(smooth piano music) - [Narrator] Production of Applause and 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.

(smooth piano music) (smooth jazz music) - [David] Hello, and welcome to Applause.

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

Throughout the pandemic, Derin Fletcher's grown her art practice.

She attracts attention and business from social media and seeks to help others with their art through her gallery space in Akron.

Ideastream's Carrie Wise has more.

(relaxed lounge music) - [Carrie] Colored pencils are a staple for Derin Fletcher.

They have been for years since picking them up in high school.

- [Derin] I went to Firestone which is a performing arts school, and I had a really awesome art teacher, Mr. Dolphin, who pushed me and saw the potential in me.

And he was actually the first person to give me color pencils.

- [Carrie] In 2020, as the pandemic was just getting started, video of her colored pencil portraits took off on Instagram.

- [Derin] It came about because I could not find brown pencils during the pandemic.

- [Carrie] So she turned to greens, blues, and other colors for her drawings.

She ended up creating a series of monochromatic portraits resonating with tens of thousands of viewers on social media.

- [Derin] That's when I was like, "Oh wow, okay.

Yeah, this is happening.

Okay, well, let me keep it up."

'Cause I wasn't expecting the reaction, I was just doing what I usually do and creating.

And I created the green image, it had to be maybe at midnight.

It took me a couple hours and just kind of experimenting, but I was not expecting it to go the way it did.

- [Carrie] Fletcher says she's always been drawn to portraits.

While she does commissions of real people, her preference is to use her imagination and create freely.

- [Derin] So I enjoy being able to kind of come up with different characters in my head of who these people are or what their personalities are like.

It's kinda like creating a different character who doesn't exist thoroughly.

- [Carrie] Since sharing her portraits on social media, Fletcher's landed work for Hulu and Akron Metro, and now she's creating art full time.

- [Derin] It jump started with the monochromatic drawings.

It was like, "Okay, I can do this.

I can become a full time artist."

And that's where it began.

- [Carrie] On a recent afternoon, Fletcher was working outside of her comfort zone on a larger piece, featuring two women connected by a braid of hair.

- My goal is just to do more drawings of that style, bigger colored pencil drawings, and push myself on a bigger scale 'cause I'm used to working small, I don't usually go beyond the 9 x 12 or 11 x 14, so I'm trying to push myself to work at a bigger scale.

- [Carrie] Fletcher seems to enjoy new challenges.

Last summer, she opened her own gallery near the campus of the University of Akron for both teaching and displaying art.

She says before opening the gallery, she struggled to get her art on view.

- [Derin] It was hard finding a space that would either accept you.

I know a lot of different galleys you have to have... they want you to have at least so many solo shows under your belt, and it's like, "Well, I'm trying to get one."

And as of before opening the gallery, I only had one solo show.

- [Carrie] Part of Fletcher's vision is to help others exhibit their work.

- It shouldn't be that hard for artists to showcase their artwork, so that was a goal of mine.

Like, "When I get a gallery, it's gonna be so easy."

- [Carrie] Fletcher's work as an artist has been a bright spot in what's been a tough time for people in general, due to the pandemic.

She says art provides her a break from all of that.

- Things are starting to get worse before they're going to get better.

So that can be tough to think about on a daily basis.

So having an outlet like art to kind of escape that reality sometimes, it's amazing.

(relaxed lounge music) - [Narrator] Recently, a new organization, Future Ink Graphics, also known as FIG, opened in the Pivot Center for the Arts Dance and Expression located in Cleveland's Clark-Fulton neighborhood.

It's a maker space for digital and graphic designers as well as silkscreen artists.

Take a look.

- [Stephanie] FIG stands for Future Ink Graphics.

I decided to found this organization because I have been in visual arts nonprofits for about 20 years.

I worked with artists with Professional Development in Chicago.

I worked directly in this neighborhood with Art House for several years doing arts education in schools.

I worked for Zygote Press, which was a maker-space for artists.

I did residencies, I had a lot of ways for artists to get exposure to different artists and work on their practice.

I wanted to create a space where I could help artists really grow and find different ways to use their skills to create income for themselves so that when these kinds of situations come about, which hopefully we won't be in another pandemic for any time soon, that they have additional skills, resources, and a place to network and a place to come to when they have questions and just ways for them to grow their business.

I'm creating the space so that artists and designers can use the space as they want to.

We are gonna have a fully-functioning silkscreen print shop.

So this will have a spray out booth, we will have a dark room and the exposure unit.

