AOTA-240531 - Lynn Buckmaster | Chris Cassidy | Spotlight Dunes Art Foundation

This week's episode of Out of the Air features artist Lynn Buckmaster, whose landscapes are part of the permanent collection at Indiana Dunes National Park. The show also highlights food photographer Chris Cassidy's travel photography exhibit, as well as interviews with director Michael Aswell and actor Robert Morris. The hosts, Esther and Larry, introduce themselves and discuss the show's sponsors. They also welcome guests from the Dunes Arts Foundation Summer Theater, who talk about their upcoming productions and their roles in them. The guests discuss the challenges of set design and their backgrounds in theater. They also mention the dates and ticket information for the shows. The episode concludes with announcements about other local art events and a thank you to the guests. The show ends with an interview with artist Lynn Buckmaster, who discusses her painting style and her inspiration from nature. This week on Out of the Air features region artist Lynn Buckmaster, whose charming landscapes are part of the permanent collection at Indiana Dunes National Park. Next we have commercial food photographer Chris Cassidy sharing his travel photography in a June exhibit at the Depot. Our spotlights on Dunes Arts Foundation's Blight Spirit Director Michael Aswell and Talley's Folly actor Robert Morris. Express yourself through art, and show the world your heart. Express yourself through art, and show the world your heart. You're in the know with Esther and Larry, who aren't on the air today. They're in the know with Larry and Esther, who aren't on the air our way. Express yourself through art, and show the world your heart. Express yourself through art, 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, South Shore 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. 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. And we'd like to welcome to Art on the Air Spotlight from the Dunes Arts Foundation Summer Theater. In the upcoming productions they have, we first have Michael Laswell, who will be directing Blythe Spirit, who is also all season there for Scenic Design. From the next show, Tally's Father, we have Rob Morris, and he's going to talk about participating in that. They have not yet started rehearsals yet, but they will very shortly. And of course, Elise Cremani, who all herds the thing to make sure everyone's in place. Welcome to Art on the Air Spotlight, gentlemen and lady. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Well, Michael, we'll first kick it to you and talk about Blythe Spirit, directing that and everything like that. And also then a little bit about, maybe just a real brief thing about your background, and then also about the Scenic Design for all the shows this season. Yeah, this season we decided we'd explore the theme of the way the course of true love never runs smooth. So it's the bumpy road to love. And in Blythe Spirit, I've wanted to do this show my whole life. I've worked as an actor and a director and a set designer over and over again. This is kind of the Olympics of set design, because there are a lot of special effects, a lot of magic, a lot of crazy stuff. But it's sort of about how a guy gets turned into an accidental bigamist when he throws a séance just for a goof. He thinks he has hired a phony medium to have a séance, and it turns out she's the real thing. And so he thinks happily married to his second wife, but his first wife comes back from the dead. And one of the critics described it as a psychic menage a trois, as he tries to juggle two wives at once. And they don't like each other a lot. Eventually a lot of crockery gets thrown through the air, sometimes by invisible beings. So that's Blythe Spirit. So tell us a little bit about scene design things planning for the whole season. Do you try to incorporate a whole concept like, okay, I'll use this in this show, and now what can I use from that in this show? Tell us about your process. I have to be sneaky because the turnovers are really, really fast. So the basic platform arrangement of this beautiful English arts and crafts country house that's all art nouveau and beautiful is there, but then we turn it into a ruined boathouse for the next show, for Talley's Folly. It's supposed to look like it was once a grand architectural folly, and then kablammo, a hundred years go by and it goes to rack and ruin. So we're going to build a beautiful set, and then we're going to crackle finish all the paint. And tell us real briefly about your background, just like about 30 seconds here or so. Oh, yeah. I used to work as an actor all the time in New York, and as a director in New York and Chicago and Oregon. And the set design job was always my day job. I wasn't a waiter, I was a set designer. Well, that's excellent. Well, we appreciate that. We'll move on to Rob Morris, who's going to be in Talley's Folly, and it's a two-character movie directed by Morgan McCabe, who we have interviewed as a feature interview. So, Rob, tell us briefly about yourself and a little bit about the play. Well, currently I'm an English teacher, head of middle school, but I've been doing theater for 15, 20 years now, and it's become a passion of mine, and getting an opportunity to do a role like this. I'm just really looking forward to continuing to dive into it. I know we don't officially start rehearsals until June, but the co-star and I have been working on the side, working on our lines, memorizing, getting that going. Tell us a little bit about the show, Talley's Folly. It's set in 1944, I know that. Yeah, it's set in 1944. It's in Missouri, and we've got Matthew and Sally that they were together a year ago, and they're trying to figure out what went wrong in that last year. And from that beautiful boathouse that is now ruined, it's now coming together, and they're trying to see if they