Segments (10) - [R11, DUB]; State of the Arts

Year 1882 that a German immigrant and craftsman named Charles Zimmermann fashion this instrument and about 40 years later autoharp began rolling off the assembly line. International. Here at this factory in Union New Jersey they turn out about 40 auto shops every day. It's not that they're so hard to make. But times are tough all around. And even though the autoharp is pretty obscure Not so long ago the people at Schmit could make 300 a day and sell them all. Now the instruments design hasn't changed much over the years but its makeup has been a Lumba better quality control. Looks. You know better finishes. And it sounds a lot better than it would have better control over the type of lumber we consumed. Tom colonies is the plant manager and he supervises the crafting of the autoharp from start to finish.

This is where the instrument is carefully framed into shape. After the grooves with the chord bars cut. The rough instrument is sanded to perfection. From there. It's onto the paint shop where a splash of colour is applied. When the house was completely dry a drill will punch 72 holes in a matter of seconds. These holes will How's the instruments pins. From there. A device like a sewing machine strings the instrument and once tension is applied to the strings. The autoharp is ready to adjust. If they come off the line. This Spacek. And Mike wanted it every ten. Maybe we would take. Two in and check it. Each step as they were being assembled. Each person is trained to look for something. Flaws or rejects in any way and we would be pulling them out that way. On the known models or the real expensive models they would be hand tools before it is shipped out tested

checked. Also given to professionals. If we have a new model professional would keep it for a year. Play you take it on the road with him and he would give his comments on. If it's going to be a good. Or what is wrong with. Him a hundred years since it's worth the autoharp is roaming you from a simple strumming on the back porch kind of instrument. To sharing the spotlight on stage with big name bluegrass bands and Country and Western bands. Now the autoharp even being used in a classroom. With tiny infants is used with autistic kids. You know the terrible problem with autistic kids and their lack of being able to communicate and with speech damaged with orthopedic. Or with adults who are orthopedic handicapped in the sense that they were guitar players the banjo players and they had an industrial accident or an accident as a result of a war or something like that so they can press. One chord. And they can strum with their hand the thumb their knuckles

whatever. So in this way this instrument can be something that is as is easily attained. Meg Peterson whose husband is a descendant of Oskar Schmidt believes that anyone can learn to play the odds. She should know she's an instructor autoharp a Ranger and an accomplished autoharp strumming. You can have. A lot of what it like. I can spend two or three hours practicing. Company themselves simply and sing. So that anybody can do that they can play a chord and stroke it. But then if you want to play in style strum patterns you can do melody. And once. You. Do. Do.

Do do. Do. Entertaining is natural to every body

to every time you've seen children carrying on an active playing line and they all stop at the same time you did the same thing. The cameraman did the same thing you out there watching you all did the same thing. You played the games when you were when you were children. Good guys bad guys then you tried to fight over the roles we play at this time you got to watch Star and then you all stop at the same time. What is that. When Mom came out at the age of awareness when you used to realize that someone else might be watching. And then you get into a cocoon and all of this creative incentive that you had as a child stops. If Mickey Rooney we're all talk and no action. His personal philosophy of creativity. Would we get polite attention and not a whole lot more. But when the top child star from The Golden Age of Hollywood rents a store front of the ANP shopping center along

Route 1 in Woodbridge New Jersey says he means to shape the next generation of young performers. How that's putting your money where your mouth is. From what I read this school idea goes way back to 1964. Even before that. It's been a dream of mine. I would say since I worked with Judy when I was just 19 or 20 we'd often talk about the fact that maybe someday there could be. A performing arts center and I must tell you that it's not a school. Connotes that people are going to go you're going to learn.

Specifically which. They don't want to do and not schools school. This is a creative arts. And for people who wanted to win an. Individual. That is the most important thing I think in all of life outside of loving God. And of course your country itself and your family and this and that. I think the development of your individuality. Most people cannot accept their individualities. How does the training you're going to provide a town town compare with what you had at MGM. Well we didn't have any training at MGM. Not. Nothing. There's this vision that child stars in the studio system had special training in fencing and dancing and singing class. That's a dream. That's that's that's a movie I am a magazine dream. Mickey Rooney says that the child stars of his day like Judy Garland and Jackie Cooper and.

