- [Announcer] Production of "Applause" on Ideastream Public Media is made possible by the John P. Murphy Foundation, The Kulas Foundation, and by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.

(bright upbeat music) - [David] Coming up, meet a former medical student from Guatemala who became a beloved artist here in Northeast Ohio.

Walk inside Cleveland's home to Latino culture through the "Doors to My Barrio".

And later, sit back and enjoy the Brazilian jazz of Moises Borges and Dylan Moffitt.

Welcome to "Applause", I'm Ideastream Public Media's David C. Barnett.

(soft music plays) Since 1990, Hector Castellanos Lara has made a tremendous impact on the arts community of Northeast Ohio.

From his work on Parade the Circle and Chalk Festival in Cleveland's University Circle to his beloved Dia de Muertos celebrations in the Gordon Square Arts District, Castellanos Lara loves to share his Latino heritage.

Born in Guatemala city, Guatemala in 1954, Hector Castellanos Lara is the son of a Bohemian artist and a young entrepreneur.

- My mom was a designer for a newborn's clothing, her name was Marta Reyna Lara.

I remember my mom coming with materials in the evenings and cutting and measuring everything.

There was a lot of sewing too with embroidering, with beautiful designs.

It's in my genes for sure, I cannot deny it.

- [David] His artist father, Gustavo Castellanos was a free spirit who died young.

At his mother's bidding, Hector entered the school of medicine at the University of San Carlos in Guatemala.

But this was the 1970s and his country's political situation was dangerous.

- 1974, I was in my first year in school of medicine.

Those days they were unstable situation with the students and the government also because there were some political issues that were so critical and many of my friends were disappearing.

- [David] Castellanos Lara's mother and younger brother had already escaped to New York city.

- Because the situations was so unstable, my mom decided to bring me here to the United States.

She decided to get my papers done, she was already a resident here in those days.

So I came to the United States, New York in 1977 when I was 22.

So that's where I lived for the first 12 years.

- [David] Castellanos Lara's medical studies did not transfer to the U.S.

So he followed in his mother's footsteps in clothing design, working for an American footwear business in the 1980s.

- By the third year, they knew that I know how to design, to draw and take photographs.

So they hired me to another department to do just that.

So that opened the door for another level into the artistic field.

- [David] By then, he had married and his wife Liz had family in Northeast Ohio.

- And they told us it would be nice if we can move to Cleveland because is more quiet city, very affordable housing.

If you're raising children, you have better opportunity.

We decide to come in 1990.

- [David] It was in Cleveland where his artistic life began in earnest.

One of his earlier exhibits hearkened back to his beloved Guatemala.

- People always asking me why I don't make scenes from Guatemala.

And Guatemala is one of the most important art that is very easy to recognize because the Mayan population, they dress with these beautiful dresses, representing different local areas, where they live.

All the ideas that I have in my paintings come from my mind, from my head.

I usually don't go and take photographs or see the scene and draw it or sketch it.

No, I just sit in front of the paper or canvas and I start putting together what I remember.

In this case, people from the market, people with sombreros or people taking a good rest and a sidewalk.

Those scenes are part of the daily life in Guatemala.

- [David] In the late '90s, a chance meeting with the Cleveland Museum of Art's Robin Van Lear led Castellanos Lara to the pageant of a lifetime, CMAs Parade the Circle.

(upbeat music) - I have been part of the family working for almost 22 years with Parade the Circle, preparing floats, making giant puppets, also training school kids, to teenagers, to adults and the Cleveland Public Library also, I did it for many years.

So much fun, so much creativity every year.

(soft music plays) Robin Van Lear has these great events like Parade the Circle, she has the Chalk Festival.

So that was another invitation directly to me.

And I say, yeah, I would try this new media.

Since then, I haven't stopped it.

- [David] A fellow Latino artist, Salvador Gonzales invited Castellanos Lara to help him create a new festival for Northeast Ohio in 2005.

Dia de Muertos at the St. Josaphat Arts Hall on East 33rd Street.

Gonzalez retired two years later, leaving the festival in Castellanos Lara's hands.

- 2008, we started here on the West Side, Cleveland Public Theater.

Raymond Bobgan was so excited about it.

Matt Zone, the councilman from Detroit Shoreway also.

And we started doing face painting.

In the beginning, we thought it's gonna be mostly children and teenagers.

But no, there were adults coming and some grandpas, people from all colors.

