Power

Captioning sponsored by THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

( moaning )

Type in "What up?"

"What's up?"

No, no, no, no.

Not "What's up?"

What up?

What up?!

"What up?"

Oh, okay, now, and tell them that this is David Alan Grier--

actor, comedian, raconteur.

W writes, "Yeah, sure, and this is George W.

Bush."

No, tell them this really is David Alan Grier

with an exclamation mark, damn it!

Art:21 is on

and asking if you are spreading the word about their new show?

I am, I am.

Floyd, type this.

Be sure to watch Art:21, the show that reveals

the world of contemporary art.

This episode

addresses the theme of power.

Get me a sandwich!

Take those glasses off.

Hey, find out if Halle Berry is on the line.

Other foot!

Yeah, yeah, okay.

( explosions )

CAI ( translated ): My work is sometimes like the poppy flower.

It has this almost romantic side,

but yet it also represents a poison--

gunpowder.

From its very essence, you can see

so much of the power of the universe, how we came to be.

You can express these grand ideas about the cosmos--

very epic and heroic--

but at the same time, it's used for such destruction.

( explosion )

Gunpowder possesses a physical danger

for anyone who is near it.

But with time, you get to know the material.

First, you have to accept that it's uncontrollable

and then work with it.

I've worked with the material so long

that I've gained an understanding with how it works.

My way of doing it is just to flow with the material...

to let it take me where it wants to go.

( speaking Chinese )

TRANSLATOR: So I continuously want it to give me problems,

give me obstacles to overcome.

This whole process of making drawing is

very much like lovemaking.

From the very beginning of laying down the paper,

it's like laying down the sheets on the bed.

And it's a very long process--

always working towards a final goal.

And all the time,

there's this feeling that you just want it to explode...

to finish.

But you're afraid that maybe it's too early,

maybe it's not the best time yet,

maybe you need to work on it a little more.

( series of small explosions )

And then afterwards, you either have great satisfaction

or you have disappointment as to your entire performance.

You can talk all day

about the ancient philosophies and modern philosophies,

art history, criticism, theory, subject matter,

historical context, contemporary, postmodernism,

form, representation.

All these things can be discussed,

but in the end,

it's really this on-site performance, so to speak,

that really makes a work.

What I'm using here is a sort of a fold-out sketchbook.

It's not so much a scroll,

but traditionally, it's always been used

for people to record their thoughts,

almost as in a journal or a diary format.

In Chinese, we actually say "reading a painting,"

"reading a picture," because there's actually page by page,

section by section that you are reading this,

not just looking at it.

These folded books are very similar in this aspect

to the scrolls.

The long hand scrolls are very traditional in Chinese painting.

Here, I like to show you what my father has painted on silk--

a very long scroll.

Sometimes I see my explosion projects

almost like these scrolls.

Once you open it,

it opens up the universe in that it seems boundless.

As the explosion project unfolds,

it's like opening up the scroll, but then it disappears,

and yet it's pregnant with all kinds of possibilities.

What really influenced me the most

are these very tiny matchbox paintings

that my father used to make.

( speaking Chinese )

TRANSLATOR: He would paint these small landscape paintings

with his ink pen.

I saved some of these from that time.

When I was little and I would ask what he was painting,

he might point to one of them

and say, "Oh, this is the sea of our hometown,"

but then I went back with him to our home village,

and it was nothing like that.

From very early on, I understood from these

that art is not about what you say;

it's about these other things that you don't say.

We can say that the entire exhibition at MASS MoCA is

like a long scroll unfolding.

It links to my past, and it's linked to my culture as well.

When I first saw the exhibition space,

I felt that it was like a section of road,

a very wide road, that's been transported here.

Further extending the idea of this path or journey

is very much like taking a walk along this path.

In the main gallery, as the first car takes off,

tumbling through the air in a very dreamlike fashion,

it lands safely back on its four wheels...

undamaged, unharmed.

It's just a repetition.

It goes right back to the very first car again.

The video in Times Square also borrows

the image of the car bomb.

This continuous cycle suggests

that something might or might not have happened--

this illusion that we're seeing in front of us.

