THE ARTS PAPER – ARTICLES

Barbara Harder’s Tales of Topographic Notions

Hank Hoffman

Barbara Harder in her studio.

How does the world fit together? For printmaker Barbara Harder, that is a question that is answered piece by piece, layer by layer. Harder often refers to her creations as “topographic explorations;” imaginative representations of natural surfaces achieved through layering of colors. But topography is present in her artistic method, too. Colors, shapes and textures interact within her prints to explain a larger meaning. Similarly, the body of her work flows from a progression of experimentation—small to large prints; layered imagery on paper to layered works in three dimensions.

After graduating from college with a BA in Studio Art and moving to New Haven in the 1970’s, Harder rediscovered her affection for printmaking in classes at Creative Arts Workshop (CAW) in New Haven. (Harder now heads the Printmaking Department at CAW and also teaches at Quinnipiac University in Hamden). She developed her skills in traditional printmaking techniques and etching was her first forte. She explored lithography, collagraphs and woodcuts, too. But it was a workshop with printer Miklos Pogany that sparked her enthusiasm for monotypes.

“I used to find when I finished an etching plate—maybe I worked on it for six months—by the time I got finished and printed the edition, I really hated the thing,” Harder tells me in an interview at her spacious Erector Square studio. Her works sold and people liked them, but Harder had soured on the repetitive process.

“With monotypes, it’s a one-of-a-kind print,” says Harder. “I discovered that it freed me to be very reactive and interactive with the process.” Moving from small works to an increasingly large scale, Harder printed with a collage method for many years. She would print inked shapes of cut and torn paper onto her prints, rearrange the shapes, flip them, ink again, print more layers.

“You start out with a process that is somewhat controllable, but really not. You think you have an idea where you’re going, and then really the print tells you where you’re going,” Harder explains. “I think of it as a dialogue. I like that talking back and forth.”

For a number of years, Harder printed on the Monster Press—accommodating 5 x10 foot prints—at the Contemporary Artists Center in North Adams, Massachusetts and on a smaller press in her own studio. (She now has a very large press in her studio). Many of these works succeeded on two levels: they read as magnificent abstractions, but also engaged as aerial views or cross-sections of the earth.

In a 1999 show at the now-defunct Erector Square Gallery, Harder displayed around 20 of these prints, part of her ongoing “Layering Space” series. Reviewing the show for the New Haven Advocate, I noted that one of her large prints (“L Topog III”) was like “examining a rendering of the American Southwest through a microscope.” In one section of the print, flowing gold and turquoise meshed and then yielded to a turbulence of faded violet. In the top center, a large shape marked with an ‘X’ was flecked with congealed crystals of blue and camouflage green, similar to the way the earth hardens and cracks in the dry, unrelenting heat of the desert. Another print (“L Topog II”) evoked a tidal sea, or perhaps the heart of the rainforest. Dense, dark and mysterious, its rich purples, maroon, blues and rusty reds were pitted against whites—spatters of light against dark.

There was an evident affection in those works for how the ink physically adhered to the paper—a metaphor for nature.

“It’s opposites I’m always trying to bring together. The textural and the smooth, the bright color and quiet color, the little shape and the big shape,” says Harder. “There is a viscosity that you can play with in inks that even on a flat surface will do something. A lot of it is just discovery. You may have a preconceived notion, but when you mix a lot of different kinds of inks with different amounts of oils in them, you get something you didn’t plan for.”

Over the past ten years, with the freedom she has found in monotyping, Harder has begun looking for “icons from nature.” It could be a river seen from an airplane, a tree in the Imperial Gardens of Japan, or even styrofoam packing circles found in an Erector Square dumpster. Harder says she keeps her “eyes open for objects, images, ideas that interest me.” She’s interested in finding the “beauty in it all—to see how in a sometimes elegant, sometimes jarring way, I can make use of these objects.”

Recently, Harder—in step with the currents of contemporary art—has been incorporating a wider range of media into her work. Sitting in her studio, she draws my attention to a work on the wall, one of her Japanese-inspired Topog series. It is dominated by five panels of wood—panels that she had initially bought to print on. But when she hung the panels on the wall, she realized that the lines of the grain flowed from piece to piece.

“I thought, ‘Oh my god, this is done!’ I did a few drawing lines to connect them a little bit more,” recalls Harder. She then incorporated torn pages of an antique book she had found at a French flea market. It was the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament, written in French.

“I started to pull the sheets out, added them to the bottom of the piece and added a couple of ancient chopsticks. I love it because it’s a combination of all these things,” says Harder. An artist friend pointed out that the work could be interpreted as a reference to Harder’s Irish Catholic upbringing, mixed with her current Asian influences. “I think we lead ourselves to where we need to go and don’t even know it sometimes,” says Harder.

After spending nearly 20 years printing up to 20 layers of images on only one piece of paper, Harder now has been separating the elements and printing on overlapping layers of translucent Asian paper. She presents them on “gridded hanging systems in the gallery, erected in response to the spaces they are in,” says Harder.

