Hello, this is the wcsd Saturday show and I'm Claudia hamston today a conversation well to relate with Hungarian artist Bela peso who discovered to lose 10 years ago and in exhibits last fall. And again this summer at umd's Tweed Museum of Art showed us Natives and residents of the area how extraordinary beautiful this city is. This program is being presented with the financial assistance of a group of Duluth our Patron purchasers of a collection of Paces paintings for Tweed Museum about that purchase and what it means for the area later. Artists musicians writers of prose and poetry have a way of experiencing their environment. It seems almost a miracle to most of us and in their work the expression of that process. They returned to us their Vision enriching our perceptions and indeed our lives. Toulouse Hendricks Hudson in his book black stars and collected poems has a poem which illustrates that idea. It's called enger Tower. Like some more steadfast Firefly soft green against the hill and Sky the light on enger Tower glows be on the way the river goes and steady burns the tower light against the clouds beneath the night glow worms do to like the dog. They're flying through the river moving black and deep beside the shore where people sleep memory sleigh makes its way to rest upon St. Louis Bay. Across its surface row on Row The Harbor Lights reflected glow in Amber emerald and pearl shimmering where the currents World sitting toward the night. They are the 10 boys flashing light while port and starboard signals float, like color Globes above each bone 9th departing free to slide the massiveness across the tide talking the channel more and blackening the lights on shore. when Mars is red and angers green and all the white Stars Burn between and those of us who cannot sleep a video with the tower key. And know when there is no Repose the light on enger Tower glows. Hudson has done here in verse giving us the color and Rhythm the play of light on water the mysteries of Hill & Harbor as they are seldom seen by the Casual Observer looking out into the Night Vale. El Peso has brought to life on canvas who is Chairman of the art department and artist in Residence at st. John's University in Collegeville has been coming to Duluth to paying for most of the ten years. He's lived in Minnesota. I met him quite by accident this summer while lunging at UMD with a friend. He and Bill boys director of the Tweed Museum joined us and I'm going to the group of his Duluth paintings would soon be exhibited tweet John by the man and his way of expressing himself. I asked if we might get together to talk about the works what follows is that conversation? Most people looking at the city of Duluth today on a very rainy grade-a would suggest that but as an artist, what do you see? I want it going to rain today. I'm afraid I see some very soft and very nice course. So it's rainy days have that for the long run. It's dull. So I try to select a different kind of bread. Do you know and which is the Poetry of the late afternoon which produces beautiful yellow full fledged very saturated colors. So this is the main emphasis of the show and I'm not talking about the sunshine adult. Yes, really your work as I saw it in the gallery is Is Duluth is I think the Lucien's never really perceive it. We we have this kind of overall grade 8 mentality, but in your paintings I saw Aqua skies and blues ranging to purple. Do you really see those color changing and I spent cumulatively about five years hanging out somehow gets used to this kind of the kind of friction is of the stir crazy and the Indila nice day, see how this guy is very beautiful here. So is the buildings are very Orange. The people usually relates to a greater route because my colleagues at st. John's. I've met you know, what the hell are you doing up there in that crummy City and nobody believes me as soon as they see the pain text story is different so that I turned tables. How their day I hope they speak for themselves. You came to delete the first time on the recommendation of one of your colleagues the same chance. Did you know that I'm 66 colleague of mine again? What a Minnesota rifugi Viennese Society Professor. He told me you have to come with a German accent you have to come to to to lose and then I didn't even know about spell Toulouse Clinic. That's it. Do you know what could be so peculiar? I bought this place and then I have seen it became a major study of the city or did it just happen. If I can't hear iPhone the same kind of visual factors which promoted my painting so nicely in the Mediterranean. So this is like, I don't know it's a if it is very common and ordinary to see a Rolls-Royce on the Streets of London around the Buckingham Palace. Maybe it's very ordinary to see a rose rose in the middle of Africa. I should capitalize an architectural historian of a city in or trying to make a document in a small City in the midwest. Looks like I couldn't care less about this is not my favorite. Mendes and if his work is being done he is right if not then Are there many cities which have a portrait of them in such detail? Is your portraits of Duluth? That is a big question and one has to go back to history. Certainly Venice has a tremendous history of it was always the First Love First and Last Love of creyts Road Lorain and unique side of London have data painterly interpretations done by are the most outstanding painters of the past 3 400 years and