(bright music) (upbeat music) - [Host] Vintage dollhouse figures act as models for Cathy Osborne's moody interior paintings.

All around creative Jermaine Wells discusses his acting career.

And catch a performance from Dominic Orlando.

It's all ahead on this episode of AHA A House for Arts.

- Funding for AHA has been provided by your contribution.

And by contributions to the WMHT Venture Fund.

Contributors include The Leo Cox Beach Philanthropic Foundation, Chad and Karen Opalka, Robert and Doris Fischer Malesardi The Alexander and Marjorie Hoover Foundation and The Robison Family Foundation.

- At M & T Bank, we understand that the vitality of our communities is crucial to our continued success.

That's why we take an active role in our community.

M & T Bank is pleased to support WMHT programming that highlights the arts, and we invite you to do the same.

(bright upbeat music) - Hi, I'm Lara Ayad.

And this is AHA A House for Arts, a place for all things creative.

Let's send it right over to Matt for today's field segment.

(musically whistling) - Go ahead, go ahead.

(musically whistling) - I'm here in Hudson New York to get a special look behind the scenes at the process of artist Kathy Osborne, let's go.

- Okay.

I keep him in here.

It's really kind of um - Oh wow.

- It's not pretty - Mr.

Plaid shirt I've used him very many times.

I wish I had, you know, thousands to choose from.

I'm Kathy, I was born and I paint.

I paint doll houses.

Those are the setups dollhouses and dolls.

They are almost always interiors, like still lives, but with people.

I love her dress.

I used to be an illustrator.

I've been in The New Yorker, I've been in New York times, GQ, New York Magazine, Chicago Tribune.

Yeah, kind of 70 everywhere lots of places.

Yeah.

Now I paint.

This is a case where I added the lamp later cause I just didn't think of it.

It all got started cuz I saw a dollhouse in Brooklyn.

It had the vintage door and I had to have it and I didn't understand why exactly.

I had been taking photographs.

And one of them seemed like it'd be right for a painting.

And I tried it and I thought it was great.

I thought it was this I could really go with this.

It just seems like a 60s telephone it's a beautiful thing.

And now who wants to paint that?

Who wants to paint what we have these days.

I do a lot of voyeurism.

Heavy shadows and you know, mood pieces.

(upbeat music) So I just sort of mess around and then, ah, that looks good and point them down and it's very haphazard.

And things fall over all the time and I'm swearing and this could be at three in the morning and I mean, I really (quack) I take about 75 photographs.

Click, click, click click, click, and I'll take five they're so similar why'd I do it.

Maybe I would bop the light a little bit so that it's a little bit lower.

Hmm.

The only time I really have fun is when I'm three quarters done with a painting and I see it's worked.

Yeah.

I have a friend who keeps telling me, you know you can change the colors you don't have to go buy a dozen doll houses.

You can, you know, and I'm like I kind of can't.

It's like I arrived at, you know, everything just the figures and the arrangement and the colors and the furniture and the outdoors and it all was right.

And so I hate taking a chance.

I like this painting, now he's kind of jaundice and I keep going back and forward.

Do I want him, you know, to be grayer and bluer?

I don't know.

I'm scared cuz I like 'em.

My hands are so messy.

Believe me.

I made, gotten paint all over my hands and I plopped it right on something that now the whole thing had to be repainted argh.

- Oh my gosh.

- Nightmare.

Lots of swearing at three in the morning.

As I was saying.

(piano tune) Art makes me feel, it makes me feel like it's I can do something, I've got something.

I'm not a good storyteller.

I'm always things drop outta my mind and I tell oh I forgot and then have to go back to the beginning.

This is something where it's always there.

Everything you've done in that painting's already there so you don't lose it so it's you can always build.

So it feels, safe.

- Jermaine Wells is an actor, director and musician based in Schenectady.

He recently landed the role of Max Axel on A Good Cop.

And you can to find him giving public speeches at local schools.

