Exploring Artistry in Upstate New York

(bright music) - [Narrator] Explore the sculptures and collages of artist Steven Siegel.

Learn about The Local, a new performing arts venue in Saugerties.

And catch a performance from Sketches of Influence.

It's all ahead on this episode of AHA, A House for Arts.

- [Announcer] Funding for AHA has been provided by your contribution and by contributions to the WMHT Venture Fund.

Contributors include the Leo Cox Beach Philanthropic Foundation, Chad and Karen Opalka, Robert and Doris Fischer Malesardi, and the Robison Family Foundation.

- At M&T Bank, we understand that the vitality of our communities is crucial to our continued success.

That's why we take an active role in our community.

M&T Bank is pleased to support WMHT programming that highlights the arts, and we invite you to do the same.

(bright music) - Hi, I'm Matt Rogowicz and this is AHA, A House for Arts, a place for all things creative.

Steven Siegel made a name for himself creating large site-specific installations all over the world.

Today we're visiting his studio in Tivoli, New York to learn more about his art, and to see what he's working on now.

- It's very hard for me to describe what kind of an artist I am.

My reputation is for using large quantities of pre or post-consumer industrial materials.

Therefore, I am very much attached to what some people would call environmental art, or eco art, or land art.

And my reputation was built primarily around the large temporary pieces I did in natural settings, like forests.

In addition to other pieces in urban settings made of plastics.

However, I would not be doing this if aesthetics were not the primary motivation.

I remember driving by a really large pile of some kind of material that was tarped over, which was all held together by tires that were thrown over this thing.

There was just something about the aesthetic of that that appealed to me.

I started reading John McPhee's books on geology, and the linkage between materials and landscape, and what's known as deep time in geological circles, all started to fuse together for me.

Deep time is a phrase to separate human time, which could be today or last week, or your lifetime, or the life of our species, which is relatively short.

To separate that out from this greater time, the age of the planet, which is 4.5 billion years.

I've always felt that if one had an understanding of that, the difference between our time and deep time, that our collective response to the environment and how we go about, you know, inhabiting this planet, and what we do with it, would be much more profound.

That we'd have a much greater basis of understanding for what we're doing here and why we're here.

I was invited to do a piece for the Snug Harbor Cultural Center on Staten Island.

And Staten Island was the home of the world's largest landfill.

They wanted me to do an outdoor sculpture of some sort, and I didn't really know what to do.

I hadn't done an outdoor piece in a number of years.

And I realized, well, why not use materials that are in the landfill?

Because the landfill is the new geology.

If there are humans or some species around 5 million years from now, they will have a material that is consolidated landfill.

And I finally decided on using newspaper.

It turned out to be a good medium in terms of technically what you could do with it, how you would build with it.

That first paper piece was built on Staten Island, and that led to probably 30 or more paper pieces that were sort of the foundation of what I was doing.

And I became the guy who did the paper pieces.

So the container pieces, they are a reflection of an interest in evolutionary biology, which was kind of a natural step from the geologic stuff.

In geology, gravity kind of limits form-making.

And being somebody who's interested in the generation of form, that was getting a little less interesting, and I wanted another model to work on.

In biology, when you look at an organism, like you, or me, or any organism, you can pick that up and throw it up in the air, and as long as you don't throw it too high, when it lands it will be intact.

Because the organizing principles are much more sophisticated than sandstone.

I started working with forms where I could package materials.

So the whole notion of a skin and a skeleton, and all this came into play.

The reactions would range from this is just a pile of trash to wow, that's really big.

Or how did he do that?

Or is that what I think it is?

And as the pieces got more sophisticated, and bigger, and more articulated, the wow factor really came into play.

I am of the belief that the wow factor, for lack of a better term, should be the introduction to any work of art.

That for it to be successful, a viewer had to be drawn to it.

Then, and only then, does all the interpretive stuff really come into play.

Biography, the large piece, that part of which was at the Albany Airport for six years, started in 2008.

And over the course of five years, Biography just kept growing to the left.

And if you look at it, you'll see it just evolves, evolves, evolves, and different materials come in and out of it.

