- [Announcer] Production of Applause, on 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 music) - [Kabir] Coming up, meet a painter with a passion for his hometown and a finger on the pulse of his generation.

Plus, discover the story behind a Hall of Fame pinstriper's nicknamed, Jim Dauber Farr and listen for a work written by a composer who spent World War II serving his country as an ambulance driver.

It's time for applause everyone.

Thanks for joining us.

I'm Idea Stream Public Media's, Kabir Bhatia.

Derek Walker is a graduate of the Cleveland School of the Arts who left behind a lasting image for the student body.

Now he's getting ready to graduate from the Cleveland Institute of Art where his award-winning paintings look to the past and the future.

(upbeat music) - Some of my earliest memories of art included learning from my dad and my cousin.

They had a lot of different sketchbook pages and they kind of encouraged me to pretty much learn how to sketch and do it on a daily routine.

I did a lot of drawings of cars like Lamborghinis and stuff.

I was really inspired by Leonardo da Vinci and how he was also into drawing inventions and designs aside from painting portraits and I pretty much continued doing all that until I got into Cleveland School of the Arts.

One of my teachers that had an impact on me at CSA was Miss Telich.

- He left drawings on the board every day which is no surprise but they weren't just drawings like I get from most kids.

They were hilarious, when we were reading Hamlet, it would be something about Hamlet's interactions with Ophelia or Hamlet's interactions with Claudius and it would always just say something hilarious.

You could see even at that time that his creative thinking was understanding history kind of in this context, and then also creating this empathetic way of understanding people and presenting it and then creating a story.

And I think he does that through his artwork.

- My class of students were one of the first students to actually enroll into the building because it was newly built and they wanted to make the school a bit more welcoming to the students.

So they invited several artists of the school to create murals on all of the blank walls.

And I was chosen as one of the artists and I was working on several different concepts for the piece.

And one that struck me was a piece that kind of resembled the mode of creation that Kehinde Wiley does when he takes African American figures and inserts them into traditional and art historical paintings.

(upbeat music) At the beginning of the mural is from A Girl With A Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer.

- Which notoriously features a very white woman and he repainted it with an African American.

So in the same way that I saw him reinvent or take history and context and tell his own story through it, you know, he made a giant mural in Cleveland School of the Arts cafeteria.

- Pretty much every figure in that piece was created from imagination.

I would just use different facial features from anybody walking around.

(soft music) So being at Cleveland Institute of Art, I really appreciated the plethora of majors at this school, it's not just drawing and painting.

- Derek is extraordinarily earnest and thoughtful and he works very hard.

Like he's in the studio a lot.

I can almost always walk by his studio and he is there.

- Professor Cooper would actually tell me different art eras to pull from.

For example, like the Baroque period, that's where a lot of artists would do chiaroscuro, which is a style of painting where you have like a black background and it kind of seeps into the shading of the canvas.

And that was definitely a popular style of reference that I would use in my paintings.

So from my Let the Cape Fly series, I was going through some of my photographic references for my paintings and one struck me from high school of my friend Isaiah, who was sitting on a pink couch and he was sporting a pink durag.

And after spending time with that photograph, I was thinking like, hey, I think I should do more paintings of my high school friends wearing durags.

I haven't seen it in a painting before and I thought it would be a refreshing thing to include with these old traditional conventions of painting.

- [Lane] He's very considered about how other people are gonna understand his work and what it's gonna carry out into the world.

So, and those are really mature ways of thinking about being an artist that you don't often see in a person so young.

- I think that the durag is really culturally significant to the African diaspora because it's like a common theme amongst the black people worldwide.

A lot of people wear it for fashion choices and it has more uses than its origin of being a utilitarian object where you just wear it to bed.

But it has evolved so much where people can incorporate it into their outfits and I find that really intriguing.

I made sure to include elements that reference Cleveland, Ohio, for example, in this piece titled Fendi's Ballad, which is a painting of my friend, he is standing in front of these two windows and the windows are shaped as the RTA logo for Cleveland.