can make love work or not. Rob, do you have a past connection with the Dune Summer Theater? No, this is my first time, and I think Michael is a big reason why I've been called. He had seen me in something and wrote me into it. I'm thrilled that I got my first walk around to the site just yesterday, and it's just a beautiful venue and just a great opportunity and great stage. I'm looking forward to seeing it all. Are you in anything else this season, or is this the only show you're in? For myself, this will be the only show I'm in at the Dunes. Okay. Are your students aware that you are an actor? Yeah, I have the posters up in my room. Every time I'm in a show, another poster goes up. I've lived in the area for two years, and so I'm getting a little collection, and now I've added this one to the list. Okay, very good. Well, Michael, we'll come back to you briefly. You talked a little bit about how to make the transition from one show to the next in terms of scenic design and stuff like that. What type of crew do you work with? Are you a hands-on scenic designer, or you're also the master carpenter? I am hands-on. I am feet-on. I am here 12 hours a day. My days usually start at 10 in the morning and go until 10 at night. Alex, who does everything, Alex Front of the theater, helps me out, and we've got a lot of community volunteers. We actually have a team of people making unbreakable Chotsky vases and lamps and plates made out of metal, and we're glazing them to look like they're fine ceramic so when they fly through the air or jump off the mantelpiece, they don't get broken. Excellent. Well, Elise, we'll kick it to you so you can remind people the dates of at least these two shows and some of the things coming up and how to get there. Yeah, so Life Spirit opens on May 31, and it runs until June 16, and so it's every Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m. Central Time, that's Chicago time, and then Sundays at 2. And we open, the bar opens an hour before, and we're hoping, fingers crossed, we'll also have a food truck there with Mexican food, so come early, enjoy the beautiful lawn and patio. And you can get tickets right online, dunesarts.org, D-U-N-E-S-A-R-T-S dot O-R-G, and the best deal is four more, $25, buy four tickets. Well, thank you for coming on Art of the Year Spotlight. Rob Morris, Michael Laswell, and Elise Cremani from Dunes Arts, and that's dunesarts.org. Thanks again for coming on Art of the Year Spotlight. Yeah, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Esther and Larry. The Duneland Photography Club's upcoming exhibit, Summertime, is running May 28th to June 27th, with an artist reception on Friday, June 7th at 5 p.m., located at Valparaiso's Art Barns School of Art, 695 North 400 East. Art of the Year Spotlight and the complete one-hour program on Lakeshore Public Media is brought to you by Macaulay Real Estate in Valparaiso, Ola Patrician, Senior Broker. And as a reminder, if you'd like to have your event on Art of the Year Spotlight or have a longer feature interview, email us at aotaatbrek.com. That's aotaatbrek, B-R-E-C-H, dot com. This is Clay Jenkinson for Listening to America, and you are listening to Art on the Air on Lakeshore Public Media 89.1 FM and WVLP 103.1 FM. We would like to welcome Lynn Buckmaster to Art on the Air. Lynn is a realistic acrylic painter who paints in studio and plein air. She's inspired by nature and has many awards for that work and was chosen for the 2001 Artist in Residence Program at the Indiana Dunes National Parks, and a piece is in the park's permanent collection. Thank you for joining us on Art on the Air. Aloha and welcome, Lynn. It's very nice meeting you. It's a pleasure to meet you, too. Thank you both for having me. I really appreciate it. Well, Lynn, how we always like to start off our shows, we want our guests to have a chance to talk about themselves, their origin story. I always like to say, how you got from where you were to where you are now. So tell us all about Lynn. All right. Well, I'm born and raised in northwest Indiana. I'm an acrylic realistic landscape painter, mostly self-taught, but I have a great circle of family and friends that have always been so supportive and encouraging, and everything that I, all my major accomplishments, I attribute to the support of my awesome circle. What about that early schooling? What type of artwork did you do, elementary, high school, middle high school, all of those? What were those experiences like, and did you have a house full of people who were doing creative things, either music or visual arts or I don't know? My dad dabbled in some visual arts when he was in high school, and so he would help me out and support me when I would do something. I had some awesome critiques available there, but I was drawing landscapes since I could pick up a pencil, and pencil and crayons were my only art supplies, and I treasured them, and it was just always landscapes. I would obsessively draw the same landscape over and over when I was very little, and then all through school, art was just always my thing, and everyone knew it was my thing and supported me in it and told me about art contests, and my parents enrolled me in that. I don't know if you remember back in the day, they had a correspondence art school where you could draw the turtle. Were you good enough to be in art school? But I'm sure everybody was, but they supported me in that, and it was a two-year-long entrance into basic art skills, and it gave me a good start. And then in high school, I was in the honors art program where we did things in the community, and so it was nice to be able to reach out and see art being used and appreciated by the community. So, Linda, after you did the high school and things like that, did you get any other formal training like in the academy or art school or in college? I started to, but I went into college locally, and