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

>> BOWEN: I'm Jared Bowen, coming up on Open Studio: from roosters to romance-- the art of Cuban painter Mariano Rodríguez.

Then a return to Oz with Wicked author Gregory Maguire.

>> When I felt mental incapacity crowding upon me, I need to dig into my imagination and find something new to see, and Oz, interestingly enough, was still there.

>> BOWEN: Plus, we dive into American waters with artists you might not expect, like Georgia O'Keeffe.

>> What she saw at night is the beach before her, the far distant horizon with a lighthouse, the wave rolling at her and the vacant space that is everything where the narrative should be.

>> BOWEN: And a Florida artist who sees the light.

>> The concept is, you know, it's a very feminine idea with the moon, the tides, water, how we're all connected.

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

♪ ♪ First up, 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.

But now there's a must-see excavation of his work 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."

♪ ♪ >> ♪ And nobody in all of Oz ♪ ♪ No wizard that there is or was ♪ ♪ Is ever gonna bring me down ♪ >> ♪ Down.

♪ >> BOWEN: That was from the blockbuster musical Wicked, which just helped kick off the return to Broadway.

Just as Gregory Maguire, the author of the bestselling book that inspired it all, returns to the world of Oz with a new trilogy set in the Wicked universe.

A product of the pandemic, the first installment, The Brides of Maracoor, is about to hit bookstores.

Gregory Maguire, thank you so much for being with us.

>> Thank you for having me.

I'm really glad to see you again.

>> BOWEN: And in person.

We very much love that.

Well, let me start with your book.

We... we thought-- and I think you even said-- you had kind of retired from the Land of Oz.

It seemed like a pretty definitive departure.

But, and I apologize for this, but is there no place like home?

Did you have to get back there?

>> (laughing) Well, there's no place like home when you have to go abroad during a pandemic.

And to be stuck at home with some teenagers, and no international air tickets, and not even a library card that was functional because the library is very closed, where do you travel except in your imagination?

So it's been my experience for most of my life that when I felt mental incapacity crowding upon me, I need to dig into my imagination and find something new to see.

And Oz, interestingly enough, was still there, despite the fact that I hadn't visited it in ten years.

>> BOWEN: But it surprised you that it was still there?

>> Well, not really.

I knew it was going to be there.

I just thought somebody else can unroll those maps after I'm dead and, and see what happens next.

I didn't expect to be the one to be doing it myself.

>> BOWEN: I'm always interested in process.

So I guess my first question is, do you normally go away to write?

And so what is your process if you're at home and writing?

>> Well, I don't normally go away.

I only go away in my mind, as it were.

And the process, Jared, is not much different from how I developed it when I was in third and fourth grade, which is I buy a new pen and I buy a new notebook where it hasn't been messed up with smudges or bad spelling errors.

And I start on the first page and I start writing by hand.

>> BOWEN: So you're writing this during the pandemic.

How much of the themes of this world, the pressures we're all under, the stresses, how much do they work their way into your novel?

>> I'd say in this case quite a bit.

I've always used it... these particular creative efforts as a kind of way to consider what is happening in the contemporary moment in which I'm living, and try to find a way to survive it.

So the book, The Brides of Maracoor, starts on an island that not only the seven inhabitants can't get off, they don't even know anything about the world beyond the island in which they've been raised since infancy.

So that feels sort of pandemicky, doesn't it?

>> BOWEN: Well, that's as you're talking, I'm thinking the world changed so much and so quickly, we, we careened from one thing to the next.

(chuckling): So is there a lot of careening in the novel, too, as your... as you in the... in this world are adjusting and writing about this world?

>> Yes, there is, because one of the things that happens in this book-- and indeed it happens in most of my books that are set in the alternate universe that includes Oz-- is the friction between the lives of common, humble, perhaps not very well-educated individuals, and the sociopolitical dynamics that strangle their lives and their world.

>> BOWEN: Well, going back to your world, is it... was it... even though you're returning to the world of Oz, as you say, we're now dealing with the descendants of the characters we know from the original Wicked.