older we get to American cities the closest what I remember and perhaps I might I might be uninformed on this the Museum of Modern Art Show a few years back between New York through the eye of several painters in order about 40 pieces in the show and it was circulated about Natsu and again, We do know there's a small town 100,000. They know that's all the population. You know what it's like, I don't know how or Chester New York to Cedar Falls Iowa. Leah says, it sounds like a Mad Magazine title. It is not that way especially if you look at the painting should I boil? These paintings and how many of them are there is a selection of about sixty bucks and out of the cell T belongs to the treat Private Collection Center in Minneapolis. St. Cloud Fargo-Moorhead, you know, you name it about this subject belonged to this tree down that I think it's a good idea to keep them together. They were purchased by local benefactors for the Tweed Museum and I understand that they will be then on loan to Publix to public institutions of for showing for. Of time. So to speak the whole thing is they have to provide relatively secure places and there might be some kind of a small fee, but it's good. I was wondering if speculative question really if when people see these works and they see them in their own environment rather than in the gallery setting. If it it may change the perception of delusions from looking at the city as it is a gray City. We may be begin to see the the colors ourselves. This is effective not by fiction and not by Arabic there has to be a grain of truth and truth VR not really impressed by the work of a Madman. We are not impressed by the yard stuff and arbitrariness and then all kinds of eccentricity guys, which has been revealed to us and European Sink switch our objectivity that what I am saying that under the circumstances In late afternoon sun sets this city is uniquely beautiful. And this is just as an objective statement as to buy to add up to $4. I just don't know if it's the eccentricity or or extreme subjectivity or adjuster. I'll speculative intellectualism, you know people look at these things and tomorrow, you know, I'm bad as Leah if they are not what I did I tell you was vernacular, but that you do not really rich people buy humbug. And I guess if that is any medicine the show it is Just Dance now that it is not have not seen this before, but it was that. The pace of paintings purchased for Tweed will be more than a nice collection for that Gallery since part of the plan is that they will be widely circulated available throughout the city area State and even the nation to responsible institutions for exhibitions duluthians and visitors to the city will soon be able to see the works on display in one of the local banks other institutions within interest can learn how they might acquire the paintings for display by contacting the director of Tweed Museum William Boyce. Well that first brief conversation with Bella paese who suggested that we perhaps should plan on having occasional dialogues about art since we had obviously only scratched the surface. The rest of the program is the initial exploration in that direction We Begin by discussing how an artist living in a small community and away from the mainstream of his profession cities on the east and west coasts and European art centers can survive and grow up too late because it depends what kind of artist you are. If you are highly intellectual brainy type personality type person that you have to be always on top of the latest event to know what the computer is doing to Graphics than the other neon light is doing to kind of fun. The latest technical tricks. However, I assume personally I kind of far more profound you about this is not really between East and the other that is a New York critic. I guess Leo Steinberg who says that all art is basically about art. I think he's missing the point or actress is at least a great part of art is between a man and himself and man and his environment and I don't want any major achievements in the last hundred years such as the Art of War was really a kind of reacting to the art of some other people, you know, it was really between Vulcan between nature influences what to put this issue in the center that an artist paints because he responds to the challenge of the other artists that It's a fish if it is really reaching some people Ava has to come from a deeper level than this kind of thing. I'm going to know who the hell I am. So if you don't have this kind of Constitution that you work yourself and with the given surroundings, it could be up. I don't know what kind of Metro motive could be a portrait of South Florida. If there is a constant dialogue between you and nature then you are not so much lost as one would suppose. How do you maintain that dialogue surely there are up Days Inn in down days and and all sorts of very human moods artist. I'm sure he'll have the just like everyone else. How do you sustain that creative drive when you're constantly force backup on your own resources or any kind of fuck that, because it's the nature it is so crude. It's not worse like to talk to her light work by reacting to the kind of visual stimuli rich ricchio and sometimes somebody walks into your studio and the seats down in a particular manner toward her light is calling it an interesting manner or I don't know you watching the gate Great drama of nature herbs late afternoon hours with the