They honoring our loved ones.

It goes to everybody, it's not just one country.

And even they have different customs or ways to celebrate.

And in one way or another, we sympathize.

We remember them at least once a year is something very good, it's something that will be very positive for the new generations because we can tell our kids about who was grandpa or who was the uncle who passed away 20 years ago.

So that stay in their memories and they will continue and pass it on to another generation.

That's why it's so important to keep this festival alive.

(soft music plays) - [David] Arts education is a big part of his career as he works with area schools on projects like traditional sawdust carpets for the holy week of Easter.

His most recent activity is at the Art House in Cleveland's Brooklyn center neighborhood, working with young immigrants, currently living in Akron and Canton.

Castellanos Lara christened it, The Gateway Project.

- The idea was to welcome the refugees, welcome everybody, immigrants to go through these installation and we gonna have some wind chimes made out of bamboo materials.

Like you can see there is no walls, so you can come to different directions inside.

And that was the main idea, we don't need walls.

So we just need like a fun part of this installation.

They can see new elements, they can feel people like happy and welcome and gathering at the same time.

- [David] During his three decades living in Northeast Ohio, Castellanos Lara has witnessed incredible growth in the Latino arts community.

- One of the main things for me to tell them all the time is like, I don't stay with one discipline in the art.

If you're a painter, that's great, but explore other disciplines, because that opens the doors in other directions.

I jumped into making massive giant puppets or floats, or I go and make sawdust carpets, or I do chalk art.

I really motivate them to explore more because that give you more chances, more opportunities in life, especially in the arts.

- [David] Hector Castellanos Lara's Gateway Project is scheduled to open later this month at the Art House on Denison Avenue in Cleveland.

In the Brooklyn center neighborhood of Cleveland, a series of doors opens to the talents of more than a dozen Latino artists.

Let's head to the Julia De Burgos Cultural Arts Center and enter the "Doors to My Barrio".

(upbeat music) - "Doors to My Barrio" was started in 2016.

It was just on an idea from a donation of doors that I received from a friend.

And at first I was just thought, what am I gonna do with these doors?

We kind of came up with the idea behind the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame guitars.

We decided that each door would represent a Spanish speaking country.

So the great thing about this year is that we received funding for Hispanic heritage month.

And part of that funding was to commission artists to do some work for us.

And I thought this was a perfect time to kind of bring the project back to life and to finish it.

We still have several doors that need to be completed so that we can, the collection will be complete.

I really feel that each door has a story behind it.

And I have a sentimental attachment to them.

(speaking in foreign language) - My door for the project, I was actually given Spain as my theme 'cause bull fighters are very common and Spanish artworks and everywhere.

It's a Matador in a purple suit, Matador suit.

And he's kind of like pulling like the low blanket, like when the bowl goes by him and it's, I colored it so that it looks like the flag of Spain.

Although the colors are inverted, that was kind of unintentional.

- So I did Bolivia and I wanted to include like the indigenous population of Bolivia 'cause a big percentage of the people are Indigenous.

So it's the Aimara and the Quechua people.

So I included the two women and kind of looking at the Andes and then I included a sunset.

So one of the rays is the Wiphala flag which is actually also like a national flag and it represents the Indigenous people which I've never heard of that before, so yeah.

I've never heard of like a flag, an Indigenous flag being included as like a flag of the country.

- And I got Uruguay.

Back in the colonial times, it was a place where the Africans came and it was a place where they came for freedom and that was where they kind of distributed themselves into America essentially.

So that's where I kind of have all these different melting pots of people in this small little door I have.

A lot of my art is mostly colorful skin tones like blue magenta and sometimes green.

So it was different, but it was also really cool to try to do all these different skin tones but also incorporate those colors around them and have their skin tones shine as the main feature.

- Every time somebody walks into this room, they immediately take out their cameras.

There's like a kind of like a gasp and they're impressed by the collection.

First of all, they're on doors, and second of all, I think it's very impressive that we have such talented local Latino artists in our community.

- It was great for me, it was a great chance to get myself out there as a striving artist.

- It is opening a door up to like the artist itself to this country.

But not only that, I feel like in Cleveland we wanna have exposure as Latinx people.

So the door is just like passes way to our culture, which is really beautiful.

- The main Latino population in Cleveland is Puerto Rican.

And we have a growing population of different Latino cultures, like Mexico and Cuba and Salvador.

