>> BOWEN: I'm Jared Bowen, coming up on Open Studio: Rob "ProBlak" Gibbs-- portrait of an artist.

>> Why do I do what I do?

It's because it feels right.

I feel like I have a responsibility because of the gift I've been given to... with the ability to create, translate, and kind of speak for a lot of folks other than myself.

>> BOWEN: Then Sebastian Smee-- observations from the Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic.

>> I think that we need art, in some ways, as an expression of a vitality, of life in the deepest sense.

>> BOWEN: Plus that time our shoot aboard a hot air balloon resulted in an emergency landing at rush hour.

It's all now on Open Studio.

♪ ♪ Thanks for joining us.

As Open Studio winds down its decade-long run, we continue my conversations with some of the most impactful figures working in the arts today.

In this edition we present the artist and the art critic.

First up, I've watched over the years as Rob "ProBlak" Gibbs has authored the city as Boston's Man of Towering Murals.

Part of the scaffolding that allows him to reach high?

His unyielding optimism.

Rob "ProBlak" Gibbs, thank you so much for being with us.

>> What's going on, Jared?

How you doing?

>> BOWEN: I am well.

I have always been struck by your positivity, and this is why I wanted you to be one of the final guests on the show, because it just makes me happy to be in your presence, to be honest.

>> (exhales): It's an honor to be here, man.

Like, wow.

(both laughing) Such an honor.

>> BOWEN: Well, let me ask, I've been asking this question in this show: why do you do what you do?

>> Why, why do I do what I do?

It's because it feels right.

I feel like I have a responsibility because of the gift I've been given to... with the ability to create, translate, and kind of speak for a lot of folks other than myself.

And, um, I get really excited about just knowing that the things that I'm doing is having an impact on who's to come.

>> BOWEN: You have spent so much time with kids too as co-founding Artists For Humanity, the great organization which, which puts kids to work as artists.

>> What I see in all of the young people that come through the program is just a piece of the future.

>> AFH has opened so many doors for me.

It's unbelievable.

I'm still taking it in and I've been here for almost five years.

♪ ♪ >> It makes you feel like a sense of accomplishment.

Like you finished something.

It's like empowering.

>> BOWEN: You're a teacher.

I wonder what you see coming up now in the next gen... a couple of generations down of artists.

>> The next generation is going to have all the... the, the... how could I say it?

The vocabulary, I would say, to like things that we just uncovered.

And there's going to be practices that are going to be considered the norm.

There's no more, you know, we wanted to change the term of a starving artist.

Like, if it's figuratively or in the abstract, that's one way.

But, like, we want to make sure that there's an industry that thrives off of just the energy and that the voices and the representation is just... all-inclusive, making sure that they're, like, you know, when you're telling your parents, "I'm gonna grow up and be an artist," it's not a... it's not a thing to be scared of anymore.

It's an actual career.

>> BOWEN: When you told your parents that, was it hard for you to do that?

>> I've never really told them that.

(both laughing) That's a, that's a, that's a great question, man.

I think they seen where I was going, and like the one thing that I had to do was earn their trust in a way that I didn't know that's what I was doing.

I never really got any, like, pushback for the things I was doing.

They were always supportive.

I just felt like I couldn't go out in the world and misrepresent them and our family.

>> BOWEN: When did you know you were an artist?

>> I was late in the game.

I had to been like 14 or something like that.

I knew I had the ability to look at things and, like, copy it real well, but I just thought it was something to, you know, pass the time because me and my cousins, we would finish our homework real fast.

And then our grandfather was giving us, like, you know, the, the newspaper, the funny section to kind of like, do the CryptoQuotes, the WhatsIts, and things of that nature.

And I started finishing those fast, looking at the like, you know, the comic strips.

from like Dagwood to, uh...

Peanuts, you know, Calvin and Hobbes.

Like any of those characters, I was able to copy real well.

So I just had that as, like, a secret (laughs) until a friend of mine saw what he was able to do; Damon Butler.

And it really started with me just saying, "You know what?

I can do that too."

(laughs) >> BOWEN: When you need art now, where do you go?

What do you do?

What... is it reading, listening, going to museums?

>> It's being around.

I'm in like a collective of, like, very talented individuals.

I work at Artists for Humanity, where I get to see, like, I'm in a vehicle looking at the future.

I've also come across like a lot of shows that I go to, like First Fridays are a thing now.

Before I never even thought about the first Friday of a month, now we're going out to galleries, we're going to shows, and going to different cities.

