Mixed Media

Behind the Art: Violinist Baiba Skride's star is on the rise

Critics, too, have fallen for her charms. Reviewing her performance of Lalo's Symphonie Espagnole with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the Washington Post wrote, "Skride was completely unfazed by the work's myriad technical challenges, playing not only proficiently but with flair and a nearly improvisatory freedom."

Mark Swed of the Los Angeles Times praised her recording of Shostakovich's First Violin Concerto as "the most sophisticated performance of the concerto I know." When I meet with Baiba Skride, the day before her October debut at London's Wigmore Hall, she looks very pretty, very relaxed-and very pregnant, with the birth of her first child a scant two months away. Her advanced stage of pregnancy had required her to cancel an autumn US tour, about which she is quite apologetic: "It would be four weeks before the due date. I never cancel anything, but this time I had to cancel!"

With the birth of her son, Emilien, in December, she already has made amends: at press time, she was scheduled to perform the Mendelssohn Concerto with the Minnesota Orchestra in April, the Tchaikovsky with the Oregon Symphony in October, and two Mozart concertos in Detroit in November.

Born in 1981 in Riga, in the small Baltic republic of Latvia, Skride comes from a musical family. She's the second of three girls, all of whom are professional musicians: younger sister Lauma is a pianist and frequent duo partner, while older sister Linda is a professional violist. Their father is a choir conductor and their mother a pianist.

"We got our first introduction to music from my grandmother, who used to teach singing to little kids," Skride says. "She taught us our first song together, we three sisters."

The love of music, especially vocal music, is a vital part of Latvian society, Skride says. She tells me about the 1991 Singing Revolution, during which the Russians were trying to regain control of the Baltic republics. "People were standing in front of [the main buildings in Riga] and singing, not with any weapons or any anger, just using the force of music," she says. "Now, every five years, we have this huge singing festival, where 30,000 people sing together.

Read the full article by Inje Kjemtrup here.

82 and Still Painting

"We're living in a total illusion here on earth for better or worse, but whatever is beyond, that's where I'm looking... to the reality behind it all," says George Rhoads (pictured, right). He's talking about his landscape oil & acrylic paintings, his "chosen profession" as he puts it. But isn't he most famous for his huge moving sculptures, which appear at the Corning Museum of Glass, the ScienCenter in Ithaca, the Port Authority in NYC, and around the world? "In the 60's is when I started making the sculptures, and that provided me with kind of a living from then on, so I was able to paint quite a bit." Those paintings hang in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and in the collections of Leonard Bernstein, and Lawrence Tish, among others. "Commercially, that hasn't done me a lot of good," says Rhoads. But painting is his first love. His rare solo exhibit, Landscapes of the Fingerlakes, is at Ithaca's Community School of Music and Arts through March 28.

Rhoads moved to the Ithaca area in 1970, in part because he was tired of living in New York. "I paint what's around me, and I was tired of painting the city," he says. Now his adopted home has named the month of March in his honor. In proclaiming March to be "George Rhoads Month," Ithaca mayor Carolyn Peterson cited, among other things, Rhoads' "international reputation as a painter, sculptor, and designer of kinetic art as well as being one of the first North American origami masters, and a yoga teacher." Rhoads says of the proclamation "it's rather gratifying, but strange... It's fun. I feel that I really belong here in Ithaca."

A few years back, the late Fred Rogers brought a crew to Ithaca to film an episode visiting George Rhoads' studio and looking at his fanciful rolling-ball sculptures. "That was a great day when he and his crew came to do the show, really unforgettable" says Rhoads. "Mr. Rogers was exactly as he seems on TV, a marvelous character."

The area landscapes in Rhoads' rare solo exhibition were all completed within the last three years, some of which had languished for years before being completed for this exhibit. (Pictured, left: Lake Afternoon, up for a raffle to benefit CSMA.)

He'll give an artist's talk Sunday, March 9 at 2pm at the CSMA gallery. He says he'll ask those attending what they want to know about... his career in general or the specific creation of the landscapes on display.

The exhibit's "gala opening" 5-8pm tonight (3/7) is timed to coincide with Gallery Night of Ithaca. Landscapes of the Finger Lakes runs  through March 28 at the Community School of Music and Arts, 330 E. State Street, Ithaca. Gallery is open Monday through Friday, 10am - 8pm.

LISTEN AGAIN: Hear my interview with George Rhoads online.

Read an article by Peggy Haines about George Rhoads in Life in the Finger Lakes magazine.

Visit George Rhoads' website.

--Gregory Keeler
gkeeler@wskg.org

 

Behind the Art - Madeline Silber

Name:  Madeline Silber   

Hometown: Born and raised in Englewood, New Jersey and spent most of my adult life living in Manhattan, Williamsburg and Greenpoint Brooklyn until I moved upstate to Oneonta in 1996.

