AOTA-240202 - Peter Marks, Bryana Bobbs, Spotlight-Chris Acton

This week on Art on the Air features Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author, and longtime theater critic for the Washington Post, Peter Marks, sharing his storied career. Next, we have artist Brianna Bibbs, whose Chesterton Arts Center exhibit, Changes, runs through February 29th. Our spotlights on the Port County Symphony's Side-by-Side Concert featuring local music educators sitting in with the orchestra. Express yourself you are, and show the world your heart. Express yourself you are, and show the world your heart. You're in the know with Esther and Mary, Art on the Air today. They're in the know with Mary and Esther, Art on the Air our way. Express yourself you are, and show the world your heart. Express yourself you are, and show the world your heart. Welcome. You're listening to Art on the Air on Lakeshore Public Media, 89.1 FM, WVLP 103.1 FM, our weekly program covering the arts and arts events throughout Northwest Indiana and beyond. I'm Larry Breckner of New Perspectives Photography, right alongside here with Esther Golden of The Nest in Michigan City. Aloha, everyone. We're your hosts for Art on the Air. Art on the Air is supported by an Indiana Arts Commission Arts Project Grant, Southshore Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Art on the Air is heard every Sunday at 7 p.m. on Lakeshore Public Media, 89.1 FM, also streaming live at lakeshorepublicmedia.org, and is available on Lakeshore Public Media's website as a podcast. Also heard on Friday at 11 a.m. and Monday at 5 p.m. on WVLP, 103.1 FM, streaming live at wvlp.org, and Tuesdays at 4 p.m. on WDSO, 88.3 FM. Our spotlight interviews are also heard Wednesdays on Lakeshore Public Media. Information about Art on the Air is available at our website, breck.com, slash A-O-T-A. That includes a complete show archive, spotlight interviews, plus our show is available on multiple podcast platforms, including NPR One. Please like us on Facebook, Art on the Air, WVLP, for information about upcoming shows and interviews. From Art on the Air to my dear friend Michelle Schaefer, you leave a legacy of a rich, fabulously enormous body of work that is strong, triumphant, and brave, and I will strive to be all the colors, but never blue. Love to you always and forever. Traditions may vary. In our hearts we all carry a treasure trove of joy, joy and laughter. And I'd like to welcome back to Art on the Air Spotlight from the LaPorte County Symphony Orchestra. She's going to tell us all about what's coming up in the next couple months, and especially in February. We have the executive director, who's now just getting used to that job and going in, replacing the king that used to be there, Emily Iannis. Welcome back to Art on the Air Spotlight. Thanks so much for having me. Glad to be here. Well, first of all, I was privileged to come to the Pops concert in December. Thank you for that. You performed, and I knew that you were probably a great singer, but you were really awesome. I was very impressed by that. I was thrilled for you to be able to perform with the symphony, but it was really a special moment of that evening. Thank you so much. If you haven't heard Emily sing, yours are going to be other opportunities. I hope they get a chance to come out and hear you. Well, thank you. Yes, Carolyn Watson and I are concocting, hopefully, my next appearance with the symphony next season. Great. Well, you've got a new concert coming up in February, and I want you to tell us all about that. Absolutely, yes. So, kind of piggybacking on the success of our first side-by-side concert last season with the LaPorte High School Symphony playing alongside our symphony, we are doing a similar concert, but with a little twist. Instead of high school students, we are inviting their music teachers to play alongside the symphony. Oh, excellent. Isn't it cool? Yeah. It's so cool. Local music educators, private teachers have been invited. So, we're putting together a roster of local music educators to play alongside the LCSO. So, we're really excited about that. Is it mostly LaPorte, or did you go into Michigan City and Chesterton? How far did it go? Yes, we went all over. We were all over LaPorte County and into Porter County, some Lake County even. So, we really kind of capped a wide net into southwest Michigan as well. So, we're really excited about this. That's a great concept. And, of course, probably a little rusty maybe on their instrument. You know, you're used to teaching instruments and everything, not actually getting out and playing in an organized church. That's right. Yeah. So, we're looking forward to inviting students in. As you know, students attend all of our subscription concerts for free, but we thought this one would be especially special for them to see their teachers practicing what they preach, as they say, on stage. So, tell us about, again, this is not going to be at the Civic. This is going to be where? Right. This will be at the Holdcraft Center for the Performing Arts in Michigan City, which is a lovely theater. It's about an 800-seat theater and great acoustics. So, we're really looking forward to performing there. Again, we did a concert there last season as well in March. Very intimate space, even having 800 seats. Yeah. Yeah, it is. It's kind of got that old-school theater vibe. So, we're looking forward to that. Well, and you don't have as many seats as you do in the Civic. Civic seats, what, for your concerts? That's right. I mean, the balcony can seat, I believe, 1,500, and then we can put about 500 on the floor. So, I mean, if the house is completely packed, it's near 2,000, which is a lot of people. Oh, my gosh. Yes. So, well, that sounds great, and at the end of the segment, we'll get to how they can find out more about that. But you have some other fun things coming up that are not, well, some concerts, but also some other things. So, tell us about some of the other things the Port County Symphony has