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is made possible by The State Arts
and Cultural Heritage Fund, and the citizens of Minnesota.
(female narrator) On this edition of Minnesota Original--
public artists Amy Baur
and Brian Boldon incorporate digital images,
glass and tile in their large-scale installations.
Painter Gary Welton's Study of Movement
is inspired by early stop-motion photography.
Literature and mythology influence the atmospheric music
by the anglo-rock quartet Greycoats.
These artists and more, now on Minnesota Original.
electronic music plays
(Amy Bauer) Brian Boldon is a visual artist, a sculptor,
my collaborator, and my husband.
(Brian Bolden) Amy Baur is a visual artist, photographer,
and digital artist, my business partner,
my artistic collaborator, and my spouse.
(Amy) When we collaborate, we have different processes,
I think, but in the end, we have sort of the same vision,
and so we're a really great team.
The process that Brian and I do
to make artwork is kind of unusual.
Essentially we take any digital image, mainly photographic,
and I manipulate that in Photoshop.
Then it's sent to a printer
that's been refurbished with glaze inside,
so there's no longer any toner.
(Brian) Instead of having ink in it,
it has ground-up glass and pigments in it.
(Brian) Can I take a look? (Amy) Yeah.
(Brian) That's printed onto a piece of water slide transfer paper.
Then that is able to come out of the machine
and be soaked in water
and slid onto the surface of ceramics and glass,
and then permanently fused in the kiln.
(Amy) And that's why it is so permanent,
because it's not ink, it's glaze,
so it can't be scratched, or UV light doesn't hurt it.
So this process is not only really useful for a large-scale public work
that we do, but we also use it in our own private studio work.
bass, percussion, & vibraphone play in bright rhythm
(Brian) My work is really installation-based work.
It's about creating environments in spaces
that one can move through and move around.
It sort of has evolved into trying to create spaces
that challenge the idea of linear perspective.
It's sort of influenced by virtual reality environments
and digital space, where there's no up and down.
There's really no beginning and no end.
It's not only about just creating a pure fiction
and it's not about fantasy,
and it's not about creating some sort of set design.
It's much more about creating a sensibility that maybe
the references that you're using to describe what you're seeing
are not the thing to be focused on, but you tap
into some sensibility that goes beyond just what it looks like.
I really like creating a situation
that's not easily decipherable,
and finding something in the work that just kind of insists
a different take, a different perspective.
There's a piece I have; it's called 3-D Chair,
and it's a glass construction, and I took a chair
and I hung it from a cable, and I spun it,
and I photographed it while it was spinning.
I took six stills out of the rotation
and put it at right angles to one another.
And it became completely believable that there was
an object inside of this glass construction.
It was a very transformational piece for me
because it played off that exact sensation
that we have about our relationship
with physical space and our environment.
Once you understand what a chair is,
do you really every think about the chair?
You infer that you know what chairs are,
and you no longer look at them.
I just insisted upon making it prismatic.
We are biologically virtual beings.
We spend most of our time not in the present.
I'm just an artist, but I've done enough research to know
that neuroscience is proving a lot of this now.
And unless you hit your thumb with a hammer, and you go
that really hurts, it's really hard to be in the moment.
Well, I think that's a huge opportunity there
as a maker, as an artist, because you're the person
that's intervening, you're the person saying,
I care enough about this idea, that I'm going to act on this;
I'm going to build this, I want to share this idea.
(Amy) I think I've showed some straight ones
in the very beginning, but honestly, I never
really have been interested in just a photograph.
I love when other people do it,
but I want to create not a factual world.
I want to create images
that are to the right and left maybe of fact.
acoustic guitar plays softly
I've always been really fascinated
with the idea of having a physicality in the imagery,
so I will spend a long time going through my collections
or looking at junk shots
for just the right bent nail laughs
or rusted lid of something.
And I like that it has a history;
I like to find something that maybe somebody used,
so utilitarian, and something found.
This recent work, Open Spaces,
it's kind of a contradiction in terms,
and I like that because what I think I'm doing is,
I'm containing, in a sense, a landscape, and so I think
these are super pined down,
open, sparse, distilled landscapes.
I am using photographs that I've taken,
and then, using the decal process, fused that to glass.
Some of the glass I've curved in the kiln, slumped,
so it actually creates a curve.
soft scraping
The exterior of the work is laminated birch,
and it's curved as well,
and then I very carefully glue this transparent,
almost vellum-like paper onto it.
And as I work, that's become a big part of it,
where I like the sort of overlapping of that paper,
creating maybe another very liminal
suggested hill or horizon line.
And then I really like this idea of combining found objects.
They actually physically raise the work,
and I like that idea that air can move
between the open spaces and the ground,
but also, I think that they are a marker of our external world.
So here I am creating these imagined spaces, you know,
I'll use a hinge to connect two pieces of glass together,
or I'll raise them with these things.
I think it's the one place where somebody looking at the work
could say oh, I recognize that.
I'm really asking for just a moment where the viewer
would look at this work and really look.