interests. Shadow is better shapes transform suddenly a grayish is faceless. Usually during the day become something magic, you know by it just by the Light then just buy the backgrounds or just buy what happens between light and Shadow. So if one has a fresh eye for these kind of sex, you know, that nature is so foolish. As a matter of fact, it's much richer than any of that kind of stuff, you know that comes out from avant-garde art centers. And also if one is somehow given over to move to Dallas should I kill myself then of course, he's losing this kind of what happens around him and if one cannot respond anymore, Adam perhaps, this is the end of the and the Fox Run is losing this kind of how can I see the basic? I and all that I've discovered wonders everyday if this is not Daddy and no matter how many cameras in computers and laser beams and all the tricks. We have to help. So you're saying that? Whatever we read in romantic novels are there is much more discipline and and being aware and being alert. Then it is some random romantic inspiration of the fringes of society full moon goes off to No End Pizza on Melancholy love poetry and pains the moon is it quietly sings in the water in Orange? And then that's that's what that is about actually asked. This is more than that somehow. I want this kind of adolescent phase of our heart is so autobiographical and really self-serving meaning that it's kind of a FBI work in the solenoid who reviewed all the secret tapes. Alexandra Clarkson, usually all these kind of Revelations self-expression, especially the vulgar types of expression is not contributing too much to the fellow the are not interested in the eccentricities of somebody else's private problems. Here. We are interested really the basic underlying forces, which somehow integrate all the breakdown. Kind of wall. You know, what convention Society reading education is setting up between fellow man and fellow man because I think one of the great tragedy of modern man. That is so little real communication going on between members of the society know everything what we do everything going to be communicating scheme. You know, how do you do if you got your got to come to dinner. It was so nice meeting you see you at? We are surrounded by schemes by schemata and make our life. Aren't you supposed to counteract this breakdown this kind of how do you communicate that to the larger Community? I realized that of course one way that an artist as it is is through his work and then through exhibitions of his work, but it occurs to me that in this community Angelo's we have come to the point where art is generally accepted. We've we've moved a step from Total ignoring of it to to the point where we believe generally that art is good in some rather amorphous way for the community. We're now in the process of building a cultural center. So we were beginning to put our money where your mouth is in in that sense, but It's much more than that. How do you get? Beyond that to those those essential kind of communications that you were talking about kind of a private passion in order her kind of little place and get over it has some kind of positive. So I supposed to intensify our life experiences and thereby enhance our general feeling positive feeling throughout life. The theory is that how life is somehow she + Impressions Richard they are coming down as a kind of cascade after a storm and cutting guy at that auction. Ruth trunks in the garbage heaps in all of this. Set the artist is selecting Samsung, which is Meaningful and create a kind of order. So by looking at this order and then joining it somehow we discovered a kind of stability a kind of email in an order in ourselves or even if somehow he shows it in a controlled Manner and thereby we are left with the feeling after eating disorder could be restored and somehow control. So on top of Samsung, you know, which look very chaotic and very tough for the first time that he's hoping it and thereby if that is hold that is no desperation anymore or desperation is not so bad. This might be some of the psychological Foundation Lviv me. Now the ordinary person, you know, somebody might not need Being such an acute sense of deprivation that he needs this kind of counteractant is art. But I'm sure everybody has a few moments, you know, but he would like to look or listen to something. You know about that is Clarity that is ordered that is stability, which is giving a kind of rock like a little Island. you were talking about creating order out of chaos, and All of us have tools with which we work and and a parameters within which we work I think of myself working on paper and and with lots and lots of tape and sometimes it's very difficult to create order out of that and I wish so much for another dimension. I wish perhaps for the visual dimension. As an artist do you ever wish to get Beyond? Those limitations or have you mastered your tools? So well that their friends in and not things you have to butt up against our assets is that the the artistic crisis especially in in our age and there is no methodology. No methodology to painting a salt, you know, everybody is left of it is only the sons of God and design before in The Good Old Days Inn, and the Old Masters are they learned the trade that they learned every shadow is nicely browned and every highlight is our kind of LED lighting with the little orange in it so that there was a kind of systematic way