- [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.

(energetic music) - [David] Coming up, meet an artist who shares the folklore of her homeland with intricate illustrations.

Plus a poetic walking tour inside this cultural gem, the Dayton Arcade.

And the Cleveland Orchestra gets the max out of a minimal masterpiece.

It's time for Applause.

I'm Ideastream Public Media's David C. Barnett.

(energetic music) Memories and stories from childhood make their way into Dinara Mirtalipova's works of art, whether she's illustrating children's books or designing colorful patterns.

Step inside her studio in Sagamore Hills with Ideastream's Carrie Wise.

(gentle music) - I call it folk art because folk art means art of the people.

(gentle music) - [Carrie] Dinara Mirtalipova paints from her heart.

She draws influence from what's familiar, whether it's old scary fairy tales or the flowered patterns her grandmother wore.

- I grew up in a culture that had lots of those mixed cultures.

Uzbekistan is the place where I was born.

It's like a crossroad of so many different cultures.

It has a very interesting history, all the way from Genghis Khan to being under the Soviet influence for such a long period of time.

- [Carrie] Living in the US as an adult, Mirtalipova turned to art, from sketching to painting.

- [Dinara] I work mostly in gouache, and gouache a water-based paint.

My scale is very small, and with gouache, it's possible to get those tiny details with a tiny brush.

But sometimes, when I paint larger, I go with acrylics because acrylics is more water-resistant and it stays longer.

(gentle string music) - [Carrie] For years, she's been sharing her art online, initially through blogging and more recently, through Instagram.

Her online posts have led to all sorts of collaborations.

- I've been mostly sharing my work, my personal work, and to my surprise, I started receiving some requests to illustrate a book to everything, from little projects like stationery to wallpapers and murals.

- [Carrie] For her latest children's book, due out in 2023, "Woven of the World", she's illustrating familiar Uzbek customs, such as how her grandmother wore clothes with multiple patterns.

- Everything's mismatched, and it was totally okay by her.

She liked to just wear things that are colorful and she didn't really care if this color goes well with this color, and I kind of find that cute now.

- [Carrie] In "Woven of the World", she's illustrating the craft of weaving through a variety of cultural traditions.

- [Dinara] It's not just about weaving as the craft.

It's about how we are all woven, one culture into another.

- [Carrie] Mirtalipova is also currently working on a book project with her own young daughter writing the poems.

- [Dinara] It's a book about the North Pole village, like what is happening in the North Pole, and most characters, like Mr. Claus, polar bear, and his little helpers, mice who do all the charming work of wrapping up gifts and preparing and creating and painting toys.

- [Carrie] Mirtalipova says making art is like yoga for her fingers, providing relaxation and a way to separate from the stresses of life.

Self-taught in her practice, she encourages others to create too.

- If the process brings you peace and you enjoy it, you call yourself artist, and anyone can become one.

Art should make you feel happy or I would say provoke reaction.

Sometimes the reaction may be that you have to wake up and realize what's going on in the world, but sometimes it has just to bring you peace.

I guess it just depends on the person.

What is it that you are seeking in life?

What is it that's missing?

If you find art that somehow communicates that, that's awesome.

(upbeat music) (energetic music) - [David] The Arcade in Downtown Dayton is both an historic landmark and a creative hub of innovation.

It's also home to a unique collaboration between poetry and design.

(gentle music) - [Sierra] Walk with me through a city within a city, walls holding a cornucopia of heritage, passageways, and corridors filled with antiqued joy and treasured wisdom.

- [Vince] The Hub is really designed to be an immersive, experiential learning platform for students, as well as a space for startups to really develop and grow.

The Hub is a joint venture between the University of Dayton and Dayton's Entrepreneurs' Center.

It really creates this unique blend of active businesses who are there every day working and students coming into take class on a daily basis and making those connections.

We want The Hub to be a space for everybody.

The idea of a community artist-in-residence really seemed like a natural fit.

- [Castel] Sierra Leone is the first artist-in-residence for The Hub, so we were talking to Sierra about doing a piece for us for the opening.

Sierra's work also speaks directly to the City of Dayton.

A lot of her poems, all of the things that she does, really talks about space and place, but also can speak to the vision of what we hope the space to become; not just where we are now, but where we see the space growing into.

- My vision was to write the commissioned poem.

(Sierra laughs) But the vision that was a much greater vision was the commission of a body of work, was to work with students, was to form alliances in spaces that I had never been in.

- [Castel] Luckily, Sierra, as that first artist-in-residence, she has also had experience on her own, working in education settings.

So we thought that that would be a great opportunity for her to come in and kind of work directly with the students on the things that they're learning in class, but also just her life experience as an artist.

- [Misty] The first charge for the students was to create a 24x36 poster.

There's a lot more at stake when you are visualizing someone's poetry, someone's inner feelings, and life's work.

