(bright music) - Coming up on "Curate."

- [Luis] When you begin to look at each of these prints, what you're going to find out is the same things that interest me or excite me or inspire me, they inspire the next printmaker.

- [Robin] We're educating the public about glass making processes.

- [Tremaine] So I was obsessed with TV when I was little, and I always wondered, how did the people get inside of TV?

(bright music continues) - Welcome back, I'm Heather Mazzoni.

- And I'm Jason Kypros.

Printmaking is one of the oldest forms of art, and it's also one of the most collaborative and experimental.

- For the Chesapeake Bay Print Collective, it's not just about creating stunning prints, it's about building connections.

- Now, every year, this group of artists from across the region comes together to produce a portfolio of works that celebrates their diverse styles and perspectives.

- And this year, they let us come along to witness the process.

(pleasant music) - I cannot get into the debate about what is art and what is not, I really don't know.

I just know that doing this feels good.

I've been working in digital all my life.

(pleasant music continues) Being in physical, having things that are in person gives me some feelings that I haven't had in a long time.

I still have a hard time using the word artist, but I guess I am.

(cars whooshing) (pleasant music continues) Oh, hello?

- [Sam] Hey, hombre.

- Hey, Samuelito.

- Thank you so much.

- All right, here, I got it, it's here.

- Fantastic.

- [Luis] This was a bit of a challenge.

- [Sam] You say that every year.

Oh, that's beautiful.

Yeah, thank you so much, that's fantastic.

(gentle music) It's cool that you're able to do the digital to the analog.

- Yes, yes.

- You know, that's what I love.

- I think it came out nice.

- What we do every year is 12 of us get together and we each produce an original work of art, an 11 by 14 original signed, numbered print, and it could be whatever the artist wants to do in whatever medium the artist wants to do.

We get all those prints together, do 25 each, and we create 25 beautiful Mylar boxes, the portfolios of these prints.

Yeah, here's an example of the portfolio from last year, this is Tony Mirabelli and his wife Peg, the Hotdog King.

So you have 12 prints encased in this box, separated by tissue.

And Luis, who's a wonderful designer, he creates an insert, so you've got a beautiful printed spine and then thumbnails of each print so that when you look at the box, you can see what's inside.

And then, each artist writes a little blurb about their print.

So it's a lovely, beautiful object, as Luis calls it.

- It's just the idea of something physical and that you can hold on and keep, and it could be an expression of the year or wherever you're at.

It's kind of rewarding to see it physically in one place altogether when you have the collection.

Oh, wow, look at all of them.

Look how it works all together, I love how different all they are.

- Yeah.

This is by Eloise Shelton-Mayo, beautiful block print.

This is a block print by Petya Ivanova.

This is a fantastic silk screen by two guys, they formed SuperCompStudios in Virginia Beach, and what they've done, which is brilliant, is they have a reversible print, one guy did one face, the other guy did another face, and they superimposed them, it reads both ways.

This block print is by Donna Iona Drozda, who is a painter, a fantastic artist.

This is Adrian Bohannon, he's incredible.

This is mine, it's a cyanotype, first one that I've tried, I really love it.

This is Brian Kreydatus, who pulled out all the stops, created this beautiful etching.

This is a beautiful silk screen by Cate Currier.

This is Clay McGlamory, Cate's husband, fantastic screen print, they go all out.

Half Ass Studios in Old Towne, Portsmouth is fantastic.

(birds chirping) - What we're printing today is just this middle, but I printed it all, I don't wanna overlay the safe film.

So now I'll position this based on the key image.

(joyful music) Okay, that looks good.

So at this point, we can turn the light table off.

I can take my extra eyeballs off and we can move over to the press.

(joyful music continues) Since our work is more rooted in print than probably anybody else in The Collective, it's fun to watch people that have less print knowledge.

Seeing anybody get excited about printmaking because of how much we love it, I think, is one of the big joys of The Collective for me.

