>> They find the beautiful rocky coastline, the ocean, crashing waves, and unspoiled land.

>> BOWEN: I'm Jared Bowen, coming up on Open Studio-- making the rounds of two artist circles-- Cape Ann and Monhegan Island.

Then, Foster Prize winner Eben Haines.

In making space for artists, his mantra is "go small or go home."

>> It was a way to kind of get around the financial constraints of building things and use the space to photograph my work that I wanted to make in the future.

>> BOWEN: Plus Frida Kahlo-- how the Mexican painter struck a pose for all the world to see.

>> She really teaches us a lot about ourselves.

>> BOWEN: And from roosters to romance, the art of Cuban painter Mariano Rodríguez.

>> He went off on his own and created his own unique, radical style.

>> BOWEN: It's all now on Open Studio.

♪ ♪ First up, miles of ocean separate Cape Ann and Monhegan Island.

What bridges the two are the American painters who made their mark in the 19th and 20th centuries, and made both New England getaways their creative home.

A new exhibition at the Cape Ann Museum features the artists connected with these still-thriving artist colonies.

As much as artists have always been drawn to, say, the sea, they've also felt the gravitational pull of each other.

Throughout art history, it's been the crux of many an art colony.

>> In the case of Cape Ann, it is a place where teachers and... art teachers and students and professional painters, amateur painters all seem to gather and find inspiration amongst themselves.

>> BOWEN: Cape Ann has been a draw for its harbors in Gloucester and Rockport-- places which have long found a balance between bustling and the rustic grit that defines ages of seafaring.

Martha Oaks is curator of the Cape Ann Museum.

>> Here in Cape Ann, where it's a very welcoming place for artists, and everywhere you look you can find something that attracts you no matter what medium you work in.

>> BOWEN: But many of the same artists who have made Cape Ann their artistic oasis have also found their muse on Monhegan Island.

One hundred miles up the coast from Cape Ann, it's a picture of stony isolation.

>> They find the beautiful rocky coastline, the ocean, crashing waves, and unspoiled land.

>> When I was there this summer, I stepped off the boat and literally the first thing I saw was an artist at an easel.

>> BOWEN: Oliver Barker is the director of the Cape Ann Museum, which, along with the Monhegan Museum of Art & History, is presenting an exhibition documenting the growth of the two enduring art colonies.

>> It's looking at that period of the late 19th century into the early 20th century when artists were searching for their own unique American voice.

And I think perhaps why they were drawn to these two rugged landscapes to try and encapsulate that, that new sense of American identity.

>> BOWEN: Artists began creating arts colonies in both locales in the years after the Civil War, when transportation improvements made access to Cape Ann and Monhegan easier.

Both places, Barker says, illustrated the differing dimensions of an America on the mend.

>> In recalling that these works were made at a time when Gloucester was in its heyday, it was America's largest seaport.

And I think that you see the working industry of the fishing industries here.

Going to Monhegan for the first time this summer, and sitting on that boat and going out from Port Clyde for 12 miles out into the middle of the ocean, and what impressed me about that experience is that there are people that live there year-round, and it obviously was a way of life.

It still is.

And this to me, it shows a pioneering spirit.

>> BOWEN: It was also a spirit of welcoming, Oaks points out, as we tour the show.

Especially for women like artist Theresa Bernstein, whose work we find here.

She was a pioneer in her own right as one of the early 20th century's leading artists.

>> This shows a group of women artists in the Folly Cove neighborhood.

And we see some of the local people-- the woman who ran the boarding house where artists stayed, the man who supplied her with the lobsters that she cooked to feed the artists.

>> Well, we just long for days like this here in the fall, right?

>> I know.

Eric Hudson, whose painting is shown here, he's one of the few artists who actually resided in both places.

The story is he would frequently get in a dory or a small boat and actually take his canvases out with him.

So not as much in this one, but some of the paintings you look like you're actually in the trough of a wave with the artist looking up at these big fishing vessels.

>> BOWEN: What carries through these works is an aura of place, something that comes from years, if not decades, of familiarity and careful observation, as we see in a lifetime of work by Stow Wengenroth.

I love works like this where you can smell the wood almost, you can smell the evergreens.

