>> If I make a mistake, whatever a mistake is, something I don't like, I stick it back together with glue and then I keep on.

>> BOWEN: I'm Jared Bowen, coming up on Open Studio, Seeing Things in Things-- the sculpture of Mel Kendrick.

Then we meet the directors of the Oscar-nominated documentary Crip Camp.

>> I hear about a summer camp for the handicapped run by hippies.

Somebody said, "You probably all smoke dope with the counselors," and I'm, like... "Sign me up!"

>> BOWEN: Plus an experimental art show.

>> We basically are trying to provide opportunity for people to have access to art without feeling like you have to just be a collector.

>> BOWEN: And the path of a portrait painter.

>> There has to be some kind of a journey for the viewer to embark on.

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

♪ ♪ We begin at the Addison Gallery of American Art, which has filled an entire floor of galleries with the sculpture of Mel Kendrick.

As we see in nearly 40 years of work on view, he's an outlier who's never taken to lying down.

The name of this show is Seeing Things in Things, which is essentially what artist Mel Kendrick has been doing since the 1970s.

Where we might see a plain old birch tree, he sees it from the inside out.

>> The only way I could do this was cutting it into many small pieces and then removing the core.

And reassembled it exactly the way it grew in the tree.

The wood grain is matched up all the way through.

>> BOWEN: For most of his career, Kendrick has always gone out on a limb.

Dismantling them, actually, along with trees and logs, so that they can be reassembled.

>> On all these pieces, you can match up the holes and see what's going on.

But it always brings up the whole question, it's, like, what am I making?

(laughing) What am I making?

Why is this interesting to me?

>> BOWEN: They're questions that have sustained Kendrick through a 40-some-odd-year career, charted out here in his first-ever retrospective at the Addison Gallery of American Art.

Kendrick came of age as a New York artist when Minimalism reigned.

Where artists like Frank Stella stripped art down to its barest forms, Kendrick was building it back up.

In other words, going against the grain.

>> I was heavily influenced by the artists I was meeting-- the older artists.

And I kept trying to break through to find something that was my own.

>> BOWEN: So he stayed with sculpture.

Something the art world had written off by the time he had a significant early-career show of his small works in 1983.

>> I literally went into that show and I thought, "Okay..." I can get emotional about it.

(laughs) "Okay, I've done all that I can do, and if they don't sell, if no one likes them, I'll give them all to my friends."

(chuckles) Didn't turn out that way.

(laughs) >> I really can't think of anyone I would compare him to, which is what makes, for me, this show so exciting... >> BOWEN: Allison Kemmerer is the curator of the show-- really a show of shows, where each gallery offers a different body of work.

>> As you wander through, you will participate in this show.

These works demand physical engagement.

They suck you in.

You're asking yourself, "What is this?"

You need to walk around them to fully understand them and process them.

>> BOWEN: Often the answer, despite Kendrick's best efforts, is that these are beings of some sort, with their craggy legs and humanistic forms.

>> Mel is adamant about avoiding any link to the representational world-- but of course!

We all see that-- I imagine Nemo, the insect-like, full-room-sized sculpture, when we turn off the lights at night, as making his rounds around the museum.

I mean, it's all about motion.

>> BOWEN: And made in motion.

Kendrick never sketches, draws, or designs his sculptures beforehand.

>> He sees wielding the chainsaw much like wielding a pencil, in that the shapes that he enforces onto wood-- curves and arabesques and holes-- are not things naturally, um, akin to the material.

It's more a painterly, drawing process.

>> If I make a mistake, whatever a mistake is, something I don't like, uh, I stick it back together with glue and then I keep on.

So I'm incorporating all those elements.

And that, to me, is drawing.

>> BOWEN: The clues to Kendrick's how-did-he-do-that process are everywhere.

The traces of paint, the ties, the armature-- all locked into these single blocks of wood.

Well, what about your relationship with wood?

Is it a relationship?

Have you mastered it at this point?

>> I like to say I'm a very bad carpenter.

(laughs) But I started in construction.

When I arrived in New York, I knew nothing about wood, so it's really, the whole thing built up from, literally, building-- building walls, building kitchen cabinets.

>> BOWEN: Wood does have the starring, and frequently towering, role here, and with appearances in his woodblock prints and photography.

But occasionally we find cameos by concrete and rubber.

>> This is sort of an architectural rubber.

And I love the color, the amber.

And it satisfied something in me to see the inside.

>> BOWEN: How often does beauty matter in your work?

>> Beauty as a concept is not something I go through, but I think it's one of those intangible things, because how do you know what's beautiful if you've never seen it before?

But the amber is beautiful, the light coming through it, I mean, these pieces near a window-- it's fantastic.

But in no way did I think this could be deemed a beautiful object.

(laughs): I think it's a very disturbing object-- or a very funny thing.