going. Absolutely, yeah. So, we have a couple. Every other month, we have our Friends of the Symphony luncheons, and the Friends of the Symphony is a special group of people who are just passionate about the symphony. Some are subscribers. Some are longtime audience members. And we gather together, generally on Tuesdays for lunch, every other month with a special guest speaker. So, upcoming in March, I believe it is March 13th, sorry, 12th, excuse me, we have the conductor of the South Bend Symphony, Alastair Willis, who will be with us as guest speaker for that luncheon. And that is at Portofino Grill on that March 12th at noon. And then I think way off in May, you have a trivia thing. So, tell us about that. That's right. Yeah. So, the final meeting of the Friends of the Symphony in May will be music trivia, and that is May 14th at noon. And so, we will be competing for who is the best music trivia knowledge, and that will be at Swing Belly's in Michigan City. So, we have a lot of fun at these luncheons. It's $20 to attend, and that includes the lunch. And the Friends of the Symphony often do volunteer work for the symphony. So, that's kind of our volunteer brigade that I rely on when we need volunteers. Excellent. We'll come back next month to talk about the concert, but just kind of give us a rundown of what concert you have coming up. Yeah, absolutely. So, in March, we have another concert at the Holdcraft Center in Michigan City. This one is going to be really special. It's going to be on March 10th at 3 p.m., so a Sunday afternoon concert. And we have a visiting composer, Dr. Ingrid Stolzl, who is originally from Germany but is a professor at the University of Kansas. She will be in residence with us, and the symphony will be playing her composition, City Beautiful. So, that's going to be really fun to have a living, breathing composer and playing her work and having her there to comment on it. Yeah, sometimes people think classical music is all dead composers, and there's really a vibrant world, which I know Carolyn Watson has brought some of those composers to us. Speaking real briefly in our last minute here, tell us what plans you have for next season. Have you started looking at the choices for the concerts? Absolutely. We have, yes. So, we're really excited. I can't really share too much yet. There will be a press release coming soon, but we are very excited to be planning next season, hopefully featuring a couple of really exciting guest artists and soloists, hopefully from our symphony. We have our principal flutist, Alexander Kemble, who is playing this year, and we hope to continue that tradition of featuring one of our principal players on a solo. Busy times at LePort County Symphony. That's LePort County Symphony. Emily Iannis, Executive Director, LCSO.net. You can find out information there and call the office. Emily, thank you so much for coming on Art in the Air Spotlight and sharing. Thanks for having me. Thank you, Emily. Thanks, Esther. Thanks, Larry. Art in the Air Spotlight and the complete one-hour program on Lakeshore Public Media is brought to you by McAuley Real Estate in Valparaiso, Ola Patrician, Senior Broker. Did you know that you can also listen to Art in the Air anytime as a podcast at Lakeshore Public Media's website through Lakeshore's app or from NPR? Plus, it's available on demand from your favorite podcast website, including TuneIn, Spotify, Amazon Music, Pandora, Apple Music, iHeart Radio, and many more. If you have a smart speaker like Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, or Apple Siri, just tell to play Art in the Air to hear the latest episode. This is Raina Torres, host of World Cafe, and you're listening to Art in the Air on Lakeshore Public Media 89.1 FM and on WBLP 103.1 FM. We are honored to welcome Peter Marks to Art in the Air. Peter joined the Washington Post as its chief drama critic in 2002. Previously, he worked for more than nine years at the New York Times, where he was drama critic, theater reporter, metro reporter, and national correspondent during the 2000 presidential campaign. He was a member of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for spot news reporting. He is also co-author of the book, Good for the Money, My Fight to Pay Back America. Thank you for joining us on Art on the Air. Aloha and welcome, Peter. It's very nice to meet you. Lovely to talk to you, Esther. Thank you, and Larry. Well, we're glad to have you on board and everything. And, you know, like we do with all of our interviews, we always like to know a little bit about the person. I always like to say their origin story, how you got from where you were to where you are now. So tell us all about yourself. Oh, well, thanks, Larry. And it's a pleasure to be on with you guys. Well, you know, I'm a New York kid. I was born in Brooklyn in a family that worships theater. My father was a frustrated actor who worked the Borscht Belt as a young man and unfortunately sidetracked out of that world, but gave me a love of theater. And it was born seeing Mary Martin in The Sound of Music on Broadway when I was five years old. And frankly, I never looked back. After that, it was a passion all through my own childhood, discovering really through musical theater, acting, you know, in high school and then in college at Yale. I thought for a moment I might be an actor. That was sort of scared out of me by an acting teacher I had at Yale who really was brutal at a time when you could still be, you know, brutal in those kind of capacities. And then I applied to an acting school in New York and a newspaper because I also loved public events, public affairs. At the same time, I got a job at the paper. And then I set off as a reporter for many years, just a news reporter, until I got to The New York Times and a job opened for the theater reporter there. I was like, you wrote a theater column about the news of Broadway and off-Broadway. And one day, the editor of the section, John Darton, came up to me and said, we have an opening for a second critic, the