How does Jermaine juggle all his creative endeavors?

I spoke with him to find out.

Jermaine welcome to A House for Arts it's a pleasure to have you.

- Thank you so much for having me.

I was looking forward to this all week so.

- Wonderful.

We were looking forward to this for months.

So you are, you wear many hats.

- Yes.

- You're an actor, you are a director, a writer, you do music.

- Yes.

- But what we're gonna get to all of these different kinds of roles but I wanna know how this all began for you that you're you're this all around creative.

- Okay.

Well, it started in the Bronx, New York.

- That's where you're from.

- That's where I'm from yes.

And I would say probably around eight years old.

Interesting anecdote, when I was eight years old, I wrote a poem on racial harmony.

And it won Citywide and I get a big trophy and all that got to meet the mayor.

- Amazing.

- And that was like the beginning.

I was like, wow, to use, you know my creativity to sort of help people and then to get sort of rewarded.

It was like the, the icing on the cake so that that's where it all began.

- Now I wanna talk about something recently that you've been doing that you played this character named Max Axel.

- Right.

Yeah - On the show it's called A Good Cop, right?

- A Good Cop yeah.

- And it's on NTD?

- NTD.

- NTD.

Can you tell us what this show is about and who your character is?

- The show is about, you know the current times with, you know civil unrest, you know concepts like defund the police, black lives matter and drugs you know, fentanyl laced drugs, which is killing people.

- Killing people in the United States primarily.

- Yes, yes.

They're kind of, it's kind of mixed in with drugs and my character Max Axel is sort of the like the fourth character in the, in the main characters there is a rookie cop and she kind of changes from being a protestor into being a police officer.

- Right.

So she was like, she was saying, you know defund the police at the beginning, and then she kind of goes through this transformation in the story.

- Absolutely.

- Yeah.

And where does your character come in with that.

- So my character interacts with Jayden who is a main character, he's my partner.

And the captain who is a main character and we uncover this plot that, and we are digging to see there's child pornography, which is a main theme and we're trying to discover this and of course it puts our lives in danger.

- It sounds like these main characters these cops are really kind of stuck in the middle of trying to do the right thing but also being kind of at the brink of what has the effect of the police on people been over the past many years in particularly certain racial groups and certain economic groups.

So this kind of makes me think about TV and storytelling.

- Yes.

- Television and storytelling.

What do you think is the role of the actor actress in the storytelling aspect of a television show?

- I think the, the actor's job is to really take that character and build as much of a dimension as one can from that character.

And partnering up with the director, here the director gave me a lot of freedom - And the director kind of lays out the vision, right?

- Exactly.

- Okay, and so how where did you come in that he, you said that he gave you a lot of freedom.

- He gave me a lot of freedom and actually he wrote kind of solo wrote this and he was the director.

So I think, you know, he realized they might he might have some blind spots and my character is a a black man from the Bronx that becomes a cop.

So there's layers on that as well.

And there was only a few times where he sort of twisted the my choices, but for the most part he enjoyed it.

And I think also two we had table reads, which for people listening.

- Yeah what's a table read, tell us for audiences.

- It's where you really develop your character and you read out your character with your cast.

- Right.

So you got the script in front of you everybody's got the same copy and you go through and you read, which actually sounds like a lot of fun too.

- Oh, it's a lot.

It's a lot of fun.

- And using technology we did it virtually as we filmed last summer.

So as we were doing this read you know, it was easy to utilize technology to do it.

- Yeah.

And I understand the director cuz you're saying you know, you're coming at this character Max Axel being a black man from the Bronx, the director I understand he's Australian of Chinese background.

- Right.

He a Chinese Australian yeah.

- That is so fascinating.

That must be such an interesting mix of perspectives coming in there and it sounds like you have some creative license when it comes to the interpretation of the story.

Kind of backing out now you know, actors and actresses are so visible.

- Right.