Ever since September 11,

the idea of terrorism is ever so present,

always on our minds.

This work obviously has some direct reference

to these conditions that we live in now.

( speaking Chinese )

TRANSLATOR: Looking at the work that I've done, I've noticed

that things are sticking out of or into objects a lot.

I think this has to do with my interest in explosion.

But it also has to do with the aesthetics of pain.

There is a very visceral response

that the audience has to the work.

They feel pain when they see the tigers.

The tigers are realistically made,

but they are completely fake.

It's a stage setting that you enter into.

It's through visual impact that you transmit these ideas,

and it's through visual impact that this pain is felt.

You can actually elicit a very direct response

from the audience, a very strong response.

This installation in Washington, D.C.,

the sunken boat with the broken ceramic pieces,

shows the power of destruction, the beauty of destruction,

the aesthetic of decay.

And in this way, I feel that this work is quite close

to some of the things

that I'm discussing in the pieces at MASS MoCA as well.

A number of years ago,

I went to a factory in Delwa for a visit,

and I saw all of these statues that looked perfectly fine,

but they were rejects.

( speaking Chinese )

TRANSLATOR: Because of their imperfections,

they're no longer considered deities.

You know, I thought it was very strange--

without these imperfections,

these were figures that people worshiped.

They were sent to thousands of homes, including my own home.

It seemed too arbitrary.

Here, I see them as artwork.

They don't hold so much of a deity's power,

but if I take one from here and put it in the studio,

I think my emotions will shift very naturally.

This very fine line defines the nature of an object.

I really like to hang things up--

it defies gravity--

because I think I don't like the heaviness of things.

The piece in Sao Paulo is

obviously a plane made out of a vine.

We have these sharp objects confiscated

from the Sao Paulo airport stuck all over it.

Again, it looks like it's inflicted with all this pain.

I travel all the time,

and I'm always flying in and out of airports.

There are times when you just kind of have to stop yourself

and think, "Do I have weapons in my pockets?"

You know?

Even nail clippers-- I've had a few confiscated.

So, for this piece, we used all local materials,

and we borrowed all the pieces from the airport.

Behind all this is a very earnest and frank look

at our society today and the cultural-political issues

that we have to deal with.

It really is an honest reflection of our world today.

It's easy for us to depict things of this physical world,

but it's very difficult to depict things that are not seen

but that have a profound effect on us.

And it's something I'm continuously exploring

and trying to form.

I take a lot from the ancient Chinese philosophies.

These are very much infused in the art-making process.

Maybe everything does not have to be resolved;

sometimes you can allow uncertainties to exist.

The ever-changing, never-constant--

these are the kinds of ideas to understand the world.

All right, so let's go into his face,

which is crazy.

Well, well, well.

What other background blue do we have?

You know, I was thinking for the billboard,

I just wanted it to play off the sky.

It was an unreal sky blue.

ALI: I spent a lot of time watching television.

I think for artists of my generation,

it has to be some kind of influence.

I watched a lot of cartoons.

It wasn't unusual for things to be two-dimensional.

So when I use what looks to be

sort of cartoon imagery in my work,

it's just part of what I grew up with.

When I talk about the work, I don't want to talk about it

as if I believe in this alternative fantasy world

which is my secret little world, like a doll house, right?

It doesn't really work that way for me,

it's not a escapist fantasy.

I wish it was; it would be much more pleasant

and much more of a relief to be in here.

It's a little bit too connected to the world, to my own life,

for it to be an escapist, um... endeavor.

Over the course of time, I collect images.

When I'm at home and I'm reading the newspaper,

I tear them out-- or magazines--

and then periodically I file them.

And my filing system is...

it's on the wall according to categories

that kind of make sense for my work.

It's like underlining when you read.

For me, it's cutting out when I read.

I think about what I am interested in

that might feed the work in those.

Okay, I'll show you just the "hands" category.

Hand gestures have been very important for my work.

These are some Shiite Muslims praying,

and their hands are of interest to me.

Ah, this is from a few years ago, 1994.

These are the tobacco executives

swearing that they're telling the truth.

