(light jazz music) - [David] Next time on Applause, we remember Greenwood, America's Black Wall Street, destroyed by white residents 100 years ago.

Also, we meet a Cleveland illustrator designing children's books that explore gender identity.

Plus, we rediscover the paintings of a Cleveland artist that went unseen for decades.

All this, and more, on the next round of "Applause."

(classical music) Production of "Applause" on WVIZ PBS is made possible by grants from the John P. Murphy Foundation, the Kulas Foundation, the Stroud Family Trust, the Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation, and by Cuyahoga County residents, through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.

(jazz music) - Hello, I'm ideastream's David C. Barnett.

Welcome to Northeast Ohio's Arts and Culture show, "Applause."

Cleveland illustrator, Andy Passchier, is part of a creative team behind a new children's book that sparks conversations about gender identity.

"What Are Your Words?"

tells the story of young Ari who is unsure which pronouns to use.

Ideastream's Carrie Wise has more.

- [Carrie] Ari is clearly excited at the start of "What Are Your Words?"

On the brightly colored first pages, Ari waves to Uncle Leor, paying a visit just in time to meet the neighbors for the big summer soiree.

But Ari is also conflicted which pronouns to use when making introductions.

- So they go through the whole neighborhood and different people are introducing themselves to them.

And then towards the end, you see whether Ari finds their words or not.

Spoiler, they do.

- [Carrie] The story by Katherine Locke is illustrated by Andy Passchier, who also goes by Anne professionally.

Passchier has illustrated several children's books about gender identity and pride, topics that weren't included on the bookshelf when they were growing up.

- I didn't even know what it meant to be trans or non-binary.

I only knew a little bit about like, different sexualities, but nothing about gender.

It probably took me until my early to mid-twenties to sort of realize like, "Oh, that's a thing?

I can be that?

I think that's me."

I think it's kind of cool to be able to start those conversations earlier and make people realize this is not weird.

It's not you that's wrong, it's things around you.

- [Carrie] Books like "What Are Your Words?"

can also be helpful to parents who may only recently be thinking more about pronoun-use themselves.

- You know, in this day and age, it could still be quite daunting to share your pronouns in sort of a more public setting if you don't know everyone very closely.

I hope this can sort of normalize doing that, just like you'd share how your day is going or what your job is, you know, 'cause they're not just a trans and non-binary topic.

Everyone uses pronouns.

- [Carrie] Everyone in the story shares not only their pronouns, but other descriptive words about them.

Such as, "shy," or "vegetarian."

And Passchier depicts diversity in many ways within the design of these pages.

- So even though it's kind of a unified style and it's very childlike drawings, we wanted to include, you know, a lot of skin colors, body types, people with visible disabilities, you know, clothing, hair, just so it actually does depict a diverse, happy neighborhood and not everyone looks the same.

- [Carrie] The design also stands apart from children's books, toys and clothes that reinforce stereotypical ideas about gender.

Passchier says the publishers they work with are actively challenging these ideas.

Those publishers include Penguin Random House and Little, Brown and Company, which tapped Passchier and Locke to create "What Are Your Words?"

- It meant a lot, especially since Katherine is non-binary too.

So for two non-binary creators to work on something like this together and then also for the publisher to take that into account and say, you know, "I think we need two trans or non-binary people to work together on this and share their voices and you know, help bring this story to life," I think is really cool.

- You just know this.

Any harm comes to my daughter by your hands, I'll kill you.

- [David] 100 years ago, the Greenwood district, Tulsa, Oklahoma's thriving African-American community, also known as Black Wall Street, was destroyed when white residents descended upon the neighborhood, killing hundreds of black residents and burning the district to the ground.

Until recently, the story of one of the worst acts of racial violence in U.S. history went untold, swept under the rug until activists, historians and investigators began searching for answers.

In a new stage play, "Greenwood: An American Dream Destroyed," produced by Karamu House, the theater looks into Greenwood's glory days and tragic past.

In collaboration with Karamu House, WVIZ PBS ideastream presents a special premiere of the play on Monday, June 14th at 9:00 PM.

Here's a scene from the broadcast.

- (laughs) Are you ready for us yet?

- Not quite.

- Oh.

- So you're one of the veterans too Mr... - Taylor, Forrest Taylor.

They call me peg leg now.

Yep, I'm a vet and damn proud of it.

Begging your pardon ladies.

I did my duty as a man and went to war, come back home thinking we was going to get treated better.

It looks like things got worse.

- Yes.

I've noticed in my travels, a certain undercurrent of anger and violence directed at the colored soldier.

There've been reports of soldiers being lynched and burned alive.

- You from where?

- Harlem.

- Harlem.

Harlem Hellfighters.

That James Reese Europe?

Whoo-wee!

And that drum major, Noble Sissle?

Man.

