- [Announcer] Production of "Applause" on Ideastream Public Media is made possible by funding by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.

(upbeat music) - [Kabir] Coming up, literature inspires art with a special exhibit at the Massillon Museum.

Plus, we visit the heart of Cleveland's Clark Fulton neighborhood with a vibrant set of murals.

And northeast Ohio blues legend, Becky Boyd takes the jazz route aboard the A train.

It's time for another ride along the arts and culture track, my friends.

It's "Applause."

And I'm your host, Ideastream Public media's Kabir Bhatia.

Fabric is the fabric of our daily life, and central to an exhibit inspired by the book "Homegoing" about two sisters from Africa.

Step inside the gallery at the Massillon Museum for a look at Home Again, the embodiment of Africa through art and fabric.

(bright music) - I wanted people when they came to the exhibition to be able to travel through the essence of the book.

The essence of the book is always bringing you back to home, which is Ghana.

The book is all about two sisters who were half sisters.

They were separated at birth.

One sister ended up staying in Ghana and marrying a British man who came to colonize in Ghana.

The other sister ended up being sold into slavery.

It was really important for me to have the show be a great representation of the story and so I wanted to have artists that were international artists from Africa.

I wanted to have artists that were local artists as well as national artists.

So we have national, international, and regional artists represented in the show.

- River Spirit is an accumulation of different fabrics that I've painted and embellished.

I make a form out of what would be considered like paper mache.

And I cure the paper pulp for about two years.

This happens to be a representation of the struggle of someone that is from the Motherland, Africa.

She lives off of the river.

Her spirit comes from the river.

She is the river spirit.

(calm music) - (indistinct) is a South African artist.

He is a painter who does collage work with fabrics.

I love his work because he's representing oftentimes women in his culture.

He represents people that are socialites, like this particular one is actually someone who's a royal person in South African culture.

And so he does work that is definitely inspired by what's happening in culture.

He has a piece over here called Family.

This piece over here that has the mask on that was created during the time of COVID, he wanted to show how family members were still able to be together and communicate even though you know they were having to be draped with these fabrics around their faces.

When we think about home, typically we think about the curtains in our grandmother's living room or we might think about the sofa print that was, you know, the floral print that was on the sofa.

Or we oftentimes think about quilts in our bedding, the things that kept us warm in the evening.

The Gee's Band collective has a tremendous history.

They started quilting during enslavement times, like around like the mid 1800s is when the Gee's Band collective started.

They didn't call it that at the time, but that's when the lady started quilting.

And eventually their quilts became this international phenomenon.

You can see Gee's Band quilts in the Smithsonian.

They have been collected all over the world.

- I drove to Gee's Band and met a woman by the name of Queenie Petway who was a very, very famous quilter in Gee's Band.

And these quilts really symbolize what you can do with your hands and a little bit of something, just a little bit of this, a little bit of that.

And it turns into this.

This is Tallulah Bula.

And Tallulah Bula is like my version of what we call a scarecrow or a garden ferry that would be placed in the garden or what would be formally known as the plantation.

These are mostly a collage of cuttings from art pieces that I have made over the years and designed for what I consider wearable art.

The dream pot next to her is as a child, I had a neighbor that was down in Selma that used to tell us, just tear off a piece of cotton or tear off a piece of fabric.

Think about your dream, drop it in the pot, honey, it'll come to you.

So that is what that's from.

- So Chesley Antoinette, she did a collection called tignon where she created sculptural pieces as well as photography.

And what I absolutely love about these pieces is that it shows the depth, the richness, the variety that women can use.

And so in Louisiana there was the tignon law and women they had to wear a head covering over their head.

It was law, they couldn't leave the house without it.

And so Chesley's work being almost like a reinvention of what those ladies probably looked like, you know, long time ago and the variety of things that they did and how creative they had to be to come up with all of these different styles that they had to wear, you know, as a way to oppress.

But really it became an enhancement.

- It is such an honor to be showcasing artists who are local and national and international because it really reflects the extent to which our community has an ability to invite artists and perspectives from all around the globe.

Museums help shrink our worlds by introducing us to how large and vast the world is, but helping unify us around these common themes and these things we have in common.

- One of the things that connects us all as human beings is our use of fabric.

And so I would love for people to just be able to come into this space and feel a connection to the human experience.

- [Kabir] Home again, the embodiment of Africa through Art and Fabric is on view at the Massillon Museum through May 19th.

A community partnership in Cleveland's Clark Fulton neighborhood also honors the notion of home, a series of murals called Many Hearts One Community spotlight some of Northeast Ohio's top Latino artists.

(upbeat music) - The goal of the Clark Fulton Public Art Project was to create a partnership between Metro West Community Development organization, LAND Studio and Metro Health, and to take what we developed in the neighborhood plan and start to implement that, start to act on that.

