- [Narrator] Production of "Applause," an Idea Stream 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 jazz music) - [David] Coming up, an artist collective in Canton provides a safe space for a creative expression.

Plus enter an exhibit of decorated eggs, which celebrates Ukrainian traditions in Tremont and dive into WCs "Le Mer" with the Cleveland Orchestra, joined by an old friend at the podium.

Let's get into the swing of artistic things with this edition of "Applause."

I'm Idea Stream Public Media's David C. Barnett.

For the past six years, Silo Arts Studio has provided education and inspiration for adults with disabilities to grow their creative talents.

Both a studio space and gallery in downtown Canton, Silo partners with professional artists to offer learning opportunities, build friendships and elevate art in the community.

(light music) - My name's Todd Donnelly and I'm the owner and facilitator of Silo.

We are an artist collective.

So I find the artists and I make sure that they have the materials that they need and the space that they need to express whatever they need to express.

During the day, we'll have anywhere from 14 to close to 20 artists in the studio working on their art.

Some of them just trying to progress in their skills, some of them working on shows that are coming up.

They all kind of have their lane, if you will.

And we do try to push people to explore a little bit outside of their lane, but they also have really interesting ways of expressing themselves.

And there's guys here who do horror masks and really high end looking horror masks.

- I do horror masks and horror themed items.

This is the first one ever done.

It's sentimental value.

And then there's ones you seen that in the gallery.

(bright music) - There's painters, there's colored pencils, there's people who construct out of cardboard.

Just all different ways of expressing themselves.

We just try to help them facilitate that and grow in that.

So, this is Ron Babb.

Ron does a lot of western scenes.

Very colorful western scenes.

He actually came to us just doing color pencil and then lately, he's been getting into...

He just makes these out of like cereal boxes.

So we bring in all our cereal boxes.

He makes the whole thing there.

(bright music) - Hi, I'm Kasey Wassam and I've been here at the Silo.

It'll be three years.

I'm working on the country women's with the Judds.

- [Todd] And then, she's also making the famous country music venues.

Grand Ole Opry, that's Dolly right there, front and center.

- [Kasey] Dolly Parton.

- Dolly Parton, the Dolly Parton.

You know, historically, people with disabilities have been either overlooked or sometimes they make people uncomfortable and they're a little bit shunned and I think that's definitely changing for the better.

One of our big things that we try to do is to introduce them to other artists.

They have a real drive to be artists.

This is what they want to do.

This is what they spend their time doing is their expressions.

And so, the idea is to help connect them to the larger art world.

And we've been really successful with that.

We have two teaching artists who come four days a week.

They're local professional artists and they also are very integrated into the art community.

- My name's Kat Francis.

So when I came here, I got really excited by working with each artist individually because they're all so unique.

So, I've taught drawing classes, painting classes and those are fun.

And so it's just a really exciting, inspirational job to me on the art aspect, but then on just the human level.

The artists here teach me a lot about being a better person, being a better friend and I get just as much as they do out of this place.

Sometimes, I go around and talk to each artist individually and kind of am guided by what I think maybe they need.

You'll start to notice that there's an interest in something specific with a few artists at the same time.

And then sometimes, some of them who weren't interested in that topic, someone will just start running with it.

And I just always am trying to teach something different, but the artist kind of guide me on what the next thing is to teach.

- This is my watercolor friendship around the world.

So I watercolor painted some girls in earth with a red heart shape on it.

So that we will see my beautiful art creation.

Here's the panting of me and Tana's BFFs forever.

I sketch myself and I sketch my BFF.

- I do digital work.

I also color pencil and marker.

This one is based off of my dad.

He was a retired truck driver, so I turned him into a superhero truck driver, going through space.

Silo is a great place, it's different.

I've been with many places somewhere like this and Silo, I love it here.

You could be yourself, you can do whatever you want.

- It is about bridging that connection to where in the past, maybe they didn't necessarily get included as often and just subtly slowly showing that, no, there's real talent here, there's real ideas here, there's real heart here.

And so, if we can help them connect to other people who are trying to get in touch with their talent and their ideas and their art, ultimately, the idea of disability doesn't matter and what they have to express is just as valid, oftentimes maybe more valid than anything that I can produce.

And it's worth looking at.

It's worth not looking past.

(bright music) I really feel like I'm actually making a difference in people's lives.

Not I, we are just really here for helping people to achieve their own goals and to be able to feel like full human beings.

- [David] Solo and group shows go on view at Silo Arts Studio year round, during First Friday's Canton's Monthly Art Walk.

Ukrainian Americans in northeast Ohio enjoy sharing an ancient tradition that reminds them of their homeland, their family, their culture and their faith.

It's the art of the Pysanky.

- The eggs are folk art.

They're not just centuries old, millennia old.

They go back to pagan times when people sheltered during the winter and looked forward to when spring would come.

- Ukraine became a Christian nation in 988.

So those concepts kind of fit kind of neatly into a Christian Easter concept of resurrection and light conquering darkness and life conquering death.