second chair, which was the off-Broadway critic. Would you like to do it? This is back in like the mid-'90s. And I said, well, I've never written a review in my life. And he said, give it a try. So I went out and did a couple of practice reviews. I showed them to him and to Frank Rich, who was the emeritus drama critic at the Times, and they said, these are good. You're the second-string drama critic of The New York Times. And, you know, I went from being a guy who had never reviewed to being the second-most influential theater critic in America, which is a ridiculous leap to make for any human being. And it was surreal for me. And eventually, The Washington Post recruited me to be the chief critic. And that was how I got to the position I served there in for 21 years. Until you just left. It's like kind of a magical thing. So what do you think it takes to cultivate separating your personal feelings to give an objective review? Well, you know, it's never objective, Esther. It really is a combination of gut and brains. Certainly for me anyway. It came from such an organic space in my constitution, you know, looking at theater and forming an opinion. And knowing that you had to come down one way or the other. Not 100% yes or no, but certainly you had to give readers your own choice of whether this was worthy of their attention or not. And that process doesn't happen overnight for a theater critic. Certainly at a mainstream, large newspaper like The Times or The Washington Post. It takes cultivation of a lot of experience. The first year I did it, I was very unsure of myself and very insecure about it. But trusted my gut. That was where it starts. And if you have a body of work that you've seen and you have some ability to communicate and an enjoyment of entertaining readers, those are the elements that really carry you through and help you understand what your role is. Not to be the final word, really you're sort of the first word. And hopefully that will carry through to other people reacting to what you think. Even if it's not the most definitive view of a production. And it shouldn't be, actually. Going back to those first reviews, what was the typical feedback that you received after one was printed? And then compare that to like now. Yes, that's a great, that really is a great sort of arc of experience. When I started, I got a lot of, especially for New York Times readers for whom theater was a blood sport, I would get a lot of letters like, who the hell do you think you are? They thought they knew so much more than I did. And sometimes did. And would tell me so. I would get copies of my reviews clipped out of the paper with their own editing. And so it was really daunting. Was it beneficial? Yes, because it's humbling. It makes you understand that there are such a diversity of opinions and so many people who love. Passionate. Right. It comes from a place, even if it's nasty, it comes from a place of protectiveness of the form and of wanting the people who write about it to be authoritative or at least convey for them something smart and perceptive. So that was really an instructive period. Now, that is weird because now, you know, 21 years later, the outpouring from people who were disappointed that I was leaving the job, and I must say I was really surprised at the volume, but I built up a following and a number of people, even if they didn't agree with the point of view, they appreciated the seriousness, the passion, the love, the knowledge I brought to the job. And those are the things that are the hardest things to give up, is those connections to those people who've come to expect a certain caliber of response to a play or musical that you provide, having done this for so long. What does the difference between a theater critic and a theater reviewer, you know, because there's sometimes kind of a gray area about that, and it kind of overlaps in both. Yeah. You know, the terms, some critics object to the term reviewer because it implies a kind of, you know, one-off, that night's response to a play and that's it. I think that both words are fine, but it really, it lands somewhere in the idea of the difference between a review and criticism. And a review is a specific piece of journalism that responds to what happened on a particular night and has an element of consumer information and helpfulness to readers in their own decisions about what kind of art they want to see. A criticism is a more, I would say, elevated form of a review, which takes into account some macro sense of where this piece of art fits into a larger context to the longer continuum of what is important and what is valuable in the theater, for good or ill. And I think that somewhere along the line, you know, those you say, Larry, those things sort of cross over back and forth. You can have criticism, very refined criticism in a review, and you can have a very well-structured review in a kind of a more comprehensive piece of criticism. And, you know, obviously there are essayists who, you know, take that to a next level where they're only reflecting on a trend or an idea or something important about a playwright's body of work. Sure, I tend to be captivated, you know, by the critic's review in either direction, you know, to be inspired to attend, whether it's in communion or opposition to the review. So they're really important. Yes, the best thing I hear from people most over the years when people say, you know what, I could tell you didn't like that show, but I still went because it sounded interesting to me. Right. You said. And that's, you know, that's kind of the ideal. You know, the idea that people, sometimes people write to me and say, did we see the same show? No, we didn't see the same show because you are you and I am me, and we bring a whole lifetime of knowledge and experience and emotional reactions that are going to be very individual to a show. Right. So, you know, and I think people are a little bit intimidated sometimes. They think they're supposed to agree with a critic. And