This painting is a callback to the Leonardo da Vinci painting titled Madonna Litta.

(upbeat music) The piece that Mayor Bibb was standing in front of was titled Astro Noir.

And for that piece I wanted to explore ideas of Afrofuturism, specifically the themes of going to space.

I pulled inspiration from this jazz musician of the, in the seventies named Sun Ra and he made a song titled Space is the Place.

He felt that African Americans would only be liberated if they went to space, which is like an imaginative exploration in Afrofuturism.

(soft music) So for my BFA, I'm exploring ideas of commuting in Cleveland.

Commuting as far as like taking the bus or walking from place to place is something that I do pretty much every night.

- Transportation is a a big reality for him and I think it's kind of amazing how he transforms it into something to make work about.

- I really like the different visual elements I see at night where buildings are kind of illuminated but the sky is pitch black.

So it's all these different glowing elements for my peace title, Late Bus, I wanted to make a painting about a bus being, better for it to be late than early.

And a figure is looking at his watch no buses in sight and several other figures are in the background just exploring the night.

- [Telich] I think now he's telling his own story, he's finding what interests him and he's understanding through his own eyes why it's important and he's communicating that through his art and he's communicating it to a wider audience.

- So this is my final year at CIA, so I'm going to possibly take up like an art directing job or a creative directing job and maybe grad school.

And on the side I'll be doing a studio practice.

So I'll still be painting - [Lane] You know, I expect that he's going to do extraordinarily well.

Like I think that we're gonna be hearing about him for a very long time.

- [Kabir] You can meet Derrick Walker and see some of his work at the 2023 Black Arts Showcase.

Saturday, February 18th at moCa Cleveland.

From one paintbrush to another, we travel now to Cincinnati where customized cars are the canvas.

Let's meet Hall of Fame pinstriper, Jim Dauber Farr.

- When I was a preteen, there was a point where I quit buying comic books and started buying car magazines.

I was fascinated by the designs.

And eventually I found a magazine that showed Dean Jeffries doing some pin striping on an old car and he had a striping brush in his hand.

I got on my bike, pedaled down to the Sherwin Williams store.

Back wall had striping brushes so I bought the smallest brush that would fit my hand and it helped me learn how to do skinny lines.

I'm Jim Dauber Farr.

I'm a pin striper, gilder, commercial artist.

Graphic artist, happy to be here.

There was a, an occasion when I was at the art museum viewing the show, Women of Egypt.

And at the end of the show there were two caskets encased in plexiglass and there was pinstriping on these caskets and knelt down to look at them.

And I couldn't resist drawing my hand across the plastic imagining what that wood would've felt like with a brush in my hand.

And when I drew the brush back like that there was a thunder boomer overhead and the lights went out and I had my hand there and I looked up at my friends who were standing there and it took my hand away.

And some, for some reason, the lights came back on and it just sort of seemed to be somewhat karmic.

If you take my drift.

Dauber came into my life when I was working in my partner's shop, Bill Rel over in Covington.

We worked together for almost 10 years and there was a guy from the west side of town who came in and was watching me letter and the lighting was very inadequate and I kept wiping paint off on my shirt 'cause I couldn't get it the way I wanted on the car.

And this gentleman was standing there looking at me doing that and he says, this guy daubs more than he paints, we ought to call him Dauber.

Within a week, the concrete had dried and I had no choice in the matter.

I actually am pinstriping in gold leaf and not too many people do that.

You mix a sizing, a glue, which is commonly known as a sizing and you mix glue and usually some color with that.

So you have an image of what you're actually putting down and you let it dry a certain amount of time depending on the weather and the thunder and lightning and also the the humidity and whatnot and once it's ready, it's ready.

And if you don't pay attention to the clock, you can find yourself having wasted some time and possibly material.

And it's entertaining sometimes, but also challenging.

You've got to pay attention to detail.

Simple as that.

Gold leaf has a tradition in the history that goes back centuries, literally centuries.

The Egyptians were doing it and possibly further back than that.

