confused Deception”
by Rodriguez Calero
“Point of View”
by Rodriguez Calero
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