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

(jazz music) - Hello, I'm Ideastream Public Media's David C. Barnett.

Welcome to Applause.

In the 1990s artist Mark Howard was a regular presence in the Northeast Ohio arts scene, but noticeably he's been absent for several years.

Recently however, he's emerged with an all new style of art.

- Sometimes, you know, the painting may take several weeks, depending on how it progresses, you know.

Normally though, usually about two weeks.

It wasn't anything else, it was always art, wasn't music or sports or anything.

It was always art and went to school in Cleveland at the Cleveland Institute of Art.

I got my BFA and I set up my first studio in Cleveland in '88.

I worked in galleries, part-time jobs and I did murals for nightclubs, or I was just doing these really avant garde things at the time and they were fun.

And so I had that job and then I worked as a color mixer and a screen printing company.

And so, you know, all these little things kind of in the end, kind of made me who, as an artist, who I am now, because mixing the colors commercially, I got to see how to mix colors at the right scale, the right amount.

And so, you know, everything kind of worked out, but it was initially, it was you know, pretty rough.

Normally what I do is I'll have a bunch of drawings and then I'll pick out of the drawings, which paintings I think, are worth doing.

When I was really exhibiting in Cleveland, probably around the late '80s and they were kind of like pop art type of things.

And I was doing a lot of silk screening on canvas and mostly it was figurative, but, and I held that for probably until about the early '90s.

And then I just wanted to break out and try something new.

And then I discovered paper cutouts, and that's where most people in Cleveland are familiar with my work was with paper cutouts.

And then that evolved into the paintings based on the paper cutouts and then the public art pieces throughout the city.

The first one was at the Cleveland School of the Arts.

That was my first public art project.

And that was that outside mural.

And that really was, that was a big learning curve and a big start.

That was my first introduction to artwork on that scale.

And once I got my foot in the door with that project, other projects started to come in and Cleveland Public library downtown, the mural there, you know, they just kind of just like took off.

But yeah, at, at one point there really wasn't a lot of public art at that time.

Now it's just exploded all over now.

But at the time it was like an open field.

And I think I've done about 13 public art projects since probably the '90s.

I think it was like '92 and '93 when I did that Cleveland School of the Arts mural.

And so then once one is done, I'll start the next one.

And that way it keeps me busy.

Within the past couple of years, I kind of, kind of got disillusioned with figurative work.

It was 2019, COVID, I had really no place to go.

You couldn't go to any art museum.

You couldn't go to any galleries, you couldn't do anything.

And so that gave me a time to just start painting.

Couldn't do anything else.

And so I decided to just, I'm just going to do the abstractions and enough of the other stuff.

And I produced quite a bit during that, that first year.

And it was all abstract.

And I just decided that I'm just going to go with this.

No more figures.

I didn't want to see any more faces, anything.

I wanted to have just pure shapes, colors.

And, and that was enough.

And this new material, the painting on this burlap, that's new too, I, I like it.

It's a different texture than anything I've really done before and eats up a lot more paint, but it's a different, totally different texture that I like.

There's, there's no theme, 'cause I didn't want any reference to any outside reality.

So, but I do have a box of shapes and those shapes are the shapes that I use and sometimes alter those shapes and reuse some.

And those are kind of the basis for the drawings, but there's no theme at all.

So I try to keep themes or any outside references.

I try to like banish that.

I'm definitely much happier with the path that the paintings are going now.

'Cause I'm just free to just create these shapes and the colors.

And I don't have any reference to anything, you know, I don't have to have someone ask me, what does it mean?

And it, it was right there.

And so it's kind of liberating in that sense.

And, and so I feel like I'm going to continue with this.

I think this is, this is where it should be.

- A sampling of Mark Howard's work is currently on view at the Akron Art Museum as part of their contemporary art series.

Roy Lichtenstein's pioneering work as a pop artist, shook up the New York cultural scene in the early 1960s.

But the story of his pre-pop days in Cleveland is largely unknown.

A documentary produced by Ideastream Public Media introduces us to the Ohio woman who supported him as he developed his signature style.

Take a look.

(group chatter) (contemplative music) - Everyone I spoke to who knew Isabelle always described her as dramatic, flamboyant, generous, life of the party.

Whereas Roy was very quiet and reserved.

And so I think it may have been a case cliche though it is, of opposites attracting.

He always was very, very shy in high school.

He couldn't get dates, but yet had a great focus 'cause he always wanted to be an artist.

