(piano) - [Narrator] Production of applause on idea stream 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.

(jazz music) - [David C. Barnett] Hello, I'm idea streams, David C. Barnett.

Welcome to idea stream public medias, arts and culture show 'Applause'.

Throughout much of the 20th century black fashion designer and business owner, Amanda Wicker made her mark on Cleveland.

While it's been more than 30 years since her passing the Western reserve historical society is teaching a new generation about her local legacy.

Idea stream public media Kari Wise has the story.

(jazz music) - [Kari Wise] When Amanda Wicker moved to Cleveland nearly a century ago, she put her education to work.

Having studied teaching and sewing.

She started her own business out of her home training others in dressmaking.

- [Regnnia N. Williams] She's launching this business in basically what is the era of the great depression.

That's when her business is taking off.

And she's a widow, a childless widow at the end of the 1920s and through the 1930s, but she doesn't give up.

- [Kari Wise] Wicker's determination paid off.

Not only did she create unique designs for herself and her clients, she helped others do the same.

- [Patty Edmonson] Well, she started out with a business in her home with, you know a single client, teaching them how to sew and turned it into this huge school that taught teenagers, adults.

She taught, you know, high fashion design couture techniques, but also if you wanted to be trained in garment industry factory work she could train you on machines that way too.

(jazz music) - [Kari Wise] Wicker moved her business out of her home and established the school at east 89th street in Cedar avenue in Cleveland's Fairfax neighborhood.

In tribute to her own fashion instructor in Washington, DC, Addie Clark, Wicker named her business the Clark School of Dressmaking and Fashion Design.

- [Regnnia N. Williams] I really liked the fact that she's an alumna of Tuskegee Institute.

And of course the founding principal of that school in Alabama was Booker Calvarial Washington.

And he was someone who preached self-help for black people.

So it was an industrial and a normal school, certainly lots of jobs available in manufacturing, sewing, textiles you know, creating the fabric, working with the thread and then creating the garments once they the fabric has been manufactured.

And so I like to think that Booker T. Washington would have been proud of that Tuskegee alumni who eventually studied in Washington DC, and then made her way to Cleveland and became the focal point of a burgeoning black fashion community here on America's north coast.

- [Kari Wise] For decades Wicker celebrated Cleveland's black fashion scene with annual shows.

The large scale events featured models wearing the latest designs, live entertainment and scholarship awards for students.

- [Patty Edmonson] She called her fashion shows the Book of Gold and you get a program with a gold cover and it was a sort of part graduation ceremony for students.

And then part, just a way for locals to display their work because the fashion shows were kind of a mix of student work, Amanda Wicker work but also they would bring in local milliners to showcase their hats on the models.

- [Kari Wise] Wicker designed clothes throughout her life from wedding dresses to suits and evening wear.

More than a dozen of those creations as well as her photograph collection were donated by her niece to the Western Reserve Historical Society.

Those photos and designs live on in a display now on view at the Cleveland history center.

- [Patty Edmonson] I think like playful is a good word for her style.

So fun, a little bit of sparkle, sometimes a fun silhouette.

I have a personal favorite.

It's a sort of chartreuse green dress that's covered in a grey lace.

And then on the back, it has a detail.

That's almost like sort of half of a cape.

It's like on the one hand somewhat conservative, but then has these little twists.

- [Kari Wise] Wicker also had a talent for helping the community look its best.

She was an active member of Antioch Baptist church and the Cleveland NAACP.

She taught her trade for more than 50 years until selling her school and retiring in the late 1970's.

- I think a lot of people don't necessarily think that teaching someone sewing is a form of activism but it can give you a skill to become something different.

It can help support a community.

- [Regnnia N. Williams] The freedom of expression.

I will have to say associated with fashion design and dressmaking.

I think that's something that black women in particular came to appreciate in the years following the end of the civil war and certainly something that Amanda Wicker was the expert on and she taught other people to express themselves in excellent ways.

- [Kari Wise] Her legacy lives on through the exhibit, Amanda Wicker, black fashion design and Cleveland.

(jazz music) - [David C. Barnett] From trailblazer, Amanda Wicker.

We continued to follow the threads of women who have revolutionized fashion.

That's the focus of a new exhibition at the Peabody Essex museum, which features more than 100 pieces spanning 250 years of fashion design.

- [Narrator] It's the strange thing about women's fashion that for most of its history, it's men who've been the designers.

Deciding not only what women might wear, but how they wear it.

- [Woman] Yeah, yeah, it doesn't make sense.

But this exhibition is the exception.