- Especially in the American eye, right.

- Yeah.

- You know whenever you think of a movie or a TV show, you first think of the characters played by the actors and actresses.

What is something that actors and actresses regularly do on the job that you think would really come as a surprise to people outside of the entertainment industry.

- Okay, one of the things I think is that people don't realize, a lot of times things are shot out of sequence.

- Okay.

- So you may be doing a scene and not doing it the second part of that scene might be days or weeks and sometimes even months.

So keeping that same, you know, that same sentiment, right.

Whether you're really really crying and sad or upset, or really really angry is trying to match that energy because even though it may be weeks later, it's the continuation of the last time somebody saw.

- It's like you have to put yourself in the frame of mind of the character, like (snaps fingers) all of a sudden like that, and you know sometimes things change at the last minute too on a production.

It's like, nevermind.

We're not doing that scene.

(mumbling) (laughing) - Exactly.

- Yeah.

I kind of sure that kind of keeps you on your toes quite a bit, right?

- Yeah.

- Tell us then about your role in education, cuz I understand of course you act and you write and direct.

- Right.

- But you also do public speaking a lot at schools.

Am I right about that?

- Right, yeah.

I do public public speaking at schools of all ages elementary, high school, collegiate level.

And I hinge my talks usually on hip hop and hip hop history, but to me all roads begin and end with hip hop.

And there are meanings and there's so many directions I go within that talk, you know I can talk about Biggie, I can talk about Tupac, I can talk about the beginning, and it's very interesting.

But I also do know public speaking and where what they call like motivational speaking.

- Mm.

- Which I do as well.

- Why, I wanna come back to this hip hop thing.

Why hip hop.

Why does it always begin and end with that?

- Well because for me, it's you know, it's this it's the soundtrack of my life.

Growing up for me it was way more diverse than it seems like now.

- Hmm - It's still just as diverse but, the radio or the popular hip hop songs tend to be very very limited in scope and focus.

- Mhh.

But for me it was like, I could have it be very hard or very melodic sometimes in between and very diverse.

- Right.

- So just like life is and can be.

- Yeah.

- When you get out of a bubble, even with hip hop, like even for specific talks, I talk about how somebody began their career and how somebody's ending it.

Somebody like 50 Cent, he started as a very hardcore rapper and now he's a mogul, a television mogul.

- Mh.

- With the Power series and BMF.

So that's one thing that I would go into as for a specific talk.

- You know speaking of these different roles that, you know a famous musician plays or you play, do you see a symbiosis at all between the role play in education and the one you do in entertainment?

- Yes.

I think that, you know for an actor, or at least for me I want you to feel like each character may be a piece of me but it's a different defined, you know well oiled piece of me.

- Hmm.

- And so with that, I think that, you know when I'm on stage with my band Ill Funk, right.

I am this musician piece that is all you know, bravado and confident.

- And I'm guessing Ill Funk is hip hop.

- Ill Funk is hip hop and soul and RnB.

- Okay.

Okay.

- So we started because if you know the band The Roots, that play with Jimmy Fallon.

- Yeah.

- That's the reason why we even wanted a band.

So we do it all.

- Yeah.

- And so if you come to a show you'll hear me sing, you'll hear me rap, we'll do Bruno Mars, we'll do, you know Naughty By Nature and things in between.

- Amazing.

Amazing, and very contemporary and very like kind of nostalgic and retro.

and so then tell us about not only are you doing music and you're in Ill funk that's so great.

- Yeah.

- Tell us about what your current you have two entertainment companies I understand.

- Right.

So there's Jermaine Rises.

- Okay.

- And Jermaine Rises is more so with DJing for, you know some of my lectures on hip hop.

- Mhh.

- And then there's Super Jermaine Entertainment.

Which is more into copywriting, helping with formulating commercials.

- Right.

- And the movie production side.

- Right.

Helps with a lot of production services, branding, things like that.

- Absolutely.

