(jazzy 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 & Culture.

(festive jazz music) - [Barnett] Hello, I'm Ideastream's David C. Barnett.

Welcome to Ideastream Public Media's arts and culture show 'Applause.'

North Carolina artist Patrick Dougherty uses primitive building techniques to create large outdoor sculptures in nature from nature.

Right now you can surround yourself in his installation, Tilt A Whirl, on view at the Holden Arboretum in Kirtland.

Take a look.

- [Patrick] I just wanted to be a sculptor.

I actually built a house before I got, became a sculptor and was able to, you know, work out many of my ideas while building a house.

And so I went back to school, and so that put me on a good path to making a living and making a life's work out of it.

I always think that people love to look out and see a path that's going off into the woods, you know?

And so there's a, there's a sense of that when you see this work.

There are a lot of doors and windows, and you imagine, maybe I could go in there.

Maybe I could.

And when people, other people are in there, they're enlivening it.

So, if you see somebody in there, you think, oh, I could go in there, too.

Turning point for this one, we looked at a lot of secret insect trails that are in the garden, if you look on the back of leaves, if you look at the ground, insects make little pathways.

So, we took that boring pattern and we laid it out on the ground.

We scaled it up.

Drill a series of holes along the perimeter of that shape, of that plan, set scaffolding around it.

And then we use a scaffolding as kind of an exoskeleton, and we pull the shape we wanted.

So when we wanted this wall to lean way over, we pulled it over initially to intertwine into the sticks to make a very strong wall that you could use.

You can feature all kinds of architectural, strange architectural details of having walls and flying buttresses and leaning over and leaning one way and then another.

It's kind of a mindless operation in which your eye is connecting with the wall.

So there's this constant dialogue between what you're seeing and what you're thinking about how you could improve the look of it and make a much more luxurious wall where you feel kind of unselfconscious, you don't really think about what you're doing per se.

You're just kind of locked in to where you think it ought to go.

So I get a big stick like this, and I know it's too long for me to pull through.

So I'll make two pieces out of it.

I can use that top in a different way.

Sometimes I'll bend the thing just slightly because I'm trying to make it a little bit more flexible.

Then I'll drive it down in here like this.

I wanted to cross these two, see these pieces, because X-ing is also a way to make lines look more interesting.

So if those two lines cross like that, now when we stand back it'll look a little bit better.

It's better to go behind it if you can to kind of get things down in the midst of it.

Sticks have an inherent method of joining.

If you drag a stick through the woods, you see what I mean, it entangles and everything.

So we're using that basic entanglement as a way to join this sculpture together, and also sticks have a little flexibility.

So if you flex the stick and pull it into a matrix, it snaps back and holds itself in place.

So, you know, we, I've learned to use sticks in lots of different ways.

It's a slow process of building up the kind of quality of line, so just work at it for hours.

Pretty soon you have something that people really are enticed by.

They really want to be able to come over and explore this.

So when people see this work, they often are reminded of those, you know, the big Mr.

Twist or simple, hard and easy trees they climbed when they were kids, or a walk they took, or the first kiss they had, or, you know, something very significant that occurred to them while they were walking in the woods.

So, all of those things kind of are promoted when you look at this work.

And so it's got a lot of starting points.

Initially, people evaluated this work as sticks were found objects, you know.

Now they're connected with environmental issues.

You know, I'm still making the same work, but their context is changing, the relevance has changed.

I think one of the great things about a garden is that people come here for a respite and enjoyment and to get away from the world.

And they also connect with, with nature, which is such an inherent need that we have.

Usually you get about two good years.

You get one great year and one pretty good year, and you try to take the piece down while it still looks good, because you know, this is a public exhibition, and you want it to be serviceable right to its very end.

So, close to the two-year mark, the garden we'll start evaluating it and say, well, maybe it can stay up another month, maybe another month, and at a certain point, just like some of the flower beds that fade here, they'll say, hey, let's plant something new.

- [Barnett] With its unique design and use of all natural material, Patrick Dougherty's installation Tilt A Whirl will be open year round at Holden Arboretum.

Right now we head down to Cincinnati to meet Jim "Dauber" Farr, a hall-of-fame master pinstriper.

For over 40 years, he has been working on his craft, transforming cars into one of a kind customized masterpieces.

- [Jim] 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 pinstriping 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 pinstriper, guilder, commercial artist, graphic artist.

Happy to be here.

There was 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 have 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.

I looked up at my friends who were standing there, and I took my hand away.