It's a winding tour through 250 years of the women as the Peabody Essex museum proclaims who revolutionized fashion.

Petra Slinkard is a co-curator.

- [Petra Slinkard] You know, one of the things that I think is very frequently sort of taken for granted is how innovative many of these women designers were and are putting pockets in skirts to kinds of examples of improvement to a system that women are building on for themselves.

- Starting as we find here in the 1700's, when Marie Antoinette was the queen atop the fashion scene.

- Regard to silhouette, you know, here a woman's silhouette even if she is a diminutive stature is still taking up almost three times the size of her male counterpart.

- For well over a century, European women were part of a Guild system, where they made the clothes men told them to.

Until in the 1800's, they began to push back.

In the U.S., Elizabeth Keckley was an enslaved woman who purchased her freedom and ultimately fashioned her own success, dressing the upper crust.

And one very famous figure.

- She became the in-house dressmaker for Mary Todd Lincoln.

She became her confidant and, you know, lived and worked very close with her for many years.

It's her sense of scale and proportion and fit that makes an ensemble like that work on someone of such a short stature in which you know, I think just speaks to her artistic ability.

- But for all the stitches and strides.

It would take years for the story to change.

- Good morning Betty.

- Good morning.

- [Petra Slinkard] If you've ever seen the movie Phantom thread you know, here's this, this powerful figure, right?

He's sort of larger than life but he's almost sort of like the conductor.

But if you really look at that film again, you start to see the army of women behind the closed doors who were actually doing the making.

And then you start to see this narrative, you know play out that it has for, you know, hundreds of years.

- But when the alterations came, we saw them like hemlines rising with the tides of change, especially in the 1960's.

- Women were experiencing a new sense of independence that I think in some way was also experienced earlier in the 1920's.

When you saw another moment where hemlines rose and waistlines went away, but that there's this sort of democratization that is taking place in the fashion of the 1960's.

- And where men had put women in constricting corsets and couture, women like Elsa Scott Scarelli and Gabriele Coco Chanel, let the seams out.

- It upset Chanel so much that she came out of retirement.

And that's where we start to see that boxy Chanel suit really gaining prominence.

And it was in part because I think it was easier to wear.

- Barreling through the 20th century.

Vivienne Westwood turned punk, Ray Kawakubo deconstructed dress.

And Katherine Hamnett literally made fashion statements on t-shirts.

- [Petra Slinkard] She's using them as a billboard.

So even if you say nothing, you say so much, you know with what you've chosen to wear.

- [Natalie Chanin] I do think that it has been one of our great goals to you know, make very beautiful things that also, you know you can drive your car and pick up your child.

- Natalie Chanin is the founder of Alabama Chanin, a fashion and lifestyle company based in Florence, Alabama.

Where she joined us by zoom.

Until Chanin came along, Florence was a former textile town time for God.

- [Int] And how many people work for you?

- Altogether, little over 50, 50 people all together.

So small business.

- [Int] And how many of the 50 people that you know?

- [Natalie Chanin] All of them.

- [Int] Which is important to you?

- [Natalie Chanin] Yes, yes it is.

- [Narrator] Chanin's design is fully considered.

From her local employees to her use of organic materials, to the garments she hopes will still be worn decades from now.

- [Natalie Chanin] I really do have this philosophy about what we wear being utilitarian, but also, you know made with beauty and this care for the environment in mind.

- [Narrator] Moving fashion forward to today, the runway still traffics in gowns, but also now in bikinis and all body types.

Because Slinkard says women have fashion all zipped up.

- What makes women and men different in their designs that you know, women are designing from that standpoint of hand, heart and head, and that it is emotional and that it is powerful but it's powerful because of what it represents.

- [Narrator] Next time on applause, we bring you a taste of Ireland with Cleveland's Kilroy family band.

Also liquid painter Arabella Proffers portraits of punks depicted as medieval royalty have international fans.

But then her work took a surprising turn.

Plus a cartoonist inserts real life into his work.

All this and more on the next round of Applause.

Ever since she was a little girl, Christine Jackson has been fascinated by music.

She discovered her dad's record collection early on and learned to love the blues.

- [Christine Jackson] ♪ Now, my first love ♪ Didn't have much to say ♪ - Today, Jackson is one of the top blues musicians in Northeast, Ohio and she joined us recently for Applause Performances.

♪ Some say it's foolish to carry on ♪ - [Int] Now you got your musical start in the fifth grade but it wasn't a guitar you picked up, it was a trumpet.

And I understand that your parents sort of mandated that you had a very special practice room.