It was, came into vogue again during the Renaissance, actually prior to the Renaissance and so forth, subsequently in churches and things of that nature began being used on picture frames and things like that.

I know of maybe five or six other stripers nationally that do been striping and gold leaf on the streets.

There may be more, but I'm unaware of it.

Where do I get inspiration from?

Everywhere, I'm blessed with powers of observation and I try to be receptive and I try to pay attention to things.

I also try to do things, for instance that have not been done.

I try to give people more than they expect simply because I've been doing it this long.

And if not now, then when.

There was a very humbling experience in 2006 for me and for Bill, he was contacted and was told that the National Hot Rodding Association was going to nominate him for induction in the drag racing hall of fame.

He said, I won't do it unless you also incorporate Dauber in that.

And it was a humbling thing standing up a bunch, in front of a bunch of people in a crowd situation, thanking them.

It didn't make a lot of sense to me until I realized there were no other artists in the drag racing hall of fame at that point.

And it was a humbling situation and still is.

I've done a quite wide variety of work for folks, including the museum center, the fire museum, multiple radio stations, the Cincinnati Zoo, clients involving race cars, hot rods, motorcycles, all over town.

Everything you see around and behind me and everything that I do is original and it's hand done.

I do not use a computer for my art.

I do not do anything in vinyl.

Everything I do is done the original way, the right way.

I like the smell of paint, I like the feel of brushes in my hands.

I wanna do it right or not at all.

Pinstriping is sort of a zen thing for me.

You gotta be in a good frame of mind.

I do yoga, I do meditation twice a day and it gives me a good frame of mind, it keeps me calm.

You can't do pinstriping without having brush control.

You don't have brush control unless you've got some control up here and in here.

It's logical.

I tend to look at a naked panel and I can imagine, you know, things growing out like a blooming flower and God willing, it'll bloom wherever the brush is pulled up.

My grandmother was the first one to encourage me to do art.

Art is not as easy as it might seem.

There are a lot of people figure that you just put a coin in a slot and out pops art.

It doesn't work that way.

You've gotta think, you've gotta be versatile, you've gotta be diverse.

You've gotta be qualitative, you've gotta be all of those things and you better know how to market yourself too to a certain extent.

I am grateful to have work.

I'm grateful to be doing art.

Art for me is a long-term deal.

I am very grateful to be able to work with young artists, young stripers and so forth because there was no one around to teach me anything.

I am completely self-taught.

I'm frequently asked, don't you think that's a dying art?

No, I think thanks to the internet and the web, there are probably more people pinstriping worldwide than any other time in history.

(soft music) - [Kabir] A Summit County car collector spotlights Japan's auto industry with the book, A Quiet Greatness.

On the next Applause, ride along with Myron Burnes as he highlights some of Japan's most astonishing automobiles.

Plus meet an artist from Nepal who's bringing her traditional techniques to Columbus and hear the vulnerable vocals of singer, songwriter, Emily Keener.

All that and more on the next round of Applause.

♪ Do you love me lately ♪ - [Kabir] Another Ohio artist is making her mark as a fashion designer for the people.

Recent Columbus College of Art and Design graduate, Nat Della Selva, likes to keep everyday folks in mind when creating her designs.

- When I first got that word fashion, I wanna be a fashion designer.

I had no clue what that meant.

I just knew that I loved sewing and I loved making and I loved clothing and I loved style.

And so, for some reason that came together to be fashion designer.

(upbeat music) Both of my parents are artists.

My mom had a stint as a floral designer and my dad has been a full-time musician since I was a child.

So I always had like creativity in my household.

My mom, if you asked her like, how did I get started as artist, she'd be like, oh, she was digging in the recycling bin, finding stuff to put together.

I was just a very curious child.

(upbeat music) I started actually knitting, I think I must have been like seven or eight and I was terrible at it.

I was like really impatient.

I can't remember if it was at my grandma's house or if it was just like an old sewing machine we had.

I like tried it out and it was fast.

I could like think of something, I could get it done and I could see a result and I loved that compared to knitting.