letting go of that is an important part of the education of a reader, I think. You know, you touched on this and the importance of what theater criticism is today. And, of course, with people like yourself, I mean, well, as we know, kind of the Washington Post bought out your contract and you're no longer doing that. But what's the role, is the diminished role of the theater critic, are we seeing a trend in that? And how is that going to actually affect the theater performance itself? It's another huge question, Larry, and it is devastating for the field that we have only about a handful of full-time critics with health coverage from a major mainstream media outlet left. That is, that's, that bodes very sadly for theaters across the country because there are levels at which theater criticism permeates the theater culture that don't necessarily respond to, you know, how many tickets are bought that next day after a selling review, for example. You know, there's a conversation that has to happen. Theater is so local, so localized from city to city, that the only way now for really the words to coalesce about something, for producers elsewhere, for the rest of the theater community across the country to understand the value of a show in Chicago or Indianapolis or Cleveland or New York to have some legs is for there to be some authoritative writing about it. And more so even than I think for movies and television because there are such forms of mass communication, of mass media. We don't have that luxury in the theater. So this is very, very disturbing. But it's also, you know, I dare say, Esther and Larry, that the review form may not have transferred particularly well to the Internet, especially with the competition of social media. And newspapers did not invest or try to find a way to make reviewing a feature of their own outlets. It all sort of atrophied together. So it happened societally, it happened culturally. And I don't know what the future really holds for theater criticism at this point. Well, I think critical theater reporting will be missed because the reviews give me personally, you know, a sense of the experience. Since the amount of theater I can personally experience is limited, these reviews are really enriching. And sort of like the reason I read the London Book Review or the New York Times Book Review is, you know, I can only read X amount of books, but I can read these synopses that are really almost akin to reading the book. And I'm definitely enriched by the experience of doing that. Yeah, and actually, you know, finding out, you know, having this, you know, people write to me from all over the country, all over the world, really, about, you know, what they got from reviews that I wrote, you know, it's reassuring and makes me think there is a future, there is a way forward. There has to be. And hopefully this next generation of journalists and arts leaders will come to some understanding of that, and there will be outlets, venues that sort of work towards revivifying the form. Yeah, because I think, like maybe boldly we'll say that it's a cultural loss that goes beyond theater attendees, really, because... Well said. Absolutely. That was one of the things I tried to do in this job. As I saw the attention sort of wavering, I started to write about theater as it happened in other parts of our lives. I tried to show the connection, the way that we see theater so often. I spent, in 2020, I spent a large amount of time traveling with presidential candidates to write about their performative skills. You know, being an orator was always a valued part of being a political leader. And, you know, the modern comparison is, you know, retail politics during the primary season. And I wanted to see how performatively people like Biden and Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg performed. Not to diminish their other skills, but to give people a sense of how they were as communicators. And I used the tools of a theater critic to do that. Question, what is forward for you now? We're talking about maybe there not being theater criticism, but, you know, I don't think it's something you just, just because you're no longer associated with the Washington Post, do you still, are you looking for an outlet to do that, whether it be a blog or something like that? I know this is kind of new, but tell us about maybe what's down the road for you. Yeah, thanks, Larry. Well, one of the things I do is, like you and Esther, I talk. I have a podcast with Elizabeth Vincentelli called Marks and Vincentelli, very creatively titled. We had done it originally with a third critic, Terry Teachout, from the Wall Street Journal, who died a few years ago, but we had then called it Three on the Aisle. And so that's one outlet that'll continue. I love talking to actors and directors and playwrights. I'm going to write for some publications. I already have some projects approved that I'll be writing for, for American Theater Magazine, for other publications, you know, maybe even of wider circulation, we'll see. I have some ideas about writing other kinds of things. Have you ever written a play? Have you attempted playwriting? Yes, yes. And, in fact, I have a whole set of files of half-finished plays, and I'm going to go back and look and see which one, you know, strikes me as the most dynamic at the moment. So that hopefully will be something. You know, obviously, you know, when you've been a critic for so long, you know, you're fair game if, you know, God forbid somebody actually decides to produce something, you know. Right, exactly. There's a lot of people, you know, wringing their hands with joy, I think, at the idea of taking that on. But it's a completely different skill, obviously. But it's one I can tell just by the look on your face makes you very happy. Oh, yeah, it does. Oh, no, you're talking about fantasy, the idea. It's one of the reasons I love being a critic so much, I think, Esther, is, you know, the joy of the idea is so uncanny to me. If somebody who sits down, writes