12. Brian Jones
Creator's Cafe Episode 12: Brian Jones: Creating the Space with host Jessica Payne of Kika Labs
I join my former professor Brian Jones for a special in-person episode live from the Artist's Hand Gallery and Espresso Bar in Indiana, PA.
Listen on your favorite podcast app here
Show Notes:
Follow:
Artist's Hand Gallery
Sandglass Theater
When I put on your Glove
Creator's Challenge: Emerging Vision Board
Collect images that feel like you. Rip them into pieces and assemble on a vision board, not aiming for anything realistic. Then paint or draw the essence of what you have created.
Bio & Intro
Brian Jones is Scenic and lighting design professor and former department chair of theatre and dance at IUP, my undergrad. Brian has designed scenery and lighting for more than 200 productions across the nation, while holding a full teaching load. He’s my former professor!
Brian’s the Founding executive director of Footlight Players youth theatre program. And most relevant to this episode, Brian is the founding owner of The Artists hand gallery and espresso bar. At the time of this recording I am in town visiting my family for the holidays and stopped by to do my very first in person podcast episode from the artist's hand so you will hear espresso machines and all the activity of a working Cafe and gallery enjoy the soundscape as part of this episode.
Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Ed Simpson
Sandglass Theatre
Quote:On Commitment, by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Until one is committed, there is always hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising to one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no one could have dreamed would come her way. Whatever you can do or dream you can begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
Creator's Cafe with Jessica Payne of Kika Labs
Host Jessica Payne of Kika Labs breaks down the subtle and the sublime of the creative process with inspiring artists at the Creator's Cafe.
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Transcript:
Jessica
Welcome to Creators Cafe. I'm your host, Jessica Payne. I'm a performer, performance coach and multi-hyphenate creator. I'm going to be bringing you conversations with some of my favorite creators where we talk about the sublime and the specifics of the creative journey. So grab a drink, get cozy. Let's go. Brian Jones is a scenic and lighting design professor and former department chair of theater and dance at AUP.
That's Indiana University of Pennsylvania in Indiana, Pennsylvania, which, by the way, is where I went to undergrad. And Brian was one of my professors. Brian has designed scenery and lighting for more than 200 productions across the nation while holding a full teaching load. He's also the founding executive director of Footlight Players Youth Theater Program and most relevant to this episode.
Brian is the founding owner of the Artists Hand Gallery, an espresso bar in downtown Indiana. At the time of this recording, I was in town visiting my family for the holidays and I stopped by to do my very first in-person podcast episode from the Artist's Hand, and you will hear the soundscape of people working near us, the espresso machine whirring, and even people walking through the shot and being greeted cause the regulars.
I got to meet some of the artists and talk to the man behind the Magic of a real creator's café. My former professor and now friend Brian Jones tears. Hello and welcome. Brian Jones to Creators Cafe.
Brian
Thank you. It's great to be here.
Jessica
Yeah, well, and thank you for hosting.
Brian
So, yeah, we have a café, we have a espresso bar here in the Artist’s Hand Gallery.
Jessica
So this is this is incredible. So I'm visiting my dad. Hi, Dad. He's by the camera back in Pennsylvania. And so this is in Indiana, Pennsylvania, at the artists hand Gallery and Cafe. And can you just start off with telling us what you're drinking? Oh, I'm.
Brian
Having a delicious chai latte. Yes.
Jessica
And I'm having a warm latte. And it's wonderful in beautiful mugs as well.
Brian
Made by a local artist through me. These are at St Paul Pottery. I know. Burch Frew. Yeah. Wild. Yeah.
Jessica
Wow. Hi, Birch. That's so funny. Yeah. So tell us all about the cafe that we're in, because this is kind of the dream, right? It's a place for artists to get together and showcase work.
Brian
Well, it's a I could go on a long monologue, so I'll try to keep my answers short.
Jessica
Medium monologue.
Brian
The the artist's hand is really an art gallery with an espresso bar in it, but most of the people who frequent it on a day to day basis really rely on it to be a cafe, to be a place where they can have their third officer hang out with friends or with a lot of people just come in here and chill and have a cup of coffee, maybe read a little bit.
Brian
I called it my bird feeder when I decided to open an art gallery and we can talk about that separately. Yeah. How does somebody decide to create an art gallery? Yeah, but the the thought that I had was that nobody's going to be in the habit of going out and going to the art gallery. Let's say let's go to the art gallery today.
Brian
But they would go out for a delicious drink of some sort. And Indiana has a reputation of having some really nice coffeehouses. So I thought, well, that will help people come in and then they'll see the art and give me a chance then and the staff here to demystify it a little bit for people to have some affection for art and not think of it as something other people have, special people have.
Brian
It's really an art for everyone.
Jessica
PLACE Yeah. Bringing art to the people.
Brian
Exactly.
Jessica
That's really wonderful. So when did you conceive of this and how long did it take you to get there? What did that path look like?
Brian
I sometimes refer to it as my midlife crisis. Better than a sailboat, but for me anyway. But the more the notion came to me after I'd been because I'm a professor over at Iope and a scenic and lighting designer by trade and training, and I'd been promoted to full professor there. I was about to become department chair. I had become department chair, and I realized that this is really where I'll probably retire to.
Brian
I'm good. I'm really happy to be living in Western Pennsylvania. I really like it. And so I thought I'd, instead of being outward focused and going off to other cities and doing theater design in venues away from here, I might get on the Indiana Arts Council and contribute to the community. And when I did, I found out how many absolutely bonkers good artists there are in this zip code.