(chuckle) Tell us about that.

- Absolutely.

Well, I started on the trumpet because we happen to have one in the family.

So it was, it was easy to attain and I wasn't very good obviously and it wasn't so much my parents, but my siblings, you know they were like, you're horrible.

So they said, they sent me outside and said, you know practice in that car, you know the car sitting in the backyard.

So that was my practice rolled up.

- With the windows rolled up?

- With the windows up yeah.

- Wow.

- I can't tell you how many hours I spent practicing in that car.

Yeah.

- But eventually you turned yourself on or you found out about a very special form of music through your dad's vinyl collection.

You were turned on to the music of Riley 'blues boy' King, BB king.

Tell us about him and, and his influence on you.

- [Christine Jackson] Absolutely.

So, you know after several years of, you know, car practice, you know I kind of acquired the ability to hear music and just kind of play it by ear.

And then I would go into the attic and spin my dad's vinyl.

And one of the records was BB King's 'Completely Well'.

And the horn section on there just blew my mind.

And again, hours and hours playing my trumpet along with that record.

(guitar strumming) ♪ Roars like thunder ♪ ♪ Like a damn freight train ♪ ♪ Roars like thunder ♪ ♪ Like a damn freight train ♪ ♪ My love for you babe ♪ ♪ Is steady on like rain ♪ ♪ Could've shot it from the mountain ♪ ♪ To the valley below ♪ ♪ There aint nothing in this world ♪ ♪ I wouldn't do for you baby ♪ ♪ To have you right here ♪ ♪ Ooh now, now ♪ ♪ Next to me ♪ ♪ Ooh ♪ - We were talking about the influence of BB king but you actually got to meet him.

Talk about that.

- So, you know, rewind I'm in high school, the very first concert I ever go to is BB king.

My dad gets me tickets and we're at the Playhouse downtown, right?

Our yeah, Playhouse square.

- [Int] Mhm.

- And again, just falling in love with the whole vibe of live music and just blown away with the horn section.

I'm loving it.

I said, you know, eventually I need to be up there someday.

You know, fast forward a few years, he's back in town.

I'm a little older.

I know some of the local blues artists, including Robert Lockwood junior at this time.

I used to hang out at Fat Fish Blue.

Downtown on a Wednesday night.

That's when he would play there with his all star band.

Fast-forward BB Kings in town.

So me and Austin Walkin Kane, Michael Bay, we all go to the show and we'd go backstage afterwards because you know, you get a chance to maybe meet him, right.

If you're lucky.

So we're in line, I get really close and I just start shaking and I'm kind of crying (chuckle) a little bit.

- [Int] Awe.

- And by the time we walked in I'm just full blown crying.

I can't believe I'm about to meet the BB king.

- [Int] Sure.

- And you know, Austin's laughing, Michael Bay's laughing.

And, there you go, Robert Lockwood junior sitting right there and he said, " how's come you never cry for me?".

(laughing) I'll never forget that.

But BB gave me a hug and he said, 'it's okay, sweetheart".

You know?

And I was like this.

I mean, it's pinch me.

♪ I, I pray every night for you ♪ ♪ All night ♪ ♪ I search all my dreams for you ♪ ♪ Ooh for certain ♪ ♪ Darling for certain ♪ ♪ Ooh for certain ♪ ♪ My love ♪ ♪ For you ♪ ♪ Are the only one for me ♪ ♪ Yes, you ♪ ♪ Are the only one for me ♪ ♪ You are the only one ♪ ♪ The only one for me ♪ ♪ For certain ♪ ♪ Darling for certain ♪ ♪ Ooh for certain ♪ ♪ My love ♪ - [Int] You've got another guitar.

Am I reading this correctly?

It's one of your favorite instruments it's known as a cigar box guitar.

- [Christine Jackson] Absolutely.

We call it a CBG.

- What is that?

Tell us, show us.

- So, you know, I didn't know much about it until I had one in my hands.

But my understanding is, you know, back in the day, the old blues musicians would make homemade instruments out of whatever they could find laying around the yard.

Whether it was a, you know the old washboard, you know, raking.

- Sure.

- Yeah, the old washboard - Jug, jug band kind of stuff.

- Jug band kind of stuff yeah.

To homemade guitars and so this one is an actual cigar box.

- Wow.

Look at that.

- And I have some, these are old 1932 Philco radio knobs on here.

- That is so cool.

- Just cause they look cool.

- Yeah.

- Thanks to my friend, Chad, out there for those.

But so, yeah, so I was down in Florida as I do most winter times, I get down there for quite a bit of time and a lot down there.

