(gentle music) - [Announcer] Production of "Applause", an 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 & Culture.

(gentle upbeat music) - [David] Hello, and welcome to another round of "Applause."

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

About 160 years ago, the Cleveland "Plain Dealer" debuted a writer who would soon take the whole country by storm.

His fans included Mark Twain and Abraham Lincoln, but his fame was cut short at the peak of his career.

New Jersey native, Ritch Schydner, is on a mission in Rockefeller Park on the east side of Cleveland.

He's searching for a missing person or, actually, a missing sculpture of a person.

- So there's not even a plaque there, he took everything.

- [David] The park is home to a garden of American cultural heroes such as, Booker T. Washington, Mark Twain, and a person you've probably never heard of, Artemus Ward, but he's nowhere to be found.

Likely taken by thieves looking to get quick cash for a big hunk of bronze.

- Obviously, this blocks go on top of here, it would be just as tall as Twain's.

- [David] In fact, Mark Twain was one of Artemus Ward's biggest fans.

Ward was a humor writer and a performer in the mid 19th century who got his start in Cleveland back in 1858.

Ritch Schydner, first heard about him through an essay written by Twain.

- And when I started getting into Artemus Ward I found books written about the man and so many articles, and he was a huge star at the time, completely forgotten.

- [David] And as it turns out, Artemus Ward, wasn't really his name.

- [John] His name was Charles F. Brown, Charles Farrar Browne.

- [David] John Vacha has taught and studied Cleveland history for the better part of a half-century.

He says Browne was born in Maine.

And as a young man, worked his way to the Midwest to find a job in the newspaper business.

- Then he was hired by "The Plain Dealer" and he was put in charge of the local column, "City Facts and Fancies" on page four.

- [David] But filling a regular column with colorful little bits of local news proved to be a tough task for the enterprising writer.

And so he started making things up.

He wrote a series of letters to the editor in the character of a traveling showman who went from town to town, exhibiting everything from wax figures to a live kangaroo.

Browne named his fictional entertainer, Artemus Ward, after a revolutionary war general and told some fantastical tales from the road.

- "In the fall of 1856, I showed my show in Utiky, "a truly great grate, G-R-A-T-E, sitty, S-I-T-T-Y "in the State of New York."

- [David] City reader's loved these fractured dispatches from this plain spoken character.

Browne would soon start sending his stories to a humor magazine in New York, which started getting Artemus Ward a national audience, including President Abraham Lincoln.

Soon after that, Browne got bookings on "The Lecture Circuit."

- [Ritch] This is a book of Artemus Ward's lecture.

- [David] Rich Schydner knows something about getting famous for being funny.

- Would you welcome, Rich Schydner.

(audience cheering) - [David] Schydner's interest in the Artemus Ward character stems from his own career in the 1980s as a standup comedian.

He sees a parallel between the rapid rise of his career and Ward's, who he calls America's first standup comic.

- The first time they ever had a place dedicated to standup comedy or comedy clubs in 1980s and it exploded and I caught that wave in the '80s, 1980, when they started opening everywhere.

So suddenly there's this whole circuit, it's almost like a new ball built circuit for standup comics.

Artemus Ward, he did a lot of his performances, the lyceum circuit.

It was all these lecture halls and places back in the 1850s and '60s.

- [David] In a time before movies, before radio, and television, lectures by writers like Oscar Wilde, Charles Dickens, and Mark Twain, were a form of popular entertainment.

Schydner says Twain was fascinated with this writer who took his prose and performed it on stage.

- Twain was always pumping for information, he said, "Artemus," or Charlie, everybody called him Charlie, if you're friends.

He says, "What would you do if you lose your train of thought up there?"

And Artemus goes, "I catch the very next train.

I'm in the talking business."

(Ritch laughs) - [David] A role model for Mark Twain, his writings and performances were well-known and documented in historical accounts of the era.

So why does a person like that just seem to vanish from our cultural memory?

- It may be partly because of his relatively short life span.

He didn't have time to produce too much of a body of work.

Artemus Ward died at the age of 33.

- [David] Charles Browne took his Artemus Ward character on a successful tour of England in 1866, where he contracted tuberculosis.

- When Artemus was dying in London of tuberculosis, at the very same time, Twain was going on stage in San Francisco doing his first lecture.

So he started doing stand up at the time that Artemus was dying.

But he said everything he got from doing it the way he did it, when he first started, he got from Artemus Ward.

- [David] In Cleveland, Twain, still sits high on his pedestal, but Ward's gone missing.

Actually, though Artemus Ward hasn't totally vanished from the city where he first found his fame.

(Ritch laughing) - It's seen on a elementary school in Cleveland.