>> BOWEN: And therein lies the beauty of Mel Kendrick.

Seeing the other side of things.

♪ ♪ Next, the Academy Awards ceremony is this weekend.

And among the nominees for Best Documentary Feature, Crip Camp, which tells the story of a summer camp for disabled teens run by hippies in the 1970s.

A number of the camp's young attendees then went on to become leaders of the Disability Rights Movement that ultimately led to the Americans with Disabilities Act.

I'll speak with co-directors Jim LeBrecht and Nicole Newnham in a moment, but first, here's a look.

>> The world always wants us dead; we live with that reality.

>> At the time, so many kids just like me were being sent to institutions.

It was just a continual struggle.

>> Most disabled people, like myself, are unable to use public transportation.

>> We needed a civil rights law of our own.

>> BOWEN: Thank you both for joining us.

Congratulations on the film-- congratulations on the Academy Award nomination, how exciting.

>> Thank you, it is.

>> Yeah, it's pretty amazing!

>> BOWEN: Well, Jim, let me start with you.

I mean, watching this film, I think we all have remembrances of these halcyon days of youth.

But there did seem to be something different about Camp Jened-- what was it?

>> You know, having an obvious disability-- I'm a wheelchair user, I was born with spina bifida-- I always felt different on the outside world, but, you know, take the combination of this great camp run by hippies and the times we were in, where everybody's kind of questioning what we were doing and how we were doing it and throwing out the rules and making new ones, well, I mean, Camp Jened was that kind of place.

It was just a place that I just felt like a kid.

>> You wouldn't be picked to be on the team back home, but at Jened, you had to go up to bat.

>> BOWEN: Well, Nicole, let me bring you in here.

What is the story, as you began to collaborate, that you saw emerge here?

>> Well, you know, Jim came to me, we'd been working together for about 15 years, and over time I really saw, um, disability in a different way through Jim.

He really opened my eyes to seeing disability as a community and as a culture and as a civil rights issue.

And I started to realize that a lot of the ways that non-disabled people typically see disability is either usually in kind of a tragic sort of medical model, or a sort of charity, inspirational way of looking at it, you know?

And I thought, cinematically, if we could bring people into an immersive experience, that's like going to summer camp themselves, that that could shift the way we saw disability.

>> BOWEN: But in order to tell the story, you have to have footage.

People can do it through still photographs or they do it with recreations in documentaries.

But you had the actual footage.

>> This group called the People's Video Theater had showed up at Camp Jened in 1971.

We were in the middle of quarantining and doing all sorts of things because two counselors had gotten the crabs, right?

And so I remember that they gave me a camera one day, and somebody pushed me around camp as I did a tour.

>> Come to Camp Janed and find yourself, you know?

So I mentioned this to Nicole, which was, like, "Oh, my God, Jim, you actually shot some footage?"

>> BOWEN: To be indelicate, Jim mentioned crabs.

There is a lot of sex portrayed in this film, a very deliberate choice-- tell me about that.

>> Oh, well, you know, when Jim and I started talking about the film, it was clear that there were a lot of things that I think it's fair to say, Jim, that you, like, you had spent your entire life thinking it would be important for non-disabled people to understand about disability, as, like, a full, 360 human experience.

And, and one thing is that idea of people with disabilities having, you know, the same kind of stories of sexual awakening as anybody else.

We saw the whole camp section of the film as a way to just really shake up what people think about the disabled experience.

We really wanted to make a film that felt like Wet Hot American Summer or The Breakfast Club, you know, that really showed that journey to adulthood that these particular people happened to go on.

It's just that these particular people also happened to be, you know, the architects of the revolution that came later.

>> BOWEN: Well, let's chart that revolution, then.

Tell us about where you take the film from the people who were at that camp and what they ultimately did for the civil rights movement for the disabled.

>> I met Judy Heumann, who's a central character in our film.

And Judy was working at the camp, she'd been a camper.

And then I find out that she prevailed in a lawsuit to get a teaching position in New York City, that she was denied simply because she used a wheelchair.

And for the first time in my life, as a teenager, I'm realizing, "Oh, my gosh, we can fight back.

"We, we have some way of pushing back against the oppression that we're experiencing in our lives," and for me... (snaps) That really, really clicked.

>> They were announcing Paraplegics Stop Traffic in Manhattan.

>> Basically, with the one street, we were able to shut the city down.

>> It sparked a lot of other people that met Judy at that camp.

And we would talk about our need for a liberation movement, seeing what was going on in the Civil Rights Movement and the Women's Movement and the Gay Rights Movement.

And out of that, you know, we started creating our community outside of camp, around our activism-- it was incredibly motivating.

>> BOWEN: We see kind of a founding at the camp, and then what happens in Berkeley?

