← All Of It with Alison Stewart
All Of It with Alison Stewart
New Jersey Artists Tom Nussbaum and Christine Romanell at the Montclair Art Museum
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- [00:09]
A
You're listening to all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. We continue with the theme of art and head to the Montclair Art Museum, which has two new exhibitions featuring local artists. Later this hour, we'll hear from Christine Romanell. But first, I'm joined by artist Tom Nussbaum. Tom's work combines bright colors, a sense of humor and whimsicality. He works with iron, steel, gum wrap, ceramics and a whole lot more. You may know Nussbaum's work from public art projects in Jersey and of course, in the city. Now the Montclair Museum of Art has opened a showcase of Tom's work spanning across the course of his career. A hundred pieces are in the show. The show is titled Tom Nussbaum. But wait, there's more. It's up now through January 4th of next year. Joining me now is Tom Nussbaum in studio. It is really nice to meet you.
- [00:57]
B
Thank you, Alison. Thanks so much.
- [00:59]
A
Your dad was a professor of electrical engineering and physician physics. What did that teach you about art?
- [01:07]
B
Well, the thing that he taught me, he was a professor, but he also liked to tinker in the basement and he had a whole workshop in our basement. And so I learned from him how to use tools to make things, which he liked to do. And so he would teach me how to use tools and I would use them to make things on my own. And one of the first things in the show actually are these little ice boat racers that I made when I was 10 years old. And I made those on that workbench. And what they are are little 3 inch long boats that are made from carved pink erasers with paperclips and scotch tape and all painted. And so the show, which is now a 60 year survey, started, starts when I'm 10 years old. But with those little objects, when did.
- [02:01]
A
You realize you were going to be an artist?
- [02:05]
B
Well, I always made things. So as I just said, I've made things since I was a little kid and it's just been a continuum for me. I didn't really imagine that I would be an artist artist until I got a little older. But really the idea of just making and creating and using my hands has been a continuous process since I was a child.
- [02:33]
A
Why? I'm curious why? What does it give you to work with your hands?
- [02:38]
B
Wow, that's a. Yeah, that's a really good question. When I'm working with materials, I kind of fall into a world of my own where I can make things up as I go along. I work Very intuitively. And so a lot of my sculptures that I make now are not planned in advance. I do some little sketches, but it's the act of working with materials. And as a sculptor, working with materials in three dimensional space is very. It's very important to the process.
- [03:15]
A
My guest is Tom Nussbaum. We're discussing his new show at the Montclair Art Museum. It's titled Tom Nussbaum. But wait, there's more. It's up through January 4th. If you'd like to see some of Tom's work, you can go to our Instagram llyc and click on so you can follow along as you listen to this conversation. You're originally from Minneapolis.
- [03:35]
B
That's right.
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A
But you came to live in our area in 1980. From about 1980 to 1993. What were those that decade like for you creatively in New York?
- [03:46]
B
Well, we came to New York and I worked for some other artists as an artist assistant for the wonderful Mimi Gross, who was a terrific artist and also an animator named Susan Pitt, who was making paintings I worked for, and also a little bit for Red Grooms. And it was a very creative time in New York. And there were artists working everywhere in all the neighborhoods. And I just felt a lot of freedom just to do whatever it was that I wanted to do. So there were lots of artists that you now know as kind of household names, but meanwhile there were other artists like myself who were just continuously working and making the whole time. And I showed early on in a gallery called Phyllis Kyne Gallery, and she specialized in showing artists who are a little eccentric and many artists from Chicago, and those were artists that I had an affinity for. And she also was one of the first galleries to show outsider artists, so called outsider artists in New. And I admire a lot of those folks as well. So all of these things were influencing my work here in New York.
- [05:09]
A
So the Montclair Art Museum comes to.
- [05:11]
C
You and says, we want to give you a show.
- [05:14]
A
You've been working for a long time, use a lot of different mediums.
- [05:18]
C
What did you want the show to include?
- [05:21]
B
Well, it's funny, when they first came to me, they said they wanted to give me a retrospective. And I thought, oh, they're going to include every single thing that I ever made in my entire life.
- [05:31]
C
Life.
- [05:32]
B
Well, that turns out to be, you know, 1400 pieces. So the brilliant curator of the show, Gail Stavitsky, she immediately started narrowing things down and helping me sort the work out by decades. And as those decades have rolled by, you know, I've had a lot of different interests. I've worked with a lot of different materials and. And so there are representations of kind of every decade of my work as it goes along.
- [06:08]
C
I wanted to ask you about the ACME robot night lights, which began as a request from your daughter.
- [06:14]
A
It's in the show.
