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THIS TIME ON COLORES...
NEW MEXICO ARCHITECT ANTOINE PREDOCK SHARES HIS VISION.
Architecture, with a capital A, is a poetic encounter, with a client, with a site, with
a place, with a people, a collective of people.
NEXT, PHOTOGRAPHER MICHAEL EASTMAN CAPTURES THE EXISTING LIGHT OF ARCHITECTURAL SPACES
WITH LONG EXPOSURES.
I'm a painter who uses the camera as my brushes.
PRATT INSTITUTES DESIGN INCUBATOR TEACHES STUDENTS TO USE THEIR SKILLS TO CREATE SUSTAINABLE
PRODUCTS AND SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE COMPANIES.
We use design as a tool to help these organizations make a positive impact.
SINCE SETTLING IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA, PAINTER NING HOU IS INSPIRED BY NATURE AND WHAT HE
CALLS THE CALIFORNIA GOLDEN LIGHT.
When I do the painting I feel totally I belong to the nature.
IT'S ALL AHEAD ON COLORES!
ARCHITECT ANTOINE PREDOCK DESCRIBES HIS DESIGN AS A POETIC ENCOUNTER.
It's really hard to articulate where so called design comes from. I mean architecture is
an art. It's a poetic encounter every time out. With client, with sight, cultural power,
you never no its kind of a roll of the dice in terms of what's going to happen. So I just
sort of look trough the rear view, I look through the peripheral vision rather than
a head on idea about something. I let things sum up in my feelings. You live your life
and you get filled up with stuff in life, then there's some kind of poetic filter that
selectively releases that experience. Architecture is mysterious and if it's really architecture
then It's not about, hey where are the bathrooms, how many square feet, all that. That's so
boring. You could do that in two seconds. You could figure that out, but the other deeper,
deeper thing, way deeper thing is what defines architecture.
It's the first National museum out of Ottawa. It's the Canadian Museum of Human rights.
So It's very, very important building for the Canadian culture. So, a human rights museum
what do you do with that? But I thought of roots engaging the Earth, like the building
clutches the earth. So these pieces that come out are call them roots. So they establish
a connection to the Earth. The power of this place, the forks are where the Red River meets
the Assiniboine River, a place of rendezvous for everyone from the earliest first nations
peoples where there was great dispute resolution here without turning to violence on that very
same place as the building. So it's got this anchorage in a human rights endeavor. So then
the building aspires to the sky, to hope and optimism, and acknowledgment of the struggles.
So the
cloud that wraps the building is a glass cloud, cloud like. Maybe you could read doves wings
into it if you wanted to, you know, take and extrapolate the building to a human rights
narrative. You know, tower of hope maybe, the aspiration to the sky that we all kind
of have and with our feet to the ground. The aesthetic of the building just kind of happens.
You know there's no point where you say I'm going to put some aesthetics on it now. You
know what I mean right? It's either there or it isn't. But the process starts from a
lot of research. I mean this, that's an example that collage back there. That's an example
of my research process. I was an action painter at UNM Arts School and it was paralleling
architecture. So the idea of collage and physicality and the gesture. Literally, the gesture in
making something. The gestural aspect, the research aspect, is in the mix, you know,
that you're kind of stirring up all the time. When I travel all around to do projects all
around this country or internationally, the question arises well how do you tune into
these different places and how do you empathize and do the things that I'm talking about when
you're kind of coming out of nowhere? New Mexico is the place to start. Because I've
been working here for, I don't know, 50 years or more, I've lost count and it's just so
much in my system, you know, awareness of wind direction, you know with sun. The importance
of cultural diversity, this is the laboratory for an architect, for anybody.
I did the American Heritage Center, an art museum in Laramie, Wyoming and the lessons
I've been talking about applied there. You know, how you look at the place, and it is
a geographical phenomenon called the Laramide Orogeny which means that the mountains are
instead of wearing down and diminishing like the Rockies are doing, the mountains are coming
up. There's some kind of upheaval going on so I thought, well let's make a mountain.