Brian
And so I started thinking about what we could do to get them in front of people. So because I'm a theater maker, right? So I think in terms of audience, yeah, I really thought about this in terms of delivering an audience to artists work. Yeah, and I couldn't run it myself. I found some people who could. I found some people who could help me make it operate on a day by day basis and started small with and It's a Wonderful Life event.
Brian
We just did a gallery for a month during the winter season, the gift giving season to see if it would go and it did so great.
Jessica
And for the audience, this is Indiana, Pennsylvania, where Jimmy Stewart, who is the star of It's a Wonderful Life, was Born, who I met when I was two, and I got to sing at his house for some of the stars and his wife. Yeah. So, yeah, it's but it's the movie was partially kind of inspired by Indiana, which has this, oh, you know, small town, homey kind of feel It.
Brian
Does feel an awful lot like Bedford Falls. Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica
So that event is really kind of savvy to start it off with. How did it take the steps kind of developing from a one time event into what's now clearly a flourishing space?
Brian
Well, there's and such is the reason that this exists at all is because of my parents and my father, particularly moved here with me for about a year. He was in failing health. I was taking care of him and he passed before he went through all of his money. And I hadn't been counting on that. And I received a little bit of an inheritance and I thought, you know what might be a really good lasting legacy is to do exactly the opposite of what they tell you to do when you have a windfall of money and they say, sock it away for a year and not do anything with it.
Brian
And so I went out and bought a building. Wow. And and I'm glad I did. Yeah. Got a venue that we could make over into into a gallery. Discovered very quickly that renovating a downtown building is more expensive than I had even thought and have I had to get investors. So I got to learn a lot about business in in many ways.
Brian
And in fact, I sometimes chuckle when I think about what my father might say about this. I think he's taking me to business school, You know, after in his afterlife, he said, You know, you're going to learn business one way or another. He offered me his business when I was a kid.
Jessica
What did he do?
Brian
He was an independent representative for material handling equipment. He was a salesman. Yeah, and a lot of work. And so I said, No, I kind of want to go to college. And that was okay. I'm kind of first generation college that way. And then I, while I was in college, discovered that there was this other side to theater that I had done in high school.
Brian
I'd performed in high school, and I wasn't terrible at it, but I was not going to make a living at it, performing what I was pretty good at designing and building things. And so I talked to my parents and I said, Can I study this now? My father was an amateur artist. He painted all the time and he gave away everything.
Brian
He didn't really have an audience like this. He didn't hang in any galleries or anything. But he he was good. He's very good. Wow. And so in a lot of ways, this is an opportunity for me to to use his his funds, like, I suppose his and my mother's funds as a legacy gift to to in the end.
Jessica
It's really incredible and just this amazing downtown space where people are gathering all the time and wandering around and looking at the art and having meetings as we talk, which you'll hear. And I think that's what's so special is there's, you know, people a few feet away meeting and chatting and looking at art, and there's a woman on a loom behind me, and that's really special.
Brian
It's the kind of space it isn't exactly what I had imagined, but it's exactly the kind of space that I look. The details are different a little bit, but I also ended up getting into the coffee business a little bit accidentally. I had somebody lined up to run the espresso bar out of the building and to be a completely separate business and they pivoted and moved their business to Pittsburgh.
Brian
Okay. And so we still work with them.
Jessica
Okay.
Brian
For our supplies and for a coffee. But he said, you know, you could just operate espresso by yourself. And I said.
Jessica
Yeah, sure.
Brian
We learned a lot and got pretty decent at making delicious drinks. And now we that's that's a part of the business too. And it it helps it helps drive the bottom line so we can keep the doors open.
Jessica
Yeah, that's incredible. How do you go about finding artists to be represented?
Brian
Well, the first year when we got established was I wouldn't say it was a bit of a challenge, but we really had to make ourselves known that we had to get out there and talk to artists that we'd met. Sandy and I. Sandy is the one weaving back there and she was the first business manager of the gallery and the person that the two of us were on the Arts Council together.
Jessica
Oh great.
Brian
Cooking up the idea that, you know, what this town really needs is, is a is a gallery. So at any rate, what was the question?
Jessica
Just how you go about finding the artists and.
Brian
How you go about finding the artists. So she knew some local artists, I knew some local artists, and she did most of the legwork in getting them under contract. And we just offered the space to people that we knew. But they also told to friends who told to friends. And then word quickly got out that we were we were a legitimate gallery to work with, but we knew what we were doing or at least we had the appearance of that.
Brian
And and Greg Langham was the first one to sign up. And he he knew people and had friends. And so very quickly, we had, I'd say, about a dozen artists that we could start putting into our inventory right away. And now we're up over 30. Wow. And to and we can be pretty selective. Yeah, we still want it to be an art for everyone space.
Brian
And that includes the artists I find developing young artists. Or sometimes I'm thinking Ken Fehrman right now, who very much reminded me of my father actually. He had been a heavy equipment operator, heavy equipment engineer throughout his career, and then he retired and he went back to drawing and painting and doing the things that he had loved. And he brought in a couple of paintings.
Brian
I still remember them are Trillium, these little flowers that live in the shelter. We ravines in western Pennsylvania. And they were good. I mean, they weren't remarkable, but they were good. They showed. They showed a really good competence and it seemed like this was somebody I could invest in that that he was going to get better over time as he practiced more and more.