of mastering the other technique now, everybody is left on its own daily because sometimes the means are so complex that is not always that coming out on top. Highly unusual in the history of art, you know because it's some kind of a diver Edenton have in the 19th century. Impression is massage Chino was the oil they highly subjective in all this is why some other people like Sarah try to systematize the singing about what does it shows the crisis in the 19th century people felt an acute need to know to correct the situation. So I dunno and sometimes in most instances it is the book about Should I wanted to say it now and I'm still have this is a frequently Asked question of autistic experiences by looking at a beautiful sunshine. Everybody could express himself or herself as this extra luxury don't my answer is that this is not true that the average person. Could express himself or herself but not her experiences. You come back from vacation that whatever you go to Bear Bermuda or Florida or Korean Seacoast any television and suddenly it where the sun sets and I don't know what the top of the Horizon. Jean experiences to people and they politely say I know what you mean could show these things in car not in the color photograph is going to do the same thing too much would say, okay. This is what I'm talking about. Beachwood exhibition should contain a tremendous amount of communication which could not be communicated in which are important for us to imagine living in that everything would be painted gray. There wouldn't be any Sunshine that would be a kind of artificial light would not be any color and there wouldn't be any Shadows by to go. Just just that kind of uniform play know how long you would survive. isn't there also in addition to to what you suggested this this whole matter of levels of expression quality of expression if we don't have an artistic models that are really Really good. How do we measure even SS a weekend artist Where We Are Legion Hall occupational? So every traditional occupation have that traditional stand that so if somebody's watching paint out, he's automatically facing the challenge of portrait and drinks in all starting from North Ratatouille ending of the Modigliani and everybody always in between. So there are certain kind of standard scene. Which are not so much as those people would think it is not so much life like because photography is very lifelike your passport picture of your driver's license picture is supposed to be very lifelike. The passport pictures in the driver's license picture Center where I don't know but it's supposed to be scientifically objective great artists are always somehow that's so much life like because Modigliani is not life. Like there is no human being who is created the same way as more than a day out of I thought they have a life of their own the emanator life that has eight. This is what the so-called photorealist miss the boat. If I thought our Vital in art is something entirely different to know that means that the artist is setting up his own means and video These means that at least thinks these colors for man what not to know the interest in a manner which constantly keep our attention in a joyful manner alive. Photography I sync a good heart is in the same kind of category as a beautiful day or on a beautiful woman walks into a room. Nobody has any second people don't say you don't have to consult books in over that decide. This girl is beautiful. Not just look at the person the same kind of category will see late work of the God. For example of every kind of Simplicity how he drops these complex for immediate, you know, it punches you in the nose, you know, but that is no blood that ain't no but joy some kind of magic and people react to it. I don't have to know too much about art history and somehow bed that leaves us gold and I was standing in front of his the most interesting that it is not really giving of this kind of peculiar type of charge. You tell me that you called and and you mean you generally I know. but all kinds of people are going up to the Target store in spending 3998 for a piece of I have not said junk and is that Problem people need I mean even if we're only talking about wall decorations people needs something around them in their own environment to enhance it and in Richard and if they don't know, what's good. They will buy that 3998 piece of junk. How do we teach them that what's good is available and might not even cost that much. First of all, if you have to teach the function of art what art is doing it is basically a little bit of existence of philosophical proposition. It is the kind of order which is digestible to everybody on creating out of chaos some kind of an order this kind of first baseman Diaz. They have older out of the charms of act IV. The essence of it such as they have a kind of pleasing color Harmony not really too complex. Which goes Valley the couch which breaks down the monotony of unbroken flat surface like the wall. So this is really one function of art decoration, but this is about the lowest function what happens in this kind of so-called art appreciation quote unquote. Do the first approaches of an adolescent romance and a blonde daughter that had and that uses heavy lipstick and walks in that kind of fun is out automatically associated with the kind of very profound sense of beautiful femininity. It takes about 20 years for that matter or even more who is having