(upbeat music) - [Lara] Painter Tania Alvarez captures her experiences living with chronic illness.

Learn how writing a superhero story can fight climate change with novelist Sarah E. Lewis.

And catch a performance from "Jim Gaudet and the Railroad Boys".

It's all ahead on this episode of "AHA, A House for Arts."

- [Announcer] Funding for "AHA" has been provided by your contribution and by contributions to the WMHT Venture Fund.

Contributors include the Leo Cox Beach Philanthropic Foundation, Chet and Karen Opalka, Robert and Doris Fischer Malesardi, the Alexander and Marjorie Hover Foundation, and The Robison Family Foundation.

- At M and T Bank, we understand that the vitality of our communities is crucial to our continued success.

That's why we take an active role in our community.

M and T bank is pleased to support WMHT programming that highlights the arts, and we invite you to do the same.

(upbeat music) - Hi, I'm Lara Ayad and this is "AHA, A House for Arts," a place for all things creative.

Let's send it right over to Matt for today's field segment.

- I'm here at Foreland, the 85,000 square foot arts campus here in Catskill, New York.

And we're here to speak with artist Tania Alvarez.

Follow me.

(upbeat New Age music) - I've always been a really emotional person, and I kind of bottle things up.

And I think that through my art I've been able to process a lot of trauma and just things that I don't think I would've known how to process without my practice.

Right now I've been mostly focusing on small paintings.

12 by 12 inches has been pretty much the largest in the past two years.

But I've primarily focused on a series of four by four inch works.

And they range in media, some of them are sculptural.

Many of them are very layered and collaged.

I'm kind of going off of this piece, but I think I'm eliminating the hands.

I just think it takes away the seriousness of the piece.

So I'm just kind of going on intuition and changing the colors as I feel fit.

And then eventually I'll go on top of it with some oil paint to create a bit more texture.

I don't really have a method to my madness.

People have asked me before, and it it's just strange because I don't know if I'd ever be able to teach someone how I make my painting, 'cause it's always changing.

This is too like cemented in the painting.

I want it to be more of a memory.

All of my sisters were really artistic.

And I think as the middle child I was really striving to do something well.

And so I got a little obsessive towards junior and senior year with sculpture and painting.

And an art teacher of mine pushed me to apply to Pratt.

That's where it really kind of hit a mark with me that this is what I wanna do.

And I kind of just never stopped from there.

In 2017, two months before I graduated my MFA program, I was diagnosed with a chronic illness that really shook me in a way that I don't think anything ever has.

It really made me aware of the fragility of time and the fragility of our time here.

So I really wanted to curate the way that my life and my memory would be seen when I'm gone in the way that I wanted it to.

And I wanted to tell my story authentically.

So the only way that I knew how to do that was through my art.

I didn't want to talk about it.

I didn't want to Instagram about it.

I leaned on my work as a means of healing and coping and understanding what I was going through.

I was doing a lot of medical interiors and sinks and bathrooms, and just a lot of repetition of patterns from the hospital.

(soft music) So there's a smaller piece there that's sewn.

And I think that the sewn aspect of the work is really relevant in terms of just piecing myself back together and healing and mending.

It took me a long time to understand that I didn't have to be so literal about my experience, and that there are many layers to myself and that this illness didn't define me.

I think it took a long time for me to look for the future.

I just got back from 10 weeks in Boise, Idaho.

I was at the James Castle House.

And James Castle was a native to Boise, Idaho.

And he was a deaf artist who used a lot of found material, soot, spit, and created multimedia pieces, which I'm really influenced by and feel a huge connection to his work.

(light melancholy music) I think that being in Boise and away from my comfort zone really just sparked a new creative energy that I think through the pandemic and dealing with my illness and whatever, I just think I lost at a certain point.

Getting off of the canvas and doing more three dimensional pieces, just experimenting with everything I learned.

I want the viewer to be able to look inside and kind of learn a little bit about me and the time that I created it.

I've always wanted people to respond to my work and have a a deep emotional connection to it.

And I don't want someone to collect it because it matches their couch or their curtains.

I want them to really feel a deep connection to it.

And it was really interesting because I had a woman relate to my work.

And somehow the imagery in my work triggered memories of her dealing with an illness.

It was just a really powerful experience because she was like, as I was looking through the mirror and the sink, it just brought me back to a time when I was really ill. And I just thought that was so powerful.

I want more of that effect.

I've kind of mended myself through the work that I've made and continue to do so.

- Sarah E. Lewis began her 30 year career as an attorney tackling environmental issues.

She's now returning to her roots in her new novel, "The Change Agents," which features a superhero dog named Bebop.