Freddie Bartholomew and Jane Withers they all learned their craft by doing it. Naturally we would go in and we'd work out the beauty in our There's a lot of to go to America. So from Rooney an important aspect of town town is hiring only working professionals to teach Tom Stamm looks pretty much like the teacher at any corner dancing school in his class with young boys. When we caught him alone planning a new routine for his advanced students it's easy to see the training of his as a man who's hands on Broadway in Hollywood and on primetime TV specials Mickey Rooney himself is not part of the teaching staff but that doesn't seem to bother the parents we spoke to his credentials are enough. Well he can identify with Mickey Rooney and seen him on TV and you know. Like. No one knows it's not a matter of dance recitals at the end of the year and trying to get the money out of you to have little costumes and all that this is regular straight dancing.

We don't promise anyone to start a Talum down. It's a bunch of. Bosh. That's junk. Nobody could do that but we can promise to develop and to give them inside to do outreach and make no mistake we are going to find out what tremendous stars and celebrities. What do we do with the Stars we them put them in an agency we're going to. Produce our own motion pictures hopefully in the future. OK Scott we'll have our own network here and it just isn't singing dancing ballet. But it's Shakespeare. It's a. This isn't anything with my name. This is my dream. This is where I'm going. This is where I I want to leave as a legacy. I like to look at things like this and. They give me ideas about

images here are layers with something breaking through and something hidden inside. And a lot of my work is about something hidden inside information. That's what I think is out here. Most artists take their inspiration from their surroundings. Chris Craig takes her supplies from the natural world around her too. She works primarily in paper paper she makes out of dead plants from the woods behind her house in Hopewell and from that woods come the materials and the ideas for the mysterious boxes she calls shrines. Is. Like the information. You know what's in there. And you know it is I'm not going to open it up or anything I don't want to but something is going on in there because it's a beautiful form when you know somebody is alive and you're going to know. I don't really know. But I like the idea that it's a secret there. And I also like the way the form

emerges out of the line. And these are the kinds of images that have some kind of impact I think when I'm making the work. I'm. Out every day. It's important for me to be out every day. And. In fact. I didn't know that until I moved to New Jersey. And somehow I discovered that about myself as an adult. I don't. Want to touch what's out there and I don't smell it. Walk around in it. All the elements you would want you would want to make yourself they're out there so you don't need to mix them. You just simply need to discover them and then find out where they're going to sit. This year. I started. Out. A little gold and silver metallic colors.

And. That may seem contrary to natural but. It's not this gold and some days the sun hits the reeds in just a way that they're like golden rods standing up and. So that putting. That into the work I think is OK. And what about special things. These boxes are. About. Things inside not in memories inside. Even though her ideas may be hard to grasp Chris's way of working is incredibly simple. She makes the paper by saturating just bark and grasses and vines. She tries never to kill anything. She uses an ordinary blender to break it down. Then she makes DECA led sheets in an old vac behind the house. When it's dry she so is it just an ordinary needle and thread working in other natural things like fleas and pods for texture. Other paper artists like to mould the pulp into sculpture. But for

Chris it's important for the paper to be flat. This may have something to do with the fact that I. Studied in a traditional way painting and drawing and it was that watercolor paper around it was so beautiful floaty that there's something about this sheet that just intrigues me and I do you know it becomes dimensional relatively easily. I could never have made this work at 20. There's no doubt in my mind about that. How are you different. Now that you're not 20 these images. Well I don't know as much. No. I certainly knew a lot everything. And. I would like someone to like them but that's not why I'm looking them. These are this good or are seeing it. As a way

of expressing ideas of dealing with. The world around them and wanting to. To. Effect. It. Wanting to change the world. Jeff Hendricks has been a force in the life of every artist in this show. That's not to imply he takes all the credit for the tremendous energy and vision you see here. But for 20 years he's been teaching art in the graduate school at Rutgers University in New Brunswick specifically the Master of Fine Arts Program at the Mason Grove School of Art. And the idea that art is something more than a beautiful canvas something more important than interior decorating is a priority. He helped establish 20 years ago a standard he helps perpetuate today. People have very quaint ideas about how an artist gets. Was techniques develop how his ideas develop. Graduate school fit into that mix. Will leave your MFA program today has become increasingly important for creating a new artist. I think artists feel the need for being in touch with