- [06:15]
B
Yeah. When my children were young, my daughter asked me to make a nightlight for her just to put in the bathroom because she was a little fearful about the dark bathroom. And so I made a simple nightlight out of a cheese grater and a tomato paste can. And it looks like a robot and it's all painted black with a red light inside. And my friends came over and they liked it and they wanted one. And pretty soon I had a little cottage industry, making and producing these night lights of all different shapes and sizes. And I sold them to a museum through museum stores all across the country. They were just handmade, artist designed objects.
- [07:01]
C
You work with shapes that are geometrical, a lot of shapes on top of shapes. What attracts you to a certain shape?
- [07:11]
B
Well, there are certainly themes in my work that I've repeated. I started originally doing ceramics, so I'm interested in the form of a vessel. And so a lot of my pieces are based on the idea of vessel or a basket. And then I started thinking about buildings as being like vessel like, and even the human body. So I build these structural pieces. They're made from now made from welded steel. And they're like drawings in space almost. They're the framework of a basket or a building. And. And everything, of course, is painted these often very bright colors, but not always. And I'm very interested in paint and I use lots of colors. I like to paint and use the colors to lead the eye around the sculpture.
- [08:17]
A
Lead the eye around the sculpture. Describe that a little more for me. I like the. The sound of it.
- [08:23]
B
Yeah. So a sculpture is something that you. It really exists in three dimensional space. And often people think of as a sculpture as a solid form that sits on a table and. Or fills a solid space. And my pieces are very linear, and so they do take the space in the room. You share the room with the space with your body. However, they're also very colorful. And the colors can guide your eye through and around the form. You can see the form, and you can also see through the form.
- [09:04]
A
My guest is artist Tom Nussbaum. We're discussing his new show at the Montclair Art Museum. It's titled Tom Nussbaum. But wait, there's more. It's up through January 4th. Some of your sculptures have sort of absurdist elements to them. There's one of a man lying inside another man's ear. It's on the lawn of the museum. Tell us a little bit about this piece.
- [09:30]
B
That piece is titled Listen, and what it is is a small figure curled up inside the ear of a very large head. And so right away, you know, you're kind of in a mythological world. And it's an expressive of feelings that I had when I was doing that series of work. I was thinking about the relationships between people and what it feels like to be heard. So that little figure is kind of curled up and very comfortable inside the ear of this much larger head. And, of course, that head is then laying on the ground, and it has its ear to the ground also. So it's about the psychology of what it. Of a feeling, of the good feeling of being heard and being listened to.
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C
It's such a beautiful piece, too.
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B
Thank you. Thanks so much.
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A
Where do you work?
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C
What does your workshop look like?
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B
I work in East Orange. I have a studio in an old factory building in East Orange. It was the former original headquarters of Johnson and Johnson back in the 1800s. And my studio is just stuffed.
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A
There's a picture in your book, and.
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C
I was like, wow, that's a studio?
- [10:44]
B
Yeah. Yeah. So it's my workshop, and it's where I build all my work. So it has all my tools and my. All the things needed to actually build sculpture. And then I also have my paints there, and I paint everything there. And so it's. It's a pretty fun place. It's a little bit like being inside my brain, but it's a place where I feel very comfortable working, for sure.
- [11:14]
C
And right now, you're working a lot with steel.
- [11:17]
B
Yes, I am. Yeah. So the newest piece in the show is actually a welded steel wall piece. It's made from hundreds of pieces of steel welded together, and then it's all painted black and white. But it's kind of a scene of a. It's called Jalopy, and it's a piece about a car or a vehicle moving through, kind of moving through the landscape of life. So there are lots of figures, and it's kind of a western landscape. And the car is rumbling along, and there are animals and people, and there are skeletons and windmills and oil rigs, and there's a figure of the Grim Reaper is kind of trailing behind, because, you know, that's what the Grim Reaper does. So it's a big, brand new piece I worked on it for six months. I just got it done a week before the show opened.
- [12:20]
C
Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. I was pushing it.
- [12:23]
B
Yeah, it is. But it got done and it went up and then the show opened. And so I was very happy about that.
- [12:29]
C
A big part of your practice is public art. What is the process for making public art? How does it differ from, say, the piece you just finished for the museum?
- [12:43]
B
Yeah, public art is a kind of a quite a different process. When you're in the studio, you're just doing your own thing. You're improvising and you're kind of. At least I am making it up as I go along and inventing and finding pathways that I wasn't aware of. And in public art, the work is planned in advance because it has to be presented to a client who is an entity, a public building or organization. All of the creative work is up front and then it's followed by a lot of fabrication in materials that have to be very sturdy and long lasting and then put in outdoor places.
