(gentle music) - [Matt] Visit SUNY Schenectady's new art gallery.

Learn how to thrive with author Rhonda Rosenheck.

♪ This is the sound ♪ - [Narrator] And catch a performance from Cassandra Kubinski.

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

♪ Sound that breaks your heart ♪ - [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, and The Robison Family Foundation.

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

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

I don't know if you heard, but there's a new art gallery in Schenectady, and it's housed in the former YMCA building on State Street.

Let's head over to SUNY Schenectady and step inside the Rise Gallery.

Follow me.

(exciting music) - Originally, this was the YMCA located here on State Street.

It was built in 1926, and there's what had been a walking track above us here.

(exciting music) It is a combination of gallery, the Rise Gallery, and also studio art space.

(exciting music) Schenectady is growing.

Schenectady is expanding in terms of its arts offerings, and I think that this provides an ideal space that connects with the college community and the community at large of Schenectady.

I think that that relationship is very important.

It's vital not only to the college itself, but also to the vibrancy of Schenectady as a whole.

(catchy music) March 28th, we had an incredible opening with so many people, so many families, politicians, trustees, faculty, among others.

We wanted this exhibition to be a showcase of all of Schenectady, as well as community members, like former faculty and current faculty members and students, and so it was a real coming together.

It was like a family experience.

I'm teaching a course in Introduction to Drawing, and I can tell you that over the years I have felt blessed by meeting quite a number of different students who have various types of talents and skills.

One of those students who is represented in this show is Emely Davila, and she is just an amazing visionary in her own right.

- As soon as I stepped in here, I was very amazed with the space.

I'm an artist.

I would say all types of art.

I'm very interested in music and digital art, traditional art.

I have my piece, "Life in Gaza."

I very much like representing more underrepresented communities, and I like bringing light to voices that usually don't get heard, and that's something that I do carry with myself and with my art very personally.

I feel like it's a very beautiful gallery that represents so many walks of life.

It's a place where you can really just, you feel the creativity exuding from people in here.

- She is a person of consciousness, a person who has a great heart, and we are just pleased and honored that she accepted to be part of this exhibition.

Miki Conn is an incredible artist.

She's not just an incredible artist.

She's an incredible human being, and she is very much a legend in the Schenectady community through the Hamilton Hill Art Center, which her mother, Margaret Cunningham, helped to create.

- The pieces that I have here, I think I've got two pieces.

The first one, sort of as you go around, I call "A Few of My Favorite Things."

They are things that inspire me, that make me happy, that bring joy into my life.

Farther on in the display is a collage, a paper collage, that was motivated by the thoughts of our ancestors who were enslaved and who leapt off of the ships rather than to become slaves, and sort of what did they feel?

Did they console each other?

Did they support those who did live and went on to become our ancestors?

I'm very excited that we have the Rise Gallery.

We need places in this community where we can see art of all different kinds.

(soft music) - I'm very blessed and privileged to have come at such a perfect time where we do have this art concentration opening in fall of 2024.

- We're very excited about it, and it will give students an opportunity to learn about the business of art, to use their skills in communication as a way of amplifying their voice and reaching the public.

(lively music) The Rise Gallery is open to the general public.

We're open several days a week at specific hours, usually a period of four hours per day, and it's free of charge, so we invite families, we invite so many people to be part of this experience.

My hopes and wishes for this space are to engage the community.

We'll be having public conversations about subjects that are important to the community, subjects that deal with the environment, social issues, with science, with music, so that there are many different ways that people can engage and come together to share their voices and also experience the works of artists who address these particular types of subjects.

The idea of Rise is very aspirational.

One could look at it as a revitalization of inner Schenectady exhibitions.

I think that at the heart of it, that the arts can be a vehicle that pulls people together, that links people together, that amplifies their own interests as a community for the general wellbeing of the community.

(lively music) - Rhonda Rosenheck is an author and poet in East Greenbush, New York, and she recently edited "Thriving," an anthology of personal resilience through prose, poetry and illustration.

Jade Warrick spoke with Rhonda to learn more.

- Hi, Rhonda.

Welcome to "House for Arts" today.

- Thank you.

I'm happy to be here.

- I want to know your journey as a writer.

How did you get to where you are today?

- I think I always saw the world in pictures and words.

My family is filled with visual artists, but I paint in words.

My dreams have voiceovers.

When I was a kid, I started to write poetry, and then I started to write new lyrics to songs for family members for occasions and things like that.