- And so, the decorations reflect that to tears of Mary, a cross, but also still reflects some of the ancient pagan.

So, you have various animals, you have shafts of wheat and it's something that we, at the museum, have been highlighting for the last 25 plus years.

The Ukrainian Museum Archives in Cleveland was founded in 1952 by a displaced scholar who went through the DP camps after World War II, during a time when Stalin was still in power.

And during a time when the Soviet Union was deliberately destroying Ukrainian culture and the culture of other people's.

- They knew that their culture was being destroyed and they felt a very strong responsibility here to preserve these traditions.

So, my parents made me go to Ukrainian school on Saturdays and that's where I learned how to make a pysanka the first time.

- The completed egg is called a pysanka and that comes from the verb pysaty, which means to write.

Everybody comes up to me at shows and say, oh, you painted all of those eggs?

And I said, no, I don't paint.

I said, I write and actually writing a design with beeswax.

So I have a tool to write with.

This is a tool called kistka.

- It's basically a metal funnel attached to a wooden or a plastic handle and you scrape wax into the wide end of the funnel.

You heat it by a candle and as the wax melts, it comes out of the narrow end of the funnel and that's what you draw onto the egg.

- [Linda] And if you notice, I'm moving the egg and I'm steading my hand by putting my baby finger on the egg.

So the egg is what's moving, so that I can draw straight lines.

- Your creating the design in reverse.

So you start with a clean white egg and you cover the parts of the egg that you want to stay white.

The wax seals off that part of the egg and the dye can't get in.

And so, then you use the lightest color dye that you you plan on using, usually yellow.

- What I wanna do next is in the center of the star, I'm gonna do teardrops and the teardrops symbolize the bus of Virgin Mary's tears.

I do designs that can take me anywhere from three to five hours to eight hours to 14 hours on a simple chicken egg.

It relaxes me.

The lines, there's no beginning and there's no end, symbolize eternity.

Now I'm gonna do a few feather lines.

I'll just show this.

Okay, I'm gonna do the feather lines here on these lines.

And this is gonna be done on all of 'em.

It then goes into the red.

Okay, red dyes right over the orange.

Okay and you can see, white lines, yellow teardrops orange feather lines.

And now we're gonna cover the entire star with wax.

I can be a little messy here.

So this star will be completely covered in wax and then it's ready to go into the final color, which is black.

And voila, this is what it looks like when it's done.

It looks like really nothing there.

You hold the egg close to the flame.

When melting the wax off, all those pencil lines that I had before, all come off with the wax.

There you go.

There's the white lines, the yellow teardrops.

I don't have the green dots, but there's the orange feather lines and the red star.

(orchestral music) - This egg has a periwinkle pattern to it.

Periwinkle has a special place in Ukrainian folklore because the green vine of the periwinkle stays green for such a long time, even after the first snow.

You can see how green the periwinkle vine is.

And for that reason, it's developed a significance of perseverance and persistence, which is kind of a lovely thought.

- It's something that I grew up with.

We had 'em around the house, so we have 'em at home.

It's part of tradition, it's part of who we are as people.

- They have really become to be very strongly associated with Ukraine itself.

And they've always had a meaning of renewal and rebirth and I guess hope could be included in that.

- Let's pray for peace in Ukraine.

That's all we can do right now.

- [David] The pysanky are on display year round at the Ukrainian Museum Archives in Cleveland, located on Kennelworth Avenue, just across the street from Lincoln Park in the Tremont neighborhood.

On the next "Applause," step inside the Tudors Exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

This royal collection tells the stories of England's kings and queens with portraits, tapestries and more.

Plus, learn how Playhouse Square was once saved decades ago by the songs of Jacques Brel.

And hear a song from Cleveland indie folk artist, Kahrin.

♪ Hello my soul where've you been ♪ ♪ I've been stumbling down this road soul searchin' ♪ ♪ Oh break my bone.

♪ - [David] All this and more on the next round of "Applause."

On the outskirts of Dayton, sits the Aullwood Audubon Center and Farm, a bird sanctuary dedicated to conservation.

However, the center is now inhabited by a family, not of birds, but of fantastic towering trolls.

(tranquil music) - Aullwood is a nature sanctuary and farm of the National Audubon Society.

And our mission is environmental education that connects children of all ages with nature, birds, wildlife and bird friendly farming.

- I really love the intersection between science, conservation and art.

And I think that if those things can work together, they can impact a much broader audience than any of those can individually.

And so, I think it's really exciting to have art at a place like Aullwood.

- Thomas Damno, this world renowned recycle artist from Denmark, he's written this story called, "The Great Story of the Little people and the Giant Trolls."

And what he's creating is a worldwide fairytale.

Everyone loves a fairytale.

This story is all about what the little people need to learn, we're we're the little people.

And I kind of love that perspective, that we are the little people and the trolls are wise and they're teaching us.

And so Thomas goes around the world making his trolls and sharing this message of wisdom from the trolls to protect the earth, to take something that maybe you think is trash and make it something meaningful and something beautiful.

And that's actually what he did with our trolls here.

