ARTS FOCUS

Time Warner Cable Channel 23
presents a new weekly program focusing on the visual arts in Poughkeepsie and the Hudson Valley. The show is produced and hosted by artist, FRANC PALAIA

The premiere broadcast of Arts Focus was Thursday, September 7th, at 5:30pm
And repeated again at 9pm every Thursday.



“Arts Focus” is exactly what its title implies, a focus on the visual arts in the Hudson Valley. Franc will present area and regional painters, photographers, sculptors, printmakers, filmmakers, architects, craft artists, performance and video artists, designers, computer artists, folk artists as well as curators, art critics, museum directors and art dealers. The program will consist of artist interviews, in-studio presentations of original artwork and/or images from CDs and DVDs. Artists will discuss their technique, philosophy and inspirations and share interesting stories about themselves and their art-making experiences.

Franc will bring attention to special exhibitions in the area with an Arts Calendar at the end of every program. He will highlight senior and children’s art events and important activities by local arts organizations. Discussions with commercial and non-profit art groups will cover all aspects of the arts; either cultural, political, aesthetics and how they impact Dutchess county and society in general.

The first show aired in September, featured the newly appointed president of the Barrett Art Center, Roy Budnik. Roy discussed the history of Barrett and the art center’s future plans. The second guest was painter, teacher and gallerist, Betsy Jacaruso. She discussed her successful gallery and school in Red Hook and mentioned the Rhinebeck Paint-Out of Sept. 30th. Some of Betsy’s and other artists participating in the Pint-Out were presented in the TV studio and on the screen.

The second show in October focused on the lively art scene in Newburgh. The Newburgh Sculpture Project was featured as well as Garin Baker, the project manger and artist who is spearheading the very large mural, the “Tressle Project” near the waterfront. It is 200 feet long and 20 feet high and should be completed in spring 2007.

The November show was about Weekend on Main, with event co-organizer,
John Essick (along with Franc). The second guest was Harald Plochberger, artist and member of bau-beacon artist union an artists collective on Main Street, Beacon. bau was recently awarded the Dutchess County Executive Arts Award for outstanding arts organization.
Future shows will include interviews with ASK, (Art Society of Kingston), Carole Wolf of Mill Street Loft, Kathleen Murray of the Poughkeepsie Journal, Sara Pasti of BACA in Beacon, curators, Beth Wilson and Wayne Lempka, Mayor Nancy Cozean will discuss public art in Poughkeepsie, muralist Nestor Madalengoitia, Poughkepsie multi-media artist Sukran Aziz, filmmaker Ralph Arlyck, gallerist and artist, Carl Van Brunt, Maria of the Children’s Media Project and many others.

Franc Palaia is perfectly qualified to produce and present this arts program. He has 35 years as a professional exhibiting artist with over 300 group exhibitions and more than 35 regional, national and international solo shows,(10 in New York City). He has exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Smithsonian Institute, Whitney Museum Annex, and The White House and will participate in a group show at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC in 2011. Franc’s experience in several media allows him to ask the right questions of his guests. Franc is a painter, photographer, sculptor, lamp designer, educator, sign-maker and muralist. He is also an independent curator and has organized more than a dozen exhibitions since 1982 in galleries and museums in the US and Italy. In the mid 1970s, Franc worked as a professional cable TV cameraman, street -reporter, set designer and hosted a visual arts program similar to ArtsFocus at a New Jersey Cable TV station. He has been an assistant and collaborator to several well- known artists in video, film and photography, and they include Salvador Dali, Annie Leibowitz, Roger Simon, Robert Wilson, Crash and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Franc will present two solo shows in Dec – Jan’07. One at bau-beacon artist union will feature large scale photo light boxes of his hand colored SX-70 Polaroids and a show filling the entire Haymaker Restaurant on Rt 44 will include large scale color photographs of the Hudson Valley.
The bau show opens Dec 9 and the Haymaker show opens Dec 14. For more information call 845-486-1378.