a wide range of ideas within a university with an MFA program. It's possible to. Have contact with computers with an apology or a history of various aspects of cultural political thought. And you find that on. The art programs in universities around the country have been growing in strength over the past 20 years. The length of our graduate program are in a certain way. What's happening in art now is what was happening in sciences 50 to 100 years ago where originally the university excluded the scientists. No it's very much an integral part of the program. What does Mason growth school look for in a grad student in a grad student I would say that we look for on. The potential of the person to do something really very interesting. We don't look for someone who comes to us with. A polished portfolio. There

there though there are people who are excepted who've already heard some major shows. On. But. Since the faculty that this person will go ahead and take some risks challenge certain ideas in contemporary art and go ahead and do some original thinking. Most of the graduates in this exhibition are known and shown by New York galleries body recognition factor counts that this work by George Segal class of 63 is the star of the show. It's called the hustle the forehand that's his plaster people sleep walking forever in a funhouse disco. There's nothing similar around it. Yep that's the thing that ties all these works together. A sense of adventure about materials about techniques about messages. Now that sounds a lot like the revolutionary 60s and looks a little like it too. It's no accident. The faculty that started this program included Alan Capra coined the word the happening.

Bob Watts who created this pop art sandwich and the man who elevated comic books to high culture. Roy Lichtenstein so no wonder so many artists and the record show use words in their work. Sometimes the most direct way of. Getting something communicated you know they say a picture is worth a thousand words but sometimes one word can go ahead and put a particular kind of focus on a picture. As a longtime faculty member how do you feel when you look at this show because you feel good. It's great to see all. The work of a lot of people that I've known. Over the past 20 years or whose work I've seen seen develop. You say you don't speak of the longtime fuddling but I don't feel that old or heavy even having been there that long because it's it's a program that as I've said is thinking about new ideas. It's always in this process it really will.

And so one's own attitude about art is there and that kind of a to. Even though very few people have seen her in person well it's one of the great master pieces of art and it's wonderful to be able to see you in

Montclair almost anybody on the street can describe her. She has long dark hair and something about her eyes and that dark dress but most have no idea who she was. It sort of has that quality of mystery about it. I think sort of trying to figure out the expression her name was Liza Del Gioconda. She lived in the 3300. Very sad looking woman. Probably a sad looking burgeon woman that. She was the wife of a Florentine nobleman. This portrait was commissioned by her husband and painted by Leonardo da Vinci. It's a rather softly viewed picture. Where the sharply detailed landscape and the background for whether Leonardo painted this particular portrait of Liza Del Gioconda is a mystery. A mystery of particular interest to the people of New Jersey. I mean we knew what it was but we wanted to be sure that other people. Were satisfied. Suzanne Vernon Swick is a Montclair woman and she claims that this painting of the Mona Lisa that's been in her family for 200 years is the genuine article. It

was given by Marie Antoinette to William Henry Vernon at the time of the French Revolution. It's only been on public display once 1964 in Los Angeles. Otherwise locked up tight. And last year a book came out that brought new attention to the Vernon painting by this man Seymour. Right now I did come to the conclusion that here in America we have an early version of the Mona Lisa by Leonardo not by a capias cites a scholar but he's not an art historian. Yet in this case he's been a detective following the trail of this haunting image from Leonardo's studio to the luvin Paris and parts beyond his book details the theft of the authenticated version of the Mona Lisa from the walls of the Louvre in 1911 a poor Italian carpenter named Vincent Rouge who was blamed for the heist. Actually he was just a low paid accomplice to what was really a forgery scheme. The plan. Lifted the Mona Lisa from the Lou Rawls make a bunch of excellent forgeries and some two unscrupulous rich people around the world who all think they got the real one. Three years later the real Monir

