>> JARED BOWEN: I'm Jared Bowen, coming up on Open Studio, could the State House also be an art house?

I talk to Governor Maura Healey about her arts agenda for Massachusetts, plus her personal passions.

>> I like to listen to music, and we have such a variety of music halls and, and concert venues around the state.

So no shortage of things to take in.

>> BOWEN: Then, Pulitzer-Prize- winning poet Tracy K. Smith processes our times in verse.

>> "These were the Reagan years, when we lived with our finger on the button and struggled to view our enemies as children."

>> BOWEN: And how oil painter Ron Anderson uses his art to communicate the nature of the human condition.

It's all now on Open Studio.

♪ ♪ First up, Governor Maura Healey.

As a former professional basketball player, she's a known sports fan, but her passion for the arts runs just as deep.

I recently sat down with the governor to talk about her arts agenda-- from the investments she's already making to her vision for further incorporating local artists into everyday life.

But we started the conversation by talking about her own background in the arts.

Governor Maura Healey, thank you so much for being here.

>> It's great to be with you.

>> BOWEN: So we'll talk about your arts agenda in just a moment.

But first, let's talk about you and the arts.

What's your go-to?

>> I like to listen to music, and we have such a variety of music halls and, and concert venues around the state.

So no shortage of things to take in.

>> BOWEN: So you're a live music person.

We saw Brandi Carlile at your inauguration.

You're a live music person.

>> Yes!

I love live music, and I love Brandi, and invited her to come play at my inauguration, which she did.

She'll be back in Massachusetts in just a few months and hopefully I'll see her again.

But so many great acts-- spring coming, now our outdoor venues will be available, and it's just great.

>> BOWEN: You spent a couple of years in Europe playing basketball, of course, but Austria, that's a very arts-rich environment, especially in Europe, especially in Austria, Vienna.

Does that at all inform how you look at the arts and what we should be doing in this country and here in Massachusetts?

>> Well, I think it starts a little bit further back even.

I grew up loving arts, and, and antiquities, and auctions.

My family was involved in auctions, in the auction business, and particularly antiquities.

And I think that that's... that's where some of this began.

Certainly living...

I lived in Salzburg.

It's home to Mozart.

And so that was next level in terms of exposure to, to arts and throughout Europe, I traveled a lot in Europe, and you're able to visit different museums and the like.

And so there's that.

And then I think here within Massachusetts, particularly after COVID, I mean, we really, really, I think, have collectively developed a new appreciation for the arts, and culture, and shows and things that we could not see for a period of time.

And hopefully that helps folks understand just how important and fundamental they are to our way of life, to the social fabric of community, to who we are.

And that's why I come to this job now as your governor, wanting to do as much as we can to both celebrate arts and culture here in the state, and also invest in it like we haven't before.

>> BOWEN: Is it worthy of a cabinet level position with you?

>> Well, we'll see about that.

I can tell you we're not wasting any time in getting started with our investments.

Record investments proposed for Mass Cultural Council.

We also proposed some tax credits, relief for those who were engaged in movie production in the state and also pre-Broadway, post-Broadway production.

The idea will be provide some live theater tax credits to both attract more people and talent to Massachusetts and help those who are in the business.

$3 million in a fund just for our independent movie theaters to help them buy new screens.

I think about the funding that we have for workforce and apprenticeship programs through the arts, as well as tourism.

We've got a $6 million program that helps direct people to places, cool places in the arts to visit across Massachusetts.

So you'll hear our administration not only investing in the arts, but visiting our wonderful arts and culture institutions around the state and trying to find ways to really lift them up and celebrate them.

>> BOWEN: Going back to the theater tax credit that you just mentioned, we, we know well the movie tax credit here.

We see it all around us now but there's never been traction for a live theater credit.

What was the fulcrum point for you to see the value in that?

>> Well, you know, we have so many shows coming through Massachusetts and so much production within Massachusetts, but we could do even more to support live theater in this state.