So I'm hoping that there's a sense of recognition
and maybe pause, reflection.
(Brian) When we started working across mediums, and exploring
2-dimensional imagery that's captured by cameras
and physical materials like ceramics and glass,
we thought it would be a really interesting thing
to try out some experimental ideas,
and so we began working together 8 years ago,
and it's been really interesting
where we have gone with these kind of collaborations.
This is a project that's going to
the Ralph Carr Justice Center, Denver, Colorado.
It's a piece that fits in between the appellate court
and the supreme court in the Grand Corridor,
and it's about 120 feet long.
We bring all of our cameras,
and we try to get a sense of the location
and try to make something that's really, you know, really local,
really about that particular site.
Instead of shooting the building, we'll go
and we'll shoot the reflections of all of the buildings.
We'll shoot like, the details of the buildings,
We'll try to create a sense of place and aspects
of what it feels like to be in that city.
So we're generating a kind of a visual archive
of imagery that we bring back.
(Amy) Then I work very long hours in front of the computer,
pushing, melding, and working these together in Photoshop.
Then I print them out and you know, then it's Brian's job
to decal every one of 'em and then fire 'em.
(Brian) Each tile is a 10 by 16; it's about 1250 square feet,
it's about 680 tiles
and I'm doing about 16 to 32 square feet a day,
laughs so this has been, oh, 4 months with the work, not full time.
Conceptually, it's kind of pure and simple.
I mean, we use architecture materials
and we encode it with electronic imagery.
We work really hard to integrate and make it kind of feel like
the architecture and the artwork
are really just reacting to one another.
You really don't get that opportunity as a fine artist
to impact 130 feet of space to this level.
In the public art realm, you really have that opportunity,
and over time now, we've done, I think, 17 projects together.
The experience level has gotten up to the point now
where we can really understand space and understand
the sort of dynamics of how to impact a space,
and it's really exciting to actually realize that.
strings and guitar play
(Gary Welton) I think that the dance is a universal language.
It might have even come about before speaking,
so to me it's a very primitive way
to express an emotion or tell a story.
When I go to the theater and see a ballet, for example,
to me it's like watching a painting come to life.
It's a melody; it's melody of the music
and the melody of the rhythms of the dance.
That's what I want to get on canvas.
Capturing movement in a static medium
has always been a challenge for all artists, I think,
and we're lucky today to have had
people like Eadweard Muybridge
who was a photographer that studied motion.
He captured movement of animals and people
in sequential photographs that showed movement,
and that was really the advent of motion pictures.
For a painter painting in two dimensions,
pretty much a static form,
the way I do it is to show kind of the way Muybridge did,
and it's a series of sequential movements
that illustrate the motion forward.
My paintings come from one dancer model.
Sometimes people look at it and think
well, he had 3 dancer models, but rarely is that the case.
I mean, one is complicated enough,
particularly when he or she is moving around.
So it's usually the succession of movement
by the one dancer model.
There's another nice one.
I call my work abstract figurative.
I do like the abstract, and I do like
the more figurative, more realistic work.
Somehow I want it to be in between, a little bit of each.
To me that's where the life is.
It looks good, a good start.
piano, strings, drums, & bass play in bright rhythm
The speed of the dance, the speed of the movement,
is the direct connection between the abstract quality
or the realistic quality of the work.
The faster the model moves, the more abstract the work is,
and the slower she moves, the more realistic it is.
If the dancer is moving quickly, I have to work very quickly,
and I have to find my way through the maze,
basically as a series of marks that get made on the canvas.
It has very little thought at that point;
the thought comes later in the resolution of the work.
I like to define that kind of balance between the abstraction
and the realistic representation in the work.
Today I have a piece that I started some time ago
and it's ready to be worked on again.
It needs a little resolution.
I think there's always a fear, when an artist is making a mark.
I mean, you can ask anybody to make a mark
on a piece of paper or a blank canvas.
It's kind of a hard thing for a lot of people to do.
And there's a resolution that needs to come eventually
to all the little problems that come up in any kind of artwork.
Once you make a mark, there's something else needs to be done,
you know, it's a nice dialogue.
That's what I enjoy about it.
I love coming to the studio and having that dialogue.
And because I work on many pieces at one time,
maybe 6 to 10 pieces, I can walk in the studio
and have my coffee, and I can look around
and see which piece is talking to me today,
and that's the one I'm going to work on.
This painting is an example of the way I work
because it shows some of the shapes
that I saw in the movement.
I put a skirt on because it really shows motion,
and I believe that it's closer now to the way I want it to be
to explain what I saw that day in my studio.
I like to work with a lot of mediums;
ink and watercolor are fantastic,
I love that, it's so free,
and I love the fluidity of it and the transparency,
the fact that you can't erase it,
you have to kinda go with the flow on it.
What I can do with the fluidity of the ink or the watercolor
or the paint on that paper, to me it's also reminiscent
of the dance as well; it's very fluid.
I think that a good painting
is more understood later than earlier.