In the Cleveland days, he had to work during the day.

So often he had to paint at night because he had all sorts of jobs.

He taught at the Cooper School, which was a commercial art school in Cleveland.

He worked on this magazine project to make a before and after of a model city of a neighborhood in Cleveland.

And Roy did not want to do the new model city.

He wanted to do the, before, the slum.

So that's what he worked on and distressed the buildings and did all sorts of things.

He was a window dresser in Halle's Department Store.

And eventually he ended up as an engineering draftsman at Republic Steel.

But he was not really expressing himself as an artist on a day-to-day basis.

Isabelle wanted to work too.

And she learned about the interior design business and really within about a year or so, went out on her own and was really in her element.

- Homes have more than new plans.

They have new patterns for living made attractive by luxurious interiors.

- She really was an exponent of what we would call today, mid-century modern.

And she had a lot of upper middle-class families in the Cleveland area like Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights.

- These are how many years old.

That's how she would tell people what color I guess to use for their homes, their chairs, their sofas, what colors to use.

It's raw silk, it's beautiful.

And then he would hang their curtains.

That's what he did.

- If the drapes needed to be hung, he did hang the curtains because of course that would be free.

- He came to our house to hang the drapes because you had to get the drapes hung.

That was part of the deal.

And he was free.

And he hung them and they didn't do too well.

He came back and hung them a second time.

He was very quiet and said all the things you're supposed to say, oh hello, how are you?

Good to see you again.

You know, but beyond that, he didn't make any attempt to mingle with her clients.

He asked us if we want to buy a painting.

And I must admit that the paintings I thought were the worst things I'd ever seen.

And we always say we were so smart.

We didn't buy one of his paintings.

You know, I never got him to sign the drapes.

That's the trouble.

- I remember going to their house and what a mess it was.

They had paintings everywhere.

They had cupboards and they had paintings on all the cupboards.

I never saw a house like that.

And she had fabric samples everywhere.

- Roy also encouraged her to paint.

So she actually did paint a little bit too.

Roy taught her a little bit, but she was mostly self-taught.

So they're kind of a faux primitive.

(radio broadcasts) But how much time she had for that because she did eventually in Cleveland in 1954, 1956 have her two sons and a very busy design business there, which she loved.

And she was the primary breadwinner for a while.

♪ When I was just a little girl ♪ ♪ I asked mother what will I be ♪ ♪ Will I be pretty ♪ - People used to tease Roy about her being the breadwinner.

I think he never minded and not just about the money, but he was perfectly happy with her success.

People thought they were weird.

♪ The future's not ours to see ♪ ♪ Que sera, sera ♪ - The documentary, Isabelle and Roy, which spotlights Roy Lichtenstein's years spent in Cleveland and how those years helped shape his later impact on the art world.

is available on demand through the PBS video app and PBS passport.

On the next Applause, long before Alvin Frazier let it whip, he was a respected R&B vocalist in Northeast Ohio.

We'll learn how he got recruited to join the Daz Band as its bass player.

Thanks to Instagram.

And we'll preview an exhibit at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History that commemorates its 100-year anniversary and looks to the museum's future.

All this and more on the next round of Applause.

- Since she was a teenager, artist Judy Holly has been practicing the art of quilt making.

With skill and concentration, she renders colorful quilts, rich with pattern and design.

We head down to Baton Rouge, Louisiana for this story.

- Yeah, in 1998, I had a quilt that won first places in every show that it was in, including the one in New Orleans and then the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival in Williamsburg, Virginia.

And then it also won something in Houston at the International Quilt Festival that year.

Raspberry parfait is a New York beauty block.

And it's something I always wanted to try.

And I was at a fabric store and I saw some '30s prints on sale.

That's always a good excuse to buy something.

But one of the prints on sale looked exactly like the fabric that was in my mother's kitchen when she bought this old '30s house in central Mississippi.

It looked like the curtains we took down.

And so I bought that and I bought some prints and they were on sale.

And for about a year, I kind of gathered up all this fabric that was Depression-era '30 type prints.

And so I made her a New York beauty quilt out of those depression era prints for her '30s house.

When you look at the New York beauty blocks and you see all the points, I actually cut strips and their paper piece so I'm not cutting out any little pieces, I'm making them from strips.

And I just kind of sync up.

That is what's called an offset log cabin.

I'm attracted to curve designs.

And when you do an offset log cabin, you can actually do circles with it if you choose to.