I actually got a professor that was a bit discouraging, which was a different experience for me because I'd always gotten so much encouragement. And so I just kind of figured, well, this is not the place for me to learn art, and I'm not kind of an independent do-it-yourselfer, so I just kind of said, well, I'll just take my own road and I'll learn on my own, and I've been mostly self-taught. But as a young adult, life kind of got in the way of work, married life, parenting, and before I knew it, 25 years had gone by and I hadn't made any significant progress towards the art career that I always dreamed or thought I would put together. And so one day I woke up and I'm just like, okay, I'm refocusing. I'm doing it. I have the time now. And I gave myself a goal that I thought would take me five years, and that was the Indiana Dunes Artist-in-Residence program. And I was lucky enough to get in there sooner than I thought, and that was a super great experience, and it taught me that even if I dream a little bit bigger than I think I ought to, that's probably a good thing, and I was able to achieve it, and now I love to use my art to encourage others and as much as I love to create my own art and you love to get recognized for your own work, really what lights me up now is encouraging others in their creative passions. If somebody tells me, oh, I'm really into, you know, I really would like to paint, but I don't think I could, and so I just, you know, people's case. I'm like, you need to spend some time doing that. You have that passion for a reason. And so, yeah, I really feel excited when I can put a gleam in somebody else's eye for art or nature or whatever their creative passion is. That's kind of what I'm about nowadays. So when did you add the acrylics? When did you go from pencil to acrylics? What part of your career? When I was a teenager, I didn't start painting until I was a teenager, and my uncle was into oil painting, and he was only a few years older than me, and he was really into oil painting, and I wasn't allowed to touch the supplies. So eventually I got gifted my own, and at first it was oil paints, but as I got older and I had to replace the paints and, like, the cost and the toxicity, I just kind of fell to acrylic then because oil perfumes from some of the oils trigger migraines for me. So I'm kind of stuck with acrylic, but now they have new products out where it's water-based oils and open acrylics that are kind of an in-between. So I'm enjoying dabbling in those as well. You know, going back to your non-art life, tell us some of the things that you did in that outside of art before you started re-exploring your career later in life. What work did you do? And obviously raising a family, but just tell us a little bit more about that. Well, I just did a lot of odd jobs. I worked sales. I worked in a warehouse. I've painted cabinets. But most of my time was I homeschooled my daughter, and that's a full-time job. So she was a little prodigy and took a lot of work, and I enjoyed getting to spend the time with her and direct her education directly, although I wasn't a teacher, so that took some learning on my part to learn how to teach and to learn how to teach her specifically with her advanced skills. And so I had stacks of magazines and catalogs for homeschool items and, you know, advice on how to teach this or that. And so I did a lot of learning about how to homeschool my daughter. So I'm very interested to know what your days were like in the artist residency program. Can you take us through what that experience is like, you know, from application to actually having the residency? First of all, it was just an amazing experience, and any artist out there who is even thinking about applying, I highly recommend. Everyone from the staff to even the patrons of the park, it was an incredible experience, nothing but positive things to say. The application can be found on their website, and I believe it's sometime in February. You would have to check with that, with their page to, I don't know if they shift that around any, but you can apply online and you submit a certain number of images and your bio, and it's a very competitive program. I really was very surprised to get in so quickly. I thought, well, I'll work on my skills until I'm good enough, and I'll just keep applying until I get in. And the first year I applied, I did not get in. And the second year the letter came because I applied again, and I was opening it up and expecting to get the same response, and it started off, congratulations. And I had one foot on cloud nine, and the other was, oh, no, am I ready? But once I got there, Jeff Manuzak, who was in charge of the program, gave me a full tour of the park. He split it up into two days, and so the first day we toured the east side of the park, and the next day, the next morning, we toured the west side of the park, which is from Miller Beach over towards the state park. They house you for two weeks, so I got to live there, and it was kind of a community housing. We each had our own space, but then, you know, a shared space for the kitchen and living room area, and, you know, my roommates were wonderful also. And every day, I just got to go out and explore the park and paint, and it was really a treat to not only end each day so close to the beach where I could go, experience the sunset, just knowing that, you know, I belong here right now. I'm representing the park, and it was such an honor, and I just treasured every moment of it. I painted until 3 in the morning because I couldn't stop, and I wanted to get, you know, so much work done while I was there. I exhausted myself, but I'd do it again in a heartbeat, although they only let you do it once, so I had to go find a residency someplace else. How was your day structured? I was wondering, so did you paint plein air, or did you take photographs and paint? Because 3 