- [Narrator] 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 jazzy music) - [David] Coming up; daffodils spring into action at Lakeview Cemetery in Cleveland.

So where did all these hardy narcissus' come from?

You'll find out in moments.

And then stick around for the sassy statements of Letterpress Jess as she steps into the "Making It" spotlight.

And, can the Cleveland Orchestra play or what?

We'll close this show with a tremendous performance of a Dvorak masterpiece.

I'm David C. Barnett, and this is Ideastream Public Media's "Applause."

First off, let's head to Lakeview Cemetery on Cleveland's east side where visitors have been pouring in to see daffodil hill.

Every April, thousands of narcissus' dot the landscape.

Ideastream Public Media's Carrie Wise takes us in the field for a look at this Cleveland tradition.

- [Carrie] Spring has sprung at Lakeview Cemetery with people eager to take in the bright blooming daffodils.

- People are tired of the bad weather and it makes them happy to see these thousands of daffodil faces.

- [Carrie] These daffodil faces date back to the early 40s when an area enthusiast donated thousands of bulbs to the cemetery.

- Daffodils kind of signal rebirth and a new season.

And so, back in 1941 when a Dr. William Weir wanted to donate 6,000 bulbs, we gladly accepted because we had the perfect hillside for daffodils, which is populated with some pretty trees, but it is perfect this time of year because the trees haven't leafed out yet and the daffodils bring so much green and beautiful yellow explosions of color, quite frankly.

They're big, showy daffodils.

- [Carrie] The daffodils have been enchanting visitors for decades.

Newspaper articles show the original donor, William Weir, was noted for his exceptional collection, growing more than 170 varieties and putting on narcissus shows with the Garden Center of Greater Cleveland which went on to become Cleveland Botanical Garden.

More than 80 years later, people are still enjoying the daffodils each spring.

- I know that a garden club planted the original bulbs.

They planted in the snow and sleet and rain of the fall.

They were all volunteers and they got the original batch in the ground.

- [Carrie] Visiting daffodil hill soon became an annual tradition, with people spreading the word when the blooms arrive each year.

This has become an even more popular spot in pandemic times.

- [Kathy] So this really picked up steam during COVID because we were a place that was open during the initial shutdown of the pandemic.

And we were free and our gates were open at least 10 hours a day, now they're open 12 hours a day.

So we had visitors in their masks, keeping six feet apart, and coming to enjoy the beauty and the history at Lakeview Cemetery.

The way we get the word out is through social media.

In fact, we have people on social media starting in February asking us when the daffodils are gonna be in bloom.

- [Carrie] Each year, peak viewing depends a lot on the weather, but daffodils are pretty hardy and offer extended color once they arrive.

- [Kathy] We typically see a couple weeks worth for sure, but some of 'em bloom a little bit earlier than others and it's a little hard to tell.

Mother nature has a lot to do with it, but we consider it around April 15th in full bloom and it continues in into early May.

- [Carrie] Over the years, the cemetery has supplemented the original plantings with now more than 150,000 bulbs.

They're mainly yellow daffodils of the Carleton and King Alfred varieties.

- [Kathy] We're actually gonna be taking several photographs of the hill to see where we have blank spaces And we courteously ask people not to walk through the daffodil so they don't get trampled, if they do they won't grow back the next year.

So we're gonna look at where we have bare patches and in the fall we're gonna plant in those areas.

So that's kind of how we do it.

We just look when it at its peak, where do we need more daffodils?

- [Carrie] Of course, many of these daffodils return, just like visitors, season after season, brightening the hillside and people's spirits at the same time.

(upbeat music) - [David] You know those quirky cards with the quirky sayings that you find in quirky stores?

If they make you giggle, chances are they came from the sassy mind of Letterpress Jess.

Here's a look at how this Northeast Ohio entrepreneur is making it.

- Awesome is one word for our personalities, but terrible is another.

I always tell people, they're like, "Oh, how do you come up with your cards?"

And I said, "Well, I'm terrible and I figured that there must be other people like me."

And it turns out I'm right.

(upbeat music continues) Hi, I'm Jess Bennett.

I own Letterpress Jess in Canton, Ohio, where we make cute and crass letterpress greetings, one at a time the old fashioned way.

I'm a graphic designer by trade, and I have always been a big proponent of the local arts scene and of art in general.

