Rose Nhem: On "Studio Space," Cleo DeOrio works dance into an emotional tapestry of movement and meaning.

Watercolorist Alan Sanborn works in a medium that appears spontaneous but requires patience and skill.

"Studio Space" explores northern California's vibrant art community.

[singing in foreign language] Rose: Hi, I'm Rose Nhem.

We're here today with Cleo DeOrio, a dance and theater artist.

Let's find out more on "Studio Space."

Cleo DeOrio: A lot of the dances that I do, they come from a place of knowing your body and learning about your body.

Every time you dance, it should be a new experience.

You should discover something new about yourself.

[singing in foreign language] [singing in foreign language] Rose: Cleo, thank you for inviting us here.

Could you tell us more about this space and how you became involved with it?

Cleo: So, right now, we are in the mime studio at Dell'Arte International School of Physical Theatre.

I moved to California to pursue my master's degree here at Dell'Arte, and then actually worked as a Production Manager here and am actually going to be teaching some dance classes here coming in the fall.

So, this space is very near and dear to my heart.

It fostered part of my education and my artistic life.

Rose: What made you decide to choose Dell'Arte in general?

Cleo: When I was graduating from college, I was studying theater and dance.

I have a degree in directing and choreography.

And I was having a really hard time deciding whether to go to grad school for dance or for theater.

♪♪♪ Rose: And when you look at grad programs, there's a distinct separation, and so when I found this program, this physical theater program, it was the melding of the two worlds, and it really felt at home to me.

So, when I visited, I auditioned and was accepted on the spot.

And so, it was an easy choice.

I just felt that this was very obviously my next move.

Rose: So, what turned you on to dance instead of just straight acting?

Cleo: That's a great question.

I would say it's that I've always felt connected to music and to the body.

There's a lot that we can do with our bodies that communicate story, right?

So, by studying theater and dance, I was able to learn what that middle ground is.

And then I came to Dell'Arte where they teach that middle ground exactly, right?

So, I live in that place of, as a dancer, I'm a theater artist.

And as a theater artist, I'm a dancer, right?

So, I don't find them separate at all.

Rose: How would you describe your style?

Cleo: My style is ever-changing, but I would say that it's rooted in free flow.

So, the way that I like to engage with movement is with an open mind and with a free-flowing, just, energy, I would say.

Rose: What have you discovered about yourself through dance?

Cleo: I would say that I don't really know who I am without being a mover, right?

So, everything I am today has been influenced by my experiences in dance and theater.

I would say that, you know, as a child, I was actually very shy.

I wasn't very confident.

I was very self-conscious with my body.

And through working in theater and in dance, you gain confidence, and you learn that everyone is special and different and can provide different things for the world.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Cleo: Pretty recently, I choreographed a piece called "Imprints."

It was in collaboration with two other choreographers and dancers.

We choreographed the piece together and then danced it ourselves, and it is about violence against women in the United States.

And again, it was very similar in a way that it's something people don't want to talk about, but it opens the space for us to talk about it.

That, we actually were able to perform that at high schools, which seems very strange or maybe even a little intense, right, to bring a piece about violence against women and violence in the home to high school students, but it was very well received, and it really made me think that, you know, these teenagers, they're completely ready to talk about things like this; and if we can get them to talk about it now, then maybe they'll have better lives because of it.

Rose: Right, it's interesting how much the younger generation is just ready for open communication and just sharing stories.

Cleo: And every time we perform, it is accompanied by a talkback, because it's a very intense experience, so people always stay after to have conversations about, you know, what happened onstage and what happened in their lives, and things like that.

Rose: Creating that space.

Cleo: Exactly.

Rose: I understand that you have an alter ego.

Could you tell us more about Betty?

Cleo: Yes; Betty Boop is, I mean, obviously, not a character that I created.

Betty Boop is a character that many of us know.

I started embodying her when I was in my second year of my master's program at Dell'Arte.

And it actually all came from one of my friends.

She approached me, and she was like, "Cleo, you need to be Betty Boop for like a cabaret or something.

Like, I just see it.

You look like her.

Like, it would be so fun."

And I was like, "Okay, okay, like, I can do something with that."

And so, I bought a costume.

I bought a corset and a little black skirt and a wig, and I got in the rehearsal room, and I was like, "Wow, I do look like her.

This is kind of weird."

And so I started trying to figure out what I could do as Betty, right?

What could Betty do onstage that is me, right, that is something that I can bring to Betty?

And so, I rehearsed this song.

I play the ukulele.

I play a few instruments, but so I rehearsed this song on the ukulele, and I choreographed a little Charleston dance because, you know, Betty was in the '30s.

And so, I was like, how can I bring the dance of that era to this character?