We will have shop screens, we'll have ink, well basically, anything that you would need as a silkscreen printer whether that is to make T-shirts and hats or to make large fine art pieces of artwork.

We will have everything there, T-shirt presses, workstations, everything that you might need will be there.

We'll be selling some of this stuff in our store too.

So it makes it accessible for some of the artists, they don't have to go in and find some of those materials outside of the space.

But everything is going to be there so that hopefully artists really it's a one-stop shop.

And then if you are established and you're already doing great work, you're a designer, you would be a great person to come to FIG and help mentor other artists, or teach classes, or give lectures, or just be there as a support group.

If you're mid mid-level or you do artwork and you don't really do digital art but you wanna learn it, we'll have programs and workshops and residencies for you as well.

The reason I selected the Pivot Center was I knew the neighborhood, I knew the public schools here, and when I came into this space, it just felt like this was the right space.

To be cheesy about it, it just felt right.

It felt like the energy was right.

The organizations that were coming into the building really complemented each other.

And so I really wanted to be in this space around all of the synergy and the energy and the positivity.

And then I wanted to have a space where artists could get more exposure.

So we are in a fantastic neighborhood, but this building also is going to draw in a variety of people.

And so I wanted to have exposure for those artists in this community, in this building.

So if you're coming to see the Cleveland Museum of Art, you're gonna also hopefully come in and look at our store and come and see the young, emerging artists in this community that are on our walls and in our store and working in our space.

And we wanted a place that could highlight and showcase different artists from this community, a diverse group of artists, artists of color, women, a lot of artists that are not represented normally, or don't get as much exposure.

So we created the community gallery, which is this beautiful long hallway where we can rotate shows throughout the year.

So we'll probably do between three to five exhibitions a year.

They will be themed in March.

Our next exhibition will be... we're coordinating with the museum and they're doing a woman-in-print show.

So it really fits well within our mission to really help women-in-technology.

So that will be showcasing a variety of contemporary female printmakers.

(ethereal heavenly music) - [David] For centuries, many artists depicted motherhood through imagery of the Virgin Mary and child, but a contemporary art exhibit in Cleveland looks at the many ways motherhood is represented by artists today.

Ideastream's Carrie Wise has more.

- [Carrie] Mothers are the stars of a new Cleveland Museum of Art exhibition.

From raising children to fighting for future generations, a wide range of mothering is on display.

- [Emily] You have this whole diverse range of artists, diverse in their backgrounds, diverse in the media they're using, diverse in their interests, focusing on this idea that touches everybody's lives.

- [Carrie] The resulting exhibition is Picturing Motherhood Now.

- [Emily] The first room, the room that I'm standing in, is called Missing Pictures, and the works in this room focus on exactly that, on subjects, on bodies, on perspectives that have not been included in the traditional histories and depictions of motherhood in art.

- [Carrie] One piece, for instance, focuses on a mother and daughter who are undocumented immigrants.

Another painting shows two black women holding babies that appear as white silhouettes sitting on their laps.

- [Emily] Do they stand for the white children that black women have historically cared for?

Or do they stand for the children of the mothers and therefore represent children who have been taken too soon from their mothers?

And I think that the painting leaves it open for either one of these or many other interpretations.

- [Carrie] The exhibit goes beyond imagery of mothers and children and presents motherhood much more broadly.

A series of photographs for instance tells the story of a Cleveland artist who turned a home into a center for creativity and healing.

- [Nadiah] We came upon M. Carmen Lane's work, and they're an artist based in Cleveland, and so through conversations, they had started this organization called ATNSC, and had created a work that was kind of about the inception of that building, which was a traditional house in the Buckeye-Shaker neighborhood.

Carmen had made one work in that series, and we commissioned five more.

- [Carrie] Another artist, Wendy Red Star, created a family portrait that reflects her indigenous background.

- [Emily] Instead of following the kind of male head of household, as you might traditionally in the United States, her culture follows the women's side.

And so she created this really wonderful commission for the work that is a portrait of her great-great-grandmother, herself, and her daughter, so kind of call attention to the way that culture is passed down through the women in the family.

- [Carrie] While most of the artists featured are women, the show also includes non-binary and male perspectives on motherhood.

- [Emily] I think it's a subject that any artist has access to and any visitor has access to.

So I think we really hope that anyone who comes into this exhibit finds some point of connection, finds an entry point, finds something that speaks to them and their experience, and maybe learn something that they hadn't thought of previously.

- [Narrator] Picturing Motherhood Now is on view at the Cleveland Museum of Art until March of 2022.

- [David] Janet Macoska has captured the top rock-stars with her camera here in Cleveland.