was returned to Paris. In fact Marusia had had it in the false bottom of a trunk in a cheap rooming house just blocks away from the loof But since that time all other versions of the Mona Lisa have come into question. I've seen all I would say eight or 10. Different versions of the Mona Lisa are some quite good some rather mediocre. And all of them claiming to be genuine right dismiss them one by one. This Isleworth Mona Lisa has impressive scientific data to validate its age and so does the painting owned by the Vernons but it had other details that convinced Wright that he was on to something. For one the Vernons Mona Lisa is younger than the lose. I did polls of people over there. No one gets done. 33 35 38. The Vernon Mona Lisa fits the descriptions by Vasari and other writers of a young woman in the bloom of news. Early 20:23 I believe pink she rosy of lip it

just fed it for two columns that are still in the Vernon painting were cut out of the loop version just after Leonardo died. And certainly no modern copyist would add more. But. Then how do we know it wasn't done by one of Leonardo's students. The Vernon Mona Lisa is painted by a Left-Handed artist. What most people do not know is that Leonardo was left handed. He is to the best of the available documentation was the only left handed artist working in his. Now if if the painting was done before his death of a woman exactly that age by an artist who was lefthanded and he was the only Left-Handed artist and that painting was then given to an American by the French queen Marie Antoinette who said to him here is a painting by Leonardo da Vinci. I think we have a pretty good case that this is a painting by Leonardo. But then why the older version in the loof by snooping around site discovered clues that

Mona had a lover who was also a patron of Leonardos. It could have been done for him. Then when he married to get rid of this embarrassment he gave it to the French king and kept it in his private quarters. Leonardo didn't sign either painting so the authenticity issue may never be settled but the evidence on the Vernon side is certainly strong enough to prompt enormous excitement at the Montclair art museum. How do you feel singing on a wall in a museum knowing it's not locked up tight in a bank vault right now I feel wonderful. I want everybody to see it. We all do in the family. We sing and she speaks for herself. And my people who can share this. The more we like. What you do

you're. Watching Jose Ferreyra direct is a little like watching a computer screen while it searches its memory for a tiny piece of information. He seems to go blank for a moment then suddenly out of all those brain cells storing all those years of theatre experience the right solution almost prints itself all over his whole face and body. So there you go. No. I mean. I just want to believe I just want to believe that what they're doing whether it's King Lear or whether it's a burlesque. I believe. Now the play in question is a lot closer to burlesque when it is to Shakespeare. But you do get the feeling the Ferreyra would approach him exactly the same way. The plays call off-Broadway a romantic comedy written by from his old friend and golf buddy Norman Krasner its world premiere is co-incidentally way off-Broadway

at Montclair soul theater company house with a great reputation for incubating young plays bound for bigger things. We get what amounts to a new york audience here in the stands and these people and we can have the luxury of making mistakes and correcting them and trying to improve them without having the New York Times say. God says you know. The theme of this play is a couple of young actors starting their career in Manhattan. What kinds of memories is that re-awaken to your own beginnings of your career. It doesn't the waking memories so much as working with young people as a waking memory. And I tell a lot of stories of of the directors from whom. I learned my craft mainly by getting beat over the head with the nearest chair. And being told blunt truths. And I have the good fortune to work with for a very very great men when I was young. And I tried to pass on some of the things I've learned and some of the things I still haven't

saw or discuss with them and sometimes they help me solve them. Never stop learning. The day we were eavesdropping on this process was the last rehearsal before the first preview performance and that meant detail work polishing and for wear that was Chenda with this cast is specific and niggling. Now wait wait wait wait wait. July 7th 1930 when it is. Gone and I just heard. The cover by the to say. And this scene with the heroine's dad is a good example of how precise the shadings have to be to satisfy Ferreyra and his author that's speculating with his wife back home whether their daughter has shall we say enjoy the pleasures of the flesh before marriage or anything like that. What did your parents know about you. You say you actually said hello.

