(classical music) - [Narrator] Production of Applause, a WVIZ PBS is made possible by grants from, the John P. Murphy Foundation the Klaus Foundation, the Stroud Family Trust, the Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation and by Mahogany County Residents.

Through Mahogany Arts and Culture.

(Jazz Music) - [David] Hello, and welcome to Northeast Ohio's Arts and Culture show, Applause.

I'm David C. Barnett.

Roy Lichtenstein's pioneering work as a pop artist shook up the New York cultural scene in the early 1960s.

But the story of his pre-pop days in Cleveland, is largely unknown.

A new idea stream documentary traces that tale and introduces us to the Ohio woman who supported him as he developed his signature style.

Here's a preview of Isabel and Roy.

(background chatter) (lighters clicking) (whimsical music) - [Avis] Everyone I spoke to who knew Isabel always described her as dramatic, flamboyant, generous, life of the party.

Where as Roy was very quiet and reserved, and so I think it may have been a case cliche, though It is, of opposites attracting.

He always was very, very shy in high school.

He couldn't get dates, but yet had a great focus cause he always wanted to be an artist.

In the Cleveland days, he had to work during the day so often he had to paint at night 'cause he had all sorts of jobs.

(jazz music) He taught at the Cooper school which was a commercial art school in Cleveland.

He worked on this magazine project to make a before and after of a model city of a neighborhood in Cleveland.

And Roy did not want to do the new model city.

He wanted to do the before, the slums.

So that's what he worked on and distress the buildings and did all sorts of things.

He was a window dresser at Halley's department store.

And eventually he ended up as an engineering draftsman at Republic steel.

But he was not really expressing himself as an artist on a day-to-day basis.

(jazz music) Isabelle, wanted to work too, and she learned about the interior design business, and really within about a year or so went out on her own and was really in her element.

(classical music) - [Narrator] Homes have more than new plans.

They have new patterns for living, made attractive by luxurious interiors.

- [Avis] She really was an exponent of what we would call today mid century modern.

And she had a lot of upper middle-class families in the Cleveland area, like Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights.

- These are how many years old?

This is how she would tell people what color, I guess, to use for their homes.

Their chairs, their sofas, what colors to use.

It's raw silk, its beautiful.

And then he would hang their curtains, that's what he did.

- [Avis] If the drapes needed to be hung, he did hang the curtains because of course that would be free.

(curtains clinking) - [Terry] He came to our house to hang the drapes because he had to get the drapes hung.

That was part of the deal, and he was free and he hung them and they didn't do too well.

He came back and hung him a second time.

He was very quiet and said all the things you're supposed to say, oh hello, how are you?

Good to see you again, you know.

But beyond that, he didn't make any attempt to mingle with her clients.

He asked us if we wanted to buy a painting and I must admit that the paintings I thought were the worst things I'd ever seen.

(jazz music) And we always say we were so smart, we didn't buy one of his paintings, you know.

I never got him to sign the drapes.

That's the trouble (dog barking) - [Carol] I remember going to their house and what a mess it was.

They had paintings everywhere.

They had cupboards and they had paintings on all the cupboards.

I never saw a house like that.

And she had fabric samples everywhere.

- [Avis] Roy, also encouraged her to paint.

So she actually did paint a little bit too.

Roy taught her a little bit, but she was mostly self-taught.

So they're kind of a faux primitive.

(jazz music) - Hi again everybody, this is Bill Handle back with a top ten - [Avis] But how much time she had for that because she did eventually in Cleveland, in 1954, 1956 have her two sons and a very busy design business there, which she loved.

And she was the primary breadwinner for a while.

♪ When I was just a little girl ♪ ♪ I asked my mother, what will I be ♪ ♪ Will I be pretty ♪ - [Avis] People used to tease Roy about her being the breadwinner.

I think he never minded, not just about the money but he was, you know perfectly happy with her success.

People thought they were weird.

♪ The futures not ours to see ♪ ♪ Que sera, sera ♪ - [Narrator] The new documentary, Isabel and Roy debuts this Thursday, May 20th at 7:30 PM on W V I Z idea stream.

(soft jazz) In Reno, Nevada, artist and anthropologist Zoe Bray paints portraits of everyday people.

Fascinated by human behavior and culture, she captures the identity and spirit of each individual, as she paints, take a look.

- [Zoe] I'm an artist and an anthropologist.

And therefore as an artist, a lot of my interests in what I paint and just create is related to people.

People in their environment.

So that's the social political and natural environment.

So how do people make sense of who they are, create their identity and relate to their surroundings.

As an artist, I'm classically trained in a sense that I've undergone a training with an old style atelier painter, and it was always with the live model.

So there was absolutely no drawing or painting or sculpting from photographs.

It was really, you had to have the real thing in front of you and, feeL it.

And this also resonated with my work as an anthropologist.

I studied anthropology at the university of Edinburgh, and then did my PhD at a European Institute in Italy, in Florence.

And as an anthropologist, this is pretty much also what you do.

Your research is about people with people.

(upbeat music) My Basque Heritage is something that I'm constantly rediscovering.