So, I've always sort of wanted to be part of the arts world versus sort of the commercial graphic design world that I'm in by day.

And so I started looking into printmaking as a way to take what I do on the computer and sort of translate it into more of a fine art practice.

And so it's, yeah, tale as old as time, just a girl falling in love with a 2,500 pound printing press.

We have Big Sal, which is our OG press and our main press and the one that we use every single day.

We also have who we call Little Dye, who is the second press that we acquired.

And then we have Long Limbs Lenore, who is a challenge proof press.

Most of what we print, we print with Sal because she's the biggest, she's motorized.

So Big Sal does all of the work and then I take all of the credit.

We offer greeting cards, number one.

We have a couple of different lines.

We've got extremely snarky cards.

Our best sellers are our crass calligraphy, some of which cannot be maybe repeated on the program.

And then we have cutie kawaii, which are my illustrations of food with faces in bright colors.

They are punny, but not inappropriate.

You could give them to your 90 year old grandmother and feel good about yourself afterwards.

We have a line of cards called the Gibson girls, and the Gibson girls were illustrations by Charles Dana Gibson.

They're these awesome vintage illustrations of these sort of "empowered for their own time" women.

And some of the quotes on the cards are irreverent but everywhere greetings, like "Girl, same."

Every single card is fed into the press one at a time and one color at a time.

So, anytime you see multiple colors on a card it means it was handled through the press that many times.

So it's a painstaking process.

And every time I pull a print I get a little bit better at that.

So someday I'll be perfect, but I'll be very old.

It's a lot of fun, but there's a reason it's the old fashioned way.

Right now we are in about 150 stores in 36 states and Canada.

The idea that more people and more places can laugh at my cards is the most a girl can hope for.

It never ceases to amaze me that people wanna buy my stuff.

And that I have something that they think is worth spending money on is maybe the best feeling in the world.

- [David] Wanna meet more Northeast Ohio entrepreneurs like Letterpress Jess?

Look for the "Making It" series online at arts.ideastream.org.

Before he let it whip as a bass player for the Grammy winning Dazz Band, Alvin Frazier was a respected member of the Northeast Ohio R and B scene.

On the next edition of "Applause," Frazier performs songs from his solo release "River" inside his home studio.

Plus, a look back at a century's worth of collecting at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

All this and more on the next "Applause."

♪ And then I'll know what they're sayin' ♪ ♪ Is more than just make believe ♪ - [David] Right along the Scioto River in Columbus, Ohio is the Grange Insurance Audubon Center, and that's where hometown cameraman, Justin Grubb, shows off his passion for international conservation.

- [Justin] I grew up in Worthington, Ohio and I think it was a great place to grow up to connect with nature.

With the natural parks being so prevalent in the city, the Columbus Zoo being right there.

That's something that I really think shaped what I do now, is being able to go out and find wildlife and explore.

(bright upbeat music) (birds chirping) My name is Justin Grubb, I am a science communicator.

So I do wildlife film making, wildlife photography, I write articles about wildlife conservation, I do photo galleries, and that's always been the focus; conserving wildlife.

(bright upbeat music intensifies) So my background is in wildlife biology, goin' out and taking data, doing population viability analysis.

But while I was doin' all that, I sort of realized that there was another element to conservation as well, and that's the storytelling, that's the connecting with people, working with the general mass public and getting them to understand how they impact the environment and these species, because conservation really is a people problem.

The animals didn't do anything to get themselves in this situation, it's what people have done to the environment.

And in order to change that environment for the animals, you have to go to the root cause, which is the people.

And so by doing that, I really got into photos, I really got into video, I really got into writing.

My love is wildlife.

I show that love through education and I educate through visual media and storytelling.

(soft music) (birds chirping) So we're sitting at the Grange Insurance Audubon Center, and on the walls here is a photo gallery called "Conservation Through A Lens."

(soft orchestral music) - Having Justin, who is known for his work with National Geographic, is just, I think is a surprise for Grange Insurance Audubon Center to have him here, and we're very excited about what his artwork does and how it connects to the bigger stewardship in conservation.

- [Justin] When you look at the center, you'll see photos along the walls that all depict animals that have very unique, interesting conservation programs, initiatives, strategies associated with them.