in the morning, so describe what, like, at 3 in the morning, where are you painting at 3 in the morning? Gotcha. At 3 in the morning, I had come back to the house and was in the little studio that they gave me and was looking at my studies from the day, my photos from the day, and I do kind of a mix of plein air and in studio, so I spent the day. I'd get out as early as I could and walk, take pictures, take my plein air gear and paint. I was early spring, but some of the days I remember being pretty hot, and there was one day in particular I got ate up pretty bad. I'm like, oh, I just can't paint all afternoon, so I packed up my gear and just took more photos that day. It was really self-structured, so they gave me free reign to do what I wanted and just experience the park, and as a result, they also asked that you donate a picture that you've done there to their permanent collection, so I knew that I had to prepare that, and they asked that you keep a journal, and so I got to keep a journal, and I have a copy of that where I just state, well, this is where I went today, and this is how it went, and every artist before me had written in this journal, and so it was really great to look back on all those experiences and add my own to that, but it was very, very self-guided, and it was just great to belong there and experience the park as the artist-in-residence and have nothing to do but paint and enjoy the great space. I know sometimes in past ones you had to have a discussion or not quite maybe a workshop, but you had to make a presentation to the public. Was that still one of the requirements? It was stated that that was going to be one of the requirements, but when it came down to it, when I was accepted in, it was 2020. Oh, okay. COVID-19 put a kibosh on a little bit. In fact, I was accepted in 2020, and they ended up canceling the program in 2020, and everyone that got brought in got rolled over to 2021, so I had to kind of hold on to myself there for a whole year waiting to get to participate, but I was the first one back after they opened the program back up in 2021, but they kind of eliminated that part of the requirement at that time. So you're in a common room with some of these other artists. You're sharing, I guess, a house or something, and you each have your own space. What was the interaction like with some of them? Was that inspirationally or just mixing it up with someone that was there? Actually, it's one artist at a time for two weeks. Who I shared the home with was the volunteer coordinator for the park. That was her main residence for the years that she held that position, and one of the other gentlemen was one of them on the maintenance team, and so they weren't artists at all, and they were curious about what I did, and I was curious about what they did, and they went about their business during the day, and I went about wine painting, and in the evenings, we'd just come back and share a drink and talk about our days and just enjoy the evening together. Sometimes we watched a movie. Sometimes we just sat around and talked. Sometimes we joined in our own rooms and worked on our own project. What was one of the features of the National Park that you liked best or struck you the most while you were not only just in residency but overall? Being born and raised in Northwest Indiana, I always knew about the dunes, and I kind of went into it thinking, well, how am I going to make this beach scene, these waves, be something different and special? During the tour of the park, Jeff took me over to behind the Douglas Center in Miller Beach, and I had never been there before, and some of the places that we stopped, we just kind of drive by, and he gave me the technical information like, oh, you're allowed to park here, and oh, don't go over here. Well, we went to behind the Douglas Center, and he's like, we're getting out here. We're going for a walk. I'm like, all right, let's go, and we start hiking behind the Douglas Center there, and I was just floored. I was there in the spring, and the rolling hills were just covered with lupine, and if I'm saying that right, lupine or lupine flowers, but it struck me like a Middle Earth shire for anyone that's familiar with like the Lord of the Rings, and I was just so floored that I thought I was going to have to travel to New Zealand to see something like that, and here it was this whole time right in my backyard, and that's the scene that I ended up painting, and it wasn't the best design, but it's what struck my heart, and I went back there on several days to paint a scene from there overlooking the marshy area. If you go behind the Douglas Center, you cross a little bridge, you take a right, or I'm sorry, you take a left, and you climb the first biggest hill. That's the scene I painted from, and it just struck me as so beautiful, and Tolsten Dunes is another one that is very similar. This rolling hills is a rare black oak savanna, so it's a very rare landscape, and I just found it to be beautiful and inspirational. So what was your next goal? So you got the park, so what are you working toward now, or what did you work toward after then? So how have you been building on that experience? I thought that I might reach out and try another artist-in-residency because I enjoy that so much, but I really have just been working on my own skills. I wanted to upgrade my skills and get them closer to where I felt they needed to be, and so I've been doing a lot of that, and I've recently had the honor of being included in a new gallery, so I now have gallery representation. So that was sort of one of my goals, to be good enough to have that happen, and it's just happened. So there's a new gallery called Gallery 02 out in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Brian Robertson and John Kelty are the owners, and a friend of mine, Carleen Rivera, recommended that I apply, and both of us