When we come back home from overseas, our platoon marched straight through Harlem with the Hellfighters.

It was a million color folks and white folks out there waving flags and cheering us on.

Woo man.

It was somethin'.

And then we come back home and they'd have a big parade for us down Greenwood Avenue.

Oh man, yeah.

I can stand to have a parade every day.

(clears throat) But now the war is over.

Well, I better be getting on.

Ms. Molly.

- Yes.

- I want to get started first thing in the morning and...

But I need to buy some more sheet rock and I need, well, you know.

- Of course, Horace... Frank?

- I thought we agreed on a budget, Molly.

- I know, I know we did.

(giggles) Horace here and his sons have been doing the renovations on our home, Boley Manor.

- Is that right?

- Uh huh.

Before I went to war pretty much all the homes you see around here, I helped put them up.

- Let you run on til the morning, Peg.

- Oh, good deal.

And good night.

- You've been to Dreamland yet, Pritchard?

- Mr. Pritchard.

- Not yet.

- I didn't see you in church Sunday, Della.

- No, Ma'am.

Went to service with white folks.

Dull-ass ditch water, but I like Reverend Kudo .

- So I take it you don't live in Greenwood, Della.

- No, I live in with a white family in Urban Heights, Mr. And Mrs. Huntington.

They are swimming in money.

Oil.

House looked like a castle.

City even put their home on a postcard.

- Postcard?

Hm, I think maybe our home should be on a postcard.

Frank?

- Yeah, I live in T-town, Mr. photograph man.

Tulsa, the magic city.

The whitest town in Oklahoma, they call it, and they are proud of it.

(laughs) But life was real good for colored folks here in Greenwood.

And fun.

Which is why I come over every off day, and to see my Bill.

(laughs) Excuse me, that was not very lady-like.

I've been working for them for about five years, but I hear they're trainin' colored girls to work the elevator now, and I'm thinking about learning how to do that.

But then again, I don't know.

I'd miss the high life with the Huntington's.

They just bought a new car and I think they are thinking of giving me their old one.

Then I could ditch this Tin Lizzie I'm driving.

- Good evening!

- Oh, good evening Doctor Jackson.

- Sorry I'm late.

- Here's our world-renowned Doctor A.C, Jackson.

- He's a renowned surgeon, dear.

(giggles) Doctor Jackson, this is our photographer, Lawrence Pritchard.

- [Both] Pleased to meet you.

My pleasure.

- Well, Molly, am I in town for that grand picture you've been talking about?

- Right on time.

- Missed you at the party.

- I was making a delivery.

- And you met the Mayo brothers, I take it?

- Oh, yes.

And quite impressed by them too.

- And you're from?

- Guthrie, Tennessee.

My father was a law officer.

Watching him, I learned early on that I could be part of the hurt or the heal.

I attended Meharry College and trained to be a surgeon.

I helped out during the influenza epidemic in Memphis.

Then, came to Greenwood.

I had heard so many wonderful things about it and they all true.

(laughs) I'm working to make sure we have our own health system here.

- Yeah, 'cause they won't let colored in the white hospital in Tulsa.

- That's right.

So living here keeps me busy, but I travel a lot, also, which is why I hope we finished the picture soon because I have a conference to go to in Chicago.

- Oh, Doc, you off again?

- Yes, ma'am .

To the American Medical College Association.

I'm learning more and more, about less and less.

That's how you become a specialist.

(all laughing) - Oh, and chase down that chain of title on the property I mentioned to you.

I have some papers from the building for you to look over.

- Excellent!

Excellent.

You're working hard, Frank.

I appreciate that.

- All right, everybody, I think I'm beginning to get a sense of the montage I want to create.

If everybody would please stand up.

Now, kind of press in.

- I understand that you will go around the country doing pieces on black towns, Mr. Pritchard.

- That's right, sir.

- Ah, admirable.

What made you decide to do so?

- Well, there are 58 independent black boom towns - Really!

58?

My, my, my!

- And each with a story to tell.

With the new negro movement in Harlem, our culture is becoming the popular thing.

And I want to be at the forefront of telling and photographing our stories.

And sometimes I fear I'd better be quick about it, because I find in my travels, as soon as the negro community starts to thrive, white mobs riot and destroy them.

Chicago, Illinois.

Washington, DC.

Knoxville, Tennessee.

Omaha, Nebraska.

Hm.

Oh, and they claim some Negro man has done this or that to white womanhood but I find that it's always about greed and the land.

Now, if you will just stand here.

Oh, and I must warn you, I'm obsessive about my work.

So you'll have to bear with me sometimes.

- Where are you going after you leave here?

- I'm off to interview the Lawrence family in a little community I've heard of down in Florida.

Rosewood?

All right, everybody.

Gather in, a little tighter.

Tighter.

All right, now everybody take a deep breath.

