>> JARED BOWEN: Welcome to Open Studio, WGBH's weekly spotlight on arts and culture from around the region and the nation.

I'm Jared Bowen.

Coming up on Open Studio, we go birding with author and illustrator David Sibley.

>> I'd watch for minutes, as long as the bird cooperates, and think about drawing.

And then pull out a sketchpad and do some quick sketches.

>> BOWEN: Then, gather 'round the fireplace-- radio plays are back, Tiger Style.

>> Okay Jen, remember, what do we say to Mom and Dad?

>> Your methods were wrong, we feel traumatized, and we demand an apology.

>> Aw, yeah!

This is a reckoning!

(woman exclaims with nervous excitement) - But...

Mom and Dad do not respond well to demands.

>> BOWEN: Plus, a sculptor on a paper chase.

>> That's what this art does.

It's... it engages the viewer not only to, to look, but to participate.

>> BOWEN: And the crux of collage.

>> You can mix papers.

You know, I layer them and mix them, so it's a little bit like mixing paint.

>> BOWEN: It's all now on Open Studio.

♪ ♪ First up, the 19th century had John James Audubon.

We have David Allen Sibley-- a bird watcher and painter renowned for his books on birds.

I recently caught up with him in the woods at the Museum of American Bird Art for a look at nature and his paintings.

>> There's probably a little flock of chickadees, titmice, there might be white breasted nuthatch.

>> BOWEN: To walk in the woods with David Sibley is to slow down, to trace the flecks of sun shining through trees and to let silence be your guide.

(bird calling) So take me a little bit into your process when you get into the woods.

>> I would just look for birds and when I find some birds, try to find one that's, that's cooperative that... (Silbey chuckling) ...that's sitting up on a... sitting up in the open and, and just watch.

And then pull out a sketch pad and do some quick sketches.

>> BOWEN: Which he's been doing since the age of five.

The son of an ornithologist and a lifelong birder himself, Sibley has published the go-to-guides for birds.

And now, in his most recent book, he delivers us into What It's Like to Be a Bird.

What changes for you when you have minutes to be spending with a bird?

>> Then I can really just settle in and look at all kinds of details and, and start asking questions.

>> BOWEN: We find his answers here at Mass Audubon's Museum of American Bird Art, where the illustrations for his latest book are now on view.

From the wide-eyed owl... to the roadrunner.

I was surprised not to see any dynamite with the roadrunner.

>> (laughing) Yes.

Well, in the book, one of the essays in the book is about, is a roadrunner really faster than a coyote?

In real life a coyote is quite a bit faster than a roadrunner.

>> BOWEN: So you're not only a famed birder, you're a myth buster, too.

>> (laughing) >> BOWEN: Another myth busted?

Blue jays aren't actually blue.

In the bird world, the color blue technically doesn't exist.

>> It is a color because it's what we perceive, it's the blue wavelengths of light are reaching our eyes.

But the way the bird is... the way the feathers are reflecting only blue is due to the structure of the feather and not to pigment.

>> The turkey isn't necessarily thought of as the most beautiful bird ever, but I think that in this painting, David really captures that and also creates almost an abstract painting at the same time.

>> BOWEN: Amy Montague is the director of the Museum of American Bird Art-- the only one of its kind known to exist.

Here you'll find sculpture and works from John James Audubon to avid birder Frank Weston Benson to avid Pop Artist Andy Warhol.

And all situated on 124 acres of a wildlife sanctuary.

>> Birds are deeply fascinating to people, but they're also really symbolic.

You think, birds symbolize hope, they symbolize freedom.

>> BOWEN: And one of David Sibley's great gifts, she says, the connections he brings.

>> He's really tried to capture the spirit of the birds.

You take away some of the wonder that he has for bird life, which is extraordinary.

>> Who wouldn't be interested in the fact that birds have two different balance sensors-- one in their inner ear like us, and one in their hips, in their pelvis, and that's how they balance on a slender twig that's swaying in the breeze.

>> BOWEN: From eating to soaring to swimming, Sibley gives us a bird's eye view of their lives.

Speaking of which, the eyes have it all, he says.

>> The eye is the most important single thing in a painting.

And a lot of it... a lot of what we ascribe to a bird's personality, we interpret the facial expression in sort of human terms.

Hawks look a little bit angry because they have this eyebrow ridge that makes them look like a... like a cartoon drawing of an angry person with the dark lines slanted down.

>> BOWEN: Sibley's work is based on photographs, sketches he does in the field, and more than 50 years of experience and memories of the natural world.

Favorite bird to paint?

Least favorite bird?

Most-- or challenging, perhaps?

(Silbey chuckles) >> Favorite bird to paint is these little tiny birds called wood warblers.

They're brightly colored, boldly patterned, very active.