I went to college pretty certain that that's what I would do, and studied writing, and then turned towards education and became overwhelmed with the importance of it and spent 33 years not writing poetry.

I had some chronic illness and I had to retire young, and I opened my computer one day and out fell a poem, and it just began as if it had never been interrupted.

So for the last almost 15 years, I've just been writing like mad.

- That's beautiful, especially having that break.

You probably had all that pent up, creative energy just ready to explode once you're out of the system.

- And life experience, right?

I graduated college when I was 20, so when I was 19, how much life experience did I have to base a writing career on?

- Yeah, that's very true.

So let's dive into your anthology called "Thriving."

Give us a little bit about this book, the concept and everything behind it.

- Yeah, I'm so happy about it.

I approached Saratoga Arts for an individual artist grant, a NYSCA regranting program, and told them I wanted to create an anthology around the theme of thriving.

I have had a lot of stuff in my life that's made it hard to keep coming back, but I do, and I began to wonder about that.

And with COVID and all of the things going on in the world that is creating so much anxiety, I wanted to focus on what it is that allows people to keep returning to a robust state, a joyful state, a robust state, a productive state.

I didn't want to focus only on how I do it, because that's not particularly useful to anybody else.

I didn't even really have a set idea of how I wanted it to look or what I wanted people to say about it.

I wanted it to be imaginative, and I wanted to throw it out there and see what came back.

I got the grant and I did both local and broad calls for submissions.

I got about 800 individual works submitted, from which came 87 works from 64 people.

- Yeah, now let's dive a little bit into the curation process of this, because that's a lot of artists, and it's not just filled with poems.

There's a little bit more in it, so would you give us a little bit of background on that?

- It's multi-genre, so there are a lot of poems and there are photographs and short pieces of fiction and short pieces of what we now call creative nonfiction, some of which is memoir and some of which is observational.

I was very clear in the call for submission that this wasn't a how-to, that this wasn't a spiritual guide to a particular path.

Show me in your imagination what thriving looks like, feels like, takes out of you, gives to you, whatever that is, and these crazy things came back.

I mean, a story about somebody whose musician brother who passed away is leading him on an international journey to Prague to a particular day on a particular Mozart concert, and then somebody else talking about reframing life with a partner who has Alzheimer's.

Somebody's talking about every single day as an addict not using, and that that person can look like a bottle of Coors.

It was all over the place, and the contributors, some of them are vastly experienced and published, and a few of them have never published anything before now, including one local contributor who's got two pieces in here.

Some of it are people who just have it and are beginning to emerge as artists and others are so polished and really know how to communicate in their modes.

- So let's dive into the concept of thriving, because that's what the book is mostly about.

You're taking all these different perspectives and saying, "How do you thrive within this?

How do you thrive?"

So what is the importance to you of teaching how to thrive and having people learn how to thrive?

- And me, how I can learn, right?

I didn't want to impose a view on this, so I learned from it.

That was my, I was gonna open my intuitive, creative mind and let these works flood into me.

We are in an era where coping skills are not necessarily taught well and are not necessarily available for us easily, and yet the need to cope is growing.

That distinction with COVID and all of the things going on, the mental health and the sense of despair and lack of control or power being flooded at us from social media, from news all the time, what can I possibly do?

And yet, the truth is that the only things that have ever changed societies or individual people actually changing from that downward spiral somehow up, and so I felt that the timing was valuable, that a piece that didn't preach at anybody, that didn't say there's one way to do it, but just shows the struggle, the opening, the sense of community and the exuberance, which is the final section, the exuberance of those moments when you really are thriving before the next obstacle trips you up a little bit again.

- Yeah, but how you keep recovering, using this as a tool, to be honest.

When I'm going to read the whole thing, I'm gonna probably learn so much of how do I thrive within my own world, and when things get dark, how do I thrive within the darkness, too?

Because that's the hard part as artists and creatives.

- None of it is about leaving reality behind.

It is about a reframing and sets of decisions.

You see different people make different sets of decisions.

For some it's intuitive and it's their nature, they're positive, and some of the writers here, they are not intuitively and naturally positive people.

So you can learn almost more from them than from somebody who just does it.

- That's true, that's very true.

So, where can folks, when's the release date and when can people purchase it?

- It's GoldenLeafBooks.com.

You'll find it as a new release book.

It's in pre-order until June 4th, and you can get 15% off.

