>> JARED BOWEN: I'm Jared Bowen, coming up on Open Studio: for sculptor Alison Croney Moses, there's no such thing as dead wood.

>> Even though a tree is cut down, it still feels like it's living.

So it adjusts to the climate.

It swells and, and releases that moisture.

And all of that's happening every cut you make.

>> BOWEN: Then artist Eli Brown is transmitting hopeful messages by way of a U.F.O.

Plus, a tipping point for the iceberg.

Artist Zaria Forman's glacial landscapes have something to say about climate change.

All that, plus our weekly roundup of everything to see in Arts This Week.

That's now on Open Studio.

♪ ♪ Right now at the MassArt Art Museum you'll find you'll find the exhibition Designing Motherhood, looking back at 150 years of design centered around reproduction.

It was an exhibition, by the way, planned before the Dobbs decision this summer.

We're about to meet one of the artists featured in the show.

She is woodworker Alison Croney Moses.

Alison Croney Moses, thank you so much for being with us.

>> Thanks for coming to my studio.

>> BOWEN (laughing): I was going to say being with us, but we're the ones who invaded your studio here.

Well, tell me about this space and what, what happens here, what it represents to you.

>> I think it's just a space that I actually can focus on making and kind of block out everything else.

And there's not many of those spaces in my life.

>> BOWEN: What happens here?

Do you go into a zone?

Do you know what you're going to do when you walk in already?

>> I think both.

It depends on what I'm working on.

If I'm commissioned for a piece, like the Designing Motherhood piece, there's a piece back in my studio now that I was working on, but it was really pushing my artistic practice a bit, challenging myself, doing different things, evolving some.

And so that's really a process of I have an idea, I have sketches, and I come in and I am in a zone.

I'm often listening to music, or podcasts, and I'm kind of experimenting as I go within a reason because you got deadlines.

(chuckling) Got to make a decision.

>> BOWEN: In your relationship with wood, is there a conversation that happens?

Is there a relationship?

Am I being too ethereal about it?

Well, listen, because I'm thinking ceramicists, they can mold, they can work with glass.

Sort of the same thing.

>> Yeah.

>> BOWEN: I don't think you can do that with wood, can you?

>> You can... you know, you can, but it will... like it has a limit.

I tend to try to push those limits.

You can bend a piece of wood or a veneer to a certain amount and then it will crack.

It will break.

And so that's part of that, that relationship or that process that, that is interesting to me.

It also, like, even though a tree is cut down, it still feels like it's living.

So it adjusts to the climate.

It swells and releases that moisture.

And all of that's happening every cut you make.

So that's when I about the relationship with the wood and if it's speaking to me, there is a relationship.

>> BOWEN: The living nature of it that you experience, how, how do you then see it at the end when you're looking at the final piece?

Is it still alive?

>> It still mimics life.

>> BOWEN: Looking at your pieces, where does your love of the curve come in?

>> When I was in school, you learn all the machines, and they want you to make a box, they want you to make a table, really angular pieces.

And I kept being drawn to a curved form and I've kind of found my place.

I think it, again, mimics life and it mimics the mother figure.

You know, all these things, now that I have kids, I'm like, "Yeah, it, it does reflect who I am a bit more."

>> BOWEN: I was wondering about how motherhood has affected your work and, and being pregnant and having children and, again, going back to that form.

>> I have thought a lot about my shifting identity as a woman, as a Black woman, as going from a young person to an adult, going from, you know, a single person to married to then now having kids and your identity shifts.

As I'm making these pieces and I think about the material, and where it came from, and its connection to, like, past generations, to future generations, and life cycles.

I can't quite put words to it, but I feel more of a connection to those forms, even ones that I made when I was much younger without kids connecting it to the life cycle and the, the role that motherhood plays in that.

That the growing of, of human life, or life in general, and just that, like, space for love, and, and nurturing and caring and, and like, what role does that play in our society?

>> BOWEN: Well it makes me wonder how... how much of a different artist you are now than prior to all of those things.

>> Back in college, I purposely would say, "I'm not making work about identity."

I'm not doing that because I wanted to be treated like a woodworker.

I wanted to be treated like a craftsperson that could stand on my own, and people would look, and critique, and put me in the level with everybody else.

And, so now fast forward, realizing that I had been kind of dabbling with identity in my work beforehand and I couldn't dabble anymore.

It had to be about who I am.

