Narrator: In the far northwest corner of New Jersey is Luna Parc.

Open to the public, it's the creation of Ricky Boscarino, who's been working on it since 1989.

Boscarino: It's like Dr. Seuss meets Pee-wee Herman, meets Willy Wonka meets Martha Stewart, all kind of rolled up into one.

Narrator: At the Morris Museum, painter Maureen Chatfield's journey from realism to abstraction.

Chatfield: There came a point where I said, "I can basically paint anything I see, and so where's the challenge?"

You always have to challenge yourself.

So I wanted to see what was inside.

[ Woman vocalizing ] Narrator: And the composer and lyricist for "Empire Records: The Musical" returns home to Princeton for its premiere.

Sarnak: We work on these things for years.

So much of your sort of DNA ends up in the show.

And then you're presenting it for a group of strangers saying, "What do you think?"

Woman: [ Singing ] Every single morning, makes her sweet little bed.

Angel in the class, she knows she better get ahead.

Narrator: [ Talking ] "State of the Arts," going on location with New Jersey's most creative people.

Woman #2: [ Singing ] I'd break the rules.

I would if I could.

Announcer: The New Jersey State Council on the Arts, encouraging excellence and engagement in the arts since 1966, is proud to co-produce "State of the Arts" with Stockton University.

Additional support is provided by... ...and these friends of "State of the Arts."

[ Birds chirping ] [ Music plays ] Boscarino: I always felt like I was a bit of a pariah in the mainstream art world.

I remember this discussion when I was in -- in college, and there was all this controversy of, like, what is art and what is craft?

Someone said, "Creating and making art are a way for me to explain the world."

And then I raised my hand and I said, "Making art is a way for the world to understand me."

[ Birds chirping ] [ Music plays ] People that I knew who stayed in our hometown got married, had families and all that.

And I just thought, "I don't want any part of that."

I couldn't get out fast enough.

It was really my boyhood ambition to build my dream house, where, like, literally, all my dreams could come true.

The family lore is that we were all carpenters for many, many generations.

[ Metal clanks ] My whole life became about making things with metal, wood, glass, fabric, concrete, ceramic.

December of 1988, I started setting out to find, like, whatever dream house that was going to be.

It was the very end of a day of looking at properties.

I saw this -- "Oh, there's this cabin.

It's on five acres."

And no one even really knew that this house existed.

We parked on the road.

We had to cross this little bridge.

I took one look at this dilapidated little cabin, and I knew that this would be the place I would spend the rest of my life.

This is the house I've been looking for.

[ Music plays ] [ Birds chirping ] [ Music continues ] This house was a summer cabin retreat, but they hadn't really used it for about 10 years.

And 10 years in the woods is -- that's a lot.

I got it really just in the nick of time.

I spent that first night here ripping out everything that I could inside the house.

There were stacks of mattresses.

There was paneling.

Whatever wasn't nailed down was out the kitchen door in a big pile in the morning.

Fortunately, it didn't need any major structural repairs.

However, it was basically uninhabitable, and I actually inhabited it sort of illegally early on 'cause I -- I needed a place to live.

So I had to renovate the house while I was living in it.

And there was no insulation in the walls.

There was no heating system.

The few electrical outlets were definitely not up to code.

Any normal person, like if a family, had bought the property, the house would have been demolished.

But for me, I mean, I was 28 years old, I needed the place to live, so that was not an option.

[ Music plays ] I could have never predicted that this project would evolve into what it is now.

It started out fast and then accelerated.

[ Chuckling ] That's the way I describe it.

I painted the house primary colors, but then I decided to make the footprint of the house a little larger.

[ Camera shutter clicks ] Level one is the original cabin, as well as the main level of -- of the museum wing, where I set out to build a temple for the body and its functions.

Level two, you actually go down, and that's called the cantina.

Level three is the ballroom.

Level four is my nature lab.

Level five is my music room and folk art collection.

Level six is my thread studio, where I have my loom and my grandmother's sewing machines.

Level seven is my bedroom loft.

To access level eight, you actually have to go up a few steps to level nine.

But level nine is actually sort of like a -- well, it's actually a secret passageway.

[ Door creaks ] 10 and 11 are the roof deck.

I think of this house as a museum.

It's like Dr. Seuss meets Pee-wee Herman meets Willy Wonka meets Martha Stewart, all kind of rolled up into one.

I have always had this fantasy that, someday, Luna Parc will be on the list of great houses in America -- Monticello... the Biltmore...