Now watch the changes. They're tiny. Ferreyra knows exactly what he wants you to do. You may say you can't go wrong. Parents know about us. They want you don't really see us as having no other moments because you are an acting director that you wish you were on the stage. Never if I never act again it will be just fine with me. I mean even when I was young I was never really consumed with overweening ambition to be the center of attention on the stage. I enjoyed acting and I've been very very fortunate and blessed and good parts but I enjoyed writing infinitely more and I really don't have to be. The center of attention the fact that I'm well-known is a good thing for me and the respect that I can get on a plane. I get a good room in a

hotel and I can get a good table in the restaurant. Creature comforts the fact that I'm well known. Give me the rest. I value my anonymity and glad that when I walk down the street I'm not Robert De or Dustin Hoffman I don't know how those people. Exist in life. Most people don't know what I look like don't recognize me and that's just wonderful. Doing this play at this point in your career is it a challenge or is it. Oh God it's always a challenge. You know you're always measuring yourself against the best and then you're always saying to the audience well you paid your money and we made you happy and that's a terrible challenge. What's the appeal to you of the classic repertory.

Well I don't really look at is what most people call the classic repertory I'm looking for plays at a time was universal and have a great. Great deal to tell the modern audience and create a perspective of where modern man finds himself. Christopher Martin once you're night at the theater to be more than just entertaining. Not that he skims the math department. He's getting rave reviews for his current production of Johno Keith's 18th century farce. Wild oats at the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival. The pace is lively the language almost musical in its effect. The business is broad without being Hami all appropriate to a play about traveling actors. Pompous Quaker's mistaken identities. One good combo. That's one thing I don't think. You. Know but Martin has intentionally superimposed a colorless quality on the look of the show. The cloud over the action is poverty and it's his

way of trying to make it a 20th century audiences see the play through the nineteenth century eyes. This play was first produced in London and in this country there was a great deal of social injustice. Now O'Keefe was very concerned with this. And being an Irishman and he tends to put all of his plays particularly in this one. The difficulty of what it's like to live as a normal human being not as the people who can afford to go to the theatre. So the audience coming to see this play at Covent Garden which is where it played it. And if you've been to London you'll know that the Covent Garden opera house stands in the middle of the vegetable district. The first scene of my fair lady or Pygmalion is no joke. They actually used to have just a few years ago stuck all the letters and moved around the beats and the cabbage right in front of the opera house so that one one went to see this play it originally. He stepped through all of the difficulties of the lower class life in order to go to the theater to be entertained. Well our audience just kind of lost that. So what we've done with this production like lot. It. Is to create a social context in which to play it. So we've set the play in a kind of mill.

Where there are some 15 or 18 workers during the entire course of the play including child labor who get involved with the play but are also always on the fringes of it. So the audience has a constant reminder that the social context it would have existed in Covent Garden outside the theater is here in this theater or during the play. You were an actor yourself. Does that influence your directing style. Yeah because I don't ask actors to do anything that I couldn't or wouldn't do myself. I can't walk on my hands although I might ask an actor to do that but it is something that some actors can do. It's hard for me to carry to of anything very difficult. But some actors can do what I might ask them to do that. But basically to move fast to speak faster think fast jump all over the set to run around the theater. I do all by myself so I expect them to do it too. For the actors Gary Sloane and Tom specked when this play is almost a triple take on their lives they've spent the summer living and working under the same rules. Twelfth Night. One performance Timon of Athens the next. Now the stars of wild oats. It's enough to make an ordinary

man schizo frantic. Yet in this new play they were asked to portray actors old friends who use the tricks of their trade like impersonations and lapses into character to make trouble and then get out of it again. The news of my intended please watch. He doesn't always get his way so I'll carry it on. What you two. Going we just figured we all were stage close. Tell us what you mean when you're chatting. No Squire Harry one of the guests being here for me has been working with Tom and then to have part swear in this play where the two actors are working in cahoots with each other helping one another out. Sad to see one another leave enjoying one another's company. Well it's just the same thing on stage off stage. It's worked out real well that also makes it very real in the scenes. It's a real luxury to have a day free clocking at

seven o'clock and be down at 11 or 12. But there's a schizophrenia I think because this will be gone this will be over and we'll be out of work. Possibly last winter I didn't work at all. Just looked for work in the offices of having that experience of coming here and having them being full of three plays doing all summer long for four or five months. That's one thing that's hard to try to put into your lifestyle. One of the wonderful thing here is that we both feel it's an inspiring company and it's a fine company of actors and we respect everyone's work and as people and as actors so it's just been a real joy of being here this summer. I love this village and I've been involved in a. Great deal for seven years and I've known