Everything from paper, which is saturated with acrylic medium and is a mainstay in my work, to yarns, to electronics, to waste of various kinds, to plastics, to wood, tongue depressors, zip ties.

There's a million different things in there.

And my photographer would come once a year, and he would photograph the 30-feet that were on the wall because that was the length of the wall in the studio.

And after five years, we have an image of a piece that no one, including myself, has ever seen fully assembled.

I've seen 100-feet of it assembled, but I've never seen all 156-feet assembled.

That's only visible in the photograph, which to me is perfect, it's fascinating.

The fact that it has never been all assembled in one place at one time is its greatest strength.

And this is upside down.

People tell me I'm shooting myself in the foot.

People tell me where's it gonna fit?

And I have tried to explain it doesn't need to fit because it's a continuum.

And everything in our lives is part of a continuum.

(bright music) Currently, I'm working on a project No Wall is Big Enough, which had to be developed along with a book that carries the actual narrative.

So you see this huge image with all this incredible detail, but the detail can't really mean much, unless you're gonna spend weeks looking at this thing.

So the book, it doesn't explain it as much as it carries you through it.

These sections that I've worked on for the past year, they will fit into the overall image, but they're of a slightly different nature.

This piece not only goes from right to left and expands continuously, it also goes up and it also goes down.

So the piece physically is now something like 40-feet high, and I don't know, 60-feet wide.

No one has ever seen the entire thing assembled in one place at one time, including me.

There are approximately 140 sections now, of which only 21 fit on the wall.

Crazy, impractical.

Am I shooting myself in the foot?

Yes.

It scares away most people.

It scares away the art world.

They don't know what to do with this.

They want rectangles on the wall.

That's what they're used to selling.

I don't do rectangles.

- Danny Melnick and Isabel Soffer both have distinguished careers producing music festivals and concerts.

And in 2023, the two opened The Local in Saugerties, New York, a performing arts venue housed in a former Dutch Chapel.

Here's Jade Warwick with more.

- Hey, Danny and Isabel, it's great to have you today.

Welcome to a House for Arts.

- Thank you so much for having us.

- Yeah, so just to dive in first, I wanna know a little bit about both of your backgrounds.

So let's start with you, Danny.

Give us a little bit about your creative background.

- So I've been primarily producing jazz festivals, concerts, and tours for about 35 years.

I grew up on Long Island, and I went to American University in DC.

And when I was there I worked at Blues Alley Jazz Club in Georgetown.

And from there, came back to New York, and wound up working for a very prominent music festival production company called Festival Productions Inc. And I was at Newport Jazz for a long time in New Orleans, and so many other festivals.

And for many years now, and still to this day, I've been producing the Freihofer's Saratoga Jazz Festival up at SPAC.

But primarily, as I just said, my background really has been in jazz.

And I've been very lucky and fortunate all these years to be able to work with phenomenal artists, and in amazing venues all over the world.

- So you say you're mostly in jazz, like in the jazz?

- Yeah, I do R&B, soul, bluegrass, funk, Latin music.

People talk about jazz being part of this larger tree, and I think that there's a tremendous amount of truth to that.

And so as a presenter, I've never really been interested in defining the music.

It's really about celebrating the music, and all the great collaborations that exist, and all of the amazing rhythms that people bring to the music, and that we can then present on our stages, and have the audience really enjoy so many different styles.

So it's Jazz plus.

- I love that.

And do you play anything yourself?

- I used to play clarinet when I was a kid.

I was actually very good.

But I got into a big argument with my band teacher when I was a senior in high school and I quit.

- Oh, you're like, "I'm out."

(joyful laughing) - I'm out, and I regret that to this day.

- Oh, hey, you can always pick it back up, right?

- People say that, and I've tried.

I've tried to play guitar and piano over the years too, and I just haven't spent enough time trying to do it.

- One day.

- Your busy.

- What about you?

- In my retirement.

- Oh, there you go, in your retirement.

What about you, Isabel?

What's your creative background?

- I grew up in Brooklyn to artistic parents.

Both my parents are fine artists and craftspeople.

I started working for a nonprofit arts organization in New York City that was really at the beginning of international music programming.