Just even something like the difference

between the way he swears

and the difference between the way he swears

and his thumb is bent towards his hand like that.

And it's this...

And those little things have a great interest to me.

One of the ways I keep track of everything is

I have a very detailed notebook

on what I'm supposed to do every day on the paintings.

And then I'll write down all the notes from that day,

and I'll circle or make notes

on what I think I should address the next day.

Especially with this kind of system

where everything is all over the place

and I have, you know, a hundred colors of paint,

so there has to be a method of note taking.

All of these brushes-- they sit here

and they refer to different colors,

and I don't mix my... one brush, one color.

I don't...

You know, there's no cross- contamination of my brushes.

So I have to be sure I'm using the right brush.

There's been times when I label the brush,

I mean, when things get really crazy, you know.

So, I have little pieces of tape and I label them.

This is gouache that can be really fussy to use

and not very forgiving.

( chuckles )

It's a constant source of frustration to me,

but I always like the end product a lot.

But it takes a lot to get there.

This is a little bit more velvety and soft

than an acrylic.

Around the studio, I've taken some of them down

but you'll see color swatches.

So, before I decided on that color of gray,

I tested all of these ones.

It was very hard to tape them on because they're so skinny.

But they all have little notes on the back

as to how I made them, what color combinations I used.

Everything I do is plotted months beforehand.

It's not exactly enjoyable, this stage, because it's...

the tension around screwing up is high.

( laughs )

The figures don't have ears.

( laughs )

Not yet.

They don't have to have eyebrows.

I mean, there's things that they just don't have.

And they still exist just fine as...

I don't like to say "creatures,"

because "creature" starts to be almost too... monstrous,

and I don't think of them as being fantastical.

By removing arms, in some ways I can understand what they do

a little bit more, so...

sort of figure out what can be done without arms,

what kind of commands can be given without arms

just through other kinds of gestures.

There's still a lot of power left in the body,

and in some ways I'm trying to see how much I can take out

and still retain a really powerful or influential core,

or one that can tell a story.

Which is a little bit of what's going on with this guy here.

He's obviously extremely compromised.

He's got these growths coming out of his abdominal area,

which interest me a lot because it's not clear

whether he's been stuck with them or they're growing,

if they're something that the other figures are frightened of

or that they've done to him.

I grew up in Buffalo, New York, in a...

I'd say a working-class family.

I was a real reader, and I think in that way, this--

the way I work-- is more like reading.

Um... you know, or writing.

That I use paper instead of canvas--

I'm very connected to the paper.

And I think that has something to do

with my love of reading and writing.

And the smallness of the images--

I think also, initially,

this idea that you could be intimately involved

like you are in a book.

These are some of the drawings I've done, preliminary drawings.

Part of my process is to do things to loosen up

and come up with ideas.

These are mostly helpful in terms of the costuming.

So, little details about headdresses

and shapes and textures might appear in the paintings.

Obviously, the paintings will be color.

On these, a little bit of this expression could show up,

but there'll be, hopefully, more complexity

in the psychology of the facial expressions.

I'm acting on impulse in the drawings,

and I think that's important.

It's important to keep that part really alive.

So there are no paintings without the drawings,

but they're very different from each other.

Sometimes it looks

like two different people have done them.

Because they're not so studied,

they can capture something I didn't anticipate,

and they're more playful than the paintings.

And they're more enjoyable to make, frankly.

Yeah.

The green-headed figures all had the same color head

and same color skin.

These new characters have a wider range of facial coloring.

I mean, I'm just sort of fascinated

how just those visual phenomena

affect your reading of the figure.

What a color does, you know?

How it affects your eyeball.

Sometimes I wonder, is that what it is about?

I mean, you know, dark-skinned people, you just...

their face absorbs more light,

so you have to look into them more?

They're more mysterious?

I mean, what is that, you know?

Could... could racism be just attributed

to bizarre visual phenomena?

You know?

There's a question.

I think when people say "violence,"

oftentimes we think of the violent act.

In my earlier work, it was more about maybe

the moment that somebody was getting strangled or hanged,

whereas now, that rarely happens.

There's very little concentration

on the moment where the violence occurs.

