[upbeat music] - In this edition of WLIW Arts Beat, painting a city.

- My job is to take the culture and show what it is.

I'm not mimicking.

I'm giving birth to culture.

- Contemporary glass art.

- Each of these works are very different from one another just as each of the artists are different, and that's what is really so brilliant about the Berengo Studio.

- Filming dance.

- The camera gets to move with the dancer and in a way, get in their face, get in their movement.

And then you can see more of the details of what's going on.

- An immersive exhibition of Van Gogh's work.

- It's a journey where they can discover Panorama of the main masterpieces in vivid colors and in a poignant, vibrant way.

- [Host] It's all ahead on this edition of WLIW Arts Beat.

Funding for WLIW Arts Beat was made possible by viewers like you.

Thank you.

Welcome to WLIW Arts Beat.

I'm Diane Masciale.

Born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, artist Terrance Osborne loves to paint his city.

His compelling canvases are full of expression and vivacity.

We meet the artist in his hometown and hear more about his craft.

[jazz music] - I'm one of five.

We used to play under our house.

These shotgun houses, they're raised.

So we used to play archeologists, digging up bottles and things like that.

I developed a love for antiques and rustic things and all things New Orleans.

My mom collected a lot of antiques, right?

That was something that she did.

A lot of rustic stuff, she liked.

What I try to do is paint about those things.

Playing under the house, gave me an idea of how the structure of a house was formed because I could see underneath.

So when I started painting them as an adult, I just painted from memory.

It was easy to understand them.

There's the artist who sees the culture and who mimics the culture.

I'm going to paint the guy playing a trumpet or I'm going to paint some crawfish or something like that.

And that's fine because that introduces people to the culture and gives them something to take back.

But then there's another artist that I'm partial to.

This artist is born of the culture.

And when he produces something, he produces it from a place where he's not trying to mimic.

He's creating the culture.

And that's what I do.

My job is to take the culture and show what it is.

I'm not mimicking.

I'm giving birth to culture.

And so when people see my work, they recognize that.

People who are not artists, they experience the same thing that I experienced when they look at the city locals, right?

The difference is that I have the motor skills to interpret my perceptions.

Even though someone might think of what Mardi Gras is, I can paint the expression of it.

There's this piece called Throw Me Something Mister, where this lady has her arm stretched out and she has beads, and you can see the enthusiasm in her face.

She is Mardi Gras personified, right?

Now, that's how everybody feels, but I can paint about it.

Most of my pieces originally were about the houses and the neighborhoods and things like that.

But I'm gradually starting to move into painting people more and then putting houses on their heads or umbrellas on their heads or alligators, anything that represents the culture here.

I've been painting a lot of women in sort of a regal look, centered around something having to do with Mardi Gras or New Orleans.

And oftentimes I use my wife and my daughter as models.

I'll take a picture of them with the right angle and paint them in.

Sometimes it's my wife's eyes and my daughter's face or vice versa just to create these women.

Typically there's something centered around Mardi Gras.

And I enjoy that.

I put my family in my work.

I've always done that.

I don't know what else I would paint for me, if that's real life.

Lady Mardi Gras is my absolute favorite.

I use this image on all of my cards and the advertising.

You could easily find her at a ball or something.

She would be the lady that stands out.

When I painted this piece, I needed something to intertwine her hair through the house to lock the house on her head.

So I added these birds.

Then I added the cat because I tend to add something that doesn't belong, because birds and cats don't really get along, to give it contrast.

Also the black cat is mysterious as well, so it gives her that sort of mystery about her.

So the Bayou St. John Bridge, it's actually called the Magnolia Bridge, right?

And one day this lady called me and said my husband and I are retired, and one of our favorite things to do is to sit on the porch, sip wine, and watch people get married on the bridge.

You know, it's mostly a pedestrian bridge.

So she says that her husband mentioned one time, he said, honey, when I die, I would love for a band to second line across that bridge to celebrate my life.

So she said his birthday's coming.

She said, I want to give him the gift before he dies.

Could you paint a scene of a band celebrating my husband's life on the bridge?

So I did.

And also I put them in the boat on the scene, and also my wife is in the center of that bridge.

So I thought that was a sweet sentiment for her husband.

The house is in the scene.

It's the house that's closest to the bridge with the picket fence around it.

Uptown Bound is one of my favorite ones because it has all of my family's names in it.

So on the left, if you look at the buildings, you'll see Stephanie, my wife, the second one is Seth, he's my twenty year old, he's the culinary artist in the family.

Then L.T.

is my oldest, L.T.

stands for Little Terrance.

Now he's not so little, he's twenty-six.

He's a graphic artist.

And then there's a sign that says Sydney, my daughter, she's seventeen and she's a vocal artist.

And 524 on the streetcar is my wedding anniversary date.

So it's the only one that has my entire family in it.

And the streetcar is nice.

This pandemic was happening.

And you saw all of these women, eighty percent of the people who are in the medical industry, on the front lines, are women.

So, a friend of mine suggested that I paint the Rosie the Riveter.

I thought it was a fantastic idea.

His wife was a nurse.