And I got hooked on it, and ended up working there for 25 years.

And when I left there, I founded an organization called Global Fest, whose goal was to move international music into the center of the performing arts field.

And moved up to the Hudson Valley, and connected with Danny.

And yeah, so it's just been also over 30 years of producing concerts.

- Just like a creative path, never stopping.

And do you play any- - Never stopping.

- Right, I don't think you ever do as artists.

Do you play any instruments?

- I don't, I've tried.

I always think of myself as a good listener.

- There you go.

You're the muse.

(joyful laughing) So you both co-founded and co-run The Local Center for Arts and Culture.

So give us a little bit of background of like what that space is and how did it begin?

- The Local is in the heart of village of Saugerties.

And Saugerties is a very artistic and creative area, with probably thousands of people in creative fields, but it doesn't have a cultural center.

Didn't have cultural center.

And Danny and I had been working throughout the pandemic to bring different types of music to the area.

And opened up an organization called Hudson Valley Live.

And through Hudson Valley Live, we produced a bunch of events, and then found this incredible, gorgeous 1876 Dutch Chapel in the heart of the village.

And decided that we would try to turn it into a center for arts and culture.

- And what are some of the main services and creative focuses would you say it would have?

- Well, the venue opened up in September of 2023, so we just finished our first season to great success.

We did about 20 concerts.

We presented a really eclectic lineup of global music, jazz, some singer songwriters.

Our vision of it was to allow people to use it for all sorts of different purposes.

It's a really interesting space because it's one really sort of 40-foot by 30-foot open space.

We do have some rooms on the side, but it's just this open, beautiful, incredible hardwood floor space with this incredible stained glass and a really high elevated chapel ceiling.

- What has the community been saying?

Like, what's been their reaction?

- The enthusiasm, and the encouragement, and the happiness that people have of being there, and then telling us about it either after the concerts are over, or the next day, or running into people on the streets, has just been amazing.

Our aesthetic in being as welcoming as we possibly can, to being really mellow and sort of casual about the space in terms of people hanging out, general admission seating, we have a little bar, we let people come in an hour early, we let people hang afterwards.

The other thing that's really I think been such a massively positive part of the equation is the music.

Because the artists that we have booked have been fabulous.

They've loved playing there.

They've put on these incredible shows.

And they're really connected with the intimacy of the space, and with the audience.

And they're doing meet and greets.

They're signing, you know, vinyl and CDs after the shows.

They're chatting with people, they're taking pictures with people.

So it's this whole sort of integrated experience that we're all having together.

- The other thing I think is that we're booking things that are challenging people.

And I think that's really important for both of us, that we bringing things that you can't hear anywhere else in the area, or not a lot.

- Yeah, connecting through music truly.

- [Isabel] Yeah.

- So what's your spring program look like, March and beyond?

- We have a lot of programming going on, actually.

We're very excited about the spring season.

In March we're doing, and in April, a very eclectic lineup of jazz, some singer songwriters.

We have a lecture series that we're doing.

Really interesting expert people, particularly in the sciences.

And some programs for families and kids.

So again, the idea for us was just to try to really mix it up, and to do a lot of different things, and try to offer the audience a really wide variety of things to check out.

- Yeah, and I'm definitely going to have to stop by myself.

Thank you Danny, and thank you Isabel, for taking the time to sit and tell us about this current endeavor, and passion, and beautiful space for community today.

- Thank you so much for having us.

- Please welcome Sketches of Influence.

(upbeat jazz music) (upbeat jazz music continues) Thanks for joining us.

For more arts, visit wmht.org/aha, and be sure to connect with us on social.

I'm Matt Rogowicz, thanks for watching.

(calm music) - [Announcer] Funding for AHA has been provided by your contribution, and by contributions to the WMHT Venture Fund.

Contributors include the Leo Cox Beach Philanthropic Foundation, Chad and Karen Opalka, Robert and Doris Fischer Malesardi, and the Robison Family Foundation.

- At M&T Bank, we understand that the vitality of our communities is crucial to our continued success.

That's why we take an active role in our community.

M&T Bank is pleased to support WMHT programming that highlights the arts, and we invite you to do the same.