So, I'm more interested in what happens before and after

and examining that.

I didn't think I could pass up the opportunity

to enter into a kind of creative collaboration with somebody,

just to see what would happen.

It's about as different as I can imagine something being,

working with dancers and a performance piece.

It is still foreign enough that when I walk in

and there's actual living, breathing bodies there

with hearts beating...

it's a little freaky.

It's a little like "Aah!

Aah!

They're all alive!

How do you deal with alive people?"

MAN: The first time I saw Laylah's work,

I was just struck by these images,

and the seed for that idea of working together

started to happen.

I set about making some work in relationship to a set of images.

She comes to rehearsal, looks at them,

makes many, many, many notes...

I had a couple notes for you.

I notice it because the paintings

are frozen in time, right?

So the expression I give them, that's it, it's forever.

But for you to be burdened with that as a human being

doesn't seem right.

DANCER: It's too much.

MOSS: She's very precise.

I had a kind of list of things that I wanted to occur

over the course of this work, so I started cutting out

Laylah's books that she made for MoMA.

These images would hold me to a kind of outline,

because the images themselves were iconographic.

It is a score,

but it doesn't tell me what to do.

I think where it's interesting is

to watch how he can still include

almost my way of working into the movements.

And I'm not sure how he does it,

because it's pretty fascinating to watch.

I've just always been fascinated by dodge ball.

I mean, I don't know how long it's going to take

to wake up to the fact that this is a cruel game

where the weakest in the school get targeted.

And there's something from my childhood:

Being the only black child in a white elementary school,

dodge ball was not enjoyable.

( chuckles )

( strap snapping )

Belts connote some kind of power,

belts also being something used as a kind of instrument

of domestic violence.

I've used belts to hang some of my characters.

I think they take your belt away when you're in prison.

They take away things that you could harm yourself with.

I mean, I think I do know

that part of the control that I want over these

has to do with a lack of control over things in my life,

especially when I was a kid.

What's mysterious about it is

for all the control that I can have over the paintings,

the ones that are successful for me

when they are done and I look at them,

something happens that I didn't expect to happen.

And I don't mean like "Ooh, what's that?

What happened over there?"

It means that they are giving back

a kind of energy or presence.

It's as if they've taken on a personality of their own

in the making.

So much of the work is about me trying to control it,

doing all I can to control it, and yet it still defies me.

So that struggle...

yeah.

NEWSCASTER: Live in downtown St. Louis with more on our first story at 6:00.

REPORTER: Washington University is sponsoring

the event called the "St. Louis Projection."

In this case, the movie shows crime victims and inmates

sharing their stories showing only their hands,

the building representing the other parts of the body.

WODICZKO: In St. Louis, I turn to the very beautifully designed building

of the central public library.

WOMAN: Check, check, check, check, check.

( people speaking in background )

Yeah, that's very nice.

WODICZKO: Inside the building, participants were sitting

with cameras pointed on the person's hands.

Hi, my name is Diana.

WOMAN: Hi, Diana.

WODICZKO: Outside, it's a kind of open mike.

Anybody can come forward to speak back to the building,

trying to prevent perpetuation of the murders, killing

and gun violence in St. Louis.

This type of projection brings more opportunities

for more people to join each other

in an attempt to speak up and open up...

open up and share in public space,

something that is usually relegated to private domain.

We never expect

to bury our grandchildren,

and when we do, it's the most horrible feeling in the world.

And when I see Riley's two little children,

growing up... without their daddy,

it just breaks my heart.

WOMAN: Yes.

When it's your loved one, it's not an easy thing.

You don't forget.

Now that it's been a couple years,

how are you and your family handling birthdays, holidays,

family get-togethers?

WOMAN: You always have that empty space,

but it never goes away, because there's a hole in your heart

that nothing can ever fill it.

People don't have a clue of how we feel,

because on the outside it looks like we're okay,

but on the inside we're slowly... little bit, every day,

like, we feel like we're dying.

This eternal flame burns

in memory of Christopher King, age 20,

murdered on August 26, 1986.

It burns in memory of J.A.

