(classical music) - [Announcer] Production of Applause on WVIZ, PBS is made possible by grants, from the John P. Murphy Foundation.

The Kulas Foundation, The Stroud Family Trust, The Kelvin & Eleanor Smith Foundation And by Cuyahoga County residents, through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.

(jazz music) - [David] Hello and welcome to Idea Stream's, Award-winning arts and culture show, Applause.

I'm David C. Barnett.

As you walk, hop a bus or even scoop through downtown Cleveland, it's easy to miss the fact that the buildings have something to say.

I recently spoke with an architectural historian to help decode some of these hidden messages.

Many of us live in a world of texts, web browsers and social media.

With every ding, buzz and chime, Our eyes are drawn to a screen, asking for our attention, but architecture writer, Janine Loves says, a hundred years ago the lives of Clevelanders were also filled with an abundance of messages.

- [Janine Love] I think that was an era, where so many things were new.

I guess you could compare it to something like the tech revolution that we're more familiar with.

- [David] And the messages weren't coming through screens.

They were baked into all the new buildings that were sprouting from our streets.

Formerly sleepy little towns, throughout the Midwest were transforming into big cities.

Thanks to the industrial might of oil and steel companies.

- [Janine] It wasn't just Cleveland.

It was cities like Buffalo, Toledo, of course Chicago.

They reinvented themselves several times.

Pittsburgh, all of these cities were growing tremendously and constructing new buildings.

- [David] The new buildings were designed by a crop of young American architects who had recently studied at the Ecole Debosou in Paris where they learned a trendy new style based on what was actually an ancient look emulating Greek and Roman temples.

- [Janine] So we had gone from sort of the accesses of the queen and style with all the peaks and kind of nonsensical elements on those buildings.

To something much more refined.

By incorporating these elements from ancient times but in a modern way - [David] The city's new moneyed class wanted the downtown architecture to make statements in a couple of different ways.

First, it was a notice to all the old world cities the East coast like New York and Boston, that Cleveland was an up and comer, but the buildings were also talking to local residents.

Love describes these structures as billboards advertising a message that the owner wanted to tell you about this office building, this auditorium, this bank.

- [Janine] Banks particularly, were concerned about their image.

and often they would incorporate murals, and sculpture that would subtly convey messages.

- [David] The next time you're downtown, at East Ninth and Euclid take a look up at the old Cleveland Trust Bank building, that was converted into a Heinen's grocery store, Six years ago.

There's a triangular frame called a tympanum up near the roof over the front entrance.

That features a group of sculptures.

- [Janine] The figures there would be, holding elements that Clevelanders produced to make a great economy.

So you'd have evidence of fisheries, mining, all the occupations that were common to the area.

The central figure represents capital.

So the bank is saying we are the holder of capital, and we as a bank are helping to produce all these other areas that make the city great.

All these other professions.

- [David] Across the street, there's a more subtle message inside the Huntington bank lobby, where a series of massive columns, support a towering ceiling.

- [Janine] During that time, there were a lot of bank failures.

And that was a very strong concern, of groups that organized banks, which was to convey this image of solidarity and strength.

And if you put your money in that bank, it was going to be safe - [David] Several blocks away, If you walk around the headquarters of the Cleveland public library, you'll see lamps, there in the leaded glass windows, the sculptures and carvings.

A lamp, a symbol of knowledge is there by design.

Similar decorative art with a message can be found in government buildings and even the public auditorium.

Some of these messages are still easy to access but that could change.

Jeanine Love worries, that security concerns following events like the Capitol insurrection have made it a little harder to appreciate the beauty and the history that surrounds us.

- [Janine] You used to be able to walk into the federal building or the city hall or the court house without obstruction.

And you could see how the architect envisioned that impression when you first walked in.

Now you were in counting all the apparatus to check you for metal loader weapons or whatever.

And it really ruins the whole impression of the building.

But that's the world we live in.

And I don't think that's going to go away very soon.

- [David] In an era bursting with visual clutter, and a constant stream of dings, buzzes and chimes.

It's worth it to look up from your phone occasionally.

Try reading these stories from a century ago that tell us where we come from, and give us a sense of stability.

(soft gentle music) Historian Janine Love explores more of the city's architectural history in her book, "Cleveland Architecture 1890 to 1930 Building the City Beautiful."

