(bright music) (bright music) - [Matt] Visit the studio of sculptor William Fillmore.

Chat with Albany Art Room owner Karen Schupack, ♪ We are the ♪ - [Matt] And catch a performance from the Dust Bowl Faeries.

♪ Not for the new sold ads ♪ - [Matt] It's all ahead on this episode of "AHA!

A House for Arts" - [Advertiser 1] 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 Malesardi, and the Robison Family Foundation.

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

That is why we take an active role in our community.

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

(bright music) (graphics whooshing) - Hi, I'm Matt Rogowicz and this is "AHA!

A House for Arts," a place for all things creative.

As soon as I saw the work of sculptor, William Fillmore, I just had to find out why he makes such twisted sculptures.

Their dark, scary, a little funny.

I can't even describe them.

Just take a look.

(gentle melancholic music) - I'm Billy Fillmore.

I make intentionally creepy stuff.

(gentle melancholic music) I really like to take the things that I don't like about society or the things that I've experienced, and I try to replicate that in 3D materials.

In the end, it's all about trying to make work that makes people stop and wonder why the hell would anyone make that?

(gentle melancholic music) When I was a kid, I was terrified of my closet and I didn't know why.

In fact, my parents have these really funny pictures of me sleeping in the hallway or I would go to Mike's room, my brother's room, and I'd sleep with him.

And then eventually my brother was so tired of me coming and waking him up and sleeping with him that they put a lock on his door and then they have a picture of me sleeping in front of his door.

'cause I was so terrified of sleeping in my room.

It took a while of remembering this that I remember looking into the closet and seeing the void, and I was so afraid of the possibilities of what could be inside of there.

(tense music) And so I was so afraid of that closet and I think my aesthetic and my taste kind of built around that terror, that now I feel like I am no longer afraid of the closet but now I've become the thing in the closet.

(gentle melancholic music) Just putting back is a... (laughs) It relates to my birth story, so I was an in vitro baby and this is in 1980 and an in vitro baby cost $10,000.

(laughs) And so my dad never let me forget how much it cost.

And during the time of my birth, it was just a very traumatic event.

I guess there was, at some points they asked my mom, you have to choose between yourself and the baby.

(gentle melancholic music) So I was finally birthed.

And (laughs) the way it's told to me is the umbilical cord wrapped around my belly and so I was covered in green (beep) and none of my hair follicles had been like sloughed off, which is normal.

All of your hair follicles grow when you're born, but some babies are born with all their hair follicles still in touch, so from head to toe, I was covered in orange hair and green (beep).

I was so gross that my mom's first words to me was like, that's the ugliest thing I've ever seen.

Just put him back.

(baby sobbing) So I think that that is one of those perfect kind of stories where my artwork comes from where it's beautiful on one hand and how much trauma and suffering had to occur.

But then it's really funny on the other hand that you went through all this trouble and you just get a red-haired, green (beep) covered baby.

There's nothing I get along.

I love my parents mom, dad I love and we get along great.

But they, they were kind of the first institutional rule setters for me and I never understood why.

I got a bachelor's degree in business administration and there's nothing worse than graduating with a degree that you didn't actually want.

The day after I graduated, I went to my first visiting artist lecture, and the artist was name was Justin Sweet, who was a concept artist.

And I'd never seen anybody make the stuff that I was consuming.

So he made a lot of concept art for like "The Chronicles of Narnia," "Lord of the Rings," some video games that I had played comic books and it just kind of blew my mind.

And after that, the next semester I just started going back to art school.

There's two parts of me that I always am questioning.

One is my 13-year-old self who was in the middle of puberty and being punished for being different or not understanding the rules.

And the other part of me that I like to listen to is my death bed self.

So I'm imagining myself in my 90s or hopefully like later than that in a hospital bed, trying to look back on my life, and hoping that what I did was worthwhile.

So between those two parts of my personality, I find myself trying to make work that appeals to both of them.

(gentle melancholic music) So I've worked here at Russell Sage College on New Scotland, and right now I live like a mile and a half away and I always walk.

And when I'm walking, I'm not looking for stuff, but stuff seems to find me.

So I walk by a church that's down on New Scotland and in the grass was this doll that definitely looks like it survived a fire or something like that.

But it's porcelain head is still intact.

And I saw its mangled body and I was just like, that is the ugliest thing I've ever seen.

Like I was to my mom.

I pick it up and its eyes are closed.

When I pick it up, its eyes open and its eyes are just terrible looking 'cause they survived the fire.

But it's just the weirdest creepiest thing ever.

So when I brought it back, I didn't want it to just sit it on a shelf.

So I ended up making a box for it.

And in my mind I was imagining what would the grandmother who said I was the cutest thing she'd ever seen.

(coughs) What kind of box would she like to see it in?