It's really the only place you see it, there's no other.

We just went to the Rockefeller Gardens.

The bust is gone, this is it.

This is what's left of Artemus Ward in Cleveland.

And if you went here, 1863, everybody would know who Artemus Ward was.

- [David] He takes a selfie with the name of this once famous funny man.

Schydner says he's written a script and hopes to one day make a movie about one of Cleveland's most famous and least remembered citizens.

(upbeat music) And now we're off the Kent for a behind-the-scenes tour of Bell Tower Brewing.

It's part of Ideastream Public Media's ongoing series, "Making It," featuring folks in Northeast, Ohio, pursuing their passions.

- I was a philosophy major at Kent State.

I also studied psychology.

I also studied religion.

So I loved that those three things brought me into a church where the beer that we're creating is being served.

And sometimes it seems like that is the only reason why I'm here is to brew beer (laughing).

I found my purpose.

(upbeat music) Hi, I'm Jennifer Hermann.

I'm the head brewer, here at Belltower Brewing Company in beautiful Kent, Ohio.

- I'm Bridget Tipton, and I'm the designer for the project.

- And I'm Ryan Tipton.

I'm also a co-founder and the general manager.

- I started home brewing about 23 years ago.

I'm still pretty fascinated by the whole fermentation process and by the whole combination of art and science that brewing brings.

- Jennifer and I met about 10 years ago.

Jennifer was hosting a local home brew demonstration in her driveway.

After connecting on the home brew level, five years, later we got serious about pursuing a brewery in Kent.

- It took us a while to get to this point.

We looked at every single building, I think that was available and this building became an opportunistic dream come true.

- [Ryan] The second we all walked in, we knew this was the place.

- We are the third group to take care of this property since it was built.

It's held a lot of different functions over its long life.

It was built in 1858 and there were three additions to the building.

And the area that the brewery is in now was built in 1915, and that was the last addition.

So, yeah, a lot of history that's already taken place here.

- So I will tell you that this system is a 10 barrel system.

One barrel of beer equals 31 gallons.

So it's about 290 to 310 gallons I'm getting in the fermentor the end of this process.

The more beer you have the more fun you have, right?

This is hot wort.

There is hops in here 'cause I'm first worting, which means I'm adding hops before they boil.

This is simply just chilling down the wort so I can take a proper reading to see where our gravity is at.

And that gravity is gonna tell us what our potential alcohol is at the end.

This is just a quick reading to make sure that I'm on the right track and it looks like I am on the right track.

So once beer is stout, it just means that the yeast has done its job.

There's nothing more for it to do and now it just needs to rest and then it can be consumed.

So this is the German-style pilsner, which we have named Geist der Glocke, which means "Spirit of the Bell".

Really nice.

- [Ryan] We couldn't have chosen a better response from the community, I think as soon as we opened our doors.

- It's crazy to imagine people who you just don't know at all willing to come here and support the business.

- Beer does have the power to bring people together and when you've got an agoric space like this where it's extremely inviting and you have room to share and enjoy life with your friends.

If you have those beers that are conducive to that kind of socialization, I think it's great.

Beer is very, very simple.

Talking about it can be very complicated, but enjoying it shouldn't be.

Cheers.

- [David] For more profiles of Northeast Ohio people who were making it, you'll find the series at arts.ideastream.org.

(upbeat music) - [David] 78th street studios is home to dozens of Northeast Ohio artists and art galleries.

On the next "Applause", we warm up inside this old Cleveland factory space, now, an art mecca.

Plus you'll see the beauty and strength of the black hair exhibit on view in Kent and an "Applause Performance" by Mourning [A] BLKstar with the song, "If I Can, If I May."

All that and more on the next round of "Applause."

♪ Chasing pleasure ♪ ♪ It's the place ♪ As "Applause" continues, the late painter, Jean-Michel Basquiat, is remembered in an exhibition in the Bay State that shines a light on his role in the art of hip-hop.

- [Narrator] Blazing off the walls of the Museum of Fine Arts, the massive paintings of Jean-Michel Basquiat.

He was a New York street artist of the 1970s and '80s who became a darling of the art world.

Three years ago, one of his paintings sold for more than $100 million at auction.

Legend, icon, maverick.

He bore all the crowns so frequently depicted in his work before his young, untimely death.

- He often gets described as the kind of soul, black genius, artistically, of the time.

And what we're trying to show is that he absolutely was incredibly genius artist.

But he was surrounded by his peers who were on a similar journey with him.

- [Narrator] This new exhibition at the MFA, is the first to examine Basquiat and his fellow artists in the hip-hop generation who changed the chemistry and sound of New York.