- This whole process, for me, has felt very vulnerable.

I think anytime a poet is going to put themselves on display, you are so vulnerable.

You are saying to the world, "I'm healed enough for you to look at me fully, completely, and to judge that."

- [Misty] I gave the students the whole body of work over a weekend.

I said, "You're gonna read all of these, and then Sierra will come in and tell you the background story and then do a spoken word reading of that chosen poem."

So I feel like that connection for them, with her, and then getting all that background information is just great research for the designer.

'Cause they're thinking about image making.

They're thinking about inflection.

When did you audibly hear her get louder?

When did she get softer?

When did she feel abrupt?

When could you see a punctuation or a shift in the line break?

So typographically speaking, the whole time, they're trying to think about, "Is that bold?"

"Does a color come to mind?"

Then they had the larger installations as group projects.

So they had to learn what it was like to design independently, but as a whole, because your work is gonna affect everyone else's work when you're exhibiting it together.

Then what it's like to have to come together under the same pressures and now design this whole new thing with this material that's gigantic, that's more environmental.

She also had a whole nother layer with QR code.

So if you were walking up to the piece, you could hear her deliver it and do her spoken word of the poetry.

I think it just gave it a whole different dimension of experience.

"Walking with Words", it was like, "How do we move the body through?

How can you use type and language to move someone through a space?"

Extracting those moments, being playful with it in this space was really exciting.

- [Castel] You think of poetry, you think of book, you think of page, you think of something that's very flat, but this overall exhibit really heightens that to a new level of adding in audio, adding in visual.

You can sense it and you can touch it in ways that you don't typically think about when you think about poetry.

- I want you to imagine giving someone a Word document and this is what you get in return.

I always describe the exhibit as an opportunity to walk with me as a poet, as a practitioner, as an artist, and as an entrepreneur.

It's my perspective.

It's my lived experiences and voice.

It is a piece of me every single step of the way.

- I think the additional beauty of the exhibit is that it's not just in The Hub.

It flows beyond the walls and it impacts the rest of the Dayton community.

- [Sierra] Walk with me.

Walk with my words.

Walk as a spirit of a flyer.

And from that space you leave, and if you wanna visit the Levitt and continue to walk with the words, they can stop by the library and take in how we've gathered, our gathering space as a community.

From that space, you're traveling over to the Wright-Dunbar District and the Greater West Dayton Incubator.

From that space, we close the exhibit, right at a beautiful space where the art ends but it begins again with Papa "Bing" Davis.

So for me, it is a walk with me, a walk with my lived experiences.

(gentle music) - [David] Contemporary art pops up around the region with the return of the FRONT Triennial.

On the next edition of Applause, learn how Northeast Ohio's International Art Expo aims to heal.

Plus cool coffee for the dog days of summer, as we scoot over to Cleveland's Near West Side for our latest Making It.

And the first in a series of Cleveland Orchestra performances led by renowned American composer and conductor John Adams.

All that and more on the next episode of Applause.

(orchestral music) Let's head to North Canton, where Yurko Sports finds new life for old baseball gloves, as part of our series on creative makers in Northeast Ohio.

- He hand-stitches things.

He's the crafty one.

He makes... - The visionary of, set the vision of where the company's going to go.

She thinks I'm crazy, but I'm like, "Just trust me.

This is where we want to go to."

("Take Me Out to the Ballgame" plays) Hi, I'm Brad Yurkovich.

- I'm Dayna Yurkovich.

- And we're the co-owners of Yurko Sports in Game Day Fields.

I'm the creative of the business.

- I'm the nuts and bolts.

- Welcome to our shop.

Yurko Sports started with a passion of mine of just making things with a sports twist to it.

I threw my back out and they said, "You need to get a new wallet.

Don't put it in your back pocket anymore."

Bought a Nolan Ryan Rawlings baseball glove.

Take all the laces off first.

Tore it apart, made my first wallet.

- Honestly, he started making one for himself, for his dad, for his brother.

Before you know it, he had like 20 wallets and I'm like, "Honey, you wanna do a show and see what people think of these things?

If they wanna buy 'em?"

(tool pounds) - I don't edge the wallets.

I don't make 'em look super super pretty.

I'm a baseball player first.

I want the dirt, scuffs, and scars.

- [Dayna] People loved it.

They'd never seen anything like that before in person.

- Then COVID hit.

No one's going out.

No one was carrying a wallet.

I was almost exclusively baseball glove wallet company.

It gave me a lot of time to brainstorm.

(tool whirs) I never thought a bottle opener would be our one of our biggest sellers.

It was in person.

We traveled around the country.

Baseball was canceled, live events were canceled.

It really forced us to move some things online.

We ended up getting a laser.

The laser's really transformed our company.

We work with the Baseball Hall, the Football Hall now.

One of the coolest things that we do for the Baseball and the Football Hall of Fame is we do signature signs.