about it for eight or nine. And I love to see it just filled with music. And. To. Every building. Every special place that exists for me. I mean Beethoven Mendelssohn Schumann Schubert being performed in most special places. This is Gerard Schwartz day to sit back relax and savor the fruits of another summer's work at Waterloo village. This is the seventh season of The Music Festival he directs here the festival he helped establish. The event is the annual chamber music picnic. The players all talented young musicians just beginning to establish their careers. They're wrapping up a five week fellowship with the music school that's attached to the festival. True they have spent a lot of time in class but they're not just students here. With their teachers as the principal players. These are the actual members of this summer's Festival Orchestra. And that means learning to play music. GEORGE SCHWARTZ way. In when he conducts. He simply asked for. Perfection.

I believe. Very strongly in a literal approach lead and do what most. Of us don't take liberties when it's called for stylistically. But the principle of the composer says it's a Rondo. I like it which I want of he says forth that I like to play for them. There are those conductors who tamper with that kind of thing as well which I don't I'm more literal. And. I'm very meticulous about pitch and about rhythm. At the same time and textures. I like that have clean. I like to have music that's on the page for as much as possible. I believe in. Playing the right notes. I mean I worked very hard to make sure that the notes are correcting the parts. On the other hand I strive for a great deal of warmth and the individual sounds of the instruments or the string tone of the individual players that we have in the winds and hopefully a very expressive way of playing within the realm of being very clear and being very correct. So it's it's ideal. I mean if you if you look at the situation you say well what's ideal is that if it's clear you can hear it all it's in tune. It's beautifully etched at the same time it's warm

and expressive. So you know if I attain that ideal that's wonderful but that is what I'm striving for. At Waterloo the Chamber Ensemble is the building block toward that ideal and all the students have been playing and chamber ensembles throughout the five week fellowship. The kind of. Ensemble playing is necessarily kind of playing together. That's not to say a string quartet for example is. Amplification of what's necessary in an orchestra. It's even more more and more careful. Same thing with intonation. Same thing with interpretive concepts. So it's it's a very important. Way for every student to grow. In terms of intonation in terms of interpretation in terms of ensemble playing and if they all play string quartets and brass quintets and woodwind chamber music they'll be better orchestra players in the end as well. Donna Robins is certainly past the students stage.

She's been a cellist with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra for a couple of seasons. Yet she's made the time for a third summer here at Waterloo. To be back in the student atmosphere. It's. Just a humbling experience and. When you're working with. Very fine coaches and you see what kind of standards they're looking for. It raises your expectations of yourself. And. Viola player Ken Johnson is from West Orange This is his fourth season. Waterloo. So he's seen a lot of changes in the program. Something he considers a definite improvement. Is now the Chamber Players are matched up. This year the faculty worked out the ensembles before the students arrived and then assigned them. That means in theory at least they ought to be compatible.

Well any ensemble you just find a lot that's all. And of course there's often there's one person in the group who would kind of take command. And. Really leave that group in the direction and can help get the work done. We've been lucky in our group and. We've accomplished a lot in the weeks that we've been together. How does this place influence you when you're away from it. I think about it a lot. I keep wondering if I would come back the next year. How can a musician who's just establishing his career afford to take five weeks coming into the music school. Well I can because I live in New Jersey most my works here anyway. And so I often don't have to turn too much down. We've been allowed to grow in quality. Where. We. Put the music first. And. And. It's become. One of the most important things in my life. And I think we do things of musical significance here. For the community. For ourselves. For our students.

I mean. There are many more dreams yet to come but I can't say that I'm anything but extremely pleased with how it's gone. Take some sea and sky combine them with paints palettes and potters wheels.