have works out there now. Congratulations. Thank you. Everything that I have going on right now is just because of my circle of friends. Somebody has encouraged me or asked me to apply or believed in my work enough to, you know, to have me do something, and I'm just really grateful. So you currently have in the May show something in the Art Barn, and then you've got upcoming in June you have something special. You're recognized in the Women's Club at the Chesterton Annual Art Exhibit. You're the featured artist. So tell us a little bit about that and how you got chosen for that. My friend, Deborah Stepanovich, asked if I could donate a piece for the show, and she's like, this comes with being a – would you like to be a featured artist? And I was surprised and honored and happy to donate a piece to the cause. Especially when I heard what they did with the proceeds from last year's donation, what they do is I donate a painting and they raffle it off, and the proceeds go directly to the Chesterton Women's Club. And last year they used the proceeds to get things from the local school's angel tree, and they went back for seconds, and then they also donated to an organization that supports children who find themselves suddenly in the foster care system with hygiene things and pajamas. And I'm like, wow, they're really doing great work, and I'm really honored to be able to help support them in that. But raffle tickets are currently available. They're $5 each, or five for 20, and they're available at the Chesterton Arts Center. And that show runs June 3rd until June 29th. And they can still get in at the show if they bring their pieces. Artists can bring it, and I think it's on the 29th of May or something like that that they can present it for acceptance at the Chesterton Arts Center. Is there any subject – and we're getting in our last couple minutes here – any subject that you have not explored that you have, like you've done landscapes and things like that, like portraiture or something else that you haven't done that you might want to do? I'm really stuck in landscape and I've been really stuck in acrylic, so I really need to get out of my box, so to speak, and reach out a little bit more. But my heart just lives in the landscapes. But I am thinking more about imaginative landscapes, putting a little bit more of my imagination and maybe things that aren't very realistic or maybe like Middle Earth or, you know, just kind of imaginary kind of things, something that people don't see but can be inspiring and still bring people joy. And tell us about any artists that inspired you. I really enjoy – I love looking at all landscape art, especially, but I really enjoy Albert Bierstadt, you know, his great works of the landscapes out west. I've not been out west, but it's just so inspirational, you know. He's one that I know. It's just fantastic what people can do with paint and how much it can inspire others. I just love that, yeah. Yeah, you need to make a trip out west. When I took my wife for the first time, she actually filled up her photo card because, you know, we're both photographers and it was amazing because she had never seen red rocks before. So it was – yeah, I think you would be definitely inspired by a whole new look out there. You know, we're coming up on our – about last minute here. We want to give you a chance to talk about, you know, not only your website, how people can reach out to you, but also exhibits that you might have coming up later this summer. Okay. Well, thank you. My website is bookmasterart.com. I'm on Facebook as bookmasterfineart. Instagram is officialbookmasterart. Most of my social links can be found at Linktree slash bookmasterart. We spoke about the Chesterton Art Center and the Gallery 02. I'm part of the Zoom and Plein Air Painters Group, which has been good for my heart and my art. And they have an exhibit coming up June 30th to August 22nd at the Village Gallery. I'm going to be at the Creative Arts Summit at the Lake County Public Library. It's June 1st, 12 to 4. And currently at my studio at the Fairchild House in DeMont, we're doing what we can to reach out to the community as far as art. And so the last Monday of every month, we're trying to host an open studio time where anyone who does anything creative, wants to come make art and make friends, they can come hang out with us and enjoy making art and friends. That sounds wonderful. Well, we appreciate you coming on the show today. That's Lynn Buckmaster. And you've heard where she's going to be and how she's going to be. You can contact her at her website and everything. Lynn, thank you so much for coming on Art of the Year and sharing your art. Thank you so much. It's been truly an honor. Yeah, thank you so much, Lynn. Thank you. Art of the Year listeners, do you have a suggestion for a possible guest on our show? Whether it's an artist, musician, author, gallery, theater, concert, or some other artistic endeavor that you are aware of or a topic of interest to our listeners, email us at aotaatbrek.com. That's aotaatbrek, B-R-E-C-H, dot com. Did you know that you can also listen to Art of the Year 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, iHeartRadio, and many more. If you have a smart speaker like Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, or Apple Siri, just help to play Art on the Year to hear the latest episode. Art on the Year is pleased to announce that it received a 2024 Communicator Award of Distinction for its Episode 212, an interview with public media music theme composer B.J. Liederman. Thank you for listening to Art on the Year. This is Meg Barrow of the Beverly Shores Depot Museum and Art Gallery. I'm the curator. You're listening to Art on the Air on Lakeshore Public Media 89.1 FM and on WVLP 103.1 FM. We are pleased to welcome Chris Cassidy to Art on the Air. Chris is a successful commercial food photographer. Now