And so I'm tapping in on just like a lot of creatives and the communities that we all communicate with each other.

You've got the luxury of just scrolling through your phone and, and tapping in with a lot of people who are connecting with you because of the work you're doing.

So it's like, um, like mini radio stations and we're broadcasting the stuff we're doing, and people are picking up the frequencies, and they're just throwing their work right back at you.

So it's been a beautiful, like, spectrum that's just been opened up from being creative and touching a lot of people.

>> BOWEN: So in terms of you in Boston, I have...

I have described you as you're the man who authors our city.

I mean, you really have.

With, with your great imagery and, again, orienting people to these beautiful pictures, and notions, and positivity.

And then, just before we sat down, you said you were starting to go to other cities, but you're not leaving, are you?

>> Nah.

>> BOWEN: You just promise me you're not leaving.

>> I'll just promise you, man, and I'm gonna give you the, you know, the fingers crossed, secret handshake that I'm never leaving.

To your point, like, it's, it's great to have the representation of the city wherever I go as well.

So being an ambassador, being the, the face, giving a voice to just, you know, what a lot of people don't look at Boston as, other than the sports teams, you know what I mean?

Like, there's arts and culture here.

There is a history here.

There are people who've been born and raised and we carry, you know, pretty much the same values that you would go somewhere else and try to visit.

So I don't have this problem to go to other places and be like, you know what, this is cool.

This is real tight.

Come to the crib, you know what I mean?

Come, come home and I... and I can show you, you know, what we're doing as well.

So I think it's, it's really amazing to have that like that scope and that reach to just be able to like, go somewhere, make a little bit of noise, and then come back home because, you know, we got kids to raise.

(both laughing) >> BOWEN: That's what I always say about New York.

Now, I love to go to New York, and then I love to come home.

And as much as I love that city, and all it has to offer, I love to come home.

I want to end by asking you about the positivity that has just so endeared me to you.

We're in such tough times.

We've been through a horrible few years.

Does your positivity ever get punctuated?

Is it ever hard to carry?

>> It's always been a challenge to balance or give people another thing to talk about or to look at.

It's never really, um, I never look at something with a smile.

I just know what could easily turn it around because it's infectious.

As easy as it is to see somebody yawn and it's contagious, I was like I'm hoping I can spread a smile the same way.

There's a lot of hard things that we all sit back and talk about in private or just like amongst each other.

But it's how we're representing when we're looking at things from a public's eye view.

Where we don't want people to feel bad for us, or the hard times aren't the only times.

You know, if anything, they don't even last, tough people do.

And we thrive through all of it.

The resilience is what we celebrate or don't celebrate enough because there's always something hard.

You think you got something going on?

There's somebody that has it going on harder than you.

And we could talk about that for days, but let those be the lessons and then let's celebrate the blessings and things that are coming to keep a lot of people looking forward to.

You know what?

Okay, I see this challenge is going to be a little bit of something.

What did this individual do?

There's, there's a level of inspiration that we can hold ourselves accountable for, to spread that love, to spread the word, and to make sure that, like, we're leading by example and, and living instead of surviving, you know?

>> BOWEN: You need a mega church.

(both laughing) Actually, I have one bonus question.

I assume I'm looking at Bobbi, your, your daughter.

>> Oh, yeah, you're looking at Bobbi.

>> BOWEN: Yeah.

I don't think I've ever done an interview without the year... over the years without asking about her, because I love your stories about her, and how she appreciates art, she appreciates seeing herself in the, in the city.

>> Mm-hmm.

>> BOWEN: How's she doing?

>> Bobbi's doing amazing right now.

Our rides in the car are just straight, like, interviews.

And she's drilling me, asking me questions about why the sun and the moon are out at the same time.

And her level of brilliance is, is amazing.

I'm learning everything I possibly can just from having conversations with her, and, you know, bless her mother for teaching her, you know, just kind of how to learn.

I'm just helping her apply it.

So Bobbi's just helping us be better people out here.

And I'mma, I'mma just kind of keep paving the way in this world so that she can benefit from it, you know?

>> BOWEN: Well, Rob, this may be our last conversation here on this show, but one of many to come, I'm sure.

Thank you so much.

Pleasure to be with you.

>> Pleasure to be with you as well, Jared.

And is there anything have you seen since we've met that's been different in the city from the time that you started paying attention to things to now?

Like, is there anything that's really stuck out to you?

>> BOWEN: I think the, the... people who are now slowing down and paying attention to, to art.