- [13:30]
A
What are you working on?
- [13:33]
B
Well, I've just finished this piece I worked on for six months. And so the next piece is going to be quite small. We're having an open studio event at our studio building, which is called Manufacturer's Village in East Orange. In two weeks, all the artists in the buildings open up their studios to the public. And so I'm hoping to get a little small piece done just for that.
- [14:00]
A
My guest is Tom Nussbaum. We were discussing his new show at the Montclair Art Museum. It's titled Tom Nussbaum. But wait, there's more. It's up through January 4th. Thank you for coming to the studio.
- [14:12]
B
Thanks so much, Alison.
- [14:24]
A
You're listening to all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. We're continuing our conversations with local artists featured at the Montclair Art Museum. Alongside Tom Nussbaum. The museum is featuring a new installation of work from New Jersey artist Christine Romanell. Christine's work uses 3D and laser printing to achieve hypnotic, colorful circular sculptures that reflect light. The installation is titled Christine Romanell Sacred Transition. It's on view now through August 9th. And Christine is in the studio with me. Nice to meet you.
- [14:55]
D
Thank you for having me.
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A
Alison, when did you first get interested in making art?
- [14:58]
D
Oh, I don't know. Sometime after I was born. Perfect.
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A
Well, what is your artistic practice like? Do you work every day?
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D
Yeah, I go to the studio every day. I work primarily, I guess, in the idea stage digitally and Then I'm trying to get those digital ideas out into the real world. I kind of call it Pinocchio. Like, I'm trying to make them real.
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A
So your work involves laser printing, laser cutting. Laser cutting. Thank you. And 3D printing. Could you walk us through that?
- [15:35]
D
So I'll do a digital drawing, which is flat in two dimensions, and then I break it out into layers, and then those layers either become an extruded 3D print, or they become layers of laser cut wood. So I get someone to laser cut for me, and then I paint each layer and then glue them together.
- [15:56]
A
So something goes from an idea in.
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C
Your head to being 2D to then going to a 3D printer.
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D
3D printer. Or a laser cut. Or sometimes I'll 3D print, and then I'll take a mold and then I'll cast out of ceramic as well.
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A
So how has the advent of new.
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C
Technologies like 3D printing changed your approach to your art and to your work?
- [16:19]
D
I come from a graphic design background. Oh, that makes sense. So those skills were kind of like Adobe Illustrator in design, Photoshop. All those things are kind of innate to me. I've been using them probably for more years than I'd like to admit, but those skills are kind of my wheelhouse. So, you know, I mean, I can draw something with my hand, but over the years, the more I use the computer, the more it kind of supplanted that physicality.
- [16:46]
C
You used to work primarily in plexi sculptures, right?
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D
When I got out of grad school, I was working in plexi.
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C
And why did you make the switch over?
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D
It's expensive, and the welding of the plexi is quite toxic. So now I only try to laser cut it, incorporate it. I try not to weld it. I was doing a lot of welding, the chemical welding, which is tedious and dangerous.
- [17:12]
C
My guest is Christine Romanel. You can see a new installation of her work now at the Montclair Art Museum. It's titled Christine Sacred Transition. Much of your work includes these spiral patterns, and they're round and they're circular. What draws you to this particular shape and pattern again and again?
- [17:31]
D
So I love investigating patterns, non repeating patterns. So when you overlap circles or you use rotational symmetry. So for example, if you look at your bathroom floor, you have a square and you know where that tile is going to land in 6 inches or in 6 miles. Right. It's easy math. But when you take a form, for example, a circle, and you rotate it using the golden ratio. Right. So you start rotating that circle now you're getting order and pattern, but without the repetition. It's the repetition of ratio and difference, not the repetition of the form. Exactly. So you'll find it in fractals, trees, nature, you know, our own body cells. It's everywhere.
- [18:23]
A
I didn't know there was going to be math involved. The insulation is called Sacred Transition.
- [18:30]
C
You can see it now on our Instagram Stories Llavenyc.
- [18:34]
A
You can look at pictures while you're.
- [18:35]
C
Listening to this conversation. Why was that the title for this piece of art?
- [18:42]
D
So I start everything with a circle, and I'll overlap two circles very much like a Venn diagram. And that almond shape in between is called the vesica.
- [18:58]
A
That's it right there.