And 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 Rell 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 because 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.

When you mix a sizing, a glue which is commonly known as a sizing, and you a 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 thunder and lightening and also 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 and a history that goes back centuries, literally centuries.

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

It 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 a five or six other stripers nationally that do pinstriping in 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 Nashville Hot Rod 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.

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 hand.

I want to 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.

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 got to think, you've got to be versatile.

You've got to be diverse.

You've got to be quality.

You've got to 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.

(calm music) - [Barnett] Coming up on the next 'Applause,' a 17-year-old Medina graduate honors the fallen veterans who walked the halls of Medina High before him.

Plus, we stop by a new museum that's a wonder.

And we visit a treatment center that uses art to heal pain and suffering and build connections.

All this and more on the next round of 'Applause.'

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic artist Lisa DiFranza has been creating daily sketches as a way to process what is going on in the world.

We visit the artist in Bradenton, Florida, to find more about her special project.

- My name is Lisa DiFranza, and I'm here today to talk with you about the Sketch A Day project that kind of emerged organically out of this COVID-19 world health crisis.

(mid-tempo music) So when I got laid off from my job, I started sketching, and I didn't know it, but it was going to be the beginning of sketching every day and posting it online.

(chill music) I come from a family of visual artists, even though my sort of career and work life has always been in the performing arts as a director or as an educator.

But I think sketching came organically because it's a way to process and share with the community, the online community, the experience of living on earth now.

(chill music) I started posting on Facebook and Instagram.

I added Twitter.

The response has been really interesting and people are writing saying, "This is part of the way I'm processing through COVID," or, "Could I get a copy of this?"

So I began to work with Art Source Studio in Sarasota to make fine art limited edition prints of the sketches.

So when that started to happen, I launched a website where you can see the sketches and the odyssey of COVID, through my eyes anyway.

- [Andrea] So at this point I have purchased two of Lisa's sketches, Splashy Sunset Over Route 41 Motel and Hopeful Moon Over Bradenton.

And what I found with her sketches, I was watching her post these every day on social media, and they were so timely.

We are all experiencing this array of emotions every single day, and Lisa was capturing those emotions every single day.

And so there are some of those that she captured an emotion that I really related to.

And so those were the two I selected.

One of them, you know, is a moon and it's beautiful but it's hopeful.

And she has that piece of it.

And you know, it's over the water.

And the other one, though, is an old motel on route 41, and there was something really poetic about that as well.

And that that wasn't that stereotypical beautiful scenery, but she made it feel really beautiful.

And so I truly appreciate her ability to capture all of these emotions that we've been feeling during this time.

And I think, even though she was doing it daily, in the end, when you look back on it as a collective, it truly encapsulates all of the things that we've been feeling.

- As far as processing COVID goes, I think Tempest Tossed is an image of the Statue of Liberty that really, to me, sort of emerged from my confusion about the American experiment.

I've done a couple of theater images.

I miss theater.

I recently did a Remembering Curtain Call image that just came out of missing that feeling of being in a live theater for a live performance and the energy and excitement of that.

And of course I worked in theater so much that it's so close to me, and I feel for all the workers in theater who really have no work.

Also there's some of the sunrises and sunsets that are close to me because they're right from our neighborhood, our doors and our dock and the river.

And the river's just been so much a part of this time for me.

And I have never had the time to see and think in this way.

(soft piano music) I think sketching marks the day, whereas everything else is blurry, but sketching every day I wake up and I do this and it marks a new day.

The thing I think that's therapeutic is being able, through social media, which is weird because I'm not a big social media person, but being able to share with other people and get a response.

So I feel like that helps to process communally even when we can't.

- Well, I think what Lisa has been able to remind us all of is that art has the ability to speak when our words don't.

And so whether it is relating to something that she created or creating something on your own, it really is therapeutic in so many ways.

And when we're alone, as we have been so much recently, that connection through art is even more vital than it ever was before.

(upbeat guitar music) - I think there is nothing more gratifying than making something from nothing.

And my advice would be, just do it.

Don't judge what comes out.

One thing that I've really gotten out of the Sketch a Day thing is sometimes I don't love the sketch, and it's really been very, very wonderful to not get too hung up about it, because I know next day's a new day.

I know I can start again.

Another blank piece of paper.

Just produce it, share it, produce it, share it.

- [Barnett] We now head further down the Florida coast to meet sculptor Craig Gray.