Brian
And what he really needed was an audience base to show his work and maybe sell a few pieces so that he could develop the confidence that is necessary to keep painting everyday. And drawing. Yeah. And now he does. He paints and draws a lot. We've shown a lot of his work here. He sold several pieces. He comes around to the studio events and draws and paints.
Brian
We do classes and workshops in Open studios as well. In the studio space behind you. And you know, he's not unusual. He's a particularly visible success story in my mind. But there are others who have really grown in the gallery, so I'll I'll take a look at it. It's it's it's tricky. It's not always it doesn't always work out.
Brian
But I'll take a look at where somebody is at and where they're going with their artwork. That's fun. But really, it's it's not a two or three person gallery. It's it's a it's a some people have described it as a community gallery. And I take that as a company.
Jessica
Right. And you're walking a line there of not everyone can just put a piece of art up on the wall. There is true. There is a standard that you're looking for. And so to have both is probably an interesting line to figure.
Brian
Out, and it can be a little bit difficult to walk, but we do the best we can.
Jessica
Yeah, absolutely. And I'm assuming that that was exciting to be developing this. While you were the dean of a department at Little College.
Brian
Yeah, Yeah, actually, I was the department chair in department chair in colleges. I was a department chair, theater, dance and performance at IUPUI, which is a big job. Yeah, it's a big job. I stepped away from that last May.
Jessica
Congratulations.
Brian
4:00 in the afternoon.
Jessica
Not that you're coming.
Brian
Why should that be really memorable? 50 years is long enough for anybody. Yeah, well, at least for me. And. And so for most of the time that the gallery has been in existence, it's been run by other people. Sandy was the first manager saying he wanted to get back to her artwork. And we hired two or three managers after that.
Brian
And Sandy took care of operating the books and the office work and that sort of thing, which she's very good at, and then platformers and stuff like that. So a few years later she wanted to move on a little bit further away from the business, although she still runs our classes and the the Yeah, the effort was on to find a full time manager for the gallery and we found somebody, but it just didn't work out.
Brian
They needed to leave after just a little while and so it happened to be and we'd done a pretty diligent search and there was literally just this one person that stood out that we felt like I could turn the keys over to us. Right? And so Lynne and I, my wife Lynne, and I kind of looked at each other and said, well, it's May.
Brian
How are we going to find a manager? It's right before summer break. I might be able to carve out a little time from teaching and running a department and we'll just actively manage it ourselves and really come to know it. And that was four years ago now. Wow. And so, you know, I was enough in the swing of running a department as a department chair, I could it was hard, but I could still to vote some discretionary time to the gallery and train some people up to work around us.
Brian
I mean, I have employees.
Jessica
Yeah.
Brian
And then COVID hit. Wow. Wasn't there? Yeah.
Jessica
What was it like going through that? Terrible. Yeah, yeah.
Brian
Yeah. It was public gathering places. Really Thought we'd have to probably close our doors. Yeah, the peep loans and the emergency grants and things like that. We applied for everything that we could find, including the county had stepped in for us too, and provided us with a no interest loan and Small Business Administration, and we were able to keep up with the people loans in particular.
Brian
I'm really proud of this. We were able to keep our employees on payroll even though they weren't working because they couldn't work. We couldn't. Yeah, you know, we couldn't have customers. We ran some, we ran some remote. So you have to go to exhibitions and and filmed work on the walls. We tried everything.
Jessica
Yeah.
Brian
But when we came back, it was we were one of the success stories. We were succeeding in downtown Indiana. And, and now I'm really pleased to say that we've got another major gallery just recently opened this year down the street there's Birch Through has put in Stow called Pottery. Oh, there, there downtown version of it they mostly teach classes.
Brian
They do sell a few things out of there, but it's mostly classes. They have some kilns and things and it's the city mouse version. This isn't really a sort of the pearl of of what he has out in the woods. It's still called pottery of north of town. So. Wow, that's really nice to have in town. There's a cure rate and create, which is a craft based store down by the railroad tracks on Philadelphia Street, Seventh Street Market Tree has there's a lot of boutique shops and things, and sometimes you'll have some artsy objects.
Brian
A new place just opened up with called the paper and waiting for your. Oh no, I don't want to go up on this name.
Jessica
I can put it in the show notes later if you figure it out.
Brian
The the paper or something. The paper. Something's got Indiana. It's down it's down on Gompers really close to right across the street from Stow, whole pottery downtown. And they have they sell teas and books and used books and new books. And they're just a lovely place to to hang out. So we're a nasty little, nasty little town. The creative space is collaborative.
Brian
Funded by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Started up and got a grant to put in murals. You probably notice them all over town. It's just a great place to visit for the arts here in Indiana.
Jessica
Yeah, well, you're doing a good job as an advocate for the arts here that you're spending your time kind of celebrating what everybody's doing, which I appreciate all that.
Brian
And that's that was intentional. We we would love for this venture to inspire others to take the risk of opening a business in the arts. And when you get enough of that in a town, then it becomes an arts destination and people come from distance to come visit it. Yeah, that's our that's our long range goal in ten years.
Brian
We'd love for this to be recognized as the cornerstone of a renaissance.
Jessica
An arts hub. Yeah. Is there anything else that you kind of have hopes for the cafe specifically moving forward and galleries, stuff like that, or is it feel like it's in a good place to sustain it?