So we have all these growing Latino populations in our city and we wanted to celebrate that.

(speaking in foreign language) - Well, when I came to Cleveland, I couldn't really find my Latinx peeps or my people.

So I think just being part of it just means that like there is a community here and we're thriving and we're getting our name out there.

And I never really felt part of Cleveland until I started working with Julio De Burgos.

So it means a lot to me and it feels like I kind of find my space here.

(speaking in foreign language) - [David] "Doors to My Barrio" is on view by appointment at the Julio De Burgos Cultural Arts Center on Archwood Avenue in Cleveland.

The art of flamenco is a language all its own.

On the next "Applause", meet the dancer behind ABREPASO, dedicated to sharing these Spanish dance form with Northeast Ohioans.

Plus, ever hear of a pop-entrepreneur?

We explain one woman's passion for the Popsicle.

And Dancing Wheels takes the stage in Cincinnati.

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

Cuban culture is strong in Miami, Florida and it is there that we discovered the caricature art of Conrado Walter Massaguer.

- My name is Francis Luca and I'm the Chief Librarian here at the Wolfsonian Florida International University.

I'm the curator of this installation, that's looking at Conrado Walter Massaguer, a Cuban publisher, art director, illustrator and caricaturist.

(folk music plays) He was born in Cuba in 1889.

He actually left and fled with his family when the Spaniards invaded during one of the independence wars.

And so he grew up kind of bi-culturally and then multi-culturally.

And so I think for that reason, he was influenced not only by the artwork in Cuba, but what was happening in the modernist movement all around the world.

He actually introduced the modernist aesthetic to Cuba with a lot of art deco, designed covers for his magazines.

"Social" was one of his most important magazines and that one aimed at an elite audience.

So this was designed to get the who's who of Cuba interested in modernism.

(folk music plays) He had an entire section in "Social" magazine called Massa-girls which is a play on his name, sounds like Massaguer, Massa-girl.

And what he was doing with that was showcasing this new woman that had suddenly appeared first on the American scene and then he helped import into Cuba.

He loved beautiful young women.

He was a little bit of a Machista in that way.

But he wasn't so thrilled about there being so outspoken and liberated, that I think was a little bit threatening to him as well.

So you sort of see that little bit of ambivalence in these kinds of portraits.

He was also very famous for his caricatures.

In fact, that's how he's mostly known today.

And he did over the span of a lifetime, tens of thousands of caricatures.

And he did them in a very modernist style.

He said the best caricatures are done on the sly with a furtive hand where you're just sketching them and they don't even know that you're sketching them.

Some of his caricatures got him in a little bit of trouble.

He was not shy of expressing his disdain for certain Cuban presidents.

You look at Machado sitting in the chair, not so handsome.

And then you look at the portrait that's being done and it's oh, he's young and handsome.

It's a completely different individual.

Massaguer spent a lot of time working for the tourism industry in Cuba, which began in 1919.

Since this exhibit focuses exclusively on the work of Conrado Massaguer, I wanted to sort of show him in the context of some of the other contemporary caricaturists from Latin America, and so it's called Caricaturas.

(soft music plays) Once Castro's revolutionary ceased power, Massaguer continued to live in Cuba though in relative obscurity until his death in 1965.

Here is someone who was the cultural ambassador for all of these visitors, especially from the United States.

And all of a sudden there are no visitors from the United States after 1959.

He ends up working in the Cuban national archives, just spending out his remaining days there.

To me, the most important thing about this exhibition is the fact that we can showcase this artist who was well known, well renowned in his period, but has sort of been eclipsed because of more than 50 years of strange relations between Cuba and the United States.

And his artwork is reflective of this earlier period, this period of warm relations and cordial relations.

- [David] From Cuban culture in Florida to the culture of Brazil, back here in the Buckeye state.

For more than a decade, Moises Borges and Dylan Moffitt have brought the Brazilian beats to Northeast Ohio, including for "Applause" performances.

(folk music playing) If you'd like to watch more of "Applause" performances featuring Moises and Dylan, that's available on demand via the PBS App.

(folk music playing) Adios mis amigos, I'm Ideastream Public Media's, David C. Barnett.

Here's an invite to join us next week for another round of "Applause".

(folk music playing) (upbeat music) - [Announcer] Production of "Applause" on Ideastream Public Media is made possible by the John P. Murphy Foundation, The Kulas Foundation and by Cuyahoga county residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.