King,

murdered on April 7, 1991, age 27.

It burns in memory of Adam Enis...

WODICZKO: The Revolutionary battle on Bunker Hill somehow connected

with the daily struggle of Charlestown residents

who are living in the shadow of this monument...

WOMAN ( continues ): 1994...

WODICZKO: Overlooking the area in which,

on weekly or monthly basis, someone was murdered, killed.

James Boyden IV...

So the battle perhaps continues--

not that it should, of course, but unfortunately it does--

for life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

When I was 17,

my brother Kevin was found hanging in a prison cell,

Bridgewater.

The gangsters knew that he knew too much,

and I believe that they killed him.

It was made to look like a suicide

and it was never investigated.

But everyone in the streets has always told me

that he was killed.

We know a lot more in the streets

than we tell the outside world or the police,

and everyone knows the truth about things that go on

but we just keep quiet.

WODICZKO: They eventually develop some trust

to break the code of silence,

to open up and speak about what's unspeakable.

I think a lot of you people wonder why...

why am I up here.

I'm no special person--

just an ordinary person, just like you.

But all I can say is just take a look at your family,

the ones that you love,

and what would you do if one of them was taken from you?

How would you fight back

and still try to have a heart that can still love

and be a person that can care?

It's not very easy.

My son, Adam, all I can say is that I love you,

and I will do my best.

And someday I'll see you.

WODICZKO: I need to make sketches.

I need to make sure the body of the speaker fits well,

the outline, the character of the body of the monument,

so they both are integrated.

But I realize with time that there must be another reason

why I'm preoccupying myself so much with those drawings.

I need to keep certain distance from what people say.

Somehow, the process of making sketches keeps me sane,

because I cannot relive each time what I hear.

In case of anybody in my position,

it will trigger my own experiences

or perhaps even trauma.

So I need to have something in between.

Something in between for them is the camera and the monument,

and what it is for me, perhaps, the sketchbook.

I received Hiroshima art prize.

The condition was that I will organize

retrospective exhibition of my work.

This gave me motivation

to do a large public project in Hiroshima.

I propose a projection.

It was to take place

the night after the anniversary of bombing.

My mother being a Jew, whose entire family was killed

in Poland during ghetto uprising,

gave birth to me in the midst of all of this.

My childhood was on the ruins of war--

physical, political and perhaps moral, definitely psychological.

So I started working on my projection with this assumption,

that we're going to re-actualize

one of the few structures that survive bombing

that is just underneath of the hypocenter of explosion,

to re-animate it with the voices and gestures

of present-day inhabitants of Hiroshima

from various generations.

( woman speaking Japanese )

WODICZKO: I started to talk

to associations of survivors of bombing.

I need to quickly develop some trust,

so they can really open up towards me.

Without developing of trust,

there is no possibility for my work.

The participants could not speak very long,

interrupted by their own tears.

( speaking Japanese ):

WODICZKO: I seem to be working with people

who managed to survive and heal themselves to the point

towards reconnecting with society, with others--

helping others to understand, at least a little bit,

a small part of what they went through,

to open up and share with the world what is so painful.

A memorial should be a vehicle

through which the past and the future converge.

The river became a graveyard

for both people and buildings in Hiroshima...

( water trickling quietly )

as both a tragic witness

but also as a hope... because it's moving.

There's new water coming.

Tijuana.

It's a border for many people who came from poor provinces

who tried to advance their life moving north.

This building is

a very important symbolic structure in Tijuana.

It's almost like a symbol of the city,

landmark.

So, here we have the kind of variable television studio

with camera and lights and microphone,

to project the face with precision onto the façade.

So the camera would be always in the same position

in relation to human head

no matter where this person is looking.

So the boundary between architecture and projected body

would be blurred.

The skin of the building and the skin of the person will be

background and foreground at the same time,

will be shifting focus.

In Tijuana, 90% of labor are young women, girls.

They work in ways that we don't even imagine, some of them.

The issues that were brought were taboo,

were issues of incest, rape.

( speaking Spanish ):

WODICZKO: I think that people were there

to support what they were hearing,

even if what they were hearing and seeing was unbearable.