So I was like, this is my thing.

Yeah, I guess that's how I kind of got started.

(upbeat music) When I was thinking about what I wanted to create, I was really thinking about like who am I and like what stories do I know?

And my neighborhood is where I began really and my neighbors were my family.

And so when I think of like the different traits I have or like the different values I have, it all kind of like stems back to those people.

And like what they instilled in me.

In terms of what that means in like my clothing, I create things that are very thoughtful and like slow.

My textiles are very textured, naturally dyed, upcycled, natural fibers.

My collection is entitled Neighborhood and each look is inspired by a different neighbor.

So I kind of started thinking about that person and like what are their needs and what would they want to wear?

(soft music) So this is actually inspired by my Auntie Lynn.

So this is the cardigan that I knitted on the knitting machine.

All my work is very playful, so I wanted to like emulate that in the textures I picked.

So we've got like these little bobbles, you know, the little garter ridges and this like texture throughout.

I really wanted to have a jean, but I thought it'd be fun to do something that's a little bit of a twist.

So it's just a bit of like a balloon style pants so it goes out on the sides.

But of course it has like the traditional J fly front And then it's got an elastic back waist so it can adjust to the wear.

So this look is inspired by my neighbor Mary Jean.

Really all she wears is jeans or sweatpants and a big sweater.

So I wanted like an oversized sweater that you could just throw on and feel really cozy and comfortable in.

And all of my looks are meant to be layered and they can all kind of interchange with each other.

So this is a jumpsuit that goes on top of it.

It's got elastic on the bottom so that you don't have to worry about it dragging when you're running around and playing and a little button back.

So this look is inspired by my mother, Lisa.

And all the textiles here are upcycled.

So this is a tablecloth from my youth.

It also has these adjustable ties on the side.

So each item has very durable pockets and I wanted this to be able to cinch in.

So if you wanted it to have a bit of a tighter look, you can, but it's also easy to take down and be flowy and comfortable and then this last look is inspired by my neighbor Joan, who's a big biker.

And I wanted each piece to be really comfortable to wear and easy to transition from, you know, going on her bike to the grocery store to coming home and gardening.

This is the top that goes with it and it's very casual.

I wanted to be oversized.

Yeah, it's so interesting.

This is the first garment I started and I like, I definitely subscribe to like slow fashion but this is the slowest garment I've ever made.

I started in September making this coat.

Yeah, so it's a waxed ripstop cotton that I dyed using indigo and then overdid using turmeric.

But the wax, it helps it to be waterproof.

(upbeat music) So today we are having our photo shoot for our collections.

So everyone is right now getting ready, getting their hair and makeup done and soon we'll be taking photos and we'll all be together.

I'm excited.

(upbeat music) I think this is like kind of the first time of it all coming together in a really finalized way.

(upbeat music) Clothing to me is meant to be worn and used, but like it's not something that you just hang up and you think about and forget.

It's something that like is part of your daily life and it's something that like inspires you to play and move and like have the life that you wanna have.

I want to make clothing that is easy fitting and like it feels like it's inviting you to like move and play and like there's no restrictions.

I understand that like clothing and objects can be so precious and have so many like meaning and memories in them and at the same time, like they're just objects.

You know, there's, it's not about the piece of clothing or the object, it's about like what it means.

And so it's kind of a balance.

But I really would like people to feel comfortable being able to share their clothing and create like connection and community through design and clothing.

(upbeat music) - [Kabir] From fashion for the people to a composer of the people, Britain's Sir William Walton served during World War II as an ambulance driver and as a military music advisor.

The Cleveland Orchestra recently performed Walton's Violin concerto written during the war.

(soft music) This performance is part of the Cleveland Orchestra's online concert series for its app, Adella.

The PBS app is where you can find more episodes of Applause to watch on demand.

It's time to say cheerio and we'll see you in a bit.

I'm Idea Stream Public Media's Kabir Bhatia.

Let's catch up next time on Applause.

(violins playing) - [Announcer] Production of Applause on 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.