And right now I have this exhibition on at Nevadan Basques with oil painting, and charcoal drawings, exhibiting at the city hall of Reno.

I was interested in painting people who have some kind of connection with Basque culture.

Usually who have Basque lineage, but not necessarily.

I mean, that's that's also what interests me is what is identity today?

How do we identify ourselves?

Is it our lineage, our background, or is it what we choose ourselves to be right now in the present?

So painting from life is for me extremely important.

(upbeat music) When I can go into more depth into, into a painting or into a portrait, then I would go use the oils.

And the oils again, it's I use very simple colors.

And just with these, these four, you can actually mix them up and get all the nuances, all the subtleties, all the different turns that you find in nature.

(upbeat music) If I have to define myself in terms of, you know, what kind of painter I am?

I might say I'm a naturalist rather than a realist.

I mean, when people see my work, they say, wow, that's so realist, and the term realist it can be understood in many different ways.

I would agree, I am a realist, but as a more of a naturalist realist, in that I'm interested in understanding how we see things in as natural a way as possible.

So for instance, when I'm looking at somebody, when I'm painting somebody, I'm interested in focusing mainly on the eyes because when we communicate we look at each other in the eyes and at that point everything else is out of focus.

So it's deliberate that to other parts of the portrait style, not so specific, so detailed, so defined.

(upbeat music) But then I want the viewer to have their eyes wander around the painting and notice how they hold their hands or what are they wearing?

How significant is that to the identity of the person?

So I will try and draw these things out.

There has to be some kind of a journey for the viewer to, embark on.

Every portraits is a new adventure ♪ Every time I close my eyes.

♪ - [David] On the next Applause, we welcome a trio of Cleveland musicians dealing with the homeschooling situation as they continue to make their music.

And we visit an exhibit that highlights one of the founding fathers, Alexander Hamilton.

Plus we size up a company that creates modern day shoes inspired by early American fashion.

All this and more on the next round of Applause.

Stereo Tank is a design studio focused on the relationship between sound, art and architecture.

Let's take a trip to Florida to meet the studios co-founders and see some of their experimental projects - Stereo Tank was born in 2009.

- Our goal was to use the space as an instrument.

So sort of like you can inhabit the musical instrument of course that evolved into many other iterations.

- We've been trained as architects.

- We moved to New York and then while we were working in architectural offices, we, on our side, we started to do our projects in the city, public art, temporary installations and so on.

And there was also like a perfect territory to experiment, this idea of combining public arts and sound, or architecture and sound into immersive installations.

- We found several opportunities, grants, and awards to be able to propose quick installations that could be done in the city.

Just to targeting some areas that were underdeveloped or underused that needed activation.

(drumming) - [Marcelo] We try to experiment with sound always sort of in a very primitive way.

The first sound installation we did was actually called Stereo Tank, and that's were our name came from.

We took this huge plastic water tanks, side by side and then a connecting them.

- [Sara] So the actual string that was creating the sound was also part of the structure of the installation because it was keeping it together.

So we liked that idea of kind of joining architecture and sound even through structure of a project.

(drumming) So we were invited to propose a project for time square.

We won luckily this competition and we had to design a heart shaped installation.

That was the premise of the proposal.

- It had to be related to love and we never saw ourselves doing anything like that.

So we took it really sort of our way and looking at the heart more from a acoustical point of view.

The heart had some drums embedded so people who could stop and play there were actually like six different acoustical percussion instrument.

- [Sara] Very low frequency sound beating with a light.

All of this was pulsating while the heart was not being played by people.

We had to figure something out that was sturdy enough.

And we went back again to the plastic tanks.

Thinking about the afterlife of a project, we designed the heartbeat project for being able to be transformed after its use in times square as another project that is called heart seat.

(drumming) We're going to show a sample of the Cargo Guitar.

The Cargo Guitar was a project that we did in Japan.

These extra long string it's within a shipping container.

So that's how we came up with the name.

The string is amplified but it doesn't have any kind of effect.

So the string becomes smaller and the tone higher.

(ambient music) - [Marcelo] When we arrived in Miami, we couldn't really treat public spaces the same because it's completely different.

So what we started doing is actually going first inside of galleries, where we could experiment with space and also people.

So the first one we did is called generative drop sequencer.

(water dripping) - To engage more with public space here in Miami as well.

We've been working with some students at FIU on a seminar that has to do with a public space and art.

- [Marcelo] I think we have to mention about the little free library project.

- [Sara] It's basically turning the standard little free library format into an inhabitable little free library.

We've also been working on our own projects, our own houses studio.

(drumming) - [Marcelo] We start with one idea, but we never really know how it will sound until we finish it.

- [Sara] That applies to sound but also applies to working with given materials in general, because when you have to work with an object that already exists, that has its own properties then you really need to adapt to it.

So that's we think the beauty of working with materials and with systems that have been designed for other purposes.

(drumming) (upbeat music) - [David] For over 20 years Scenic Solutions has been bringing a variety of stage productions to life based in West Carrollton, Ohio.

This scenery shop creates designs for some of the biggest stage shows in the country.

