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>>Narrotor: THIS TIME, ON COLORES! ALBUQUERQUE ARTIST RAY MASEMANS PRINTS ARE
A RESULT OF PLAYING WITH IDEAS THAT COME FROM DREAMS, MYTHS, CHILDRENS STORIES AND CHANCE
OBSERVATIONS. >>Ray Maseman: Its really important to feel
like you are safe and comfortable enough to just try things without knowing how its going
to turn out. >>Narrator: ARTIST FLOYD TUNSON HAS CREATES
WORK THAT CHALLENGES VIEWERS TO LOOK AT DIFFERENT SIDES OF LIFE - THE BEAUTY AND THE DARKNESS,
THE CHAOS AND THE ORDER. >>Tunson: I think art should change how we
think about things.. >>Narrator: THE MUSEUM OF THE DOG HOUSES OVER
700 PIECES OF CANINE THEMED ART, EXPLORING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MAN AND BEAST THROUGHOUT
THE AGES. >>So the artist is telling you something.
What is he telling you here? Hes telling you the dogs have emotions...
>>Narrator: AUSTRALIAN ARTIST KONSTANTIN DIMOPOULOS PAINTS TREES BLUE TO BRING AWARENESS TO ECOLOGICAL
ISSUES AROUND THE WORLD. >>Konstantin Dimopoulos: So that whole idea
of creating something that is surreal started to come about because then you notice something,.
>>Narrator: ITS ALL AHEAD ON COLORES! PRINT MAKER RAY MASEMAN EMBRACES PLAYFULNESS.
>>Hakim: Your work lends itself to metaphor. Can you talk a little bit about that?
>>Maseman: Well all that stuff I make. Its like after I made it Oh this is what that
meant At the time its just, I should put this bicycle
here. I should put this animal on this bicycle. There should be a thing off the top of the
bicycle. Oh this wants a little mountain in the background. Its not about thinking what
it all means its just composition and what color looks good. Somehow through that, whatever
was in the back of my brain pops out. You know when my kids were younger it was a lot
of that was sort of fatherhood stuff. Parenting things. A lot of traveling happens and you
know, how much of that is wanting to travel... some of thats literally travel some its just
life is a journey kind of thing. And I guess the ideas of archetypes, you know, is the
Jungian philosophy thing that these ideas are all in our heads, I feel its a good word
even though it was just about stuff that was all in my head. It seems to resonate with
their head too and thats what archetypes are supposed to do. Theyre supposed to be universal.
The metaphor part of that is that metaphors are kind of universal. You know maybe sometimes
the boat is a boat. You can interpret in lots of ways.
>> Your work , to me is excitingly curious. Youre trying to find the dynamics between
say a penguin and giraffe. So lets talk about the characters in your work.
>>Maseman: the animals started happening because a friend gave me a book about animal fathers
and the first third of the book was about emperor penguins. And I didnt know anything
about male penguins. Reading the book I discovered that Male emperor penguins carried the egg.
And thats a good role model... Im going to try and be that dedicated. After a while the
penguin needed a buddy and the penguin needed a friend so with sea horses the males get
pregnant. They bare the young. And so the sea horse started showing up. At that point
it started evolving from this fatherhood thing into are these two friends? Are they in a
relationship? Are they a couple? Are they parenting the egg, are they doing something
else? The whole Metaphor thing just kind of took off.
>> Questions. >>Maseman: and it kind of just evolved into
this archetypical thing with the anema and the animas. Where if youre a man you have
the internal woman and if youre a woman you have the internal man, and it kind of became
that and its still kind of depending on you if the penguin is the internal woman or if
the sea horse is. Its just that play with female and male identity. What does that mean?