“I like the idea of printing on different materials—wood, metal—things you wouldn’t normally print on,” says Harder. “If you think of where traditional prints came from and where they’re evolving to, it’s really quite exciting.”

Pondering Playwright

Kara Arsenault

	Paula Vogel.

This month, Pulitzer Prize winning-playwright Paula Vogel debuts her latest work “A Civil War Christmas” at Long Wharf Theatre. Seen by many as one of the leading playwrights in the country, Vogel currently heads the playwrighting department at the the Yale School of Drama (a position she previously held for many years at Brown University). Vogel recently answered questions for The Arts Paper about her latest play, her transition to Yale and her advice to aspiring artists.

Tell me about “A Civil War Christmas.” How did you come up with the idea for the story?

The play came in a “blink:” I was having dinner with Molly Smith during tech rehearsals for “How I Learned to Drive” at Berkeley, and she had just been hired as artistic director for Arena Stage in Washington DC. And I started my riff on why do we only produce Christmas plays about Victorian London? Where are the American Christmas Carols? In a flash, on a paper cloth and with crayons, I outlined the entire play. I knew all the songs from childhood, and the music organized the story. That was the easy part.

The idea that came in a blink has taken ten years to research. It was difficult to stop reading about the Civil War. I wrote it in 2006.

This is your second work that addresses the Christmas season (the first being “A Long Christmas Ride Home.”) What draws you to this particular time of year?

It is one of the few times as Americans where we share the stories of the season, the songs, and the family gatherings. It is one of our few shared myths, and a time for reflection, celebration, and communal coming-togethers. I think it is a very potent and powerful time in our yearly cycle.

“A Civil War Christmas” takes place in Washington DC —the city where you grew up. How has your hometown influenced your work?

Anyone who grows up in DC, or Maryland, or Virginia, is stepping on the past of our country every day as we go walk to school, or work. As youngsters, we go to battlefields, ride by the place where President Lincoln was shot, or go on field trips past the Mall where Martin Luther King stirred the soul of our nation. So I think being a history buff comes with the territory. I think being aware of the fractures in our national consciousness while living in Washington DC also comes with the territory. Being aware, for instance, that people who live in the District of Columbia still do not have a vote in Congress, as a disenfranchisement of African Americans who fled slavery and settled in Washington, DC, is one of the legacies of our slavery past that still has not been addressed. We remain haunted by the four years of fratricide and the two hundred and fifty years of bondage on every street in the District and across the country.

You’ve said that you see theater as a medium for democracy. How so?

Again, theatre is a medium in which we gather together, and as individuals walking through the lobby into the theatre, we become a community. We watch our neighbors watching the play. And we walk back through the lobby changed, charged as social animals. The Greeks, whom we credit with inventing theatre, as well as democracy as we know it in Western culture, insisted that senators and citizens sat cheek by jowl with women and slaves, and the senators that had voted for war had to watch Trojan Women, or Medea. Theatre makes us exercise empathy and critical analysis simultaneously: skills that are fundamental to our being citizens.

Are there unique challenges to being a woman playwright?

Yup. Very little has changed since the last century; women playwrights now are over fifty percent of the writers, and only 17% of plays produced are by women. Women are fifty percent of the audience. We’ve yet to accept that plays written by women and writers of color are “universal.” It is harder for women to gain access to the larger theatrical canvas that male theatrical artists have at their disposal which is why Yale Rep’s production of “Passion Play,” written by a woman playwright of the 21st century is so important, and why I so appreciate Long Wharf taking a chance on “A Civil War Christmas:” the largest canvas I’ve had to date in my career.

What’s your advice to young people interested in becoming a playwright? Is this advice different from what you might give to people interested in other careers in the arts?

There’s no difference in my advice to a writer or a director: I simply know the writing field better. I encourage young artists to give the life in the theatre a chance, and develop skills that will pay the rent. I encourage writers to be fearless. And I think it’s important to follow one’s joy.

You’ve come to Yale after a long and prosperous tenure at Brown University. What attracted you to coming to Yale and New Haven?

Yale School of Drama, Yale Repertory Theatre, and Long Wharf were important attractions. James Bundy’s support of writers is important. My friendship with Gordon Edelstein, and the reception of the New Haven audience to “The Long Christmas Ride Home” was important, and I am grateful to audience members for their generosity. This is a town with two vibrant professional theatres. I’ve known and admired my faculty colleagues at the Yale School of Drama for decades. It’s mouth-watering to have so many rich collaborations with theatrical artists in the same place and time.

How has your experience been so far? What have you found most surprising?

How very welcoming, and open, people here have been to me. What constantly surprises me is the Long Island Sound, the beauty of the Quinnipiac River, the more gentle and lush landscape of Connecticut to the sparseness of the Cape. It’s the kind of surprise I’d like to experience for years to come.

