>> BOWEN: I'm Jared Bowen.

Coming up on Open Studio: artist Rose B. Simpson's creations and intentions.

>> These are my hope for the future.

I take our clay bodies and I turn them into beings that are in service to, you know, the intention that I want for the world.

>> BOWEN: Then, another reason to go to Salem in October: the Punto Urban Art Museum.

Plus, how nature nurtures the artwork of Casey Bradley.

And our weekly round-up of everything to see in Arts This Week.

It's all now on Open Studio.

♪ ♪ Artist Rose B. Simpson has many "beings" dotting Massachusetts right now-- standing tall in Williamstown, populating an entire gallery here at Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art.

It's all about spirituality, because when she's not making sculpture, she's making performance art.

When she's not making performance art, she's making cars.

And, as she told us here, it's all about healing.

Rose B. Simpson, so nice to meet you.

Thank you for being with us.

>> Nice to see you.

(laughing): Be here with you.

>> BOWEN: Who are... these sculptures?

I say "are" rather than "what".

Do you... are they... what are they to you?

>> Huh, these are my prayers.

These are my hope for the future.

These are my process for our human condition that I... that I manifest into.

I take our clay bodies and I turn them into beings that are in service to, you know, the intention that I want for the world.

>> BOWEN: And born out of... born out of what?

To... what are you taking the hope from?

>> Deep experiences of frustration and challenge around our human condition, my experience as a multicultural person in a post-apocalyptic world.

And so, you know, I conjure inspiration for myself to transform, and change, and grow as a person.

>> BOWEN: I know this piece is titled "Storyteller."

What is the story here?

>> This was based on a tradition of storytellers from my community.

A Pueblo... sort of larger Pueblo community where ceramic figures were made that were actually teaching the young ones and telling the story of Creation.

And there's so many levels of that you can look at.

From the metaphor of parent and child, the metaphor of culture, and, and participant.

The metaphor of, of a larger source.

The beings of the world, right?

And that this piece itself was a take on that idea of storyteller.

>> BOWEN: What about the eyes?

(Rose laughs) >> They are like masks.

I think often about that vacant space that opens up to...

These are hollow clay forms that I coil build, or slab, slab build, where I build with slabs of thin clay.

And so they have a vacant space inside, which I don't believe is vacant, right?

And so the way that the eyes are hollow-- >> BOWEN: Well, before you go, what is it?

If it's not vacant?

What is there?

>> There's... there's someone in there, right?

There's...

So the idea is that So often we objectify the inanimate, and we don't believe that something is watching us, that we're being seen, right, by all the things around us.

And these pieces act as examples of how the inanimate is also alive.

>> BOWEN: And I... and I interrupted you just as you were talking about the eyes and what, what happens there.

>> I have left them open because from the idea of masks and leaving space for, for that vision.

So we witness these pieces.

They are also witnessing us.

>> BOWEN: You've titled this piece "The Remembering."

What is it conjuring?

>> This piece was made when they were first finding the bodies of Indigenous children around the boarding schools and started bringing up some of that heavy history around those lost children.

And it's something, you know... colonization and genocide is something that you kind of, in a post-apocalyptic world, you sort of live with, you know?

>> BOWEN: When you say a post-apocalyptic world, how do you mean?

>> The Indigenous people of the "New World," the Americas, and I think around the world who have been Victims of colonization and genocide, we're living in a post-apocalypse.

So the world that we see now that we consider modern is, is an apocalypse for many cultures and peoples.

>> BOWEN: You give your beings signs that we see here.

>> Yeah.

>> BOWEN: What are those?

And I see them on your fingers.

(Rose laughs) >> They're intentions.

And oftentimes, when I put my prayers, my, my work out into the world, I need it to stay protected, you know, and I need them to, to do their work safely.

And oftentimes those are the markings.

Um, this, these are stars and these are for protection.

>> BOWEN: Is it significant to you that you can...

I, I can see your hand here, literally.

Well... pretty much... (Rose laughs) ...in the, in the texture.

>> So when I'm making these I am leaving the marks of my process in the surface of the clay intentionally to honor the making of ourselves.

I want to be seen as a person who's working on building myself.

I'm not there yet.

I'm not there yet.

>> BOWEN: There is an immense physicality to your work.

Working in construction, doing automotive work, you build cars; very physical work.

I would assume that's very important to you.

So, as I think about this, and I think metal to me is cold and unforgiving in terms of shaping.

You have to work with it.

It's not like clay.

So how do you balance those two?

>> Metal is actually incredibly satisfying (laughing): after dealing with clay.

