On NJN2: Friday, December 4 - Thursday, December 10, 2009
@ 5:00 pm • 11:00 pm
Untitled #1 features art that speaks for itself – the Bay-Atlantic Symphony playing Handel and Bach, a Madison-based painter of nail salons and Bible stories, the art of contemporary glass at the Newark Museum, and abstract art by late 20th century Russians.
Bette Blank has a Ph.D. in Engineering from U.C. Berkeley, but her art is about the emotions and feelings of everyday life. In 2000, Blank gave up her day job to pursue painting full-time. According to the artist, it was her mother’s death which caused her finally to pursue her dream – and it prompted her to create a painting as well, “Tug of War.” In it, Blank depicted her mother’s hospital room, filled with family, medical personnel, and angels, as showing the “struggle between the living, loved ones and her dead, loved ones (angels.)” Family memories, popular culture (“Annunciation of the War in Iraq” – as seen on TV in a nail salon), and Bible stories are some of Blank’s favorite themes. State of the Arts producer Susan Wallner visits some of sites of Blank’s paintings with her – including a nail salon and two of her favorite restaurants in her hometown of Madison, New Jersey. Although her style has a naïve look, Blank has studied art at the Brooklyn Museum School of Art and the New Jersey Center for Visual Arts among other places. A resident of Madison, New Jersey, she has had solo shows in New York and New Jersey, and her work is in the permanent collection of The Jewish Museum in New York.
Dena and Ralph Lowenbach have been collecting glass art for decades....and they want to share their passion with the public. They also feel strongly about the city of Newark (where Ralph grew up) and its world-class museum. So they have promised their collection to the Newark Museum, and to mark that commitment, lent some of their major pieces to the museum for a 2007 exhibit. State of the Arts producer Amber Edwards meets the collectors and tours "The Art of Glass," which drew on both the Lowenbach's personal collection and the treasures already at the Newark Museum. The exhibit traces the development of 20th century studio art glass from decorative arts, growing out of the arts and crafts movement, to contemporary sculpture using glass as a primary artistic medium. A veritable "who's who" of glass artists, the pieces on view display both the precursors and the evolution of contemporary studio glass and illustrate the enormous breadth of work in the field today.
Cobalt Violet Deep Persian Set
(1993), blown glass,
by Dale Chihuly
Cross Composition
(1986), cast glass,
by Stanislav Libensky
and Jaroslava Brychtova
Head with Monitor (2003),
cast glass, wire and metal,
by Hank Murta Adams
bay-atlantic symphony
In 2007, State of the Arts producer Eric Schultz visited the Bay-Atlantic Symphony for the first of its annual concerts at the Cape May Music Festival. The Bay Atlantic was marking its fifth year as orchestra-in-residence for the Festival. Two days before the season opening, a crisis hit when the orchestra learned that their piano soloist did not have the proper visa to travel to the United States. So, music director Jed Gaylin called his old friend Clipper Erickson, a well-known concert pianist based in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Erickson spent the next two days relearning one of Bach’s most difficult concertos, and delivered an electrifying performance!
Schultz speaks with Gaylin and Erickson as they prepare and perform Suite No. 1 and Piano Concerto No. 1 by J.S. Bach, and the famous Water Music by George Frederic Handel. Gaylin points out that performing at a summer festival right next to the beach in Cape May creates a wonderfully relaxed and free atmosphere for making music. Erickson adds that audiences sense this freedom and really enjoy hearing musicians who are having fun.
A fully professional orchestra, the Bay-Atlantic was the focus of an NPR feature highlighting its innovative approaches to developing new audiences. Maestro Gaylin’s conducting has been described by the Baltimore Sun as "consistently impressive, with a propulsive sweep that allowed the lyricism to linger.” The symphony performs throughout rural southern New Jersey with both winter and summer concert series, and at numerous educational outreach events. As their name suggests, the Bay-Atlantic Symphony performs from the Delaware Valley to the Atlantic Ocean.
Why would an artist leave a painting untitled? Indecision or aesthetic intention? Principled restraint or slacking off? State of the Arts producer Christopher Benincasa explores these questions in a visit to the Zimmerli Museum’s exhibit “The Heritage of the Russian Avant-Garde.” Curator Jeffrey Wechsler talks about what it means to call a piece “Untitled,” based on the 50-plus works drawn from the Zimmerli’s extensive Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union. The current exhibit focuses on the Sterligov School, a late 20th century group of abstract painters who worked in Leningrad from 1960-1990. These artists based their approach on Kazimir Malevich's Suprematism and Mikhail Matiushin's Organic Culture, and sought to convey their perception of the world as a non-representational reality, "a visible invisibility, and a visibility unseen." As you’ll hear in this story, some kinds of art are better off untitled.
On NJN2: Friday, December 4 - Thursday, December 10, 2009
@ 5:00 pm • 11:00 pm
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