Let's think about making a new mountain for that horizon. At its base I think is the position
of rendezvous, crossroads. So there's some encampment, durability to its base. So there's
this big mountainous form, and at its base a fragmented art museum. So that's kind of
the big idea, but working from within so the mountain notion had to work at the same time
with programmatic, investigation into what they were presenting there, and storing there.
\e You know, when you talk about place it's kind
of slippery. What defines place, what is it? In the information age it's so easy to even
out cultural sensibility, to even out how things look. So that's all the more reason
to pay attention to the specifics of place and this is a good example of it. When I went
to work on my project in Qatar, an educational facility in Qatar for her highness Sheika
Mozah, and she really controls kind of the cultural message. Qatar's special if you know
Al Jazeera is there and they said okay well you really got to go to the desert and I found
this Pepsi can. I noticed that it had been in the sand and its been really messed with.
Like somebody took a sand blasting machine and blasted one side of it off. Well that's
the desert sand doing it. I really had to think about the wind direction for my project
and how I would defend against it. Architecture, with a capital A, is a poetic
encounter, with a client, with a sight, with a place, with a people, a collective of people.
So what's the role of an architect? What's the mission supposed to be? I think as with
anyone, any individual in an endeavor, is to have your inner content, your deepest inner
content made visible. So then what you do when you make your work, if you happen to
be an architect, then you let that be a kind of guide. You trust that inner place and you
have to find that inner place. I mean that's up to, how do you figure that out? I don't
know. Everybody's got their own way of doing it. So then the role of it is to be true to
that. The role of an architect, be true to that, and see what happens, you know, in your
work. I don't think a there's some master vision; oh I'm going to do buildings that
are changing society or anything like that. Architects have done that too often and really
screwed things up drastically by thinking they're masters of the universe and we're
going to shape society and all that stuff.
Problem with architecture is what you put out there. That's not going away you know.
It's not like a poem is sort of in the air, you know, in a book or in the air. It's out
there to mess with people. So some other impulse in that building should last. Almost superseding
its physicality. I think a great piece of work, a building, a poem, a novel, music,
a green enchilada, is a gift to mankind, if it's coming from a special place.
FASCINATED WITH COMBINING LIGHT AND LONG EXPOSURES, MICHAEL EASTMAN CREATES ARCHITECTURAL PHOTOGRAPHS
THAT SOMETIMES LOOK ABSTRACT. HE CALLS HIS GENRE URBAN LUMINOSITY.
>>MICHAEL EASTMAN: I'm drawn to things that reflect light - either
reflect light or transmit light - and I'm not always too concerned about what it is.
It becomes kind of abstract, so you don't really know that this wall is in an elevator
or that this shaft of light is in an atrium. To me it's unimportant. These are not photographs
about the architecture. These are photographs about the way light hits and transmits through
surfaces. You know, I try to see myself as a kind of urban alchemist. I'm looking at
fairly common, usually more textures and surfaces in contemporary architecture in cities, big
cities usually. I started these photographs in New York, which is a great place to start
because there's such great architecture there. I traveled around the country and found that
I wanted to go to sites where there were really fantastic contemporary architecture, so the
far east is where I headed - Shanghai, Tokyo and Osaka - great examples of architecture,
great examples for me to photograph luminosity. They're shot usually at night, the exposures
are very long, usually from two to ten minutes. I don't know exactly what I'm going to get
because the lights are so dim and they are usually photographed off of reflective surfaces
that until I get the film - and I do still shoot film - back to the studio and scan them
in, I don't know what they look like. So it's sort of like I'm doing this digitally, but
it's the same thrill as when I was photographing, and you printed a piece in the dark room for
the first time, and you looked in that tray, and it's suddenly emerged.
When I first began I was accused of photographing things as a painter and I thought it was sort
of a criticism, but now as I do this more and more I realize it is what I am. I'm a
painter who's using the camera as my brushes and the world as my canvas. I see things much
the way a painter does, I'm very interested in texture and patina and surface and light
and the subject is not as important, in some ways, as the color and what that abstract
surface looks like. I started in 1972, I got into it by borrowing a friend's camera. Unlike
other art forms, photography was really accessible. And I started creating images right away - I
thought they were fairly good, it took me ten years to realize they weren't. By that
time I was pretty hooked.