>> And with the giraffe and the bird? >>Maseman: So, well with the penguin and the
sea horse, People started giving me penguin and sea horse gifts and I dont want, just
stop I dont want to be the penguin guy or the sea horse guy, I need a new anima...l
and about that time I was reading a book about the giraffes at the Prague Zoo in what was
then Czechoslovakia and there was this whole epic story of how the giraffe got from Africa
to the zoo. It had all this stuff about giraffe biology and giraffe psychology and just how
giraffes work, and one of the things that really struck me was that their eyeball is
proportionally the biggest eyeball of any animal. There was this sense that with giraffes
their vision is in the same as with smell is for dogs. You know dogs smell things that
we dont smell and a giraffe maybe sees things we dont see. There is a level of detail that
we dont see as humans and I felt like that was a good artist metaphor. The penguin inspired
me to be a better dad and so the giraffe is inspiring me to be a better artist.
>> So you have the two giraffes staring at each other, and one has the caged bird, one
has the not caged bird. Theres certainly a narrative?
>>Maseman: Yah >> Maybe thats where the question is.
>>Maseman: There is defiantly a narrative, I mean sometimes I have a fuzzy idea of the
narrative when I started. Maybe I didnt have a clear idea, sometimes I dont know until
its over but theres a narrative, and I want people to be able to look at them and make
up a story or have a sense of story but without it being tied to this is the one story.
>> So people have ever asked you what the bird is?
>>Maseman: Birds are like the stereotypical, the iconography is the birds are supposed
to be souls or sprits. Thats kind of what they ended up being most of the time, like
the two giraffes, they each have a bird and the bird is like their little spirit or their
little soul or what ever and one of them has their bird in a cage and the other has his
bird free but hes in his cage and what ever you may think youre doing at a given time
your bird is off doing what youre really doing or youre actually seeing what youre really
doing because its flying up high and it has the birds eye view.
>> That kind of sense of play, that inherent sense of play that children have and what
you have in your work. Can you tell us where that playfulness in your work comes from?
>>Maseman: Its really important to feel like youre safe and comfortable with trying things
without knowing how theyre going to turn out. Without knowing for sure what is going to
mean. I think part of the reasons I like setting up the pictures is because people have to
ask questions. It sort of forces them to get out of their little rut, whatever the little
rut might be. >> In your personal experience and your personal
background how does playfulness kind of connect to your up bringing?
>>Maseman: Neither one of my parents were super playful. But my dad was definitely not.
And as he went through life you know theres a lot of addiction stuff there alcohol and
cigarettes and what not. Especially as I got older I could look at him and be like youre
stuck. I mean defiantly addiction stuff happens; people have done studies where peoples brains
get kind of almost literally rutted in this path of what ever your addiction is. And I
looked at my father and was like yeah, he cant... its too scary to get out of his rut
and theres not any play happening. I have two brothers and I think for all three of
us we looked at our father and were like were not going to be like that Im going to be a
better dad. Im going to be a happier person and for me I think the art was a way to explore
that. >> Lets extend this playful trajectory, what
is the future in the kind of progression of your art?
>>Maseman: I dont know. I think a big change has just happened I havent digested it yet.
This summer I spent a month living in the Farol Islands, which are up in the Norwegian
sea. It was this artist residency so I spent a month in this whole other country far away
from here to remove me from my normal context. It was an adventure and since I got back I
have had almost no interest in giraffes. The penguin is still floating around a little
but its more of a return I think to the earlier penguin who was partly a self portrait to
stand in for me and the penguin has reappeared that way but I dont know yet what that means.
It makes me think about stuff but Im not conscious about what Im making Im just making stuff
and then down the road Ill know what it means. Im not there yet Im the penguin in the boat
sailing across the water. >> The metaphor
>> Maseman: The Metaphor of floating through the air. Im going I know Im going somewhere.
Something about being a human you want to go see whats there, you want to go find out...
what else is there besides whats in front of me.
>>Narrator: FLOYD TUNSON CREATES ARTWORKS THAT CELELBRATE THE VERNACULAR OF HIS CULTURAL
HERITAGE. >>Floyd Tunson: I dont always want to be a
narrative, I dont want to tell a story with a period on it. Id rather tell a story with
a question mark. >>Blake Milteer: We believe that Floyd is
one of the Rocky Mountain regions most significant contemporary artists.