Again, this is an industry, a space, so hard hit during the pandemic.

So my view was let's find ways to support live theater throughout Massachusetts.

Many of these are small businesses, right?

So we also have additional assistance for $78 million in grants for small businesses.

But this special targeted tax credit for those doing live theater.

>> BOWEN: I talk to artists all the time, of course, I know there are myriad issues they're facing from, from lost revenue, to lack of rehearsal space, lack of studio space.

What do you see... what have you identified as some of the most critical areas of need in the arts community now?

>> I think housing has to be the top, far and away, the top issue.

And I was over in East Somerville the other day, there's a wonderful pottery gallery over there, and potters working, and they do all sorts of training, have school kids in and just members of the public can go and take classes and it's also studio space.

And so I was talking with a number of the artists there, and to a person they all talk about housing; housing, the high cost of housing-- rents have gone up, housing prices have gone up.

And so, you know, one of the top goals of our administration is to increase housing production around the state, because whether you're in the Berkshires, or Cape and Islands, or in Suffolk County or Middlesex County, I mean, across the state, we just need to find ways to increase housing production, and lower costs, and make housing more accessible to people.

That's really, I think, the top priority right now.

>> BOWEN: The arts as an economic engine, which kind of befuddled me and maybe cross at times, is the fact that people don't understand what the arts brings.

Pre-pandemic, it was $2.2 billion in revenue that was generated, $100 million in taxes, and 70-something thousand jobs.

What's there to be leveraged?

I mean, how do you see that as an economic engine, the arts as a whole?

>> I've seen great shows lately, including SIX and Hamilton again, Into the Woods was in, in town as well.

But I think about the productions, and the arts, and what's happening around our state, around our state.

And they truly are so essential.

I mean, you think about the jobs created.

This is why we need to invest more.

Our state actually lags behind other states when it comes to investments in the arts.

And this is a space that is a $2 billion contributor to our economy, $128 million in revenue every year alone.

We could be doing even more, right?

And so part of what we've proposed in the budget, and in our tax relief package, are ways to really make that investment in the arts.

One thing I think is exciting, though, to talk about and think about, and we've been thinking about it a lot, even within the State House, who, who has not been reflected, who's not been uplifted in the arts.

And in this moment, I think there's a huge opportunity for greater representation.

We're having that conversation generally.

But I think within the arts, one of the things that I'm looking to do as governor is to uplift and amplify voices, faces, stories, artists who have not been as widely profiled.

And I'm hoping to even be able to do some of that within the State House.

>> BOWEN: To see their work on view?

In what way?

>> I think work on view and having a greater diversity of artists' representation in our public buildings, in our public spaces, right?

I also think it would be great to bring artists in to our agencies.

Imagine our roadways and bridges and, you know, some of the infrastructure and you think about the ways we can incorporate art into that.

A lot of cities have done this.

They've done this very well and beautifully.

I think we could do that on a different level when it comes to some of the state infrastructure, state public buildings.

And I think it will be...

I think it'll be something that people will really come to appreciate.

>> BOWEN: Another threat to the arts right now is the... is the book bans that we're seeing, the Tennessee ban on drag performances.

In Wisconsin, a school would not allow a song by Dolly Parton and Miley Cyrus to be performed because it was too suggestive, they thought, the school administration did, that it was too suggestive of LGBTQ issues.

How are you looking at this moment where we're in culture wars again?

>> Yeah, isn't it distressing?

I mean, I can't believe that some of this is being resurrected again.

But it's just where we are in terms of some of the dynamics, particularly the, the political expediency of some of this, right?

And, you know, the perpetration of different forms of bigotry, homophobia, transphobia, racism even, in the guise of either religious freedom or so-called parental rights, what have you, right?

My view is the way to fight back is to double down on those investments.

Massachusetts, we're home to the first public school in the country.

Education is enshrined in our constitution.

We're also home to the first public library.