Do you... was it hard at all to leave those characters behind and start to think about the next generation?

>> It is no harder to think about the next generation than it is to turn from the casket of your great-grandmother and take your great-nephew in your arms, even at the service and say, "Here we are together still, let's... let's see what life has to offer."

>> BOWEN: What about the fans?

I mean, fans of your stories are so ravenous between, between the theater adaptation, your books of course-- I'm going to ask you about the film in a moment, the upcoming film, that is.

But how much allegiance do you feel?

Do they ever filter in?

Do you think, "Oh, well, look..." Maybe this is the Misery, the Stephen King Misery story, right?

"I can't do this or I can't do that.

"That might upset them.

"I might get my ankle slashed by a... smashed by a sledgehammer."

>> I have...

I've had those...

I have had those worries in the past.

Luckily, my ankle... my ankles are no longer attractive enough for the sledgehammer.

So I feel like I've escaped that, that particular future.

My fans have been extremely respectful by following me in directions in which they didn't know I was going to turn.

And, and they don't always agree with what I've done.

Lots of times I get...

I get revisions of, "You know, the last chapter should have gone like this.

"Here's 40 pages of handwritten material so you can see "how you should have done it.

You know, pay attention next time and do it better."

All that suggests to me is that the world that is alive to me is also alive to my readers.

That makes me very happy.

>> BOWEN: So what was it like to experience... you were just in New York for the reopening of Broadway.

And what better emblem than the reopening of Broadway than to see Wicked back on stage?

You are one of the central figures, in addition to some of the original cast who were there.

What was that like?

>> Well, it was... all I can say is 18 years ago when Wicked opened and there was a Broadway premiere, I thought nothing could be more exciting than this ever in my life.

But I did not anticipate a pandemic.

The fact is that of the 1,700 people in the room, all vaccinated and masked, there were maybe only two who had never seen the play before.

So that every piece of stage business got its own round of applause.

People started laughing at jokes before they were said.

It was really, really thrilling when at the bottom of act one, Elphaba lifts up and sings the last verse and chorus of "Defying Gravity."

>> ♪ I am defying gravity.

♪ >> She lifted up, and she's like, ♪ It's me ♪ And the entire 1,700 people lifted up, too, and started screaming.

>> BOWEN: Well, I can't let you leave without asking about the film.

I understand that they're beginning to assemble for filming the long, long-awaited film adaptation of the musical, which is an adaptation of your story.

>> Right.

>> BOWEN: What can you tell us about it?

>> As far as I know, principal casting has not begun yet, but the teasers are out there every two or three days, you know, it's like, you know, like getting fortune cookies, (chuckling): like, who is it going to be?

>> BOWEN: Well, so, I have to ask, so who is the first more than 20 years ago, who could play Elphaba and who now?

>> In my mind, Glinda was played by Melanie Griffiths, you know, Working Girl era, with lots and lots of curly hair.

(high-pitched): She has that voice, too.

(Bowen chuckles) And Elphaba was played by K.D.

Lang.

So that was 28 years ago or so.

I think there must be people who are thinking of Ariana Grande for Elphaba, given that I know she loves the songs and she loves the role.

And I don't know about Glinda.

I'm a real fan of Annaleigh Ashford.

I don't know if you know her.

I think... >> BOWEN: I've seen her many times, yeah.

>> I think she is just terrific.

>> BOWEN: Well, Gregory Maguire, always such a pleasure to speak with you.

We'll compare notes after the film comes out.

>> Absolutely.

I can't wait.

Thank you so much, Jared, for having me.

>> BOWEN: Thank you.

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: There are some dancing queens on the North Shore.

That and more in Arts This Week.

♪ ♪ >> Won't you join me?

>> BOWEN: Tuesday marks the 60th anniversary of Breakfast at Tiffany's release.

Audrey Hepburn's wardrobe was also a star, and in 2006, one of her Givenchy dresses fetched nearly one million dollars at auction.