Brian
There's nothing really on the horizon in terms of changing it. I think that we're getting ready to go into maybe our first really step, but maybe this is our first really stable year since the pandemic. So we have a range of exhibitions next year, but we kind of know that we found our groove a little bit again, I think that we want to we want to stay with me when I talk to the other managers because we have an arts management group.
Brian
I'm only here three days a week and it's going to be even less when I go back into the classroom. I'm on sabbatical this fall, so that's been kind of nice for me to be able to be in here three days a week. But we have a management team and we talk about the long view of the gallery and its story and really what we'd like to think of it as.
Brian
It's something that someone ten years from now will be so successful that someone will want to acquire it and run it themselves, because I'll be what, 73? Then we'll be probably ready to not be running a art gallery. Yeah, I'm just thinking.
Jessica
Yeah, absolutely. So it's in a in a solid place. But yeah, the legacy could continue and the community hub could continue. Could continue.
Brian
Yeah, we are looking for ways to, to, you know, get beyond our walls. We show some work at a nearby brewery. One of our artists shows work there, but people can purchase it online through the gallery. So we serve that function in getting artists out in front of other people. I'd like us to maybe inspire an art fair downtown again.
Brian
There used to be an arts fair called the New Growth Arts Festival. I remember that.
Jessica
Yeah, I used to go to.
Brian
That and we've kicked around the idea of being the stimulate it or that helps bring that back at some point and the next couple of years.
Jessica
Do artists work on commission? Is that how the model is?
Brian
Really good question. Yes. Okay. We would never be able to purchase this amount of artwork out, right? Nor could we really turn it over. Like most art galleries, we take work on commission. We'll take a few small gift items, particularly at this time of year, and we'll buy them outright wholesale, a lot of times.
Jessica
Pottery Yeah.
Brian
We'll just buy a whole, almost a whole kiln full of pottery. Yeah, at a little bit lower price to to supplement. But virtually everything you see here is on commission. Yeah. It's a 6040 split. Okay. Front about that. And then artists need.
Jessica
To the artist.
Brian
Get artist get 6060.
Jessica
Oh nice go.
Brian
And a lot of galleries go 5050 now.
Jessica
Yeah. I was just going to say I think that's very special that you are trying to get the artists to get the majority there. Yeah, absolutely.
Brian
Now what we also do is we, we hope the other side of that is that we and other galleries, even some 5050 galleries, will require an artists fee, a membership fee to be in the gallery. And we do the same thing as small as $10 a month.
Jessica
Oh, that is. But it's just that is small. It's just an acknowledgment.
Brian
Yeah. And it helps people, I think artists think of this as a place where they want to change over their work. They want to produce work that will want to be acquired by somebody else. And it's not just a place to hang up for posterity. Yeah, bunch of stuff that never sell.
Jessica
Is that something that once you sign with an artist they are in charge of or do they work with you or do you.
Brian
Work together on.
Jessica
What pieces are up?
Brian
Yeah, I see. I have the right of refusal, I suppose a piece that I, I think the other side of that is a better way of putting it. I, I select pieces that I think will stand a chance for this audience.
Jessica
So we've talked a lot about the artist hand gallery and it's a beautiful and wonderful space. Let's talk about you as an artist. So you have designed 200 plus shows.
Brian
Oh, yeah, probably 300 plus. Now my sea view is a little bit dusty.
Jessica
So what are some favorite highlights from the years? Wow.
Brian
But, you know, I'm a scenic and lighting designer, so a lot of times what I'm called on to do is just breathe life into a space for for a particular play. So, you know, having absolute favorites is a little strange. It's a little it's applied art, unlike this work. One of the reasons why I think this works is that I've been gathering art and looking at it and examining it all my life as a function of how I do my creative work.
Brian
I, I gather artwork or visuals. I mean, I when I'm teaching my students, I call it our image bank gathering, an image bank that goes into the design that you'll eventually make. And some of that stuff is really great visual art. Some of it is just photographs and things like that. So, so favorite pieces, I'm kind of I kind of went often into a rabbit hole there.
Brian
Yeah. One of my first favorites was a production of Romeo and Juliet that I did a bazillion years ago at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. My first really long term teaching assignment. I was tenured there. I grew restless. I decided that I wasn't where I wanted to live, but the the people that I met there, and particularly Larry West, who was a director there when I was there, and one of my students, Brian Wynne, who's now a lighting designer in the University of Iowa, but designs all over.
Brian
He's really great, does a lot of work in Chicago, really gave us a you know, I think I really feel like that was a turning point in terms of working creatively with a collaborative team. In my own work, I find it, I find it difficult and kind of all inspiring that people that make this kind of work can just start with a blank canvas and go, I think I'm going to make this tapestry or this watercolor or this oil painting today, right?
Brian
It's just and they start laying it down. I'm much more of an ensemble kind of maker. Yeah. And so I need I need that inspiration, I think. And sort of urgency. If we have this play, we're going to produce it. It's going to happen, you know, 35 weeks from now. Yeah. So, you know, let's get going. Yeah. And you read the script and you do the analysis of it and you start thinking about the world that these characters live in.
Brian
And that's really exciting. But I hadn't up until Romeo and Juliet really had not. I'd really thought of sort of the classic version of a designer, and that is sort of highly illustrative of the play. Yeah, creating an environment for the play to take place in, of course, sort of a an allied artist that provides something rather for those people over there as opposed to being one of those people over there and, and coming to decisions in the making up sometimes fairly late in, in the rehearsal process.