(upbeat music) Rammellzee, Fab 5 Freddy, Basquiat, they were among a crop of fresh-faced art world outsiders from marginalized communities, but they made New York there's, says co-curator, Liz Munsell.

- They came from many different boroughs, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and then they began to converge downtown.

They were getting a little bit older and they saw this incredible scene of 1980s creatives.

People like Madonna around and they became part of this club scene.

- [Narrator] But before that, they were labeled graffiti artists, pursued by police for tagging buildings and the most prized canvas, the New York City subway.

Painting subway cars guaranteed their work would be seen by thousands of people as trains raced throughout the city.

- There's a lot of chaos for the eye to see everyday.

- [David] Writer and musician, Greg Tate, is the show's co-curator.

He knew most of the artists featured here when they all began to mix with performers, filmmakers, and musicians in New York's downtown scene.

(upbeat music) - This is a youth movement and in America youth is everything.

So whoever's leading that church is gonna win.

- [Narrator] What the outsiders called graffiti the artists simply called writing.

A form, Basquiat, noted had dated to ancient times and what artist, Lady Pink said was like calligraphy, but it was all a language the artists shared.

- Abstracting it, coding it, crossing it out.

They really in the vein of hip-hop music, are incorporating really whatever they can get their hands on and very freely, in an unfiltered way getting all of that into their canvases.

- [Narrator] But these artists wanted off the streets and into the galleries.

They demanded they be heard and seen.

The art world took notice and in the U.S., two of them, Keith Haring and Basquiat rocketed into the stratosphere.

- [Basquiat] I could see the handwriting on the wall.

It was mine.

I've made my mark in the world and it's made its mark on me.

- [Narrator] Basquiat work was fueled by his interest in history, not to mention the years of museum visits he'd made with his mother while growing up.

He charted his thoughts in notebooks.

- I went to a party, I went to one party at his house once and walked past his bedroom on the way to the loo.

I saw there was a video of "Superfly" that was on.

And then all of these art books stacked up.

So when he wasn't painting, he was in there just studying the artists he liked.

- [Narrator] Basquiat's work is also often populated by random bits of anatomy.

When he was seven, he was hospitalized after a car accident and developed a fascination with the book, "Grey's anatomy", but it's this crown that is most ubiquitous in his world.

- He said, my work is about three things, royalty, heroism, and the streets, right?

So he was also as someone who had gone to all the major galleries and museums and didn't see any black people represented there he's letting you know that his royalty is a street royalty.

- [Narrator] That reign would extend into the art world where Basquiat achieved super stardom.

But in 1988, he died of a drug overdose.

He was only 27, but he'd managed to see his community of artists get their due.

And beyond that says Liz Munsell, they began to influence the A-list artists they worked to be alongside.

- Frank Stella, you can see his referencing.

And he also notes that he was looking at graffiti and trying to find a different surface for his painting in his late '80s works.

- [Narrator] It was a hard-fought acceptance and for it, this singular group of artists hanging together still.

(upbeat music) - [David] We find our next artist on the east side of Columbus, where, Bryan Moss, creates colorful works at the home of his late mentor.

This painter muralist and comic book artist, is attracting attention well outside of CBUS.

- [Interviewer] How many comic books do you have?

(Brian laughing) - Okay, let's put it like this.

How many comic books do I own?

(gentle upbeat music) I own 20 bookshelves of graphic novels.

(Brian laughing) I think I might open a library one day.

(gentle upbeat music) So I was born in 1981 on the South End of Columbus, so born and raised.

Now that I reflect back on it, I grew up really poor.

When you say it, it sounds pretty triggering, but actually I learned a lot.

That's how I figured out how to do art through like a grassroots process.

I signed up for art classes at Schiller Park.

That's when I discovered and understood that I was gonna be an artist.

After that, it was more just like drawing, drawing, drawing.

So just nonstop, just obsessed with it.

So when I was like 10 or 11, that's when I discovered comic books and then that's when it shifted so that I was just drawing comics all the time.

(gentle upbeat music) The current project I just finished up and I'm still working on a little bit here and there, is a comic book called "Eightfold Path."

It's a 225-page comic.

The turnaround time for the book was six months.

So it was a team of us about six to eight people just working around the clock on this book.

I'm the beginning and the end of it, which means that I approve what goes through and what doesn't.

So it's almost as like a director.

The idea of converting a script into a comic book is actually a very difficult process.

You start penciling, we go through this process called thumb nailing, which is where you just literally sketch out the idea.

And then after that, you go into like your official pencil, which is like where you're like, "Okay, this works, now let's do the paneling and actually draw it in pencil and make that work."

(gentle upbeat music) After that, we ink it.