Training/School: B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College in Painting/Literature, M.F.A. in Painting from the Maryland Institute, College of Art.

Community Involvement:

Currently I have a solo exhibition Entanglements in the Fine Arts Gallery at SUNY College at Oneonta, February 4th-29th. For more information call Tim Sheesley, Gallery Director 607-433-3456. A color brochure with an essay by Thomas Piché Jr. accompanies the exhibition.

I will be giving a gallery talk on Wednesday February 27th, 1:30 pm, which is free and open to the public.

Describe your ‘art’:

I’m a painter. I make small intimate oil paintings. My work exists somewhere in between abstraction and representation. The forms are imagined yet they’re painted by using traditional painting techniques. They appear as if they’re real objects inhabiting a plausible space, but actually are a vocabulary of characters that I’ve developed over time, that have multiple references and metaphoric associations.

Who or what inspires your work?   

The illusion of representing three-dimensional forms in a two-dimensional space is still magical to me. I love the slowness that painting affords for images to develop over time. (I usually spend 2-6 months on one painting). In my paintings I’m inspired to portray the struggle we all have in trying to juggle the complexity of our contemporary relationships. I’m interested in the subtleties of connection and separateness. My paintings could be viewed as playful magnifications of the way things work, strange still lives of dancers in mid-motion, or family members struggling for autonomy. Some of my all time favorite painters are: Vermeer, Chardin, Velazquez, Morandi, Alice Neel, and Philip Guston.

What do you think is needed to help the art community thrive in our region?

I would like to see more funding sources for artists living upstate who are actively pursuing both regional and national careers. If more individuals bought and collected local artist’s works and our museums had more aggressive acquisition policies for collecting regional artists that would be helpful. Also more grant funding aimed toward artists living outside of New York City.

Advice to aspiring artists:

Be open to other people’s insights about your work, but stick to what matters to you most. Your work is the same whether you get rejected or accepted to a certain show. It’s hard to remember that when we all want to be recognized for what we do.

Who are you listening to and/or reading right now?

Right now in my studio I’m listening to The Roches recent CD Moonswept, Aimee Mann's The Forgotten Arm, and the soundtrack for Once. Recent books I really enjoyed, Gone to Soldiers by Marge Piercy, After Long Silence by Helen Tremont, and The Last Days of Dogtown by Anita Diamant.

What is important to you?

Trying to find some balance in my life between painting in the studio, trying to get my work out into the world, spending time with my 8 year old twin daughters and my husband, and staying connected with friends, especially artists who don’t live in Oneonta. I love walking my kids to school in the morning, working out, enjoying how beautiful it is here, watching movies, reading books, keeping a sense of humor about everything I tend to be very serious about.

Who are your personal heroes?

People who keep pursuing their art no matter how it’s received in the “art world” at different times. This can be so hard.

Do you have any upcoming shows or events that you’d like the public to know about?

In April my work will be included in the 61st Exhibition of Central New York Artists at the Munson Williams Proctor Institute in Utica, N.Y. A catalog and podcast of many participating artists speaking about their work will be available.

'Behind the Art' is a regular series that profiles the people behind the arts in our community. If you'd like to be profiled in 'Behind the Art,' email editor Crystal Sarakas.

Behind the Art: Making a Glass Goblet

This video from the Corning Museum of Glass shows how glassblowers create a glass goblet.

Behind the Art – Christopher Julian

Name:  Christopher Julian

Training/School: Binghamton University & Tompkins Cortland Community College

Community Involvement: Video Editing & Cinematography

Describe your ‘art’: I write, direct, produce, shoot and edit films and videos of a variety of different kinds including documentaries, narratives, promotional and commercial videos.

Who or what inspires your work? I was hooked on film ever since Star Wars at age 5. Since then it has been a very wide variety of filmmakers’ works that continue to reinvigorate my passion for the medium.

What is your proudest accomplishment so far? “Invisible Ink,” a two-hour narrative that took my co-writer and I over three years to finish. And “101 Ways to Retire—or Not!” a one-hour documentary about active retirement.

Who are your favorite local artists? The local music band “IY” has some of the best songwriting and musicianship around. The fab four of Ithaca!

Advice to aspiring artists: Do what feels right. Worry about money later...

Who are you listening to and/or reading right now? The music I’m listening to lately usually features dead artists J Nick Drake, Elliott Smith, Jeff Buckley. But among the living, I love Iron & Wine, Radiohead, and the Shins.

What is important to you?  Art of all kinds are the things that are most important to me. Filmmaking, music, photography, mostly.

Christopher Julian's documentary "101 Ways to Retire - Or Not!" will be broadcast on WSKG-TV on Thursday, January 17th at 8 p.m.

'Behind the Art' is a regular series that profiles the people behind the arts throughout our community. If you'd like to be profiled in 'Behind the Art,' email editor Crystal Sarakas.