Production of applause and ideastream.

Public media is made possible by funding by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.

Coming up.

A Cleveland woman preserve the diaries of everyday people.

A sculptor gets Charlie Hustle to slide in Cincinnati.

And a trio of folkies salute Lady Liberty.

The papers are all in order.

Hello, and welcome bac to another edition of applause.

I'm idea stream public media's Kabir Bhatia.

Did you keep a diary or journal growing up?

I got thi because they were out of beige.

This is a secret place for my thoughts.

Maybe you still write yours down somewhere.

Well, if you're willing to share Cleveland's America Diary project, once your stories in Cams Corners diaries from all over the US, some dating back to the 1850s, are finding a new purpose.

I love the tabs on this one.

It feels very organized, but the different pen write like what is the the different colors mean?

I've been a lifelong diarist.

I mean, maybe not lifelong, but since I was a little kid writing and diaries and, I was wondering what would happen to them when I passed away.

So I don't plan on having kids.

You know, I'm married, but we don't necessarily have anybody to hand our diaries down to.

And so that got me searching on the internet, you know, where are there archives or somewher that I could donate my diaries.

And I really wasn' finding anything in the States.

There's a really great project that's in the U called The Great Diary Project.

And, when I found that I was like, oh, I would love to do that.

I'd love to start something like that in the States.

And my wife was like, well, you should.

And I was like, okay, challenge accepted.

So the American Diary Project is the diary archive for everyday folks.

So what we do i we archive and digitize diaries from everyday Americans, making sure that they'r preserved for future generations and, honoring the full human experience.

So this one is from 1859, and it's the Diary of Henry Saturday.

From Ohio.

And it it's got to be the smallest diary that we have in our collection.

It's teeny.

It's written in pencil.

It's not as, flowery or fanciful or, like, filled with emotion as, lik most of our diaries are today.

It's very much just like about the weather and plowing the field and tilling the land like living off the land.

Saturday the 13th.

Rainy, snowy snowed all day.

The American Diary projec was started in October of 2022.

It was honestly in an office or a bedroom in my home, which is interesting to think about.

But we had to really see the collection when we first started.

So we would go in place like eBay, Facebook Marketplace.

We no longer need to purchase them.

We just accept diaries from the public who want to donate them.

So right now we have over 500 diaries.

It's about 541, I think last time I checked, we have a handful from the 1800s.

The majority of our collection is from the 1900s and, some from the 2000s as well.

They're geographically al over the place within America.

We've got.

Our oldest one is from Ohio our newest one is from Hawaii.

So it really runs the gamut across the board.

New York, Colorad pretty much all over the place.

And that honestly, our only rule like is that it has to be American.

Right?

So if it's from Canada, Mexico, you know, apologies we won't be able to accept it.

But so long as it's written by an American, we're happy to take it to for all of our diaries we keep them in archival boxes, and then we also put them in protective poly plastic sleeve.

You don't want to seal them up there.

They're like books in that sense, where they need to be able to breathe and you don't want to encourage moisture.

So this is one of my favorite diaries.

It's got an adorable locking mechanism on it.

Oh, I'm going to see if I can even get it.

Okay, there we go.

And then when you open it.

So it's from, the late 1960s from Kim and there's a warning in it that says warning padlocks do not open.

It's just it's so cute.

So we definitely receive ou diaries from a mix of sources.

So some of them will be from the actual diaries themselves wanting to contribute their own collection, make sure that gets in and then still continue to to write and plan to leav the rest of their diaries to us when they pass.

But then there's also, a whole host of people who have their relatives diaries and they don't necessarily know what to do with them.

So but they don't want to throw them away.

Right?

We think there's value in everything.

So we're so happy when somebody sends us their, grandmother's diary, their, their mother's diary, even so, we have about 90 volunteers that have been trained across the country.

They help with things like transcription, digitization.

We also have a few local volunteer as well, who come to our archive in Cleveland and take photos of the diaries so that we're able to digitize them and put them o our website for folks to read.

We love visitors, so we love when people make appointments to to come in and look at our collection, flip through the diaries.

We're happy to have folks, come in and look at them in person.

So in this year we saved a collection of diaries that, came from Michael, who was the former partner of Frank Diorio.

So Frankie Oreo' diaries are mostly from the late 70s and early 80s.