'Cause there's... working with clay there's so many moments where it can go wrong, and it's very fragile, and vulnerable, and very intimate, and records your intentions very immediately, right?

There's an immediacy and a vulnerability in it.

And with metal, it's so forgiving.

Like welding, it's strong, it's easy.

From... it's a lot easier.

>> BOWEN: I'm so curious about this stage in your life, and now being a mom, how that has... has it changed how you create?

>> (laughing): Yes.

Very much so.

Becoming a parent has invested my time (laughs) so differently.

I also care more than I ever cared.

>> BOWEN: Yeah.

>> You know?

So when I begin to work I have less time and I am way more invested in the moment.

And I have more change to make because I have this beautiful, small human that I need the world to be a better place for.

And so all of a sudden the stakes are way higher in all the ways.

>> BOWEN: Is this piece a reflection of your hopes for her at all?

>> I would say so.

I want her to be empowered and graceful.

And I want her to have a world that nurtures her very distinct gift, right?

Whatever that is, whatever she chooses to make that, I want her to feel safe.

I want her to feel nurtured.

I want her to feel honored, you know?

>> BOWEN: And that's what we see here.

>> Yeah.

And it's hard, you know.

We're fighting, we're digging up these graves of all these Indigenous children, and our missing... and our women, and girls, and, and Indigenous people are going missing and murdered.

And so the stakes of having an Indigenous daughter is really... is high, it's scary, you know, and we are currently endangered species in a way.

And I want to protect her and make her powerful enough that the world she walks through is going to be protected and, and transformed from what we've known.

>> BOWEN: To go back to what you said at the beginning of this interview and how these beings help you with your own healing, how far have they taken you with the healing?

>> I don't think I would be here if I didn't have my creative process.

I think that's as simple as it gets is they are me existing, and persisting, and surviving.

And this is that, like...

I know it's like, you know, like crawling through the dirt, you know.

It's like we're going to make it, we're going to make it, and I'm crawling through the dirt with these.

Each one is a step of survival.

And hopefully that step in survival turns from survival into absolute thriving and creating a world that's beautiful for everyone.

>> BOWEN: Well, Rose B. Simpson, thank you.

It's such a privilege to be with you.

Thank you so much.

>> Yeah.

It's nice to hang out.

Thank you.

♪ ♪ In Salem, artists are turning a neighborhood known as The Point into a point of pride by literally painting the town red, yellow, blue, and more.

As the world descends on Salem this weekend for Halloween, we're rebroadcasting our trip to Salem last fall when we visited the Punto Urban Art Museum.

In the Salem neighborhood known as El Punto, or The Point, these residential buildings double as towering gallery walls, featuring portraits, landscapes, and dreams.

>> These beautiful murals are the backdrops to this community.

>> BOWEN: Yenny Hernandez is one of the many artists who have contributed to the some 75 murals that populate this small neighborhood.

Her work is also featured on this sprawling wall, which turns over annually.

This year's theme-- interpretations of the American Dream.

For Hernandez, as poet Langston Hughes wrote, it's a dream deferred.

>> The word "deferred" to me had a double meaning.

It held some of the weight of the financial kind of burden that we're kind of experiencing now in this country.

To illustrate that, I created a glitch effect to represent the misalignment that exists between the dream and how we arrive to that dream.

>> BOWEN: It's a sentiment that makes this and the myriad other murals nestled in the neighborhood for and of the community.

Formally known as the Punto Urban Art Museum, they are emblazoned on buildings owned by the North Shore Community Development Coalition, a non-profit serving this low-income community with affordable housing, health services, and now art.

Mickey Northcutt and David Valecillos are the museum's co-founders.

>> What art does is, it kind of, like, destructures the complexity of the topic of bringing two communities together.

So we think of art as the vehicle to talk about complex issues like segregation, racism, and actually portray different points of view.

>> BOWEN: For years, the densely populated working-class neighborhood has seemed a world away from tourist-heavy downtown Salem, even though The Point is just a few blocks away.

Northcutt blames an enduring stigma.

>> For some, it's racism.

For some, it's xenophobia.

I think a lot of it is the criminalization of poverty in this country, that people feel that somehow poverty is a choice or a crime.

>> BOWEN: Enter art as the change agent.

What began as one crosswalk punctuated with portraits has become a cherished maze of murals.

>> We thought, could we do something that would be beautiful and inspirational for people who are living in the neighborhood to really just change the narrative of anything to do with negativity.

>> BOWEN: The people behind these murals are a combination of Salem residents and artists from diverse backgrounds, who take time to learn about the community before making their mark on it.

>> We started, like, with a crosswalk, then we did one mural, and we see how people interact with the artists, with the art.