There's the hall of a threatened species which, each photo depicts its own conservation initiative.

But then we've got "The Forgotten Wolf" which is an entire sequence of photos that describe a single conservation initiative from start to finish.

And then there's the "Planet Indonesia" gallery which talks about how an organization in Indonesia is doing conservation work through community development, which is a really unique strategy that I think should be adopted more around the world.

(soft orchestral music continues) People really connect with a good story.

And so, with these photos, they all kind of convey their own little story.

You're getting a snapshot of the animal's life through their eyes, in the moment, in their environment, behaving naturally.

And as a photographer, I live for those moments.

It feels like everything just is still on earth and the only thing that matters is you and this animal and you're just trying to capture the moment as it happens.

One of the most exciting things, I'd say, about the gallery is its interactiveness.

Each photo has a little card next to it that explains its range, the conservation project associated with the image, but also has a QR code that allows you to connect to a website called Conservation Through A Lens that has more details about that animal.

You can read more about the initiative and you can even donate to the initiative if that's your thing.

But there's also other really cool elements to this gallery as well.

There is a section where you can draw an animal and contribute to the gallery.

We also have a couple film screenings.

And there's something that I built called "Beyond The Lawn."

It's a biodiversity survey where people can learn how to convert their lawn into usable wildlife space.

(soft bright music) - No matter where we are in this world, we live on this world with animals, insects, plants, and other things, and what we do affects how they live, and oftentimes we don't make that connection.

And so I'm really excited for people to see the beautiful work and how he captures it and learn about how they can help make a difference in what we do as humans to help not have those animals become extinct.

- [Justin] Bringing my work back to Columbus is really exciting.

This gallery brings in a very global perspective on conservation.

And so, you're seeing animals from all around the world, varying conservation initiatives to help protect them from various threats.

But everything that you'll learn about is applicable to what goes on on a small scale, like Columbus, Ohio.

And so that's one thing that I want people to walk away with, is everything is very interconnected.

And what you do locally has a huge effect on global biodiversity.

(soft bright music continues) - Columbus is an art rich community, and I'm just excited to see what else is down the pike, 'cause I think there are a lot more Justin's out there.

(soft bright music continues) (birds chirping) - [David] Dominic Moore Dunson grew up in Akron, often questioning his identity as a black man.

The 2019 Cleveland Arts prize winner created a work inspired by those feelings called "The Black Card Project."

And just before the pandemic, we caught up with Moore Dunson to learn more.

- In sixth grade, Miller South, I'm sitting with the seven other black boys in my grade at the time and we're all sitting at the same lunchroom table.

And we're talking about what we wanted to be when we grew up.

And one of 'em says, "I wanna be in the NBA, I wanna play like LeBron."

And other ones were, "I wanna be in the NFL."

"I wanna be like Michael Vick."

When it was my turn to say something I said, "Well, I wanna dance in Paris or play professional soccer in England."

And it was deafening silence that went on the table.

And one of my friends looks at me and says, "Bruh, that ain't black."

and all the kids started laughing.

There's this overarching feeling that, well, if I don't know this about the black culture, if I don't know this kind of music, I'm not black enough.

If I don't like this kind of food, I'm not black enough.

Sometimes I feel like I was supposed to learn how to be black somewhere.

But there's no program to learn how to be black.

And I kinda sat for a while and I was like, what if there was a school?

What if there was a school where someone learned how to be black, and that's where it started.

And I was like, what if there's this kinda weird interesting character who's kind of like me, but like a different version of me in my head.

And what if he kinda went through all these classes and it kinda felt like a really weird version of the "Wizard Of Oz."

Because you had this single character who runs into all these different characters and learns all this stuff, so it's kinda like the structure that we used.

Kevin Parker, when I asked him to collaborate on the show, I didn't know really what the show was yet.

I was talking to him, we went out to an Applebee's and we sat down.

I was like, "So I have this idea.

I kinda wanna talk to you about what it means to be black."

And we started just kinda joking and laughing about all of these things that we knew about.

So we're at Firestone High School, which is my alma mater, I graduated from Firestone in 2008.

It's hard to talk about how important it is to me, because this moment is full circle.

At 14 years old I was learning the foundations of what it meant to be a creator at the same time that I was dealing with all these internal struggles of, well, can I dance?

Should I be dancing?