Brian
Yeah. So I think of the designs that I make as being better when they stay open for a while rather than closed and can change and adapt to what the director and the actors are discovering in time and space. Because, you know, the director can have the mental movie of what they want to have happen on stage with their cast.
Brian
But that's never what's going to happen on stage because actors are actors who are brilliant, beautiful people that do so much hard work and making making characters come to life so and so. That's a really tricky rail to run down because it has to be substantially like 80, 90% of that has to be ready for them to inhabit so they can do their job too, right?
Brian
So they know they can environment there.
Jessica
Yeah. Where is the wall? Where are the steps? Just some of the practical things. Yeah. So what's your favorite way when you are in a situation where you have a fair amount of freedom? So there's some limitations in the script that it calls for X, Y and Z, but there's also room for open interpretation and encouragement from a director.
Jessica
What do you do in your creative process to kind of decide which direction you want to take something artistically?
Brian
Oh, that's that is different. The answer to that is as different as the people that I'm working with because I'm, you know, they're giving me clues, too. We're all in the same thing together. Let's go back to the production of Romeo and Juliet again. It wouldn't have occurred to me to design it the way that I did if it hadn't been for such an articulate director who imagined the the production sort of hovering in space and time.
Brian
We started with an interesting premise. I think it's the premise, you know, there has to be something that I'm not sure this is answering your question, but there has to be something that kicks off the imagination of what, if not unlike what an actor faces with creating a character. And I remember Larry said, what if the the Montagues and the Capulets were 1930s Mafiosi in Italy, one sort of new family, new money, the Montagues, you know, maybe wine merchants or something like that that had found their way into wealth.
Brian
And we're trying to figure out how to use it. In the only game they knew, which was very family based. Right. And then the Capulets corrupt as hell and full of old money and and dressed quite differently and behaving quite differently. Yeah. And so two families both of like, you know, the whole, the whole lead in to our Prolog, to the play suggested this possibility.
Brian
And what we, what I painted were a couple of large family portraits hanging above the space. And it's a very it's a gunpowder play right it's it's anything can happen to set off violence right Everybody's just sitting on black powder waiting for something to go off in that play, I think. And so the opening scene eventually became through a series of conversations, all quiet white, these these pictures of these two families, maybe they could be sitting for a flash old fashioned, you know, with a flash pan.
Brian
Oh, yeah. And the black powder and everything. So that's how we fired on the very opening moment. Yeah, it was complete darkness, eerie music. The two paintings that have been lit there go black. Also, the characters come out on stage and take their poses and we see boom, boom. And we see that after image in our eyes of just the families standing for their portraits above.
Brian
And it really set that moment, then set everything else we were going to do. Yeah, and it was very the other what if was what if the space were. I remember Larry saying this, I don't want to have a balcony. I don't want to have to work to get Juliet up to the balcony down from the balcony, all the balcony stuff.
Brian
That's for the Globe Theater that was written for a time and an audience and a certain set of circumstances that we don't have. What if there were no balcony, Brian? What would that look like?
Jessica
Okay.
Brian
And so we ended up talking about multiple points of view at the same time. We saw Picasso painted, right, the whole abstract modernism that he was he was looking for a different method of painting that involved putting multiple points of view on the canvas at the same time.
Jessica
Right.
Brian
So you're so you see the face on the side of the wall and the scalp of the woman's face all at the same time. And it it's a very rigorous kind of method that he was outlining for himself. So we equated that with with how the space was used, that just because Romeo and Juliet or in the balcony scene doesn't mean they're in the exact same realistic physical relationship to one another.
Brian
Juliet could be on kneeling on a chair using the back of a as the balcony and looking down, and then Romeo could be over there also with a chair hand on something and looking up and our and it's a lot about trusting the audience too. Yeah. And the audience comes into it quite a bit, trusting the audience to put those two images together and go, Oh, that's the deconstructed balcony scene.
Brian
And that allowed then, because there's a problem with the balcony scene, you probably run into it. Somebody has to be secondary in the scene. Somebody is playing out and beautifully to the audience and somebody else. Is a quarter turned away from the audience to try to be in relationship with with Juliet or with Romeo, depending on how you're staging it.
Brian
So that allowed us to pull that, rip that apart and present both of those.
Jessica
So then they're both taking it out to the audience, directly out. So then the audience is required to connect the dots between them.
Brian
Exactly.
Jessica
That's really.
Brian
Interesting. And we've done enough of that work in between, you know, through all the scenes that I that the the audience kind of knew the game by the time they get. That was one of the difficult sledding places where it really ripped the play in the space apart. Yeah, there were other times where Juliet, her bed and her funeral beer are the same thing.
Brian
Oh, she goes and lies down on her bed but has but but has a dream and rises up and trying to replay it in my mind after she dies and she's in the in the crypt she's laying out on the scene rectangular block with sort of renos on. So you kind of trim around it as as she was when she was doing the bed scenes and the the bedroom scenes with with Romeo.
Brian
So so she lays down on that. She's taken the potion so she's not truly dead, but she's in an almost dead state. She's laying there and then she rises up. And I painted the floor in a circular pattern of stones and things. She rises up and walks in a funeral procession. It's in her head. It's a funeral procession with a censor and smoke billowing out of the sensor and people carrying portraits in the fine Italian style of of of a funeral procession.
Brian
Well, she's walking around this round desk that we can also represent space and time with. Tybalt comes walking. Now Timothy's dead right. But Tybalt walks through and they narrowly just miss each other and they sense each other. Wow. But they never quite. She she senses something's wrong. Something's odd. He senses something. But they're in two different places. And in the afterlife or in the piece.