“A Civil War Christmas” plays at Long Wharf Theatre from November 26–December 21. For more information, please call 203-787-4282.

Young at Art: Reaching Out to New Audiences

Alyssa DellaCamera

Green Street's state-of-the-art sound recording studio.

If you ask young people, or young professionals, what they do with their free time, they might mention the movies, Facebook or sports. But chances are good that they won’t respond with an arts-related activity. Local arts organizations have noticed this trend and several have taken action in hopes of reversing it.

Anne Culver, a Guilford resident and professor of art at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, says teenagers usually need lots of encouragement before they’ll get involved in the arts. “As far as arts activities that are participatory—teens need persuasion, and they prefer to take a class with a friend or friends” Culver says. Janis Astor del Valle, director of the Green Street Arts Center in Middletown, agrees. She says that they are constantly challenged by what to offer older children. “We start losing them when they go to high school,” she says. “It’s a time when young people are struggling with identity issues.” And while Green Street offers a wide range of classes for teenagers—break-dancing, songwriting, playmaking, drawing, video animation and sound recording—many still view Green Street as a place for little kids. “Most of our teens have come to us because their parents have said ‘you’re going to be here,’” Astor del Valle laughs. To try and combat this image, she has provided the teens with their own special space. “I really feel strongly that they need a place to call their own.”

She’s also started to think creatively about programming—like a new project designed for teens in which they design their own advertisements to promote healthy eating. Through this project, she hopes they will notice the connection between art and the media. “There is an art to everything. You just have to find the connection.”

And once teens get involved, they often become hooked—like the two Green Street students who started their own hip-hop group using one of the arts center’s dance studios to rehearse for free. One of the students then decided to form a poetry club. She facilitated the group all on her own and had a substantial impact on the younger children. “It is quite inspiring,” Astor del Valle says. The New Haven Symphony Orchestra has also forged new paths in trying to get young people involved in the arts. This past spring, the Symphony decided to form a board comprised entirely of students, known as the Junior Board. “So far, it has been very enthusiastically received,” says Tracey Scheer, vice-president of the Symphony board.

According to Scheer, the board consists of 12 high school students who are all vocalists, musicians, or both. To initially attract the students, the Symphony distributed notices to members of the orchestra, as well as public and private school music teachers throughout the state. High school students entering ninth grade and above were welcome to apply, and the Symphony was thrilled with the response. “We really are so pleased with the great pool of kids we got” Scheer says. She describes it as “a win-win situation.” While the students gain exposure to the orchestra and earn volunteer experience, the Symphony acquires young energy and its own volunteer power.

As the program embarks on its first year in operation, room for development still remains. “We really want the kids to help invent the program,” Scheer explains. But for now, the inaugural students are off and running, having all received brand new New Haven Symphony Orchestra t-shirts in a distinct color that recognizes their status as members of the Junior Board. “They’re really part of the family now.”

While the New Haven Symphony is engaging young people through the formation of their Junior Board, the Shubert Theater in New Haven is reaching out to young professionals and entrepreneurs through its recently developed Red Carpet Club.

According to Anthony Lupinacci, director of public relations at the Shubert, the Red Carpet Club is a more affordable offshoot of the theater’s successful Corporate Club, a club which offers companies attractive benefits, such as access to ticket sales in advance, an exclusive suite, prime seat location, and complimentary parking vouchers. Lupinacci says there are many young professionals living in New Haven, and the Shubert wanted to create a program geared toward this group. “We needed to create a program that addresses their needs at a price they can afford,” he explains.

As a result, the Shubert began working with young corporate members this summer and introduced the Red Carpet Club during the kick-off to their season. Similar to the Corporate Club, the Red Carpet Club offers members special opportunities unavailable to regular ticket-buyers, including advance ticket purchase for seats in the best locations, access to exclusive lectures and speeches as a part of the Shubert Speaker Series, Red Carpet events at local restaurants and bars, and group discounts. “For a much more affordable amount, they can become a part of this program” he says.

Aside from more affordable rates, Lupinacci says the club can also broaden theater-goers’ experiences at the Shubert. “We recognized there are a lot of young people that come here just to see shows” he says. Through the Red Carpet Club, Lupinacci says members can now be exposed to many different opportunities and events at the Shubert, in addition to regular shows. Currently, the Red Carpet Club is a small group. “This is a program that needs to be cultivated through special events” he explains, referring to performances by comedian David Sedaris and musician Lucinda Williams this October. “These are all events that are definitely appealing to a younger audience.”

“What we’re trying to do…is expand some of our programming selections to appeal to audiences that normally don’t come to the Shubert.” When the show “STOMP”—characterized by its unusual percussion—made an appearance at the Theater, Lupinacci says it attracted not only people of all ages, but also people of many different ethnicities. “When you make smart programming choices, that [desired] group of people will react and come see your show. It’s really rewarding to us…when we see people of all ages and generations coming together to enjoy the show.”

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October 08 Articles

Technical support provided by Odonnell Company.