The most difficult, most challenging, I would say, are, for me, the herons and egrets.

They're very graceful, elegant looking.

But when you look closely, they're kind of almost reptilian.

There are some weird angles and joints in that neck that... And getting that balance, getting that... the curvature just right in a drawing is incredibly difficult.

>> BOWEN: Fortunately for Sibley, there's always more time and more space for the work to take flight.

♪ ♪ You might remember the fascination and blowback a few years ago after Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother hit shelves-- detailing her strict, Chinese parenting meant to produce super-successful children.

Playwright Mike Lew answered the book with his play Tiger Style!-- a comedy at the Huntington Theatre Company.

>> I'm going to yell at my mom like a white girl.

>> This could be downright therapeutic.

Instigating a fight with our family sounds like a full satisfying evening of entertainment!

>> BOWEN: Now Lew has gone old school, adapting Tiger Style!

as an audio play that'll air right here on GBH Radio Saturday night at 6:00.

I recently spoke with Lew about earning his tiger stripes-- again.

Mike Lew, thank you so much for being with us.

>> Thanks so much for having me.

>> BOWEN: Well, let's start with this book that came out a few years ago, Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother-- very headline-grabbing.

I actually had a conversation with her right here at GBH.

How much of your play was in response to the notions that arose in that book about what Chinese parenting was?

>> You know, I think that I had a collision of a couple of things that made this play really pressing for me.

One of them was coming from a primarily science background, and going into theater, and getting a lot of mentors that were encouraging me to write about my family, and finding that that was a little of a coded suggestion to write like a Chinese immigrant type story that they've seen before.

And being really taken aback by that and not knowing how to process it, because I'm third-generation Chinese.

And then the sort of discourse around Professor Chua's book and the real sort of backlash to it, (laughing): I have parents that... that in some measure subscribe to some of these principles.

And I have like insight into that that I could speak to.

And so then feeling a real sense of wanting to tell a Chinese American story that kind of is moving us forward rather than the types of tropes that we've seen before in theater.

>> BOWEN: Well your play is hilarious about these two...

"kids."

I say "kids" who become adults, who don't quite meet expectations, probably any parents' expectations necessarily.

How much are you... given what you just said, is it really telling your own story or just kind of what you're observing in society?

>> I grew up with a lot of sort of pressure to succeed academically and to put a lot of effort into college admissions.

And then I went through a kind of deprogramming or sort of adjustment of expectations like in adult life, which I think everybody does, that like all of that pressure doesn't necessarily result in the same kind of success that you can find in academics that you could find in the real world.

>> BOWEN: Well, how were you raised?

What were... what were the expectations?

Did you feel expectations?

>> Yeah, definitely.

The discourse around that book that I was seeing was, was a very stereotyped version of Chinese American culture, that like somehow these parents were putting undue expectations on their kids and that all these kids would end up hating their parents or committing suicide.

And I...

I live, and I have a good relationship with my parents and so I... (laughing): I was like I think I have... you know, I have something to say about that stereotype that there's aspects of it that are true, but that just from my perspective, there's aspects of that type of upbringing that seem overblown in this discourse.

And so for me personally there was a lot of pressure for me to succeed academically and to, to really do well in, you know, in high school and in college.

But then I feel as though there's a missing aspect of understanding like where these parents are coming from.

>> BOWEN: I would imagine that for you, and most playwrights, there's not much opportunity or even desire to go back into your work.

How is that for you as you do this adaptation for radio?

>> Don't feed me that American dream crap.

After three generations in this country I don't want the American dream.

I want to be an American idiot with all the irrational self-confidence and sense of entitlement such a position of privilege entails.

>> I wrote it for a 2016 audience with those sensibilities and now it's a 2021 audience with those sensibilities.

So any time that I get an opportunity to go back into a play and tinker with it, I will.

>> BOWEN: You can't play off the audience necessarily for a radio play because they're not there.

You don't hear the response.

You don't hear the laughter.

>> Yeah, it's harrowing.

And I...

I don't envy the actors because I think that they feed off of audience energy too.

But fortunately for this cast and the director that worked on this iteration, they've worked on the live version of the play before.

And so they're just so adept at, at my words.

>> BOWEN: And finally I just want to ask what your experience has been like.

You said, you've updated this, of course, from 2016.

This is a very different time.

Chinese Americans-- Chinese people have been treated horribly as we've seen as a result of the COVID virus.

What are your experiences, and is that something that you address in this piece?

>> Before COVID, there was a lot more case-making to be built into the play in terms of the kinds of microaggressions people are experiencing or the biases or the implicit biases.

And now with with what's happened with COVID with this like really overt racism and hate crimes against Asians, a lot of buried surface... buried things have come to the surface.