>> Mm.

>> BOWEN: I think that's what stuck out.

It's a... it's a different vibe, and it's a different audience, and it's a different appreciation now.

>> Mm-hmm.

>> BOWEN: Yeah.

>> I appreciate the work you're doing, Jared.

>> BOWEN: Thank you.

(laughs) >> Thanks a lot, man.

(laughs) ♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: Next, there's no arts writer I enjoy reading more, rely on more, or learn more from than Sebastian Smee, The Washington Post's Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic.

For this conversation, perhaps I tried to look in the mirror a bit as we talked about the necessity of carrying the arts out into the wider world.

Sebastian Smee, thank you so much for being here.

>> Thank you for having me.

>> BOWEN: Well, I love this because there's no agenda.

We're just going to talk about art, which is lovely.

>> Fantastic.

>> BOWEN: What I love to do.

>> Me too.

Me too.

>> BOWEN: But let me talk about you in art for a moment.

Why do you do what you do?

>> Why am I an art critic?

Why do I write about art?

That's a great question.

Wow, that's a really tough first one to come up with.

Look, I, I love it.

I, I was really attracted both to art and to writing early on.

And I read some great stuff by, by critics as a young man.

And, you know, it...

I didn't intend to write specifically about art at first, but I knew I wanted to write, and in kind of not in academic ways, but in ways that spoke to a more general audience, hopefully.

>> BOWEN: But... but that, I think, is key.

Why did you wanted to write in that way to reach people?

>> Well, again, I think it's about things that you read.

You know, you read things that are accessible and at the same time informal.

You know, they come from a... things that come from a kind of base of knowledge and expertise, but are about expressing enthusiasm and passion.

There's nothing as seductive, I think, as kind of expertise that's casually held and almost casually communicated.

You, you feel you're entering into a kind of almost secret society with people who share your interests.

And I love that.

>> BOWEN: So one thing I didn't hear you say when I asked why you do what you do is, is... is what responsibility do you feel or how do you own putting art out into the world so that people can access it, and understand it more, and hopefully participate in it?

>> Right, I mean, look, I think criticism, you know, is one of these inherently fraught words, isn't it?

It just sounds so negative.

No one likes to be criticized.

But, of course, you know, 90%, maybe 95% of what I write is, is broadly positive and even celebratory.

You know, but I think that we all have a desire to engage with stuff.

And that means that we're all involved in the business of making judgments all the time.

And to pretend otherwise is, is a kind of false position.

And I think if I didn't occasionally express, you know, something negative, then people wouldn't trust the, the positive things that I write.

And, you know, I just fundamentally feel that, that art deserves to be met by more than just silence.

I think that's something another critic, a guy called Adrian Searle, who writes in The Guardian, once said, but I, I really feel it's so true.

And, and, you know... >> BOWEN: What does that mean?

>> Well, it means that art shouldn't enter the world and just be met by, by silence.

You know, that it should hopefully generate a response.

Otherwise, what's the point?

And I see my role, and, and the role of other people who write about art, as being part of that, that response, that hopefully starting a conversation.

And, you know, if occasionally you do write something negative, then hopefully that's going to start a conversation.

And the people who feel differently are going to articulate their take on something, whether it's a film, or an exhibition, or whatever.

And that way you get the ball rolling.

And that's part of what we think of as culture.

>> BOWEN: Well, in your case, I'm struck by the fact that you had this relationship, I assume, kind of a mentor relationship-- you'll clarify-- with Lucien Freud, and... >> Yeah, it wasn't really a mentor.

You know, I was just a 29-year-old art critic, who'd moved to London from Australia.

And I got to know the painter Lucien Freud, who was 79 at the time.

And, you know, I ended up writing quite a few things about his work.

But, yeah, he was-- and anyone who met him will testify to this-- he was a pretty electrifying personality as well as, I think, a powerful artist.

He painted the human body in ways that people can find confronting or a little too truthful perhaps.

And, and, you know, I think postwar American art is much more inclined to celebrate varieties of abstraction.

And he was very much not an abstract painter.

I felt very lucky to get to know him and, and to have the chance to write about his work.

>> BOWEN: Well, what I wonder in that is we all have our different learning experiences.

But to get to know an artist, especially an artist who's so celebrated in a different way, perhaps a more intimate way to actually get to know them... >> Yeah.

>> BOWEN: ...and not see them at some kind of remove how, how that... what kind of impact that may have had on you.

