Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
The views and opinions expressed in the following programmer those
of the speaker and don't necessarily represent those of the
station it's staff, management or ownership.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
I'm good morning, you'll finding out with Pete and the
Poe Cold.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
I'm Peter Leonard and I'm the poet Gold.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
And we're on the ed this morning with Harry Roseman
and artists, a multimedia artist. And before we get to Harry,
we're going to go right to the Poke Cold for
her weekly poem prayer incantation goal. Please let it.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Roll, Thank you Peter. Today I'm going to do the
dance in accordance with the speed of the wind. Nature
sways interpreting music from its howl. May not be a
traditional dance, moving in different directions without form, appearing wild,
organically beautiful. I gaze until my eyes tear, longing to
feel the breeze against my cheek. I walk into the
(00:47):
river bear. I'm naked, roots of the reeds beneath my feet.
We are separate, but in this dance we are connected.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
One of the few oughts that you don't practice, Harry
is dance.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
But I have danced in history, okay, and I was
even an extra with the Bolshoy This.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Is not true.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
It is true one time, okay, but for the premiere
of the ballet sparticles when they came to New York.
So there you go.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Well, that is world wide ranging in your right than
I expected.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
It was a moment it might be easier to say,
what haven't you done?
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Then you know what?
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Well, we do know that you once to find yourself
primarily as a sculptor.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Yeah, near the earlier part of my showing career, because
I did make and show at that point mostly sculpture.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
And what size sculpture?
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Well, when I got my first commission to do something huge,
I would say anywhere from astray size to person size, okay,
until I made something building size that was later.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Was there any type of main theme for your sculpture?
Did you like to think your points?
Speaker 1 (02:05):
They were depictive and now would look at things and
make sculptures about what they look like. And one of
the big issues was scale, I guess, and materials and
landscapes still lives stuff like that, A lot of relief space.
(02:26):
That was a big ongoing core and that has still
carried through to the stuff I do now, which is
very different but has some things in common, including my
being drawn to relief space.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Relief space.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Relief space would be something that has dimension, but it
could be anywhere from a quarter of an inch to
five feet. And a relief usually has one point of view,
So the artists and thus the viewer are looking at
whatever it is are looking at at from one point
of view, and there's a front and a back, and
(03:04):
the relief can be very deep or very compressed.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Okay, So the physical relief the context of the piece counts.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Yes, but not that doesn't necessarily decide how much relief
space there will be. And that's a different kind of
decision that I would make for various reasons.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
And you know, with you the sculpture, your most famous
sculpture was probably the curtains that you.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Did, probably if I have such a thing as a
famous sculpture, okay, that was that was seen by a
lot of Yeah, and it's still there at the airport, and.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
So it was like t w A when you came
in from from many points.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
It was at the terminal for uh the international air terminals.
So I don't know how many airlines I'm going to
make it up. Let's say eight or ten airlines would
come into that terminal and then those people would pass
by the sculpture.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
And the sculpture was like six hundred feet long. Yeah, right,
there was a series of.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Series of sculptural events that took up six hundred feet.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
And you know sculptural events, they were all curtains.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Right, yeah, yeah, I just meant physical objects because there
was object space object space. But the walls are from
my point of view, considered part of the work.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
So were they haven't seen the piece? So were they
curtain curtains? So were they images of images of curtains
and sculptures of curtains. Yeah, yeah, that's probably more accurate.
And they were kind of relief, meaning they had a
back and a front, and they ranged in size from let's.
Speaker 4 (04:47):
Say five by seven feet to maybe fifteen by twenty
feet because the card was on an incline and so
the wall got bigger and bigger and bigger, and then
I use that space as part of the narrative of
the sculpture.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
So there were two visual perspectives. You can see it
in the front, you can see it in the bad.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
No, you could see it in the front, and you
can see it sideway side when you're walking down the corridor.
You could look ahead and see them at an oblique angle,
or you could turn your head and be right in
front of one or a couple of them.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Now, you mentioned earlier in the conversation that your work
today is somewhat different than what you did that and
how is it different for you?
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Well, for one thing, the last five six years I've
been making I've been doing mainly two things, films which
have been animations and some live action films what one
might call experimental films, which means they might not be
all that entertaining. And then the other thing I've been
(05:55):
doing a lot are photographic installations called local business. So
they are photographic installations in places I do my errands,
like the dry cleaners, like the mechanics, the restaurants I
go to, and they are photographs about the place itself
and then installed within the place.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
Okay, so you're sort of telling a neighborhood business story,
I would say through your work.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
I guess so. And the rationale behind those is that
when someone let's say, the first one I did ever
was at Gladmore Cleaners, and that was twenty fourteen. The
first one of this series, Raymond Avenue and I'm still
doing them. And the idea is because I spent a
(06:45):
certain amount of time doing errands and I've decided for okay,
little by little, I've made everything I do part of
my work. So shopping became part of my work, and
now it's part of my work in various ways. But
as far as the local business installation goes, they're photographs.