>> (chuckles) Yeah.

What we have here is an early lithograph they did in the 1930s of a Cape Ann scene and then on the bottom, a drawing done on Monhegan.

And he was really a master of black and white.

It's just remarkable.

When you look at them, you really think you're right there.

>> BOWEN: And, as both Oliver Barker and the artists still working in both places today remind us, we still can be.

>> These landscapes are all still here around us.

So we very much hope that people, when they come to see the show, will also then step outside and explore this wonderful place.

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: Amid the pandemic lockdown, we all had to figure out how to scale down our lives.

But artist Eben Haines, who just won the I.C.A.

's Foster Prize, turned downsizing into an artform.

In response to COVID confinement, he created the Shelter in Place Gallery, a miniaturized exhibition space where fellow artists could show their work without worrying about the big budget and supersized venues that installations typically require.

Eben Haines, thank you so much for being with us, and congratulations on the Foster Prize.

>> Thank you so much.

>> BOWEN: So we'll talk about more your work at the I.C.A.

there, celebrating the prize in a moment.

But first, let me ask you about Shelter in Place Gallery.

How do you describe what this gallery is?

>> It's a miniature gallery that was born out of the pandemic as a way to give space to artists who were suddenly without space.

As the pandemic closed down the city, studio spaces closed down and art galleries closed down and things.

And so people were kind of without a home for their art in many ways.

>> BOWEN: So I understand this correctly, so they'll show... so they'll make a small version of their art, it shows in your gallery.

People see it and then that leads to something bigger when they create a much larger image of their work.

>> Yeah, exactly.

It's kind of like a blueprint and, and proof that they're able to do this work, and proof that the work will look, look good at that scale.

And so then they're able to go on and do it later.

>> BOWEN: What is fascinating is it took me a little bit, and I'm sure a lot of other people, I'm looking at this, saying, "Well, where's the miniature gallery?

I'm looking at the real gallery."

But this also ties into the work, the design work you've done for the Museum of Fine Arts, too.

What labor, what effort, what intent did you put into making this so real?

>> The space kind of originated as a way for me to make small maquettes that looked regular size.

And so it was a way to kind of get around the financial constraints of building things.

And I could use the space to photograph my work that I could use then towards, like, grant applications and residency applications and stuff and kind of fake the work that I wanted to make in the future without having to spend the money or have the space for it.

>> BOWEN: Artists who are in the spotlight in Shelter in Place Gallery, what's the opportunity?

I mean, obviously you wanted to give them a space during the pandemic.

But as this has grown, as it's gotten attention, what have you come to understand about what it means to the artists who've been able to show in it?

>> Well, a lot of artists that have shown with us have been able to go on to have shows, to have solo shows based on the work that they created before.

But then at the same time, it's, it's proof that this kind of space is really necessary in that, especially in Boston, with the crazy rents that we have, like, this space doesn't really exist in full size.

And so giving artists the opportunity to make these smaller things in the smaller space for way, way cheaper and also most people don't have studio space that can handle work of this size, and most galleries that are this size can't really afford to show this kind of noncommercial work.

And so by having it all small and just by existing, we're able to kind of give artists this opportunity to have these ambitious solo shows but without, you know, all the general baggage that comes with that.

>> BOWEN: What are artists facing in this city, as we see... you drive in and you see the cranes going up everywhere, we see the development that has come at the cost of artists who are in buildings that have now become prime property for developers?

>> A lot of property in the city that was light industrial or commercial space is being re-zoned as residential.

And then we're building these big towers.

But that obviously means that, you know, an artist is not allowed to use loud tools and power tools and things in a residential building, and so artists are continually pushed further and further outside of the city.

But eventually you get to the suburbs and there's no more of that space left.

And so eventually there will be no space left for artists.

>> BOWEN: And so do you find yourself in that situation as well?

>> Yeah.

My studio in Jamaica Plain about three years ago was bought by a developer and torn down and turned into condos.

And then actually my current space, we were just told, has been put up for sale.

And so we're kind of in limbo waiting, waiting to see how long we have left in that building.

>> BOWEN: And what's... some people may be watching and think, "Okay, well, okay, so they have to move to the suburbs."

What's the difference in your estimation of having a community here in the city versus being displaced and sent further outside of the city?