- Luckily for us, LAND Studio was already hard at work with Metro Health working on their visual arts program.

And this was just a really natural way for us to bring all of the beautiful work that was happening inside the hospital and really reflect that in the neighborhood and in the streets themselves.

And what we wanted to do is make sure that we were bringing residents to the table as early as possible to help shape what that vision can look like and also to tell us what kinds of artworks spoke to them.

- Not just any art but you know, art that represented community and culture and had the colors and really beautified the neighborhood.

- All the murals when you see them that transport you to another place, it's a happy place.

And that means it puts something positive in the minds.

And to have positive thoughts brings another good things for the neighborhood.

- Just being able to create a neighborhood that represents the people that live within it, I think is really satisfying for me too.

And I also feel like the people that live here feel valued by the investment in arts of the neighborhood and all the other projects that are going on too.

- Public art, it challenges thought, creates positive environment even in the most critical of themes, or create conversation in a polite way, not a aggressive way because it comes from beauty.

- And that's really why I do what I do.

You know, I just believe in the power of art and color and beautiful craft to elevate a space, to elevate people's moods and outlook.

And I think that can go a long way.

(bright music) - Just people driving by and seeing this bright new building immediately starts interest in that neighborhood where you wouldn't get that from anything else.

It's that bright pop of color or that some interesting new piece.

All of a sudden people start thinking about the neighborhood differently.

- A lot of the personal work that I've done before I started the project was very, I'm very much into like diversity and community and bringing people together.

My biggest inspiration.

- The kits were primarily inspired from my excitement about living in the neighborhood, noticing and celebrating that the majority of residents of our community, their major transportation is on their feet, on their pedals or on the bus.

I like that there's also this sort of art evidence.

It does go away, but it takes a little time.

And so I like also watching this art maybe stay up longer than it was intended before nature watches it all away.

- As an artist, you know, I understand the needs of an artist, you know, based on my own experiences.

And so I've been able to use these different projects as a way to support independent artists as part of bigger projects.

And then they have more opportunities, more visibility, more skills that they can then use in projects in the future.

And it's been really cool to see that happen.

(soft music) - This was an opportunity right away to make an investment and to show that we're living up to that vision of creating a neighborhood that is based in equity, inclusivity and opportunity.

- The metro health investment and just the partners coming together has been transformational into building community.

- It really was just such a wonderful partnership and we're so thankful that we could do this together.

- All we really wanted to do was beautify and make sure that this neighborhood really reflected the folks who live here.

- We are here and we're here to stay and that we're not gonna move elsewhere to make a difference.

We're gonna stay in this neighborhood right here and we're gonna gather with partners and we're gonna organize residents because we wanna see the change here for our children.

It makes you smile.

- [Kabir] Rug hooking is an art form people might not be aware of, but the craft is thriving in Geauga County.

On the next "Applause," meet the Western Reserve Rug Hookers Guild.

Plus a visual artist's passion for yoga is seeping into her work.

And in Cincinnati, (soft music) they're singing away the stigma of mental health myths.

All that and more on the next round of "Applause."

♪ Don't show the world your true face ♪ ♪ It's dangerous to let them really see ♪ - [Kabir] You can watch past episodes of "Applause" with the PBS app.

Portrait painting has become a lost art in the age of the cell phone selfie.

However, in Columbus, mathematician turned artist, Miriam Baranov is painting old school portraits with an eye to the here and now.

(soft music) - I just love looking at people and I love looking at portraits and just different stories and just creating something timeless that will be there forever.

'Cause when I create a portrait, I'm always thinking of longevity and how it'll last many years.

It's just so beautiful and connecting to look at other people and comforting.

And as you look into their eyes, you're always wondering like, what they're thinking, what their story.

So I'm trying to create an illusion of painting from life.

It goes to how we visually see.

You focally look at me, the first thing that you're gonna look at is my eyes.

That's kind of what I'm trying to create, like a conversation my painting where I'm looking into your eyes and eyes are to me like the most, you know, the most telling of the person.

And that's just visually how our eyes work.

And so literally I'm painting what I see.

I always myself think of how do I best describe what I do?

Figurative realism, when I think about it, to me it's a classical approach to rendering the human figure.

I'm also a math major so I, you know, graduate Ohio State as an actuary.

But really how math factors into for me like classical realism is that there's a true craftsmanship approach and stages.

So like the way I paint that's very engineered and thoughtful just in a way that you would approach like math per se.

I've been working with models for many years now.

There's two avenues.

One is I have a client coming in for a commission.

I try and get them to sit for me first so I can learn more about them.

So they're inexperienced about posing.