And you've got the idea of being on the long beach island foundation of the Arts and Sciences. 1982 is there thirty fifth year of operation here in the quiet town of Lovelady's. In spirit. It's not so different from many other local arts centers throughout the state. There's a good faculty. Like Martin Levitt a sculptor who teaches in Princeton. Bruce Wiener a production Potter from the clay studio in Philadelphia. There are good facilities too with 20 wheels and three kills going full blast every day it's got to be one of the most active potting studios in the state for two months anyway. And that's what makes this place a little different. All of this talent and resources are focused around an eight week season in July and August then it shuts down. So if you're wondering as I did why go to all this trouble for two months. Their founder Dr. Barra's Bly has the answer. This is the man who established the tiler school of art in Philadelphia. He's a sculptor of international fame. In fact their distinctive warm memorial outside the

foundation is his work. He's in his 90s now. He first came to Long Beach Island back in 1927. So we went to his home along vine to get base for some memories. Dr. blight what was long beach island like before you started the art center as a place for artists to come. It was no place for a lot of for everybody else to come. She was a very nice provincial little pleas for people to come and get drunk to get drunk. Here was some rooms and then all of a sudden these change the change in go toward cultural center. Cultural Center means everybody will you press the Atlantic City or any other place they had to go through that. That's what Lovelady's whether they like to admit it or not is the result pretty much of what we're doing here. All those houses on the lagoons. I would say at least half of those people are members of the foundation. Have certainly come into the

foundation and those who come down here with kids really got a place to bring the kids. So the kids won't be spending all day on the beach but they'll be learning pottery ceramics painting as well as the adults. And then they spend the afternoons on the beach and the evening they come back here for concerts and lectures and films. So it's not going to be that. MARTIN zippin is the artist whose work was on display during our visit to the foundation in the winter. He teaches at Harlem college in Bryn Mawr in the summer. He lives in Vonnegut and teaches the weekly painting workshop at the foundation. If you take more water and let's. Use the site we get. This. Use this site. Everybody comes on their own level of skill and background. Now some of the people I've had working with me for 15 or 18 years. Others like today there was one person came in today for the first time ever somebody who said quote I can't draw. I've heard this before. And I've got to convince them that while they can't draw which they cannot. They can learn. And they say Oh. And they all were so that we got classes that

start with. People with absolutely no background. I mean I have other people in my class who have shown paintings for years sold for years and exhibited for years. What about the student who really has no talent at all. But isn't there an enjoying them sounds like fun as far as I'm concerned. Painting is the greatest therapy in the world. It really is. It's marvelous therapy because for a few hours you forget all your troubles your kids your your bills or nothing. And even the sunburn on your back. So it's great. And if they can't paint we try to. Get them at least to enjoy putting paint on canvas and making something that makes themselves feel. Comfortable. After a lot of years of painting What's the value to you of an exhibition in this space. It's a great spot for it because there are many people familiar over the over a week or as many as I do this to a thousand I guess plus in the evenings there have all sorts of events so even people who might not be coming to see an art exhibit whether they like it or not. And they come to hear a lecture or a concert. They have to look on the walls there's

nothing else to look at. So after a while whether you like it or not you you may have gotten too. Close to somebody who hadn't intended to be. Interested in art. And that's a tradition has been you know I've been here for 35 years and we have pupils here whose fathers and mothers were here and it's just one of the cities. It's very hard to define. But it has a very special feeling. You have to expect to hear old time songs in the air when you drive through Cape May. Sure there are

plenty of modern intrusions. Cars utility poles everywhere. But these Victorian homes have so much presence. With their intricacy their sheer size alone they just seem to defy anybody to even try and look away. This small city at the very bottom of New Jersey commands attention all the way to Washington. They've decided that all of Cape May should be on the National Registry of Historic Places. There are a lot of. Implications to being declared a national historic landmark. Some are good and some are bad. We start off with the concept that a man's home is his castle and if I want to put in glass brick there is no reason I can't put in glass which you can't do that there are restrictions imposed on you in return for the honor. On the other hand on the good side is that we can preserve something from the past. The National Trust for Historic Preservation is very fond of saying we cannot know where we are if we do not know where we have been. Grossman has to be one of Kate May's best spokesman. Even though he works in New York as a