- Right.

So any projects that are coming up that really excite you right now?

- Yeah.

I mean the short film stuff have a Christmas movie called a Nouveau Christmas Story.

- Okay.

- So we just finished that and it's gonna go around the film festival market and probably around November I'd like to have it on a streaming service Home.

- Great.

- We just did a film race, which film races.

- Yeah.

What's film race.

- You have a designated... - I'm imagining people with like film reels and they're just like them across the floor, like running.

- (laughing) Running beside.

- I don't know that would be like my stupid idea for a race.

- I mean, that would be funny.

We should keep table that for later.

We'll do (laughing) - Keep it open an idea for your entertainment company.

(laughing) (mumbling) - But basically you have a designated time, you know whatever, it could be 24 hours, 72, you know 48 hours.

And once that designated time happens you get an email from whatever, you know company that you signed up or film festival and then you get a theme, you get an action you get a prop that you have to put into this film and you only have that designated amount of time to write it, to film it, to edit it and submit it.

- Amazing.

Do they give you a budget for it or.

- No.

(laughing) - Oh, okay so you have to basically out of the $5 that you have in your pocket.

- Exactly, exactly.

Everybody shakes out their pockets.

- Right, right.

- Or sees what they have in their Venmo and then make it work.

(laughing) - That's a but it also sounds like such a great learning experience, that you learn how to be kind of scrappy, that you have to use the resources you have to get something done very quickly even if it's not perfect, I'd imagine.

- Absolutely.

Absolutely.

I would say in those times it's even more important to have a a cast with a good temperament rather than the talent per se, because it's very high pressure.

- Well, Jermaine it was such a pleasure having you on the show.

Thank you so much for coming in.

- I appreciate it.

- Please welcome, Dominic Orlando.

- Hi.

My name is Dominic Orlando, and this first song I'm playing is called Breathe.

This is a song I wrote kind of in the midst of the pandemic when things were really starting to ramp up last year And it's a song about just trying to come to a sense of peace and calmness.

And I hope whoever hears this will feel that, the way I feel when I play it.

(guitar strumming) ♪ Think about the things that change ♪ ♪ People can feel like the fallen rain ♪ ♪ Breathe out the sorrow too ♪ ♪ It blows away ♪ ♪ From you ♪ ♪ From you ♪ ♪ Why don't you breathe ♪ ♪ Just breathe ♪ ♪ Why don't you breathe ♪ ♪ Just breathe ♪ ♪ Just breathe ♪ (soft music) ♪ Think about the things we see ♪ ♪ What often falls away from me ♪ ♪ Breathe out what's on your mind ♪ ♪ It blows away from you ♪ ♪ From you ♪ ♪ Why don't you breathe ♪ ♪ Just breathe ♪ ♪ Why don't you breathe ♪ ♪ Just breathe ♪ ♪ Just breathe ♪ (soft guitar playing) ♪ Why don't you breathe ♪ ♪ Just breathe ♪ ♪ Why don't you breathe ♪ ♪ Just breathe ♪ ♪ Just breathe ♪ (soft guitar playing) - So this final song I'm gonna play, is an instrumental piece I composed.

It's titled To Let Go, and you can find it on my latest album called Where To Begin.

(soft guitar instrumentals) - Thanks for joining us for more arts visit wmht.org/aha.

And be sure to connect with us on social.

I'm Laura Ayad Thanks for watching.

(bright upbeat music) - Funding for AHA has been provided by your contribution and by contributions to the WMHT venture fund.

Contributors include The Leo Cox Beach Philanthropic Foundation, Chet and Karen Opalka, Robert and Doris Fischer Malisardi, The Alexander and Marjorie Hover Foundation and The Robison Family Foundation.

- At M & T Bank, we understand that the vitality of our communities is crucial to our continued success.

That's why we take an active role in our community.

M & T Bank is pleased to support WMHT programming that highlights the arts and we invite you do the same.