And so then I find that I don't have to make as hard of a case that, like, these forces exist because we've seen them come to the fore.

And so it's bracing in a way, because it's like you think that you've made a lot of progress in this country, but then you see real-life examples of how that's not true, and then how do you fight against that?

And so then I'm placing the context of tiger parenting against this, like, really generational acculturation and resiliency that we've had to show to fight for our place here.

>> BOWEN: Great to see your play a few years ago, and I can't wait to listen to it right here, at GBH, actually, and on the podcast from the Huntington Theater Company.

Michael Lew, thank you so much for being with us.

>> Thanks so much for having me.

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: Next we have some blazing memories as old films and violins top Arts This Week.

♪ ♪ >> How about some more beans, Mr. Taggart?

>> I'd say you've had enough!

(belching) >> BOWEN: It's still a gas!

Sunday marks the release 47 years ago of the Mel Brooks' film Blazing Saddles.

The satirical Western starred Cleavon Little and Gene Wilder.

John Wayne was offered a role, but he declined.

Monday, listen to Williamstown Theatre Festival's world premiere audio play Chonburi International Hotel & Butterfly Club.

Available on Audible, it's a comedy about transgender women finding sisterhood in Thailand.

♪ ♪ ArtsEmerson presents Julia Tuesday.

It's a new adaptation of August Strindberg's 19th century classic Miss Julie.

It has a modern-day sensibility and edge.

Thursday, Celebrity Series of Boston presents violinist Alyssa Wang's "Memories," a virtual concert of solo works presented from Wang's own living room.

History At Play virtually presents Cato and Dolly: A New American Play Friday.

It details the life of an enslaved person in the home of Massachusetts governor John Hancock.

We move to Florida now where sculptor Felix Semper has put new terms on paper.

♪ ♪ >> They can't believe that it just does this.

♪ ♪ If you touch it, I mean it's solid, and then all of a sudden it becomes something else that expands it, and moves, and it gives you that idea of flexibility, of movement.

And that's what I was trying to achieve when I made this, you know, is... And not just the top.

It goes all the way up to the bottom.

♪ ♪ Somehow I've been able to change the way that we perceive sculpture.

It entertains, it excites.

♪ ♪ Hi, my name is Felix Semper, and I am an artist.

My first paper sculpture I glued solid, and I said, "How am I going to prove this is paper?"

Took me about a year to kind of come up with a whole system.

And once that happened, our first sculpture just, I took it to New York and I went to Washington Square Park and just kind of messing around with people.

I just wanted to get people's feedback and reaction.

It started going viral.

Most of my stuff is recycled paper and I try to do that as much as I can.

So what I do is I take sheets of paper, individual sheets of paper, glue it in stacks, and then I cut them to about the size that I think the sculpture's going to be and then I start carving it.

So all this process is eliminating paper.

It's kind of like the original technique of sculpting, but in a different method.

I'm using paper versus, you know, stone or any other media.

But the fun part about it is that I paint it and give it the original look.

So you really, a lot of times, you can't really tell if it's paper or what we're talking about.

I was invited to... to a dinner, you know, like a wine dinner.

And then I brought this bottle with me.

And, you know, everybody brought their own bottle and stuff.

And so I, you know, I walk in, like they say, "Oh, why you got a nice, nice French bottle right there."

I say, "Yeah, it's Bordeaux, man.

Here, let me..." (chuckling): When they... they were like that.

They were freaking out.

They went crazy.

Things that are... inspire me are things that are around me.

I made a Lay's potato chip bag, and then A$AP Rocky bought it, and then you know, all these celebrities started talking.

So it's just, it's just kind of exploded that way.

So it involves painting, it involves sculpture, and it involves performance art because I take these pieces and I go into the public.

I open them up show them what it does.

So it becomes a performance art.

♪ ♪ This is my new series, this is actually, I finished this not long ago.

This is a flexible wood sculpture.

So I said, "I'm going to make a wood that I can twist and turn and it goes in any direction."

And then of course he has a hat that is flexible.

♪ ♪ I went to a... to a place where it had like old junk stuff and that this old TV was just sitting around there.

When I saw the TV is from the 1950s, I said, "I wonder how many people watching it... like what was "the most famous show back in the day, you know, that the kids love?"

So I was, you know, I did some research and it was, you know, Howdy Doody.

So I said, "I bet I can put Howdy Doody in there in black and white," and I want to just kind of bring it, kind of mix all kinds of mediums together.

So I developed a motor, and put it inside, and Howdy Doody comes up, remote control, and, you know, he expands.

♪ ♪ That's what this art does.

It's... it engages the viewer, not only to look, but to participate.

And, you know, it just keeps evolving.

And that's the... that's the beauty about this art.

I think it expands your mind because you don't, you know, you're looking at an object that is solid and then all of a sudden this object does something else.