Brian
And it's just those kinds of possibilities. Yeah. Just really were really profound in that setting. So maybe that's when I first realized that I really enjoy making spaces for dramatic action to take place. Yeah, as opposed to illustrating plays which some designers are great in. And I don't I kind of marvel at some particularly the mid 20th century musical theater designers who did these beautiful drop shows, wing and drop shows and things, and people would go to the theater to see the stunning, beautiful work.
Brian
And that's not what I do. I, I prefer actually to work intimately with the director and the cast to try to create the right space, to make their work possible.
Jessica
And I think that I mean, something that's always stood out to me with your work and you as a professor of was your ability to kind of find potential in a moment and people and see that invisible thing before other people see it. And help pull that to life in an ensemble.
Brian
The imagination, right? Yeah. Being able to have that visual, that ability to imagine in your mind's eye, we call it, right? Yeah. Something that has never happened before. Yeah.
Jessica
And I really like that. That couldn't have happened. Your ideas couldn't have happened without the team. But also ideas then influence the acting in the moments.
Brian
It's right.
Jessica
Yeah.
Brian
So there are other times like that. One of my favorite directors to work with. You might know this guy Simpson. Oh, hello. Oh, man. Some of the best work I ever did was at, and I really think Ed and I worked a lot.
Jessica
More than.
Brian
I did Chopin.
Jessica
Yeah, I thought so.
Brian
Yeah. So we took the cases. Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica
I was his assistant director for that.
Brian
Or Oh, yes.
Jessica
To the director, whatever.
Brian
That was. You know, we talked about favorite shows. That was one of my favorite shows. Yeah. And it was inspired by a little bit of what I mean, what if this was a very artificial Italian renaissance style world with the wings of hard scenery and all of that. But I relied on an artist, a very specific artist. I don't know if you know the the illustrator and children's book author, Tommy de Pola.
Jessica
I believe it or not, I was in his national tour of Strike.
Brian
Where I strike it strike. You know, I love strike, you know well strike a known and other books by him. But I remember striking on them I did more than maybe others that it was a form to the style in which the illustrations in Chopin were made on all of the flats and wow, all the visual elements.
Jessica
Yeah, well, I mean, I saw Bill Irwin's version of that at A.C.T., and I loved it. But I think your design stood on its own and I loved it. You know, they were both excellently done. But, you know, somebody might not expect that. Like western Pennsylvania, you know, a theater department is going to stand up against one of the great regional theaters.
Jessica
And I really think it did. And it was beautiful and well-executed and fun and bright and just informed the world of that place so. Well.
Brian
Yeah. And that is the world of the play is what I'm always after. When I teach my classes in design, we start out talking about what's the world, what are the rules of the world this play takes place in and they may not be. In fact, they probably shouldn't be our world's rules because the fun stuff happens when the rules changed.
Jessica
I wonder if there's something special you bring to the table too, because you do a lot of the lighting design and I'm sure sometimes the sound design as well that you in addition to the scenic design, because I've worked with a lot of scenic designers who are technically incredible artists, but it feels a little 2D or 3D, but it doesn't feel like a living, breathing environment that someone is.
Brian
Yeah, I really think of your affecting. I really think of it taking time place in time. Yeah, right. You mean the four D? Yeah, I work in 40 when I work as a as a scenic and lighting designer. And I think lighting design helps you think in terms of the fourth dimension because it's a time based medium. Right.
Brian
Come on through. Alex Yeah, it's definitely a4d proposition, so I actually find it difficult to think about scenic design and lighting design separately when I, you know, I'm imagining the world of the play. Is it just all, all those things run together? I don't always get to be the scenic designer, the lighting designer. Sometimes I'm doing one or the other.
Brian
Yeah, but in my mind they're they're happening at the same time. They're there, they're co-mingled. I other fun productions, Cabaret, where we were, we put the pit for the Kit Kat Players were actually in the pit of Fisher Auditorium. And my goal and I think we did okay. And this was another Ed Simpson getting Brian into a lot of trouble.
Brian
Yes, it does. Yeah, he's good at that. Yeah. You know what? What if the world of the Kit Kat Club inhabited the entire Fisher Auditorium? Not just Kit Kat Club and all of the cabaret shows up there, and then the audience was sitting safely over here. Now it's a scary and exciting musical. If you're brought into that world and you're inhabiting the same space.
Brian
So we made, in a way, a big oval room out of it. And I remember making fake wooden green panels of all of that wood that's in Fisher Auditorium that went all the way up on stage. And we built a stage. This is I don't think you were around for this, but we built a stage out over, I think the first seven or eight or nine rows of seats and Fisher Auditorium.
Brian
And you have to remember that that is on a slope in two directions. So every leg for each platform had to be cut to a different level.
Jessica
So you taking an old giant proscenium theater and making it into the Kit Kat Club?
Brian
Yeah. And turning it really into a.
Jessica
Cabaret.
Brian
Cabaret space instead of a proscenium space. Wow. It was fabulous. It was fun. It was crazy. It was. Yeah, it was hard. Oh, but yeah.
Jessica
Really, that fits the feel of the show beautifully.
Brian
I like to see a place where when the show is done, it's changed the space somehow. I'm roaring. Eric Overmeyer’s play “On the Verge” that we did it we ever state again with Larry was the play took place on a rigged disk I guess I like the circles I was in my circle phase at that time maybe.