>>Tunson: Never have I actually seen all of this work the way Im looking at it right now.
So for me I actually had to think, like, am I the artist. You know, because when I see
it in totality it was overwhelming for me, and I did the work!
>>Milteer: He finds the right media to draw us to the work and tease out some of those
things that we might not have thought of before we walked in the room.
>>Tunson: So, the work is not easy and as I matured I think Im more caustic, more provocative,
with what Im trying to say. Im trying to draw you in initially then I try to give you a
little punch in the gut so that you have to view the work differently.
Im not one who can do something the same way for a long time, that would drive me crazy.
Im always looking for adventure and growth. I want to grow as an artist.
>>Milteer: Just as he looks with an equally critical and reverent eye to various aspects
of our society, he also does that with art history and inspires us to reassess it, inspire
us to reassess the role of black people in todays society and he wants us to wonder.
>>Tunson: I think that is all Im doing is posing more questions than answers.
Im trying to convey things that are important to me and hoping that there is a common denominator
of other people feeling the same thing When you conceptualize something it is so personal
and once it gets out there everybody brings their own baggage to the work. But there has
to be some common denominators and I think Im trying to be the voice of the underdog.
>>Milteer: In the Endangered series you see that posed as a question to us so you see
these very beautiful, very naturalistic portraits of young black men and what they inspire us
to think about is what point in these young lives are we looking at? We dont know but
we have to ask ourselves whats the future of these young men in any case.
>>Tunson: I think theres some humor in the Universal Bunnies, I think there is some humor
in some of the Delta pieces. Because basically Im conveying that lifestyle which is pretty
light when you really get into it. Listening to the music, being transported, hearing those
stories from those old guys, you know, smoking little brown cigarettes with them. They have
stories and a lot of those stories are humorous and a lot of that stuff is inside jokes for
black people. That maybe other people will not understand but culturally has been embedded
in us for a long time and I bring out little things that are funny to us.
>>Milteer: This is a 40 year plus retrospective. And one of the things that brought me to Floyds
work and kept me coming back to it was that, he, as an artist is able to create this beautiful
balance between the most elegant representations and the most challenging ones. Youre drawn
into the work via this absolute beauty and elegance then as you spend more time with
it, get up close and look at all the physical layers to it, youll find things that challenge
your expectations of what art should be, what art should do, and to me, thats when art is
at its best. >>Tunson: First of all, it has to draw someone
in, you have to have some visual dialogue, you have to have some interest in the piece
then once you get drawn in I use different devices. Sometimes I make it very comfortable
for you to come to the piece then once you get there I throw little things in there thats
not so comfortable but gets you to think differently, or to emote differently, about that particular
work. I think art should change how we think about
things. Thats what art should do. ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI IS HOME TO A FINE ARTS
MUSEUM DEVOTED TO MANS BEST FRIEND. >>Barbara McNab: A dog museum is a museum
devoted solely to canines. Its the only dog museum of its kind in the world. Its a fine
art museum, so we have paintings, bronzes, porcelains, decorative arts, artifacts all
relating to mans best friend. And its where you can see your favorite breed immortalized
on canvas. There was a group of interested people back
in the 1970s who got together and said, you know, theres all of this beautiful dog art
out there in private collections and various places. There must be enough to sustain a
particular museum that we could have a dog museum to bring it all together in one place
to share with everybody. And thats pretty much the premise behind the dog museum.
The dog museum is housed in Jarvel House in Queeney Park, West St. Louis County. Jarvel
House dates from 1853, a fabulous antebellum home, absolutely gorgeous. The collection
is comprised primarily by 19th Century, early 20th Century pieces, but of course dog painting,
and dog art has been around long before that. These two objects are probably the oldest
pieces in the collection, these are Japanese temple dogs and they date from the 1500s.
