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Today’s summer encore is a visit with painter and art professor Cat Balco, who is writing a memoir.

The book is shaping up to be about painting, but also about a lot of other things going on in her life. Cat, who teaches at Hartford Art School where I’m proud to say she taught me painting, was my inaugural guest on Open Studio, back in September of 2020, and since then a lot has happened in her life. She says she has a stubborn little muse inside her that’s calling her to write about it in memoir. Painting, writing – well, that speaks my language. I had to invite her back on the show to talk about it.

A few of Cat’s paintings:

Orion’s Belt, acrylic on canvas, 60″x72″, shown in Cat’s studio

Three Green Triangles, acrylic on canvas, 72″x72″,

Open Orange Triangles, acrylic on canvas, 40″x40″

Here’s a link to that inaugural chat:

Welcome to Open Studio! Conversations on Art and Why It Matters

You can find Cat’s work at her website catbalco.com and at her NYC gallery’s site rickwesterfineart.com

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Today, we diverge from visual art to take up another Art – Art Meyers, more formally Arthur Solomon Meyers, who died in late May at age 85. Art was a hometown hero for not only expertly heading the Russell Library in Middletown for 19 years but also for his leadership on many other fronts, including for presiding over the annual naturalization ceremony the library hosts around the Fourth of July and for creating lunch groups of diverse people to talk.

A plaque hung in his honor at the library says it all: “During his tenure as Director of Russell Library, Arthur Meyers engaged the entire community. His special warmth encouraged diverse populations to connect and discuss issues in the Open Forum style e.g., where the goal was to raise the level of public discourse through the striking of mind upon mind. Art established local groups for discussions on a variety of subjects; many lives have been enriched through his efforts.”

Yes, he was all about raising the level of public discourse well before it had sunken as low as it’s gotten.

The episode, in our continuing summer series of encores, features two interviews I did when I hosted a previous radio show on WESU, Reasonably Catholic: Keeping the Faith. In the first, from 2013, he talks about the Open Forum, a kind of chatauqua in the style of one discussed in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance; in the second interview, from 2017, he celebrates a groundbreaking priest whose work anticipated the New Deal.

A big thank you to friends and radio guests who answered my call for donations to the radio station’s spring pledge drive. As of this airing, we’re still a few thousand dollars shy of our goal so, not to guilt you, but if you haven’t donated yet and you love community radio, please go to wesufm.org and give what you can. Thanks.