- [Scott] Anybody can build a scenery and it's the details that really make it a show and help create this whole environment.

As opposed to just scenery on stage, we kind of build an atmosphere and an environment into everything we do.

- [Joel] We are a small company, but we produce big, big things, we just got done with a national tour of Blue Man Group, which will be all over the country.

And the amount of scenery that we turned out for that show was, just astronomical.

That's what blows my mind the most is that we're able to produce such large productions with such a small group of people.

- [Chadwick] We serve a multitude of industries.

We work anywhere from high school theater level to first run Broadway tours.

We also build entertainment for the cruise line industry.

We make the magic happen mostly backstage behind the scenes because we are a custom shop, not a single job is the same.

Not a single client needs the same thing, not a single material we use is the same.

There are days when there's no one in the shop, and there are days when there's 40 people in the shop.

There are days when I have six crews all over the world at any given point in time we might have eight to 20 projects in different stages within the company.

We have a lot of good people working here.

- [Mary] Scenic Solutions has been in business for 24 years.

We started with the sowing room in the basement of our old house.

Dan was working for the Dayton ballet's lighting designer and I was freelancing as a custom designer and seamstress.

And pretty soon Scenic Solutions became our life.

Dan is my business partner, he's president of Scenic Solutions, he is my husband.

It's a very busy place.

I sometimes say it is so chaotic that you can't keep up.

There's never two days that are the same.

- The clients come up with the creative designs and then myself and the other production managers and drafters take all of their ideas and turn them into something we can actually build and create all of the drawings that we give to the carpenters.

- I take drawings from designers and draftsmen and engineers and communicate them to the guys working under me and we turn it into reality.

I feel like the welding department is the backbone of most of the things that are built here.

We always start with a structure, it's just the nature of scenery that you have to start with a structure.

And then you make it look like something entirely different.

The way scenery is today, most of it has to be portable, be lightweight, durable and that's what the metal structure gives you.

With touring shows, it has to last for a year, if not more, as far as a cruise ship show goes, we do have weight constraints when it comes to cruise ships, so you gotta keep things light.

- [Chadwick] The cruise line industry definitely presents unique challenges.

Typically when you go to a Broadway show the theater does not move on a cruise line the theater moves.

That bases a lot of our decision making on how to build stuff.

The other unique challenge of a cruise line is getting your scenery, lighting props into the theater.

They never designed big enough doors to get the items into the cruise ship.

Typically the crew will have to carry the scenery through the cruise ship, in the middle of the night when everyone's asleep, up the stairwells and in the theaters, and that is a unique situation.

- I recently went to Italy for a single day to do a site survey on a cruise ship that we're working on there.

This is the room everything will load into through that door.

I also took all of the measurements of the doorways and the hallways and our path from getting everything from the loading dock through the ship and into the theater and made sure that everything broke down into a small enough piece to fit through that path.

- [Scott] It's definitely worth the cost because we know things are going to fit as opposed to sending a piece of scenery or an entire show to the other side of the world, and then it not being able to fit through the door to get it onto the ship.

That would be a big expense.

One thing that would blow their minds I would say probably that they've seen a lot of our work and they just haven't realized it.

We've got a lot of stuff all over the Dayton area but you'd never, unless you work there, you'd never know that we actually did it.

We kind of sneak in, sneak out, so we're not, you know, well visible out to the general public.

- [Joe] We help Carring Fairmount School District consult and install, ringing lighting and the orchestra shell for their new theater.

We work for the Schuster center, downtown Dayton, Victoria arts association.

- [Mary] It's really hard to think of what the coolest thing that came through Scenic Solutions is.

Blue Man Group's pretty cool, but getting to do the Rich's boxes.

(upbeat music) - [Lexa] Starting in the 1940s, Rich's department store did a display every year at Christmas.

People that have lived here or grew up here, if you say something about the Rich's elves, they talk about how they used to go see them when they were kids.

It's a very big part of Dayton's Christmas holiday.

- [Mary] We originally built the boxes that the Rich's elves were in about 15 years ago.

And then last year they approached us and asked for new boxes with new scenes inside.

(upbeat music) It feels amazing to give this gift to Dayton.

We've been part of the Dayton community for a long time but to get the chance to give such a big project back to the community feels great.

(festive music) - [David] When the Cleveland orchestra canceled live concerts due to the pandemic, they went to online performances using an app they developed called Adella.

It's named after the orchestras founder, Adella Prentiss Hughes.

Concerts under the series named In Focus, are recorded live at Severance Hall.

As we say goodbye, let's take a look at a recent episode, Carmen Suite by Shchedrin, conducted by music director Franz Welser-Möst.

I'm David C. Barnett, hope to see you next week for another round of Applause.

(orchestral music) (violin music) (xylophone clinking) (deeper violin music) (orchestral music intensifies) (violin music) (gentle classical music) (upbeat techno music) (classical music) - [Narrator] Production of Applause on W V I Z PBS is made possible by grants from the John P. Murphy Foundation, the Klaus Foundation the Stroud Family Trust the Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation, and by Mahogany County Residents through Mahogany Arts and Culture.