Cleveland Vocalist Kyle Kidd, is best known as one of the lead singers, for the nationally acclaimed band, "Mourning a Black Star" Multi-instrumentalist Marcus Alan Ward, is a self-taught musician and producer with a burgeoning solo career.

For the first time, Kidd and Ward are joining forces.

To create new music.

These rising stars joined me recently, for Applause Performances.

- Kyle, music's been a party your life for quite a while.

And a lot of it comes from the church.

Can you talk about those early musical influences for you?

- Yeah, so my experience started in the church.

My father's a pastor and we had a family church that we went to, well that a lot of our family went to.

And so my aunt was a pretty amazing singer as well as my uncle.

So that's kinda like where I got like my vision of like, Oh like singing is a thing.

And my mother told me, you know, when I was younger, she always would tell me she knew, that there was something different about me or that I was really going to be into music, from like the age of three.

Our church used to always sing a hymn at the beginning of the service.

And I would stand on the back pew, next to my grandmother and sing all the way through, And I probably would be the loudest person in the sanctuary the whole time.

- [David] And for you Marcus, now you're this kid growing up in Bedford Heights, that's where you get the love for guitar, but there was a maybe, a little difference between your musical tastes and most of the other kids at high school.

or how would you describe it?

- Yeah, so I, you know, I did, unlike Kyle, I did not grow up playing in church.

You know, I don't have any, musical members in my family at all.

I just kinda, I was a kid, you know, I was lucky to have parents that, just kind of let me try anything.

And I, you know, like I said, I tried skateboarding, you know, all types of things.

And then I picked up a guitar one day, it was kind of connected with me.

So I was the only black kid in my high school playing guitar and listening to things like, you know , the Mars Ball Time and Led Zeppelin.

And you know these prog Rush and things like that, is prog rock things that I was inspired by, but now I'm glad to see today that you know, black people are in all spaces.

You know we're skateboarding, we're making alternative music, rock music, punk music.

So I wasn't after that for future, and I still am now.

♪ Seems like you always running from me ♪ ♪ Can't tell if this is your inability ♪ ♪ To go to your feet ♪ ♪ You put spot in everything ♪ ♪ With no regard to our dreams ♪ ♪ That you promised me ♪ - [David] Both of you, call yourselves Afro Futurists.

what does that term mean for you?

- [Marcus] Afro Futurism is seeing black people in the progressive space, that may not exist today right?

So I know that, you know black people may be at the bottom of the totem pole today, politically and socially politically and economically things like that.

But I will never look at black people differently, because I see the future.

- And I've seen the future happen in my lifetime.

Like I said, with something just as small as music.

But a thousand years in the future, black people may be the most dominant.

I mean, we're going to be at a different economical space.

We're going to progress so, I'll, you know, Afrofuturism is in, fashion, music, everything like that, Wearing things that may not apply to our small lens today but will be commonplace in the future.

- I think if you don't mind me chiming in, - Yeah, absolutely!

- We always have been ahead of the curve.

If you're looking at the history of black culture, if you're looking at rock and roll, we talked about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and what it means to have rock and roll be a thing.

You know, it was black people who brought it to be a thing.

And then, you know, the society we live in, gave it a it a specific name.

And they, you know, the categorizing of things.

But we always been ahead of the curve, The new trend of, you know, people wearing do rags, and all of these things, like that has been a part of black culture.

And wearing your hair in different styles with the volume, and things like that, even fashion and things like that.

So we've been ahead of the curve.

It's just about being able to, have the power behind us to claim it as ours, and it's still be ours.

And a part of our cultural experience and not be adapted, to something else taken away from our experience, in our heritage and our cultural background.

♪ Body gain some self control ♪ ♪ Nothing like it was once before ♪ ♪ I cried so many times ♪ ♪ Walking out that door ♪ ♪ But somethings something brings me back to you ♪ ♪ To late ♪ - [David] Marcus, I know, that as you guys relate to each other, you're coming, from two totally different musical perspective, two different perspectives in life or something.

or explain a little bit about that.

- Kyle is a queer black male, and I'm a heterosexual black male.

And, you know, it's just interesting that you know, who you choose to be intimate with, or have sex with can lead you on these, two totally different things kind of the basis for your life, you know, but it's me and Kyle are this collaboration is special, because we do have different backgrounds on that.

But we're really kindred spirits in that.

Like I said, I mean, we both are, you know, once I saw him singing in "Mourning at Black star" I think that night called, right.

Like I came up to you and I was like, we gotta work.

