- [Announcer] Production of Applause on Ideastream Public Media is made possible by the John P. Murphy Foundation, the Kulas Foundation, and by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.

(upbeat music) - [Kabir] Coming up, a unique group of Northeast Ohio collectors shares a love of history and postcards.

Plus an Akron photographer takes an nostalgic journey for the forgotten malls of the Rust Belt.

And spring has sprung at severance.

The Cleveland Orchestra spotlights a French female composer from the early 20th century.

Thanks for tuning in.

This is Applause and I'm Ideastream Public Media's Kabir Bhatia.

(upbeat music) National Postcard Week is just around the corner and the Western Reserve Postcard Society is preparing for its annual show.

It's also a special year as the group of about a hundred members celebrates a major milestone its 50th anniversary.

Let's step back to a time before cell phone cameras and text messages and remember the handwritten postcard.

- [Harlan] I probably have one of the most extensive Cleveland postcard collections.

I wouldn't say it's the most, but I'd say I'm up there.

(upbeat music) - [Shirley] Everybody always enjoys looking at postcards and finding that one that they've been searching for years or someone will say, "You made my day, I'm so thrilled that I found this postcard."

(upbeat music) - My name is Harlan Ullman.

I am the newly elected President of the Western Reserve Postcard Society.

I've been a collector a lot time and it took me a while before I joined the club.

I'd probably been a member about 20 or 30 years, probably closer to 30.

- I'm Shirley Goldberg and I welcome to Western Reserve Postcard Society.

It's many people that enjoy collecting postcards of every subject matter, even part of their life, their history, different hobbies that they have.

- When I was kind of towards the end of my first decade, somewhere in eight to 10 years old, I developed two of the great interests in my life, The Cleveland Indians, now Guardians, and then Cleveland history.

And that latter one evolved into postcards.

And then I found there were a lot of 'em up Cleveland with all the various buildings, many of which still exist, and many of which are gone.

And that led to a almost lifelong love of postcards.

- When I started looking for postcards for my children then I noticed my stack was getting larger than what I was picking out for them.

Collecting postcards is very educational.

I started my children trying to learn what is grown in America, what the manufacturers were, what the climate was, where the oceans and the rivers are, and to know a bit about geography.

- The postcard as we know it was created by an act of Congress, I think it was 1898.

Before postcards, they were called private mailing cards or PMCs.

And they were developed as a quick, easy way to communicate with people.

The postage rate was cheaper and you would have a photo of where you were or something.

And the intent was people to mail these things, quick little note, the so-called wish you were here thing.

But I think what unexpectedly happened was, people didn't have cameras then and they would use postcards to have pictures of what they were seeing 'cause they couldn't capture those images any other way.

- Then there are also postcards of circus, or different entertainment, or movie theaters that are no longer around, and there's all postcards on those memories.

You were there, you didn't have a camera at the time, but you certainly could buy a postcard and save it for those years.

- [Harlan] That led to what was called the Golden Age of Postcards, which millions of cards were created and bought, and many of which are brand new.

I mean, you find cards all the time from over a hundred years old that were never sent.

And the reason was people bought them because that was their photo album of their trip.

(upbeat music) - [Shirley] One might find a folder that consists of 12 or 16 or 18, this one's more like a book and this was on realm.

- Then the Brownie camera was invented by Kodak and that put cameras in most people's hands.

And that kind of led to the decline of postcards in terms of modern usage.

But the hobby is still strong in some cases is that people like the history part.

The images, the old images, the artwork that's on them.

You can buy a postcard at a postcard show for a few dollars and you have a nice piece of artwork anybody can afford.

- For me, as an artist, the postcards are a very good reference for me to create a painting.

(upbeat music) My name is Jim Sens.

Well, I've been an artist seems like almost all my life.

When I would be on the road traveling I would make postcards to send to my grandkids.

And I'd be looking out the window and maybe I might see whatever, landmark in town that I was happened to in be in.

And then I'd say, man, I gotta send this to one of my grandkids.

So that's really how I started doing postcard art.