Brian
I don't know. But I remember there were I bought two giant boxes of dyed light blue turkey. Feathers on the verge takes place moving through space and time again. Right. And I ended up looking at a painting by Green of Clouds. Come on through at least you know, and probably familiar with the painter Mark Green, who did the surreal skyscape some cloud scapes.
Brian
In fact, we painted a bunch of those on the proscenium wall. I got into a lot of trouble for that and then had to have contractors come in and repaint the proscenium walls. But yeah, it was worth it. It was really cool. But but there were also all these feathers across the stage. And so every time these Victorian women would walk across the stage, feathers would go in every direction so that the what the floor looked like was constantly changing underneath their feet.
Brian
It was almost like they were walking through pillows of clouds and things. It was beautiful.
Jessica
Wow. And that matches that style of that play, so. Oh, yeah, that's really cool. Okay. It is time. It's time. Well, what is your creator's challenge for my honor?
Brian
I know this is so hard. That is so hard. I had hoped that something would pop into my mind. Uh oh. It's even as you spoke that. But. But, yeah.
Jessica
Can I give you a suggestion of.
Brian
Please do.
Jessica
Something that I think I still have in my home is one You had us in class do something like draw a person, but they're abstract energy.
Brian
And. Oh yeah.
Jessica
And I wondered if you could. And so, you know, one of my best friends, Annie, did mine, and it was beautiful. And it was just this abstract kind of colorful drawing. So I don't know if there's a version of that that.
Brian
Maybe the steps that we took before you got to that was to first experiment with line and see how line could be changed to present anger or joy or love or all of those things. Yeah. And then we were also, you'll recall, making collages so people call them mood boards or dream boards now, and it's kind of chic to cut out pictures and and put them together in some sort of pattern.
Brian
But I still think that that's part of my process for doing scenic design is to gather a bunch of images and then put them in a collage in my mind perhaps, but they're related together. And then that collage of if you were in the generation of students in that class that I think you were, it was a collage of self.
Brian
And all of those images that you gathered were about you. And then I asked pairs to using line and color and shape and looking at the collage of just then draw or paint, just not as a real illustration, but as something it's informed by those collages and by those like o shapes and things. At least that's the way I remember.
Brian
That's probably not true.
Jessica
I mean, that's what makes that makes it make a lot more sense for me because it was so good that it didn't seem like it was just a single abstract moment. Yeah.
Brian
So what's.
Jessica
What's the baby version of.
Brian
That? That. So how do we do that in 10 minutes? Yeah.
Brian
All right. First 5 minutes. Gather a whole bunch of images that you would think of as related to yourself. Okay, Cut them up into pieces. In fact, it's better instead of cutting them with scissors to tear them into pieces, because it's a much more visceral thing. And what you're trying to fly around is any preconceived notion of what that thing's going to look like.
Brian
Just everything in an image that seems to have something to do with you for an intuitive reason, you don't never have to explain it, shouldn't have to explain it. Grab those things and get them all together onto sheet of paper and and and lay them out. Rearrange them, if you will. But they'll have an arrangement. And then for the second 5 minutes, take a pencil, a colored pencils, something fast, watercolor, pretty messy.
Brian
And people are never confident enough about watercolors. But markers markers would be nice and bold, get a piece of paper and look into that collage of stuff that you've gathered about yourself. And then look at the lines and the colors and the shapes that are in there. Forget everything else. Just lines, colors and shapes. You don't have to.
Brian
It doesn't have to look like any particular person. And using those lines, colors and shapes draw a self-portrait of what essentially is herself. But draw draw a composition made of those lines, shapes and colors.
Jessica
Yeah.
Brian
And I'll bet you you'll be able to discover something about yourself in what you end up putting down on the page.
Jessica
Do you do you encourage that to look representative of a person, or is it more of an energy or is it.
Brian
It's more of an energy? It's more. Yeah, it's more.
Jessica
Of mine was pretty abstract.
Brian
Yeah, it should be abstract. You should not be trying to create correct ideas and noses and mouths, because what we also want to do in that regard fly around your symbol system. We have a symbol system. Look around with us that looks a little bit like a smiley face, right? A face is a round thing with a dot in the middle of it in a curve.
Brian
And that's what faces are. They're very complex constructions with planes and round places and variations of color that are just amazing. And you want to really get around the symbol system of what a face looks like and just get some lines and shapes and colors down. And then should it someday become a face that would be cool. I mean, you could use it as a as a launching point to then drawing a face or something.
Brian
So.
Jessica
Yeah, mine was pretty special and that's why I still have it is it kind of felt like a vortex or a flower of becoming of some kind that somehow cut something of my essence that I had not seen before. And I think that's an.
Brian
Anti an anti did that Yeah she's you know.
Jessica
A talented artist who knows me through her so that's pretty special to have. But also she wouldn't have sat down and done that unless you gave her the challenge.
Brian
So we'll pass it on. Thanks for that suggestion because I could have gone for the go in a lot of different ways. But my my tendency is to think of projects that are a little bit longer than 10 minutes. The minute challenges are hard for me.
Jessica
Your modality is pretty long.
Brian
You know, it is. Although I've been working in a brief form, you may appreciate this if you've ever done it. Well, I know you have devising and improvs. The work. I just came off a summer intensive with stained glass theater company. Yeah, I'm working on some. The thing that I'm excited about now is a puppet. Yeah, And this is another revisit to how I.