The Breakers... and Luna Parc.

People come here, and they think that I'm like, "Ooh-hoo!"

-- like kooky and crazy.

It was a nightmare, as well.

[ Music plays ] There were times that it was very lean, and I was really kind of struggling financially to just support this institution.

[ Music continues ] As the years have gone on, we've both kind of like aged together.

People might think that I am kind of a hermit.

And that's fine with me... because if you do anything long enough... ...something big is going to happen.

There is such a joy and an ecstasy of making something.

I never gave a thought about having to slow down, but I have to be a little bit kinder to my body now.

So on that day that I finally do check out for good, I actually asked one of my younger assistants if he would get my ashes into this little box, maybe about 16 inches by 8 inches, set into the floor with a really thick 3/4-inch piece of glass on top.

And I'll be one of the oddities in my own personal museum.

This house will be operating in perpetuity as a museum, a sculpture park, and a very small art school, showing young people that there's an alternative way to live.

[ Music plays ] I didn't build myself a mausoleum.

I built myself an obelisk.

[ Music continues ] Narrator: Later on the show, an abstract artist inspired by nature.

But first, the cult movie "Empire Records" becomes a musical.

[ Group vocalizing ] Man: [ Singing ] Real life stories.

Most, they don't have the... Sarnak: [ Talking ] The experience of being with music in person, being with human beings in a room, whether it's a concert or listening to music with other people in real time and you're with them, can never be replaced and will never go away because sound is -- is physical.

It's reverberation.

So it exists in space.

And I actually think it has something in common with theater.

Narrator: McCarter Theatre Center opens its new theater season with the world premiere of "Empire Records," a musical based on the 1995 cult classic film.

Sarnak: "Empire Records" is about a group of employees and a day in their lives at this record store.

But this particular day has some high stakes because it's Rex Manning Day, which -- come to the show, you'll find out what that is.

And, also, the store is in jeopardy of being taken over by a corporate chain, Music Town.

Narrator: "Empire Records" is also a homecoming for composer and lyricist Zoe Sarnak, who grew up in Princeton.

Sarnak: There's a bit of a homecoming happening here, but that was not on our minds when we first started working on it.

The origin of the musical adaptation predates me.

Bill, one of our commercial producers, and Carol, the book writer, started talking about the idea of making it a musical.

Unbeknownst to them, I had often said to friends of mine in the theater industry that I think "Empire Records" would make a fantastic musical, but I'd never tried to pitch it to anyone or anything.

Narrator: Carol Heikkinen, who wrote the original film, has welcomed the opportunity to return to these characters after 30 years.

Heikkinen: When I graduated from college, I moved to LA because I secretly wanted to be a screenwriter.

So I had had one movie made, which was also about music.

It's "The Thing Called Love," and it was directed by Peter Bogdanovich, and it's about country music.

And so I was trying to think of an idea for another script that I could write on spec.

I think the first thing I thought about was, was setting it all in one day and having a love story in it, and then I was like, "Oh, record store.

Yeah, that's a good place to have something take place in one day."

Mark: Empire Records.

Open till midnight.

This is Mark.

Yeah.

Hey, it's the bank.

Heikkinen: An important thing to me was that it was about two best friends who are nearing the end of high school and realizing that they're going in different directions, Corey and Gina.

Corey: Happy Rex Manning Day!

Gina: When did you have time to make these?

Corey: Dad says there's 24 usable hours in every day.

Thank you.

Gina: You absolutely amaze me.

You are a nerd.

Corey: [ Chuckles ] That's me.

Gina: [ Chuckles ] All: [ Singing ] How's life?

Woman: [ Singing ] Every single morning, makes her sweet little bed.

Angel in the class, she know she better get ahead.

All: [ Singing ] Mama said that... Heikkinen: [ Talking ] Bill Weiner, who is our producer of the musical -- he approached me.

I said, "Okay, well, the only way we're doing this is if I'm writing this."

The weirdest thing about going from having written the entire movie and now having written the book for a musical is it is a different skill, but it's one you can learn.

Sarnak: Carol and I have become close 'cause we've worked together on this now for a set of years, and she's so special because these characters, they still live with her.

So when we do a rewrite and there's, like, a new material, new moment, it's like, "Oh, of course Lucas would say that," right?

There's just a way in which she knows them so deeply.

All: [ Singing ] The future generation.

The future generation, the future generation.