- The name of the installation overall is, "The Troll that Hatched an Egg."

The trolls are named Bibbi, Bo and Bodil.

And all of their names start with the letter B because birds starts with the letter B.

The story that Thomas wrote for Aullwoods trolls, really revolves around this cardinal, this bird that the trolls befriend.

Bibbi, the daughter who's out in the woods and she sees these metal things fall from the sky.

And she also notices this metal bird that she thinks is a bird, but it's really an airplane because we're close to the Dayton Airport.

And these metal things falling from the sky were obviously the metal bird's eggs.

And so, she ran and got her mother and said, mom, these metal eggs have fallen out of the sky.

We've got to hatch them.

So they go off and they build this giant troll nest and they put the eggs in there and they try to hatch them and nothing happens.

So Bibbi's very upset by this and she thinks the only solution really is to go up in the sky and get that metal bird to come down and get her eggs.

So she sneaks off into the woods and builds herself wings.

She's been watching how the birds fly.

So of course that's a little nod to the Wright brothers.

And she goes up to the top of the hill by the prairie and takes off up into the sky to find the metal bird and bring her back down.

So that's kind of the basics of the story of our trolls, here at Aullwood.

All of the bodies are made out of old palate wood.

We collected thousands of sticks and pieces of logs and we pulled grapevines from farms next door to us and all kinds of crazy things.

And then Thomas built the faces of the trolls out of Dollar Store shelves he found in a dumpster in in Denmark.

And so, he built the faces and the feet in Denmark in his shop and then he shipped them to us on a container.

And then when you opened up the doors, there were just giant faces and huge feet in the back of the trailer, so that was a lot of fun.

- Thomas likes to have a certain number of volunteers.

He's done this for years now.

He knows what works well for him and his team.

Our volunteers had a lot of different skills.

They ranged in age from 18 to 81.

Some of them were engineers, many were retired teachers, one was a college student.

And they just brought this really fresh perspective and excitement that was very contagious.

- Nanita contacted my wife and said, hey, we've got this secret project coming up.

Do you know anybody who likes to work with their hands and who likes to be outside?

And my wife said, I absolutely do.

There's a lot of pre-fabrication that went into each troll.

A couple of weeks were spent cutting up big water container pallets and painting those to be the wings and all of the fur and the skin had to be cut down from pallet boards and things like that.

The nest was a lot of fun to work on too.

There's a lot of troll language carving around the nest.

And if I remember correctly, Thomas Dambo has a book about the trolls that has the troll language in it.

So you could track down that book and translate the writing, down at the nest and see what they had to say about it.

- Since I was retired, I was able to do about four days a week.

I was here pretty much the whole month.

Yeah and I would've done more too 'cause it was very exciting to come every day and see the progression.

'Cause you really didn't know what they were going to look like when they were finished.

The dad got finished first, Bo.

My job for Bo was clean up on aisle five.

I basically was asked to pick up all...

I mean, when they're working, this crew is amazing.

They're climbing all over the structure.

When they're working, there's wood flying everywhere.

So I collected the wood, made sure to get everything out of the stream.

And then for some reason, I was put on stick patrol.

So when they did the hair, follow the trolls, you were sent out into the woods and you had to collect fallen branches and then bring them back and cut 'em in certain sizes and the next thing you know, you've got this gorgeous hairdo on Bo or on mom to help with her hairdo.

And then the one that's the funniest one is Bibbi, the baby.

I'd found a pine tree that had died.

And I held it up and said, what do you think about this?

And she's perfect.

She stuck it right in the back of Bibbi's hair.

So if you go out there and you look around the backside of Bibbi, there's this one wild hair pine tree sticking out.

- We've had just an incredible response from the public.

I mean, our gate has gone up, I think something like, 700% since the trolls opened last November.

And I just love the reaction that the public's having.

People are coming here from all over the country, all over the world.

The trolls will be here at Aullwood as long as we can maintain them and preserve them.

And as Thomas says, someday, they will go back to the earth.

So, I think they'll be here for several years at least.

The takeaway from visiting "The Troll that Hatched an Egg" is the belief that they can make something beautiful out of recycled materials or trash And that they too can do something to protect the earth, to preserve the earth and to cherish the earth.

We only get one.

(chill music) - [David] American conductor, Alan Gilbert, began his acclaimed career in northeast Ohio as an assistant conductor for the Cleveland Orchestra in the 1990s.

He returned recently to his old stomping grounds of severance to lead the orchestra in a French masterpiece by Claude W.C., "La Mer."

(orchestral music) To see more of this impressionistic performance, visit the Cleveland Orchestra's Adella app and a reminder that all of our "Applause" episodes from this season and seasons passed are available on demand via the PBS app.

Well, it's time to set sail and say Bon Voyage.

I'm Idea Stream Public Media's David C. Barnett, reminding you to tune in for next week's edition of "Applause."

(orchestral music) (electronic music) - [Narrator] Production of "Applause," an Idea Stream Public Media is made possible by the John P. Murphy Foundation, The Kulas Foundation and by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.