- The first year, we basically just invited people that we knew.

And that first year, I thought, I guess we need to invite at least one professional tight-ass printer, Clay.

- Sam's and Luis' energy is infectious, and Cate and I lead kind of an insular art life a lot, especially since we moved to Old Towne.

We work in our shop together, we live in this house together, sometimes we don't see a ton of other artist friends, so that's another thing that helps us engage with other artists in the print community and just the art community.

- Well, it's an unusual structure because they have six foundational members that then invite.

So every year, you have six new people bringing six new perspectives, ideas, and experiences to The Collective.

So the variety that you see from the six invited people is often a lot more dramatic than what you see, because we know each other's work now.

(lively music) What is interesting about the Chesapeake Bay Print Collaborative has been that it's an open themed portfolio, and this is wide open.

Everybody does different stuff, but in this portfolio, I've tried to do things that I don't usually do.

My first print was using the grid, I don't use the grid.

My second print was using black, I don't usually use black.

And this is using photography, which I don't usually use.

So it's an opportunity to try something different.

So these are examples of three of the four layers.

We have the cyan that we just printed, we have the next layer is a yellow to build in some of the greens, and then we have a magenta layer, and it becomes more and more in focus, I know it looks blurry and it has a pattern to it, but that doesn't come out in the printing.

So those three layers are the base of the image, and the last layer is right there, and you'll see that at the reveal.

(bright music) - It's so wonderful to have everybody together.

I look forward to this every year, it's the highlight of my year.

I'm so thrilled with the work that you guys did.

The fact that we are all here together is wonderful.

- I love this project because my job gets so busy during the year, it's almost like an excuse for me to be able to make time and stop things in my life to actually do my artwork.

- When you begin to look at each of these prints, what you're going to find out is the same things that interest me or excite me or inspire me, they inspire the next printmaker.

So we find our shared humanity in these prints when we put groups like this together, we learn from each other.

And so, we welcome everybody because they all bring unique perspective to the arts.

- I think, as a creative, you wanna interest yourself.

It's just a really interesting process and I have a lot to learn.

This gives me the confidence and the opportunity to think about it more than I did before.

(bright music continues) - All these artists have an urge to make stuff that resonates with them, that doesn't really serve any economical purpose.

We're serving our creative impulse, which is kind of fun, right?

(Sam laughing) - Bravo.

(bright music continues) - [Jason] "Out of the Box" is where Paul Shugrue serves his creative impulse, weeknights from seven to nine and Saturdays one to five.

Find your favorite alternative Americana local musicians and more, listen on 89.5 and whro.org/outofthebox.

- After opening in 2011, the Perry Glass Studio at the Chrysler Museum quickly grew into one of the most innovative exhibition spaces in the region.

- But that growth pushed them beyond the small footprint they had originally set up in.

And in 2015, ideas about creating something more began percolating.

- Now, nine years later, those dreams have come to fruition.

- It's a huge addition to the glass art community, the Chrysler, and all of Hampton Roads.

(intriguing music) - So the thing that's always attracted me about the medium of glass is when it's hot, when it's being worked, when it's moving, when the artist is literally dancing with it.

(intriguing music continues) What keeps me coming back to it and has kept me enthralled for 30 years now is the molten glass and working with it up close.

(intriguing music continues) I love the history of glass making here, in 1608, in Jamestown, they were blowing glass.

It was the first industry, you know, here in the US, and first export back to England was hand-blown glass.

Here we are, you know, a couple hundred years later, still doing it.

(intriguing music continues) - There's a big movement in the museum world to have immersive spaces, and we do have immersive space here.

You're gonna see actual objects being created, you're gonna feel the heat, you're gonna hear the noise of the furnace.

And that is so exciting.

People come here and they have a kind of a physical experience.

(intriguing music continues) - This theater that we've built, this amphitheater is a full on theater with lighting and sound and catwalk, which enables us to present glass making to the audience in better ways, more enhanced ways, up close cameras, dramatic lighting, to really kind of transport them, you know, to another place with this magical material.