Whether that's just a vessel.

When I say just a vessel, vessels are like amazing, you know, creations of things that hold, and nurture, and all the things.

So it's not separate from my identity.

>> BOWEN: Going back to Designing Motherhood, It is such an interesting time.

I know it wasn't by design.

The world changed around it for this exhibition and the story that it tells.

When you look at your work in that exhibition, and the stories of women, and what women have endured, and how they've been ignored, and how technology had to evolve for them, what do you see in this moment?

>> You know, so much of motherhood, of raising children, so much of that is hidden away by society and not, not talked about, not discussed, not visually represented, which makes it hard to go through the experiences.

And so part of the intention of being in that space, and creating this work, is to say this is the reality.

It's like that piece that's there now, it's this belly.

Each stave or, you know, piece of wood is glued together, but you see those cracks.

And the reality of it is everything about motherhood is beautiful, and amazing, and painful, and scary.

It's both.

We all hold both of those things.

I recently, since then, had surgery to correct... All of that stretching you saw in that sculpture, it really stretched apart muscles in my body, as it does most women who grow babies in their bellies.

So that's part of producing the work is also part of me thinking about my physical identity, which is not about what other people see.

It's about my strength, and, and my ability to live in this world as long as I can, and be healthy and whole.

And what are the steps I can do to like pull that back together, which is also part of motherhood and the story we should be telling.

>> BOWEN: Well, thank you so much for welcoming us in here today.

We're so grateful.

>> I'm glad that you came.

So thank you.

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: Imagine a U.F.O.

has just crash landed in Boston.

That's what artist Eli Brown has done.

His public art installation at LoPresti Park in East Boston is titled Beam Me Down.

And it's intended to beam out a message of hope and encouragement.

♪ ♪ >> I don't ever feel offended by people's interpretations.

It's more about presenting questions than answers, the project as a whole, so I feel like it's just nice when people come and are intrigued or curious at all, to be honest.

♪ ♪ My name is Eli Brown and I am a maker of things.

I haven't seen it happen yet, but I think that there are probably times when the tide is touching the sculpture.

Most of us in Boston are aware that waters will rise and there's a lot of artwork being made that has to do with that.

And I really wanted to sort of challenge this idea that we're all doomed.

There's just so much anxiety currently, especially for young folks growing up at this moment.

So I just, I really wanted to address that and give this object that maybe brought some joy and, like, wonder perhaps into the world.

Inside each of the windows is a different tidal animal, and these are animals that have been around for hundreds of millions of years.

Given our shorter timespan as a species, just makes sense to me that we should (chuckling): probably try to learn something from species who are most likely going to outlast us.

Even though we're not taught necessarily that plants and animals and different fungi are multi-sexual, or have many genders, or switch from one gender to another.

A lot of really common plants that we would know, like tomatoes, and roses, and avocados.

And so for me, as a trans person who farms, it was really eye-opening to me too, when I learned about this, because it felt really validating.

Well, it's information that's been kept from us, especially as someone who has been caring for plants and taking care of them, just felt like, "Oh yeah, of course, this is like not just a human phenomenon."

♪ ♪ I feel excited to share that information because I feel like it validates the trans experience.

♪ ♪ Reimagining queer reproduction, to me, it's like, how can we think outside of this maybe somewhat limiting box and think about more than just ourselves.

Actually sort of like widen our scope of who we care about to include, like, friendships, and other mutually beneficial relationships, not just humans too.

Like how can we as people consider the natural world as part of our family and care about it at the same level as we might our kin that maybe, you know, is like blood relative to us or something like that.

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: It's time for Arts This Week, your download of the latest arts and culture events in and around Boston.

♪ ♪ Boston has a new museum composed around music.

And it's sprung up, quite fittingly, in one of the city's grandest concert halls.

The Boch Center's Wang Theatre is now also home to the Folk Americana Roots Hall of Fame-- or FARHOF.

And with a curatorial pedigree that extends to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the Bruce Springsteen Archives, the inaugural show has terrific might.

Titled Boston: A Music Town, it's chock-a-block full of the city's musical history.

And it's expansive, telling stories in jazz, folk, hip-hop, rock, blues, bluegrass and classical music.

There's Pete Seger's banjo and hat, Terri Lynne Carrington's Grammy nomination certificate, and Leonard Bernstein's tuxedo and baton.

Case after exhibition case reminds us that there have been longstanding ties, community, and creativity here.

