Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3CG6Q4hl2w&list=PLOQvdw7d0cd9RZZkd2lZy2hmrnJv-cfLI&index=63
Evan: So we are back here on the Choose 954 podcast, episode 38, from the New River Artists Cooperative in the History Fort Lauderdale Museum with local artist, curator, manager, teacher Alan Cohen Berman. If you didn't know about Choose 954, we started a social movement to cultivate culture and community in Broward County, keep people in the know with all the great things that are going on, in an effort to make this a better place to live and not just a better place to vacation. The point of the podcast is to connect you with incredible people, like Alan, doing amazing things in the community. This podcast is sponsored by the Thousand Mermaids Artificial Reef Project, creating artistically crafted artificial reef modules to help save the reefs and save the oceans. You can find out more at www.uaex.edu Ardell. We are the museum, but we are also, we have three other buildings in total, three buildings in total here, and we are on the third floor of the New River Inn.
Ellen Cohen-Berman: I am a ceramic artist. I teach ceramics at the Guild in Pompano, which is a not-for-profit school, and I just love creating with clay.
Evan: And how would you say you got involved in the arts?
Ellen Cohen-Berman: I’ve gotten involved in the arts through necessity. I lived in Coral Springs since 1992, and my daughter was in Coral Springs Middle School when I heard about a playground that we were going to build that was designed by a child at Betty Stradling Park on Miles Road, and I got very involved. I became the family fundraiser, and one of the big fundraisers that we did was a handprint wall at the entrance of Sliding Black Playground that is in Betty Stradling Park.
Evan: Which I know well, and one of the ways that we connected because I’m from Coral Springs on Miles Road, and I know Betty Stradling Park, my parents really well. And I think it has contributed significantly to Coral Springs, to Broward County. And if you don’t know, I think Coral Springs the last time I checked had like 96 parks in the city—family-friendly!
Ellen Cohen-Berman: Yes, very family-friendly.
Evan: But you know, that was definitely a great contribution and a great way to incorporate art. Tell us about some of the other art projects you’ve been involved in, in Broward County.
Ellen Cohen-Berman: Well, from the Betty Stradling Park, the next thing that happened while my daughter was in Coral Springs Middle School was meeting Sharon Shull, who was the principal. And I created a fundraiser that is now on the front of Coral Springs Middle School called "Diamonds in the Rough," where children literally signed their names on tiles, and that's on the front of that school.
Ellen Cohen-Berman: Then from there, I was called by Dr. Paul, who has since passed away, but he was a vet that was very active in Coral Springs. I created a fundraiser for Dr. Paul’s Dog Park in Coral Springs, and then he also asked me to do some tiles for his two veterinary hospitals—one on Wiles Road and one on Atlantic Boulevard.
Evan: And then after that?
Ellen Cohen-Berman: After that, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School’s facade had sheared off, and I did my due diligence and painted a watercolor of the Everglades. I did a presentation to the then-principal Sherry Clark, and in 2000, the mural went up. It’s 244 square feet on the front of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, and it’s of the Everglades in honor of Marjory Stoneman.
Evan: One of the largest murals in Broward County and one of the most noteworthy, unfortunately now for better or worse, but great contributions to the arts in Coral Springs and in Parkland.
Ellen Cohen-Berman: Yes.
Evan: When I was growing up, I don’t really remember having so much involvement in the arts aside from going to the museum, and the museum is a favorite—Science and the Broward Center for the Performing Arts for field trips. But I’d like to think that those contributions now, there’s more for the kids to appreciate and engage with.
Ellen Cohen-Berman: Yes, I went in front of the Commission one evening and requested an art in public places ordinance, and after that, they did create an art in public places ordinance in Coral Springs. And that’s why you see so much art in Coral Springs on the entrances, etc.
Evan: Very proud. I lived there; I have since moved east.
Ellen Cohen-Berman: Amen.
Evan: I’d like to also think that those contributions once again laid the groundwork. They just had the recent Temple installation, and you know, that was a big public art installation. A lot of great sculptures now.