And I'd been doing postcard art for quite a long time.

The postcards, the finished product starts out in here as a sketch, and then I refine it as time goes on.

(upbeat music) I've been to New Orleans three times.

So I've done some paintings of New Orleans.

I've been out West a lot.

It took my wife and I 30 years to visit all 21 of the Spanish missions.

I sketched and painted each and every one of them.

Everybody has a different specialty that they might want to collect.

I never declared it, but I think now that I think about it, starting a collection of carousels, things like that use as a reference but create an original piece of art myself.

(upbeat music) - This is one of the holy grail cards of Cleveland.

It's certainly the holy grail card of amusement parks.

A Puritas was the lesser known of the parks.

And I go to postcard shows and I always hear people saying, do you have Puritas Park?

This photo here of the original or first carousel at Puritas Springs Park, and this is that very same photo made into a postcard.

- And it's hard to find postcards now.

Used to be in the pharmacy, or drugstore, or a 5&10.

Well, where are the 5&10s?

They're not around anywhere.

Where are those postcards?

They're in somebody's shoebox by now.

(upbeat music) - Probably your shoe boxes.

- Or an album.

Or an album.

- And I think nostalgia is something that people will always be interested in.

People, they wanna see where things were.

They wanna see what it was like for their parents, their grandparents, their great-grandparents.

They'd be ashamed to see the hobby become extinct.

And I don't think it will in my lifetime, but a lot of things people think are gonna be there forever and not there, but these postcards will be here for a long time.

Even where we're gone.

(upbeat music) - [Kabir] The Western Reserve Postcard Society's Annual Postcard Show takes place April 28th and 29th in Rocky River.

Here's another story of nostalgia for you, empty fountains, quiet corridors, shuttered storefronts.

Once bustling centers of a city social scene, malls are no longer fixtures of everyday life as they were in generations past.

Travel along with one Akron native documenting these once grand structures through photography and capturing a mall's last moments before the buildings are closed for good.

- This photo is of me.

And I was 18 months old.

And my mom had me at a Chapel Hill Mall, and she was approached by a photographer from the Akron Beacon Journal who asked if her child would pose with some tiger cubs.

And my mom said yes.

So this picture ran in the Akron Beacon Journal in 1978.

(upbeat music) My name is Jessica Anshutz.

I am a documentary photographer and a storyteller.

(upbeat music) My dad is a bricklayer and one of his first jobs was working at Rolling Acres Mall during the building of the mall.

So quite literally from the first bricks of that place my family has been involved.

(upbeat music) I basically grew up there.

I've always joked that it was my childhood home, because I lived three miles from it.

I went on my first date at that mall, at the movie theater.

I had my very first job at the mall.

So it was always a presence in my life.

I started photographing malls in 2016.

I've wanted to pick my camera back up.

So I did with the intention of starting a daily creative practice.

(upbeat music) I've always been interested in architecture and buildings.

And I drove by Rolling Acres on my way to my mom's house.

And I was like, "Oh, okay, I think I'm gonna go take pictures of the old Kaufman's," because it was falling apart and like it was also on the cover of the Black Keys Gold on the Ceiling album.

So it was a very familiar iconic piece of local architecture.

Every season I would go and take different pictures because there were trees growing up in the parking lot and like the leaves would change.

And it was an interesting juxtaposition of this decay, but also life from plants.

(upbeat music) I really didn't get lake nostalgic for 'em until I started doing this, until I started photographing 'em.

From there, I started doing more research and I ended up at Canton Center Mall.

And so you're in this space that is familiar.

You can look at the storefronts and know from like the colors and patterns like what store used to be there, there might be a label scar, but all of the plants were dead, the fountain was empty.

It smelled old, and moldy, and musty, but it still, it was a mall.

And that was the one that I was like, yes, this is what I need to be doing.

There's clearly something happening and I want to capture this.

(upbeat music) With malls now, they've taken all the seating out, you don't see fountains, like even plants are hard to come by, and it's just this big white box that you go in, you shop, and you leave.