So you walk into a space, and it's often a
(07:07):
space that you don't even think about that maybe you're
doing something you think of as boring, like bringing your
clothes in to be dry cleaned, or your car in
to have the oil changed, and and so the idea
of the photographs is to give the viewer, the customer,
(07:35):
a sense of where they are, and then maybe where
they are might be more interesting than they think. So
the photographs are sometimes odd in the sense they may
be the corner of a room where the room is
right there, or as my mechanics said, when I did
my installation at Al's garage, he said, someone came in
(07:59):
and said, how come you have a picture of your
office in your office? So it's a way for people
to take stock and say, oh, wait a minute, what's
around me? Maybe this is interesting. And I also don't
put my name up on them. Oh really, and people
find out, you know, because I'm not like in hiding.
(08:21):
So if someone says who did this, the person's allowed
to tell my name, but I do it. So it
makes the work even less separate from the place than
if it looked like art. So if it had my
name on it, it would say art. But I wanted to
be so intertwined in the place that it just sits there. Yes,
(08:45):
and so I think of it as art, but I
don't need it to be seen that way in the beginning.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
I can appreciate that because I know when I run errands,
you know, I'm often looking up at the walls of
a place, the vironment that I am, and if there's
a painting there or a photograph there, I'm wondering if
it's connected to the location in some way. Yes, you know, yeah,
you could be a good that story, right exactly. I
could see myself now visiting these places just to sort
(09:13):
of put together pieces of the story.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
And afropo of that. The one I'm working on right
now is at my pediatris office, So that office has
all these paintings that one of the doctors I don't
know which one. His mother made these paintings. So amongst
other kinds of photos I'm putting there, one series is
(09:36):
so the paintings are framed, so under each painting I'm
not done with it yet, will be an image of
that painting. So the frame, because they had real frames
on them, but my frame would be photographic, so physically
the same as the surface of the photograph, and inside
(09:58):
the frame would be a detail of the painting right
above it. Oh, that's so cool. So you you sort
of go back and forth and you see something maybe
you didn't see in the painting before.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
It's sort of a very outfit Hitchcock kind of. Yeah, Yeah,
it is definitely if you're just tuning in, you're listening
to finding Out with Pete the poet gold and I'm
the poet Golden. We're here today with Harry Roseman, multimedia
artists living here in the area of the Hudson Valley.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Harry, I want to make two points. Yes, One is
you brushed by the curtains thing that was at the airport,
six hundred feet of things and curtains. That's not what
somebody would normally think of as a way to welcome
the world into America. But I mean you had the
curtains blowing in certain directions. The notion of freedom and
(10:51):
ease in America was embodied in it, but it was
a it's a very unusual thing. And just like your
goals reaction to your business photographs, Yeah, you know where
wolves and the owners are glad more clean as a
couple being reflected in the window and uh and there
(11:11):
these are all unusual my senses, your artwork is more
unusual than you conceive of it, as do you think
of it as well.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
It's kind of funny because when I was in art school,
and I don't know if this is I think it's relevant.
So when I was in art school and I would
get an assignment and I would bring it in always
trying to you know, not being ironic and trying my
best to solve the assignment. Sometimes a teacher would say,
(11:43):
why are you ridiculing this assignment? And it's not what
I'm doing. I'm just trying to find a way in
that's maybe interesting. So I don't know if that maybe
goes over into other decisions I made much later, but
I'm not setting out well. This is hard to say
I'm setting out to do the best work I could do,
(12:05):
but I'm not setting out well, I don't want it
to be ordinary either, but I'm not setting out to
be quirky for its own sake. I'm just maybe it's
just how my ideas work and where my mind brings
me right, more than I'm going to do something that's
really a little bizarre. I never say that to myself.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
That's worth mentioning because it is. You know, some of
the stuff you do is different enough that somebody could
accuse you of that. And I use the word accused
because it would be insincere, in other words, to try to.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Sainfully sincere about my work.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
So you don't go in it's sort of like like
a marketing plan, like not at all, you know.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
And I'm not drawn to irony either in work, in
my own work, because I think iron is easy interesting
in some ways. So so no, it's not I'm not saying, oh,
I'm good. And if it shakes up, well, you know,
I want the person who comes into these businesses to
stop for a minute and maybe take stock and maybe
(13:19):
shake up their preconceptions. But the art isn't there to
shake them up onto it for its own reason. For
the reason for that reason to say, oh, what's this,
what's going on, it's more for other reasons.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
So going from the curtains to the Gladmore Cleaner on
Raymond Avenue, it's all very community oriented. In other words,
the curtains will Welcome to America, and you go to
Gladmore Cleaner rou OL garage and say, man, you're a
OL's garage. This is not no place. So as a
(14:02):
community I.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Would say it's a strain of my work, but it's
not everything I do, because I do these very hermetic drawings,
meaning meaning you don't need They have references, but they're
not depicted, and they live on their own terms, and
(14:24):
they are shown in galleries and if someone buys it,
it goes in their living room, work or or dining
room or somewhere. So I would say those aren't really
community oriented works. But the other stuff we were just
talking about really is. And the reason I've only done
a few what you would call public commissions. I've won
(14:45):
in the subway, one at the airport, and wanted a
community college in Rockland County. The thing I like about
those is a little bit what you're referring to but
also you don't go to see them. They're just part
of your life, part of of getting from point A
to point B. And I like that. That's not everything
is isolated in a gallery.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
But in some sense, the connection between the work that
you do with the businesses is sort of like that
in a way.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
I think of it as a kind of low key
public art, right absolutely, you know the public, maybe thirty people,
but it's still I think of it as a kind
of public art.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
And what about the subway display because it tell us
where that is, and.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
It's on Wall Street and the IRT two and three
train take you there, and it's one level up from
the subway, one level down from the street, and it's
under I don't know why I don't look this up
either forty Wall Street or sixty Wall Street.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Forty Wall Street is a Trump address.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Then it's probably sixty. It used to be the Morgan Bank,
and it was a project that was done under the
auspices of the MTA and the Moregan Bank, and it
had to do I don't know, if you want to
know this kind of stuff. It had to do with
whoever built the skyscraper built it on spec and they've
got some extra floors for agreeing to put some art.