And a couple board members at the time, it was about 2009, said, "We need a glass studio."

(light music) The original space was a renovated bank, and it had a quirkiness to it, which I love.

It had a triangular shape working space, which is a little unusual, but it was neat.

(light music continues) The initial studio was kind of an experiment.

Let's see what happens, let's build it, and within five years, we were already talking expansion.

Here we are not 15 years in and the expansion is complete.

(light music continues) The education is our entire mission, and we're educating the public, we're educating college students, we're educating, you know, both visitors and students about glass making processes, about how some of the works of art collection were created, and this is through demonstrations as well as through classes.

(light music continues) We have partnerships with Old Dominion University, Norfolk State University, Governor's School for the Arts, we also work with Teens With a Purpose, and the Boys and Girls Club of Southeast Virginia, Virginia Wesleyan University as well.

We interviewed several architectural firms up and down the East Coast from all the big cities.

But it was a local firm, WPA, that really hit it out of the park, and they were also very receptive to our suggestions.

And so, you know, to their credit, I think it really worked out.

(cool music) - We leaned into was the idea that we wanted a more industrial space.

So there are the polished concrete floors, the steel, really a place where things are being made, and also, it's not fragile or delicate, it's really robust and strong.

- Having this facility in Hampton Roads is very special.

The Chrysler Museum is definitely a gem in this region, for a city of this size to have a museum of this caliber, it's really special, and then tying it to this glass studio just makes it that much more.

(cool music continues) I hope the legacy of this place to always be a place of learning, but also pushing the edge of what can be done with the material and being experimental, using glass in new ways to create gorgeous memories in people's minds.

(cool music continues) (waves crashing) (heartbeat pounding) ♪ Grateful again ♪ ♪ Grateful again ♪ ♪ It's been a long time coming ♪ - [Mo] Our love is starting to fade away, like old memories.

I can't say that I'm in love with you, but when I'm in you, I might say I love you.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) - This is Curate Presents, I am Kayda Plus, and I'm here with Tremaine Etheridge, director of "Phases."

How's it going, Tremaine?

- I'm doing wonderful, Kayda, how are you?

- I'm well.

Are you having flashbacks of being back here in the studio at WHRO?

- Yeah, so things are kind of turned around a little bit differently, but I remember we came through that door, brought the couch in, it was a lot going on that day, but it does bring flashbacks, I miss it.

Maybe I'll have to do another project in here soon.

- What got you into creating films in the first place?

- I was obsessed with TV when I was little, and I always wondered, how did the people get inside the TV?

- Really?

(laughs) Okay.

- Yeah.

So then, I started, you know how you poke around online and you just say, "How are movies made?"

- [Kayda] Right.

- And I just started doing that.

Then my grandfather, he bought me my first digital camera and my first laptop, and I just started making movies with pictures.

And then I got my first camera that did video.

- So "Phases," the film "Phases."

- [Tremaine] Yes.

- With Mo Woods, right?

- Yes.

With Mo Woods and also Trevor Saniano.

- Yeah, so tell us a little bit about that.

- "Phases" was a feat.

It is a musical film that we filmed up and down the East Coast, and it pretty much documented Mo Woods' journey of love.

I think the album that he made was over the course of maybe a five-year period, and it's like three or four relationships that he was in at the time.

And we just put our three heads together and figured out, how do we tell the story of this album?

You know, sometimes, music can get lost because there's so much of it, especially with this streaming era, people listen to music one week, and the next week, they move on to the next album or song or whatever.

And I just add the idea of, you know, how do we make people relate more to the music, become more invested in it?

- And your company is named PHOND.

- PHOND, yes, P-H-O-N-D. - Tell me about PHOND.

- I was going through depression and I stopped filming altogether, and I started PHOND out as this way of getting out of depression just by creating.