I can do anything, I think, with paper.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: Well, speaking of paper, artist Marsha Monroe Pippenger's kaleidoscopic collages are paintings comprised of paper.

Here, we find her in her Dayton, Ohio, studio.

♪ ♪ >> When I teach about collage, I always talk about the fact that Picasso and Braque are credited with "inventing" collage in 1912, And I beg to differ with that, always.

Because, as far as I'm concerned, any kind of piece work throughout the centuries, taking all kinds of ephemera and discarded materials and fabrics and paper scraps and creating things out of them, for me, that's collage.

I'm Marsha Monroe Pippenger and I'm an artist, I'm a teacher, and I'm a teaching artist.

I'm kind of the artist-in-residence here at the Requarth Company.

We have seven acres here at Requarth.

The building, of course is old, it dates from the 1880s or 1890s.

The Requarth Company moved down here in 1895.

There's a kitchen showroom here now, and we have six kitchen designers, plus the lumber yard and the lumber staff.

And everyone who works here will bring clients up to meet me, and see the studio, and they enjoy that.

I think customers enjoy that too.

I have lots of room.

I have really good lighting, it's all north light.

There's great storage.

It's just a really good space.

The building, the people, the surroundings, are wonderful.

♪ ♪ What's my favorite... my favorite part of artmaking?

The first favorite part is the idea, which often comes from my reading, reading books, articles, or a phrase that I hear that will capture me.

And from there, it's gotta roll around in my head a little bit.

I'll make sketches and drawings and I put the drawing on canvas.

Sometimes it's to scale, sometimes not.

And then, the second favorite part, is getting in there with the paper.

I start pulling the papers that I think will work, and sort of creating a little pile, and start moving things around.

I don't commit right away, and I use thousands of glue sticks.

Because the nice thing about a glue stick is I can put a dab of glue down, I can put the paper down, I can remove it if I want to if I change my mind, or I want to move it or whatever.

You can mix papers.

You know, I layer them and mix them, so it's a little bit like mixing paint.

I have a huge collection of paper-- huge.

In the beginning, I used tissue paper and cheap magazine papers, and they fade.

They don't last.

So I use mostly handmade papers today, and I do use paper from magazines, but it's gotta be a high quality magazine with high quality inks.

And then sometimes I incorporate other things-- bits and pieces of rock, or tile, or rust.

Yellow is my favorite color.

I'm pretty sure there's a touch of yellow in probably every single piece I've made.

I really like to work big like 36 by 48.

That's three by four feet.

That's a nice size, I like that size.

I've got these collage tapestries that I've been making, and they're bigger.

They're four by six, five by seven, five by eight.

But I have leftover collage pieces that have innate, nice little compositions.

I've been making pendants from those.

So, they're about two by three inches, so two by three inches up, you know, as big as I can manage.

The most challenging part about creating a collage might be knowing when it's finished.

I think it's really easy to overdo, and there are times when I felt like I need somebody standing behind me to tell me when to stop.

You should leave a little mystery.

When you put in all the information, you end up boring people, and you need to let the viewer do a little work.

And so, I try to keep that in mind, that's one of my mantras, so to speak, for artmaking is to try and stop just a little bit short of finished.

And I think that works.

About five, six years ago, I was asked to design a prayer wall for my church, which is Westminster Presbyterian Church here in Dayton, downtown.

And I designed it to fit with the architecture of our sanctuary and it's made out of wood.

And I had designed it so it looked like it had grown kind of organically, so it had sort of a random pattern, and so you could tuck your prayer into the cracks among the wooden bricks.

And the pastors remove all the prayers about once a month, I think, and nobody reads them.

It's between you and whoever you believe in, and they're burned.

Our senior pastor invited people to come up and put their first prayer in the prayer wall, which I did like everyone else.

And I turned around, and I looked down the center aisle of the church, and people were lined up all the way down the entire length of the sanctuary out into the narthex.

(voice breaking): And I started to cry, and as you can tell, it still affects me.

And I started thinking about walls, and how walls can be positive, they don't have to be negative in connotation, that walls can protect and surround.

And so I started a series called Redefining Walls of collages that are abstractions of walls.

I've been making them ever since.

I've made literally hundreds of collages relating to that idea of redefining walls, and it was all because of this serendipity, this blessing that I had, that I certainly didn't expect.

There's a quote that I really like: "Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart come together."

And so, if you can incorporate those three into your work, I think you've done a good thing.

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

Next week we go behind the scenes for a look at the restoration of one of the most famous monuments in Massachusetts.

Then Edgar Alan Poe's The Fall of The House of Usher turned opera, turned film.

(operatic singing) Until then, I'm Jared Bowen.

Thanks for joining us.

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

And you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter @OpenStudioGBH.