But I chose to do a clamshell pattern with it.

And at the time my son was living in Japan.

So I was collecting Japanese prints.

It was just a good excuse to buy fabric.

And since he lived in Japan, I bought Japanese prints and made that quilt.

The railroad through the Rockies pattern is another way that I could use a New York beauty block.

And it was traditionally gave you a broad open space that represented the plains as the railroad went across the country, nice place to hand quilt, or to showcase your quilting.

So I decided to use my New York beauty block in that kind of setting.

And I had bought a Australian print for the border.

I taught a lot of quilt classes for probably 25 years throughout the Gulf Coast area mostly.

I started sewing at 16.

I was in a girls' trio for several years and we had all of our dresses alike and I liked my trio clothes.

I didn't like the ones that were store-bought.

I said I liked going to the store and picking the pattern and picking up the fabric.

My mother made my trio clothes, but she didn't like it.

My grandmother was a depression era quilter and her quilts were all over her houses, but she was old by the time I came along and I never actually saw her quilting.

She talked about it.

We slept under the quilts.

And at one point when we lived in her house, her quilting frame hung over my bed, suspended from the ceiling.

I never saw a quilt in it and I never saw anybody using it.

I knew what it was for.

And I always said, one day, I'm going to make a quilt.

When I was 16, I took my money I got from my birthday and I lived in Connecticut at the time, right in the middle of the textile industry.

And I went to the one of the local mills and bought fabric and everything I needed.

And I shut myself up in my bedroom with a sewing machine.

And when I came out, I had a dress.

I've been sewing ever since.

I made my first quilt right after my son was born, then I just kind of played around at it.

I didn't actually follow directions.

I just kinda did my own thing.

And I did that for about 15 years.

And finally, I just decided I wasn't progressing.

I was going to pick a pattern, actually read the directions and start very traditionally and do a traditional block and something like that.

The first book I bought, I bought in 1970.

It was the only book that was still in print on quilting.

It was published in 1949.

It's by Marguerite Ickis.

It's over there on the shelf.

I worked with a lot of traditional patterns and I have a quilt program.

That's electric quilt, a lot of traditional patterns in there.

You can also draft your own patterns in there and then you can print out any block in any size that you need.

I work on the computer a lot.

I don't really design that much on the computer.

I do some, a little bit, but I liked designing at the design wall, like the fabric to tell me what to do.

Originally I pieced by machine and I quilted by hand and I did quilt by hand for quite a few years.

And you finally get to the point you're not going to be able to finish all these quilts.

Hand quilting takes a while.

I decided to learn to quilt on a domestic machine.

And a lot of people now use a big, long professional long-arm.

I didn't even know what that was when I was learning how to quilt.

So by the time I was aware of what long arms were and what they could do, I had already mastered quilting on a domestic machine.

So I have no desire to change.

The Juki, it actually is an industrial strength machine, but the batting doesn't really cause much of an issue.

Sometimes there's a lot of bulk in the seam allowances that you have to sew over, but it's not an issue with the Juki.

I had one machine that if you weren't using the exact needle specific for that technique or that fabric, it wouldn't sew.

Most machines aren't that persnickety.

I do use predominantly cotton.

Men's shirts are great to make quilts from dead people's clothes often, usually that's for family members.

When I made the quilt for the family and he had beautiful shirts, 100% cotton, high quality, they wanted their quilt and I got to keep the rest of it.

And I like using woven fabric.

I'm adventuresome.

I will still use other fabrics.

I collect ties and people just give those to me.

They're predominantly silk, but they can be acetate.

They can be polyester.

They can be wool and silk blends.

That can be cotton.

So you're putting them all together.

You have to wash it in cold water and not put it in a dryer.

I have a quilt in the front made from Japanese brocades.

If you're working nonstop on a project, I made a quilt for my boss in about two weeks.

Four to eight hours a day.

That was maybe twin size or a large lapper twin.

Quilting is compulsive and once you start, it's something like you need to do, or you have to do.

And I probably sew some everyday.

(country music) - A game that's seen its share of ups and downs in terms of popularity is pinball.

Once video games arrived on the scene, many thought pinball machines would end up on the scrap heap of history, but thanks to places like the Replay Amusement Museum in Tarpon Springs, Florida, visitors are still playing pinball and a variety of other arcade games.

- My name is Bobbi.

I work the front desk and help handle our event calendar, try to plan some fun events for people to come out and play for.