dialogue, and it becomes its physical manifestation on a stage, and to be able to see that happen, I think it's like the highest achievement one can have in life. So, you know, there's that. There's that beautiful payoff that I can't even fathom for myself. Like with all arts, you know, when you think of theater, you think about the actual production on the stage, but so much goes into that from the set design to the costuming to the lighting. You know, it affects a huge amount of people to produce something. When I was in college, the only interaction I ever had with a critic was, I was in a production of Camino Real. It was the Tennessee Williams play, and the critic didn't understand it for the Yale Daily News. And I wrote a letter to the Yale Daily News saying, how could you not understand how much work we put into this? You know, it's like, I go, please. But at the time, that's exactly what you're saying. It is a huge list. These things are, you know, and that's why I always love being in rehearsal rooms and watching them being put together, just to get a taste of, you know, what goes into this, you know, piece by piece, literally, you know, day after day. The future. Do you feel that the proliferation of easy access streaming of entertainment is going to affect theater and probably a possibly loss of it being a priority, maybe? Yeah. Yeah, they try. Yes, I think that's true. I think that the idea that you can, I think the thing that's atrophied for theater is that over the pandemic and beyond, people discovered that with streaming, you can turn on a great piece of art at 10 in the morning. If you're tired, you can stop it at 10 minutes later and watch it later on in your pajamas. I mean, the idea of it being brought to you. Including theater. Including pieces of theater, which, you know, of varying degrees of quality. But the idea that the alternative is, you know, getting dressed, finding parking, or taking transit in the rain, or whatever it takes to get to the theater, you really have to want to be there. And it puts even more pressure on theater to be that kind of event that is, and plus paying a fortune sometimes to go see it. You know, these things are barriers now of a much higher level than they were before. So there is that challenge. Peter, what's your favorite genre of theater? I come from a musical theater background, but 90% of the stuff I did as lighting designer, director, producer is that. But what's your favorite genre? My favorite genre is good. Perfect. You know, that's what it's come to. I love being surprised. I love being drawn into a world I didn't expect to love. And that can take any form at all. That can take musical form. That can take verbal form. It can take any form. Favorite playwrights? Favorite productions? Oh, God, so many, Larry. I will say that my favorite composer was the one that I grew up on, who was, of course, Stephen Sondheim. And so those works are going to be eternal for me, or eternal as long as I'm eternal. And with playwrights, there are so many I love that it would be unfair to some that I'm about to go see a play called Appropriate by Brandon Jacobs Jenkins, a youngish. Now he's sort of a middle-aged playwright. But I don't sing him out except to say that he's top of mind right now. But it ranges from Stopper to Shakespeare to Paula Vogel to... You name it, you go down the list of great writers. Tony Kushner. You know, I could see Angels in America a hundred times. There's just... The litany is embarrassingly long. As it should be. Yes. Well, we only have about a minute left. We want you to give a chance to quickly summarize and let people know how they can still find you, obviously, with your blog and maybe future, like, I don't know, a website and things like that so they can dig into what's left. What is left? What is the... Where are all the dregs of Peter Marks? You can find our podcast on marksvincentelli.substack.com, I think? Yeah. And I'm on Threads, no longer on that thing that Elon Musk has under my name, Peter J., with just the initial Marks. And in various... I'll pop up in various publications, one hopes. We hope so. We appreciate you taking the time to discuss theater, theater criticism, your storied career in it, and not all over yet. We're looking forward to seeing what you're going to be doing next, I guess, as you depart the Washington Post. Their loss, I think, seriously. That's Peter Marks, a theater critic and a lifelong journalist, actually. Thank you so much for coming on Art on the Air. Yeah, thanks for sharing time with us. Oh, I enjoyed it greatly. This is Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence, and you're listening to Art on the Air on Lakeshore Public Media 89.1 FM and on WVLP 103.1 FM. We would like to welcome Brianna Bibbs to Art on the Air. Brianna is a Chicago-based artist who works at the intersection of textiles, painting, and community-based practices. She's the founder of the We Were Never Alone Project, a weaving workshop for victims and survivors of domestic violence, and serves on the Surface Design Association's Education Committee. Thank you for joining us on Art on the Air. Aloha and welcome, Brianna. It's very nice to meet you. Yeah, likewise. Thank you for having me. Well, Brianna, we always like to give our guests a chance to tell us about their, I like to say, their origin story, how you got from where you were to where you are, and also tell us all about Brianna. Yeah, that's a great intro, so thank you for that. So, where to begin? I was born and raised in Country Club Hills, Illinois, which is the South Suburbs. For many years, I went to private school, and I was always really interested in doing art. I was always coloring or painting or doing these, like, weird sculptures. I remember when I was little, I had done this, like, bedazzled cat sculpture that ended up winning first place when I think I was in, like, fifth grade or something. And then I went on to high school at Rich Central High School in Olympia Fields, Illinois. And from while I was