It's the Boch Center's hope that FARHOF will become one of the city's preeminent museums.

That's a lofty goal in this museum town, but so far and with shows centered on Bob Dylan and Arlo Guthrie in the offing, it's hitting all the right notes.

♪ ♪ One of the traditions of the Jewish faith is the Tzedakah box for collecting spare change.

But deeply unsettled by all that's plaguing the world right now, artist Caron Tabb decided to expand on that notion.

What about considering what we might take out of the box?

That notion is explored in Be the Change, a public art project presented by the Jewish Arts Collaborative.

Six artists of Jewish and non-Jewish faith have created large outdoor sculptures dotting Boston's Fenway neighborhood.

Each is embedded with QR codes linking visitors to non-profits addressing anti-Semitism, police reform, domestic violence against women, and more.

The idea is that you can experience the sculptures and then act on the issues addressed.

A blend of arts and activism, or artivism, all in the pursuit of justice.

For example, it's hard to stop thinking about artist Jason Talbot's Family Tree.

To illustrate the effect of wrongful arrests on families, it's ornamented in handcuffs.

♪ ♪ Writer and director Todd Field's newest film is TÁÁR which he wrote expressly for Cate Blanchett.

And together, the two have spearheaded a masterpiece.

Blanchett plays the fictional Lydia Tár, one of the greatest musical geniuses of the world.

A protégé of Leonard Bernstein, she leads the Berlin orchestra and is an EGOT-- a winner of an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony.

We're first introduced to her as she's launching a book and about to assume the herculean effort of recording Mahler's "Fifth Symphony."

Blanchett's Tár is cool, assured, an intellectual and cultural force.

She wears her privilege with the same fine tailoring as her suits.

And like the sleek Porsche she drives, she skims the surface of life, subsisting on her rarefied air while her complete lack of empathy sets off detonations in her wake.

Her power is unchecked and translates into rampant exploitation and abuse of her students, her subordinates, and her wife.

TÁÁR, the film, is brilliant.

First for how it charts the flight path of a supremely gifted artist.

But then for its examination of how power corrupts.

One of the infinitely compelling measures of Blanchett's performance is the steely aloofness she carries throughout much of the film.

Her interpretation of a psychopath may go down as one of the greatest performances of all time and it's disturbingly magnetic.

♪ ♪ The photography of Rosamond Purcell is wondrous.

It's also confounding.

And dark.

Because she has spent a career-- a long one, some 60 years and counting-- shepherding photography to its most amazing reaches.

The Addison Gallery of American Art presents the first-ever retrospective of the Cambridge, Massachusetts, artist in a show called Nature Stands Aside.

Keep in mind as you're looking at these often painterly images, they're all analog.

Every effect and marvel is hers.

No digital fixes here.

Purcell has spent years working with natural history collections, finding ways to lift up life after death.

She's masterful in playing with our perception-- a bird's wing that's actually a mineral.

She interprets Shakespeare's sonnets through the swirling prism of mercury glass.

Bring a backpack and a tent because you'll want to spend days in the Addison's galleries absorbing not only what Purcell sees, but how she sees it.

And perhaps most intriguing, how she wants us to see it.

♪ ♪ Now my pick for what to see, or rather who to see next week.

Tony-winning actor Bill Irwin, one of the greatest stage actors and clowns of our time, brings his love of playwright Samuel Beckett to ArtsEmerson as he stars in On Beckett.

That's it for your arts and culture download.

I'll see you here, and at On Beckett, next week.

Artist Zaria Forman travels to remote places to send a very relevant message about climate change.

Her large-scale drawings of turbulent ocean landscapes and glacial expanses convey both the majesty of the natural world and its vulnerability.

♪ ♪ >> I grew up with an artist mom and she was in love with the most far-off, remote landscapes she could possibly find and venture to.

And so every year growing up as a child we would travel to these remote places for at least a month at a time and that's what instilled in me a love of landscape.

So my mom and I were planning a trip to go to Greenland in 2011 together, but my mom was diagnosed with brain cancer and passed away before we could take the trip together.

I thought that was the end of my traveling days.

I didn't think I had it in me to plan those kinds of expeditions that, that she did.

I decided to do it in her honor.

So I was spreading her ashes along the trip in several places.

That was also the first time I drew ice.

I hadn't drawn ice before that trip.

Greenland is epic.