(16:12):
And so when the Morgan Bank became the tenant, they
were stuck with having to put some art in it.
And it was a competition and I got to make
the art.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
Wasn't it a cool deal?
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Very cool? You know? I like? I like the reason.
I was a little surprised I got it, Not that
I didn't think it was good, but up to that
point my work was much smaller and so and this
was like a forty one foot bronze sculpture, so the
jump was huge.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
And what gave them the faith that you could do
make that jump.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Because I convinced them I could.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Yeah, so you can sell?
Speaker 3 (16:51):
Yeah, so and tells me you're very convincing.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Well, I think I chalked that up to teaching, okay,
you know, to be able to be clear and articulate
about ideas. And I'm not sure I could have quite
done that if I hadn't ever taught. And so you
go to a committee and it's mostly not artists, it's
business people for all the public ones I've done, and
(17:16):
an architect sometimes and you present, you present some visual
things and you talk about how your ideas make sense
in the context of the place that they want to
put the work, and so, yes, you have to be convincing.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
And I have an impression that one of the things
that might have been convincing about it is your personality.
Nobody would not think that your personality was a genuine
New York growth, right, I guess, well, let me tell
you oo ooh's New York and to have in the
(17:53):
subway system gives an authenticity to that. Yeah. But another
thing that I've always been curious about, Harry, I remember
years ago, maybe ten years ago, fifteen years ago, you
read there's a nice gallery Advassa College is where you
taught for all those years, right, and they were having
(18:13):
some special opening and you not redesigned, repainted.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Oh that was at the museum. I think you're thinking, yeah, yeah,
I did it whatever you want to call it, a mural,
a wall painting in the entryway to the Leyman Lobe
Art Center, which is if that's what you're referring to them.
And it was huge. It was like, I don't know,
we had a scissor lift and we couldn't even reach
the top of it with it, so I don't know
(18:41):
how tall it was. I don't know how tall these
ceilings are, Yeah, thirty forty feet, I don't know. And
then so, yeah, so I was kind of invited by
the museum to do what they were at the time
was supposed to be the first of a series of
artists interventions, which really didn't pan out very much after that.
(19:04):
So I got to do this very large drawings painting
mural thing.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Yeah. I think that you're under selling it at this point.
I mean it was all the walls and up to
the ceiling. I mean it was a huge thing.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
It was a big undertaking.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Yeah, and it was like a cavernous and it was
basically orange with all these very uh I think, interesting squiggles.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
And then yeah, curved lines, curved.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Lines and then big circles. And it was called Hole
in the Wall, right, And it was painted orange, and.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
Well it was different colors, but orange was a big part.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Orange is not the dominant uh color at Vassa College.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Oh you know, I certainly wasn't worried about making work
that had Vassa colors in it at all, because it
wasn't meant as a kind of promo for the school.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
The opposite may have been more likely.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
But that wasn't Miami either, but it was called Hole
in the Wall, and the vocabulary started from there is
an ocular or circular window on the front wall of
that space, very high up, and so that became my
starting point for putting other circles, which inside those circles
(20:30):
I painted different colors to reflect different times of day,
you know, sunny, blue sky, night time, because out that
window the sky would change. And then the curvelinear lines
kind of went around and went from one of those
circles to another one, and that was what precipitated. And
(20:52):
I was working with curve lines anyway and other works,
so that was what precipitated that. And during the summer
I got to use since I taught there, I got
to use some large studio spaces to do sketches for that.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
If you're just tuning in, you're listening to Finding Out
with Pete and the poet Gold, and I'm the poet
Gold and we're here with Harry Rosen Roseman Multimedia Artists.
I have a question for you about the piece that
you were just speaking about, the glory. Yes, so you
didn't walk in so to speak with a perception or
conception guys idea of what you wanted to put in there,
(21:32):
you were inspired by the place.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
And that's one thing about all kinds of public kinds
of art, at least as far as what interests may
in And I think it's often and maybe almost should be.
One of the impetus is for making art that goes
in a certain place is to think about the place.
What kind of place is it, why are people going by,
(21:57):
what does it look like, what's the scale of it?
And so always when I've done things like that, and
I've done you know, the more permanent installations and temporary
ones like at the museum, that was exciting for me
to say, Okay, what kind of what is this place
telling me?
Speaker 2 (22:17):
What?
Speaker 1 (22:17):
How can I have a conversation with this situation and
this place that I'd be excited about?
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Yes, and they they painted over you a great way.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Yeah, sooner than I would have liked.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
How did that feel?
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Well? I did it knowing it was temporary, but I
must say it could have stayed six months longer, easily.