Finding places where I can still go sit in a conversation pit by a fountain and like enjoy the sights and sounds for like 10, 15 minutes, that's my jam, that's what I wanna do.

(upbeat music) A lot of times when malls close they just leave the plants in.

This plant started from a little clipping of the plant that was on the fountain at Chapel Hill Mall.

When I visit malls, I am very immersed in the actual experience of it.

I shop while I'm there if I can.

We'll get a snack, we'll go sit by the fountain if they have one.

We engage in the space and I think that lends itself to photos that are a little more atmospheric.

And I feel like my photos are a little more intimate.

(upbeat music) I've always had a camera.

My parents put one in my hands very young.

I didn't go to school for photography, I went to school for journalism.

So I think that's where the nonstop curiosity has come from.

I will see something or experience something and if it's impactful enough, I wanna know everything about it.

I wasn't anticipating this, but I love it.

And I've just dug into it, and it's endlessly fascinating because people dig into it from so many different aspects.

I'm looking at it from more of like wanting to document these places while they're still around and engaging with people and just enjoying the nostalgia.

But I'm also not a person who is like and I think mall should still exist.

In a lot of ways, the time of the mall has passed.

I do think it's important for photos and the folklore of a mall to still exist.

This is my favorite piece of mall ephemera that I have is this Chapel Hill Mall is not closing sign, because there was like this big campaign probably the year before they closed where it was just like, no, we're not closing, we're not going anywhere.

And the writing was on the wall, everybody knew they were closing, and it was just like these optimistic posters just hanging everywhere.

There's definitely an interest.

And I've noticed locally, if I post pictures local people are just like, "Oh, my gosh, I haven't thought about that place in so long."

And it sparks all of these memories and discussions that reinforce what I'm doing.

I know that the photos I take are important and they are important to people who engaged in those spaces.

And if I can be the person who helps them spark these memories and spark these conversations, then that's fantastic, I love it.

(upbeat music) - Here's the top - [Kabir] Youth hoping to one day make it in the music business are turning to the Kaboom Collective.

On the next Applause, learn how prize winning conductor, Liza Grossman, gives students a crash course in the art of studio recording.

(upbeat music) Then pop inside the Akron Art Museum for a tour of the Keith Haring exhibit against all odds.

(upbeat music) And hear how a professor's passion for sheet music turned into a treasure trope of Cleveland history.

All this and more on the next round of Applause.

(upbeat music) Columbus artist, Tiffany Lawson, celebrates contemporary Black Life in her work, and she does so by taking inspiration from both French and Japanese traditions, as well as her roller skates.

(upbeat music) - I really make work based off of what I'm experiencing and the books that I read.

So that's a big part of my process.

Growing up I always was a drawer, if you will.

My favorite place to draw was in the end table drawers and behind the couch.

My mother wasn't a fan of that at all, and I'd sign 'em, they were all masterpieces in my mind.

So it's always been sort of my thing.

(upbeat music) His mom ran a church program across the street, Ohio Avenue Methodist Church and we had a art squad called The Baby Squad.

And also the workshops brought in local artists like Amina Robinson, Queen Brooks, Grandpa Smoky Brown, and my uncle Do Art.

So art has always been a part of my life.

(upbeat music) Wabi-sabi has very much given me freedom 'cause it is very hard to sit in front of a stark white canvas and figure out where to make your first mark.

So with wabi-sabi it gave me a sense of no matter where I make the mark as imperfect as it could be it is beautiful and it just freed my practice.

And so when I make mistakes they're happy mistakes like Bob Ross.

It is a aesthetic of impermanence and there's beauty in that as it continues as those imperfections continue to build even or age through time, there's beauty in those.

(upbeat music) A seat at the table actually started off as just a daily practice sketch, and it developed into a series.

In exploring Black life or even the healing component of it, it's important for us to have a seat at the table to begin to have these conversations so that new work can be done.

And in a lot of ways there haven't been no seats or a table.

So in regards to my several seats, I'll bring my own seat.

Several of them, as a matter of fact.