Rather than using doom and gloom to raise awareness, Sarah is using hope to motivate readers and inspire action.

I sat down with Sarah to learn more.

Sarah, welcome to "A House for Arts."

It's such a pleasure to have you.

- Thank you so much.

I'm so excited to be here.

It's an honor.

- So excited for our conversation, especially because you have such an interesting background.

I know you recently wrote a novel, and we'll come back to that.

But you've spent over 30 years as an attorney in the past, and you originally focused on environmental issues.

And what I understand is you wrote this new novel that's brought you back to your roots with your concerns about environmental issues and changes.

So what is the novel's title, and tell us what it's about.

- Sure, it's called "The Change Agents: Whispers in the Wind."

And it's a story in which animals seek to partner with humans to save the planet from climate change.

And the premise of it is that animals are getting extremely frustrated, exasperated with their habitats disappearing, their food supplies going away.

And they realize in order to save ourselves, we need to get humans to do something.

- Right, get humans on board.

- Right.

- With this project.

And I understand the protagonist is, it's a human woman, Eliza, and she gets kind of recruited by these animals in order to become a change agent, essentially.

- Exactly, yes, yes, she does.

The animals have it all planned out.

They have an alliance of animals from all over the planet.

And they have planned and chosen Eliza as their initial spokesperson.

- So it's got almost like this classic kind of superhero format then to the novel.

- Right, right.

- That's really cool.

And we'll kind of come back to the kind of process of writing and storytelling for you.

But I understand that as much as this novel's a lot of fun, that you originally started writing it because of personal loss.

- I did, yeah.

The beginning of the story is not at all what someone would expect knowing my environmental background.

It actually started as grief therapy for me because one of my dogs, his name was Bebop, passed away suddenly and unexpectedly.

And I just had trouble with it.

I was having big trouble dealing with it.

And friends said, well, maybe for grief, I've heard if you write something.

Maybe write him a letter, just write something.

So I wrote a poem about him and that was helpful.

But I still felt like I needed something more.

And I would stare at his picture in my office and think.

- [Lara] And I've seen a picture, he's a cute guy.

- Yeah, it's a picture in the book actually.

- (laughing) Yeah.

- And an idea came to me.

Well, maybe I write a story in which Bebop's a main character.

And how about he works with other animals and they team up with humans to do something?

But what are they gonna do?

What's something that would interest both animals and people?

What's common to both?

So different ideas popped into my head, but they usually concerned only animals or humans and not both of them.

And then one day I was reading a climate change blog that I'd followed for a while.

And all of a sudden it hit me.

I'm like, well, this is it.

It's climate change.

Climate change is the enemy here because that impacts everything on the planet.

- So climate change is the enemy that unites humans and animals.

You were trying to kind of figure out how to bring them together.

- Right.

- [Lara] Having this uniting front.

- Right.

- Which is so great.

And actually, it makes me think about many calls to climate change, which we've been hearing a lot, especially over the past 10 or 20 years.

Although I know scientists have been working on getting this to the public for far longer, as you know of course, with your background as an attorney.

Why do you think it is that so many calls for the fight against climate change tend to be pretty depressing or pretty bleak?

And what examples have you seen of that?

- Totally, and that was one of my goals with this novel is to present it optimistically.

But I think the main reason for the doom and gloom messaging around climate change is first, it's a huge issue.

I mean, it's a monumental issue.

The projected future if we continue on the path we have is awful.

So to present such a huge issue with such a devastating impact I think is just overwhelming for people.

And when you see such a huge problem with such dire consequences, I mean, the natural reaction is to shut down.

It's too depressing.

- [Lara] Right.

- It's so big.

What am I gonna do?

- It's like people feel so powerless.

They see all these statistics, and they're like, in 20 years Florida's gonna be underwater.

It's like, what do I do?

I'm just one person, right?

So what does your novel do then in kind of, not necessarily in reaction against that call?

Obviously, because it's trying to motivate people.

But how does it motivate people?

How does it give this kind of, the opposite of the doom and gloom narrative?

- Yeah, so many climate fiction stories show the alternate, show the future of what we might be facing with climate change.

And they are based in the future or headed that way.

This story is kind of in present day but it presents a hopeful message, a message that if we work together we can accomplish huge things.

And we can make a dent at least.

We can do something to try to address climate change.

And if we do nothing, we don't wanna even consider that, but let's work together.

We're not too far into this that all is lost.

Work together, do what we can, and make a difference.

- I'm already feeling a little bit better hearing this.