director on a soap opera in Texas he lives year round. Way down here in Cape May. He's a former mayor of the town. And for 10 years he was president of the mid-Atlantic Art Center which is headquartered here on the Emelin physical stage. Now without a doubt this is the most unusual piece of Victorian architecture he'd made. In fact it's the most historically important. It was built by the architect Frank Furness way back in 1881. He was a very avant garde architect at the time. When you look at this house it doesn't look like the thing you think of as a Victorian house with gingerbread and all but it's a heavy squat. It's tied to the earth. So his concepts and architecture have become important to this is he. He did an awful lot of municipal architecture broad street station in Philadelphia. The Museum of Fine Arts are his work. He did a quite a bit of residential work but this is one of the only two remaining examples of his residential work. It's essentially unaltered from the

day it was built. The whole concept of the middle like center really started to save this property it was a combination of that. We wanted to save this property which had been abandoned for 10 years and was to be demolished within a month. When we started meeting. And we did everything to throw our bodies in front of the bulldozer. The other thing was when we began to stay here all winter we discovered that the area needed cultural Enric the quality of our life could be improved by having somebody here and we were very fortunate in having. One the need and to the perfect location to build on. Well it's taken 11 years of fundraising of slowly building community support. But this summer the mid-Atlantic Arts Center finally established itself as a performing arts center to this brand new outdoor stage has been the focal point in the last two weeks they've hosted chamber music the Princeton ballet Victorian follies and the Opera Theater of New Jersey. They came all the way from New Brunswick to sing not opera but folk music sea

shanties and original songs by a children's writer from Englishtown Jenny Michaels. They here to the. Opera Theater in New Jersey one of the reasons five years ago we chose part of the name was theater. It was to give us a more expanded outlook on other kinds of music that we do certainly do concentrate most heavily on opera and our entire educational program in the schools is geared towards making a whole new audience understand offer a little bit better. But this type of thing and Broadway and whatnot we love this music it's fantastic it's it's letting our hair down. Literally you know it it's just just just tremendous and we want to expand our horizons as much as possible.

You could look at it as a cultural bait and switch scheme promising country songs and then making sure you've got trained operatic voices to sing them. But if that's what it takes to get the public used to coming to the mid-Atlantic center for performances it's working and that makes Wayne Cooper awfully happy. He's the man who coordinated this first festival really for the Arts and the performing areas are not all well touted and I think this is something that we have to do this is our outreach to the community and everybody seems to enjoy it. They don't enjoy the mosquitoes but they enjoy everything. Else. And

everything about the state and Arts Festival is a lot like this jam sessions ordinary looking at first but in fact it's way out of the ordinary. Well take the combination of people here. Senior High girls from rural South Jersey Junior High boys from urban North Jersey and professional jazz musicians looked so much like kids themselves. You can hardly tell the players without a scorecard. Then there's the quality of the music they're making the big guys are definitely not the only talents in the room. And now consider the fact that all of these people met each other for the first time. Get this only 15 minutes before it's true. That's the kind of chemistry that fuels every aspect of his day. Arts Festival on the Douglas College campus every June some jazz workshops to street mime. It's spontaneous combustion. Well the festival is about kids performing and attending workshops from all over the

state in order to share their experiences with each other. It's really the only access that these kids have to do such a thing. Basically they're restricted to performing in their schools and sometimes in churches and this one opportunity that they get. So that is what they've been doing all year. Dave Edelman is the festival coordinator for 1982. He headed up a team that worked all year long to make these three days absolutely unforgettable. What difference does it make whether a kid from Short Hills ever meets a kid from sharing out tremendous difference these kids generate so much excitement enthusiasm and creativity. It's amazing what you do is walk through the waters gallery and see the exhibit that's hanging in there and you know that you've got the most talented kids in the state submitting their work performing in dance theater music. It's really tremendous. And just look around they have a blast and a loose atmosphere is very important to the festival coordinators. The success of the event depends entirely on whether these kids can leave their inhibitions back in their hometowns for the day and even for creative kids that can be

awfully hard. It's a time in life of constant self-examination. The key to the festival is never letting self-awareness fall into self-consciousness. Workshops are designed so everybody can participate. This one is staging fight scenes but there are workshops in every discipline of the performing visual and literary arts from poetry to conducting all the way to television graphics. The reason I don't like what you do now is you create a story for story as. You just insulted my mother. I'm going to get a motor driving the ground slow slow slow slow up break it up. Good preparation. All right. So I. Got here last if I didn't. Get. Mine. From