>> You know, as you spread people out, they have a lot harder time communicating with each other and talking to each other and learning and, you know, things in dialog like that.

And so when people become these kind of islands on the outskirts of things, I think that really disrupts the way that art works because art is a community project, no matter what.

>> BOWEN: What's the community you saw come together, online especially during the pandemic when we couldn't physically be together with the gallery?

>> Oh, that was rather striking.

I mean, you know, as everybody else's communities were becoming extremely insular, oftentimes just within their own home, our... the people that we are meeting just kept growing and growing.

And suddenly we were meeting literally, like, well, now we've had over a hundred shows in the gallery.

But all of a sudden, there are just, like, so many amazing artists making amazing work right, right down the road.

>> BOWEN: So where do the museums come in to this ecosystem?

And you're in the interesting space now where the Shelter in Place Gallery, your physical gallery is now at the Museum of Fine Arts, where you, as I mentioned earlier, also work.

>> Yeah, it's interesting.

I mean, museums are kind of a hard thing because they have a lot more money to put towards projects than individual artists do.

But at the same time, they have a lot more rules than, than other spaces would have.

>> BOWEN: Well, shifting to the Foster Prize and your exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art, guide us through what you've created here.

You're, you're interrogating history.

>> Yeah.

The idea is kind of like taking this... the look of these period rooms that you see at museums, but kind of pulling them out and making making very clear that this is all an illusionistic space.

Because the show itself is about housing insecurity in the city and what is a house for and what is shelter exactly, and who is it for?

And the current thinking is that property is an investment that you can pull money out of.

But in reality, you know, people need a place to live and shelter is a human necessity.

And so this idea of monetizing it is a pretty strange one, in my estimation.

And so this show, I'm trying to show these illusions that we already believe in, you know, like the way housing is supposed to work, quote unquote.

But then you can see as it breaks down the way that this furniture kind of gets sucked into the walls and things like that, and it's trying to break up this common idea.

>> BOWEN: Something that struck me as I was walking through it is how much is obscured.

You have the furniture that's disappearing.

You have images that are... that are kind of clouded in smoke and windows and cabinets that are fogged up.

What are you telling us there?

>> Well, I'm trying to think a lot about, you know, like who actually lives in places, and, you know, when we think about the development in the city, we don't think about the people who actually lived there before the building got torn down and turned into new condos.

We do think about the new residents and the bike paths that we can put in and whatever else.

But a lot of it is about this idea that, you know, the most important person who has ever lived in a building is the person who is living there currently.

>> BOWEN: The installation there is also so experiential.

And I'm wondering about the materials you use, if they're found or... obviously not all are found, you've painted them, created them.

But is there an element of that to the work?

>> Definitely.

So, I mean, a lot of all the flooring in the exhibition and a lot of the furniture and some of the walls are pulled out of old houses.

I was able to talk to a guy who does demo and likes to preserve things and try to find a good home for them because, you know, he's tearing out all these old beautiful houses and it all just goes into the dumpster, which is pretty horrific.

So a lot of that is from houses that are being either renovated or torn down.

>> BOWEN: We've talked a lot about these issues in this city, especially with the recent mayoral election.

This is an issue that's... gentrification has afflicted artists for, for decades and decades and decades in this country, do you see it changing?

Is there hope?

>> I do hope that it's changing.

Um, I don't know if I necessarily see it.

I mean, so there are newer rules that do mandate more affordable housing.

Sometimes that is artist housing and things.

Oftentimes the housing is inadequate for being an artist.

You know, it's really... they're like, "Well, here's where a studio could be."

You're like, "No, but that's a living room and, um... "that just... that you call a studio, but it doesn't make it a studio."

So, I don't know, it's... it's not as bleak, maybe, as it once was, but it is definitely slow and changing for the better.

>> BOWEN: Well, Eben Haines, it's been great to speak with you.

I can't wait to follow your career and see what is next from you.

Thank you so much.

>> Thank you so much for having me.

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: Mexican artist Frida Kahlo has become just as famous for how she looked as how she painted.

As an exhibition at Brandeis University's Rose Art Museum reveals, that look was entirely by her own design.