And so I went to Joanne's and found like the prettiest, nicest fabric.

So the tension between a traditional doll that's been mutilated, not by me, just found it and then putting it in a curio cabinet box as if it's some kind of precious object was just really fun.

(gentle melancholic music) I like affecting other people, but the main audience for me is me and those two characters I talked about like my 13-year-old self and my ancient deathbed persona.

By paying attention to those two, what it's really doing is making sure that I'm not being depressed about what I made and I'm not anxious about what I could make.

And it's always kinda pushing me to make the best work that I can make now.

(gentle melancholic music) - Karen Schupack is an artist who has worked in many mediums over the years.

Paintings, mosaics, and caustics, pottery to name a few.

And in 2008, Karen opened the Albany Art Room so that she can share her love of art with others.

Jade Warrick sat down with Karen to learn more about the Albany Art Room and to see what she's currently working on.

- Hi Karen, welcome to "AHA!

A House for Arts" today.

- Thanks for having me.

- Yeah, I'm ready to talk all things artsy, as always.

I want to talk about this organization you run called The Art Room.

What is it?

Where did it start?

- Well, I started the Albany Art Room 17 years ago, which is kind of hard to believe.

I can only gauge the timed change from my daughter's age.

She was seven when I opened.

She's 24 now.

So it's been a long time.

(Jade laughs) I started it because I really found a missing need in Albany.

I lived in Albany and I was driving all the way to Troy to take art and I had a young child and I never wanted to do art projects with her because it was like too much trouble, too messy, you know, they're on to the next thing really quickly and then you have to clean it all up.

And I thought, oh, do you really wanna do this?

And I thought, well, if I'm not even doing art projects with my kid, other people probably are reluctant to do it also.

So I thought there should be a shared space where we can have art classes for kids, art classes for adults, and then this concept of open studio, which was a dropping in anytime we're open.

A lot of it was parents with young children coming in and exploring materials and making art.

And I knew nothing about running a business, so I had to learn how to everything about running a business and somehow it's still going.

- That's awesome.

And what kind of like services do you offer there?

- Well, it's changed a lot over the years.

When we first opened, it was just mostly 2D visual arts for people of all ages and all levels of experience.

And then a year in, I realized that the thing that everyone was asking for was pottery.

- Mm-hmm.

- So I hired someone to help me add on a pottery studio and that has since then been the dominant art form that people want.

And so it's really taken over a lot of the space, which I was kind of resistant to for a while because it's not my first love, but it's fun and people really enjoy it.

I was really lucky to have amazing young employees from the beginning and some teachers who worked with me who helped me figure out what I was doing and how to do it.

- That's awesome, with that community support, right?

- Definitely.

- That's always about community.

- Yeah.

- So speaking of community, I know you guys have a membership model, so to be involved with the art room.

So how does that model work?

So how do people get in?

- (laughs) Well, unfortunately it's a limited space and so at the moment we're at capacity with kind of a long waiting list- - Mm-hmm.

- But the model of membership is that a member pays by the month or by the year and they basically get a key to the building and they have their own shelves and most of them are potters, but I do have some painters and mixed media artists and other kinds of artists.

And so they just come and go whenever.

So I mean there have been people who are like middle of the night artists and I never even see them.

And then magically there's all this art that appears, so... (Jade laughs) - That's awesome.

So it really is like when you go there, you're like making friends- - Yeah.

- Like you like love your neighbors.

(Karen laughs) It really is a conducive space- - Yeah.

- Of like community and teamwork, right?

- Yeah.

- Yeah, why do you think that's important for artists?

I think especially less so for kids, but for adults, a lot of adults are really reluctant to make art.

You know, they had some art teacher when they were a kid tell them they were bad at something and they shut down and when they were afraid to try it.

So I mean, I find lot of the time I'm trying to, you know, get an adult to feel comfortable trying and having kids around who are just, you know, so free with expressing with art materials.

It's a really good example that they're setting for the adults who are watching them.

So that was great in the early years of the Albany Art Room and now, you know, with the smaller sort of calmer environment of mostly adults, it's just, you know that you know everybody and that everybody's really sort of cheering you on.

- Mm-hmm.

- So like, if you wanna try something new, we're right there with you to be like, go for it, it's okay.

And if it messes up we can just make it into something else or throw it away or start again.

You know, so there's really that kind of supportive environment.

- That's awesome and I will say, I think we've all, well hopefully not all of us, but a lot of people I do know have had that one art teacher, including myself, that kind of said something that wasn't very positive- - Yeah.

- And it really throws you off your game and- - Yeah, - You're like, well maybe I'm not gonna be this vulnerable again, whether it's poetry or drawing or any type of like art.

So it's really good that you're fostering a space for older adult artists to feel kind of safe to create in.

- Thank you.

- Let's talk about you as an artist.

- Okay.