I've worked here for four years.

I love it.

My husband and I actually had our, our wedding here.

So I love it like it's mine, even though I just work here.

Brian and Becky are just big gamers themselves.

They love amusements.

They love playing games.

So I think that they amassed this collection and kind of felt selfish, just keeping it all to themselves and wanted to share it with the rest of the world.

- A place like Replay is like a test ground for these games.

We see things break that nobody else sees.

We have problems that nobody else will encounter because of the amount of plays that these games get on them.

You know, longevity is always the goal.

We want to make sure each repair is something that's going to make the game last a lot longer, hopefully as opposed to like continually going back in and fixing something.

But yeah, there's sort of a checklist as far as like looking for bad connectors because that can just cause things to overheat if there's not is good signal going through.

- Just cleaning the pinball so that the game will play properly is a big part of it.

- A lot of the older games we'll switch out to different style of light bulbs and put LEDs inside of them.

So just to take away the heat, it draws less power.

So there's, there's certain things like that to keep in mind.

The designers of the game would put notes in the game that a well-lit game is going to be played more and, (indistinct) a matter of clean well-lit game.

So it's more like, you know, we've got people that come in for the first time and they, they kind of just start walking around and it's kind of hard to say what makes them go up and put their hands on that first game.

Especially if it's one they haven't seen before.

But I think it always comes down to some part of like what they've been through in their life.

Some part of their history, whether they're into cars or like if it's some kind of movie that they're into, it could be a band that's, that's highlighted on one of these games.

A lot of it will, will definitely be like the artwork.

I feel like if you're able to see it again, it's going to be the artwork.

- Who knows if it's the colors, if it's the imagination.

I mean the older pinball machines from the '70s, they definitely pop.

They're trying to be eye-catching.

Sometimes maybe slightly suggestive in a sexual manner.

But these were back in the days when it was, you know, a room full of guys playing pinball, where there weren't really children involved, maybe not women around.

So you can see the kind of development and change of art, kind of moving back from risque art pieces and being more family-friendly.

- I mean, you can find out a lot about yourself just by playing games, whether it's just by yourself, you can kind of tell like how competitive of a person you are and how well you deal with like stressful situations.

- To me, it's gaming therapy.

It's very relaxing getting to hit the flippers, just to see how much the game has evolved over the years.

I just love it.

- In a place like Replay with the games that we have here, this style of gaming is something where even if you're playing by yourself, you still have like a social connection with people.

Whether you hear somebody yelling out of frustration because they just lost the ball or somebody is like cheering because they just got a replay or an insanely high score.

We definitely have people coming in that are trying to set high scores.

Replay is known for having scores that are just like super hard to beat because of how many people come in and play the games.

I had a number three, number four for a little bit, and I've, I've been surpassed.

I gotta have to go chase it again.

- My best high score here is going to be my GC on Tales of Arabian Nights.

It's 44 million.

I got to the wizard mode and rescued the princess.

Part of my like high score chase isn't even technically the score.

It's more beating the game and reaching that wizard mode, whatever that final objective is.

- My son is in the Navy now.

He's up in South Carolina.

I'll send him like a text message real quick and say, look at the score I just put up and he'll do the same thing.

He goes out in the community.

He's able to play pinball or any of the video games.

He'll send me a score back.

So it's a way for us to stay in contact with each other and connect, even though we're, you know, hundreds of miles apart.

- Seeing the generations actually come together, enjoy and love these games is why I do what I do.

I know we're doing the right thing.

I know we're here for the right reasons.

And we are sharing all this fun with generations to come 'cause we need the younger kids to be interested in this.

If there's any history or future for arcades, we gotta get kids playing.

We gotta get kids playing pinball.

We got to get kids playing the retro games because someone's gotta be interested once we're gone.

(Christmas music) - Recently the holiday season got underway in grand style with the opening of Deck the Hall at Stan Hewitt Hall and gardens.

This year's theme inside the Manor House is Lights, Cameras, Christmas.

Outside dazzle in the garden features over 1 million holiday lights and three holiday songs choreographed to the display.

As we say goodbye, here's a peek inside Deck the Hall.

I'm David C. Barnett.

Stay warm and see you next week for another round of Applause.

(Christmas music) (theme crescendo) - Production of Applause on Ideastream Public Media is made possible by the John P. Murphy Foundation, The Kulas Foundation, the Stroud Family Trust and by Cuyahoga County residents through.