Smile.

Hold... One, Two, Three... - Jimmy!

- Jim!

- Solene, Solene.

- What is it, son?

- What's the matter, Jimmy?

- I think I'm in trouble.

- What kind of trouble?

- Big trouble with the law.

- What did you do?

- Nothing.

I didn't do nothing.

I swear I didn't do nothing.

- Tell us, man, what happened?

They're saying that I, that I- - That you what?

- Put my hands on a white woman.

- Jimmy Jones, what are you talking about?

- But I didn't do nothing.

I swear I didn't do nothing.

Nothing.

She didn't bring anything, even with the floor.

- Bring what thing even with the floor?

Boy, calm down.

Tell us what happened, and start from the beginning.

- I was downtown at my shoe shine stand.

I had to use the washroom.

So I went in the justice building to the top floor like I always do.

It's the only washroom on Main Street coloreds can use.

We all use it.

I have permission to use it.

- Oh, Jimmy, what happened?

- Let me tell you, I'm trying to tell you so you'll understand.

- [David] Karamu's "Greenwood: an American Dream Destroyed" premieres on WVIZ PBS ideastream Monday, June 14th at 9:00 PM with rebroadcasts on July 17th and 20th.

Karamu House also provides on demand access from June 17th through July 11th.

On the next "Applause," we explore the wonderment and childlike whimsy of graphic artist, Jordan Wong.

Also we look back at artist Jean-Michel Basquiat and the hip hop generation.

Plus, we visit a museum that's assembled the works of Claude Monet, which have gone unseen together for some 25 years.

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

(mellow jazz music) Rediscovering something long faded from view can make you realize just how important that something was.

Such is the case of painter and illustrator, Anthony Eterovich of Cleveland, whose career as an artist spanned some 70 years.

His work went unseen for decades and was unearthed by members of his family.

Right now the exhibit, "A Thrilling Act, the Art of Anthony Eterovich" is on view at Massillon Museum of Art from June 12th through September 25th.

- [Presenter] Anthony Eterovich, seen here in a whole movie, was born in Cleveland in 1916.

He was an art prodigy, started drawing when he was just four years old, working in charcoal, oil, and watercolors.

At 18, he received a scholarship to the Cleveland School of Art, which later became the Cleveland Institute of Art.

In that very same year, he made his first of many appearances at the prestigious Cleveland Museum of Art, May Show, - Anthony as a student was so facile, so skilled at drawing.

This is extraordinary talent, even as early as the 30s, when he was in school.

He became so accomplished at this so early that his instructor, one of his instructors, Victor Schreckengost, asked him to take over a class for him.

- [Presenter] Throughout his career, he mastered different styles that were popular at the time.

Early on, he painted as a realist doing portraits.

By mid-career, he produced abstracts.

And later in life, he adopted a style known as photorealism.

The use of bright colors, a bit of whimsy, and love of people defined his work.

- There is decidedly a thread.

It's Anthony Eterovich's enormous humanity.

He is a man that loves everyone that's around him.

You don't see many inanimate objects, but you do see a great deal of humanity through all of this work.

There's tremendous humanity.

He's a realist artist.

He loves the objects and the individuals around him and that never ceased to fascinate him.

He is expressing it in various ways based on the influences that are coming to him at the time that he's doing it but he never relinquishes that forward motion.

- [Presenter] His career peaked in 1951 when he won first prize at the prestigious New Year Show, a national art competition held at the Butler Institute in Youngstown, Ohio.

Following that success, he sought national representation on the biggest stage in the world, New York City.

What he found, though, was disappointment.

- Dad did experience frustration with the people that were deciding what will make money, what won't make money.

And deciding, uh, what was profitable and what wasn't.

He definitely felt moments of bitterness, and he was definitely discouraged too, at the same time because you know, you would see...

He had his opinions, and his journal, you know, he didn't hesitate to criticize stuff that he thought was just run of the mill or even garbage.

He would tell you straight out.

- With the absence of hoping that that brass ring of getting into New York and into the national spotlight would sustain itself and that he could go forward.

It's what everyone sought to do.

And very, very few people, 60, 70 years ago especially, were able to achieve.

- Anthony Eterovich returned to Cleveland where he continued painting and exhibiting but with a new wife and family on the way, he sought steady work to pay the bills, so he began teaching at the Cleveland Institute of art.

- He had family and students and lots of pressures that way, and he loved to paint, so the idea of having to go out and market himself all the time and schmooze new galleries, I think that it probably became overwhelming for him.

- After accepting another position, this one teaching art at the Cleveland public schools in the 70s, Eterovich's work appeared in fewer and fewer exhibits and shows, until one day, his name could no longer be found on the gallery walls of Cleveland.

- I knew nothing about this man.