This is one of the last weeks to see the show, so we revisit a story we first brought you earlier this fall.

It was a deep and years-long cultivation: this young girl casting the camera in her spell before growing into one of the most recognizable figures of the 20th century.

She is Frida Kahlo, whose dress, hair, and eyebrows were all methodically considered and constructed.

>> She had so many mirrors around the house-- indoors, outdoors, inside the canopy of her bed.

They were a tool for her to pose.

She was composing her identities.

>> BOWEN: Gannit Ankori is the director of the Rose Art Museum, now presenting Frida Kahlo: POSE, a show she co-curated tracing the path to an icon.

How mindful was she that there was an audience for most, if not all of these photographs?

>> Well, I think that she was very mindful and she used to give her photographs, autograph them and give them to people, and tell them, "Don't forget me, never forget me."

>> BOWEN: The unforgettable face was first and often captured by Kahlo's father, Guillermo, an architectural photographer who charted his daughter's transition from a cheerful toddler to a young woman disabled after a bout with polio, then severe injuries resulting from a bus accident that left her literally at pains to emerge as someone new.

>> What's special about her is that she took all of that and not only survived, but thrived and created something that's so impactful.

>> BOWEN: In her early 20s, Kahlo adopted what became her signature style.

While others were taking their fashion cues from Europe and Hollywood, she began wearing the dress of Indigenous women throughout Mexico, a nod to her pride in her Mexican heritage.

>> She established a relationship between her wounded body and dress from a very early age.

>> BOWEN: Longtime Kahlo scholar Circe Henestrosa says that while Kahlo's dress was inspired by the powerful women traditionally wearing this style, it also disguised her disabilities.

>> This dress is composed by a headpiece and a short huipil and a long skirt.

All the adornment of this dress is concentrated from the torso up, distracting the viewer from her wounded legs and her broken body.

>> BOWEN: The focus on her upper body also accentuated what would become Kahlo's hallmark monobrow and mustache.

>> It informs also her gender identity, because her choice of dress and her construction of identity is not only informed by her ethnicity and disability and political outlook, but also by her queer identity.

>> BOWEN: Among Kahlo's identities: a masculine one.

>> She was posing as a man when she was 19.

This is a time when gender fluidity, there was no name for that.

But she was performing that in front of her father's camera.

>> BOWEN: Without inhibitions, as Kahlo would demonstrate in photographs that document the close and sometimes sexual relationships she had with women, in addition to men.

>> She really teaches us a lot about ourselves.

She was way ahead of her time in many ways that relate to identity, disability, ethnic identity, and being who you are.

>> BOWEN: Which was an artist who never received fame in her lifetime.

Not that it deterred Kahlo.

The pose she maintained in pictures-- often with a direct gaze toward the viewer and a slight turn of the head-- was the same she carried into her paintings, which Ankori says were expansions of the photographs.

>> Paintings allow her to add symbolism.

She shows herself to think about herself within the cosmos, within broader contexts.

So this is also, I think, a unique aspect of her contribution in art.

>> BOWEN: Kahlo was 47 when she died in 1954.

Bedridden and with one leg amputated, she had become, as she described it, "the disintegration," although neither her work nor her look wavered.

Even on her deathbed, where she painted this final self-portrait.

>> She's almost disintegrating into becoming a flower.

And she's still wearing a Tehuana dress.

You can see the deterioration, both of her body and her capacity to hold the paintbrush.

This shows her resilience.

Yes, it was the waning of her life, but she continued to paint, to insist on posing.

>> BOWEN: All to leave a legacy that now makes her a legend.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: Next, we go to heart of Cuba with one of that country's most celebrated avant-garde painters.

Mariano Rodríguez was a prolific 20th century artist whose exposure in the U.S. was cut short after the Cuban revolution.

There's a must-see excavation of his work, also in its final weeks, at the McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College.

Cuban painter Mariano Rodríguez was a painter of scenes, mining the richness of island life, the beauty of its women, the abundance of the land.

>> He looked to everything that was kind of descriptive of his experience of his world in Cuba.

>> BOWEN: Especially embodied throughout his career in this recurring, feathered image.

A rooster that became synonymous with Mariano, as he preferred to be known.

>> The rooster is a bad boy.