So he was an out gay man living in San Francisco, in the Castro district at the time.

And he writes of his life and what it was like, you know, being out at that time and the struggles that he dealt with.

Felix and I talked this morning about falling in love at breakfast, tortillas and scrambled eggs.

And it occurred to me that not only have I not felt that sensation in a long, long time, though, it has preoccupied me for the longest damn time, but that I hope I never feel it again in the way that I've always known it.

We will absolutely preserve the physical diaries in perpetuity, forever and ever.

You know this project will outlive me.

Like, sure, I'm the executive director now, but someone will take my place and just keep this going.

It's built to last.

But then we also want to digitize them and have that digital record and be able to to share it across the world so that you don't just have to be in Cleveland to read the diaries, you can enjoy them online as well.

So a big part of our mission is supporting Iris, right?

So not just after you've written in your diary, but as your you're writing in your journal and the art and practice of that.

And so as part of that, we've gotten into events this year.

So we hold jun journaling events once a month.

We also are now spinning that into more of like a creative journaling.

I use it for therapy.

I use it to keep records of my life.

I started with my daughter, and I would say, oh, you know, she ate this or she ate that.

She learned to walk.

And then it got bigger with all the digital stuff nowadays, you know, to have some kind of tactical or, you know, something that you ca actually touch, pick up, hold, look at, flip through it.

I don't know, it means something to me.

So you can read about history and textbooks and it's subjective based on the person who wrote the textbook.

Right.

You can only include so many facts in it.

But if you really want to get at the heart of someone's individual experience of what they went through, you're going to find that in their diary.

And I think this is important especially for the common folk.

Most of the time it's always autobiographies about important people.

And but, you know, bein an average Jane and an average shoe size and an average town is important too, because we are the backbone of, you know, America.

From capturing stories to capturing motion with a Cincinnati sculptor who gives life to his work.

Tom Sawyer captured baseball legend Pete Rose mid-flight.

And he created other notable works you may have seen around Cincinnati and beyond.

One of my conversations, I asked him, you know, hey, Pete, you know, why did you almost always slide head first?

You know, it' kind of dangerous and all that.

And he just replied, because it gets you in the papers.

My name is Tom Sawyer, and I'm a sculptor based here in Cincinnati, Ohio.

People in Cincinnati, can, view a lot of my works around town, including.

This is Andy Zoo, Mount Saint Joe Xavier University.

You see Reagan Library, Smale Park, and my interpretation of the three wise monkeys on Court Street in this sculpture is translucent and announces itself at night via led embrace.

No evil anyone has gone down to this year.

Reds game on.

Notice all my bronzes down there.

Most people are familiar with all my large scale bronze sculptures and large public works that can be seen outside and then outdoor space.

But I also do some works that are rather small, that are inside the nationa baseball game at their gallery.

And then head north.

You'll see Lux Mundi.

You see the 50f tall sculpture of Jesus greeting everybody, driving up and down I-75.

As many of us that lived in the area in like 2010 know about is that, tragic night when our beloved big brother Jesus or a touchdown Jesus caught on fire?

Lightning from the heavens struck in.

And was gone in, like 15 minutes, you know, burned up.

There was a company called Display Dynamics up in, Dayton area that, is involved in creating a lot of, like, large scale works of all kinds, you know, and then we all end up, being approached by a solid rock, you know, church, you know, about, creating Jesus, even though this sculpture here is going to be 50ft tall and it will be the biggest sculpture I've ever been involved in, it was actually the easiest sculpture.

I was involved because I just produced a five foot tall, 110 scale model.

That was my main focus and then I just provided really just the design and then display dynamics took that design, and then they did all the engineering that everything else figured out how to larger not a fabricate all the really difficult parts, including installing a lightning suppression system that runs from the top of his head all the way down.

Not I didn't care for the fort sake and Christ posed by more like his welcoming.

And that's what I wanted.

It is something that is like a loving, caring Jesus.

You I call Lux ma the light of the world in Latin, and at the same time all the local Cincinnati people, the clever people that they are.

Kim, some new names, like, to keep him with the football theme.

And this year, the touchdown Jesus.

Now it's fourth and one.

Jesus.

You know, it's I love that name.

And then they had $5 foot line.

Jesus and hug me.

Jesus too, whic I like.

That one, I like hug me.

This is, you know, any one of those names are, I think are perfect for the sculpture.