Franc has been very involved and is extremely familiar with the Poughkeepsie and Hudson Valley art scene and cultural community. He has been a founder, member and/or coordinator of the following organizations and events: ArtHop, ArtWalk, Barrett Art Center, The Gallery Shop, Friday and Weekend on Main, Poughkeepsie Mural and Public Art Projects, Art Along The Hudson, CAP (City Artist Partnership), Mill Street Loft, Dutchess County Arts Council, Vassar College Symposia, Alexander Hamilton Show, Barrett Clay Works, Art Society of Kingston, Poughkeepsie Farm Project and the Farmer’s Market. He is the recipient of two Dutchess County Executive Arts Awards in 2003 and 2006. He was named Poughkeepsian of the Year by the Poughkeepsie Beat in 2003 as a member of C.A.P. and is a member of bau (Beacon Artist Union). He is currently the Vice President of the Board of Directors of the Barrett Art Center/Dutchess County Art Association.

ARTS FOCUS will be a forum for art and artists with art historical discussions of art trends and ideas, basically anything and everything of interest in the visual arts in the valley and beyond.

We hope you will tune in!

SAUNDERS FARM

COLLABORATIVE CONCEPTS arranged this unique outdoor sculptural exhibition with contributions by 35 artists at Saunders' Farm in Garrison. I enjoyed a sunny, harmonic afternoon amidst sculptural installations situated within a bucolic environment.

The Outdoor Art Exhibition will be on display until October 31st 2006.

For more detailed information and directions please visit COLLABORATIVE CONCEPT's blog: www.collaborativeconcepts.blogspot.com

all photos by harald plochberger, 2006

COLLABORATIVE CONCEPTS arranged this unique outdoor sculptural exhibition with contributions by 35 artists at Saunders' Farm in Garrison. I enjoyed a sunny, harmonic afternoon amidst sculptural installations situated within a bucolic environment.

The Outdoor Art Exhibition will be on display until October 31st 2006.

For more detailed information and directions please visit COLLABORATIVE CONCEPT's blog: www.collaborativeconcepts.blogspot.com

BRIDGE MUSIC

JOSEPH BERTOLOZZI

During the week of July 17, 2006 composer Joseph Bertolozzi will begin the development/proof of concept stage of "Bridge Music." The end product of this development stage will result in a concert/installation in 2009 consisting of live performances from the Mid Hudson Bridge in Poughkeepsie, NY, using the bridge itself as the instrument, broadcast live to audiences on the shore as well as live radio/web/telecasts via microphones strategically placed on the bridge's surfaces.

For the development/proof of concept stage, Bertolozzi will place mics on the very surfaces he wishes to use [cables, handrails, signs, spindles, etc.] and record them individually. From this data he will then make a demo recording to present to the New York State Bridge Authority for final approval for the actual event. There are walkways on both sides of the Mid Hudson Bridge, so onlookers and paparazzi alike can watch the proceedings as they unfold. Please stay tuned for the exact date of this first phase. For more info go to www.JosephBertolozzi.com, go to the CALENDAR menu and click on LATEST NEWS.

____________________________________

JOSEPH BERTOLOZZI’S BRIDGE MUSIC - 01

There have been myriad responses from people when I’ve described Bridge Music to them for the first time, but they essentially boil down to two models: the first involves the listener bobbing his or her head with a smile in affirmation while their brows furrow and their eyes progressively fix in an expression of incomprehension. This is typically followed by the sentence “Say that again?” The second, usually delivered by people who sort of get it, is about 40 seconds of laughter. I am prepared for this if it happens when I’m on the phone, and I usually put the receiver down until they finish. There are the usual questions (How will you hear it? Will traffic be stopped?), then the consensus is that it’s a terrific idea, but you get the sense that when they’re wishing you luck, it’s at least as much so that you don’t get carted off to the rest home.

In the next chapter I’ll detail the project in greater depth, but for now it’s enough to know that in Bridge Music I want to create a live, public musical event specifically using the Mid-Hudson Bridge, a suspension bridge crossing the Hudson River in Poughkeepsie, NY as my instrument. Using the railings, spindles, fences, trusses, panels, cables, hangers (those cables which suspend the bridge’s deck), and in fact any part of the bridge except the roadway (which will be left open to traffic) to compose vibrant, site-specific music, expanding the boundaries of known music-making while integrally incorporating one of New York’s landmarks, using the river and mountains themselves as my theater.