>> When the folks from Camp Jened migrated out to Berkeley in the early '70s, they, they did so partially because Judy Heumann had been recruited by the legendary activist Ed Roberts to come and join the Center for Independent Living.

And and so all of a sudden, we have a bunch of our campers, but they are now working the phones, helping people find housing, helping people find attendants, get into a motorized wheelchair, and that, you know, sparked a whole community of kind of freedom and self-discovery.

And so that ended up kind of dovetailing with the activists' efforts to get the first disability civil rights legislation, which, the government was sitting on the implementation of this law, and that took shape in the form of a incredible 28-day takeover of a federal building in San Francisco.

>> A small army of the handicapped have occupied this building for the past 11 days.

>> People basically just stayed in the building, supported by all other kinds of movements.

You know, the Black Panthers provided food, the Gay Rights Movement provided security, and eventually won that law being implemented, which laid the groundwork for the A.D.A.

>> BOWEN: We should mention that it wasn't until 1990 that the A.D.A.

comes into place.

And what are you encountering now?

How accessible is the world today as your film comes out?

It's not necessarily there yet, I've heard that you've encountered this in some of your screenings, and then the upcoming Academy Awards.

How will that happen when we see that stage there with those steps that the winners climb?

>> Well, from what we've been told, there will be wheelchair access to the stage.

When we did talk to the academy about this, we said, look, if we were fortunate enough to win, and Nicole and I and Sara were heading to the stage, that we went the same path as everybody else, that we, you know, we weren't relegated to something over to the side or backstage.

>> BOWEN: And I'll end with you, Nicole, as you look around and you see the impact that your film is making, what is the impact?

>> The floodgates, I think, are opening.

I think we feel happy that, you know, young people who might want to make films and tell stories can, you know, look at, at Jim on the red carpet at the Academy Awards and say, "I could be there someday, too."

>> BOWEN: Well, hopefully it will be more than that.

Hopefully we'll see Jim on stage.

We'll be rooting for you here in Boston on Open Studio.

Congratulations with the film.

And again, good luck at the Oscars.

>> Thank you so much.

>> Oh, thank you very much.

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: It's time now for Arts This Week, where we're seizing on Shakespeare.

♪ ♪ Sunday, visit the Fruitlands Museum to see Piecework: Resistance and Healing in Contemporary Fiber Art.

The exhibition highlights artists who use fabric and stitching to address challenging moments in American history.

Attend a virtual reading of Seize the King, a reimagining of Richard III, Monday.

It's the second installment in Actors' Shakespeare Project's series featuring the Bard's classics told from the perspective of people of color.

Check out the closing event of the Brit d'Arbeloff Women & Science Theater Festival Tuesday.

Learn from a panel of artists how theater can help reinstate science as a fundamental aspect of American society.

>> ♪ Turn it on, turn it up ♪ >> BOWEN: Listen to Clean Green Music Machine's kids' podcast Turn it Up!

on Friday.

Geared towards five- to ten-year-olds, the podcast builds on theater to teach children about clean energy, climate change, and recycling.

>> (singing) >> BOWEN: Saturday, celebrate the 235th anniversary of Mozart's comedic opera The Marriage of Figaro.

Its Vienna premiere in 1786 was directed by Mozart himself.

Things are always a little hotter in Miami, including the Satellite Art Show, an inclusive, artist-driven fair that encourages visitors to experience interactive projects.

Here's a look at a pre-pandemic show.

♪ ♪ >> I'm Brian Whiteley, and I run Satellite Art Show.

It's an art fair in Miami and I'm the founder and director.

We are in John Gomez's Chicano-themed tattoo parlor.

John is an artist based in L.A. and he comes from a lot of the culture there that mixes kind of, like, low brow, high brow, um, and Latin culture.

Right now, with the live tattoo that I'm getting, um, that same type of idea, where art is, can be this high-brow, low-brow art for the people.

You can leave with... from this fair with a tattoo, artwork on your body, buy a painting, experience immersive rooms and artworks and installations.

So we basically are trying to provide opportunity for people to have access to art without feeling like you have to just be a collector.

♪ ♪ Well, we have about 30 projects in here.

Each one attracts you into the space and provides with some different type of engagement.

♪ ♪ Artists like Kyle Heinly from Florida, who, as a artist with, has been battling cerebral palsy since he was a child, who found art as a therapy.

Beautiful works.

And we have other artists like Carla Maldonado, who is from Brazil, who deals with, like, the deforestation, and the rain forest, and climate change.

Juan Bravo from New York, where you are literally flying through space... (air hissing) Inflatable objects that will inflate and contrast based on your presence next to them.

Mirrored rooms, 3-D mapped rooms from an artist named Holly Danger.

And it's a lounge area you can...

It's kind of like a therapy and a calming area for you to experience and soak in all of the visuals that you are getting impacted with.