And little by little, we start asking the community if they liked it or not, and then this is why we are here today.

>> BOWEN: One of the most recent muralists is Salem artist Anna Dugan, who collaborated with Yenny Hernandez on a vibrant mural that stretches around this city block.

>> We knew it was going to be colorful, but something that was, you know, celebratory of the Latinx population that lives in The Point, something that pays homage to the businesses below the mural in the front.

>> The Si Se Puede is a manifestation of optimism and perseverance, which I think is part of the DNA of the Latin experience.

>> BOWEN: Perseverance is a motivating factor for keeping The Point on point.

All across the United States, mural meccas have become hip tourist destinations.

Miami's Wynwood District was among the first.

But once a warren of warehouses, it's now been fully gentrified.

That won't happen in The Point, says Mickey Northcutt.

>> Here, nearly all of the walls that have been done are on properties that are permanently deed-restricted as affordable.

None of them are on residential buildings that are designed to drive the price of those buildings up, which so often is the case in other communities.

They're really engineering gentrification.

>> BOWEN: Although The Point has become a tourist destination, now even with a "must-see" designation in go-to travel guide Lonely Planet.

But that's allowing North Shore CDC to bake the arts into future projects, including, and quite unconventionally, indoor gallery space.

It's a boon for artists, too.

Anna Dugan decided last year to become a full-time muralist.

>> Everyone talks about Salem and talks about, like, the witches and, like, you know, all that stuff.

But they don't realize what kind of beautiful art lives here.

>> BOWEN: And hopefully inspires here.

Yenny Hernandez also grew up in low-income housing, but without the art infusion.

She can only imagine the difference that would have made.

>> Had I seen work like this, it probably would have had me thinking more, questioning more, maybe putting myself out there more.

But because there really wasn't any art programs, I didn't know what to do with my artistic abilities.

I didn't know what outlets existed, and so I found that much later in life.

And I think that's the power of public art.

And so I'm really happy to be a part of that for hopefully the next generation.

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: It's time for Arts this Week.

Your download of the latest arts and culture events in and around Boston.

After a very long spa treatment, the Huntington Theatre has just reopened.

The nearly 100-year-old theater spent the pandemic downtime undergoing a massive renovation and restoration.

A 20-month, $58 million project that saw the theater completely overhauled.

New plush seats with more legroom, historic fixtures completely refurbished, and the theater's dome is finally painted gold, something its original designers intended but couldn't do after they ran out of money.

Theatergoers will now also find an entirely new gallery space currently featuring the work of Boston artist Ekua Holmes.

The Huntington first opened in 1925 and was celebrated for being the nation's first civic playhouse because it launched as the only not-for-profit theater in the country.

The effort gained national attention.

The builder was actor and impresario Henry Jewett, who wanted the theater situated away from Boston's theater district, and closer to the city's cultural beacons: Symphony Hall and the Museum of Fine Arts.

The theater opens with a production of the late playwright August Wilson's drama Joe Turner's Come and Gone.

The Pulitzer Prize winner considered the Huntington his theatrical home, and the lobby is now named in his honor.

♪ ♪ The power of photography is that sometimes it can be so potent it shapes our memories of shared history.

How we recall the immeasurable intensity of D-Day.

Then what the euphoria of what the war's end must have felt like.

An out-of-this-world measure of the moon.

Life magazine was the purveyor of a great many of these images.

In its heyday, it reached 25% of U.S. households.

The Museum of Fine Arts Boston looks at the legacy of Life in its latest exhibition.

The magazine published from 1936 to 1972 and was well aware the role photographs had in society-- documenting it, reflecting it, and in the case of the Holocaust and the Civil Rights Movement, changing it.

With unprecedented access to the Life picture collection and archives, the curators take us inside the editorial process-- how photographs were selected, edited, and arranged; the pioneers-- women and people of color-- who were brought into the fold.

But it's also done with an acknowledgement that Life was aimed at a white, middle class audience.

So that as much as the magazine aimed to cover a cross section of American culture, it wasn't the whole picture.

♪ ♪ Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art has assembled a groundbreaking show, the first ever exhibition in the U.S. to consider childhood.

How artists treat it, how they've been inspired by it, the place children's books have in opening up the world.

Think about the story of Paul Klee.

He was an early 20th century German artist who spent years studying art.

But after he found a parcel of his childhood art, work he made when he was just five years old, he decided that should chart his artistic trajectory, and it did.

We also find epic tenderness in a painting by Jordan Casteel.

It's a moment she found on the subway of a child seemingly forever bonded to their father, a moment that upends so many false and negative notions of Black masculinity and fatherhood.