( sobbing, sniffling )

WODICZKO: Sometimes it's easier to be honest

speaking to thousands of people through a monument

than to tell the truth at home to the closest person.

APPLEBROOG: My name is Ida Applebroog.

It used to be Applebaum, my maiden name,

and then when I got married it was Horowitz.

And I really did not want a name

that came from either my father or from any other male member,

and so I invented my own.

Andrew, why don't you line this... this girl--

line her up on the other end?

Okay.

Try and connect the dots, Andrew.

( Andrew chuckles )

APPLEBROOG: It's the hand, the other hand.

This is the other hand?

Yes.

Can't you tell?

APPLEBROOG: It's hard to say what is your work about,

but for me it's really how power works--

male over female, parents over children,

governments over people, doctors over patients.

Coming out of the '50s, women were pretty invisible,

and it never occurred to me anything was wrong;

that's just the way things were.

I used to be very flattered when a teacher would say to me,

"Oh, your work is so interesting and good.

It looks just like a man's."

I have a real problem with feminism and art.

I never liked the all-women shows.

It labels us, it ghettoizes us.

I hate being labeled.

I really hate being labeled.

I came to New York in about '74,

and I didn't know anyone in New York.

I was a New Yorker.

I'd been away for a long, long time.

So I came back,

and I really didn't know how to enter the art world again.

I started to go back to my roots--

just doing drawings

and drawing and drawing and drawing,

and from these drawings I started making books.

I took these books and I would mail them out

to people I did not know.

I guess I was a nuisance.

I use a lot of repetition.

Then it becomes a filmic way of talking,

because as you put the same image after the other,

even though it's the exact identical image,

everyone sees something changing from one image to the next.

They're just really bizarre, because I know what I've done,

but they see actual gestures

and they see actual changes in the expression--

which I've never put there.

( chuckles )

And that's not the reason why I do repetitive;

it's just because it's a performance

and sort of my way of animating one image from one image

to the next without the image actually changing.

When I work with canvases,

I work with three-dimensional structures...

and the structure was as important

as whatever it was I was painting.

And I love the fragmentation,

because my work has always been about fragmentation.

Even though the work is not comfortable work,

I feel like the paint is absolutely beautiful;

I love the coloration.

And it's almost like I'm creating flypaper--

to sort of get you to...

over to look at the kinds of brushstrokes.

It's interesting-looking enough to draw the viewer into it.

Then once they're there,

they're sort of confronted with material

that they have to think about or just walk away from.

I do a lot of work on murders and serial murders and rapes

and ageism and sexism and AIDS and child abuse.

I live in this world--

now this is what's going on around me.

I can't change that.

The first time I ever did know I was an artist

is when I was about five years old.

I wanted my father to draw something for me,

and what he drew for me was a stick figure.

And...

I showed him what I can do,

and at that moment I knew I was the artist and he wasn't.

( chuckling ): And that was my first recognition of being an artist,

and in a way, that's what these are.

These are like the first recognition of making marks

with some material.

And then you take whatever it is that you know

and bring it down to its most simplistic level,

and so it becomes a sort of something that's a part of you

that just pours out and pours out.

It comes to the point

where you don't even have to think about it;

these things just make themselves.

It's a very calming activity to just sit there

and have the clay in your hands and just put out these things.

They're crude, they're weird, but they're wonderful to me.

I've been in the art world for a long time...

and yet when I do this, it brings me back

to just the basic way of how I might think-- it's who I am.

APPLEBROOG: Andrew, you're high on your side.

If you can lower it to Rita's left,

that'll be good enough.

APPLEBROOG: Someone once said that with art,

it has to be either too much or not enough.

There's so much coming out at one time for me

that even the sorting of them and trying to put it into order

is something I've been unable to do.

I like that.

I like the feeling.

I don't consider myself a sculptor or a painter

or a book artist or a conceptual artist--

I just make art.

These little pieces that seem so ordinary and like nothing,

little mounds of clay...

and if I place it suddenly on my stage...

uh, become monumental.

And you photograph them any way you like,

and you can zoom in on any part of the body you like,

and they become something totally different.