(laughs) - Like what kind of work do you do?

- So I've done art my whole life.

Grew up doing art.

My mom was an art teacher.

We had an art studio in my backyard.

I was super lucky in that way, but I really was a dabbler.

I did all sorts of different kinds of art.

And then recently I was teaching a class, a mixed media abstract class and I was helping the students go through this process of figuring out what do you really want your art to be?

What do you want it to be about?

What do you want?

You know, how do you wanna make people feel?

Like that kind of thing.

I was getting them through this process of thinking about that.

And then afterwards a friend of mine said, "Well, have you asked yourself those questions?"

I'm like, "Not recently."

And so I did, and this was like three years ago and in the process I realized I really wanna make art that has meaning that's important to me.

And what I landed on was political work about injustices in our cities, specifically about segregation.

And the one thing I knew a lot about having studied urban planning was redlining.

And so I started to research redlining and made a series of work mixed media fiber art about redlining.

And then I expanded it because I realized, well that talks about it as if it's one isolated point in history.

And what I really wanted to talk about was how every level of government throughout our history has worked to make all of those issues even worse.

You know, that so many different legislation and laws and regulations have just made segregation even worse and have left people in our cities with, you know, not a lot of options, no opportunities to build wealth, no opportunities to own property.

And so my focus then widened and my more recent work was more inclusive of other issues and it's all communicated through maps.

And I found that fiber art, layering fabrics, stitching, different kinds of stitching, different kinds of fabric and then the opportunity to add other things like paint and printmaking to it, gave me all of the tools I needed to like communicate these very complicated ideas because I could layer it all and I could layer the physical with the conceptual, you know, all physically layering it on my artwork.

So that's what I've come up with.

- That's awesome, especially highlighting like redlining and I don't know if gerrymandering even counts in that In everything I have all the city planning be- - It could be.

- It's like terrible.

(Karen laughs) Thank you, Karen- - Yeah.

- For calling us about the art room in your own personal work.

- Thank you.

- Please welcome the Dust Bowl Faeries.