(Sarah and Lara laughing) But let's, because this is so interesting that your novel, I mean, it's really taking this kind of imaginary take on animals and personifying animals and giving them characters, and gearing up with humans.

How do you get people to take tangible actions in their everyday lives to help fight climate change using this sort of imaginary setup?

How do you go from the imaginary to the literal in very concrete ways for people?

- Right, well, part of it is some of the things they do in the book together.

For example, they plant trees.

They have plant-based diets.

So the animals say, of course, we're vegetarian.

And as I was writing, I'm thinking, of course they're vegetarian because of other reasons.

They're animals, they're not harming each other.

But the other take on that is they're plant based because it's better for the environment as a whole.

So there are examples.

You can do what they do in the novel.

And the other part of it is to interest people enough in being hopeful and wanting to make changes that they look at all the other resources.

There's a ton of great content out there about what you can do to decrease your carbon footprint.

So this is kind of to start the conversation with these imaginary characters in their own world.

- [Lara] Yeah.

- And then let's do something - That's so interesting.

And what a refreshing take on this whole issue.

We've had another guest in a past episode, SueJonna Morty, who is also working to fight climate change.

But she's done a lot of research on these coral reef colonies deep underwater in the ocean.

And has collaborated with photographers and artists to help raise awareness to the public about the impact of climate change.

You, Sarah, are writing a novel with these imaginary fictional characters helping to motivate people.

There are clearly many different effective ways to motivate people to fight climate change.

But why is written storytelling, and particularly a novel, such a great way to inspire people to take action?

- I think storytelling in general is a hugely powerful tool.

And as a society, we're re-envisioning and re-realizing how powerful stories can be.

And it's been used in various other ways now.

But I think the written word.

- Such as what?

Where are you really seeing this method of storytelling cropping up in unexpected ways?

- I've been seeing it in marketing actually more often, where you see advertisements of people telling their story of where was I?

How was I feeling, and how this product really helped me.

So it helped people to relate to it.

- Right, brings a human story element to something, rather than only talking about the product itself, for instance.

- Right, right.

And with written storytelling, it enables a reader to be guided by the author, to be guided by the scenes, be guided by the characters, guided by their dialogue, but yet to internalize it and interpret it in a way that's meaningful for the reader.

And therefore it's a more effective way of getting them to make changes on their own.

Because it's a feeling.

To paraphrase Maya Angelou, they won't remember what you say or do, but they will remember how you made them feel.

So the written word is such a powerful way to invoke feelings within people.

- Sarah, I'm so glad you brought that up, and in such a beautiful Maya Angelou quote.

I always remember ever since I first read it, I was like, gosh, that is so true.

- [Sarah] It is.

- It is really about how you make people feel, right?

- Right, right.

- I'm wondering where you see yourself taking.

You've published this novel, "Change Agents: Whispers in the Wind."

Do you want to write another novel in the future?

Do you want to do some other type of creative project?

How do you see yourself moving forward for the future?

- As I was writing, I always envisioned writing a trilogy ideally.

We'll see whether that happens.

But one of the things that comes to mind that I didn't even think about as I was writing, but others came to me with the thought of it, is to use it as an educational tool.

Now, clearly I wanted it to be motivating, but shortly after the book came out, I'd been getting the word out what it concerned.

And I was approached by an educator from a private school saying, you know, we're really struggling with how to present the topic of climate change to our students without scaring them.

- What are these?

Mostly middle school students high school students?

- This school goes right from kindergarten on up.

- [Lara] Okay.

- So hearing that you have this story with talking animals and they're banding together as change agents seemed to be a way to introduce the topic to them in a non-threatening, nonscary way.

- Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

I mean, I think adults even gravitate towards animals, let alone I think children and young adults absolutely feel a certain affinity towards animals.

And I think that's such a fantastic idea and such a great educational tool.

- Yeah.

- Well, Sarah, this was so great to have this conversation about the important work you're doing.

Clearly this is such a refreshing take on helping fight climate change.

And I hope many people can have the chance to read your novel.

- Thank you.

- Please welcome "Jim Gaudet and the Railroad Boys."