Through public arts programming, he's able to share his work with many different states across the country, From orange slices to popsicles, his large-scale handcrafted sculptures are joyful and imaginative.

Let's pay a visit to Gray in his studio in Key West to find out more.

- [Craig] My name is Craig Gray and I'm a sculptor here in Stock Island, Florida.

For about 15 years, I carved gravestones.

I did granite countertops, and then I also carved other artists' sculptures.

And so that's how I kind of backed into the arts.

Then I got inspiration and I decided to pursue my own work.

I had a residency at the Studios of Key West, a great organization, six years ago, And then six months later, my family and I moved to Florida.

Up north, I was primarily a stone carver and I did a little bit of metal work.

And then I came down here and the only stone available was coral rock, which doesn't lend itself very well to carving.

It's a very soft stone, not durable over the long term.

So I started searching for another medium, and in South Florida, the exteriors of buildings are stucco.

So this piece is a set of orange slices.

I haven't finished painting the yellow yet, and usually I define it some.

It's hollow.

It's made of masonry backer board, metal lath and stucco.

And then I carved the stucco to give the slices definition.

This is one of the pieces that's up in Jacksonville, Florida.

(festive island music) The highway into creating public art, which I specifically moved to Florida, is there is close to a hundred public art programs, all shapes and sizes, all different types of communities.

And the great thing about Florida and a few other states is they lease art.

This is a set of candy hearts.

This one here I'm refurbing.

It was out on display in Hyattsville, Maryland for about two years, winter environment.

And then when I brought it down here, brought it back home, I brought it back in December, and the frost heaves, which we don't have in Florida, beat it really bad.

So I'm recovering it again with a second layer of metal lath, which you can see here.

And then stucco.

I've put large-scale pieces for anywhere from a year to two years in about 25 communities in the state of Florida alone.

And that kind of started me on that path.

And then you get the piece back.

So then again, you can lease it out again.

And from Florida, that kind of acted as a springboard.

So then I went to Chicago, I went to Jackson, Wyoming, all these places.

Right now I have 22 large-scale pieces of art around the United States.

It's a great program where a lot of communities are a bit uncomfortable.

You know, they want to feel out the waters basically and say, is this gonna be something that people are gonna like?

And a lot of the public art calls that I do, they're looking for a temporary installation of sometimes a year to two years, and then I can come back and do touch-up work if somebody tagged it or something like that.

A lot of cities are bringing in pieces.

They'll display them for a limited amount of time.

They may move them around within the city, and then they come off display.

They're trying to keep it fresh.

This one just came off display from Rosemary Beach out on the panhandle of Florida.

It's kind of a fun piece because even though you can, you can reach through it, a lot of this rebar, the steel was salvaged off of Route 1.

At the last installation when I came and picked it up, there were probably a dozen locks on it.

I'm only guessing that people had made some promises and decided, instead of locking to a bridge, they locked to my sculpture, which was kind of fun, you know?

And then I had it in another town, and it was in a kind of a green space.

It turned into a giant chia pet.

Vines had grown all through it.

I'm always open to, you know, how the art evolves.

(upbeat music) The great advantage of working in South Florida here on Stock Island is the fact that I can work outside.

The cement dries within a couple days.

I could have never done this if I was working up north.

I mean, it would take a week and I'd have to have it inside a heated building.

If you're driving by, which is the fun thing about this large-scale artwork, you'll notice immediately the shape and you'll be like, oh, I know what that is.

But then as you come up closer, you'll see that there's still kind of a texture to it.

It's a little bit on the abstract edge.

(funky music) I get selfies daily of somebody standing up in Kalamazoo, Michigan, shivering in the cold next to a set of popsicles.

I mean, I had one outside Baltimore in Hyattsville, Maryland, a set a giant candy hearts.

And I have tons of pictures of these kids hugging candy hearts.

I mean, that's a little bit of a political piece.

I made that after the election, and it says, "I love you, embrace," but it's subtle.

I usually don't do political pieces.

I just do friendly art.

You get a pretty decent group of tourists coming down here specifically for the arts.

They're already interested in the arts.

They're interested in culture, and they're open to that.

It's cultural tourism, which is really nice.

I have people just randomly stop by who see our little sign out beside the road.

I love it.

- [Barnett And that's it for today's show.

You'll find more arts and cultural programming online at arts.ideastream.org.

I'm Ideastream's David C. Barnett.

See you next week for another round of 'Applause.'

(elegant piano music) (jazzy 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 & Culture.