So I painted her.

And what I ended up doing was donating about five thousand of the posters to the hospitals in New Orleans and some hospitals around the country.

And the image went viral.

I really felt like I was contributing to the pandemic.

There's no competition for the Jazz Fest poster.

This one guy called and said, I'm responsible for selecting the artists for Jazz Festival and I'd like you to do the Jazz Fest poster.

So that was in '07.

Jazz Festival is the highest grossing festival in the world.

The Jazz Fest poster is the highest grossing festival poster in the world.

So if you get it, of course, it's a huge honor.

Your work goes all over the world.

If your poster does well, they call you again to do another poster.

So I've done five Jazz Fest posters so far.

That really put me on the map early on.

Most people think that the artist creates it all, but it's not.

It's more of a collaboration between the producer of it and the artist.

The most excitement I got was when my third poster did well.

The third one is one of Jazz Fest's best seller, The Trombone Shorty, dated 2012.

I like how it came out.

I like the enthusiasm that everyone got from it.

I enjoyed working on it.

[jazz music] - [Host] See more at terranceosborne.com.

And now, the artist's quote of the week.

At the Boca Raton Museum of Art in Florida, the exhibit Glass Stress presents works of glass from over thirty artists who don't normally work with the medium.

Made alongside glass artisans from the Berengo Studio in Italy, this collaboration breathes new life into the art of glass blowing.

Take a look.

[chill music] - Adriano Berengo wanted to start this project where you make it relevant in the contemporary world again, by bringing contemporary artists who are not glass artists to work in a new medium and work with these maestros who have, you know, they're generations of experts.

So, you know these people know everything there is to know about glass.

- The artists, as certainly we have seen this last year, have responded to contemporary events.

Tim Tate's work that is really about the pandemic.

- This is his second pandemic, because he's an HIV positive artist, but he did go through, you know, so many people dying of AIDS.

- The whole idea of glass stress was sort of endemic from the very beginning, from the very concept.

Something that was sort of born of fire and becomes this amazing object that is at once fragile, but also there's sort of a durability about it.

There's a toughness about it.

I mean, I think of the works like Nancy Burson's DNA Has No Color, these block letters, which has a very strong message to it, or behind me, you see Vik Muniz's Large Goblet, that he takes a simple wine goblet and makes it lifesize.

- You just associate Venice with those colors and that imagery.

And even in, you see those [indistinct] and paintings, munition paintings over the centuries.

- Well, it's almost impossible to come to a glass workshop and not to be fascinated with the material.

Glass is so flexible.

Glass can become almost anything you want.

It belongs already to the creative way.

- Each of these works are very different from one another, just as each of the artists are different.

And that's what is really so brilliant about the Berengo Studio.

He's inviting artists of all sorts of persuasions, and really tests the will of the maestros who are adept at turning this liquid form into something that's provocative and fragile.

And as we see in this exhibition, full of meaning.

- A video artist could actually make something out of glass, or an installation artist, it's wide open.

So it's just for the artist to come up with an idea and for the maestros to figure out how to do it.

- I was invited by the curator to participate in Glass Stress.

And I thought this is a great opportunity to try new material.

I have never tried to work with glass before, because I know that the technique is so difficult and I happen to be a a sculptor that likes to put the hands in the material.

So for me, glass was a fascination, at the same time, I had a certain sense of not being entirely with it.

- Another one that's interesting is the [indistinct].

She represented Austria in the [indistinct] and you see the glass flowers, but they did a field of over two hundred red glass flowers, Berengo Studio did for the Austrian pavilion.

Some artists take, you know, the traditional and update it, like the piece behind you.

It's a traditional Murano glass mirror from the 18th century style, but with this ghost image of a [indistinct] woman.

- I think this exhibition that is born out of Venice, which has seen such difficulties last year, I think it really underscores the resilience that art has.

- [Host] Learn more at berengo.com.

Now here's a look at this month's fun fact.

In this segment, we are introduced to Modern Gram, a group of artists who combine dance and film to generate something new and inspirational.

We take a trip to Reno, Nevada for the story.

[bright music] - So Modern Gram is something I started with Shaila Emerson, and it is a collaborative group of people and artists that I found and love, that I consider family, that we do different dance for camera projects.

- I met Erica a few years ago.

We just started talking about dance because we both had that connection.

And then she was like, I'd love to do some dance films if you ever would want to.

It completely piqued my interest, obviously, but we made our first dance film together.

It's called Ravendoe.

It was more of just an idea from what we were both going through at that time.

It was really spur of the moment.

We planned it in a week.

And we just went out into the woods and dressed up as animals.

It ended up being like super inspirational to continuing doing dance films together.

- A dance film is cinematography catered towards choreography or choreography for cinematography.

So you would approach how you would film something differently than you would like a short film or like acting or a narrative, because it's movement based.

The videography would be used to help shift what the audience can then be looking at.

So it gives the choreographer or the producer more control over what their intention is and what they're trying to communicate.

The camera gets to move with the dancer and in a way, get in their face, get in their movement.

And then you can see more of the details of what's going on.

Things that are smaller, that humans can, or the audience can relate to.