Best part about these is I really never know

sort of what these things are going to morph into.

I mean, you become a hairdresser, a stylist,

a photographer.

So, I'll start with these little sculptures.

I will have the single figure that I will pose

and place in front of the black curtain.

Everything else has to happen with the camera at that point

in terms of how many ways you can pose it.

Every time you change something,

the kind of portrait that I'm doing changes.

This one is of the Venus de Willendorf,

and we give her her hair, nice red curly hair.

And we decided to change the color of her hair

where it's much more of a grayish color.

And we go closer.

Looks like her tongue sort of licking her lips.

You know, there are some that someone will look at

and say, "I can't stand looking at that.

It makes me very uncomfortable."

That's good, too.

My work is not about beauty,

and I know it does not hang over a couch very well,

matching the burgundy colors on the pillows.

It's not work one hangs over a couch in that way.

But I make the work,

and I make it because for me it's necessary.

Other people make work for them

that's necessary in a whole different way.

This is just my way.

I was actually a computer illiterate.

There was no way I was going to bother turning on a computer.

I didn't want e-mails, I didn't want to have to deal with that.

I was too old.

And this was last year.

So I started to go to the Apple workshop

and took everything that they had on the schedule

in the calendar, and from that point on,

I found someone who I'd known for a long time

who was very good at working the computer.

She started to work with me, and that's how this all came about.

WOMAN: I added some yellow both to the black and then to the mid-tones.

APPLEBROOG: That's very, very good.

APPLEBROOG: So, what we're doing right now

is we're trying out the new paper

to see what it gives us in terms of the color.

By trial and error, we've sort of come to this point.

APPLEBROOG: Wow-- so, that's the cream paper?

WOMAN: Right.

It makes quite a difference.

It's like night and day here.

WOMAN: Yeah, I think it looks a lot richer.

APPLEBROOG: It's beautiful.

It's like it's lit from inside.

Uh, I'm going to...

I need to work on her braces right now.

APPLEBROOG: I will be doing some small editions,

but for the most part they will be singly unique pieces.

I don't feel that's any different from doing painting

or sculpting or drawing or anything else--

it's just another way

of making art, using the technology.

For a while, because of aging and arthritis

and everything else that goes with it,

I was very incapacitated.

And that's why doing these sculptures

was an incredible thing to happen to me at that point.

So I ended up on this route.

No matter what I see, no matter what I do, it all feeds me.

Anybody that creates-- they're going to find a way to create.

It doesn't matter how.

I cannot believe there's a reawakening

( chuckling ): of every juice in my body

at... at this point in my life, which is incredible for me.

( breathing softly, crickets chirping )

( car door opening )

( dispatcher speaking over police radio )

MAN:Okay...

( sighs )

Two sugars, no cream.

Thank you.

Now, you see?

This is exactly what I'm talking about.

Okay, what if you could hold on to this moment, all right?

This moment right here, just as you're falling asleep.

And then what if there was a way,

um... if there was some kind of technique

where you could hold on to that first moment

just as you're waking up?

Okay, so you could be slipping back and forth between the two.

( police radio squawking )

I mean, come on, that's the most perfect moment.

It just doesn't get better than that, right?

Well.

All right, so you'd be asking yourself,

um, you know, "Am I asleep?

Am I awake?"

You know, "What is this?

Where am I?"

( chuckling ): But the problem is...

the problem is that by the time that you can ask yourself that,

it's too late, you know?

It's all over--

you're already back on one side or the other,

you know, what are you going to do?

( dispatcher speaking over police radio )

Oh, I don't know.

But just... just imagine if you could control it.

You know, if you could hold on

to that one moment whenever you wanted.

You know?

Anytime you wanted, for as long as you wanted.

( sighs softly )

Everything sure would be different.

( chuckling )

( police radio squawking )

To learn more about Art:21: Art in the 21st Century

and to download the free educator's guide,

please visit PBS Online at pbs.org.

Art:21: Art in the 21st Century

is available on videocassette

or with additional features on DVD.

The companion book to the program

is also available.

To order, call PBS Home Video

at 1-800-PLAY-PBS.