But the director of the museum at that point was
not behind the whole undertaking at all, and it was
mostly James, Yeah, it was mostly the curators. So he
felt put upon by the whole undertaking, and he couldn't
(22:55):
get rid of it fast enough. But it was I
guess six months or something.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
James who went on to be the director of things
at the Morgan Museum in New York.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
Right, No, not that I know of. I don't think so.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
I know, I'm thinking of somebody else.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
I think he retired from Vassa, and I don't know
what he's doing.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
I'm thinking that the guy who was the English teacher.
But he was culturally different from you there, I'm like, you.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Know, I mean, we had different ideas.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
James was a really nice guy, but he was like
the embodiment of old fish in nineteenth century Vassa wasp culture.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Well he was. He was the director of the museum,
and he really looked apart. Yes, so that's a way
to put it.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
I'm getting a little more ethic and he show you
all you could manage your learned Advasa. But you are
not that right, I mean I.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
Don't look like the director of a museum, no, right,
And so I'm different.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
From him, unless, as you know, I worked at a
Vassa for thirty years too. You're more like a minority
higher at faster than you are, like an embodiment of
the culture.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Okay, yeah, yeah, I don't know how to put it
exactly I was. I would say I was idiosyncratic for
being a full professor at Vassar and for various reasons.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
A little centric, would you would you? Would you say?
You're getting it was a little eccentric, Peter.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
I'm getting. I know he doesn't think of himself that way,
but I mean, even you know, ethnically, being a Jewish
guy from Brooklyn having a prominent position at Vasa College
is not what we put in the brochures.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
No, Okay, I probably would have been the person for
an ad for the school. But I will say, as
much as I do think I was an idiosyncratic presence,
I give Fasts some credit for hiring me and promoting
me and almost putting up with me. So I must
(25:20):
say it's it's within it being maybe a stiddier place
than I am, somehow I was able to exist there,
which which I give the school credit for a lot
for embracing me in a way.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
No, I mean, it really is a diversity higher. I mean,
in other words, you really do have a different sensibility
than many of the other people there, and you need
that diversity.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
Well, I think also being an artist, I feel like
it's built into being an artist and questions. That's what
we do. We question things, and and we try as
much as possible to be truthful to ourselves and to
our take. Okay, I'm generalizing some artists are crap, so okay,
(26:12):
that's a bad word.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Now.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
I don't mean that some artists are as.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
As what do you call it, entrepreneurial?
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Yeah, entrepreneurial mainstream part of the power structure as much
as anybody else. So so yeah, But I think art
often promotes in the person who makes it, a desire
for real exploration, real questioning.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
And is that exploration I tried to almost a civic spirituality.
Spirituality is not a word that comes easily to you,
I don't think.
Speaker 5 (26:52):
Not easily, okay, but it's there, civic spirituality when one says,
you know, I.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Like to think of myself as a reasonably good person,
so maybe that comes to my mind. I'm not sure
quite how to address that.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
Do you feel do you feel in any way that
your that your art comes through your spirit?
Speaker 1 (27:19):
Sure? When you ask it that way, I would say, yes,
that was the question.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Good work, Okay, very good.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Praise, I try it. I think it does come through that.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
Yeah, get towards the end of our conversation. But I
know you also have very deeply held political beliefs. How
does your political beliefs and your art instsecty? What do
you well? Keeps them separate?
Speaker 3 (27:43):
This?
Speaker 1 (27:44):
They're as separate as they can be within living in
this world. Meaning my work is not overtly political. And
even though I talk about the local business as having
this aim, it's not really meant to be in coructional
or educational. It's meant to be experiential, which is not
(28:06):
quite the same. Well, right now, I think it's very hard,
you know, Like, Okay, I came here to talk to
you guys, and I said to myself, Wow, we're coming here,
We're going to talk about art and my work, And
hovering over all our heads is the bizarreness of what's
going on in this country right now, which I don't
(28:28):
think we can We don't have to address it, but
I don't think we can escape from it. So is
that an answer to your question? You know, but my
work is only political in the sense that in what senses.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
Does it does it does it speak to And it
may not be all your work. I know, I certainly
for myself have some pieces that speak to the time,
you know, and it'll come out that way. And then
there's then there's just.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
Time in some way, may be even if I'm lucky,
even beyond the time.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
But the time meaning is yet the moment realially political time?
Speaker 1 (29:09):
I can't answer that right exactly. I mean it's on
my mind a lot, and you know, I go to
demonstrations and stuff, which there's my body out there, but
I I my work is not overtly political. But I think, well,
in some way, maybe all arell I'm stuck.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
We're going to have to have you back, and maybe
when you come back we'll start, Yes.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
We'll try to political and also well maybe that's what
I mean.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
I'd be fascinated to find out what you uh, you
your little hope about when you're not here, what people
are thinking of your ought.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
But you know, we're time time, we're out of time. Well,
thank you, no, thank you, Harry, and keep up your
great work. You know it was wonderful having you. I
think you just asked charming, So thank you to our
listeners of finding out with Pete and the Poet Gold
and I'm the Poet Gold, and we appreciate you tuning
in and listening. Once again, thank you, have a blessed
he
The views and opinions expressed in the following programmer those
of the speaker and don't necessarily represent those of the
station it's staff, management or ownership.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
I'm good morning, you'll finding out with Pete and the
Poe Cold.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
I'm Peter Leonard and I'm the poet Gold.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
And we're on the ed this morning with Harry Roseman
and artists, a multimedia artist. And before we get to Harry,
we're going to go right to the Poke Cold for
her weekly poem prayer incantation goal. Please let it.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Roll, Thank you Peter. Today I'm going to do the
dance in accordance with the speed of the wind. Nature
sways interpreting music from its howl. May not be a
traditional dance, moving in different directions without form, appearing wild,
organically beautiful. I gaze until my eyes tear, longing to
feel the breeze against my cheek. I walk into the
(00:47):
river bear. I'm naked, roots of the reeds beneath my feet.