I started off in black-and-white abstractions, urban, usually architecture. I switched to
color in the '80s, went to Cuba in the late '90s. In 2000 I started working on a book
on horses, so things lead from one another, but I do a lot of different things. And even
though I've got all these chapters that are throughout 40 years, there's a consistency
throughout it. I mean, I am interested in surface and color and composition, sort of
abstract expressionism. So the works are all related and I think you know it's the same
photographer although the subject matter's fairly diverse.
You know, I'm not one of those people that knows - and I have a great deal of admiration
for those that know exactly where to be, when you see something that would be the perfect
photograph. There are many great examples of photographers that can do that. I'm not
like that. I think things present themselves to me when I'm there, and some things don't
present themselves and I don't get them. It's sort of what happens right at that moment
when the light hits it, the wear and tear of the rain has peeled away the poster - all
these things culminate in a moment in time when the abstraction is there for me and the
light hits it and boom that's it. Because I think it's everywhere. I think what I do
is in a sense, hopefully, help people who see my work see the world. And the highest
compliment I ever got was that somebody said that they were walking down the street and
saw an old surface and thought of me. And I thought, my God, you can't do more than
that. You can't do more, as an artist, than change the way a person sees the world.
PRATT INSTITUTE IN BROOKLYN IS HELPING DESIGN STUDENTS MAKE A MEANINGFUL IMPACT THROUGHOUT
THE WORLD WITH ITS DESIGN INCUBATOR. STUDENTS ARE TAUGHT TO CREATE SUSTAINABLE PRODUCTS
AND SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE COMPANIES.
>>DEBERA JOHNSON: The Design Incubator is really focusing on
transitioning designers into design entrepreneurs. These talented, creative people starting enterprises,
being entrepreneurs and this is a place where they can come in and they can figure out how
to do this. We want to do things that are environmentally better, socially better and
so it's those values that connect us all. >>SAMUEL COCHRAN:
You know, when we started, we didn't know a lot about how to start a business and the
incubator and its resources has allowed for us to gain that education in a safe environment.
We're looking at one of our first prototypes of solar ivy and solar ivy is a system of
solar panels or photovoltaics the interact with our built environment such that they
can be tuned to be optimized for capturing energy and producing electricity while looking
like ivy on the side of a building. >>ASHLEY THORFINNSON:
Designing Hope is an interdisciplinary design firm that works with non-profits and social
ventures and we use design as a tool to help these organizations make a positive impact.
We have been working with Tilonia, they are a not profit artisan group based out of India
and we've been working with their designers in a collaborative way to help bring a level
of sophistication to their already existing craftwork which gives them market access in
North America. >>DEBERA JOHNSON:
In the design incubator we're really quite practical. And I think that was one of Charles
Pratt's ideas...was this idea of being able to train people to go out and do things in
a practical way.
WHEN ARTIST NING HOU DECIDED TO SHIFT HIS FOCUS FROM GRAPHIC DESIGN TO PAINTING, HE
LEFT HIS NATIVE CHINA FOR THE UNITED STATES. FOR DECADES HE HAS BEEN INSPIRED BY WHAT HE
CALLS THE CALIFORNIA GOLDEN LIGHT.
>>NING HOU: My name is Ning Hou. I was born in Shanghai,
China. When I get into college my major was graphic design. I decided that design is much
more about the beauty, form and compositions rather than the politics, and the most realistic
painting in China at that time was pretty much political. Coming to the United States
is a choice and when I was 26 years old I found out I had to develop my art, and my
teacher told me there's two countries you can go if you want to be yourself and self-taught:
United States and Paris. So I only have relatives living in the United States. And also I remember
some lady told me if you drive on 160 on the levee road on the Delta there's a Chinese
community, a place called Locke. Nature is a great teacher, great teacher constantly,
every day, every moment. That's why when I do the painting I feel totally I belong to
the nature. I painted Locke for my personal reason - actually it's about the California
golden light. The deteriorating town and emerging spirit of the Chinese that used to live here
and the great lighting - I think that if Monet or van Gogh or Cezanne, if they were still
alive they would have loved to come here to be a resident. To me it's a natural open studio.