>> You know, in an academic context, we're often taught to deemphasize that connection between, you know, the life and the work.

But when you're standing in someone's studio right next to them, and you can smell the oil paint, and there's the canvas on the easel, uh... and you're, you're... you know, you're hearing, you know, jokes and, and laughter, and anxiety and concern, and insecurity even, you know, it's very powerful.

And you realize that art is intimately connected to life in so many ways.

I think it transcends that.

I think a lot of the artists I love most, you can feel that connection.

It might just be a painter like Matisse, or, you know, someone just painting a bowl of fruit that, that you know was, you know, in their studio or, or on their table in their living room.

You know, there's all sorts of ways in which life and art are connected.

But when you feel that connection, I think it's really exciting.

>> BOWEN: Well, finally, as a last question, for those of us who aren't artists, have you distilled why we-- it'll be the royal we as a society, whomever-- why we need art?

>> I think that we need art in some ways as an expression of, of a vitality, of life in the deepest sense.

And also, I think, as a kind of antidote to some of the... the things about social life that are kind of deadening.

And I think in our current moment of, let's say, our, our obsession with metrics, I think that something about the immediacy, the here and now, the directness and honesty of art, is, is a kind of great antidote to algorithms, and artificial intelligence, and all these things.

And, you know, that makes me think that we're going to need it more and more, actually, in, in the world that we're entering now.

For that sense of, of connection with what it truly is to be human in the deepest way.

>> BOWEN: Well, Sebastian's Smee, again, it means a lot that you would come for one of our final shows.

I think you're the greatest writer on art in America.

Thank you.

>> (chuckling): Jared, that's so kind of you.

Thank you.

And I'm so grateful.

Thank you for inviting me on this terrific show.

I always love it.

>> BOWEN: Thank you.

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: I want to take a moment now to thank a man who has been by my side, literally, for all of my career at GBH.

Videographer Howard Powell has shot the majority of the stories you've seen here on Open Studio over the years.

He's a friend, collaborator, and mentor.

As he's heard me say on too many shoots too many times, we're like the old married couple married so long, we no longer realize we're fighting in front of the company.

Although I am told our bickering makes for an entertaining sideshow.

But Howard and I came close to biting it a few years ago.

In 2019 we covered New Horizon, a series of art events sponsored by the Trustees of Reservations.

At its center was a huge, shiny, metallic hot air balloon which was floating across Massachusetts.

We joined the balloon and its artistic team for what turned out to be a rather dramatic finale.

>> Good morning, Lawrence Traffic, Hot Air Balloon 869 Uniform Sierra, do you have me this morning?

>> BOWEN: For this story, we'll begin at the end.

On Monday, we'd been taking a pretty serene ride over Andover, floating above the treetops in a hot-air balloon designed by artist Doug Aitken-- a shimmering, inflatable sculpture he's titled New Horizon.

>> I see New Horizon as really kind of a sculpture of time.

It's something which is, it's temporary, it's changing continuously.

Um, when it stops, we can have these kind of incredible communal moments.

>> BOWEN: But on this flight, we got communal fast.

The wind picked up, and we had to touch down.

After two failed attempts, our pilot spotted a make-do landing strip, this small, grassy median at the intersection of two busy routes at rush hour.

>> Bend your knees.

Hang on, hang on.

Right there, hold, hold, hold, hold.

(basket scraping ground) >> BOWEN: Suddenly, New Horizon was on the ground, its silvery skin collapsing in a tired exhale.

Cars stopped.

The State Police rushed in.

>> Behind us, there's cars pulling over, diving in and helping, you know?

I, I think it's just, it's, it's miraculous.

>> We had an exhilarating landing.

(laughs) >> BOWEN: Pedro Alonzo is the guest curator of Art & the Landscape, an effort by the Trustees of Reservations to disrupt the group's historic sites not with art that's ornamental, but art that engages: Jeppe Hein's mirrored labyrinth at World's End in Hingham; Sam Durant's meeting house at the Old Manse in Concord; and Alicja Kwade's exploration of reality at the Crane Estate in Ipswich.

>> I'm convinced that the public wants art.

They just don't want to feel intimidated, or, or uninformed when they look at it.

And, and this is the kind of artwork that people will be surprised-- "That was art?"

>> BOWEN: Alonzo also takes a devilish glee in the element of surprise.

Remember the photograph that mysteriously appeared on Boston's former Hancock Tower one day?

That was Alonzo teaming with French artist JR.