There's an impact up front, but I'm asking the viewer
to really give it some time and look at it,
so that they can kind of unravel the mystery.
Paintings live and die a thousand lives.
They die, and they're resurrected
and they die and they're resurrected.
It's kind of a painful process, and I think I have to be
fearless in the way I approach it, because if I'm not willing
to kill it it won't be resurrected to a better piece.
a flute plays softly
(Fawzia Khan) I created The Other,
which was the black boxes that you look into.
You see this bronze face of another person,
but with your eyes in their face,
so the viewer is meant to put themselves
in the place of that person.
Each face was from a different race,
a different gender, a different age group,
all things that we might discriminate against,
and yet on the outside, they're all the same.
When I was working as a physician,
I saw a lot of people
from different socioeconomic backgrounds,
different races, different religions.
I think when you see people inside and out,
you realize that most people are the same.
And I think that the same feelings in me that led me
to medicine in the first place, a desire to help other people
and to make their lives better
or make the world a better place,
are the same things that drive me in my art.
I had never thought of myself as being particularly artistic,
and went to medical school.
After that, I start a residency in obstetrics and gynecology,
which is where I met my husband.
I practiced for 3 years,
and then my son was born.
After my son was born, my, my whole world view shifted.
I had been a very goal-directed person up to that point,
was sure that once he was born, I was going to go back
to working full time, and that wasn't the case.
And so, I decided at that point to quit practicing.
I finished at the University of Minnesota
with a BFA in sculpture.
The minute I took sculpture, something clicked,
and I thought oh, I can do this!
This is fun, and I understand it,
I understand the way things are structured.
And I think that that relates back to being a surgeon,
because you know, OB-GYNs perform surgery, and having
the kind of mind that can sort of see in 3 dimensions.
If you know the anatomy underneath,
that really helps to create the illusion of reality.
I've done woodworking, stone carving,
metalwork, forging,
welding, casting.
I love working in wood because
I love the texture of wood
and I love the appearance of wood
and the natural feeling of wood.
But I love hot metal!
I love watching it go from just
glowing red-hot, yellow liquid into a solid form
that takes whatever shape you want to give it.
The theme I've been working with lately
is the existence of plastic in the world
and how much of it there is, and how it is affecting us,
and in particular, affecting the oceans.
There's large garbage patches of plastic in the ocean
and fish and the turtles and other sea animals
eat the plastic and starve to death basically,
because they think they've eaten food.
Also, the plastic leaches chemicals into the fish
then we eat the fish, so we're absorbing those chemicals.
I mean, as a physician and as a person, that concerns me.
So I have been knitting fish forms out of plastic bags
and crocheting jellyfish out of plastic bags.
You know, plastic is a wonderful substance.
We invented it, but I don't think that we use it wisely,
and I think that we could say that
for a lot of things that we do as a society.
I would say that I use the medium
that's appropriate to the message, and that
my work has a social justice message to it a lot of times.
I want to feel like I've moved people,
that I've made a difference, because I have to make things.
I can't stop, all my life I have made things
and I can't stop making things.
drums & percussion play in bright rhythm
Even if we're told by the flightless birds
The firmament is crumbling
They couldn't eat their poisoned words
We're not listening
Oo-oo oo-oo
Oo-oo oo-oo oo-oo oo-oo
Driving by the scene of the accident
Your fingers tight your body bent
We don't ask Who gets it next?
Nothing's certain
Even if my eyes can't see the light
Even if we don't know who is right
If it's Babylon
I think we'll still get on
History belongs
To the lions and the swans
Oo-oo oo-oo
Oo-oo oo-oo oo-oo oo-oo
Oo-oo oo-oo
Oo-oo oo-oo oo-oo oo-oo
Even if the bite proves fatal dear
I'll sing until the gods appear
I won't know that you are near
'Til the surface
Even if my eyes can't see the light
Even if we don't know who is right
Even if we cross the great divide
Even if the silence gets inside
If it's Babylon
I think we'll still get on
History belongs
To the lions and the swans
If it's Babylon
I think we'll still get on
When the curtain's drawn
It's the lions and the swans
Oo oo-oo
Oo oo-oo
Oo oo-oo
Ooo
I'm Jon Reine and I play in a band called Greycoats.
Also playing Greycoats is Mike Smith, plays drums,
Matt Patrick on bass, and Titus Decker on keyboards and guitar.
In January 2013 we released our second album
called, World of Tomorrow.
I'd say literature, history, mythology all go into our songs.
I love stories; I think history is fascinating.
The Lions and the Swans for me is about the courageous
and the beautiful, lions and swans, and I think
when we look at situations from a historical point of view,
people have been through a lot worse with a lot less
and they get out okay, so I figure if they can do it,
you know, so can I.
I'm horrible at lyrics and remembering words to songs,
my favorite songs, yet it's some of the most important parts
to me when I write a song, so yeah, stories are the world.
CC--Armour Captioning & TPT
(man) Minnesota Original is made possible by
The State Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund,
and the citizens of Minnesota.
orchestral fanfare