♪ ♪ The work here is from a wide variety of people with different backgrounds.

And what I've been trying to do with them is propel them to kind of make these spaces the most exaggerated form of what their artwork can be and should be.

And so the diversity of backgrounds and culture and where their experiences are coming from can be heightened when you add this immersive element to it.

And people can really get saturated in this one person or this one artist's idea that they want to convey to you.

As well as, you're typically going to meet the artist or the person behind the work instead of just someone just trying to simply do maybe an art sale.

So people have really interesting and in-depth conversations about where their practice is, where their ideas come from.

And they leave this art fair feeling like they've learned something valuable or learned more about culture.

♪ ♪ >> My name is Carla Maldonado and I'm a Brazilian artist.

To me, this work is pretty much me going back to this romantic idea of what the Amazon forest was.

But at the same time, getting to know that the only way that this forest is going to stay alive if, is if those indigenous activists have the power to keep doing the work that they do for humanity.

Everything that we need right now is coming from 60% of the remaining rain forest that is now in Brazil.

And it's in danger.

The newspapers, the news are actually like the current news that I've been dealing with for the past few months.

The act of, like, printing them and putting them on the wall, just putting a red blinking light, is just trying to remind people that this is still happening.

♪ ♪ >> Museums are coming here to see what's next, and who to pick up, and who to show.

And I think that's a testament to what we're doing.

Is that we're trying to build a platform for where the art world can go in the future, not what's happened in the past.

We have something for everybody.

So when they come to the fair, they have this experience where they feel included.

There's something for you there.

And that's, I think, the magic of it.

♪ ♪ >> Have you ever done an interview while you got a tattoo?

>> That's a definite no.

(laughs) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: In Reno, Nevada, now, artist and anthropologist Zoe Bray paints from life.

Fascinated by humankind, her subjects are people.

♪ ♪ >> I'm an artist and an anthropologist, and therefore as an artist, a lot of my interests in what I paint and just create is related to people.

People in their environment.

So that's the social, political, and natural environments of, how do people make sense of who they are, create their identity, and relate to their surroundings?

As an artist, I'm classically trained in the sense that I've undergone a training with an old-style atelier painter.

And it was always with a live model, so there was absolutely no drawing or painting or sculpting from photographs.

It was really, you had to have the real thing in front of you and feel it.

And this also resonated with my work as an anthropologist.

I studied anthropology at the University of Edinburgh, and then did my PhD at a European institute in Italy, in Florence.

And as an anthropologist, this is pretty much also what you do, your research is about people with people.

♪ ♪ My Basque heritage is something that I'm constantly rediscovering.

And right now I have this exhibition on Nevadan Basques with oil painting and charcoal drawings exhibiting at the City Hall of Reno.

I was interested in painting people who have some kind of connection with Basque culture, usually who have Basque lineage, but not necessarily, I mean, that's... that's also what interested me, is, what is identity today?

How do we identify ourselves?

Is it our lineage, our background, or is it what we choose ourselves to be right now in the present?

♪ ♪ So painting from life is for me extremely important.

♪ ♪ When I couldn't go into more depth into, um, into a painting or into a portrait, then I would go use the oils.

And the oils, again, it's, I use very simple colors, and just with these, these four, you can actually mix them up and get all the nuances, all the subtleties, all the different tones that you find in nature.

♪ ♪ If I have to define myself in terms of, you know, what kind of painter I am, I'd say I'm a naturalist rather than a realist.

I mean, when people see my work, they say, "Wow, that's so realist."

And, um... the term realist, it can be understood in, in many different ways.

I would agree, I am a realist, but as more of a naturalist realist, in that I'm interested in understanding how we see things in a, in as natural a way as possible.

So, for instance, when I'm looking at somebody, when I'm painting somebody, I'm interested in focusing mainly on the eyes, because when we communicate, we look at each other in the eyes.

And at that point, everything else is out of focus.

So it's deliberate that the other parts of the portraits are not so specific, so detailed, so defined.

♪ ♪ But then I want the viewer to have their eyes wander around the painting and notice how they hold their hands, or what are they wearing, how significant is that to the identity of the person.

So I will try and draw these things out.

♪ ♪ There has to be some kind of a journey for the viewer to embark on.

♪ ♪ Every portrait is a new adventure.

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

Next week, artist Sonya Clark examines symbols at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum.

>> And when I leaned in, it said that it was the Confederate flag of truce.

And I have to tell you, I was, like, "How come I've never seen this thing before?"

>> BOWEN: And artist Karl Stevens on telling stories for The New Yorker and his cat Penny.

>> It just kind of hit me.

It was this eureka moment, like, "Oh, my God!"

You know, like, "I should just be doing a comic strip about Penny."

>> BOWEN: Until then, I'm Jared Bowen.

Thanks for joining us.

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

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

♪ ♪