>> ♪ Mamma Mia ♪ ♪ Here I go again ♪ >> BOWEN: Celebrate the music of ABBA Wednesday, as North Shore Music Theatre re-opens, complete with dancing queens in the hit musical Mamma Mia!

♪ ♪ Thursday, modern string quartet Brooklyn Rider presents a boundary-pushing program of contemporary and avant-garde works.

The program features a new work by Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov.

Actors' Shakespeare Project presents a The Merchant of Venice-- a pivotal Shakespeare work exploring themes of justice and mercy.

See it Friday.

Head to Harvard Art Museums Saturday for Devour the Land: War and American Landscape Photography Since 1970, an exhibition examining the historical implications of militarism on American life.

Well, even though we're bidding a bittersweet farewell to summer, the tans and beach memories haven't quite faded yet.

So we have one more look at a Peabody Essex Museum show that's up just through this weekend.

As the show In American Waters shows us, there's plenty to explore on the horizon.

Painters throughout American history have always been drawn to the glittering, sun-dappled sea.

They've been seduced by sumptuous sunsets, majestic masts, and still waters.

Not to mention the spitting, tempestuous opposite that also attracts artists.

>> They wander the beach and they look out to sea and it's an imaginative place, and so they think about how they can generate that kind of feeling in their paintings.

>> BOWEN: Like the valor of an unyielding naval commander, the solitude of abandonment, or the feeling of just traveling by ferry on a gray day.

>> It's a very mundane scene.

But it is steeped in sort of the maritime environment, with the mist, with the thick air.

But it isn't a grand story of a fabulous voyage that was world-changing in any respect.

>> BOWEN: That's the point of In American Waters, a show that longtime Maritime Art curator Dan Finamore has been wanting to do for years, featuring work that, well, rocks the boat when it comes to perspectives in marine painting.

>> Kay WalkingStick is an artist who has always visited the New England coast in her summers and only recently began to paint it.

And it shows the breakwater, but then it's overlain by her design of a Native American basket motif.

So she is simultaneously sort of looking at her own experience of the sea while also declaring this coastline as indigenous land.

>> BOWEN: Here you'll also find a seascape abstracted, immigrants anticipating hope on the horizon, and a departure from that denizen of the desert, Georgia O'Keeffe.

>> What she saw at night, in particular, is the beach before her, the far distant horizon with a lighthouse, the wave rolling at her, and the vacant space that is everything where the narrative should be.

>> BOWEN: It's a fitting show for the Peabody Essex.

The nation's oldest continuously operating museum, it was founded in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1799-- just blocks away from what was then one of the world's most thriving ports.

Today, in this exhibition, the romance of the sea often washes away-- in Norman Lewis's roiling sense of the ocean's fury and in this rare depiction of a slave ship.

>> The ship Wanderer was chased by an anti-slaving squadron off the coast of Africa, but it arrived safely in South Carolina and all of the survivors were dispersed throughout the landscape, the crew was brought up on charges, and they were all acquitted by a Charleston jury.

>> I think it's this wonderful exploration of American identity through the lens of the sea.

>> BOWEN: Sarah Chasse is one of the show's co-curators.

Her specialty-- portraits, where the sea floods the background as it does in this Gilbert Stuart image of George Washington, painted as a gift for Alexander Hamilton.

Or in this painting of the Roman goddess Diana by way of... Maine.

I'm just mesmerized by this portrait >> It is definitely a mesmerizing portrait.

It's also very mysterious.

This is by the artist Marguerite Zorach.

The rowboat is full of crustaceans, starfish, crabs, lobsters-- sort of her bounty as Diana the huntress.

It's really interesting to see the woman artists whose works we've included, the ways that they are expanding the boundaries of what a maritime painting is and can be.

>> BOWEN: This painting by Amy Sherald, who created First Lady Michelle Obama's official portrait, is about the everyday American-ness of a sunny day at the beach.

>> I think there's so many layers of complexity in terms of America's Black experiences with the beach, and segregated beaches in the past.

So it's just really, really, poignant.

>> BOWEN: And pointed, as we also find in the show's final work.

