A Few Things About Artists: A film by Tom Weber

"A Few Things About Artists" is an hour-long documentary by Erie
filmmaker Tom Weber that explores the lives and works of many of the area's leading visual artists. It received partial funding from Erie Arts & Culture / Pennsylvania Partners for the Arts, and had its broadcast premiere Feb. 1, 2018, on WQLN-TV54 in Erie, PA.
The film features Susan Kemenyffy, Fran Schanz, Kris Risto, Shelle
Barron, Karen Dodson, Tom Ferraro, Brad Lethaby, Suzanne Proulx, John Bavaro, Jeff Kuntz, Evan Everhart and Bob Jensen.
Weber's previous films aired on WQLN include "1000," a collaboration with poet/activist Abdullah Washington about Erie people striving for excellence, and "The Trouble With Poets" (2014), which examines Erie's community of performing poets such as Sean Thomas Dougherty, Monica Igras and Chuck Joy.
"I have a deep and abiding interest in artists of all kinds," says
Weber is a former newspaper reporter who has taught filmmaking at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, Point Park University and the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. "Artists take ideas and emotions and express them in tangible ways through their work. Their stories need to be heard."
Two beautiful places created by artists are featured in the
documentary, which is accompanied by an original musical score created by Erie guitarist Joseph Allen Popp.
Time-lapse sequences filmed in metal artist Evan Everhart's
Millcreek sculpture garden -- which includes both real trees and fantastic metal replicas standing side-by-side -- are seen at the beginning of the film.
"Raku Place," the expansive Japanese-inspired garden in McKean
Township built by Susan Kemenyffy and her husband Steven, is the subject of an extended montage that ends the film. Raku Place is listed in the Smithsonian Institution's Archive of American Gardens.
A number of the artists discuss how their need to create art helped
them through life-threatening events.
John Bavaro, interviewed together with his wife Suzanne Proulx,
recounts how he struggled to recover from a debilitating stroke by
exploring new digital painting techniques. We see actual CAT scans of
Bavaro's brain, which he converted to digital images of fantastical "brain trees" made up of veins and capillaries.
Jeff Kuntz, an impressionistic painter who is recovering from heroin
addiction, openly discusses his struggle and the importance of making art to his recovery. Kuntz is a graduate of Edinboro University's art program who studied with several of the other featured artists, and offers some candid observations about the need for art education in schools.
Other artists talk about how they use art to understand themselves
and their lives, what they do when inspiration isn't flowing, and how they sustain their work while making a living.
Weber, a one-man crew who shoots and edits all his own footage, has
been producing independent documentaries and concert videos since
2002. These include "Troubadour Blues" (2011) a film about hard-traveling folksingers like Peter Case, Mary Gauthier and Chris Smither, and "Over The Pavement" (2015), a concert video with some of the world's best improvisational musicians filmed in Detroit.