Composer Joseph Bertolozzi & Mid Hudson Bridge Chief Engineer Bill Moreau

Proof of concept
And so I begin the final countdown to what engineers call “proof of concept.” In the music field it would be called the demo. I have to demonstrate to the officers of the New York State Bridge Authority that my claims of the bridge being perfectly suited for music are rooted in hard fact borne of quantified results, not only in the elusive dream world of a creative artist. I’ll do this by recording the surfaces of the bridge and then retiring to the studio with those samples to write a piece for 16 percussionists, much as if I were writing a piece for 16 violins, the difference being, unlike imagining violin music, it is understandably harder for NYSBA (and anyone else except me apparently) to imagine what the bridge might sound like. The live performances would sound very much like this demo since the actual sound heard on the shores would be transmitted to speakers via the same contact microphones used in the demo recording, and from there it is a small step to radio/web/pod/tele-casting the concerts as well.

On Friday June 16, 2006, in preparation for the actual recording date (sometime during the week of July 17, 2006, weather permitting), I took a tour of the inside of one of the bridge towers. These interior visits brought me to parts of the bridge I couldn’t view firsthand just by walking across it, and now I can dream about how, or even if I want to use those spaces for my composition.

Low bridge and long ladders
Chief Engineer Bill Moreau and Joe, one of the laborers, started me out underneath the deck, traveling at about 1 mph on a motorized metal scaffold called a ‘traveler,’ with tons of vehicles rumbling overhead. Speaking of overhead, if you ever have the unlikely chance to ride on one of these, remember to either crouch as you ride or duck every twenty feet because those floor beams sure don’t care that you’re coming up. I struck a few surfaces with my mallets just to get a sense of them, but reminded myself, as my fellow passengers looked on unimpressed, that these clanks would sound different through a contact mic.

Next was the trip up to the top of the tower to stand out in the open on a metal grate-catwalk more than 300 ft. over the river, a voyage I had been mentally preparing for awhile. I’m not especially afraid of heights, but this was clearly going to be a new experience for me. Not having the training or insurance to walk up outside on the main cable like most bridge workers would, I had to take the interior ladder, climbing 178 ft. straight up in a 3 ft. x 3 ft. chamber.

Now I consider myself a man of great stamina, once having played my solo percussion project The Bronze Collection several times over the course of a week for two four-hour stretches in direct sunlight at the US Tennis Open as part of their grounds entertainment. Also as an organist (my primary instrument) I’ve had to sit and produce music for 4-5 Masses in a row plus a wedding or two afterwards and still sound fresh. It’s one thing to sit and move your fingers all day in church or temple (Yom Kippur…yikes!) or play percussion for hours on end, but I never ordinarily or willingly pick up hand tools, and having to pull myself up furlong after furlong (it seemed like that anyway) was very taxing on my grip. I coped by mainly using my hands to grab the next rung, and using my legs to push me upwards rather than pulling myself up with my “organist arms”…’nuff said. My main focus was to keep from plummeting another 150 ft. down to the bottom.

That’s not true, for before I would drop all the way down, I surely would be greeted by one of the bulkhead-like floors that separate each vertical chamber. You’ll get some sense of it from the photo but you won’t really see how far down it goes. Also, don’t let the camera flash fool you…it’s dark in there, and that’s another thing you should know before playing a bridge: it’s not for you if you are acrophobic, claustrophobic, and whatever the word is for bridge-ophobic.

Looking down inside the West Tower

After ascending about 150 ft, I got within 30 ft. of the top (I was told this by Bill who climbed up ahead of me. Remember this chamber has no windows; you go from the inside to the outside with no preparation). Being used to walking up on the outside of the cable, he forgot that there is an extremely narrow passage to go through that even he would have trouble getting through (see first picture). I was in no position to argue so we turned back, or rather, down. I hope to make another attempt because we went through another very narrow passage at the bottom of the tower, and Bill, a trim man considerate of my current girth, probably doesn’t realize how much fat compresses. Then again I wouldn’t want to get stuck up there.

Next it was down to the masonry of the piers, a descent of about 250 ft. ending up 35 feet above the water. There we found some very responsive surfaces. They were very broad and very thin, producing a nice ring or hum when struck with the side of my fist. The ladder-chamber floor openings were so narrow that I couldn’t carry any hammers or notebooks or backpacks or anything else to juggle with me. I was able to tuck a very small camera into a buttoned pocket, but that was it.

http://www.nysba.state.ny.us/bridgepages/MHB/MHBpage/mhb_page.htm
This takes you on a virtual walk across the Mid Hudson Bridge.

http://www.exploreny400.com/home.php

Text and all photos © 2006, Blue Wings Press.
All rights reserved. Used with Permission.