There's the work of artist Ekua Holmes, who renders real-world struggle, strife, and resiliency in her artwork for children.

The show is titled To Begin Again, because for better and for worse, our adult lives are lived and remembered in the context of who we were and how we came to be.

At the I.C.A., artists show us the way back and forward.

♪ ♪ I'm not sure I've ever wanted to snuggle with marble before, but that's what a new series of sculptures in Boston's Central Wharf Park invite.

Presented by the public art group Now + There, the installation is called Five Marble Leaves, created by Swiss artist Claudia Comte.

She's someone long attuned to nature and environment.

So these sculptures are inspired by the oak trees and their fallen leaves that populate the park.

They're like joyous, huggable creatures swaying, stretching, and reclining.

Finely polished, they invite caressing.

They're just a delight to behold and they up the ante for the increasingly popular Japanese-inspired practice of forest bathing.

♪ ♪ Here's my pick for what to catch next week.

Two words: Mikhail Baryshnikov.

The legend is onstage at ArtsEmerson starring in The Orchard, a new cultivation of Chekov's The Cherry Orchard.

That's it for your arts and culture download.

I'll see you here, and at The Orchard, next week.

In his latest work, mixed media artist Casey Bradley explores our close relationship with nature and how often we're removed from it.

♪ ♪ >> My inspiration for most of my work is derived from nature, found materials, but, but more deeply rooted in the, the textures and... some of the relationships that we have with nature that I think, you know, maybe go less recognized today than they used to since we've distanced ourselves.

♪ ♪ I do stuff with hands and feet.

With those, there's that interesting connection of like our feet and hands are our interface with the world.

I mean, they're one of... some of our most important body parts in that way.

So the dialogue between those and these architectural kind of elements that I juxtapose them with or hybridize them with in the sculpture kind of creates that... some of that surreal kind of airs.

I came to C.C.A.D.

in the mid-'90s to study illustration.

I wanted to do comic books or fantasy art.

So that obviously changed.

(laughs) ♪ ♪ (hammering, saw buzzing) I've always made three-dimensional objects-- walking sticks, jewelry-- I did all this kind of stuff.

And figured out how to do it when I went... before I even came to college, I started doing 3D things.

So it's kind of the very beginning of me dabbling in making actual objects.

Some of them were functional, too, because that was a vehicle to get to the experience of the material, to learn about the material, to have that function as a driver.

I actually started casting metal.

I think that was one of the biggest impetuses to me studying sculpture.

Metal casting is what I was really, really excited about.

I basically never looked back after my first bronze cast.

I went to graduate school to cast iron because I wanted to make sculptures that would actually physically degrade, they would rust, and you could put them outside and do things with them that way.

But the thing about casting metal that kind of ties into where we are now with the work, the metal has always been my way to meet nature in the middle, to recreate a formal element to combine with the natural elements that I find, or natural materials, or objects that I find.

And help to bring that message, or concept, or idea out by partnering with those natural materials.

♪ ♪ So Bone Collector comes from this idea of I've always found sycamore branches and their knotwork that happens when they scar to be very bonelike, kind of like a... like a femur.

♪ ♪ I've always thought of them as looking like bones.

So I just decided one day that I'm going to start picking these up strictly to do a piece about collecting these tree bones.

And touch on the beauty of, of the natural weathering that they have and the process that got them there, but also where I meet nature in the middle, and basically have that material adopt another identity and vocabulary.

♪ ♪ I do think we're in conflict with nature quite a bit with our choices.

And we don't think long term.

And nature is long term.

♪ ♪ I do think that sometimes we make choices without actually working on what the outcome will be, and understanding what the outcome will be.

And a lot of the choices we make serve a means to an end.

♪ ♪ Ever since I... even my earliest work, I was bringing nature into the gallery, and I think there's, there's a magic to that.

Going back to people who really live in the city, and they're city dwellers, and they, you know, they're... all their extracurriculars in their life are social, or going to the restaurant or the bar, or, you know, another event around town.

It's like get out of town.

Get into the woods.

Get in nature and connect with that.

♪ ♪ I think making work like this helps some people reconnect with nature in a different way.

And my job as the artist is to kind of recreate those materials, and reassemble them, and compose them in a way that speaks to that.

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

Next week, director Igor Golyak of Arlekin Players Theatre brings The Orchard, starring Mikhail Baryshnikov, to the stage.

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

And you can see us first on YouTube.com/GBHNews.

Remember to follow us on Instagram and Twitter @OpenStudioGBH.

I'm @TheJaredBowen.

Thanks for watching and we'll see you next week.

♪ ♪