(upbeat folk music) ♪ Hey, baby ♪ ♪ Well, it's ashes to ashes ♪ ♪ Hey, baby ♪ ♪ And it's dust to dust ♪ ♪ Hey, baby ♪ ♪ Come on, show me a woman ♪ ♪ Hey, baby ♪ ♪ That a man can trust ♪ ♪ I'm running down the road with may head in my hand ♪ ♪ I'm looking for a woman that will understand ♪ ♪ Hey baby, hey baby ♪ ♪ Hey baby, hey baby ♪ ♪ Hey babe, babe, babe, babe, babe, babe ♪ ♪ Baby, come on ♪ ♪ Come on ♪ ♪ Hey, baby ♪ ♪ If you don't like my peaches ♪ ♪ Hey, baby ♪ ♪ Don't shake my tree ♪ ♪ Hey, baby ♪ ♪ Get outta my orchard ♪ ♪ Hey, baby ♪ ♪ Let them peaches be ♪ ♪ 'Cause I'm running down the road with my head in my hand ♪ ♪ I'm looking for a woman who'll understand ♪ ♪ Hey baby, hey baby ♪ ♪ Hey baby, hey baby ♪ ♪ Hey babe, babe, babe, babe, babe ♪ ♪ Baby, come on ♪ ♪ Hey, baby ♪ ♪ You know the Hudson River ♪ ♪ Hey, baby ♪ ♪ Well, it's cold as ice ♪ ♪ Hey, baby ♪ ♪ Jumping in three times ♪ ♪ Hey, baby ♪ ♪ Coming up twice ♪ ♪ I'm running down the road with my head in my hand ♪ ♪ I'm looking for a woman who will understand ♪ ♪ Hey baby, hey baby ♪ ♪ Hey baby, hey baby ♪ ♪ Hey babe, babe, babe, babe, babe, babe ♪ ♪ Baby, come on ♪ ♪ Hey, baby ♪ ♪ You know a man's gotta do ♪ ♪ Hey baby ♪ ♪ What a man's gotta do ♪ ♪ Hey baby ♪ ♪ To get some attention ♪ ♪ Hey baby ♪ ♪ To get through to you ♪ ♪ I'm running down road with my head in my hand ♪ ♪ I'm looking for a woman who'll understand ♪ ♪ Running down the road with my head in my hand ♪ ♪ I'm looking for a woman who'll understand ♪ ♪ Running down the road with my head in my hand ♪ ♪ I'm looking for a woman who will understand ♪ ♪ Hey baby, hey baby ♪ ♪ Hey baby, hey baby ♪ ♪ Hey babe, babe, babe, babe, babe, babe ♪ ♪ Baby, come on ♪ - All right, well, the next one we'd like to do for you is from our new release, "Hillbilly Rock and Roll."

- "Straight from the Still."

- Thank you, Bobby, thank you.

And it's called "New Girl Now."

Two, three, four.

(upbeat folk music) ♪ Well, I'm going on down to the Hudson River ♪ ♪ I told my gal I had something to give her ♪ ♪ Went to put a ring on a her left hand ♪ ♪ She told me I can never ever be her man ♪ ♪ Now, if you don't want me now ♪ ♪ If you don't need me now ♪ ♪ If you don't love me what do I have left to lose now ♪ ♪ I can see every doom as waves riding high ♪ ♪ A neighbor shot down in May ♪ ♪ Knife in the back, a slap in the face ♪ ♪ You'll never find a man who can take my place now ♪ ♪ If you don't want me now ♪ ♪ If you don't need me now ♪ ♪ If you don't love me what do I have left to lose now ♪ ♪ Had a little tantrum at the liquor store ♪ ♪ I smashed whiskey bottles all over the floor ♪ ♪ Helped the clerk clean up the mess ♪ ♪ I took her out dinner and bought her a new dress now ♪ ♪ If you don't want me now ♪ ♪ If you don't need me now ♪ ♪ If you don't love me what do I have left to lose now ♪ ♪ So I took a little walk down the old plank road ♪ ♪ I paid her back all the money I owed ♪ ♪ I'm so happy she's taking a shine ♪ ♪ I'm all hers, she'll soon be mine now ♪ ♪ I'm better off and how ♪ ♪ All the boys say, wow ♪ ♪ I got me a new girl ♪ ♪ I got me a new girl now ♪ ♪ Now, got me a new girl now ♪ ♪ Got me a new girl now ♪ ♪ Got me a new girl, got me a new girl ♪ - Thanks for joining us.

For more arts visit wmht.org/aha and be sure to connect with us on social.

I'm Lara Ayad, thanks for watching.

(light upbeat music) - [Announcer] Funding for "AHA" has been provided by your contribution and by contributions to the WMHT Venture Fund.

Contributors include the Leo Cox Beach Philanthropic Foundation, Chet and Karen Opalka, Robert and Doris Fisher Malesardi, the Alexander and Marjorie Hover Foundation, and the Robison Family Foundation.

- At M and T Bank, we understand that the vitality of our communities is crucial to our continued success.

That's why we take an active role in our community.

M and T Bank is pleased to support WMHT programming that highlights the arts, and we invite you to do the same.