They would have at one time more than likely adorned a temple in some way, but probably
to ward off evil spirits. As you can see theres a little bit of a menacing look to their face
and it would have been to make the bad things, the bad spirits go away. They would have also
been much more brightly painted at one time, and a lot of that has been lost. But the character
of the pieces is still here. This is a portrait of a pointer, painted by
the French artist JeanBaptiste Oudry. It dates from the mid1700s. Its one of the earlier
paintings in the museums collection. >> Particularly interesting about the museums
collection is how it documents the evolving relationship between dogs and humans throughout
history. >>McNab: At one point the dog was primarily
a working dog, a working companion because he was a hunter, a guardian, a herding dog,
a dog that was used to protect flocks of sheep, cattle and so forth. He helped earn his keep
in some way. And the dog was very prized for that ability, so sometimes you might have
someone who might commission a painting or drawing of their dog because they wanted to
show off their prized hunting dog. Then Queen Victoria came along and Queen Victoria loved
and adored animals. She had many, many, many dogs. And she commissioned the best artist
of the time to paint portraits of her pets. So out of the Victorian age you have this
cornucopia of really fine dog painting. This is one of the premiere paintings in the
dog museums collection. This is by Sir Edwin Henry Landseer, he was one of the favorite
court painters of Queen Victoria. This does not happen to be one of the queens dogs, but
very typical of what you would have seen in the Scottish Highlands, your deer hound and
your fox hound. And I think when you look at this particular piece you can see how absolutely
impressive it is. And hes used all sorts of things here in the composition which draw
your eye to the focal point, which would be the portraits of the two dogs. So you have
this angle of the deer hounds legs, which guide you up this way. And it shows a sentimentality
between the two dogs, theres sort of a relationship here, a story. Its not just a static portrait,
a confirmation portrait, so the artist is telling you something. What is he telling
you here? Hes telling you the dogs have emotions, they have feelings, they interact with each
other as well as with humans. This is a large painting by Richard Ansdell,
its titled The Poacher, dates from 1865. This is a really nice example of a tie dog. The
large dog here in the middle was a Mastiff, and these dogs were tied by day and let loose
by night to patrol private properties and estates. And we know that it was a tie dog
because the artist purposely put this really large ring on the collar identifying this
dog, this Mastiff, as a tie dog. This is a perfect example of the quintessential
pet portrait. This is by William Henry Hamilton Trood and it dates from 1888. And we see a
variety of breeds depicted in an interior scene and you can see all the different types
of working dog. But here they are shown inside in an interior scene, and that really reflects
the changing attitude in the role of the dog from just solely a working dog to a canine
companion, a member of the family, someone who is with you in the house.
>> Some of the paintings are as much reflections of humans as they are depictions of pets.
>>McNab: Anthropomorphism was very popular in the 19th Century, and what that was when
you gave human attributes to animals. And so we relate to that and we of course find
it whimsical. And we have a presidential pet portrait. This
is of George Bush and First Lady Barbara Bushs dog Millie, and this is on the South Lawn
of the White House. >> There are galleries that highlight the
courage of war dogs and police canine units, a dog hall of fame and memorabilia that reminds
us of some of our favorite furry Hollywood stars.
>>McNab: The museum also has some fascinating artifacts such as this incredible Palladian
style dog house by the wellknown architect Juan Paulo Molyneux, who has studios in Paris
and New York City. And then where else can you see a Mastiff carousel figure. This was
created in the Luthe Factory, it dates from the 19th Century and it was actually an item
used on a merrygoround. And in addition we have this charming childs cart. This also
dates from the 19th Century and children would have used this to play with and it would have
been pulled by a dog. And we can see an example in this painting on the wall where you actually
have a cart thats being pulled by a Mastiff and a small steer.
>> It is a museum dedicated not only to find art, but to the special bond that is endured
between our two species for centuries, founded on love and friendship, loyalty, work and
play. >>McNab: This is the perfect venue for the
dog museum, because dogs are a part of the family, they are a member of the family. And
to see their portraits displayed in a home setting, as opposed to maybe blank white walls
in a larger gallery, it doesnt mean as much. To have them here in a home, it makes it much
more personal and it makes more sense for this collection.