all this kind of all thoroughly charms and rolls down on it is not the peak of femininity as a younger guy force for this kind of femininity. German name for it is teach for the same kind of corny stuff. It takes a kind of for longer. Of life experience and maturity is the distance. I basically Foley how do you tell to a 16 year old boy that the centerfold of the Playboy is not really the same day. You have a great deal of difficulty the 40 year-old old housewife who is looking for something green to match the couch and trying to tell her to look at is not about it's about something else did the same way as you see Rich old lecher see no chasing after my description. Lips on the same level of human existence and boy it is coming out in art. This fact is is it could be be able to measure we stand You come out of the European tradition all of your education and your training and your art appreciation came from deep roots of culture. What happens to kids in the United States whose whose art education particularly in the last few years since we've been talking about Everything being artistically acceptable. Whose art education has no standards. Doesn't start with the museum by the weather affect on what ends in the music by the time you are really genuinely interested in great sculpture or painting at you go to a museum espresso poses. That long ago was already behind you. Starts with the ordinary healthy visual experience is such a nice building or Nate receipts. But I mean good proportions a kind of environment which is somehow harmonious Google I grew up in Minneapolis you you see at the IDS Tower and next to it and nothing vacant parking lot Dennis more shocked than a skyscraper. It's a horrible joke. The got those so compare biscottino growing up in in Florida. For example of some Italian city like San gimignano, you know, it is every thing is is it's a tight spot. Do you know if this is missing out on the wrong foot. Which have to lay the foundations and then he died, I said if if our environments are not aesthetically pleasing to strike side to the beginning against us and it didn't make any difference to the tender age of 19 or 22 to get One Direction. Yeah, I appreciation cards in in the college, you know if you grew up surrounded by ugliness. You find yourself several times a year looking out at the young faces, which expect you to give them something if it's only instant appreciation, how do you contend with that? I'm spoofing the impossibilities aunt and trying to point out some of the subjects in our environment. For example, I didn't know of any kind of great City architectural environments to a perfect architecture environment such as the Piazza campidoglio in a virtual design by Michelangelo, and he was carefully placing these three palaces and arranging space it out to make it. A pleasure to be here and then I just look out through the window right to know in Dallas around 6 and then they going to have some kind of idea what what is fitting and what is not fitting. This is one of the biggest issues here. I think it is not going to save them. At least sit on Boards of directors of big corporations are not having lots of money and then next somebody says all right now here in the middle of nowhere. We have to have a skyscraper and Destroy three or four mountains. Blog of this Lake and going to college. I have heard that the Greeks plays the temples on points, which really harmony with nature David working with nature and not against nature is very costly. All right, then. It's very costly. We have to pay something for her for something out. So perhaps if you have B6 my Robin, how about the idea of Young people who have or people of any age really who have never known an artist coming in contact with an artist coming in contact with you or or some other artists whose recognized is doing good working in a given geographical area. Is that An important thing I seen that are very very few people on the Earth in knowing our culture who at one point or another I did not come into some kind of a contact me with any kind of opposite of the artist. I mean Sunday painters and now I'm just glad training the quality of those sexy though because I wasn't Chicago about 150 years ago through by exhibition and people that are standing in the line in front of the Art Institute the same way as they are standing in the Line to See the Christian radich, you know inside so that has to be something you know, which is very appealing get Andrew Wyatt and perhaps he is expressing. What is the oldest public? Regards as a beautiful they have golden beans they say this is almost as good as an Andrew Wyeth or it is not even approaching get them. It's automatically bad. So the problem is a it's very hard to enjoy these people out to see a landscape in a different manner than Andrew Wyeth glad he's working with if you call a bunch of olive greens and Browns and blacks and raise hell. What do we do when you look at the terrain? What is my cat suddenly drops? This is a real problem and that perhaps these people are insisting on that are very very fine and very narrow kind of view. You know, how can I give them a kind of tremendous bass security from which light cannot be taken off and out the other day as far as I'm concerned. How do you shake people? How do you shake them out of a perception? Oh, I have always liked Andrew Wyeth to the exclusion of every other American painter. I think very gradually look at