Man: [ Singing ] Hey, hey, hey, hey!

All: [ Singing ] The future generation.

[ Music ends ] Narrator: Princeton itself is home to its own piece of music history, Princeton Record Exchange.

For Zoe, music and memory provided a strong connection to her work on "Empire Records."

Sarnak: PREX, Princeton Record Exchange, is my hometown record store, and it's located, you know, center of downtown, which is also walking distance from Princeton High School.

And so there were a few places -- Small World Coffee, Princeton Record Exchange -- where we would be able to go hang out after school, and you were always looking for places that felt exciting or interesting in some way, and then, also, where you could just go hang out where you weren't gonna get kicked out.

Narrator: John Lambert, the owner of Princeton Record Exchange, sees the connective power of music firsthand every day.

Lambert: People like coming here now for an event.

I look at Google, and they say average time here spent is an hour.

I can't think of another store out there -- or maybe a Macy's or something, I don't know -- where people spend that much time because it's an event now.

It's like going bowling or playing miniature golf.

You go to the record store, You go in, and you never know what you're going to find.

You're talking to real people.

You're in a real space.

You know, it's -- it's something that's really meaningful to people now.

The thrill of discovery and the thrill of the hunt, I think, is part of the excitement of the event.

And I think there's a real drive now, especially with the younger folk, that they want something tangible -- they want something physical.

It's not just a vinyl revival -- resurgence.

You know, I think it's a reality resurgence, where people are just tired of this ephemeral, non-existent world out there when there's so much right in front of you -- or could be.

Narrator: Growing up in suburban Phoenix, Arizona, an after-school record-store job provided Carol inspiration for the original film.

Heikkinen: My best friend Caroline was working at Tower Records in Phoenix.

We were seniors in high school.

And I went to visit her at work 'cause, you know, I would go to Tower, anyway.

And she was like, "Oh, hey, do you want a job?"

Every time that I worked at any record store, when it was time to go to work, I was anxious to go.

I wanted to see my friends.

I wanted to have fun.

We chose the music that we played.

A.J.

: Exercising my veto, man.

Mark: Yeah, well, it's only 9:00.

I mean, are you sure you want to do that?

A.J.

: Mark, listening to this crap is guaranteed to make you sterile.

All: [ Singing ] The future generations... That's wild, wild...

I'm exactly who I am.

So I... [ Music continues ] Hey!

[ Music continues ] Sarnak: [ Talking ] We work on these things for years, and they travel with us through moments of our lives.

And so much of your sort of DNA ends up in the show.

I feel so personally connected with the show by the time we get to this moment.

And then you're presenting it for a group of strangers saying, "What do you think?"

[ Chuckles ] Even though it's super vulnerable, it's also, like, there -- it's -- it's an indescribably gratifying experience, too.

Woman: [ Singing ] Can you shout at the top of your lungs?

Oh!

All: [ Singing ] Let the bass let you grow.

Let the drums lift your soul.

Fill your lungs, and you know you're... Sarnak: [ Talking ] Whether you create it or you listen to it or you share it with a friend, almost every person on this planet has, like, a deep connection to music, and it makes -- it brings people together, and, like, that -- for the fact that that's the subject of this show, not just my role on the show, makes "Empire Records" super special.

All: [ Singing ] Wake up, wake up.

Welcome to the Empire.

Wake up, wake up.

Welcome to the Empire.

[ Finale plays, music ends ] [ Music plays ] Narrator: Last on the show, a painter's journey from realism to abstraction.

Stay tuned.

[ Music plays ] Chatfield: Painting is my way of expressing myself.

I like the participation of the audience with abstract work.

It challenges them.

First, they want to try and figure it out.

It makes them question what they're looking at, and it engages them, and I like that.

[ Music continues ] I'm Maureen Chatfield.

I'm a painter, and I also teach painting, and I live in Tewksbury, New Jersey.

[ Music continues ] Nostrand: "Journey and Destination" is a solo exhibition by New Jersey artist Maureen Chatfield.

It features 17 works of art, primarily oil on canvas, that extend from work she made in the 1990s all the way through to recent pieces.

She has shared quite a few works with us for this really special exhibition.

We have organized it in two parts.

The first part is featuring earlier works that Maureen made in the 1990s, where she was recalling childhood memories of mostly trips that she took with her family when she was a child.

These are all somewhat travel stories, or travelogues, in the form of paintings.

One work I particularly enjoy is "Family Outing."