I love to have like the reverent lighting where there's a nice balance of shadows and light on the face 'cause it gives you that beautiful 3D feel in the painting.

And then they'll sit on a chair for me and maybe we'll talk about life or how their day is or whatnot for a little bit.

As we're talking, I'm really tracking their pose and just, you know, seeing which angle will tell the best story for that specific commission 'cause I have commissions that are like a governor position.

You want like a power pose or maybe a child and you just want something cute and innocent and precious.

And that's the one, you know.

And the second one is a model comes in.

So you guys met Isa today, that's the model that I'm working with for the long pose right now.

So once she comes in, first I need to decide how long is the pose gonna be.

And if it's a long pose of 50 hours, then it needs to be something that they can hold for those 50 hours.

It goes back to what the model can hold.

When you're looking at a painting in the museum, there's something so very different than looking at a painting that was done from a photo.

And essentially that is because back in the day they would sit with a model for 20 hours, 50 hours and you know, just have these conversations and paint them as they go.

And the model would come in one day maybe happy or sad.

And you can always see these feelings, you know.

A person never looks the same the next second and you can kind of like choose which element you want to put in the painting that represents them best and which one you wanna leave out.

So working with a life model takes out the element of you being in front of a person, having a camera on top of them because as soon as there's a camera that comes out, you know, people are not them in the beginning.

They play as if they wanna be someone, especially now with all the hype social media.

It just makes it very difficult to capture someone with a very, like a true essence of who they are if you're not working with them from life.

I actually just started teaching for the past two years.

Passing down this methodology is truly my dream.

I think as I've moved here, what goes the best is paint and sip.

I do have quite a few private students that I teach.

So I do one-on-ones and that's great.

And I just now like got my studio and so I've been able to teach a few workshops.

But my future goal is to just like continue with the tradition and sharing it in Columbus, Ohio.

When I was maybe like a teenager or in high school, I always had the love for art, but I didn't have that guidance.

And when I completed my education in high school, I still had the dream of becoming an artist.

But I went to all these art schools and I saw their methodology, but I couldn't specifically find a program where they teach you methodology on how to paint like classical portraits.

It's just not very common.

And so atelier program, which is part of what I was, is actually like a new wave coming back.

And I just would love to give back to, you know, people who I know really want to paint classical portraits.

Honestly, a lot of times there is not passion on a day-to-day basis.

There is just very hard work with a big goal in mind at the end of the day.

And a lot of time when I'm working on my pieces, I hate them or I don't want anyone to see them or I think to myself, why am I doing this?

But you know, you lock yourself in the studio from morning to night, you're by yourself there and it's just kind of like your head goes into many spaces.

But once you're completed the piece and hopefully you decide to put it out there and other people resonate with your piece and they say, yeah, you know, I totally feel your story, I totally feel the energy, the vibes, the mood of it, you know, it reminds me of something special.

So I think these little elements are inspirational and beautiful to me.

What I'm trying to show with my work and encourage is, you know, capture those beautiful timeless moments that you know, nothing is ever forever.

And this moment that I'm sharing with you guys like that I'm sharing right now, it's just this instance and we'll never be back here again.

And just like cherish life, life is so precious and it goes by so fast.

And if there's anything that you can take away is, I know we all have our commitments in life and you know, hardships that we face, but you better live each day, you know, being thankful for what you have.

And if you're not, like figure out a way to enjoy life.

Like for me, I always wanted to be an artist and I couldn't afford or be able to do that from the get go, but I had the goal to achieve it.

And for now, like, you know, here I am doing it and loving every second of it.

And that's just kind of what I encourage everyone else is to like pursue their creativity with you know, the opportunities that they have.

(upbeat music) - [Kabir] Since you are watching "Applause," we know you're a fan of arts and culture.

Why not take your artistic fandom a step further and sign up for our weekly newsletter, the to-do list.

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Find out more and sign up at arts.ideastream.org.

On that note, it's time to say so long and see you later, but not before we jazz things up a bit with a performance from the Tri-C Jazz Fest.

As we sign off on this round of "Applause," I'm Ideastream Public media's Kabir Bhatia inviting you to hop aboard the A train with northeast Ohio's grand dom of the blues, Becky Boyd.

Enjoy.

♪ Well you must take the A train ♪ ♪ It is the quickest way to get to Harlem ♪ ♪ Hop aboard hop aboard the A train ♪ ♪ It is the quickest way to get to Harlem ♪ ♪ Well hurry hear the rails are thrumming ♪ ♪ You got to get on board and see that train ♪ ♪ Hop aboard hop aboard the A train ♪ ♪ It is the quickest way to get to Harlem ♪ (singer harmonizing) - [Announcer] Production of "Applause" on Ideastream Public Media is made possible by funding by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.