Evan: I haven't been to Coral Springs in a while, or ever. Phenomenal downtown being redeveloped, City Hall—absolutely beautiful redevelopment. They’ve got a great lawn in front of City Hall now that they do events at. We had the Thousand Mermaids Artificial Reef Project in the Innovate Downtown weekend a couple months ago, which was like a pitch competition one night—like Shark Tank style—and then the next night they had live music, food trucks, string lights, vendors, local artists, and all the makers and creators displaying their startups, their ideas, their small businesses. And I brought my parents, who still live in Coral Springs, in the house where I was born and raised, and it was phenomenal. I never, in my lifetime, thought I’d see this amazing development.
Evan: You know, we have great 4th of July community events at Mullins Park, and there are great things in Coral Springs. It is a family-centered city. It’s a great place to raise a family, but you know, now there’s more arts and culture. They do art walks, they have art festivals, they have jazz brunches—Savor the Notes—so kudos to everybody involved in Coral Springs, and Scott Brook, a family friend that became the mayor, who we need to have a conversation with soon. But without much further ado, aside from those contributions to the arts, why don’t you tell us about some of your own work, which we might have right behind us here?
Ellen Cohen-Berman: Yes, we do. I decided after much thought process, wanting to go and take courses, I finally took my first course in ceramics at Broward College.
Evan: You want to tell us how we got to that? It’s a funny story.
Ellen Cohen-Berman: I had been thinking and thinking and thinking. My mother, she should rest in peace, always had me doing artwork when I was a little kid, and I always loved art. And I said, “Oh, I want to get back into it.” But life gets in front of you—you have children, you have to make a living. I was a court stenographer; I was very involved in the community. And I finally said, “You know what? I’m gonna do something for myself. But what am I gonna do it in?” And one day, coming up I-75 from a deposition in Miami, a truck in front of me dropped a box. I had a car to the right and a car to the left, and there’s the box coming—about 18 inches by 18 inches—and I’m like, “There we go.” And the box, thank God, went underneath my car, blew my left tire. When the cars to either side of me pulled forward, I slowed down, a Red Ranger came, fixed my tire, and I beelined it right to Broward College and signed up for my first ceramics class with Professor Lansing.
Evan: Who you have to give kudos to, right?
Ellen Cohen-Berman: Yes, I have to give kudos to Professor Lansing because he’s the nicest, warmest gentleman who really made my creativity grow. And behind me, I would always go to him and say, “I have this concept,” and he’d go, “Well, go and do it.” And I did it. I learned from my first sculpture that I was building, and I was putting on the last triangle—I love geometrics—it was all triangles, and I was putting on the last triangle, and the whole thing collapsed. Everyone in the class screamed, and he screamed, “We can fix it! We can fix it!” I said, “Let it go. I’ll learn from it.” And from that, I created these pieces.
Evan: That’s incredible.
Ellen Cohen-Berman: Interior-wise, they have a structure, a lattice structure, to withstand the pressure from above. Although a lot of these look like they’re metal, they’re not—they’re made of just clay. Air has to get through them. For example, there’s a lattice on the interior, and then there’s a hole down at the bottom so the steam can get out while it’s in the kiln. So, it’s an engineering process, and I learned it, and I loved it.
Ellen Cohen-Berman: I loved it, and I just, you know, thank Professor Lansing for letting my creativity grow. And then this one was in the Broward Student Art Show. All of these have been in the Broward Student Art Show, but this one won the Three-Dimensional Art Award.
Evan: How about that?
Ellen Cohen-Berman: That was a juried art show, so I’m very, very proud of it.
Evan:: Great colors, great shapes, great sizes, great price points, all made locally here by Broward artists. For those that aren’t familiar with where we are in your studio, tell us a little bit about the New River Artists Cooperative and the History Fort Lauderdale Museum.
Ellen Cohen-Berman: The New River Artists Cooperative came about by me being told by another artist to come down and show my art at the Jazz Brunches that take place the first Sunday of every month from 11:00 to 2:00. It’s sponsored by various sponsors along the Riverwalk here, but the Jazz Brunch is right around the New River Inn Museum on the grounds. I was there, and lo and behold, Patricia Zeiler, our executive director of the museum, took a liking to my artwork and called me to ask if I could help with a fundraiser because, after Hurricane Irma, we lost the floor in the first-floor education room.
Evan: Right.
Ellen Cohen-Berman: Orchard Hardware, which is no longer here anymore, was helping fundraise.
Evan: They were here at the right time!