On the next round of Applause, Macoska looks back at her career and how it spotlights our town's rock-and-roll history.

Plus, we meet a guitar maker with blues in his blood who discovered a dark secret in the woods of North Carolina.

And Cleveland musician, Gavin Coe, shows us his guitar made from the history of the Coe family.

You'll see all of that and more on the next Applause.

Now, let's head to Columbus to meet artist Matthew Mohr, the creator of Lightning Sprites.

Powered by the sun, these kinetic creatures resemble everyday objects, and in their whimsy, they inspire.

- For a while there, I couldn't produce anything.

When the pandemic hit, the art just went away.

And so, I was looking around for inspiration, and it just, one morning, looking at the kitchen with my cup of tea looking out my window, I was like, "I love these things.

I've had these solar powered toys for years now, they keep going.

There's something just simple and lovely about the platform."

But what if we combined that with a more open-ended approach to art?

What if we make it a little more open for interpretation?

And sculpture and solar-powered and kinetic, and boom, it was just there.

(mellow piano music) And so then the journey became about how can I make something that expresses the way I'm feeling about the pandemic?

Here I'm drawing different possible heads for these creatures.

Again, thinking about how we interact with these forms daily.

The prescription pill bottle or this is the top for a tube that you twist and you can open.

But then, the pandemic sort of put us right back in that moment where these very mundane tasks become much larger actions in our daily lives.

And I just thought, "This is a moment that's worth considering."

I actually worked with Susan Van Pelt Petry to work on a series of gestures.

Susan created a gesture that switches from recoil, which is what the pandemic made us all do, to reaching forward and grasping something new.

When you see this, I essentially translated it into sketches.

So here we are at reaching, and it's gonna go back to recoil.

And so now they're being modeled by Todd Perkins who's doing the engineering behind them.

And we're working together on these, and they're gonna be great.

(upbeat electronic music) - [Todd] Just need to remove the support material now, that's the part you see here.

- So I continue to work on them, and then I got a call from David and Janet at the Dublin Arts Council saying, "We'd like you to do an installation for the Art and Wellness Show."

(upbeat cinematic music) - [David] They're whimsical, they're fun, you're curious about them when you see them, they look like common objects, some parts of it.

So there's a familiarity there, but there's also a strangeness about them like an other-worldly, and I think that's where Matthew came up with the Sprites idea.

- Lightning Sprite is essentially a moment, a flash of lightning above the clouds, it looks unearthly, it has a reddish glow to it.

It's only there for milliseconds, but it's like something you've never seen before.

And I thought about a lightning storm coming through Dublin and depositing these Lightning Sprites around the forests of Dublin, as if the lightning struck a tree and left one of these little sculptures there.

(whimsical cinematic music) - [David] If we come out together and experience art, it's a way to move through what we've been through the past year.

And so we just hope that the art makes you laugh and gives you joy, and that's our goal.

(upbeat cinematic music) - [Matthew] We are at the beginning stages of technology that will enable us to explore many, many different ways of expression.

And I see these sculptures as being part of that dialogue.

(smooth jazz music) - [David] Our road trip continues a little further south with a visit to the Louisiana State University Museum of Art in Baton Rouge to learn about the art of Letitia Huckaby.

Combining photography and quilting, Huckaby focuses on the African-American experience and how the past connects to the present.

(smooth jazz music) - [Courtney] Letitia Huckaby is an artist and she was a military child.

Her father was pretty high up in the military actually so she lived in Germany and she really didn't deal with race in the same way that a lot of people living in the south would have.

And so I think there was kind of a moment in her adulthood where she had to contend with her past, this history of oppression, their ties to slavery.

And you see that in the work because it really was out of sight out of mind.

A large part of her life, her parents really shielded her.

Much of the work is called "LA 19 Project," it's based on her family who lives along Louisiana Highway 19.

Highway 19 connects Baton Rouge with East Feliciana Parish, her work references her family's history in East Feliciana Parish.

And there's a plot of land that several of her family members live on.

Her grandmother had 11 kids.

And so her mom moved back to Louisiana after the death of her father, and so Letitia found herself visiting here even more than she had as a child.

And so what you see in this work is her finding that history, finding that lineage, thinking about the matriarchs in her family, and really becoming familiar with this place that's been so integral in her history.

Cotton is important to the process and her meaning.

Cotton is accessible, it's warm, it's comfortable, it's something that everyone can connect to, and I think that that's really important to her.

Quilting is something that's shared, it crosses racial boundaries.