We are separate, but in this dance we are connected.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
One of the few oughts that you don't practice, Harry
is dance.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
But I have danced in history, okay, and I was
even an extra with the Bolshoy This.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Is not true.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
It is true one time, okay, but for the premiere
of the ballet sparticles when they came to New York.
So there you go.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Well, that is world wide ranging in your right than
I expected.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
It was a moment it might be easier to say,
what haven't you done?
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Then you know what?
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Well, we do know that you once to find yourself
primarily as a sculptor.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Yeah, near the earlier part of my showing career, because
I did make and show at that point mostly sculpture.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
And what size sculpture?
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Well, when I got my first commission to do something huge,
I would say anywhere from astray size to person size, okay,
until I made something building size that was later.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Was there any type of main theme for your sculpture?
Did you like to think your points?
Speaker 1 (02:05):
They were depictive and now would look at things and
make sculptures about what they look like. And one of
the big issues was scale, I guess, and materials and
landscapes still lives stuff like that, A lot of relief space.
(02:26):
That was a big ongoing core and that has still
carried through to the stuff I do now, which is
very different but has some things in common, including my
being drawn to relief space.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Relief space.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Relief space would be something that has dimension, but it
could be anywhere from a quarter of an inch to
five feet. And a relief usually has one point of view,
So the artists and thus the viewer are looking at
whatever it is are looking at at from one point
of view, and there's a front and a back, and
(03:04):
the relief can be very deep or very compressed.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Okay, So the physical relief the context of the piece counts.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Yes, but not that doesn't necessarily decide how much relief
space there will be. And that's a different kind of
decision that I would make for various reasons.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
And you know, with you the sculpture, your most famous
sculpture was probably the curtains that you.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Did, probably if I have such a thing as a
famous sculpture, okay, that was that was seen by a
lot of Yeah, and it's still there at the airport, and.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
So it was like t w A when you came
in from from many points.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
It was at the terminal for uh the international air terminals.
So I don't know how many airlines I'm going to
make it up. Let's say eight or ten airlines would
come into that terminal and then those people would pass
by the sculpture.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
And the sculpture was like six hundred feet long. Yeah, right,
there was a series of.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Series of sculptural events that took up six hundred feet.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
And you know sculptural events, they were all curtains.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Right, yeah, yeah, I just meant physical objects because there
was object space object space. But the walls are from
my point of view, considered part of the work.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
So were they haven't seen the piece? So were they
curtain curtains? So were they images of images of curtains
and sculptures of curtains. Yeah, yeah, that's probably more accurate.
And they were kind of relief, meaning they had a
back and a front, and they ranged in size from let's.
Speaker 4 (04:47):
Say five by seven feet to maybe fifteen by twenty
feet because the card was on an incline and so
the wall got bigger and bigger and bigger, and then
I use that space as part of the narrative of
the sculpture.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
So there were two visual perspectives. You can see it
in the front, you can see it in the bad.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
No, you could see it in the front, and you
can see it sideway side when you're walking down the corridor.
You could look ahead and see them at an oblique angle,
or you could turn your head and be right in
front of one or a couple of them.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Now, you mentioned earlier in the conversation that your work
today is somewhat different than what you did that and
how is it different for you?
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Well, for one thing, the last five six years I've
been making I've been doing mainly two things, films which
have been animations and some live action films what one
might call experimental films, which means they might not be
all that entertaining. And then the other thing I've been
(05:55):
doing a lot are photographic installations called local business. So
they are photographic installations in places I do my errands,
like the dry cleaners, like the mechanics, the restaurants I
go to, and they are photographs about the place itself
and then installed within the place.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
Okay, so you're sort of telling a neighborhood business story,
I would say through your work.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
I guess so. And the rationale behind those is that
when someone let's say, the first one I did ever
was at Gladmore Cleaners, and that was twenty fourteen. The
first one of this series, Raymond Avenue and I'm still
doing them. And the idea is because I spent a
(06:45):
certain amount of time doing errands and I've decided for okay,
little by little, I've made everything I do part of
my work. So shopping became part of my work, and
now it's part of my work in various ways. But
as far as the local business installation goes, they're photographs.
So you walk into a space, and it's often a
(07:07):
space that you don't even think about that maybe you're
doing something you think of as boring, like bringing your
clothes in to be dry cleaned, or your car in
to have the oil changed, and and so the idea
of the photographs is to give the viewer, the customer,
(07:35):
a sense of where they are, and then maybe where
they are might be more interesting than they think. So
the photographs are sometimes odd in the sense they may
be the corner of a room where the room is
right there, or as my mechanics said, when I did
my installation at Al's garage, he said, someone came in
(07:59):
and said, how come you have a picture of your
office in your office? So it's a way for people
to take stock and say, oh, wait a minute, what's
around me? Maybe this is interesting. And I also don't
put my name up on them. Oh really, and people
find out, you know, because I'm not like in hiding.