The way I look at it is sculptur itself is an inanimate object.

It has no life and never will have life.

It's just an object that will never live.

I always feel, and what I always aspire to d in every sculpture that I create is to give this a name that object, a feeling of life I want my sculptures to look like literally.

They have a heartbeat and then there's blood coursing through their veins.

Of course, I try to achieve the detailed likeness of people, but to me the most important thing is the low sense of life and energy.

You know, when you think of Pete Rose, there are two things.

Number one headfirst Slide and number two, he had that very distinctive crouching batting stance.

But of the two, the sliding headfirst is the signature look for Pete, because that is something that captures this whole Charlie Hustle, you know, persona as well.

I remember saying, okay, well, that'd be cool.

But, you know, that's going to be a challenge too, because, you know, I didn't want anything with some ugly pose sticking out of the belly as, like, skewed or whatever.

What they ende up designing was this incredible stainless steel skeleton that runs through the body and then a bypass.

It exits out of the elbows, and then it's like a fork that fits into essentially these tubes, and that's buried in the concrete pedestal.

You can hold 6,000 pounds, so it's amazing.

You can park a full siz Mercedes S-Class on that thing.

Big Reds fans, going all the way back to like 1975, Marty Brennaman.

It was like the, the soundtrack, you know, of the Reds.

And, he retired a few years back.

And because we always think o not only the certain players as, like, iconic, like the symbols of this inside Reds history.

Marty Brennaman, our grea announcer, has always been also one of these just fixture and just great iconic figures.

And the Reds said yeah, we're going to honor him.

Also had the good fortune of years.

I visited Marty and when Joe was also alive as well down in their booth during a game.

So I thought, hey you know, the best way to pick them would be really almost like a bust.

In this case, it's really just from his chest up and then depict his desk with the score book, the MC media guide, things of that sort.

And I thought that was the best way.

So we unveiled Marty's Bronze Twin on September 6th of this year.

When I'm working let's say a a life size bronze of a particular person, I'd from like video footage and photographs and if possible of the around I work from life.

So in the case like Marty Brennaman, since he's aroun and he's local, it's wonderful.

He just come into my studio and he can pose and I can ask him questions, and it's just amazing to always work from life.

Sometimes I'm working 12, 13, 14, 15 hours straight on something.

And to see that all that hard work is, you know, is appreciated and seen by many people is it's always a it's a wonderful feeling.

And it's something that I know that these sculptures I know have been loved by many of the locals and then other people visiting from other places.

It's both a special honor and just plain fun to see something I created all over my own hometown.

So we work here at the Idea Center.

And you know, we love at the Idea Center pizza and ideas especially when it comes to arts and culture, whether it's from here, here, here, here, whether you're any of these, send us your ideas for consideration to arts at Idea stream.org.

It could be Ashland County, Portage.

Summit.

Stark.

Columbiana.

Carol.

Mahoning.

Wayne.

Trumbull.

Summit.

Again.

Cuyahoga.

Geauga.

Lake.

Okay.

So much quieter here in the studio.

Did you ever notice how the identity of an illustrator often shines through in their drawings?

Let's meet a happy go luck art student from Dublin, Ohio, whose drawings have as much personality as she does.

I can do realism.

It takes me a really long time because I'm messy, but I'm also a perfectionist at the same time, which is a really, really weird combo to, like, have.

But like, I enjoy cartooning more.

I think it's more fun and I think you can get a lot more across with like cartooning.

Like you can communicate emotions more like effectively an like somebody who maybe doesn't speak the same languag as you can get the same from it, just from the expressions that you're putting on paper.

These are from third grade, I think is when I made them.

I think there's four issues, except the fourth one never got, like finished.

It got started.

I don't know why I made these.

I think it was just for fun.

I thought it was silly.

It was like this girl's mom gets abducted by aliens, and so she builds like a rocket out of, like, random material she has, like, lying around, and then she flies to the, you know, the alien planet and it just goes on this crazy adventure to get her mom back and befriends, like the alien princess and her pet.

And then it's just like this.

I don't really know how I came up with it, but it's her adventure and trying to save her mom.

Tea with friends was an assignment I did for my AP art class at school, and we were supposed to do like, a poster for, like our, like, school cafe thing called the Kindness Cafe.

And I don't know why I did it the way I did it.