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D
Yes. Okay. That almond shape. So it's called in Latin the Vesica piscis, which I guess in English means fish bladder. Right. So that in sacred geometry, that's the crossing of the physical and the spirit world. Right. So this is a transition between two floors in the building. Right. Between two exhibitions. And for me, my work, I think the central practice is I'm working digitally, and I'm trying to cross from the digital world into the physical world. And I think a lot of our. Our current modern life is digital versus spiritual. Right. So the digital has kind of supplanted the spiritual kind of. In modern life, you know, we're all looking at a screen, so how do we get off the screen? So my work is trying to get off the screen, and so I'm making it physical. And it's that crossover between those two worlds.
- [19:52]
C
Yeah, it's interesting. Can you describe for people where they see it in the museum?
- [19:56]
D
So if you're outside the museum, you can see the back of the museum. There's an enclosed glass stairwell, so you can see it from outside. It's glass all the way around. And so wall pieces, three wood wall pieces on the wall, and then there's multiple hanging plexi halos that are around 3D prints. And so the plexiglass has a dichroic film on it. So when the sun hits it, it not only reflects, it kind of like spreads light all over the walls and the glass.
- [20:29]
C
It's got to be amazing when the light hits it.
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D
Yeah, yeah.
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C
Were you. Did you have that in your mind how it would hit, or is it. I'm gonna put it up and see which way it goes.
- [20:41]
D
A little bit of both, I guess. One year ago, in this very neighborhood, I was at the Spring Break Art Fair. And so I got a really great Position that kind of the sun kind of came over the Hudson and hit my installation, and it spread light through the whole. The whole fair. So I had that in mind. And Gail Stravinsky, who's the curator of the museum, saw it in my studio. She saw the pictures of spring break, and she's like, oh, we have to have that for the back stairwell.
- [21:13]
C
My guest is Christine Romanell. You can see her new installation of work now at the Montclair Art Museum. It's titled Christine Romanel Sacred Transition. I read somewhere that you were inspired by a cosmology.
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D
Yes.
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C
Study of the stars and of space.
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D
Yeah. So I'm a super fan of Sir Roger Penrose. And so he has this theory, and I'm probably getting it maybe a little bit wrong, but of the multiverse, so that there's not multiple universes happening at once. It's one big bang that keeps going and going and going, and then there's another big bang. And so there's echoes of the previous universe that kind of like follow in. So kind of like a ripples in a pond. So that kind of inspires my work, working with circles and kind of those ripples in the pond. The cycles of life, the cycles of the universe, cycles of everything.
- [22:08]
A
And I also understand Islamic art is really important to you.
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D
Well, it was kind of where it all started. When I was about 18, I went to Spain and saw all the tiling. And then I was studying patterns through, you know, in school and grad school, and I came across something called the Penrose pattern, which are two ram shapes that interlock and they fill all space, but using that rotational symmetry that I mentioned earlier. And come to find out that same exact pattern was found in Islamic mosques in Iran, like in the medieval times. Right. And so the very same pattern is also found in something called a quasicrystal, but in three dimensions. So it was found in a meteorite in the 80s. It's a long, sorted, like, science novella. It's kind of crazy, but they found this structure in a meteorite. And it's a material that does not interact with light, heat, or electricity in the same way that normal matter does. Okay. And it's the same pattern as the Penrose pattern and what they were doing in Iran in like the 14, 1500s. It's crazy, but it's all rotational symmetry.
- [23:21]
A
Before I let you go, are you taking part in this manufacturer's village in a couple of weeks?
- [23:26]
D
I am the open studio on October 18th and 19th from 12 to 5.
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A
So people can come and see your work and see how you do what you do. And Tom's work as well.
- [23:34]
D
Yes, exactly. Yeah. It's a great event. I don't know, about 2,000 people come through. There's food trucks, there's 60 other artists. It's a really, it's a great open studio.
- [23:45]
A
My guest has been Christine Romanell. You can see her new installation of her work now at the Montclair Art Museum. It's titled Christine Romanel Sacred Transition. Thank you for coming to the studio.
- [23:55]
D
Thank you so much.
- [23:57]
A
A new off Broadway musical highlights the little known history of an underground railroad that ran south into Mexico. It's also the story of kindness, redemption and friendship. Coming up, its creators join me in studio.
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C
That's happening after the news.
- [24:14]
E
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- [24:44]
F
This is Ira Flato, host of Science Friday. For over 30 years, the Science Friday team has been reporting high quality science and technology news, making science fun for curious people by covering everything from the outer reaches of space to the rapidly changing world of AI to the tiniest microbes in our bodies. Audiences trust our show because they know we're driven by a mission to inform and serve listeners first and foremost with important news they won't get anywhere else. And our sponsors benefit from that halo effect. For more information on becoming a sponsor, visit sponsorship.wnyc.org.