(08:21):
So if someone says who did this, the person's allowed
to tell my name, but I do it. So it
makes the work even less separate from the place than
if it looked like art. So if it had my
name on it, it would say art. But I wanted to
be so intertwined in the place that it just sits there. Yes,
(08:45):
and so I think of it as art, but I
don't need it to be seen that way in the beginning.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
I can appreciate that because I know when I run errands,
you know, I'm often looking up at the walls of
a place, the vironment that I am, and if there's
a painting there or a photograph there, I'm wondering if
it's connected to the location in some way. Yes, you know, yeah,
you could be a good that story, right exactly. I
could see myself now visiting these places just to sort
(09:13):
of put together pieces of the story.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
And afropo of that. The one I'm working on right
now is at my pediatris office, So that office has
all these paintings that one of the doctors I don't
know which one. His mother made these paintings. So amongst
other kinds of photos I'm putting there, one series is
(09:36):
so the paintings are framed, so under each painting I'm
not done with it yet, will be an image of
that painting. So the frame, because they had real frames
on them, but my frame would be photographic, so physically
the same as the surface of the photograph, and inside
(09:58):
the frame would be a detail of the painting right
above it. Oh, that's so cool. So you you sort
of go back and forth and you see something maybe
you didn't see in the painting before.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
It's sort of a very outfit Hitchcock kind of. Yeah, Yeah,
it is definitely if you're just tuning in, you're listening
to finding Out with Pete the poet gold and I'm
the poet Golden. We're here today with Harry Roseman, multimedia
artists living here in the area of the Hudson Valley.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Harry, I want to make two points. Yes, One is
you brushed by the curtains thing that was at the airport,
six hundred feet of things and curtains. That's not what
somebody would normally think of as a way to welcome
the world into America. But I mean you had the
curtains blowing in certain directions. The notion of freedom and
(10:51):
ease in America was embodied in it, but it was
a it's a very unusual thing. And just like your
goals reaction to your business photographs, Yeah, you know where
wolves and the owners are glad more clean as a
couple being reflected in the window and uh and there
(11:11):
these are all unusual my senses, your artwork is more
unusual than you conceive of it, as do you think
of it as well.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
It's kind of funny because when I was in art school,
and I don't know if this is I think it's relevant.
So when I was in art school and I would
get an assignment and I would bring it in always
trying to you know, not being ironic and trying my
best to solve the assignment. Sometimes a teacher would say,
(11:43):
why are you ridiculing this assignment? And it's not what
I'm doing. I'm just trying to find a way in
that's maybe interesting. So I don't know if that maybe
goes over into other decisions I made much later, but
I'm not setting out well. This is hard to say
I'm setting out to do the best work I could do,
(12:05):
but I'm not setting out well, I don't want it
to be ordinary either, but I'm not setting out to
be quirky for its own sake. I'm just maybe it's
just how my ideas work and where my mind brings
me right, more than I'm going to do something that's
really a little bizarre. I never say that to myself.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
That's worth mentioning because it is. You know, some of
the stuff you do is different enough that somebody could
accuse you of that. And I use the word accused
because it would be insincere, in other words, to try to.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Sainfully sincere about my work.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
So you don't go in it's sort of like like
a marketing plan, like not at all, you know.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
And I'm not drawn to irony either in work, in
my own work, because I think iron is easy interesting
in some ways. So so no, it's not I'm not saying, oh,
I'm good. And if it shakes up, well, you know,
I want the person who comes into these businesses to
stop for a minute and maybe take stock and maybe
(13:19):
shake up their preconceptions. But the art isn't there to
shake them up onto it for its own reason. For
the reason for that reason to say, oh, what's this,
what's going on, it's more for other reasons.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
So going from the curtains to the Gladmore Cleaner on
Raymond Avenue, it's all very community oriented. In other words,
the curtains will Welcome to America, and you go to
Gladmore Cleaner rou OL garage and say, man, you're a
OL's garage. This is not no place. So as a
(14:02):
community I.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Would say it's a strain of my work, but it's
not everything I do, because I do these very hermetic drawings,
meaning meaning you don't need They have references, but they're
not depicted, and they live on their own terms, and
(14:24):
they are shown in galleries and if someone buys it,
it goes in their living room, work or or dining
room or somewhere. So I would say those aren't really
community oriented works. But the other stuff we were just
talking about really is. And the reason I've only done
a few what you would call public commissions. I've won
(14:45):
in the subway, one at the airport, and wanted a
community college in Rockland County. The thing I like about
those is a little bit what you're referring to but
also you don't go to see them. They're just part
of your life, part of of getting from point A
to point B. And I like that. That's not everything
is isolated in a gallery.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
But in some sense, the connection between the work that
you do with the businesses is sort of like that
in a way.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
I think of it as a kind of low key
public art, right absolutely, you know the public, maybe thirty people,
but it's still I think of it as a kind
of public art.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
And what about the subway display because it tell us
where that is, and.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
It's on Wall Street and the IRT two and three
train take you there, and it's one level up from
the subway, one level down from the street, and it's
under I don't know why I don't look this up
either forty Wall Street or sixty Wall Street.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Forty Wall Street is a Trump address.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Then it's probably sixty. It used to be the Morgan Bank,
and it was a project that was done under the
auspices of the MTA and the Moregan Bank, and it
had to do I don't know, if you want to
know this kind of stuff. It had to do with
whoever built the skyscraper built it on spec and they've
got some extra floors for agreeing to put some art.