They did it again two years ago, installing an image of a child peering over a Mexican border wall into the U.S. >> That kind of surprise is, for me, much more valuable than a programmed event.

>> BOWEN: Well, what does it do to, to, to plunk a sculpture down in the middle of rush-hour traffic?

Literally in the middle of rush-hour traffic?

>> Oh, it's, it's... Well, first, people take notice.

(laughing) You know, people definitely take notice.

And, and I think it, it's the kind of thing that just changes your day.

You're going to think very differently about how your day went.

>> In a world where everything is so homogenized and so repetitious, you know, we need disruption.

We need moments, a kind of a, a crack in our daily reality.

>> BOWEN: Hundreds of feet up in the air before our sudden landing, artist Doug Aitken says when Alonzo commissioned him to create a piece for Art & the Landscape, he knew zero about hot-air balloons.

So he used the idea of the classic American road trip as a point of departure.

>> It's kind of baked into our DNA, this idea of the other, this idea of... disappearance, or kind of moving into the landscape, a landscape that we don't know.

You know, I think there's an aspect of this project that's intensely physical.

(gas blowing) I couldn't have said it better than that sound.

(laughing) >> BOWEN: The California-based artist and filmmaker is a big thinker and creator.

He's animated an entire Manhattan block with his piece Sleepwalkers.

He curated Station to Station, a train that doubled as a light sculpture as it crossed the U.S. And, in Underwater Pavilions, he submerged giant sculptures off the California coast.

>> The idea of community, the idea of these kind of flash points across the landscape, has been very provocative.

>> BOWEN: New Horizon has been popping up, and in our case, floating, across Massachusetts for the last two weeks, moving from Martha's Vineyard to the Berkshires.

In daylight, it's a 100-foot-tall beacon.

At night, it's a floating light show.

And wherever the balloon goes, people gather-- for music, speakers, and conversation-- in organized happenings.

>> And they see this object, and they, you know, and they track it down.

And suddenly they're there, and, you know, it's almost like a kind of hallucination.

>> BOWEN: It's what we saw, too.

People coming out of their homes, taking a break from work.

It's from up here that we saw how different our community looks.

In the lushness of summertime, Massachusetts presents as a veritable rain forest.

>> Those moments, you know, when you have a kind of awakening, when you really kind of see the mundane, and it becomes vital and fresh and real again.

>> BOWEN: And New Horizon reminds us that a lot of life-- nature, fate-- it's all out of our control.

Minutes before our adventuresome landing, Aitken told me he even planned for the unplannable.

>> It's a very rogue project.

In the end, you know, it's, it's, it's kind of about improvisation, it's about the sense of openness.

And we don't really know what's going to happen tonight or tomorrow, and I kind of love that.

>> BOWEN: Especially when a grounded hot-air balloon makes you appreciate an otherwise benign traffic median on a whole new level.

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

Next week we look back at time well spent with local artists; including the sculptors at MadHouse Motors.

And join us on June 2nd as two very special guests sit down with me for the final episode of Open Studio: Grammy winner Lori McKenna and Tony winner Alan Cumming.

To get in the mood for our series finale, we bring you a performance from 2016, when Lori McKenna-- fresh off a Grammy win-- joined us on Open Studio.

She performed her song "People get Old," based, she told us, on her father and her husband's father.

♪ ♪ >> ♪ Someone said, "Youth is wasted on the young" ♪ ♪ I spilled every last drop of time that summer in the sun ♪ ♪ My daddy had a Timex watch ♪ ♪ Cigarette in his hand and a mouthful of scotch ♪ ♪ Spinnin' me around like a tilt-a-whirl on his arm ♪ ♪ Well houses need paint, winters bring snow ♪ ♪ You kids, come on in before your supper gets cold ♪ ♪ Collection plates and daddy's billfold ♪ ♪ And that's how it goes ♪ ♪ You live long enough, people get old ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ I sat up right beside him in the cab of that truck ♪ ♪ Goin' 30 miles-an-hour down a side road ♪ ♪ Talkin' 'bout the fish we caught ♪ ♪ And I'm older now than he was then ♪ ♪ If I could go back in time, I would in a second ♪ ♪ To his beat-up blue jeans ♪ ♪ And a t-shirt with the sleeves cut off ♪ ♪ Houses need paint, winters bring snow ♪ ♪ Kids growin' up and sneakin' out the window ♪ ♪ Hittin' every small-town dirt road ♪ ♪ And that's how it goes.

♪