No two people's seat is alike.

Everybody brings something different to the table.

So it was important to make each seat separate from each other.

In my opinion, Black art of the past, 'cause we're kind of moving into a newer generation, and that's what I mean in terms of capturing joy and healing as opposed to just the, I guess, there are some, I guess, despair with Black art, specifically regarding slavery, and the great migration, and discrimination, and all those things are still very much important, but I do believe those stories have been told and those aren't necessarily the stories that I can tell.

I would like to highlight the things that are more prevalent today for Black people, which, again, are similar, but most importantly the healing process.

Like where we have come from to where we are now because there is greater work to do.

So the healing aspect of Black life, it exists, but it is, I think in a lot of ways just not explored.

There is a component of Black resilience, I think, that needs to be captured in a different way.

(upbeat music) Bricolage is a French word that means basically using things that are at hand.

This is a Taquito box.

My process doing that, I believe that I am exploring Black resilience in a way that we've always had to make use of what we have, use what you got.

And that is very much a big component of Black life.

Mostly, in general, the tie that binds is the brown paper bags.

So a lot of times I'll start with just opening up the brown paper bag and I tend to consider what was in the bag, or because brown paper is very much recycled I tend to think about the process of that recycle.

Who had the bag before me?

What was in the bag?

And so that's a big part of I think what shows up on the brown bag.

(upbeat music) It gives me different aspects to kind of be creative with in regards to the imperfections of the bag.

So it brings a little bit more character I think to the piece.

(upbeat music) From the beginning, I just think of a story that I'm trying to tell.

The project that I'm working on now is, her name is Mother Drum, and I'm exploring the James Weldon Johnson, "God's Trombones", there's seven sermons that he believes that Black people have kind of thrived on.

(upbeat music) I generally start from something that I'm reading or again a story that I'm trying to tell, and I use my curated medias.

I kind of sift through some magazines and tear out some images or cut out a lot of texture is what I find myself using.

(upbeat music) Around the way USA, very much is a exploration of community.

So on one side it's almost a tale of two cities.

So on one side you have a beautiful, thriving, vibrant community, on the other side it's kind of dilapidated, kind of depleted on the other side.

So I was exploring community in regard to if there is a difference between a community and a neighborhood.

'Cause in a lot of cases, especially here in Columbus, as neighborhoods are being gentrified, you lose that.

It almost seems like they preserve communities or neighborhoods that they deem, I guess, worth it, it seems like.

So the communities that get washed out we'll never remember them 'cause they're completely gone.

(upbeat music) So roller skates are a big part of my process to be quite honest when I'm stuck or can't figure out how things that I've made are related or how to build a work, 'cause I very much the 3D elements I have to build, I have to actually figure out how to engineer them so they don't fall apart.

So a lot of that I do on my skates.

So I have a strobe light, I close the curtains, and I turn my music up as loud as I can and I kind of just twirl around here.

It does help.

It actually just takes me outta my mind in regards to my creativity for just a moment, long enough to figure out how the pieces fit together.

(upbeat music) - [Kabir] Got any good ideas for arts and culture stories from Northeast Ohio?

Let us know what you think.

Send an email to arts@ideastream.org.

20th century French composer Lili Boulanger was a prize-winning prodigy as a child.

While her death at the age of 24 in 1918 is tragic, her music is full of life's promise as evidenced here in this Cleveland Orchestra performance of Boulanger's "On a Spring Morning."

(orchestra music) (orchestra music continues) For more of this Cleveland Orchestra concert featuring Alan Gilbert at the helm, visit the Orchestra's Adella app, and that leads me to remind you about the PBS app where you'll find a healthy archive of Applause programs to watch.

It's time for us to beg you a dew.

Thanks for watching, manami.

I'm Ideastream Public Media's Kabir Bhatia inviting you to join us for the next round of Applause.

(orchestra music continues) (upbeat music) - [Announcer] Production of Applause on Ideastream Public Media is made possible by the John P. Murphy Foundation, the Kulas Foundation, and by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.