Can I play soccer?

Should I be playing soccer?

But coming into this place was a very safe space for me to explore who I really, really knew I was as an artist at such young age and to be, 16 years later, bringing my 90 minute work, a very large work for somebody around my age, and knowing that, wow, just a couple hundred feet that way, while I was on stage, I started this process.

- I would say I've never really seen a show quite like this.

This was completely different.

The fact that it only had two people in it doing an entire story was enough at that to set it aside from most things I've seen.

I guess I never really thought about a black card, like ever having a black card, and realizing that it is a thing, oh, there are things that I don't know about that happened within my community.

- I would say the slight stereotypicalness of it, it was pretty funny.

Like the little gangster walk and the stereotypical clothing.

It was pretty funny.

- The problem with humor is it's actually the hardest thing to do on stage.

'Cause you have to think about your own biases as what you think is funny, versus what other people think is funny.

So that's one of the first barriers.

Inside of this conversation, we wanted to use humor because we wanted to pull people into our world and making people laugh always does that.

You wanna pull people into the show before you hit 'em with the really hard topics.

We couldn't start the show with the history section because it's too raw and it feels too close to home, so you invite people in by making things funny, by making them fun, playing their favorite music, and all of a sudden they're willing to go on the journey with you no matter where you take them.

And we realized that's what we needed to do because I've seen a lot of modern dance shows, and often when you talk about race, the piece is very heavy and a lot of times you'll see people who are sitting forward start to lean back and disengage because it feels like too much for them.

So we were like, okay, well what if we did the opposite?

What if over time got 'em to lean forward and then they would stay there.

So it was also taking that idea of, we have these characters who are these stereotypes, but what if we broke the stereotype and made you learn something about them that changed you a little bit?

C.T.

Pain, who's the thug, he doesn't think he's funny.

He's very, very serious.

But as you saw on the show today, the kids will laugh as soon as they see him.

The part that was really difficult, actually, was making sure every character had integrity and it wasn't my emotional feelings about that character that came out, because me and Kevin talked about, we can't be hypocrites, we can't say there's no one way to be black and then say, well, the way the thug's doing it is wrong.

(dramatic music) And I knew I wanted to do something that had to do with black history, but I didn't know what, so I was just going through clips and things like that.

And one day I had this dream that I was running and I was just like, there's a slave master running me, there was the dog happening, and all this stuff, and then I had another dream about being in the Jim Crow South and what that felt like.

And then I had another dream right after that that was like the 60s Black Panther movement.

And then another dream that was kind of being this Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice type character.

So the section is actually literally a dream I had.

- All you can really hear is whippings, and getting hit with batons, and all of that.

And I would say that that kinda is really reflectful on our history.

I feel like that was probably the part that made it most impactful, was just the way they drawn in the audio with the dancing.

And I would say that all just came in and made it so powerful.

(gun shooting) - I would love for this piece to tour nationally.

To tour to all these large cities, especially where there's a large African American population.

And to get into the schools just like we did here.

But also, this show is also built for these students, but also their families.

It's really, really important mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, auntie, uncle see the show because what I would love to happen is everybody goes home that night and then they talk about it.

That's the point, right?

The mission of this project is to create conversation around the narrow aspects of the black identity, and then how that relates to economic development in the black community.

- This is living proof that you could literally do whatever you want to do.

And even though you may get hit, you may get hurt, you may get brung down a little, you'll still be you and be able to go forward to wherever you're trying to achieve.

- [Dominic] Today was the first performance where, I mean, I could see the audience a little bit, but it felt like 80 to 90% of the audience was the exact target audience this show is for.

And it gave me a sense of, this is why we did this.

- [David] Dominic Moore Dunson is currently workshopping a new piece that delves into the difficult relationship between the black community and the police.

It's called "InCOPnegro," and is also the inspiration for a podcast of the same name.

We now turn to Franz Welser-Most, leading the Cleveland Orchestra in a stirring performance.

This is the eighth symphony of Antonin Dvorak streaming online via the Adella app.

(Dvorak's "Symphony No.8") Thanks for watching.

I'm David C. Barnett wishing you a good week ahead and hoping we'll catch you next week for another artful edition of "Applause."

(Dvorak's "Symphony No.8" continues) (bright music) - [Narrator] 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.