- At a performance, you can only see them so far.

In a dance film, you're right there where they're breathing or looking at you, and you can see the color of their eyes, and this way we're able to add music and sound effects and different kinds of shots that are very intimate and it describes dance and storytelling in a different way.

[upbeat music] - My inspiration for anything that I do that's creative comes from a deep seated desire to unearth things that are stuck inside that I don't know how to process or talk about.

And then the concept of moving past those things.

What is the strength involved in that challenge, that I can find in my body and in myself?

I mean, that's what art is.

You know, you express the inexpressible.

- We have a lot of oxymoron ideas in or conflicting ideas in our dance films.

Visually, I think it comes from the moment.

It's very spontaneous and most of our stuff isn't really planned out.

So it's just kind of fun to bounce ideas off of one another, when we're like working through our personal, emotional things and just our life and kind of adding that into the dance films.

I think it just helps bring out like raw emotion within the dance film.

[dramatic music] - I really enjoy leading or guiding another dancer through movement while she or he is being filmed.

And then I get to be the one kind of helping them flow through the movement and helping them find what's honest in their movement and what's beautiful or real.

For Shaila, she has to be very much in tune with how the movers are moving.

And a lot of the times, with some of the locations that we're in, they can't stick with the choreography, they have to improvise.

She doesn't know what's coming next.

- Being a dancer and shooting dance, it's just like a whole new level.

I take the camera and I dance with the dancer.

And so it's almost like for the viewer, you get to be dancing with the dancer and it's like a whole new emotion that you get to experience within the dance film.

- I think what I want people to take away from what they watch is that they can relate in some way to what I've created or get something out of it, even if my intention is not the same as what they interpret.

It's just a way to connect us all.

Especially when so many things in life can be chaotic and unrelatable.

I love that ability to connect with people through something like that and to just share and I think vulnerability is one of the most valuable things as humans, as far as connecting each other.

[inspirational music] - For more information, head to modgrams.com.

And here's a look at this week's art history.

Imagine Van Gogh is an immersive exhibition that provides you with the exciting opportunity to step into the famous paintings of Vincent Van Gogh.

We visit Boston, Massachusetts to find out more.

- For the last two of his brief thirty-seven years, Vincent Van Gogh moved to the south of France.

There, in the blazing sun and a mid plower filled fields, his own life as an artist bloomed.

- You can see in his paintings that there's a lot of positivism, probably to balance with what he experienced in his everyday life.

- Speaking to us from France, Julien Baron is the co-director of Imagine Van Gogh.

Illuminating a one time subway power station, projections of Van Gogh paintings splash across this cavernous space.

- People can dive into Van Gogh masterpieces.

It's a journey where they can discover a Panorama of the main masterpieces in vivid colors and in a poignant, vibrant way.

- I think it's a feeling experience.

- Annabelle Mauger is the show's co-director.

In conceiving the installation, she's concentrated on Van Gogh's end of life work.

That's when, struggling with ill health, the painter produced the bulk of his paintings as he traveled throughout Provence.

- Those last two years was when he really decided to be a painter.

He really was the painter of all those landscape around him.

You know, Vincent Van Gogh paints a dreaming landscape, but he also paints people like you and me.

- Built as an immersive experience, Imagine Van Gogh is comprised of fifty-seven HD video projectors rendering the artists' work on more than twenty towering screens, accompanied by a soundtrack of classical music.

But what you won't see here are Van Gogh's works strictly as he painted them.

Instead it's Van Gogh in pieces, faces rather than figures, flowers rather than fields.

And just a sense of the sea.

- When you look at all those details, what you will see is that Vincent Van Gogh was painting with very straight brush strokes.

Sometimes it could be very violent, but at the same time, when you take just a little distance with those details, you will see that this painting is curved all the time.

It's very soft.

- So as you're doing this, are you mindful of changing Van Gogh's work?

- I'm very aware of that.

I always remember that I'm not an artist.

I'm a director.

The artist here, he's Vincent Van Gogh.

- The show is one of a number of immersive Van Gogh exhibitions touring the world.

It's made possible because one hundred and thirty years after his death, his work is now in the public domain.

And it's made popular by social media and shows like Netflix's Emily in Paris.

- This is incredible.

I feel like I'm actually in the painting.

- Imagine Van Gogh can be a launching pad.

Mauger says, a way to enter into the world as Van Gogh captured it, before seeing the real artwork.

- It's another way to experiment art and culture.

And then if you like it, you can discover more, like reading books, go to the museum.

You know, yesterday I was in the Harvard Museum, I saw one of the self-portrait of Vincent Van Gogh, it was such a surprise and I was very happy to discover it.

- [Host] For more information, go to imagine-vangogh.com.

That wraps it up for this edition of WLIW Arts Beat.

We'd like to hear what you think.

So like us on Facebook, join the conversation on Twitter and visit our webpage for features and to watch episodes of the show.

We hope to see you next time.

I'm Diane Masciale, thank you for watching WLIW Arts Beat.

Funding for WLIW Arts Beat was made possible by viewers like you.

Thank you.

[jazz music]