Ellen Cohen-Berman: They were! I went to Federal Highway and did the fundraiser, and at that time, Patricia asked me to come in and have a discussion with her. We did the following week, whereupon I was brought up to the third floor by Kamal Khan, who is the second-in-command at the museum, and this looked all like a grandmother’s attic—full of stuff, not being used. I took a look at all these wonderful rooms, and I said, “Wow.” When I went back to Patricia’s office, she then asked me, “Would you be interested in curating an artist-in-residence program for History Fort Lauderdale?”
Evan: How amazing!
Ellen Cohen-Berman: It’s now called History Fort Lauderdale—it used to be the Fort Lauderdale Historical Society. I said I’d be honored!
Evan:: A great space, phenomenal history, phenomenal photographs, exhibits, memories, memoirs. If you haven’t, I encourage you to come. We’re going to have a few opportunities we’ll tell you about in a little bit to come.
Evan: One of the current exhibits worth coming for is called “Island Imprint: A History of the Caribbean Community in Broward County.” They’ve brought Seminole art exhibitions during Miami Art Week. Actually, specifically, it was in conjunction and collaboration with Art Basel, which is one of the first, I believe, designated Art Basel collaborations in Broward County.
Ellen Cohen-Berman: Yes, so kudos to Patricia Zeiler and everyone involved.
Evan: Howard Chadwick had a lot to do with it too.
Ellen Cohen-Berman: Definitely, kudos to Howard Chadwick for all of her contributions—phenomenal support of the arts in Broward.
Evan: We should probably get her on the podcast, too!
Ellen Cohen-Berman: You would also go without mentioning some of the phenomenal artists that are in the New River Artists Cooperative, correct?
Evan: Absolutely.
Ellen Cohen-Berman: When this came about, I started to think about phenomenal artists that I knew. The first person or the first two people I thought of were Ruchi and Brian. Ruchi is a phenomenal public artist and a mosaic artist. He’s done public art throughout Florida, and he actually installed my first project at Betty Stradling Park and installed the project at Coral Springs Middle School for me, as well as Dr. Paul’s Dog Park.
Evan: How about that!
Ellen Cohen-Berman: So, clearly, Ruchi came in. I called him up and said, “I have an opportunity for you.” As did I call Brian Fitzgerald, who is the Fine Arts teacher at Fort Lauderdale High School. I met him through my son, who used to teach at Fort Lauderdale High School. Brian is a phenomenal, phenomenal painter, as well as an incredible sculptor. Both an incredible sculptor—he’s just come up with the logo of Fort Lauderdale quilted by him.
Evan: Yes!
Ellen Cohen-Berman: It’s amazing. And then from there, I was lucky enough to have signed up to do “Art on the Square” at the Cornell Art Museum. Things just happened, and I was in a booth next to this lovely lady, and I asked her—there were 100 artists there—and I said, “Where are you from?” And they were from all over the country. She said, “Oakland Park.” I said, “Oh, we need to talk because I live in Oakland Park now.” And sure enough, that’s how I came to speak to Harmony Jones, who repurposes things in a phenomenal way. She also does encaustics, where she uses wax, colors it, and adds resin to harden it.
Evan: Right.
Ellen Cohen-Berman: From there, I asked Harmony to recommend someone, and she recommended Florencia. That’s how we got Florencia Lemonsky, a fabulous mixed-media artist. Then, originally, we got Jennifer Haley, who does two-part epoxy resin, but Jennifer has now left to get her own space. Twila Gettert had talked to me last year, and we had no space. We just kept in contact, and now Twila is our sixth artist.
Evan: Wow!
Ellen Cohen-Berman: My goal when I was putting this together was not to have six ceramic artists. It was to have artists of different mediums so we would be a wonderful team, and that’s what we’ve got.
Evan: You’ve got a great team, a great roster. The latter half of the team have all participated in Art Fort Lauderdale. You don’t have to explain Harmony’s work too much because we actually did an Art Fort Lauderdale podcast with Harmony here last year, previewing her work that was in the art fair on the water. You can find that if you go on YouTube or Facebook and type in “Art Fort Lauderdale Podcast Harmony Jones.”
Evan: We’ll be sure to get one with Florencia in the future—she’s been a great friend and supporter and a great artist. Then we’d love to do Ruchi and Brian as well.
Ellen Cohen-Berman: Yes!