And I told myself, "If I do this one thing, if I create every single day for a year straight, then I'll actually make this a thing."

- [Kayda] Mm.

- And I did that, every year, it's just taken on a new life.

- You have a cameo in Nadd's video?

- Yeah, Nadd Harvin.

- Yeah, so.

- Nadd the Nomad.

- Right, right.

So you guys were in a residency with The CAN Foundation together.

- Yes.

- [Kayda] How did that work out?

- It was eye opening.

I used to struggle with imposter syndrome.

Over the course of, what was that, 12, 13 months, and having a space of my own and be able to work with my team and having carte blanche of whatever I wanted to do.

When the residency was over, I realized, okay, I'm exactly who I think I am.

I know the power that I have as a creative, there's no one that can tell me what I can or cannot do creatively.

- And that's what leads us to the Tremaine we have here today.

- Absolutely.

(Kayda chuckling) - Okay, so with "Phases," I know my favorite part of "Phases," I wanna know your favorite part of "Phases."

- So my favorite part is the shot that gets to everybody, it's the running through the field.

- Okay.

- And it's my favorite part because, the night before we filmed that, I had a conversation with the guys and I was like, "I need fog, I don't know how we're gonna get fog, but I need a shot of fog and I need him running through the fog."

- [Kayda] Yeah.

- And I said, "Okay, we're gonna get up at 3:00 AM, we're gonna go to this place where it's right off the water and I know that possibly there could be fog."

When we got there, there was a bunch of fog.

- [Kayda] Nice.

(chuckles) - [Tremaine] I said, "Okay, Trevor, I'm gonna have him run through this field and you're gonna drive on the road beside it."

- Yeah.

- And it worked.

- [Kayda] Mm.

- [Tremaine] Yeah.

- That's awesome.

Speaking of "Phases," where can we find it?

Where can people watch it?

- You can watch it on YouTube.

- Okay.

- Yeah, so youtube.com/PHOND, P-H-O-N-D. - So Tremaine, thank you so much for coming to hang out with us and talk about the film.

- Absolutely, thank you for having me.

- Okay.

I feel like it's only right that since we got to see your favorite scene from "Phases," we get a bonus clip of my favorite scene.

Check it out.

♪ I need to slow down and catch my breath ♪ ♪ 'Cause I really wanna have you ♪ ♪ I never thought that I'd ♪ ♪ Feel this kinda way when we locked eyes ♪ ♪ No go with emotions, I just try to hide ♪ ♪ But somethings ain't even worth denying ♪ ♪ I'm sick and tired of myself ♪ ♪ 'Cause you saw me for all I had left ♪ ♪ But I'm too blind to see for myself ♪ ♪ I'm always caught up in the world these days ♪ ♪ My judgments been getting poorer these days ♪ ♪ But you been showing me the way ♪ ♪ To better days and happy places ♪ ♪ The smile on my face won't ever ♪ - How fun was that to see the WHRO studio where we're standing at right now being utilized in such a creative way?

- I know, I feel like a celebrity just standing here.

- Me too.

- (chuckles) Well, that's our time.

And if you can't seem to imagine life without us and you wanna watch more, feel free to visit whro.org/curate.

- Thanks for watching, we'll see you next time.

♪ I can't believe my heart is racing ♪ ♪ I never thought that things would change ♪ ♪ Your friends don't like me ♪ ♪ I don't blame them ♪ ♪ But I'm not trying to stay the same ♪ ♪ 'Cause it's been a long time coming ♪ ♪ But I think I'm ready ♪ ♪ Ready to fall in love again ♪ ♪ It feels like the right time this time ♪ ♪ I spent a long time running ♪ ♪ Now I'm breathing heavy ♪ ♪ I need to slow down and catch my breath ♪ ♪ 'Cause I really wanna have you by my side ♪ ♪ 'Cause I really wanna have you by my side ♪ ♪ 'Cause I really wanna have you by my side ♪ (birds chirping) (no audio)