We do magnets, we do coasters.

We do a bunch of stuff, and it just kind of all adds up.

- If there's one thing we really learned through the craziness of the past few years, it's diversify, so that literally your eggs are not all in one basket.

Game Day Feels is a brand that we acquired within the past year.

It's baseball glove lace, but you can custom engrave any message that you want on those.

Then we make bracelets, key chains, and lanyards out of that.

- But they all still work with memories.

Yurko is something old that you may have had when you were younger that you can repurpose into something else.

Game Day is something where it's a baseball glove lace, but you can put your kid's name on it.

- [Dayna] There's a lot of growth potential with what we have.

We just need enough minutes in the day to get there.

- [Brad] We want to have a bunch of employees.

We have a bunch of part-timers.

We love having them around, high school, - [Dayna] Love our fam.

- [Brad] college kids, and then we get to work, not less, but different.

So I'm not making everything and sanding everything.

I'm more of creating, where I specialize.

- [David] Northeast Ohio is home to many entrepreneurs like Yurko Sports.

See for yourself at our Making It site, online at arts.ideastream.org.

From bicycles to black holes, fidget spinners to cicadas, the art of Roger Williams knows no bounds.

His studio in Columbus is a colorful splash of pop art.

Take a peek inside.

- I'm from Logan, Ohio, and I was a kind of orphan.

My high school teacher went off on his own and put together a great big portfolio of my work and then sent it to Columbus College of Art and Design for a scholarship.

I started out with Illustration.

Then I changed it to Fine Arts.

I ended up with a Fine Arts degree.

I went to New York and met some of the first deconstructivist artists like Julie Mehretu.

I worked for Andy Warhol.

I could look out my studio back and see the front of his studio.

He discovered pop art.

This is designed mostly after Frank Gehry, architect, more than anything else.

I'm deconstructing postmodern art.

What is postmodern art?

What is deconstruction art?

You take postmodern art and you list all the criterions, rules and regulations over here.

Then you come over here and you say, "We're not going to do this.

We're gonna deconstruct all that criterion."

Then you come out with something like this.

Well from Frank Gehry, unreasonable and random overlaps of subject matter.

In other words, if you have a bicycle, just don't even think about it, drop a silhouette of another bicycle right on top.

Don't try to look for the meaning.

The only reason I paint a subject is, "Do I like it?

Do I wanna paint that?"

If I ride bicycles and go on tours and things, well, I'm gonna paint bicycles.

It doesn't matter whether I think it's gonna sell or not.

It matters whether I'm really interested in painting the thing.

Then I got interested in spinners.

These are spinners.

All kinds of spinners.

Then I became a collector of spinners.

Then I've got spinners everywhere.

That's pop art, whatever event or object that comes along, go ahead and revere it.

Then that's the art.

(mellow music) I always liked black holes but I wanted to bring 'em into a positive light.

I'm calling this a white hole.

It's a pop art image, and it's a very difficult subject to paint.

But then I pick out very difficult subjects to paint so that it maintains its interest.

I got little hearts here, spinners, you can pretty much make up anything you want about a black hole and put it in there.

There's no way that anybody could prove it otherwise.

Then this is a close-up of a black hole here.

That's just a, you crop out a certain part that you like, and then you just paint it.

(mellow music) None of these are sprayed.

They're all either rolled on or brushed on.

With automotive tape, make a long story short, it's blocked out so it won't bleed.

Then you've got a very nice sharp line.

(mellow music) The white is not really painted on.

It don't exist.

What it is is you paint the painting white, and then you block it out with tape and then paint the painting over it.

Then when you pull the tape off, the white comes up.

That's basically the gesso.

So then along comes cicadas and they're buzzing all over the neighborhood.

I said, "I'm gonna do a couple of 'em."

I did the wings here, added a grasshopper, but then I'd made up one.

I don't want any one line to go the same direction or be spaced out evenly.

So you get this scintillation of energy going like this.

(upbeat music) I did this for a neighbor of mine.

This is Belladonna the Black Cat.

There's a cartoon.

And I altered this and changed it into my rendition of this cartoon character here.

Then there's about 40 different other cats in here with spinners.

Dark on light, light on dark, a lot of lines.

I spend most of the time unorganizing things, so you're comfortable, you try to move with it.

You know what I mean?

It's not like postmodern art where you organize.

I'm unorganizing postmodern art.

(upbeat music) - [David] American composer Philip Glass is at the forefront of the music known as minimalism.

Here's the Cleveland Orchestra, led by John Adams, performing one of Glass' most popular pieces, "Facades" from Glassworks.

(dramatic orchestral music) You can stream this entire performance on the Cleveland Orchestra's Adella app.

So long for now.

I'm Ideastream Public Media's David C. Barnett, inviting you back for the next round of Applause.

(energetic 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.