semi-retired, he has turned to travel and nature to inspire him. He will be having a show of his work at the Depot Gallery in an exhibit titled Inspiration Over Time. Thank you for joining us on Art on the Air. Aloha and welcome, Chris. It's so nice to see you. Thank you. Good to be with you. Well, we're so glad to have you on, Chris. And what we want to find out and our audience always likes to hear is your origin story. And I like to say it by how you got from where you were to where you are now. So tell us all about Chris. Well, let's see. We moved around a lot as a family. I think we lived in 17 different cities or different houses, at least, in growing up until I went away to college. And we just, you know, became very close siblings. And we always had each other as friends, a brother and two sisters. And my mom was, yeah, was an artist. And so she'd always give us a blank piece of paper rather than some coloring book and tell us to draw things. So that's how it started, just going out in the backyard. What type of art did she do? She originally was an oil painter. I think she got her degree from Indiana University. But she evolved over time and she spun wool and knitted sweaters and did collages and a lot of watercolor at the end there. But she was always busy doing it and was very prolific. You didn't say in the very beginning where you were originally born. I'm just curious. I know you moved around a lot, but where were you originally from? I was born in Atlanta, Georgia. I remember it very well. I think we moved away when I was three months old. Great. You talked about having a blank sheet of paper as your early origin. Did you have any other things going on that your mother inspired you for? Music or any other type of arts type thing? My dad was into music, and he exposed us to a lot of—we learned about the history of music, really, and he was having that exposure. He loved poetry and literature, so we were always surrounded by creative things and thinking. I remember learning how to play chess as a young age and getting a book on astronomy and looking at pictures of the universe as we knew it back then. Of course, that's all expanded considerably now, which has been interesting to follow. I'd get a piece of paper and try to draw something, and I was always frustrated because I couldn't do it the way I saw it. We had a Super 8 movie camera that my mom would take pictures of us, so I just started playing around with that and being interested in imagery and learning. I actually went to college to try to do cinematography. To get us started in that, you had to learn the camera, so that's how I got introduced to photography, learning what the camera was and how it works and the film and how to treat it and things you can do with it. I just kind of took that path instead of cinematography. I used to make movies in high school, and it's really pretty corny stuff now that you look back on it, but it was an effort. Well, even Steven Spielberg, that's how he started doing those kind of almost home movie derivative-type things, so you never know where that's going to go. Yeah, I wanted to be him. Actually, we grew up on going to Martha's Vineyard. My dad was from Boston, so we would go out and visit all the relatives every summer, and we ended up on Martha's Vineyard during the time that Spielberg was shooting Jaws. You can see they had the model sharks on a trailer, and you could walk right up to them. That just changed my outlook on swimming in the ocean. Mine, too. It changed my whole relationship with the ocean. You could crawl in the mouth of that shark and take a nap. I mean, it was just an awesome-looking thing, and they're out there, too. That's where they live and we don't, so it's like, hmm, does that look like a seal there? I don't know. Let me go take a bite. Yeah, they don't have hands to figure out. They just bite you. See if you taste good. Like most people say about humans, though, if given a choice, we're too bony for them. They like seals, which have much smaller bones, and they can almost swallow them whole. Let's go back to photography. You went through college and everything, so you learned photography. What kind of drove you into the profession, per se? Well, I worked at a portrait studio for a while in Ohio, and that kind of fizzled out after a bit. I moved back to Chicago. I had gone to the Art Institute in Chicago for a couple of semesters, and I met a friend who I always stayed in contact with. I was moving back to Chicago just to try something new, and I called him up, and he said, Hey, I'm working at this photo studio, and I think they're looking for a guy. You want to come down? So I did and got a job. We were photographing everything in the Sears catalog, pretty much, and Montgomery Ward Sunday inserts, and also shock absorbers and washing machines and rolls of carpet and dining room sets and girls jumping on trampolines and everything but food. That wore out after a while, too. I don't think it's even around anymore, but I went out, and I started photography as an apprentice kind of industry. So I started working for other photographers, and Chicago is a food town. There's a lot of that kind of work here, and so that's what I was helping these other photographers do, you know, working on food, and it just became a, okay, now that it's my turn, I'm doing that, too. It's a great industry, actually. The people in the food industry are typically very caring, and they like preparing food to make other people happy, which is a nice mindset, a nice situation to be in. So lucky enough, lucky me. I was able to persevere and do a lot of really interesting things. Like you had a good amount of experience in learning what you, I mean, like when you found what you liked doing, you knew because you had done the trampolines and the clothing and all of that, so great. I was interested in your process. So with commercial