After that, it's just ordered, and then over time we'll have it at out so that people could buy it online and at other bookshops.

- Yay!

Well, thank you for sitting down to talk to us about this amazing creative endeavor you and this beautiful community of artists really put some hard work into, and I can't wait to read it myself.

- Please welcome Cassandra Kubinski, performing songs from her EP, "The Saratoga Sessions."

(gentle piano music) ♪ I wish that I waited so quiet, so patient ♪ ♪ I thought I whenever, here it comes, here it comes now ♪ ♪ I want it to thrill me, cut through me, come fill me up ♪ ♪ I'm ready, so let me sing it out ♪ ♪ This is the sound that moves the world ♪ ♪ This is the sound that breaks your heart ♪ ♪ This is the sound that wakes you up ♪ ♪ This is the sound that moves the world ♪ ♪ This is the way I want to feel it ♪ ♪ Hearing it echo all around ♪ ♪ This is the sound, this is the sound ♪ ♪ This is the sound, this is the sound ♪ ♪ Invade me, invite me ♪ ♪ I'm willing, excite me ♪ ♪ I'm riding this wave, don't let me fall, don't let me fall ♪ ♪ I can't stop this dreaming, the bass drop, it's screaming ♪ ♪ I'm answering the call ♪ ♪ This is the sound that moves the world ♪ ♪ This is the sound that breaks your heart ♪ ♪ This is the sound that wakes you up ♪ ♪ This is the sound that moves the world ♪ ♪ This is the way I want to feel it ♪ ♪ Hearing it echo all around ♪ ♪ This is the sound, this is the sound ♪ ♪ This is the sound, this is the sound ♪ ♪ This is the sound that breaks your heart ♪ ♪ This is the sound that breaks the wall ♪ ♪ This is the sound that takes you high ♪ ♪ This is the sound that breaks the fall ♪ ♪ This is the only thing you are, the only thing you need ♪ ♪ The air you breathe, the ending and the start ♪ ♪ This is the sound that needs your heart ♪ ♪ This is the sound that moves the world ♪ ♪ In a way I want to feel it, hearing it echo all around ♪ ♪ This is the sound that moves the world ♪ ♪ This is the way I want to feel it ♪ ♪ Hearing it echo all around ♪ ♪ This is the sound, this is the sound ♪ ♪ This is the sound ♪ ♪ I don't want to die ♪ ♪ But my body feels broken ♪ ♪ And my heart has spoken no more ♪ ♪ I know that it's my time because I'm weak in the legs ♪ ♪ And I'm holding my head on the floor ♪ ♪ So I get on my knees and pray ♪ ♪ I don't end this way today ♪ ♪ Give me rebirth in decay ♪ ♪ I crumble to ashes, light up the night ♪ ♪ As my wings wrap around me, folding in tight ♪ ♪ You thought I was finished, too late to fly ♪ ♪ But you forgot I'm a legend ♪ ♪ And just like the phoenix I'll rise ♪ ♪ I'll rise ♪ ♪ I'll rise ♪ ♪ I've given all I can ♪ ♪ All I knew how to do to my own self ♪ ♪ And it's never enough for you ♪ ♪ So now I'm commanding the spark ♪ ♪ And by my own hand I start anew ♪ ♪ And I don't need your permission ♪ ♪ To see what I've been missing ♪ ♪ To see a grander vision where I'm living free ♪ ♪ I crumble to ashes, light up the night ♪ ♪ As my wings wrap around me, folding in tight ♪ ♪ You thought I was finished, too late to fly ♪ ♪ But you forgot I'm a legend ♪ ♪ And just like the phoenix ♪ ♪ Red and blue and gold ♪ ♪ Spirit never grows old ♪ ♪ With each incarnation ♪ ♪ Every transformation makes me stronger, brighter ♪ ♪ Wiser than ever before ♪ ♪ I crumble to ashes, fly like the night ♪ ♪ As my wings wrap around me, folding in tight ♪ ♪ I thought I was finished, too late to fly ♪ ♪ But I forgot I'm a legend ♪ ♪ And just like the phoenix I'll rise ♪ ♪ I'll rise ♪ ♪ I'll rise ♪ ♪ Like the phoenix ♪ ♪ Just like the phoenix, I'll ♪ ♪ I'll rise ♪ - Thanks for joining us.

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

I'm Matt Rogowicz.

Thanks for watching.

(energetic 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 Fischer Malesardi, and the Robison Family Foundation.

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