Brian
How I tend to work no matter what I'm working on with other people. I like working with other people. Yeah. I thought that after the intensive, I would be, you know, in my lonely artist's garret figuring out my puppet performance that I would unleash as a masterwork on the world and goal is to teach this class in the spring, but also invite same class theater for their production of When I Put On Your Glove, which is a beautiful piece that Shushan Abbas has created out of taking over the artistic direction of her parents puppet company, a theater company, really, but they predominantly do puppet work.
Brian
One of the things that the bastards do and Shoshanna does very well is help people build puppet performances out of transcribed life events. So, you know something that has happened to you. You be interviewed, interrogated a little bit, and get you to a point where you can create a not a puppet version of that, but a puppet performance that is inspired by the themes and ideas that come out of that.
Brian
Okay.
Jessica
Yeah. And is that where your show came out of, or was this more in conjunction with what you've learned from.
Brian
More in conjunction with what I've learned from them and the prompts that we were giving? One of the things I'm working on right now, I think you'll get it, is I'm learning to let go of some things.
Jessica
Oh, yeah. Okay. How's it going?
Brian
You know, not like you'd expect. Yeah, well, I'm no longer department chair. I'm anticipating retiring in the next couple of years, so. Yeah, you know, there are some things to let go of there as well. There's a certain that my daughter, who's turned 26 and is really living her own life. Yeah, I'm go.
Jessica
Of the filmmaker.
Brian
Yeah very exciting. Well, that's really great for me.
Jessica
I mean, you're biased, but I.
Brian
Am absolutely fantastic. That's my that's my story and I'm sticking to it. So. So that's sort of a jumping off point. You know, it'll be a festival of puppetry based upon the action of letting go. Oh, wow. Yeah. And one of the cool things about puppets is that it's the best work that I've done. And I think that a lot is when you can learn to let go of the side of the swimming pool, so to speak, and, and, and go.
Brian
It's just like an improvizational scene. But it's, it's also it's less like theater.
Unknown
Than I thought it was going to be a scripted theater, and I thought it was going to be.
Brian
What I mean by that is that in the theatrical performances, we very often reference plot and understanding how those narratives strand sticks together and characters have given circumstances that they bring into the room when they come in puppets, none of that. You have this inanimate object that you're breathing life into. You're putting it into a situation of some sort, and then just stand back amazed at what happens.
Brian
And you're basically trying to get whatever it is that you've created into some degree of trouble, right? Oh, sure. I'm trouble leads to a lot of really cool, fun stuff. Yeah.
Jessica
Yeah, yeah. I found that with writing too, that you have to create your characters and then let them get into trouble.
Brian
Yeah. Yeah, that makes a.
Jessica
Lot of sense.
Brian
Yeah. And not worry about so much about the plot in the story until after they start speaking to you. Yeah, that's.
Jessica
Cool. Well, where can people find you at the artist hand.
Brian
You can find me Monday, Wednesday or Thursday and Saturday at the Artist’s Hand. Yeah, but, but you can were at www.theartistshandgallery.com. If you just put the artists and are going to get a calligrapher in with a Carolina somewhere.
Jessica
Okay I'll have it in the show notes.
Brian
Great. And Bryan at the artists and gallery dot com is my my email and you can find me starting January over on campus that I would be quite a bit in Waller Hall trying to make magic and working with my friends.
Jessica
Yeah that's pretty great.
Brian
Yeah it is. It's a great life. I'm I live a blessed life. I, I got trained up and doing theater years ago and I've managed to live most of my life making theater. So it's pretty exciting. Yeah.
Jessica
Yeah. And you're sharing art and with the community in so many ways, it's pretty incredible.
Brian
But one of the things that that another alum spoke to me about years ago when I was anticipating I had maybe become department chair and I couldn't figure out why. And she said, well, you know, think about it for a minute. You create spaces for people to succeed and for people to do things in. And that's when you think about all the different things that I've done in my life kind of thread together.
Brian
That's really it. You know, I create spaces for other people to inhabit and succeed.
Jessica
Creating spaces for.
Brian
Art. Exactly. It's pretty great. Yeah.
Jessica
Do you have anything to pass on to my audience or any any less Fox?
Brian
Oh, wow. What a responsibility. Oh, well, one of the things that you prompted me with earlier was one of my favorite quotes or anything like that. Yeah, one of them that I've carried with me just about all my life is Goethe’s famous quote about commitment. Once one commits to doing something one once, once when somebody says, yes, I'm going to jump in with both feet, I'm going to do this thing, then the heavens and providence open up and make things possible that you'd never thought were going to be possible.
Brian
You never imagined yourself. And so I'm a little bit dangerous that way. But the the LLC, that is me, that is called ambitious, fun. Oh, well, it's called ambitious fun. And I get into trouble sometimes. I've got an idea. Let's make that happen and see one and see what happens.
Jessica
That's very similar to how I live. So that's probably why I resonate with you. So I like that you made it official.
Brian
It can be a little dangerous, but it it also requires a level of commitment from yourself that leads to getting things done.
Jessica
Yeah, absolutely. Well, this was fantastic. Thank you.
Brian
So glad to see you. And I'm so proud of you going out and making such a great life for yourself. Thank you. Even Kyle Bo. Yeah. You know, you're awesome.
Jessica
We've done some pretty cool stuff together. Yeah. Ambitious, fun, Definitely. Well, thank you so much.
Brian
Cheers. Thank you for your time. Cheers. Yeah. Thank you.
Jessica
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