The sun is at a much lower angle and so the icebergs would just be lit up in this most dramatic way and this fog would hover over the horizon.

Especially my iceberg drawings, I see them as portraits.

By the time I'm finished with a drawing of an iceberg, it's likely completely melted, or looks completely different.

Undertaking that trip, I think, is what gave me the confidence to continue.

Standing next to a glacier, you feel so tiny.

And, and coming back from these places and wanting to represent them as best as I can, and trying to give the viewer that experience of what it's like to stand next to a glacier or an iceberg.

the only way I feel like I could come as close as possible to that is by drawing as big as I possibly can.

So when I travel, I take thousands of photographs on site and I try to soak up the landscape visually, not always having the camera right in front of my face.

And then I get back to the studio and I work from both my memory of the experience as well as the photographs to make these large-scale compositions.

♪ ♪ As I'm drawing, I'm recalling the experience I had in that moment, you know, on the Zodiac, looking at the iceberg and remembering what the light looked like and how that experience felt, so I tried to imbue the composition with as much of my memory as I can.

I want it to look as realistic as possible, and so, so that's what I use the photograph for.

And up close it does become very abstract.

I'm just looking at the line, and form, and shape and color.

I've just always had an obsession with charcoal and soft pastel, just that something about the material.

I love the simplicity of just making a mark on the paper and that's what it is.

And I, I can move the pigment around and I can change the way it looks.

There's no other factor other than just me and the material.

♪ ♪ I just got an email one day.

(laughing) It was like the most exciting email I've ever received.

It was, you know, someone saying, "Hey, would you like to come fly with us?

Love, NASA."

(laughing) Not exactly like that, but in so many words that's, like... it was a very brief email and it was like, "Here's my number, call me.

Do you want to come fly with us over Antarctica in the spring?"

I thought it was a hoax literally up until the day I landed and met the science team, and we had our first science meeting and I was like, "Okay, this is NASA."

It's extremely grueling work, especially the Antarctica flights.

They're, like, on average, ten to 12 hours long every single day.

It's like you're flying across the planet day after day after day.

It's some of the most important work that's happening in the world now, because there's so much we don't know about how ice moves, and melts.

I've been traveling to icy landscapes for a long time now and so I, you know, I felt like I had a... a fairly deep understanding, just visually, of ice, but this was like a whole new ball game and a whole new perspective.

And seeing it from that perspective really made me realize not only the scale of ice, but the scale of the global climate crisis that we're in the middle of.

I mean, it's just, it's so much ice.

You can really see how, like, yeah, if that's melting at the rapid pace that it's melting at, our global sea levels will rise and there's a lot of horrible consequences.

♪ ♪ This is Jakobshavn glacier in Greenland.

It dispenses the most amount of icebergs into the ocean of any other glacier in the Arctic.

We flew over it for hours and hours.

I took the photo from the plane, so it's an aerial view, but in between those ridges is probably about 150 feet.

There's a whole batch of new colors in this piece, some that are really, like, bright and luminous.

And it's also just personal for me because the fjord where this iceberg dispenses ice directly into is where I spread my mom's ashes.

I feel like she's a part of that landscape.

♪ ♪ I'm trying to portray the beauty in these places that are at the forefront of climate change and just give a moment in time in people's life to contemplate it, because it's not always a part of our everyday life.

I want people to understand it.

I want people to be moved by it, and have an emotional reaction to it, and fall in love with the ice as I have.

When you love something, you want to protect it.

It'll make them think, "Well, what can I do to "help protect and preserve these landscapes that are changing so quickly?"

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: And that is all for this edition of Open Studio.

Next week we do some shape shifting with sculptor Rose B. Simpson.

As always, you can visit us online at GBH.org/OpenStudio.

And you can see us first on YouTube.com/GBHNews.

Remember to follow us on Instagram and Twitter @OpenStudioGBH.

I'm @TheJaredBowen.

Every Friday, Jim Braude and Margery Eagan offer up live performances on Boston Public Radio.

So we leave you now with the Handel and Haydn Society performing at our studio at the Boston Public Library.

They kicked off their 208th consecutive season earlier this month.

I'm Jared Bowen, thanks for watching.

(playing Bach's "Orchestral Suite No.

2") ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (playing Bach's "Orchestral Suite No.

2") ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (song ends, crowd applauds) (playing Bach's "Orchestral Suite No.

2") ♪ ♪