in high school, I started taking more art classes, and I started to think about art a little bit more seriously. I'd always wanted to dabble in painting at that time, and I really wanted to be an abstract painter. What's interesting, though, is while I was in high school, we didn't really learn a lot about art history. We never referenced artists. We didn't really take any museum trips. Any time I went to an art museum or something like that was actually not apparent. So I really didn't learn a lot about art history until I had gone into college, but I knew while I was in high school, I really wanted to go to the School of Art Institute of Chicago. My mom so graciously ended up paying for me to take some courses there while I was in grade school, and then I wanted to stay my junior year of high school. And so I really had my eyes set on that program and doing that school for undergrad. And so once senior year came, in high school, I got my portfolio together, and I think I printed out probably everything I'd ever made, and put it in one of those portfolio binders and went to Immediate Decision Option Day, which I don't know if SAIC still holds those days, but essentially what it is is you sit down in one of their halls and you learn about the programs that they have and they really talk up the school. But the crazy thing about that day is that day they tell you whether or not you got in based on the portfolio that you bring to their advisors. So I had gone with a friend of mine. I was super nervous the entire time because so many people were walking back to their friends or their parents or whomever, and was like, didn't get in. I was like, oh my gosh, I'm probably not going to get into the school. And I was the last person there. I was waiting on whether or not they were going to accept me. And somebody walked out and they said, oh, we just need a little bit more information from you because I wasn't the best ACT tester. And so I had to retake the test, and luckily when I retook the ACT test, I got accepted in. So while I was at SAIC, I went into the painting department thinking that that was something I was going to stick with my entire time there. But I want to say it was the second year I came across fiber material studies, and I decided to leave the painting department and focus on fibers, and that's where I learned how to weave. I initially thought I was going to hate weaving because there was math involved, and I thought I was going to, you know, I thought I was done with that once my school ended. And weaving can be very tedious and particular, and depending on what it is that you're making, sometimes you have to be really precise. And so I wasn't sure that I would like it the first time I tried it, but I did, and I decided to stick with it. So what kind of classes did you have in high school? Were there ceramics? Did you have a variety of options? No, no. Everything was very kind of, I don't want to say basic, but that's kind of what it was. Like we... Drawing and painting basic? Yeah, drawing and painting. There was no ceramics. We did a lot with pastels. I remember we were excited. I wanted to say that was toward my junior year, maybe senior year of high school. I think we were really excited because we had finally gotten Photoshop. And so I remember I dabbled in Photoshop a little bit, which, you know, was fun at that time. So yeah, we really didn't have a variety. Like I didn't know what weaving was. I didn't really do any ceramics. If I did ceramics, it was when I was in private school, when I was in grade school. So yeah. You go through college and you develop, kind of discovered your art technique in fiber. So tell us about how that evolution took place from just being student into, you know, starting art. Because, you know, Esther likes to say this, and I agree with it, is a lot of times people say, well, art's a nice thing to do, but what are you going to do for a living? And I always liked that statement. How did that evolution for you? Yeah, so while I was in art school, I was really interested in color and color symbolism. All the while, too, I was actually working a retail job while I was studying at FDIC. So that was an interesting balance for me. But in terms of my practice while I was at FDIC, I always found it really interesting to look at a color and think about what that color specifically means to me, and then also allowing the viewer to just kind of have their own interpretation with that color. And I remember when I was a kid, I think this came from my grandmother, who I call my Meemaw. She used to read me this poem out of this kid's book. All I remember is it had this purple hippo on it and some glasses. I don't remember the name of the book. But the poem was called What is Blue? And I was obsessed with that poem as a kid. And it basically just kept asking, what is blue, blue? And it referenced the sky or the shadows of the snow, things like that. So I think that obviously carried over until when I got older. Yeah, it got you thinking about color in a whole different way. Yeah, totally. And then as I was having conversations with my professors and things like that, we started to, well, I started to study the African kente cloth and was looking at storytelling through that aspect and looking at how they use colors and patterns to tell one's individual story. And I thought that that was really powerful. But after I graduated, to be quite honest, I didn't make. I graduated in 2014, and it wasn't until 2019 that I really started to make again. So your Chesterton Art Center exhibit, which is currently running there, it's called Changes. And you actually use your art as a journal using fabric. So tell us about that, how you use fabric to express your life like a journal. Yeah, so when I was little, I always used to journal. I did a ton of handwritten journals, and I still have them all to this day. Journaling was a major, major part of my life. And so going back... Is it in a dedicated book or is it in papers wherever you happen to be? It was