photography, and especially like food photography, how does that work? You get a client, and they come, and so tell us the whole, I mean, we have a lot of photographers who listen to our show, so you can get into some detail about your process of like, okay, we're going to shoot whatever it's for. Well, let's see, when I first started, it was all film, and there was process was the food stylist would prepare the food and put it on the set, whatever. We would have something set up, and the camera was trained on the set, and then you would do a Polaroid, and the wait for 90 seconds as the Polaroid processed, and then you'd look at the Polaroid and the art director and the client, and everybody would gather around, and you'd say, yeah, let's say, move that carrot over there, or can we change out that glass, or maybe there's a better-looking steak that we could set up, and the food stylist would have to keep the food looking fresh for a fairly good amount of time, and then we would do a bracket of film once everybody was happy with how it looked on the Polaroid, and then we'd send the film off to the lab and wait for 90 minutes again to get the film back and look at it, and if we were lucky or good, I suppose, the film would be fine, and we could move on to the next shot, and if, you know, in the meantime, the food stylist would have to keep the food alive or decent-looking in case we had to redo it, so that's the, I think, common thought with a lot of people is that there's a lot of doctored food that had to sit there for a long time. The evolution of the digital world became, you didn't have to do Polaroids, you saw it right away, so that a lot of those techniques where they had to keep the lettuce from wilting or whatever wasn't that important anymore, so you could work a lot quicker. Like back in the days with film and Polaroids, we could make it two or three shots a day, and then once the digital came around, we would be doing up to 12, 15 shots a day, as fast as the food stylist could put them together, even later with retouching in Photoshop. Did you use hot lights or did you use flash? Flash for food, back in the catalog days, it was all hot lights. Well, not necessarily, we had strobes as well. Now, you're still pursuing that, you still have, because you are semi-retired, you still have a set of clients, so those clients just contact you directly, you don't work through an agency or anything? Yep, that's what it's come to, which is, it's a good way to be. It's really a family, you know, get a lot of history together with a lot of these different clients, so it's a nice comfort zone. So Chris, is the food prepared in your studio? Yeah, or, you know, I do, I've gone on location with restaurants and different facilities that can make their own food. We just did a project for a company that makes soft-serve ice cream, and they had the machine in their plant, so we had to go there to do it. But, you know, have camera, will travel. That's true. Now, tell us about your camera gear. Again, we have a lot of photographers out there, and they're interested in what you use, or what you have used over the years, and what you're using now. Well, originally it was an 8x10 Deardorff, and we would shoot film, and then it evolved into, I think my first digital camera was a Phase One, and I used that primarily for most of my career. As the technology got better, I always upgraded, but I tried Hasselblad for a while, and I think I preferred the Phase One technology. Now I just use a Canon. It's a nice little peashooter. Yeah, what Canon do you use? I'm just curious. Let's see, what is it? It's the R5 is the one I have now. Okay, so you've gone mirrorless. Yeah, it's nice to evolve with the technology. I don't think I'll go mirrorless. I've got too much investment in the lenses, so I'll probably stay the generation behind that. You have adapters, so you can... I know, but you know, adapters sometimes, and even like that, I know that, but sometimes it seems like, yeah, you lose a little bit of clarity, a little sharpness when you start doing it that way, so I'm kind of happy. I'm happy for my retirement, I bought myself the 5DSR, which is a 50 megapixel, because I do a lot of landscape and wildlife photography, versus getting, let's say, a 600mm lens that has a limited use for that, where I could still use my 200, and still have plenty of pixels to crop in and get a picture that I could blow up to like 20x30, so yeah, I know. So you use that for your food photography now? Yeah, I mean, the 100 megapixel Phase One camera was really great and sharp and everything, but it just was overkill. I mean, if you're doing smooth surfaces like cars or something, then that makes a difference. Landscape, it's really nice to have a 150 megapixel camera. The latest Phase One technology is pretty amazing. I have been using the IQ4 Phase One back that's on a field camera. I think it's the Phase One XT. It's an amazing system. I mean, you can buy a nice car, or you can have that camera. That's true. So away from commercial photography, what do you like to shoot? Well, I think it just was ingrained in me at an early age. My mother would just look at things, and that's what I do. I'm always observing what's around me. I like knowing about things. I think one of the earliest memories I have is going to somebody's birthday party. I think I was five or four or six years old. I can't remember, but they gave us a little hoop, and they threw it out in the backyard, and they said, go look at whatever you see in the hoop. And I think I was there, and they had to drag me away and say, hey, Chris, it's time for cake. And I was like, I don't know. There's still too much stuff to look at. It was kind of an amazing experience. Kind of riffing on that, so in the full bloom of, you know, you're in the thick of your career in commercial food photography, do you have another art practice to decompress