The inking parts kind of like the fun.

It's kind of like the jazz of it.

And then after that we scan it and digitally color it.

That'll make this into this Hitchcockian, like masterpiece comic.

You're like, "All right, we built it while we fly."

So another project that I worked on that was super awesome, super epic, a dream come true, White Castle and Coco-Cola call me.

It was like, "Would you like to do the art for our 100th anniversary?

Would you be interested in designing a cup?"

And I was like, "Yeah."

And then I was like, "We should do like three cups."

(Brian laughs) So it's like a collector thing.

(gentle upbeat music) Now, I don't know about you guys, but I always wanted to design something like this.

And even from when I was a kid, because what I really have a lot of passionate about, is actually making products cool.

And so we developed a narrative from the beginning and the original Billy Ingram, the founder.

It shows like the diner, the first location, what the first gift card looks like.

So, yeah, this is all my narrative, all my storytelling I came up with.

And then, obviously, me there at the end as any great renaissance painter would do, which is include themselves into (laughs) the masterpiece.

So, yeah, so if you get a chance look for those cups online, you know?

(Brian laughing) (gentle music) (bird chirping) For me, lifting up other people within the community through my work I would say it's a very critical part of what I do.

(gentle music) The mural I recently completed was one of the one and only, Hanif.

It's actually on a law firm on Miller, in Maine.

Hanif is a writer (laughs).

Hanif is a famous writer.

Hanif and I went to middle school together.

There's a bit of a age difference, but there's this indirect relationship that we've always had.

With Hanif, the cool thing about it is that he stayed, that builds up Columbus.

That was my personal goal too, I can move, but I choose not to because the idea of building up Columbus.

(gentle music) We ended up calling the mural, "The People's Mural," because of how the community got behind it.

The process for "The People's Mural" was to show Hanif as a mosaic.

A reason I wanted to really inject a lot of color in it has more to do with the quote: "There is something about setting eyes on the people who hold you up instead of simply imagining them."

(gentle music) The idea of this, were the characters in the background, and these are people that are in the community too.

I put them all in black and white and I put Hanif in color because we realized as artists that we're isolated in the sense we think we're isolated and it's actually not the case.

We actually have people who support us and they care.

But just going through that process you get kind of lost and it's pretty exhausting.

So it has a lot of personal meaning when I designed this.

So in the summer of 2020, I moved into Aminah Robinson's home through the Columbus Museum of Art.

(upbeat music) Now what I served as was as the manager, but there's kind of like a duality to it, which was that, Aminah Robinson, was my mentor.

I met Aminah Robinson when I studied at the Columbus Museum of Art in May of 2001.

So it had like a higher purpose for me.

It's a curated museum space so you're essentially inside Aminah Robinson.

The spirit's definitely there, the energy's there.

It was probably the least art productive I was, but the most healing process I've had.

I was able to slow down and actually like relax because of the residency not having to worry about the finances and stuff like that.

It's the only space where I can like really fly where I can just do whatever I want.

It's like a healing space, I would say.

(gentle music) The one thing Aminah said to me that still resonates with me today is, "Keep drawing, don't stop drawing."

And at the time I'm like, "Don't tell me that I draw all that time.

That's absurd, I'll never stop drawing."

But then what happens is that life happens.

(Brian laughing) Life occurs and then you get older and drawing becomes harder.

So that message just like keep drawing has more importance to me now than when she told me that when I was 22 years old, you know?

I mean, that's just like a master teacher, right?

(Brian laughing) So, yeah, so that was pretty cool.

(gentle music) - [David] Last summer "Applause Performances" welcomed the Tri-C JazzFest all-stars, and Cleveland-born drummer, Jerome Jennings, shared this composition dedicated to his hometown.

(jazz music) Jerome, "Triumphant Land", is that it?

Are there any Cleveland implications there of the land?

- Yeah, absolutely.

People from Cleveland knows this is a underdog city, right?

People sleep on Cleveland consistently.

This is a tune that's dedicated to folks who are from Northeast, Ohio, from Cleveland, Ohio being from here, right up the street.

It's like people don't expect for you to own whatever skill you have and take it to another city and then get your props and then people start to call you and you start to do your thing.

It's something special to be home.

When I see younger guys and guys coming up, who make it to New York, I'm very touched by that because they're against all odds, you know?

- [David] Yeah.

- So it's the triumphant land, it's the land.

(jazz music) - [David] And that's it for this week.

Thanks for watching.

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

We'll catch up with you next time for another round of "Applause."

(jazz music) (logo whooshing) (gentle music) - [Announcer] Production of "Applause", an 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 & Culture.

(gentle music)