in a dedicated book. And then there were a few times where... I mean, I think I have like 10 or 12 journals. I still have my tie-dye ones from when I was a kid up until, I want to say 2018 is when I kind of stopped doing handwritten journals. But yeah, 2019, I had left my retail job to be an artist full-time, which is like a huge scary thing. And at that time, actually the day after my last day in my job, I had met with a gallery in West Town here in Chicago that offered to give me a solo exhibition. It was the first exhibition that I had ever done in years. So that was really an exciting point for me because I was thinking about making these larger scale works at the time that would have paintings on them. And I ended up doing that for that particular show. But it wasn't until COVID where things started to change. Obviously, I wasn't able to get into my studio. I wasn't able to use my floor loom. And so I had to use these cardboard looms that I was using in weaving workshops that I was doing at the time to weave on and to create. So I started to do a quarantine series. And it wasn't until that quarantine series actually had like 51 weavings in it. And I was just using odds and ends that were around the house. And so because I really enjoyed having this daily making practice that carried over into the journal series, which I started in July of 2020. And so the great thing about this exhibition at the Chesterton Art Center is that this is the first time I get to see all 79 weavings in the same space together, which is fantastic. Yeah. Because I haven't seen them all together up on a wall in the same space. I've just kind of been making these journals back to back to back to back, still making them now. I have over 200 of them in the series. And so for me, what's really great about seeing these works together is the beginning stages of the journal series. I was using things intuitively, much like I do, I guess, in other works within my practice. But it was just about going off feeling, like creating these textures, not really thinking about the colors at all. I never think about the colors. And the great thing that you can see within this show is you can tell when I was running out of a certain color and maybe bought another color at that time. And still am getting these grab bags, which are these bags full of odds and ends that a wool supplier might have. So you never really know what you're going to get. And I find that to be really exciting, rather than planning things out. So yeah, it's been fun to... Do you approach it all that way, very intuitively? Or do you have a sketch as to where you want the weaving to go? No, yeah, everything just kind of happens. There's no plan involved, which in my latest journal series, sometimes there's a fail, things will fall out, and you just kind of say, okay, it is what it is. I think that's a part of the work. But yeah, no, there's no planning, there's no sketching, there's no me picking out certain colors to emphasize how I might be feeling. There's none of that. It just happens. You're listening to Art on the Air on Lakeshore Public Media, 89.1 FM, on WVLP, 103.1 FM. I'm curious, how did you and... How did Hannah from the Chesterton Arts Center, the executive director there, and you connect to do this exhibit? Hannah is so great. I love working with her. I'm so happy I was able to have this show at this space, which is currently happening within my family. Hannah reached out to me and she said, hey, do you want to exhibit here? And I was like, yeah, of course. And I came down, saw the space. It's been a very collaborative experience. She's been incredible and just so supportive. And it's like, whatever you want to do, we'll make sure it happens. We'll see if we can do it. And yeah, it's just been a lovely experience. So in your career, when did the We Were Never Alone project begin for you? What was the genesis of that? Yeah, so that started in September of 2020. The first workshop I had ever done for the project was at Compound Yellow in Oak Park, Illinois. And it came about when I'd had this, you know, nearly decade-long relationship that was abusive. And it took me a while to realize that it was, although it was so blatantly in my face. But I had realized actually while I was working on the quarantine series how helpful weaving was for me. And the workshop that I was holding in various spaces throughout Chicago that were unrelated to the project right before we had our COVID shutdown, I saw how relaxing weaving was for people that had never woven before. Like most of the workshops that I have, both in the project and outside of the project, there's a lot of first-time weavers. I find that to be really exciting. But a lot of the feedback that I was getting from people is that they found it to be meditative or cathartic for them. And so I really wanted to see if I could get a group of victims or survivors together, including myself, to sit down. And in this intimate setting, there's really no more than five or six people that attend the workshop at a time. And we sit down for maybe about three or four hours, and we weave and we talk about our experiences. And I think it's been a really positive experience for people, hopefully. And I was also during that time, too, thinking about and reading all these articles of people that were unable to leave their abusive situations because of the shelter-in-place rules, because they are unable to go to a family member's house or unable to go to work and things like that. So there were a lot of things that I was thinking about when I created that project. I notice in your work that it's not just fabric. You have interesting objects that are sometimes embedded, shells, keys, sticks, other types of things. So I know you're very intuitive, but how does that process work? Is it, oh, I'm going to put a key here, or I'm going to put the shell here? I mean, there may not be a process. It just might be like, this needs something there, a three-dimensional object. Yeah, so that shift really started to