Many of his colleagues and himself were being kind of pushed to the side as the sweep of the second half of the 20th century moved American art in different directions.

But it doesn't mean that it was irrelevant.

It doesn't mean that it was insignificant.

It is significant, it is relative.

- [Presenter] Anthony Eterovich continued painting until his death in 2011.

While prolific with a career spanning more than 90 years, he died relatively unknown.

That was, until his work was rediscovered on the anniversary of his 100th birthday.

- We didn't know.

We didn't know he did all this work.

We didn't know that it was so varied.

We didn't know that he embraced so many styles.

- To a small degree, went unknown.

He was not totally a cipher.

His career, which we've charted in the exhibition catalog, is extensive.

And he had small group shows of this or that.

And he had multiple individual works in various locations.

There are multiple museums that own his work.

A single piece.

He wanted people to love what he did.

- Well what has been most gratifying was to finally say, this is a man that was able to grow and change and embrace different styles throughout his lifetime, and execute them magnificently.

- [David] "A Thrilling Act, The Art of Anthony Eterovich" is on view at the Massillon Museum of Art from June 12th through September 25th.

And right now, we head down to Cincinnati, Ohio to meet Dr. Sarah Hellman, the founder of Art for All People.

Created in 2010, this transformational program uses art to help individuals who are suffering.

- I'm very inspired by the great spiritual teachers that have went before me.

You know, the teachings of Christ and Dr. King and Mother Theresa.

A large part of my work is reminding people who they are.

And I start every session by saying, "Let me remind you who you are in case life beat it out of you.

I'll remind you.

You are not your mistake.

You are not your addiction and you are not your diagnosis.

You're a child of the most high God.

You've got royal blood in your veins and you've got the qualities of the King you came from.

And all of you have the wisdom, the strength, and the courage to rise above the struggle you're in today.

So if you've forgotten who you are, I'll remind you.

You are a royal warrior."

Well, I've known suffering.

I'm a recovering alcoholic and I have bipolar disorder and it actually works to my advantage in the work I'm doing, it gives me street credit.

You know, I'm not just some lady from the suburbs coming in and trying to help people, but I've been there.

So I know struggling.

I do, I do.

And one of the big answers for me was art.

Art gives us a chance to breathe.

It offers a type of breathing space for the soul.

And painting and that communion with God when I paint, it's very healing.

And I get to watch, I get to witness the healing powers of the arts every day.

And it's an incredible honor.

It's an incredible privilege to bring the arts to people who tell me they feel broken.

They feel unwanted.

That there has been days without somebody looking them in the eye.

And I come in and I remind them who they are and I give them some canvas and paint and I just give them some space.

And it's a beautiful thing.

(light music) So I received my doctorate in education, but during my doctorate, when I was working on my dissertation, I was studying the resilience levels in at-risk adolescent girls, and I really wanted to use an art space dissertation, and I got a lot of pushback because it's never been done before.

And then after schooling, I started the ministry, Art for All People, under the idea that people suffer and art heals.

And the arts, I can say, saved my life.

In times of anxiety, stress, depression, I always returned to the arts to feel better.

And for me, painting and making art, it's a spiritual experience.

And I think that's true for anything we do with real intention.

It can be very spiritual.

And the arts helped me, perhaps they saved my life and I knew they could help so many other people.

And we serve people who are affected by incarceration, addiction, mental illness.

We work with veterans and those experiencing homelessness.

I also work with women in prostitution, all under the idea that people suffer and art can heal.

- Be here.

I'm here to bring you some healing and some hope, good time, a time to be mindful and to get your mind off the trouble.

I'm not here to blow sunshine up your skirt.

I'm here to help save your life.

- I work with a lot of what other people might call undesirable people, and I can't help but think of mother Teresa's quote, "If you judge someone, you have no time to love them."

So my role as director is to love people is to bring them hope, to bring them healing, to say, "Hey, I'm broken too, but we can get strong in our broken places.

And we can do this together.

And there is hope for everyone."

I've worked with the most desperate heroin addicts and I've seen them turn their life around.

I've seen them get jobs despite criminal records.

So I'm there to remind them that your story is not over.

This is not the last chapter, keep going.

I work with people who tell me, "You planted the seed.

You were the one that helped me turn my life around."

- [David] That's it for today's show.

For more arts and culture programming, go to arts.ideastream.org.

We close things out with a sneak peek at the Cleveland Museum of Arts' new community arts center which has its grand opening this weekend in conjunction with the museum's Parade the City celebration, this West Side outpost for the museum offers residents in the Clark Fulton neighborhood a whole range of artistic options.

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

(soft piano music) (dramatic music) (lively music) - [Announcer] Production of "Applause" on WVIZ PBS is made possible by grants from the John P. Murphy foundation, the Kulas Foundation, the Stroud Family Trust, the Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation, and by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga arts and culture.