Evan: It would be great for Art Fort Lauderdale because we’re all a team, and I’m glad to tell their stories. That’s another one of the beautiful things about the podcast here, and one of the beautiful things about this space. I know this space is obviously very unique in the fact that it’s a museum, a history museum, a non-profit, but the fact that from a creative placemaking perspective—which is something we’re starting to storytell and explain the importance of—you’ve been able to make safe, affordable artist studio spaces in downtown Fort Lauderdale. There are only six of them, which is more than fine, but it serves a great purpose because there really isn’t much safe, affordable artist studio space in an arts district. This is technically the Riverwalk Arts & Entertainment District.
Ellen Cohen-Berman: Yes.
Evan: That’s one of the issues that my partner, Mr. Andrew Martineau, and I are working to address with our latest initiative called “Zero Empty Spaces,” where we are working to activate vacant retail, commercial, and warehouse storefront space that’s either tied up in a buy-and-hold, tied up in the permitting process, or is just vacant and tough to lease. We’re activating that as safe, affordable artist studio spaces at or below, or as close to, $2 a square foot as we can, being inclusive of the electricity, water, and the insurance that we’re taking care of. We’re marketing and promoting it—we’ve already gone on WLRN to talk about it. Thankfully, Katie Lepri Munoz, the local Broward reporter for WLRN, took an interest in it, and she’s going to help cover local artists and storytell their journey.
Evan:: Because if we don’t have safe, affordable artist studio space, we won’t have the artists, and we won’t have the art. Just to round this point out, we all know the success of Wynwood. Well, one of the unfortunate byproducts—not just the gentrification and the other details we can get into another time—but those artists, like my partner who used to chip in $100 to rent a warehouse in the early 2000s, that warehouse sells for $40 million now, and the artists can’t afford to be there. They got priced out of Wynwood, priced out of Lincoln Road, priced out of Little River, Little Haiti. So now they’re coming to Fort Lauderdale.
Evan: Unfortunately, Fort Lauderdale has also become pretty expensive as well, but that’s another conversation for another time. If these artists don’t have places to work, let alone live, they’ll have to go other places to pursue their craft and passion. That ties into a bigger picture conversation we’re going to address tonight with the third annual installment of what you will, and you were there last year with your sculpture, the panel discussion that we’ve had entitled “The Art, Culture, and Creative Economy in Fort Lauderdale,” a panel discussion where we storytell the importance of the arts.
Evan: This year, we have another phenomenal panel, including my partner, Mr. Andrew Martineau, co-founder and creator of Art Fort Lauderdale, Choose 954, and all of our other initiatives. We have Jodi Tanner from Las Olas Capital Arts and the Broward County Cultural Council Chair returning. And we’re glad to welcome Commissioner Steve Glassman, District 2 Fort Lauderdale City Commissioner, who also was a long-time Broward County Cultural Division Administrator. He helped form not only Sailboat Bend Artist Lofts, but he also helped create Hollywood ArtsPark, among other great contributions to the arts.
Evan:: If you’re not able to make it, it’s at 6:30 tonight, Monday, June the 10th. Hopefully, I’ll get this podcast posted before then, and you can listen. But we’ll have a replay of it online so you can be part of the conversation in the future. We’ll share all of this with you on Choose 954. But for those who want to find out more about you, where can they find you on social media or the internet?
Ellen Cohen Berman: We have a Facebook page called New River Artist Co-op or New River Artist Cooperative. We are trying to post on it as much as we can. We’re getting people’s permission to use their pictures when they do come up here, and some of them purchase things from us. And that’s right now what we’re doing—baby steps, as I say. We’re having a big meeting to talk about how we can get ourselves out there. It’s a new thing, and comparatively, I mean, we celebrated our first anniversary, but it’s baby steps.
Evan: Amen. It’s amazing. It’s really a great contribution to the arts in Broward County and downtown Fort Lauderdale, and it’s serving a wonderful purpose. We’re excited to be able to support you guys and bring some new folks in there. Hopefully, those listening will think, “Great, we can connect.”
Ellen Cohen Berman: Yes, because when we had Art Fort Lauderdale, I called you up, and I said, “I was thinking for 2020 we might be able to have an open studio night.” But we had one in 2019 in January during Art Fort Lauderdale, and it was fabulous. We also had, I believe, the day before the closing of the Seminole art exhibit, which was still running at that time. So, that was also during Art Fort Lauderdale, so it was another great opportunity to come out here and check the space.