And I'm really proud that in our proposed budget, we made historic investments in public libraries.

So that is my response.

We believe in books.

We believe that children should be exposed to a diversity of books, for example.

We stand up for those in performance arts.

We stand up and stand behind the LGBTQ community in Massachusetts.

>> BOWEN: Moving to Harvard for a moment.

You're a Harvard alum, of course.

You're also one of the people who led the charge as attorney general against the Sacklers, of course, for their role in the OxyContin, the proliferation of OxyContin in this country.

The Sackler name is still on the Harvard art museums.

Should that name come down?

>> I'd like to see it taken down.

Absolutely.

I've had a lot to say about the Sacklers and just the devastation they caused to so many families across Massachusetts and across this country.

So it's my view that their name has no place on any building of significance anywhere.

Of course, that's something for individual universities to, to address.

>> BOWEN: Well, the current president-- and, of course, he's on his way out-- but Larry Bacow has said it's inappropriate to take it down because of contractual-- well, I assume-- because of contractual negotiations and so on and so forth.

But is there any justification at this point for any institution, any university, any medical center to keep that name up when so many others have?

>> You know, there may be legal reasons, and I'm not privy to all the contracts there.

I just look at all of this as blood money, and, you know, therefore think it's a shame when names like that are ascribed to buildings of significance and importance, just as a general matter.

>> BOWEN: Well, Governor Healey, it's a great joy to talk about art with you and to hear how you're going to move it forward.

Thank you.

>> Well, thank you.

I look forward to more conversation.

♪ ♪ >> Earth, forgive us.

Claim us.

Let us live in humble thanks and joy.

>> BOWEN: That was Pulitzer-Prize-winning poet Tracy K. Smith reciting her translation of "Ode to Joy" at a Handel + Haydn Society concert two summers ago.

We continue our celebration of National Poetry Month with the former U.S. poet laureate.

We spoke in 2021, when she had just released a career-spanning volume of poems, which also include some of her latest works.

It's called Such Color.

But first, here Smith is reciting her poem "My God, It's Full of Stars."

>> When my father worked on the Hubble Telescope, he said they operated like surgeons: scrubbed and sheathed and papery green, the room a clean cold, and bright white.

He'd read Larry Niven at home, and drink scotch on the rocks, His eyes exhausted and pink.

These were the Reagan years, When we lived with our finger on the button and struggled to view our enemies as children.

>> BOWEN: Tracy K. Smith, thank you so much for being with us.

>> Oh, thank you.

>> BOWEN: Well, we just heard from some of your poem, "My God, It's Full of Stars."

Tell me about that piece.

>> That was a poem that I wrote in 2009.

It was part of a project of poems that were thinking about science fiction as a device for thinking about America in the present tense-- you know, distance between people, disconnection.

I was asking the question, "If we don't change, where will we be in, you know, some unforeseeable future?"

And the poem starts out thinking in what I imagine are even larger terms than that, because as I was working on this body of sci-fi poems, my father became ill and passed away.

And suddenly the future got really big to me and it became the afterlife.

And I was trying to come up with a satisfying version of where my father was, what the meaning or the function of the afterlife was.

And I think, of course, I was also looking for inklings about what this life might be about >> BOWEN: So there's writing in that time.

What is it to write in this time, which is such a fraught time?

>> Well, it's really funny to me that Life on Mars is a book that was really trying to pitch itself... its, its imagination out, you know, out far in time in perspective or dimensions.

And the other poems that I've written since that book have really turned toward history and the Earth, the planet, you know, the everyday textures and frictions that we move through and create.

In a way, history feels like another distancing device that allows me to grapple with the present.

It also feels eerily useful because so much of the tension and so much of the conflict that I feel we as Americans are caught up in has to do with terms of the past that we have refused to address properly.

Questions that are rooted, as I see them, in racism or racial difference, and the conundrum of freedom and equality in a nation that is also culpable of, you know, this terrible, dehumanizing institution that was slavery.