>>WOMAN: That's what you want to be, Lindsay.
>>GIRL: An artist?
>>WOMAN: That's right. That's what he does.
>>GIRL: Oh, that's cool.
>>SCOTT SHIELDS: For me it was kind of a surprise to see Ning's
work, because a lot of people don't know about his presence in this region and in the Sacramento
community. And I was shocked when I first walked in and saw a whole bunch of his paintings
together because here's an artist who's obviously worked for a very long time, is very skilled
at what he does and yet I wasn't very aware of it and I know a lot of other people aren't
either. Ning is an amazing artist because he's able to work in a variety of styles.
On one hand he works in a very impressionistic style, post-impressionistic style. And on
the other hand he does paintings that are very photo-real, like Salt of the Earth, and
they're very much like a photographer. >>WOMAN:
Why do you think the artist chose to make no faces? That's kind of an interesting choice.
>>CHILD: Because labor workers, usually you just think
those are the people out there picking the grapes, you don't know who they are.
>>WOMAN: That's an interesting idea, because usually
you don't know who they are. >>CHILD:
I don't understand why they're holding that part of the truck.
>>NING HOU: When I painted that I had a great joy about
this country, about the people. The location is Lodi, and the machinery is Japanese. And
a Chevy car is very much a symbol of what is American society. And on the right side
is an older Dutch barn. There's two Mexican workers, and one is African American there
and one of the Mexican workers wears a wedding ring, so all of those things captures that
moment. So I'm a Chinese painter, and I've become an American and my wife is Irish so
I think it is so meaningful for my individual life. Bottom line is my marriage really affects
my painting by learning what is love. It sounds so silly, so corny, but believe me, the country
where I come from, love never was first. Believe and take orders all the time, so I almost
learned what is love. In my paintings I try to reach the energy, which Westerners call
passion. >>CHRIS SPENCER:
Ning has been an inspiration because he's a supporter. He's bought a couple paintings
from me. I just had a show at his gallery that went pretty well.
OK, Mister Sunflowers, hold still. >>NING HOU:
This is a better canvas, so whatever you do is opposite. \e
My goal is to teach students to be spontaneous, to appreciate the light, to appreciate the
moment. Every 20 minutes, the light's changing, the shadows are moving and the color from
blue to violets in the shadows, and in highlights from red to gold. If you're not so spontaneous,
you're not able to catch it. Subject is second and energy is first. Energy, universe - paint
the moment. The California golden light was so hard to
paint in the first couple years when I could not identify what kind of color, like those
wild hills and wheat fields and grass in the summertime it's all dried up. To me this is
spectacular. I've found my way and I want to show how grateful that this country offered
me an opportunity, and I've become a son of the United States. But I wish someday the
border of the country is not so important, or the flag, but the most important thing
is love. Love others, love the kind that are different than you. I think if you open your
heart, in this universe very few things are really ugly, everything is gorgeous.
NEXT TIME ON COLORES!
ALBUQUERQUE'S KESHET DANCE COMPANY INSPIRES PASSION AND OPENS UNLIMITED POSSIBILITIES
NO MATTER WHAT THE BARRIERS.
When people come to us who didn't realize they could dance before, it's a really powerful
experience.
A WINNER IN SEASON THREE OF TOP CHEF, CHRISTINE HA TRADES HER KNIFE FOR A PEN
As a child I loved to read, I did love to write, but it wasn't something I really took
seriously.
IS FOOD ... ART? EXECUTIVE CHEF, TYSON COLE, BLURS THE LINES
BETWEEN MAKING SUSHI AND SCULPTURE.
When I was watching them make the sushi I was like, it seemed like it was sculpting,
you know.
A CHOREOGRAPHER FOR THE BROADWAY MUSICAL ANNIE LISTENS TO THE MUSIC OVER AND OVER UNTIL HE
SEES THE STORY COME TO LIFE.
A lot of my work actually has to do with me just paying attention to my imagination.
JIM McHUGH, A PHOTOGRAPHER WITH AN EYE FOR HAUNTING IMAGES THAT CAPTURE A DISSAPPEARING
LANDSCAPE
He's taking pictures of things in Los Angeles that no one really sees.