So, I had the song, and I had this dance, and we go into the dress rehearsal for this cabaret, and I was like, I don't know what I'm doing.

And I really didn't think much was going to come of it, but people just loved her, like, they were cheering, they were--like, you could hear people cooing in the audience.

It was like one of the craziest experiences I've ever had as a performer.

♪♪♪ Cleo: And, you know, she's still around.

Betty can pop out at any time, yeah.

Rose: Could you show us how you prepare yourself for these dances and performances?

Cleo: Sure.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Rose: There's a piece that you'll be performing for us today.

Could you tell us a little bit more about that?

Cleo: It is actually the piece that I used to audition for Dell'Arte.

And so what it is, is there's no title.

There's a lot of sometimes improvisatory feeling movement, and sometimes it is improv, and sometimes it's what I've choreographed, but it feels different.

So, there are many, many pieces that create this, this solo of mine.

Rose: It's a mosaic of performances.

Cleo: Yeah, yeah, it is, yeah, some of my favorite parts of little pieces all along my life.

Rose: Well, we're looking forward to seeing it.

Thank you.

Cleo: Thank you.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ David Ferney: Hi, I'm David Ferney.

Today on "Studio Space," we're going to visit with Alan Sanborn.

Alan is known for his exquisite watercolor paintings.

He has been a contributor to the Humboldt County visual arts scene for over 40 years.

Alan Sanborn: Drawing and painting is all about lying very well, because that surface doesn't have any depth.

At best, kind of approximating textures.

You're not actually painting the textures.

It's kind of fun to see how close you can come to creating an illusion on a flat surface.

♪♪♪ David: Thanks so much for joining us.

I've been looking forward to this interview.

Alan: I've been looking forward to it, too.

I hope you don't mind I didn't clean the house at all.

David: What originally drew you to the watercolor medium?

Alan: I love the watercolor medium.

I didn't know that I did until I was on a bicycle trip to Lake Louise.

I went into a gallery just outside of Banff, and I don't know whether they were great watercolors, they might've been really crappy watercolors that were hanging in this gallery, but it was the first time I, like, looked at them, and I saw these colors, these layered colors that didn't quite intersect.

And there's a beauty of not intersecting.

You let the line be a little bit different between colors, and that was an extreme example I was looking at, but I just like, wow, they take three or four layers, and they get like ten things happening because of that.

And I just thought, I don't know how to do that, but that is really cool.

David: When you were at HSU in those early years, taking art classes, you studied with Bob Benson, who is also a local amazing painter.

Alan: Bob Benson's my biggest influence, period.

David: Yeah.

Alan: He taught me just throw the stuff down and see what it does, just throw it down and see what it does.

And that's the first year I did watercolor, that was basically it, was--I didn't think I'd have anything I would ever sell.

It was just like, throw a whole bunch of color and learn how the stuff works.

And I love to find scenes that have a lot of tech--you know, a lot of different textures happening in the same place and figure, okay, well, I can't photographically reproduce this texture, so how am I going to have a motif that, with my brush, vertical, horizontal, diagonal, blotchy, sharp edge, that mimics what I'm seeing, or how can I get a motif going that leaves holes that are the right shape?

I think the best thing about watercolor is that you can see through layers of paint.

When you paint a oil, and you look at an oil painting, what you see is what's on the surface, period.

And when you look at a watercolor, you can see all the way through layers and layers and layers of color to the paper and then back to you.

So, I use layers of very pure color on top of each other to get all the grays, the browns, and everything, because that's how nature works.

That's what I love the most about watercolors.

It's not like watercolor does these really cool effects and all that.

So, that's great, but the best thing about this medium is that if you layer color, you get a really vibrant--you get a vibrant sense of color that the other mediums don't really have.

The hardest thing in watercolor really is not all these intricate textures, it's getting something smooth.

And I'm going to attempt to do a smooth blue sky.

I'm working from this photograph.

When I took this photo, earlier in the day, there was a fog bank there.

Right now, we have a really boring blue sky here.

So, I'm going to make the fog bank appear, and I'm going to make the top of this roof appear by painting around both of those things.

And 50% of what you do in watercolor is you paint around things to make the lighter things appear.

Water runs downhill, so if I prop this up, and I move this way, the water will be moving this direction and hopefully won't puddle up anywhere.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Alan: Then I take a damp brush because I do not want this fog bank to have a sharp edge.

I paint every day.

If I'm not thrilled about painting, I just don't paint.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ David: Can you tell us a little bit about the inspiration, about how you find your subject matter and how it goes from a glint in your eye to a photo and then, you know, onto a painting?

Alan: It tends to have to do with light more often than not, or ominous lack of light, one of those two things.

I just, when something catches my eye, I hope that I have my phone and my camera with me, take a whole bunch of pictures.