It's a story that Maureen shares about being on a family road trip and accidentally locking the car keys in the trunk of the car.

At the time, she told me that this was a rather stressful experience for her as a child, but the way that the painting is rendered almost has a playful quality, as if, perhaps, this is how it looked to her as a child.

Chatfield: The first one is from the "Out of My Mind" series.

Those are family narratives.

They led me.

After I finished them, they were kind of cathartic.

I never painted those to sell.

They were just simply for me.

They're figurative, but in a humorous way.

It is funny when you retell it, but it was not funny at the time.

Nostrand: The second section of the exhibition are depictions of places she has traveled that she created later.

So these are from the early 2000s up till more recent years.

And these are really more tranquil, luscious landscapes that depict very specific places that she has fond memories of visiting.

There's a very rich tradition of landscape painting, and I think one of the things this show demonstrates is that there's always a new and interesting way to paint something, even if it's a subject that's already been depicted.

[ Music plays ] At the Morris Museum, one of our goals is to focus and feature on New Jersey contemporary artists when we can.

And so this was a great opportunity to show a New Jersey artist who's been in the field for quite a while and has made some really wonderful work.

[ Music plays ] [ Birds chirping ] [ Music plays ] Chatfield: So, I live in Tewksbury, and it is fairly rural.

There's lots of rolling hills.

The topography is quite beautiful.

I'm surrounded by mountains.

I live on a stream with three waterfalls.

And it does impact me.

I'm about to do a painting that is basically rocks.

It won't look like rocks, but they'll be -- the shapes will be dividing the canvas, and they will be rocks in my stream.

[ Music plays ] So, the way I started painting was -- I'm an only child.

I had lots of free time, and I wound up filling it with art.

So I started painting seriously at 14.

My teacher was so great.

He wouldn't let me paint until I could mix any color he could point to.

So I learned color theory at a very early age, which is a tremendous advantage.

Color theory is the basic foundation of painting.

It's space, how you divide space and color.

And when you learn how to control color -- that is, take a color and push it through all of its values -- then you create depth with that.

When I first started painting, I did mostly landscapes.

I started painting the rooftops of buildings.

I started doing a lot of industrial painting.

Then I moved out to New Jersey, and I painted lots and lots of barns.

And then there came a point where I said, "I can basically paint anything I see, and so where's the challenge?"

You know, you always have to challenge yourself.

So I wanted to see what was inside -- just look at a blank canvas, and with no inspiration, nothing to copy, paint.

[ Music plays ] I'd use oils and acrylics.

And I paint very, very large, I paint very fast, and I like layering.

The tools that I use are bigger brushes that are a little on the loose side, and I use large trowels, palette knives -- I use oil sticks.

I hear from people all the time that they like my work even better in person, because you can see the layers, and you can't see that in a photograph.

It takes a lot of paint.

I can paint for a month on something.

I can paint for a day or two.

You never know with art.

[ Music plays ] And the first few abstracts I did, my clients would come into the studio, and they go, "I don't like that."

It took quite a long time before I could really do what I wanted.

What generally starts it for me is color.

I am attracted to color, and my bench, my workbench has tons of color.

So whatever state I'm in emotionally, I'm generally drawn to that color.

And I start with that, and then it builds from there.

It may be gestural -- I may just take a big broad stroke, or I may pour and just keep pushing the palette knife until I cover what I want to on the canvas.

I think composition is incredibly important to the painting.

There's a rhythm.

There's a pattern to the energy.

You have to create negative space.

You need tension, and the way to create tension is to not have balance.

So when I scroll, when my eye moves around the painting and it doesn't go back anywhere, just sort of looks at it... it's done.

People want to find things that they can recognize -- I've noticed that -- they like doing that.

"Oh, I know what that is."

So there is that element.

I do like when they do that.

I won't tell them with my abstract work what it is.

I want them to take out whatever they want from it.

[ Music plays ] [ Music continues ] Narrator: Visit our website to sign up for the "State of the Arts" newsletter.

It includes events happening all around New Jersey.

You can also find all of our stories to view or share.

Thanks for watching.

[ Music plays ] [ Music continues ] [ Music continues ] [ Music continues ] [ Music continues ] [ Music continues ] Announcer: The New Jersey State Council on the Arts, encouraging excellence and engagement in the arts since 1966, is proud to co-produce "State of the Arts" with Stockton University.

Additional support is provided by... ...and these friends of "State of the Arts."