>Narrator: AUSTRALIAN ARTIST KONSTANTIN DIMOPOULOS PAINTS NATURE IN A DIFFERENT WAY THAN YOU
WOULD EXPECT. >>Dimopoulos: This is part of an arts project
that started in 2003. I noticed how incredibly devastating deforestation
was-where were losing the size of Belgium...thats what was destroyed every year old forests
and everyone said, How do we get that in the front page of the newspaper, instead of always
as a postscript? and I just thought about it and I said, Why dont we-almost like a gorilla
tactic go and color them because although the forests are disappearing-hundreds and
miles away from the urban community. But we dont see that...
We decided to use the idea of Blue Trees because blue trees dont exist in natureyou have green,
you have yellow, but the color blue on a tree doesnt exist-there are flowers that are blue
and so that whole idea of creating something that is surreal started to come about because
then you notice something, The thing that kind of grabbed me initially
was when I saw the first grove of trees, its that the color and the trees and the green
and then the change of seasons as they get... as they become an incredibly beautiful landscape...
so it has a surreal nature, but it is also quite beautiful.
The pigment we use is totally safe for trees... its ultramarine blue and its one of the most
ancient of colors-its a mineral-so it was made from a stone, and you crushed it and
then you added water Its basically the way you do frescos. So the
pigment isnt supposed to last forever-its an ephemeral work.
Part of the idea of this art project is about transformation... its about change and how
quickly things go into desserts. A lot of people say What can we do? you know,
part of social art is also that we put something out and then we say to people Well this is
what you can do-if you have any ideas put them forward
as I said it could be a school child here in Houston... or in Seattle or in Sacramento
who in the future comes up with the actual answer to deforestation inn here thing-it
is the young people today rather than I think the staid people that can change it.
You dont have to have a PhD to change your environment... you just have to have an idea.
I think you got to kind of relook at the importance of the trees and where theyll affect you financially
through climate change... through a variety of other issues and really just to continue
to question which is what I think art is about.
Id love to be a redwood you know; Id love to be redwood. If you stand next to one, which
I have done, its almost as close to being to God as you can possibly be. And I love
the way that they give us oxygen. So, if God is that person that breathes life into us,
thats what these trees do they give us life, and I think its an incredible disrespect to
nature for us to do what were doing. Im not an antiforestry but I am about sustainable
forestrymanage forestry. Ecocide is not an option anymorewe dont have three more hundred
years. >>Narrator: NEXT TIME ON COLORES!
DR. JONATHAN WOLFE, FOUNDER OF THE FRACTAL FOUNDATION HAS PUT ALBUQUERQUE ON THE MAP
FOR BEING THE FRACTAL CAPITAL OF THE WORLD. HE SHARES HOW CHAOS THEORY SHOWS US PATTERNS
IN NATURE. >> Fractals are the pictures of chaos theory.
With the help of computers we can visualize how fractal patterns grow and turn into these
really beautiful things that echo the patterns of nature.
>>Narrator: STUDENTS GET A CHANCE FOR ARTISTIC EXPOSURE AT THE XL PROJECTS GALLERY IN SYRACUSE
NEW YORK. THIS SHOW EXPLORES THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CONCEPT AND THE REAL WORLD.
>> Our work still seems to have this commonality of like, ideas of the transitive state, which
are, things that are, the interaction between thoughts and objects on this plane of reality
thats not quite real and maybe even sometimes fantastical or strange.
>>Narrator: NORM OBERLES CURIOSITY FOR WHAT LIES ABOVE AND BEYOND PLANET EARTH LED HIM
TO BUILD A POWERFUL TELESCOPE. >> So I remind myself how bad it can be building
a large telescope. >>Narrator: PHOTOGRAPHER JAMES REDDINGTON
FOUND THAT MOST PEOPLE HAVE A SECRET CONTAINER FOR MOMENTOS OR CHERISHED ITEMS.
>> I love photographing anything regarding peoples secrets or anything where something
is not readily apparent to people. I like bringing that out in the open.
>>Narrator: UNTIL NEXT TIME, THANK YOU FOR WATCHING.