(Jaren laughing) The rooster is cocky and the rooster is proud.

And the rooster really is all about male virility, and the countryside, and battle.

Mariano, what is interesting about him, is he never lost the cock.

He never lost the rooster.

And he never lost the peasants and he never lost the female.

But it was the way he was reinterpreting these themes.

>> BOWEN: Elizabeth Thompson Goizueta is the curator of Mariano: Variations on a Theme at Boston College's McMullen Museum of Art.

>> It's pretty amazing.

>> BOWEN: The show, she says, is an exploration of how the artist focused on the same subjects, but through myriad styles over his 60-year career.

>> He went off on his own and created his own unique, radical style.

>> BOWEN: Launching his career in the 1930s, Mariano, like many artists of his generation, looked and traveled to Mexico for inspiration.

>> Mexico had been this kind of center to national conversations on the beauty of the indigenous people.

The beauty of what was simple and what makes Mexico unique.

>> BOWEN: But the Mexican influence was short-lived when Mariano discovered New York.

That's where he had his first exposure to artists like Matisse and Picasso and where his work began to bear threads of their own.

>> While he was here looking at the museums and these different styles that he was absorbing and adapting and translating into his own language, he also was exposed to what was beginning to be this nascent movement of Abstract Expressionism in the United States.

>> BOWEN: Which is how Mariano continued his exploration-- returning to his themes of nature and women, but through an abstract lens.

And this is where Mariano left off in America.

As U.S. relations with Cuba disintegrated after the Cuban Revolution, which Mariano supported, his work faded from view in the U.S. >> Emotionally, this is a... this is very important.

It's a very deep feeling for me.

>> BOWEN: Speaking to us from the Dominican Republic, Alejandro Rodríguez is the artist's son.

He recently toured the exhibition, seeing some works for the first time-- like this sprawling crucifixion painting.

>> I saw my father beside me.

It's complicated to separate the father from the artist.

When I am in these rooms, those persons come together.

>> BOWEN: Rodríguez says his father was always working-- even when he wasn't.

>> Always working.

He's a workaholic in the arts.

There's a pencil and a pen during dinner and he's always drawing.

He's artist 24 hours.

>> BOWEN: The painter's most striking variation came in the 1960s, when his marriage began to crumble.

He found inspiration in late 18th century painter Francisco Goya, who often dwelled in darkness.

Mariano did the same.

Elizabeth Thompson Goizueta calls these works "the Grotesques."

What is he doing with the grotesques?

>> That's what I asked myself when I saw these really hallucinatory figures, the voyeurism, the exaggeration.

I think he was beginning to ask himself, "What am I about and what are my paintings about?"

When he talks about the influence of Goya, he says, "Goya taught me how to be free in my painting."

And I think he wanted to be free of what he had been doing before.

And I think he wanted to explore something radically different.

He was looking at both attraction and repulsion.

>> BOWEN: Attraction, though, ultimately won out.

Moving toward the end of his life in the 1970s and '80s, Mariano often found artistic solace in sensuality-- his figures becoming ethereal.

Same for the once solidly rendered rooster.

And in what he called his Masses series, Mariano imagined Cubans merging together as a whole.

Aesthetically, it's the final variation, a far cry from any other point in his career.

>> He is saying, "Yes, there are rules, "but the rules are there to be broken.

And this is my contribution."

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: And that is all for this edition of Open Studio.

Next week, our most memorable interviews with performing pairs like cabaret couple Alan Cumming and Ari Shapiro.

>> There are surprises of seeing each of us slightly out of our element.

And you get the kinds of conversations that you might hope to hear from a deep, thoughtful public radio program and the kinds of song and dance numbers that you might expect from an Alan Cumming show.

>> BOWEN: And getting to the heart of Love Story with Ali MacGraw and Ryan O'Neal.

>> I liked the kiss, I remembered when we kissed I thought, "Hey, is this possible?"

>> That was good, that was a really good kiss and I thought, "Hmm, this could be three months, mmm."

(laughter) >> BOWEN: Until then, I'm Jared Bowen.

Thanks for joining us.

As always, you can visit us online at GBH.org/OpenStudio.

And you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter, @OpenStudioGBH.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