>> BOWEN: How difficult is it for you to write about these issues?

Or perhaps I'm also hearing that it's somewhat cathartic to try to process them through history and understand these times.

>> Yeah, I wonder if catharsis is what I would use.

I feel my poems, even my happy poems, begin from a feeling of imbalance or unrest.

So even a love poem for me begins with, "This is so powerful.

How can I get a grip on it?"

And I'm also asking language and association and whatever else art is drawing upon to help me get something that could feel like revelation.

You know, something that could show me it's not just other people.

You, too, need to shift in some way if you want to help make things better.

>> BOWEN: How do you find that?

I'm also mindful of asking you that because I saw a New York Times piece with you where you went through your schedule, you logged your schedule for the New York Times.

>> Oh, gosh.

>> BOWEN: And I thought, how does she have any time to do anything, let alone be an astonishing poet?

>> Time is wild, right?

(both laugh) And lately it feels so very fast.

But as we become more willing to pile and heap things in our schedules, I think we also become a little bit more efficient, or at least that's my, my hope.

So I'm trying to work on making art, even if it's just building questions or reading or dealing with material that can help me grow as a, as a person.

>> BOWEN: Well, I'm always so interested in process, and I wonder where that balance comes in.

Does it just build and build and build until you have to sit down?

>> Well, it's different in different times.

Sometimes, I mean, I look back sometimes on my phone and I see that I have actually the first drafts of many of the poems I've written were written in the Notes section, maybe while I was on an airplane or something like that.

Or sometimes an idea will wake me up in the middle of the night.

And I know now that if I don't write it down, it will go to somebody else.

(Bowen chuckles) But then there are periods built into my life as an academic where I have luxury of time-- you know, a sabbatical every, every few years.

And those are full days of feeling like I'm just in the space and writing.

When you're writing that much, other poems almost feel called by the ones you've just finished, they come in on the wake.

And that's really exhilarating.

>> BOWEN: You mentioned something just a moment ago, which I think plays off what you just said, which is if, "I don't write down "those thoughts I have on the plane or at night, it'll go to somebody else."

(Smith chuckles) What do you mean?

>> Well, I, you know, I have no proof of this, but I imagine that there are there are trends, waves, instincts that many of us have, many of us are, are nudged by, and, you know... Well, here's an example.

I wrote a poem called "Declaration," which is an erasure of the Declaration of Independence.

And when it was published, I got an email from my friend Morgan Parker, who is a poet, and the email said, "You will not believe I wrote a poem "that's very, very similar to your poem based on the same text.

Here it is."

You know, those were poems that were written during a time when we were witnessing a large number of, you know, violent acts committed against unarmed Black citizens.

But I feel like that, that awareness, I want to believe there's a voice or a wind or a, I don't know, a tug that is making certain things more perceptible.

>> BOWEN: We asked if you would read us another of your poems to lead us out of the segment.

What have you chosen?

And, again, why?

>> Well, this next poem is called "Mothership."

And I wrote a lot of poems in 2020 sitting in my backyard feeling, you know, the weight of the ages-- I think many of us did in different ways-- and asking for help and courage and clarity.

And that became a meditative practice for me, and in some ways I felt like there was something that was speaking back to me.

And I remember one day sitting out there, I was thinking about a friend who had lost her mother, and my mother's gone.

You know, 2020 was a year when I needed her.

And so I was wondering, maybe my mother and Aisha's mother know each other now, and if they can help us, that's great.

They understand what we can't yet fully understand.

And that gave me a little bit of, like, hope.

And then I said, "Oh, but wait, "what if it's true that everyone's mother who's gone "sits at a vantage point to the rest of the world that allows them to get what we can't get?"

This poem was a way of saying, "Oh, okay, what do they see?

Maybe it's very simple."

>> BOWEN: Well, Tracy K. Smith, thank you so much for being with us.

The book is Such Color.

We appreciate it.

>> Oh, thank you.