It's by early 20th century artist Marsden Hartley-- a Maine native who frequented the Peabody Essex Museum and here renders the Maine coast at night.

>> It is simultaneously calming and threatening.

We wanted to end the show with that kind of a message, that the sea is many things-- something to be wary of, to take note of, and has an impact on everybody's life.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: Next, artist Elena Madden unlocks the Florida Keys through her work-- creating light from within layers of paint.

♪ ♪ >> As a young girl, I would just stare then at this water, I called it diamond water.

It just resonated with me.

And it's just one of those things that I felt like I had to get onto a canvas or a panel.

♪ ♪ My name is Elena Madden, and I am the owner of Elena Madden Studio Gallery in Islamorada, Florida.

My parents were both artists, I grew up in an artistic family.

I had an affinity for nature and painting.

I went to the Savannah College of Art and Design and married my, my SCAD sweetheart.

We would come on vacation to the Lower Keys and we'd camp for a couple months, and I would paint down here and I fell in love with the colors, the water.

This is my third location.

And I love it because I'm right in the middle of the arts district, which is fantastic.

Oh my goodness, it's really, the light is what inspires me.

That's my main focus, is light, energy, motion.

And the light here is unparalleled to any other light I've seen in all the other places I lived, which makes the color just amazing.

♪ ♪ This may sound crazy, but every piece starts with a red background, and I build layer from there, transparent layers.

And so that creates this glow, and... underneath.

And so that's similar to what I'm, I'm imitating life here, because you have that light from below and above.

They're still evolving.

I'm constantly learning about it and I love it.

You don't want to overwork it.

(voiceover): I never wanted to paint from photography, because I assumed it would make it stiff.

So, I don't use photography at all.

I want it to move, so I have to... so it's really from memory, and it's fairly intuitive.

So I started this series about 22 years ago.

I was actually still in South Carolina when I did, and I lived on a body of water, and I would just do thumbnails and just paint from memory over and over.

I'd do small pieces and then I'd make them large.

What happened was I found my own rhythm.

♪ ♪ So I'll gradually get lighter and lighter and lighter until I'm satisfied with the, the light.

(voiceover): There's many facets of the-- of my Reflective series.

So, I started with a Pure, Pure series, which is just a pure reflection of light and everything that was around it.

And then I started with a Horizon series that gave people a little bit of a point of where they are and it grounds them a little more.

It's a little more traditional than, than the other.

Then I did a Still series with the glasses, and that's also reflective, and I, I really put away any type of, type of photography with that as well, and just kind of go and, and they become more whimsical that way.

And so painting something that moves and then something that's still is a nice balance to keep, keep it fresh and keep your hand and your mind bouncing between those two.

The Figurative series, it's a positive and negative study, and it's a, as you can see some reflection coming through the figure, basically the concept is, you know, it's a very feminine idea with the moon, the tides, water, and how we're all connected.

I want the viewer to feel what they feel.

I had one, one person say, that came in the gallery that it looked like bubbles of love.

And I thought that was fantastic.

It's funny.

It was a piece that I actually painted for my husband.

And so I named it "Amore" because as, as I finished it, you know, she said, "It looks like bubbles of love."

I said, "Well, that's interesting, that's for my husband for Valentine's day."

So, it's one of my favorite pieces.

♪ ♪ I love painting on the wood panel.

It is-- I prefer birch, I love the grain, it's understated, but at the same time it looks like... it looks like water ripples.

So, it doesn't have any bounce when you're painting like you do with canvas, and the finished product, it appears wet, just like the subject.

So it works really nicely for me.

♪ ♪ Really, my goal... if I can inspire people to see the world in a different way, bring a little joy.

I mean, it's been a dark year for everybody.

If I could distract them with a little beauty and maybe let them see all the beautiful things we have around us, that would be my goal.

I feel like, you know, my job would be done if I brought a little joy.

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

Next week, the MassArt Art Museum re-opens with a sculpture both dazzling and dizzying.

>> You can look into this as a animal, or you can look at this as a plant, or as a monster from the sea world.

You can look into this from a lot of angles.

>> 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.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