(16:12):
And so when the Morgan Bank became the tenant, they
were stuck with having to put some art in it.
And it was a competition and I got to make
the art.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
Wasn't it a cool deal?
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Very cool? You know? I like? I like the reason.
I was a little surprised I got it, Not that
I didn't think it was good, but up to that
point my work was much smaller and so and this
was like a forty one foot bronze sculpture, so the
jump was huge.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
And what gave them the faith that you could do
make that jump.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Because I convinced them I could.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Yeah, so you can sell?
Speaker 3 (16:51):
Yeah, so and tells me you're very convincing.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Well, I think I chalked that up to teaching, okay,
you know, to be able to be clear and articulate
about ideas. And I'm not sure I could have quite
done that if I hadn't ever taught. And so you
go to a committee and it's mostly not artists, it's
business people for all the public ones I've done, and
(17:16):
an architect sometimes and you present, you present some visual
things and you talk about how your ideas make sense
in the context of the place that they want to
put the work, and so, yes, you have to be convincing.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
And I have an impression that one of the things
that might have been convincing about it is your personality.
Nobody would not think that your personality was a genuine
New York growth, right, I guess, well, let me tell
you oo ooh's New York and to have in the
(17:53):
subway system gives an authenticity to that. Yeah. But another
thing that I've always been curious about, Harry, I remember
years ago, maybe ten years ago, fifteen years ago, you
read there's a nice gallery Advassa College is where you
taught for all those years, right, and they were having
(18:13):
some special opening and you not redesigned, repainted.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Oh that was at the museum. I think you're thinking, yeah, yeah,
I did it whatever you want to call it, a mural,
a wall painting in the entryway to the Leyman Lobe
Art Center, which is if that's what you're referring to them.
And it was huge. It was like, I don't know,
we had a scissor lift and we couldn't even reach
the top of it with it, so I don't know
(18:41):
how tall it was. I don't know how tall these
ceilings are, Yeah, thirty forty feet, I don't know. And
then so, yeah, so I was kind of invited by
the museum to do what they were at the time
was supposed to be the first of a series of
artists interventions, which really didn't pan out very much after that.
(19:04):
So I got to do this very large drawings painting
mural thing.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Yeah. I think that you're under selling it at this point.
I mean it was all the walls and up to
the ceiling. I mean it was a huge thing.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
It was a big undertaking.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Yeah, and it was like a cavernous and it was
basically orange with all these very uh I think, interesting squiggles.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
And then yeah, curved lines, curved.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Lines and then big circles. And it was called Hole
in the Wall, right, And it was painted orange, and.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
Well it was different colors, but orange was a big part.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Orange is not the dominant uh color at Vassa College.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Oh you know, I certainly wasn't worried about making work
that had Vassa colors in it at all, because it
wasn't meant as a kind of promo for the school.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
The opposite may have been more likely.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
But that wasn't Miami either, but it was called Hole
in the Wall, and the vocabulary started from there is
an ocular or circular window on the front wall of
that space, very high up, and so that became my
starting point for putting other circles, which inside those circles
(20:30):
I painted different colors to reflect different times of day,
you know, sunny, blue sky, night time, because out that
window the sky would change. And then the curvelinear lines
kind of went around and went from one of those
circles to another one, and that was what precipitated. And
(20:52):
I was working with curve lines anyway and other works,
so that was what precipitated that. And during the summer
I got to use since I taught there, I got
to use some large studio spaces to do sketches for that.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
If you're just tuning in, you're listening to Finding Out
with Pete and the poet Gold, and I'm the poet
Gold and we're here with Harry Rosen Roseman Multimedia Artists.
I have a question for you about the piece that
you were just speaking about, the glory. Yes, so you
didn't walk in so to speak with a perception or
conception guys idea of what you wanted to put in there,
(21:32):
you were inspired by the place.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
And that's one thing about all kinds of public kinds
of art, at least as far as what interests may
in And I think it's often and maybe almost should be.
One of the impetus is for making art that goes
in a certain place is to think about the place.
What kind of place is it, why are people going by,
(21:57):
what does it look like, what's the scale of it?
And so always when I've done things like that, and
I've done you know, the more permanent installations and temporary
ones like at the museum, that was exciting for me
to say, Okay, what kind of what is this place
telling me?
Speaker 2 (22:17):
What?
Speaker 1 (22:17):
How can I have a conversation with this situation and
this place that I'd be excited about?
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Yes, and they they painted over you a great way.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Yeah, sooner than I would have liked.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
How did that feel?
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Well? I did it knowing it was temporary, but I
must say it could have stayed six months longer, easily.
But the director of the museum at that point was
not behind the whole undertaking at all, and it was
mostly James, Yeah, it was mostly the curators. So he
felt put upon by the whole undertaking, and he couldn't
(22:55):
get rid of it fast enough. But it was I
guess six months or something.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
James who went on to be the director of things
at the Morgan Museum in New York.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
Right, No, not that I know of. I don't think so.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
I know, I'm thinking of somebody else.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
I think he retired from Vassa, and I don't know
what he's doing.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
I'm thinking that the guy who was the English teacher.