happen when I started to do residencies in other places. The majority of the journal series works, actually all of them that are in the exhibition at the Chesterton Art Center, all of them were created in my apartment. But then when I was offered these residencies, specifically in 2022 when I had done two residencies in Maine, I really started to think about materiality and place and time and how my own body was kind of navigating these spaces. And I just wanted to try something out. You know, these are a journal, and I can definitely tell when I look at them what my good days are and what my bad days are. And I just want to remember certain things, too. Like right now, although they're not online, hopefully I'll get them online at some point soon. Because of my grandfather's passing, I've actually been taking apart the hospital blanket that he had, thread by thread, and weaving with that, along with some of his favorite materials or favorite objects as well, just because this is what's currently happening in my life, and so it makes sense to have that be used within the series. Yeah, it's a very meditative process and contemplative. Yeah, for sure. So when we come to see the exhibit, which is running through the end of February, will you have descriptions about each of the pieces, like what this meant to you, or is it just going to explain itself as it sits in the exhibit? Well, I hope that it explains itself. One of the things that I have enjoyed about feedback that I've gotten about the journal series is that people tend to have their own relationships with the work. They think about their own personal feelings, and then sometimes people will say, oh, you were feeling good this day, and I'll be like, hmm, okay, maybe. But of course I enjoy that people try to figure it out, but what I really most enjoy is when people look at it and they say, you know, I can relate to this, although it's this incredibly abstracted object. Do you have anything coming up past February? You'll be on exhibit in the Chesterton Art Center through February, but anything else coming up for you in 2024? Yeah, so two things at the Art Center is on February 10th at 10 a.m. there will be a weaving workshop from 10 to noon, and then at 1 o'clock from 1 to 2 on February 10th I'll be doing a brief artist talk with the opportunity for people to ask questions as well. Oh, that'll be interesting. And anything else, I mean, past the Chesterton exhibit you have like on the things like exhibits and such, Zach? Yeah, so the Elmhurst Art Museum, I am at the Mies van der Rohe House. There's an amazing curator and artist, Norman Teague, who put together an exhibition of BIPOC artists and designers and will be taking over that Mies van der Rohe House. Oh, that sounds excellent. So any big plans for large works? I know that you also have some large works to do. Yeah, no, well, we'll see. I have my fingers crossed for some residencies, so hopefully that'll allow some time for me to create some larger works, but for now my primary focus is doing the journal series. Very good. Well, we're just about a little over a minute left. How can people find you online, social media, and if they want to get in touch with you? Yeah, so you can go to my website, briannabibbs.com, the wewereneveraloneproject.com, and then my Instagram is at briannabibbs. Very good. Well, we appreciate you coming on the show and sharing your art journey and everything. That's briannabibbs. She'll be at the Chesterton Art Center continuing through the end of February. It's called Changes. It's a solo exhibition. I think there's 78, 79 pieces, so it'll be there through February 29th. And on February 10th, she'll have a workshop in the morning and a talk in the afternoon to describe that, and you can meet her in person and everything. Brianna, we appreciate you coming on Art on the Air and sharing your art journey. Yes, thank you for having me. Yeah, thank you. Our condolences again. Thank you. Thank you. We'd like to thank our guests this week on Art on the Air, our weekly program covering the arts and arts events throughout Northwest Indiana and beyond. Art on the Air is heard Sunday at 7 p.m. on Lakeshore Public Media, 89.1 FM, also streaming live at lakeshorepublicmedia.org and is available on Lakeshore Public Media's website as a podcast. Art on the Air is also heard Friday at 11 a.m. and Monday at 5 p.m. on WVLP, 103.1 FM, streaming live at wvlp.org. If you have a smart speaker like Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, or Apple Siri, just tell to play Art on the Air to hear the latest episode. Our spotlight interviews are heard every Wednesday on Lakeshore Public Media. Thanks to Tom Maloney, Vice President of Radio Operation for Lakeshore Public Media, and Greg Kovach, WVLP's Station Manager. Our theme music is by Billy Foster with a vocal by Renee Foster. Art on the Air is supported by the Indiana Arts Commission Arts Project Grant, South Shore Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. We'd like to thank our current underwriters for Lakeshore Public Media, Macaulay Real Estate and Valparaiso, Olga Patrician, Senior Broker, and for WVLP, Walt Reidinger of Paragon Investments. So we may continue to bring you Art on the Air. We rely on you, our listeners and underwriters, for ongoing financial support. If you're looking to support Art on the Air, we have information on our website at where you can find out how to become a supporter or underwriter of our program in whatever amount you are able. And like I say every week, don't give till it hurts. Give till it feels good. You'll feel so good about supporting Art on the Air. If you're interested in being a guest or send us information about your arts, arts-related event or exhibit, please email us at That's A-O-T-A at or contact us through our Facebook page. Your hosts were Larry Breckner and Esther Golden, and we invite you back next week for another episode of Art on the Air. Aloha, everyone. Have a splendid week. 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