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: And we head now to Columbus, Ohio, to meet illustrator and painter Ron Anderson.

He describes himself as a storyteller who crafts characters, narratives, and attention-- all of it with the intention of creating a scene that is palpable, that practically pulls the viewer into the canvas.

♪ ♪ >> Whatever pops in my head instead of me saying, "Oh, that can't be done," or "No, someone's going to have a problem with that," I tend to just do it, because you're not going to know until you get it out of your head.

That's the starting place is just making some marks.

You just move paint around, or you move the pen around, or you move the, the pencil around until you find something in there.

It's kind of like looking at clouds.

As they move across the sky you start to see images in there.

My job as a storyteller is to take existing things and then somehow do a different twist on it.

And twisting the story gives it a different perspective.

I have to see it in my mind's eye before I can actually physically put it on canvas or on paper.

You know, what is this going to be about.

I know the history of the story.

How do I bring my own interpretation to that?

I have been working on this mostly drawings in my sketch book, King Kong, you know, and playing with that image and what does King Kong look like to me.

I would get an image in my head and go ahead and do it, see what it looks like, if it looks like it can be flushed out more, I'll do another one and another one, and maybe three or four so you get a sense of where this is going.

There are some paintings that paint themselves.

There are other paintings that, you know, you think, "Okay, I had a great idea, but it doesn't look good visually."

It is isn't so much about the subject matter.

It's more about the composition how things come together.

One day you'll start the painting, and then the next day, everything that you thought was just perfect is no longer perfect anymore.

It's key to step back from time to time.

I see a lot of artists will just take a seat, you know, and they're too close to the work.

That's why you see mirrors here.

If you're looking at something for a long period of time you miss all the mistakes.

But if you have a way to change the way you see from time to time, by looking in the mirror, you see all the distortions that you aren't going to see if I'm looking directly at it.

And sometimes it's better to just kind of step away from it, don't even look at it for a while, and paint more than one painting at a time.

Did an 18-foot painting.

It's called "Harlequin's Dream."

The painting appears as though it's a dream because the perspective is sort of wonky in places.

The whole idea was I want people to actually be part of the painting, to actually walk into that space, be a part of the event taking place as opposed to being a voyeur.

These aren't models.

These are people I'm making up or things I'm making up on canvas.

I think it's very difficult to... to use a model and make them do the things that I want them to do.

So I love to play with things that don't make sense or seem a little dangerous.

I don't know if I really concretely start with a story.

But if you saw the drawing that that painting began with, it's completely changed.

The figure that's holding the magnifying glass has always been there.

That's probably one of the few pieces in that painting that is from the original idea.

Because you think of the magnifying glass as one of those things where I really want to see this closer so I can understand what I'm looking at.

That's where the original concept came from, using the magnifying glass as a metaphor for, you know, not really believing until I can actually see.

By keeping an open mind to developing the piece, by saying, "I don't want to make this about any particular thing," I want it to be open enough that the viewer will have always the possibility of seeing it differently every single time.

That's not your job to explain it.

Your job is basically make something interesting enough that people will ask the question, "What is this?"

and what does it mean to them.

I have so many ideas in my head that I can't put them down fast enough.

And I tend to be one who feels like my work is important for me to just keep doing it until I can't do it anymore.

If I get an idea, I don't edit.

I just see what it looks like, and I may not like it, but at least I put it down.

So I get the joy out of just being able to come in here in my own space and create images that didn't exist before.

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

Tune in next week as we take flight with a new staging of Angels in America at Central Square Theatre.

As always, you can see us first on YouTube.com/GBHNews, follow us on Instagram and Twitter at @OpenStudioGBH.

I'm @TheJaredBowen.

And visit us online at GBH.org/OpenStudio.

I'm Jared Bowen.

Thanks for joining us.

>> You cannot see the mothership in space.

It and she being made of the same thing.

All our mothers hover there in this ceaseless blue black, watching it ripple and dim...