But he was culturally different from you there, I'm like, you.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Know, I mean, we had different ideas.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
James was a really nice guy, but he was like
the embodiment of old fish in nineteenth century Vassa wasp culture.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Well he was. He was the director of the museum,
and he really looked apart. Yes, so that's a way
to put it.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
I'm getting a little more ethic and he show you
all you could manage your learned Advasa. But you are
not that right, I mean I.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
Don't look like the director of a museum, no, right,
And so I'm different.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
From him, unless, as you know, I worked at a
Vassa for thirty years too. You're more like a minority
higher at faster than you are, like an embodiment of
the culture.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Okay, yeah, yeah, I don't know how to put it
exactly I was. I would say I was idiosyncratic for
being a full professor at Vassar and for various reasons.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
A little centric, would you would you? Would you say?
You're getting it was a little eccentric, Peter.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
I'm getting. I know he doesn't think of himself that way,
but I mean, even you know, ethnically, being a Jewish
guy from Brooklyn having a prominent position at Vasa College
is not what we put in the brochures.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
No, Okay, I probably would have been the person for
an ad for the school. But I will say, as
much as I do think I was an idiosyncratic presence,
I give Fasts some credit for hiring me and promoting
me and almost putting up with me. So I must
(25:20):
say it's it's within it being maybe a stiddier place
than I am, somehow I was able to exist there,
which which I give the school credit for a lot
for embracing me in a way.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
No, I mean, it really is a diversity higher. I mean,
in other words, you really do have a different sensibility
than many of the other people there, and you need
that diversity.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
Well, I think also being an artist, I feel like
it's built into being an artist and questions. That's what
we do. We question things, and and we try as
much as possible to be truthful to ourselves and to
our take. Okay, I'm generalizing some artists are crap, so okay,
(26:12):
that's a bad word.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Now.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
I don't mean that some artists are as.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
As what do you call it, entrepreneurial?
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Yeah, entrepreneurial mainstream part of the power structure as much
as anybody else. So so yeah, But I think art
often promotes in the person who makes it, a desire
for real exploration, real questioning.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
And is that exploration I tried to almost a civic spirituality.
Spirituality is not a word that comes easily to you,
I don't think.
Speaker 5 (26:52):
Not easily, okay, but it's there, civic spirituality when one says,
you know, I.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Like to think of myself as a reasonably good person,
so maybe that comes to my mind. I'm not sure
quite how to address that.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
Do you feel do you feel in any way that
your that your art comes through your spirit?
Speaker 1 (27:19):
Sure? When you ask it that way, I would say, yes,
that was the question.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Good work, Okay, very good.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Praise, I try it. I think it does come through that.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
Yeah, get towards the end of our conversation. But I
know you also have very deeply held political beliefs. How
does your political beliefs and your art instsecty? What do
you well? Keeps them separate?
Speaker 3 (27:43):
This?
Speaker 1 (27:44):
They're as separate as they can be within living in
this world. Meaning my work is not overtly political. And
even though I talk about the local business as having
this aim, it's not really meant to be in coructional
or educational. It's meant to be experiential, which is not
(28:06):
quite the same. Well, right now, I think it's very hard,
you know, Like, Okay, I came here to talk to
you guys, and I said to myself, Wow, we're coming here,
We're going to talk about art and my work, And
hovering over all our heads is the bizarreness of what's
going on in this country right now, which I don't
(28:28):
think we can We don't have to address it, but
I don't think we can escape from it. So is
that an answer to your question? You know, but my
work is only political in the sense that in what senses.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
Does it does it does it speak to And it
may not be all your work. I know, I certainly
for myself have some pieces that speak to the time,
you know, and it'll come out that way. And then
there's then there's just.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
Time in some way, may be even if I'm lucky,
even beyond the time.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
But the time meaning is yet the moment realially political time?
Speaker 1 (29:09):
I can't answer that right exactly. I mean it's on
my mind a lot, and you know, I go to
demonstrations and stuff, which there's my body out there, but
I I my work is not overtly political. But I think, well,
in some way, maybe all arell I'm stuck.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
We're going to have to have you back, and maybe
when you come back we'll start, Yes.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
We'll try to political and also well maybe that's what
I mean.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
I'd be fascinated to find out what you uh, you
your little hope about when you're not here, what people
are thinking of your ought.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
But you know, we're time time, we're out of time. Well,
thank you, no, thank you, Harry, and keep up your
great work. You know it was wonderful having you. I
think you just asked charming, So thank you to our
listeners of finding out with Pete and the Poet Gold
and I'm the Poet Gold, and we appreciate you tuning
in and listening. Once again, thank you, have a blessed
he
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If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce
Football’s funniest family duo — Jason Kelce of the Philadelphia Eagles and Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs — team up to provide next-level access to life in the league as it unfolds. The two brothers and Super Bowl champions drop weekly insights about the weekly slate of games and share their INSIDE perspectives on trending NFL news and sports headlines. They also endlessly rag on each other as brothers do, chat the latest in pop culture and welcome some very popular and well-known friends to chat with them. Check out new episodes every Wednesday. Follow New Heights on the Wondery App, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes early and ad-free, and get exclusive content on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And join our new membership for a unique fan experience by going to the New Heights YouTube channel now!
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.