You know, I asked you right after that.

So it just kind of going naturally like that.

And, you know, anybody that sees Kyle Sing, will know that he's a star.

♪ Everything ♪ ♪ Don't let search... ♪ ♪ Don't regrets be ♪ ♪ While you know all this feelings ♪ He represented everything that I just want it to be a part of musically that soul, a natural innate ability to just, communicate just the black experience with his voice.

♪ So little child ♪ ♪ But I keep trying ♪ - You see it the same way, Kyle?

- Definitely I think it's so, I told Marcus specifically, that I wanted to have this question, or this conversation with you all, because I think, you know, from my perspective of being black and queer, and and identifying how I identify, it's very hard to be in spaces with cis and hetero men, specifically black men.

and so for our relationship, it just speaks to the times, it speaks to the future of what it can look like, you know, putting all of these things aside and coming together and just finding commonality between one another, because, you know, it's been a struggle and you know, the majority of my friends, I have a lot of of friends who identify a lot of different ways, but I have a lot of straight male, black friends.

and people are always so surprised.

And I'm just like, well, we just like one another, like we're just cool.

Why is that such a surprise that I have friends?

So I think, you know, I want to make an effort at, always to show that things can be different, things, or not even different.

They can just be, this can be normal.

This can be the normal, if there is a such thing as normal.

And there doesn't have to be anything else connected to it.

♪ Feelings over me ♪ - [David] On the next Applause, how Akron is playing homage to an industry, that turned the city into the rubber capital of the world.

And a look at the artwork of sir Winston Churchill.

- [Celia Churchill] Well, one of my early memories, of my grandfather was standing behind him as he was painting at the easel.

- [David] Plus we step inside a museum, of signs that points to our history.

All this and more on the next round of Applause.

Aaron Simmons of California, practices the traditional art of blacksmithing.

In the profession, he's also known as a farrier, by hand he's able to shape the steel as he wishes, just as generations of Smiths have before him.

- They're steel that I have cussed.

They're steel that I appraised.

There's some steel that I'm still trying to figure out what to do with.

This innate object has a life.

Some steel has but to whisper, and you know what to do with it.

You get it a little bit hot and then, oh, okay, this steel is good for this job.

I know what it's telling me.

That's the relationship with the steel is telling me, okay it's good for this, but maybe not for that.

So I separate them based on the feedback I get.

Their parameters are already set for me.

I just have to work with them.

For me, the actual craft puts an, artistic stamp on your work that no machine can.

Some of the curves and lines that your eye will see, are not from machine work.

It's from the delicate art that a person's hands deliver.

(soft gentle music) I create what I see, What I feel.

That's the artistic side of it.

The item was always there.

I just chipped away the parts that didn't need to be there.

A lot of trial and error.

You could only bend the rules so much, before something breaks, and then start all over again.

(laughing)You know?

I can't tell whether the work found me or I found it.

Became a farriy and a blacksmith sort of by necessity.

I owned a horse and I did a lot of, ranch work on the coast near San Louis.

And it really nurtured my interest in livestock.

(cool slow music) It's just not as common anymore.

That one artist will do both trades and that's me.

Nowadays, most of the farriers, which is specific for horseshoeing, they don't do the blacksmithing work so much.

They can make a shoe, which is common, but they won't make tools or hammers.

it's become a lot more specialized craft.

90% of my tools are handmade.

What we're looking at here is just a small portion, of what I've come up with, to make my trade a little easier.

(metal clanging) A lot of folks say, well, my gosh, you could you don't have to make this.

You can go get it.

Well, I want to make the one that will last me.

I know what I put into mine so I can vouch for it.

I was born, they always say about 150 years too late.

I don't know why that is, but I think I would've done all right there.

For me it's a challenge to work with the items that I have, and make the best of them.

That's all, make the best of what I got.

- [David] In the 1960s.

Sister Corita Kent found, the best way, to spread the gospel was through art.

She was a radical for her time, but then was relegated to history.

Now we see how the Harvard art museums have set out to prove she belongs right alongside, the Kings of Pop art.

- Searching For religious inspiration in the 1960s, and activists nun turned active artist, named sister Corita Kent found it, in the supermarket.

- One might not normally think of wonder bread, as being related to communion, but she wanted to make that connection in her work.

- In an era of upheaval, Kent wanted to ground people, through art, a Roman Catholic Nun, She lived in Los Angeles, and headed the art department at a religious school there.

