Thursday, March 12
7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Registration Required Below
Get to know some of the celebrated artists who live in our community!
The Allen & Helen Hermes Art Series presents a four-part program: The Secret Lives of Artists, where we’ll hear from a panel of professionals who are renowned in their creative fields talk about their work, process and inspiration.
The first panel will include Emmy-winning writer Annie Evans; famed jeweler Robert Lee Morris; internationally renowned artist Rob Mars; and award-winning documentary filmmaker Cindy Meehl. Veteran television producer Bob Marty, a longtime Redding resident, will moderate the discussion.
The series is organized by Redding’s Tom Casey and Carolyn Prusa, who are both published fiction authors. Prusa said she and Casey realized that many artists live and work in Redding, and the series is a way to both introduce them to the community and get inspired by these talented neighbors.
This presentation will take place both in-person, at the Library, and virtually, over Zoom. For the optimal experience, we recommend attending programs in-person. Register for the in-person event by scrolling to the registration form below. . Include a cell for a text reminder. Click here to register for the virtual program and a Zoom link will be emailed the day of the program.
Dates for upcoming sessions in The Secret Lives of Artists panel series will be announced soon.
The Allen and Helen Hermes Arts Series was founded in 2003, and is funded by a generous gift the couple donated to the Mark Twain Library. The mission of the series is to enrich the quality of life in the community of Redding by producing and supporting events in the visual, literary, theater and musical arts.
THE ARTISTS
ANNIE EVANS is a writer and producer whose work whose award-winning work spans the worlds of television, live plays and books. Her television work includes Sesame Street (PBS, 13 Emmy Awards, Aurora Award), Oswald the Octopus (Nickelodeon), Once Upon a Tree (PBS, Discovery), among many other shows. She has also written and story edited Sesame Street stage musicals for Sesame Street Live, Sesame Place, SeaWorld, Busch Garden, Beaches, Universal Studios, and for touring companies in Germany, the Netherlands, China, Australia and Singapore. Annie was a literary manager on a reading series for the New York Stage and Film Company. Annie, a graduate of Brown University, also travels internationally to lecture and teach the art of television writing.
ROBERT MARS is known for his Mixed Medium Pop Art that celebrates the icons of the 1950s and 60s, artwork that has earned him comparisons to the masters of the School of Pop, such as Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg. His work celebrates both commonplace objects and spectacular icons of the time by demonstrating how they remain relevant today. Robert is known for his ability to manipulate both the color and wordplay of vintage printed material, and his work has been exhibited in major museums throughout the world. Robert’s artwork was also selected for the Absolut Vodka Blank campaign, and in 2015, Coca-Cola purchased several existing works and ordered commissions for a world tour celebrating their centennial anniversary of their trademark bottle shape. Robert’s artworks are in the collections of Coral Springs Museum of Art, the International Museum of Collage and the New Bedford Art Museum. His work is also in the corporate collections of Microsoft, Adidas, Nike Communications, Neiman Marcus and many others.
CINDY MEEHL is an award-winning director and executive producer known for her feature film documentary work. Her most recent film, Jimmy & The Demons, centered on Redding’s James Grashow, an internationally acclaimed sculptor and woodcut artist who passed away last year and was much beloved in this community. The film premiered in June 2025 at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City and has gone on to screen at other leading festivals across the country. Cindy founded Cedar Creek Productions in 2008 and directed Buck, her debut film about renowned horse whisperer Buck Brannaman. Premiering at Sundance in 2011, Buck won the U.S. Documentary Audience Award and was shortlisted for an Academy Award. Meehl also directed The Dog Doc, about Dr. Marty Goldstein, a veterinarian known for his unconventional healing practices, that premiered at Tribeca and was released in 2020. Cindy has been an executive producer on a range of critically acclaimed films, including Natchez (2025), Fashion Reimagined (2019), Rewind ( 2019), The River and the Wall (2019), For the Birds (2018), Trapped (2016), Unbranded (2015), and Dogs on the Inside (2014).
ROBERT LEE MORRIS is a jewelry designer and artist known for his innovative and influential contributions to the field of contemporary jewelry. Robert developed a passion for art and design at a young age and was featured on the cover of Vogue magazine in 1976. As the owner of Artwear galleries in New York City, his work attracted a celebrity clientele interested in owning his “modern urban warrior” pieces that tapped into primitivism. Robert has designed groundbreaking jewelry for Donna Karan, Calvin Klein, and Kansai Yamamoto and the Studio 54 crowd. He was awarded the Coty Award in 1981, and in 2007, he was selected for the Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award by the Council of Fashion Designers of America. Recently, Robert has expanded his creative medium to include chandeliers and sculptures in his signature “timeless futurism” aesthetic.
OUR MODERATOR
BOB MARTY decided to be an artist after falling in love with Willem De Kooning’s paintings at age 14. He graduated from Pratt Institute with a BFA in painting and took a job designing and building puppet characters for Sesame Street, including six Big Birds. As part of the same job, he also designed costumes, props, and sets for two George Balanchine ballets —Persephone and Symphony Pathetique — for the New York City Ballet. In 1985, he moved into television production and founded MPI Media Productions International. In the last 40 years, Marty has produced and directed programs for PBS, NBC, CBS, A&E, Discovery Health Network, BBC, the Hallmark Channel, and many others. His programs for PBS have helped raise an estimated $750 million dollars and include some of the biggest hits in the network’s history including 22 Downton Abbey specials, 10 Ken Burns specials, 8 Victor Borge specials and 50th anniversary specials celebrating Sesame Street, PBS NewsHour, and Masterpiece Theater.