those brown ones. That's very nice and I appreciate your point the fuel but now how about looking at another painter who was using a much larger variety of this Sprite no ice in or I could accept this and run could go over and say look at the talk to know he is using the jury Beauty map to end up in the forest in Dover de use the vilest yellows and violets are next to each other. Don't you point if I should read Corbett nature to a top of each other in the sky? You don't see all these kind of olive greens and Browns and still this thing is beautiful. Don't you think that that is a kind of justification which is going on down across somebody somebody is insisting on those if you Olive greens and Browns in a It ultimately boils down to a kind of very simple most simplistic type of life, you know where I work. I have my job in know I have my room and board and a square meal and that's about it. Indian life and everything guys, you just kind of fancy. Throw this whole conversation. There's one thing we haven't articulated and that is what you've come close to hitting your last and your last remarks but and that is a people really have to talk about art. It's got to be something that is significant. To enrich people's lives but also for it for our to become what it really needs to be in in our in our daily lives about that visual experiences for me to curse, you know, if you got the charge out of your secretary dressing up differently in the morning then yesterday. I love you automatically feel that these dresses, how much better then let's figure out right away rise this because perhaps he's dancing orange. Now. This is the cord which gives a kind of additional charge of Vitality otherwise drab office space people do not use the sinks at all. They just feel good about things if they would recognize Tremendous open door for artistic experience because I was talking about you a great deal about this kind of sings all the kinds of experiences which could be experienced by the census and not intellectually it is is a kind of dialect is send you off this. This word is really badly abused in central it all but the meaning of sensuality is much higher than that. If I talk about this day our artistic not really send you are because they have a little bit of honey. Components to in sculpture and painting to which these Center Falls it would be wrong. If they would be at that would be a difference between raw meat hanging down there and between Forum Forum events through oral video of the mind and it is something I already know. It is a Samsung essential and reveals not only itself but something Beyond it. So if you look at great news of me, and you don't get meet you guys for if you look at the center for you get me to know so actualities play boys are Santa photos. Are they do not belong to a heart that they belonged to a journal such as meat Cutters weekly experience as the artist that takes place. Does it matter of fact form is an enhancement of three-dimensionality meet what you got that in a shapeless decoration of it? There's an adage that says what you want to do is leave them wanting more and so I think we are too close this interview and pick it up another time because we certainly have touched up some interesting possibilities. I I'd like people to kind of Sit quietly and in think about it and and indeed react call us up. If you if you want to know more. I'll write down the questions and and in my next conversation with Bella peso will take up some of your questions. Thank you very much do artists in Residence and chairman of the Department of art at st. John's University in Collegeville whose paintings are as colorful as his conversation. Are you sure you keep his head to this program are available at a nominal charge and we've lost four letters and calls on this particular program and others of the Saturday show two reactions pro and con topics you'd like to hear more about comments on wcsd and NPR. Generally. We really do mean it the Finish program of two weeks ago elicited quite a response a number of cassette orders and this letter from dr. Rodger Matteson of Duluth. This letter is in reply to your fine program. Some of my best friends are finished and to thank you and Scandinavian Designs Unlimited for your efforts. My wife and I are both three and a half generation finish Americans making our children 4 and 1/2 Generations. Pure. I agree that your program help to teach them their roots and it's self-reliance work and Sissy got sand performance in the long run are important. I would have missed the program were not mentioned in the Saturday Morning News Tribune. So thanks for the extra publicity Karen and I both saying in the Finnish Bicentennial choir since early riser Mattson MD. Let us hear from you to know medium of communication to operate with only a one way switch with plan to take time on this program to read and reply to letters. So all we need now is your response next week Opera is on our calendar with the Duluth production of the elixir of love coming up on the 17th and 18th of this month and the conversation was poet Michael Dennis Browne. So be with us then Saturday at 10 for the Saturday show. This program was made possible with the financial assistance of a group of Duluth. Our patrons purchasers of the peso collection for Tweed Museum 40 hempston technical direction is by Jana Carter. This is wcsd Duluth broadcasting from the campus of the College of Saint Scholastica.