And then when I get home, I go through, and I go, "Oh, shoot, nothing."

Or I get home and I go, "Yeah, that one."

Or, "Well, that one except for with this and with this and with this.

Okay, I can use all these elements."

I brought it to this point, these trees look really dull blue, but I don't know.

There's no life in them.

There appears to be a lot of green in this painting.

The only green, there's a little bit of green under the water.

So far, except for this little corner, everything that appears green has been painted with blue, yellow, red, and violet.

Green is a very, very dangerous color.

Once it's there, it doesn't go away; whereas violet is a forgiving color.

You can paint the whole painting violet almost, except for places that have to be yellow, and you can get rid of that by painting other things on top of it.

This is great fun because this is sap green.

It's a beautiful green.

I can just put it over all of those blue, black, violet areas and be quick, be sloppy.

Now it's an acceptable, beautiful color.

But I save green until I get towards the end of things.

A color has to have a lot of the opposite colors in it, or it'll never appear to be an actual believable shadow or shaded area.

I don't cover all of that previous stuff because in areas of shadow you have lots of color.

You don't have just green.

In areas of green, you have lots of color.

When I paint greens over this yellow, it's going to be very different than when I paint green over this blue.

It's going to be really different than when I paint some greens over violets, well, like here.

This area is now, I think, you know, starting to get, I don't know, some depth, some-- it breathes a little bit, whereas this area isn't there yet.

But had I painted this all green in the first place, it still wouldn't breathe.

David: You talked about how it wasn't about the photo.

You could create your own composition out of the idea of the photo, and you could do different things that you wanted to in relationship to what you saw and what you wanted to bring out.

Alan: The chances that everything is going to line up are pretty slim.

But you also saw some of the photos I worked from.

I was there that day, and I know what the light was like.

I also know that sometimes I take photos, and there's some big missing elements, or it would be great, but there's not enough shadow, or there's enough foreground, or there's not enough anything to make it worth looking at.

Photo is like oil painting.

When you see the surface in a watercolor, there's a luminescence in watercolor that the photo doesn't have.

I think I could be a good photographer, but I just, I like painting.

Painting is, it's really fun.

I started this painting when I really wasn't that enthused about anything I had in the hopper.

Part of the process is you bring your idiosyncrasies to things.

I was always enamored with Ry Cooder's music.

From the time I first heard him, I was about 20, and, you know, more and more I realized no matter what he does, he has idiosyncrasies in himself.

It's not just that he has great rhythm.

I'm teaching art to people.

I think you want to hone in on what are their idiosyncrasies?

You know, are they a dabber?

Are they beautiful with line?

There's an art of pulling paint off of the surface while it's still wet that a lot of students employ.

There's so many things that people do that I don't do that are wonderful.

Part of how I work is just--comes natural to who I am.

I would love to paint like Andrew Wyeth.

I think he's the best watercolor brush painter anywhere, anytime.

But he's so much better with a brush than I am.

My brush, no matter how pointy, it always come-- it's kind of rounded a bit.

It's like, I don't want that, but it just stays with me.

And so, I just figured, you know what?

It makes my paintings nonthreatening, I guess.

No sharp edges.

David: A lot of people will describe your work as landscape work.

It's interesting that you call it human landscape work.

Alan: The landscape is fairly organic.

The horizon is straight.

After that, you don't see a lot of perfect geometry in landscape.

So, it's pretty organic.

And mostly what humans do or build or plow into the landscape is geometric.

And it's fun, that interplay of geometric and organic is really fun to play with.

My work is, like, completely nostalgic.

And part of nostalgia is acknowledging, yeah, things deteriorate, yeah, things don't last, yeah, the seasons turn.

I like to think I can reach the place that we share.

I'm not saying we need to do anything, really, because I paint an acceptance that walking around the block can be visually stunning, and a sunset at College Cove can be visually stunning.

I just--when something's visually stunning, it's not like I've discovered it.

It's not like you haven't seen pretty much the exact same things and felt just as moved as I have.

Here's the photograph.

With this weird ugly tree, like some kind of Asian strange tree.

I don't want that in this painting.

This doesn't have anything to do with strange Asian trees.

This is going to have a real dark side, so violet is a very safe color to use when you're making darks.

I am really content to be right here in this place with the sun coming down, fog comes down, and this goes up, and this comes down, stuff grows up, stuff rots.

This is great.

I'll get to rot someday if I'm lucky and be part of this whole process.

David: Thanks so much, Alan, for joining us.

It's been a great pleasure to be in your home, see your work, and learn more about your process.

And thank you for joining us on "Studio Space."

♪♪♪ Rose: Thank you for watching "Studio Space."

For more information about these artists, visit StudioSpace.tv.

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