I just thought it was like on moment I didn't know what to do.

And we had like two weeks to do it.

And I was like, oh God, like, what am I going to do?

And then like a couple day after, I was like, oh, you know, it'd be a really cute ide since this is like an art class.

Like if we did, if it was like, like art, like, like, you know, like historical art pieces, but they're having, like, a tea party because, like you know, it's going in a cafe.

And I thought the idea was really cute.

And, you know, I had two weeks to do it.

And of course, I did it like two nights, too.

The night before I. But the one art's for me.

Honestly, it's always kind of like been in my life in, like, a weird way, because I used to take art classes there when I was little.

Done arts.

Kind of like, help me, like take off with my art and, like, with my career and, like, gave me the confidence to even just, like, put my art on display for other people to, like, see in person.

So.

Mr.. Brian, Brian Moss I met him through them basically.

Yeah.

Because I went to a couple of his workshops.

That's funny.

Yeah, it's one of those things where, because my dad is the same way, because he's from Bordeaux, which is.

Honestly, I don't know what I'd be like doing right now if I didn't meet him and work with him.

Cause, I mean, like, while we've been, like, working together, I've, like, made a comic, and I published a comic, and I've, like gained more confidence in, like, talking to people and my making more art and not being as self-conscious, like it's definitely helped me like, like grow more as a person, bu especially as, like an artist.

So that's been really, really cool.

I feel like it's like a very artist thing to draw yourself a lot, because that's kind of what I do.

Like.

I just love drawing, like me doing stuff or stuff I've already done or like or something I've experienced.

Like, I love doing that.

Like, oh, if I hung out with my friends and we did some like weird thing happen.

I love drawing that and putting that on paper and then like showing it to them.

They're like, oh my gosh, it' us.

And I'm like, it.

It's so, yeah, I don't know.

I just like but if not that, then I like, I just like drawing like weird little cartoons.

I don't really know.

I just like, I like creating stuff that everybody can enjoy and like, I like brightening people's day, like making people happy.

My dream would probably be I just like, want to make art and I want to be happy.

Like, I know that's kind of like really simple but like, that's always kind of been my goal.

I've never really, other than art, like I've never really known like what I wanted to do, but I just knew, like, I just want to be happy.

Like I want to like, wake up every day and feel like great and be like, hey, is going to be a fantastic day.

And like, here's why.

And I know that I'm doing something that's going to make me happy and hopefully other people happy, which makes me more happy.

So like, that's that's I guess like the really simple version of like what I want to do.

Get your kick on route 66 on the next applause as we meet a Cleveland photographer who's putting his stamp on the Mother Road.

I would spend all my money on vacation to g travel route 66 and make photos, come back and work hard, and then go do it again.

And a Grammy winning mezzo soprano makes her debut at Chamber Fest Cleveland.

All that and more on the next round of applause.

Hopefully you saw to see that one.

Oh.

This one.

It only It's been fun, friends.

But it's that time again for me, Kabir Bhatia, to wrap up this round of applause.

Let's head to Cleveland's Collinwood neighborhood and the Millard Fillmore Presidential Library, which, by the way, is not a library for this performance by vocalis Kari Rutushin.

Here's Kari and the Kabine with their ode to Lady Liberty.

The papers are all in order.

Electronic signature too.

Yeah.

We're selling off lady liberty.

Her bright lantern just won't do.

Seems things have changed.

And we don't share the same point of view.

Well, she stayed true even when she lost a couple hue.

Damn.

Time to let her know.

Well, it's us and not you.

Just like a midlife crisis where we can't accept the blame.

We'll deflect and we'll blow them.

Never show that we truly are a saint.

Truth is, we don't retire and we cant ignore it as we age.

Now, could it be monthly?

We're no longer on the same page.

If we're honest with ourselves, we dont deserve her anyore.

My fragile ego is in control.

So we're showing her the door.

Bring me your tired, your poor.

Your huddled masses.

Yearning to breathe free.

Wretched refuge of your teaming.

Show.

Send those homeless, helpless towns to be.

I lay my lamp beside the gold.

Window.

Yeah, were selling lady liberty from my eastern shore.

Yeah were losing lady liberty.

We don deserve her anymore.

Yeah.

We just lost lady liberty from our eastern shore.

Production of applause and ideastream.

Public media is made possible by funding by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.