maybe from that, or is your career hobby and passion like all the same? So is it like photography, photography, photography, or are there other areas that, you know, you relax with and enjoy? Yeah, I play guitar, and I like doing that. That centers me quite a bit if I'm frazzled anywhere, which I don't tend to be. I'm pretty laid back. But the music has a nice settling quality. I just inherited a cello from my nephew, and I'm interested in learning how to play that. And in your past, you kind of jammed with some rock musicians or something. I remember we touched on that briefly. Yeah, that was a fun time. I made a lot of loud noises. Well, I'm going to throw probably something, a question that you've probably heard many, many, many, many times. But what is the most, like in your career, what is the most unusual food you ate, and was that one also like the most delicious? Well, the things that stand out are, in a bad way, we did some squid ink pasta that was just, I don't understand why anybody would do that. And then we had a lobster-like creature from Australia called a mud bug that somebody thought that was a good idea. I don't know why. The best stuff, we were fortunate enough to do a lot of photography for the Frontera group. Anytime Rick Bayless is cooking, I'm eating. That's probably the best. But we've had a lot, I mean, more than I can really remember or think about. I haven't been hungry in a long time, put it that way. Did you ever eat the food that they actually prepared that you did the shoot with and said, okay, I guess it's okay to consume that now? Oh, yeah, all the time. I mean, there's so much of it, it's hard to like sit down and eat a meal of it, but, you know, you taste it, that's for sure. I think one of the techniques that the food stylists would use to make cheese look like it's melty, like a hamburger, is to dab it with pine saw. It actually makes it look great, and I think I just spaced it out one time and I thought, oh, a hamburger, I'll take a bite of this, and oh, boy. That was a good lesson. I never did that again. I heard years ago, like for beer commercials, they used to use motor oil for some of that to get the really saturated colors in there, so I don't know if you had ever dealt with beverages like that. No, I haven't heard that one before. You wouldn't want to take a sip of that, I can tell you. No. Was it like some Guinness, maybe? Maybe, I don't know. It was years ago, like I said, and they did that to kind of do it and they'd foam it up somehow and everything, but it wasn't really beer. Well, we have a few minutes left. We want to talk about your upcoming exhibit that's at the depot there, so tell us a little bit about it. It's called Inspiration Over Time, Chris Cassidy's Photography, so tell us what we might see there. Well, I think it's essentially just vacation pictures. I happen to go to some really amazing places. I just got back from Iceland and there's a lot of photos from that trip and just the landscape there is phenomenal. We went into some ice caves and, of course, the whole island. What about the active volcano? We didn't see any live lava, but you see enough of it, everything there was at one time lava, which is fascinating stuff. We were hoping to see some northern lights, but just the luck of the draw, it was cloudy and there wasn't a lot of activity at the time. Last weekend would have been spectacular there, I'm sure. The other, let's see, there were some interesting shots I was able to do in Palm Springs last year but the quality of the light there is really noticeable. When you see it, the sun is dazzling. In a pool, you see a lot of the ripples. I'm sure you can picture it, but if you go to the show, you'll see it. I did some work from that and I did some abstracts that are, I think, to me, really stunning. If you like those kind of things, it was like some kaleidoscope kind of treatments to the pools. Then there's a trip I did to Maine a couple years ago that I have some photos from that. I think we're still going to try to work in a few other things. I have some photos from Martha's Vineyard that we were there during one of the hurricanes and how the wind whipped the beach scenes was really interesting. That's what's in your exhibit. Real quickly, did you see the northern lights in this last irritation of it, since being there in Beverly Shores? Yeah, we could see the glow. It wasn't anything really like the ribbons of light. I didn't really see that, but I could see the glow. You could tell it was coming from outer space, from the sun. Well, we have to close it out here. That's Chris Cassidy, and you can see his exhibit, Inspiration Overtime, Chris Cassidy Photography. It's going to be at the Depot, which is located there right on 12th and Broadway in Beverly Shores. It's running June 7th through June 30th, and on June 7th from 5 to 7 p.m., they'll be opening a reception for you, so that'll be great. Chris, thank you so much for coming to Art on the Air and sharing your arts and photography journey. Thanks for having me. Yeah, thank you so much, Chris. 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 aired 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 Rene Foster. Art on the Air is supported by an 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 Redinger 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 breck.com.au 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 aotaatbreck.com. That's aotaatbreck, B-R-E-C-H, dot com, 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. Express yourself you art, and show the world your heart. Express yourself you art, and show the world your heart. You're in the know with Esther and Larry, Art on the Air today. They're in the know with Larry and Esther, Art on the Air our way. Express yourself you art, and show the world your heart. Express yourself you art, and show the world your heart. Express yourself you art.