Just about everyone has quilts in their lives, or grandmothers, or mothers, so there's something here for everyone.

I've had people come in and respond to this work.

This is called Quilt Number One and what you can really see here is so much of her process and how it relates to meaning.

She is printing this on cotton, but also shooting through cotton.

So a lot of times, Letitia Huckaby shoots through quilts.

She always says her work is about faith, family, and heritage.

And so, she references her heritage through the cotton, which she kind of makes it as precious as a rose, and cotton references picking cotton, her family's history of enslavement, East Feliciana Parish.

And then faith is represented by this addition of light.

So the light shining through the cotton brings the person into focus.

So we can see images of her husband, her son, their hands touching.

With the addition of this historic symbol of cotton and faith, the self comes into focus, or your history comes into focus.

And so we're also talking about this process of quilting.

Quilting is a process, it's long connected with women.

And so Letitia's thinking about the women in her family, the matriarchs, and how they kind of made do and worked creatively with what they had.

Every work is quilted or collaged with images collaged together.

A quilt entitled "Cotton Pest and Diabetes" is another incredibly personal work.

Leticia Huckaby created it soon after the passing of her father due to complications of diabetes.

That work is incredibly important because it connects up the historic inequity related to cotton-picking and enslavement with the ravages of diabetes that disproportionately affect African-American communities today.

And so it features images of kind of cotton fields after the harvest that are kind of just broken down and beaten down, and she puts those with tissues that are kind of infected by diabetes.

And then the obituary of her father is featured in the center, and then other members of her family who are kind of contending with diabetes.

- When you see me as an African-American artist working with cotton fields, it immediately brings certain things to mind.

Right away, you're thinking about slavery and oppression and all those kinds of things, but that sort of continues.

And we're seeing that conversation explode in today's time at looking at how some of those oppressions are still here and it shows up in lack of healthcare and those kind of resources.

And so this piece for me is a little emotional 'cause I lost my father and it's the first time I'd lost someone really close to me.

But at the same time, I feel like it speaks really powerfully for issues within my culture.

- [Courtney] "Look What a Woman's Got" is kind of a play on a saying at Letitia's family.

There was a service man who came home, I think it was like an uncle, and he had sardines and crackers and he was just burst through the door and said, "Look what a man's got."

And her grandmother just picked up on that, and it became the saying in her family for any time things were going well.

And so Letitia, after the passing of her grandmother, inherited these heirloom fabrics and then took images of her grandmother throughout her life, there are images from when she's 16, there's an image of her at Letitia's wedding.

And then combine them into this clothesline is like a reference to that kind of experience in Greenville, Mississippi.

(somber cinematic music) - [David] And that's it for today's show.

For more arts and culture stories, connect with us online at arts.ideastream.org.

I'm David C. Barnett, hope to see you next week for another round of Applause.

We leave you now with music from Cleveland folk artist Kevin Richards accompanied by Charlie Mosbrook performing Richard's song, "Lay Them Down," set in the historic Lake View Cemetery.

♪ My papa came from Italy ♪ ♪ A mason was his skill ♪ ♪ To chisel stone and shape it to his will ♪ ♪ My brothers followed in step ♪ ♪ All except for me ♪ ♪ The shovel's my trade ♪ ♪ The grave site's where I be ♪ ♪ Murray Hill is where I live ♪ ♪ Lakeside I work each day ♪ ♪ I put coffins in their place when people die ♪ ♪ I mourn each time I plant a few John.

D in '37 ♪ ♪ I laid Chapman down ♪ ♪ That young man went to heaven ♪ ♪ I lay them down ♪ ♪ I lay them down ♪ ♪ For those no longer living ♪ ♪ I lay them down ♪ ♪ I lay them down ♪ ♪ Eternal peace I'm given ♪ ♪ It's my job to turn the earth and not feel hollow ♪ ♪ But when my poppa passed ♪ ♪ My heart was filled with sorrow ♪ ♪ While cutting rock ♪ ♪ A wall came down ♪ ♪ He struggled to get out ♪ ♪ The crushing stone ♪ ♪ He passed and left no doubt ♪ ♪ I laid him down ♪ ♪ I laid him down ♪ ♪ For those no longer living ♪ ♪ I laid him down ♪ ♪ I laid him down ♪ ♪ Eternal rest I'm given ♪ (relaxed acoustic music) (ethereal electronic music) (smooth piano music) - [Narrator] Production of Applause an Ideastream Public Media is made possible by the John P. Murphy Foundation, The Kulas Foundation, The Stroud Family Trust, and Cuyahoga County Residents Through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.