(bright music) ♪ Don't let the sun ♪ ♪ Touch your face ♪ ♪ Queens are the queen ♪ ♪ Queen Ann's lace ♪ ♪ Roses have thorns ♪ ♪ Lavender's gay ♪ ♪ Pockets are full of ♪ ♪ Posies today ♪ ♪ Another show on the road ♪ ♪ It's difficult to prepare ♪ ♪ I like the ringlets ♪ ♪ Ringlets in her hair ♪ ♪ Another show on the road ♪ ♪ It's difficult to repair ♪ ♪ I like the ringlets ♪ ♪ Ringlets in her hair ♪ (bright music) (bright music continues) ♪ Does she love me ♪ ♪ Or does she K-N-O-T ♪ ♪ If she loves me ♪ ♪ Forget me not ♪ ♪ She makes me kinda crazy ♪ ♪ Now I'm in a daisy ♪ ♪ Feelin' kinda hazy ♪ ♪ She makes me kinda crazy ♪ ♪ She makes me kinda crazy ♪ ♪ Now I'm in a daisy ♪ ♪ Feelin' kinda hazy ♪ ♪ She makes me kinda crazy ♪ ♪ The moon is a portal in the sky ♪ ♪ I'd like to go there when I die ♪ ♪ The moon's a portal in the sky ♪ ♪ We can go there you and I ♪ (bright music) ♪ Oh what sweet fools ♪ ♪ You and I ♪ ♪ Watching the portal ♪ ♪ In the sky ♪ ♪ Oh what sweet fools ♪ ♪ You and I ♪ ♪ Watching the portal ♪ ♪ In the sky ♪ ♪ She makes me kinda crazy ♪ ♪ Now I'm in a daisy ♪ ♪ Feelin' kinda hazy ♪ ♪ She makes me kinda crazy ♪ ♪ She makes me kinda crazy ♪ ♪ Now I'm in a daisy ♪ ♪ Feelin' kinda hazy ♪ ♪ She makes me kinda crazy ♪ ♪ She makes me kinda crazy ♪ ♪ Now I'm in a daisy ♪ ♪ Feelin' kinda hazy ♪ ♪ She makes me kinda crazy ♪ ♪ She makes me kinda crazy ♪ ♪ Now I'm in a daisy ♪ ♪ Feelin' kinda hazy ♪ ♪ She makes me kinda ♪ ♪ Once there was a rabbit who we took into our home ♪ ♪ We got her from the bunny store ♪ ♪ Where certain rabbits roam ♪ ♪ We built a wooden in castle so she feels safe and free ♪ ♪ Bunny the joke's on me ♪ (bright music) ♪ I lather her head with paper ♪ ♪ And the fancy little pants ♪ ♪ She dropped her everywhere ♪ ♪ I could not reach my hand ♪ ♪ She beat in every corner of a house it was once mice ♪ ♪ She terrorized the kitty, she fractured mice with mice ♪ ♪ Bad bun ♪ ♪ I tried to winkle over with the carrot and some greens ♪ ♪ Listed the thick father for my fragile self-esteem ♪ ♪ She let my friends all pet her ♪ ♪ She lit me when my trine ♪ ♪ And my ways and my grind ♪ ♪ You're just a bad, bad, bad, bad, bun ♪ ♪ Bad bun ♪ ♪ I watch frolic in the sun ♪ ♪ Bad bun ♪ ♪ I give you all the best in life ♪ ♪ Bad bun ♪ ♪ I let you cuddle with my wife ♪ ♪ Bad bun ♪ ♪ I am lost and you know one ♪ ♪ You're just a bad, bad, bad, bad, bun ♪ (bright music) ♪ You will not return to your hutch ♪ ♪ Although my advise as such ♪ ♪ You will not be tricked into doing things my way ♪ ♪ Though it may leave you climb on the highway ♪ ♪ I put a treat into her hutch to see if she would go ♪ ♪ She turned her head and thumped her feet ♪ ♪ To warn the other does ♪ ♪ She eyed me with derision ♪ ♪ She wrinkled up her nose ♪ ♪ She found the nearest houseplant and she began to mow ♪ ♪ I tried to let her know that I was keeping her from harm ♪ ♪ Life inside a cage could have a certain kind of charm ♪ ♪ The answer that she gave me nearly calls me to unwind ♪ ♪ Cages are in your mind ♪ ♪ You're just a bad, bad, bad, bad, bun ♪ ♪ Bad bun ♪ ♪ And you just love to get me fun ♪ ♪ Bad bun ♪ ♪ You've been lost your life ♪ ♪ Bad bun ♪ ♪ So now your rascally ♪ ♪ And white ♪ ♪ My dream has went and come undone ♪ ♪ You're just a bad, bad, bad, bad, bun ♪ ♪ You're just a bad, bad, bad, bad, bun ♪ ♪ Bad bun ♪ ♪ For me this is ♪ ♪ No longer fun ♪ ♪ Bad bun ♪ ♪ You turned my house into a barn ♪ ♪ Bad bun ♪ ♪ But I can't blame you just go darn ♪ ♪ Bad bun ♪ ♪ Perhaps I should ♪ ♪ become a nun ♪ ♪ All times on me ♪ ♪ You're just a bad, ♪ ♪ Bad, bad, bad, bun ♪ (bright music) ♪ It's so precarious ♪ ♪ Calling me alchemist ♪ ♪ I need a catalyst ♪ ♪ We are the catalyst ♪ ♪ Only know your caress ♪ ♪ 'Cause I'm a masochist ♪ ♪ I'm a masochist ♪ ♪ We are the catalyst ♪ ♪ Time to make a list ♪ ♪ It's time to raise a fist ♪ ♪ Make them reminisce ♪ ♪ Trade it for a kiss ♪ ♪ My fellow eucharist ♪ ♪ Of all the scientist ♪ ♪ I'll be the alchemist ♪ ♪ We are the catalyst ♪ ♪ My fellow eucharist ♪ ♪ Or all the scientist ♪ ♪ I'll be the alchemist ♪ ♪ We are the catalyst ♪ ♪ You can eat my flesh ♪ ♪ You can drink my blood ♪ ♪ 'Cause I'm a masochist ♪ ♪ She seeks a ton on this ♪ (bright music) (bright music continues) ♪ 'Cause like your cannabis ♪ ♪ In this endlessness ♪ ♪ In this endlessness ♪ ♪ In this endlessness ♪ ♪ Was my whole other mess ♪ ♪ In this endlessness ♪ ♪ We are synchronous ♪ ♪ In this endlessness ♪ ♪ Where's my whole one romance ♪ ♪ In this endlessness ♪ ♪ We are synchronous ♪ ♪ In this endlessness ♪ ♪ Endlessness ♪ ♪ Endlessness ♪ ♪ Endlessness ♪ ♪ Endlessness ♪ ♪ Endlessness ♪ ♪ Endlessness ♪ ♪ Endlessness ♪ ♪ Endlessness ♪ ♪ Endlessness ♪ ♪ Endlessness ♪ ♪ Endlessness ♪ ♪ Endlessness ♪ ♪ Endlessness ♪ ♪ Endlessness ♪ ♪ Endlessness ♪ ♪ Endlessness ♪ (graphics chiming) - Thanks for joining us.

For more arts, visit wmht.org/aha and be sure to connect with us on social.

I'm Matt Rogowicz.

Thanks for watching.

(upbeat melancholic music) (upbeat melancholic music continues) - [Advertiser 1] 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 Malesardi, and The Robison Family Foundation.

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

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

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