A lot of the venues have multiple acts throughout the day.

So there was an act that was playing before me.

And so I got there and he's tearing down his stuff and he has like, I don't know 10 of these different kind of cigar boxes.

And I wasn't sure who the guy was, come to know him as Steve RV out of, out of Florida.

And, he tears down the stuff.

And now it's my turn.

I'm setting up my stuff.

And he said, "you know, somebody was telling me about you".

He's like, "I'm going to stick around and listen to your set".

I said, okay, that's great.

That's nice of you.

So on the break, he comes up to me and he hands me this, this exact guitar.

And he said, I think you need to have one of these.

- Wow.

- And, and so Steve RV, you know, thank you for this.

And this one is made by secondhand smoke guitar builder Rusty Taylor down at Georgia.

- That's a great name.

- Yeah.

So he calls it.

I think I can show you here.

The headstock, SHS.

- There it is second hand smoke.

- Yeah.

- Great.

- (chuckling) So, I mean, it's such a well-built instrument.

All of my blues friends who have have picked it up and played on it, like Austin Walking Kane or Mike lens, they're like, wow, what an amazing instrument for being homemade.

It's like so solid.

♪ Now my first love ♪ ♪ Didn't have much to say ♪ ♪ My first love didn't even have a name ♪ ♪ Some say it's foolish ♪ ♪ To carry on in such a way ♪ ♪ My first love has got me holding on ♪ ♪ In a selfish way ♪ - [David C. Barnett] You can see the entire conversation with musician Christine Jackson, online at arts.ideastream.org.

A key figure in the New Mexico art scene, artist Raymond Johnson spent his life painting nonrepresentational modernist works.

For our next story we learn more about the colorful pieces he created and his focus on the human spirit.

- [Mathew Rowe] It's a lot of fun, kind of decoding works and jumps, and just kind of takes you out on this.

I don't know when I look at them it's like they just make my eyes feel fun.

Raymond Johnson really is my favorite painter.

These late period pieces of really a question to me.

We're looking at him at the apex of his spiritual expression.

And we're looking at him as a mature adults.

Who's refined his techniques.

He's no longer really experimenting with the technical aspect of art but really, what can he say?

We look at this and Raymond Johnson has just gone through a tragedy in his life.

His wife has passed away.

And instead of responding in this negative dark way, he's really celebrating her life and life in general.

I mean, this color palette is looking upward.

It's looking into the skies of New Mexico and it's expressing something different.

It's no longer tethered to the earth.

And we're really moving into a different spiritual expression and a different dialogue with spirituality.

He is exploring the boundaries of the canvas more.

He has fully lifted the curtains and now the works move off the canvas.

It's off the picture plane.

As the viewer, when I approach one of these I'm immediately wondering, where does this line finish?

Where's the conclusion of this shape?

How does this color fade resolve itself?

And within the picture it's complete.

It gives you everything that you need to feel a sense of finality in the work, but it also then asks you that question of, well, what's going on over here?

So, in that the conversation has shifted.

He's zoomed in, but by zooming in he's allowing us to ask, what else is there?

And I do love that it just challenges people's preconceptions of what new Mexican art can be and what it was.

And like these pieces are contemporaneous with all the cowboy Indian stuff.

And this is as much New Mexican art as anything else.

He really never stopped making art.

And in that, these pieces are beautiful and they're beautiful culmination kind of conclusion for where his career as an artist, but what he left us in that is the ability to look a little further.

It's the question of, why?

I feel Raymond Johnson really still has a lot to teach us.

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

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

And as we say goodbye, let's sneak in another song from our special Applause Performances guest, blues musician, Christine Jackson.

I'm David C. Barnett looking forward to seeing you next week for another round of 'Applause'.

(guitar music) - [Christine Jackson] ♪ It's not the way that you love me ♪ ♪ It's not the way that you care ♪ ♪ It's just a way that you groove my baby ♪ ♪ That thrills me beyond compare ♪ ♪ It's not the way that you kiss me ♪ ♪ Keeps me coming back ♪ ♪ It's just the way that you groove my baby ♪ ♪ Ooh, there's no turning back ♪ ♪ So when you move me baby ♪ ♪ Move me slow ♪ ♪ And when you love me baby ♪ ♪ Don't let me go ♪ ♪ When you move me baby ♪ ♪ Move me slow ♪ ♪ And if you love me baby ♪ ♪ Don't let me go ♪ ♪ Don't let me go ♪ (Piano) - [Narrator] Production of Applause on Idea Stream 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.