Evan:: We have another phenomenal opportunity to come out here and check out the space, have a very enriching experience outside of just viewing the space. Our monthly breakfast lecture series, our mini TED Talk—Creative Zen—will take place this Friday, June 14th. Doors open at 8:30 a.m., the talk starts at 9:00, and you’re out of here by 10:00. It’s a free event to connect, engage, and inspire our creative community one Friday morning a month, which is the second Friday morning of every month. We provide breakfast bites, coffee, and a very thought-provoking, inspiring talk.
Evan: This one speaker is one of the most powerful speakers I’ve ever seen, who is a proud native, a former NFL player, current assistant principal, current spoken word poet, father, phenomenal host, and phenomenal human being—Jairus “Quick the Poet” Evans. I can guarantee you, you will be moved if you attend.
Evan: So come out to Creative Zen, which we are hosting at the New River Inn Museum, 231 Southwest 2nd Avenue in Fort Lauderdale. You can find out more at Creative Zen, with support from the American Advertising Federation’s local chapter of Greater Fort Lauderdale and the Palm Beaches.
Evan: That’s this Friday morning. The night before Creative Zen—so the second Thursday night of every month—is one of our favorite community events of the month, which we’re so glad to support: Raw Storytelling—True Stories Untold—hosted by my dear friend Enid Nolasco of Witchcraft Branding. It’s our version of “The Moth.” A phenomenal event held in a coffee shop in downtown Fort Lauderdale.
Evan: You can find out more at Raw Storytelling, and we’re so glad to support SoFar Sounds, which would be interesting as we host one of those here. It’s a “songs to a room” experience, a very intimate listening experience. They don’t release the name of the venue, they don’t release the musicians that are playing. You have to request access or RSVP or be invited, and then they tell you the venue the day before. They’ll just put on the flyer, “It’s in Fort Lauderdale.”
Evan: It’s my favorite music event of the month, and Choose 954 is glad to be a media partner and support my dear friend Jennifer Rink. The next one is June 15th, and if you didn’t get into that one, we encourage you to sign up for their newsletter—SoFarSounds.com, S-O-F-A-R sounds. They’ll tell you when the next events are, so you can request access or RSVP to be a part of them. I can guarantee you, they are some of the most memorable experiences. You can see a little bit on their YouTube page with music video-quality recaps—absolutely phenomenal.
Evan:: These are a few ways that you can get involved in the arts. You know, we don’t live in a place like Greater Fort Lauderdale or Broward County to just go to work, come home, go to sleep, rinse, and repeat. There needs to be a “play” element to the live-work-play formula, and as we’ve found in our lives, art gives you that enriching, cultural balance, experiences, and you meet phenomenal people—phenomenal people.
Evan: We’ve seen phenomenal things. Art has given me more, without ever being an artist, in terms of experiences and connections. That’s why we do a lot of these things—to connect and engage people with the arts so that hopefully, they can be enriched. And it ties into this bigger picture of the creative economy and creative class, which you’ll find out more about tonight at the panel and how all of this comes together.
Evan: Everybody wants us to be a world-class community. We have all the assets in the world. We have the greatest proximity of any airport to a port, downtown, and beach—anywhere in the world. It does not get better than that. We have direct flights now from Spain, from Oslo, Norway, from China to a world-class international airport, to one of the top ports in the world, to one of the best beaches in the world, to what’s now becoming a world-class cultural downtown.
Evan:: But if you don’t connect and engage with your community, are we ever going to be Miami? Maybe not. But there’s only one way that we can get there, and that’s to connect, engage, show up, and try. So, hopefully, with some of what we mentioned, you’ll be able to connect and engage with the arts. We look forward to having you join us for Creative Zen, the panel, and Jazz Brunch on the first Sunday of the month.
Evan: We plan to be back here doing more artist studio tours. I’ll be off the crutches so we can hop up here. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to me at @evansnow13 on Instagram, @Choose954, @ArtFortLauderdale, @CreativeZen, @ZeroEmptySpaces, @ThousandMermaids, @FortLauderdaleDesignWeek—I’m an open book, glad to help. Save the reef!
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