- She would drive around the city, and she sent her students out to do what she called booking assignments.

In these car dealerships and supermarkets.

But it's also important historically, because as pop art is emerging around 1962, the two main centers are New York, of course, and Los Angeles.

- [David] And Kent was paying attention, reveling in Joseph Albert's experiments in color.

She marveled at the pop art stylings of Jasper Johns, and Roy Lichtenstein who are receiving early LA shows.

And she sought out Andy Warhol's work.

- [Jennifer] She never had near, the national recognition that Warhol did.

People were, didn't really know what to do, with a nun who was making pop art.

- [David] And they still don't enter the Harvard art museums, which argues in its latest show that Corita Kent belongs, in the Pantheon of pop artists who defined a generation.

Jennifer quick helped curate the show.

What happened to her that she didn't, she didn't have the same trajectory that they had?

- [Jennifer] Frankly being a woman artist, within the pop art world was, you don't hear as much about women pop artists.

It was pretty male dominated.

- [David] But Kent was undaunted, and saw opportunity where others saw potato chip packaging.

To her well-known images where the perfect way, to teach Vatican two.

The movement to modernize the church, partly with more accessible language.

- We see Corita Kent borrowing words, likely she found in the grocery store, bread peaches, very common products.

But it's also encouraging her viewers to think, about why do we need this war on poverty?

How can we help fight against poverty?

And as Catholics we're compelled to do so.

- [David] Kent drew a mountain of controversy though, as she tried to make the Virgin Mary more relatable, via tomatoes.

- [Jennifer] She uses a Del Monte tomatoes, the brand name and the logo, to reinvent the way we think about Mary.

And so to say that, if we say Del Monte tomatoes are the juiciest of all, then certainly if we think, this food product is so wonderful, we can say that the Virgin Mary, is the juiciest tomato of them all.

- [David] Working out of her LA studio, Kent used a printing process where, she experimented with angles.

Day glow colors, and familiar branding.

She then infused her work with text.

From everyone from the Pope, to the Beatles feeling groovy is a print from 1967.

- She's included lyrics from the Simon and Garfunkel song.

The lyrics are, Slow down you move too fast.

So we see juxtapose on one hand these signifier of traffic, speed, Los Angeles, moving through the city with, from a popular song nonetheless.

An admonition that perhaps we should, slow down sometimes and consider what's around us.

- In 1968, Kent left her religious order, and moved to Boston.

She became even more radical and more pointed, as protests and war consumed the nation.

Just like Warhol, her work became strikingly visceral.

- [Jennifer] She uses photographs, instead of hand cut stencils.

And these photographs are very direct, about what's happening politically, and socially in the country.

So life magazine covers, profiling the Vietnam war.

Photographs showing the assassinations of, you know Martin Luther King, or Robert F. Kennedy, race riot.

So the work becomes a lot more direct, in its commentary on politics.

- [David] Kent remained in Boston, for the rest of her life.

Producing prints and a landmark legacy, a gas tank adorned with her rainbow swash, overlooking Dorchester Bay.

- She thought of it in terms of the idea, of a rainbow being a joyful expression, as being related to Genesis.

And God's promise never to flood the earth again.

As it was recorded in the scriptures, but on the level of pop art, it's also very significant!

Because Corita Kent is making her own pop art monument, giving Boston its own pop art monument.

- Now elevating this sister to the queen of pop art.

- [David] And that's it for today's show.

You'll find more stories online at, arts.ideastream.org.

As we leave, Here's a little more music, from our Applause performances guests, seen earlier in the show.

The vocalist Kyle Kidd, and multi-instrumentalist Marcus Alan Ward.

Thanks for watching I'm Idea Streams, David C. Barnett.

Hope you can stay warm, and healthy.

and looking forward to seeing you next week for another round of Applause.

♪ Seems like you are always running from me ♪ ♪ Can't tell if it's your inability ♪ ♪ To prowise to your feet ♪ ♪ You put spot into everything ♪ ♪ With no regard to our dreams ♪ ♪ All that you promised me ♪ ♪ Just can't deny it ♪ ♪ This love this love this love ♪ (upbeat music) (whooshing) - [Announcer] Production of Applause, on WVIZ PBS is made possible by grants, from the John P. Murphy foundation, The Kulas Foundation, The Stroud Family Trust, The Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation.

And by Cuyahoga County residents, through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.