¡Colores!; 1916; Architect Antoine Predock, Photographer Michael Eastman, Pratt Institute's Design Incubator, Painter Ning Hou

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 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 sumup 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 It's the first National museum out of Ottawa. It's the Canadian Museum of Human rights. So It's very, very 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 piecesthat 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. 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 andit was paralleling architecture. So the idea 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 country or internationally, the question arises well how do you tune into these different places and how do you empathize and do the things thatI'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 culturaldiversity, this is the laboratory for an architect, for anybody. 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 diminishinglike 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'skind of the big idea, but working from within so the mountain time with programmatic, investigation into what

they were presenting there, and storing there. 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 isthere 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 blastingmachine and blasted one side of it off. Well that's the desert sand doing it. I really had to thinkabout the wind direction for my project and how I would defend against it. 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 supposedto 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 apoem 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 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 alwaystoo 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 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 offof 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 thefirst 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 acriticism, 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 aremany 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 therefor me and the light hits it and boom that's it. Because I think it's everywhere. I think what I dois 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 PRATT INSTITUTE IN BROOKLYN IS HELPING DESIGN STUDENTS MAKE A MEANINGFUL IMPACT THROUGHOUT THE WORLDWITH ITS DESIGN INCUBATOR. STUDENTS ARE TAUGHT TO CREATE SUSTAINABLE PRODUCTS AND SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE COMPANIES.

>>DEBERA JOHNSON: 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 >>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 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 energyand producing electricity while looking like ivy on the side of a building. >>ASHLEY THORFINNSON: 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. 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 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 GOLDENLIGHT. >>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 at that time was pretty much political. Coming to theUnited 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 ladytold 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 - 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 theywere still alive they would have loved to come here to be a resident. To me it's a natural open studio. 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 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 >>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, youdon'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 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 paintingsI 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. This is a better canvas, so whatever you do is opposite. 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 identifywhat 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 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 WHATTHE 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