- [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 & Culture.

(dynamic music) - [Bhatia] Coming up, an Akron choreographer is addressing police violence through dance.

Meanwhile, an arts community is growing and flourishing in Zanesville, and Cleveland's Baroque Orchestra, Apollo's Fire, adds a Klezmer clarinet to its repertoire.

Welcome back, my friends, to "Applause."

I'm Ideastream Public Media's Kabir Bhatia.

Dominic Moore-Dunson has examined issues of race through his choreography for years.

In fact, he was working on a dance piece about police violence when Jayland Walker was shot to death by Akron Police in 2022.

As Northeast Ohio observes the one-year anniversary of Walker's death and the community grapples with the officers not being charged, Moore-Dunson's latest work makes its debut in Akron.

(saxophone music) - So it's called "inCOPnegro Aftermath," because we're really looking at what happens in the wake of police violence in the community and how do we heal from that.

So, we're trying to talk about, after all that's said and done, after the news outlets go away, after there's no more viral video, and there's this feeling that no one really cares anymore, what is that community left to do and how do they heal with the trauma that they've experienced?

- ♪ I'm fighting a war within myself ♪ ♪ Playing the role but all the chords can play themselves ♪ - So, Floco is the essence of that character called The Questioner, who's spending the entire time questioning, am I a hero or am I a villain?

- ♪ This Argentine shield reflects the true society ♪ ♪ You want to change the world ♪ ♪ You need to look at the proprieties ♪ ♪ Hero or a villain of vice ♪ ♪ Versus a dilemma of first aid ♪ - The Questioner is a character that is in between two worlds.

So it's in between the community and how the community is responding to a current tragedy and being on the side of we'll say "law enforcement," with air quotes.

- ♪ There's a war going on outside ♪ ♪ You better pick a side ♪ - When I first started this, I was really curious about the black officer experience, because I've just never heard a black officer talk about their experience.

- ♪ It's way too rare that a wave could ever stem the tide ♪ - I'm not the mouthpiece for the performance, but being the only lyricist, I do understand my responsibility of every time I open my mouth and I say something from my character in the performance, I have a very big responsibility to make sure that we're leading the story where it needs to go.

If I need to be by this light right here so that triggers Dominic to move this way, it's the same thing with the lyrics.

Like how I perform and how I move and how I write is going to affect the rest of the show.

- Well, George Floyd was murdered, and it was really the days and the weeks afterwards.

So me and my wife were pregnant at the time with our first child, and at one point I realized that I'm gonna have to teach my black child about police, and I just never considered that that's a step in my trajectory in my life.

(musical beat) So, over the years, I think like a lot of black people have had run-ins with the police, up to this point, I estimate about 45 times since I was a child up until now.

- My experiences were just always knowing that this interaction can go from a parking ticket to fatal and not knowing how that's gonna go.

Every situation is kind of like that.

(saxophone music) - The week after I got my license, I was at soccer practice in Ohio, and it was February and it was cold and it was snowing, and I got stopped by a police officer.

It was the first time I got stopped by a police officer as a new driver.

Again, I've been driving for a week.

And then the second cruiser came in, and then the third cruiser came and the fourth cruiser came.

I was asked to get out of the car.

I was put on the hood of car, I was patted down, and this kind of whole moment happened for like a good 20 to 25 minutes.

I'm being questioned and things like that, and I'm in soccer shorts in the middle of winter, and then at the end, they're like, "Oh, your tail light was out," and then they let me go.

(saxophone music) When it first starts happening to you, there's a lot of fear.

There's some shame because you assume you're doing something wrong and that you're the reason you get in trouble.

But then after a while, there is a level of numbness to the feeling because it's something that you expect.

So now if I get stopped by a police officer now, there's like a routine that you go through.

You kind of know what's gonna happen.

You're like, "Well, yep, this makes sense.

It's been a while."

The feeling kinda lessens over time.

(saxophone music) (crowd chanting) - When Jayland Walker was murdered, one of the things I started really paying attention to is how everyone was reacting to it, and how you see that cycle of this explosion of people protesting and people really trying to show that this is wrong.

- ♪ You could start to take a rap ♪ ♪ For all the ones that ain't make it out ♪ - He was challenging me to potentially be a part of something that made me uncomfortable the second that he said it.

And artistically, those are the kinds of things that I try to be a part of or I try to put myself in positions to be able to grow lyrically, production wise, artistically, just for my mindset.

Like he was challenging my mindset to have a conversation about something, and I was just like, I never want to have this conversation, let alone publicly through my art form.

(saxophone music) - [Dominic] we need to start talking about, well, how do we heal and how do we not talk about healing like this kumbaya thing where everything's gonna be good?

It's complicated, it's messy.

Not everyone gets along in the healing process, and that's really ultimately what "Aftermath" is about.

- I hope they come in open-minded and I hope they leave open-minded.

If they want it to be police brutality, then be open-minded about that, community healing, be open-minded about that.

Black men, Black people not being a monolith, Black men being able to be soft, to be heard, to express grief in whatever way that is, whether it's crying, whether it's anger, whether it's dance, whether it's rap, just being open-minded to a plethora of themes the way that you were when you came in.

- It's a gift to the community.

We as artists have an ability to see all the unsaid things in society and in a city and in the community.

So we took all those unsaid things and molded it and created it into something to hand the community for them to do with as they will.

And I just hope they feel the care that we put into this for them.

- I feel like it's the perfect time for us to be doing this show, because the concept has shifted to being around community healing.

- A couple years ago I would've said, this is really important because this conversation's happening nationally, like it's happening over and over.

We have to have this conversation.

But now I think it's important 'cause it's home, it's here, it's now, it's what's happening to us in this community, and there's a lot of pain in this community, but we still have to figure out, so what do we do now?

It's important to figure out how to start the conversation and have that conversation.

We're not the only ones having this conversation, but we're the only ones doing it this way.

(somber saxophone music) - [Bhatia] Dominic Moore-Dunson's "inCOPnegro is on through July 1st at Akron's Balch Street Theatre.

From an artist who addresses today's headlines to an art form dating back centuries.

It's called scratchboard art, and it got started back in the 1800s.

A form of direct engraving, artists create their work by scratching through a surface coated in black ink, and what they reveal is stunning.

Take a look.

- [John] I think most people don't realize how long it takes to do.

Some scratchboard artists are very quick, but the process that I use takes a long time, and I usually set goals like a couple of square inches per day.

I work very close with a very sharp knife and to extreme detail.

It's a very satisfying art form.

It's immediate.

It's very much like drawing in that sense.

You know, you put the lines down and there it is.

People have said to me, "Oh, I'd love to watch you do scratchboard."

And I say, I can't think of anything more boring than watching me do scratchboard because I'm so slow.

It's like watching grass grow or paint dry.

But it is a fun thing to do even if you're not good at it.

It's just kind of fun to scratch off that black ink and watch the the white appear, and you can do some pretty neat effects with it once you start to learn how to use it.

- It's like drawing with a knife instead of a pencil.

You're starting with black ink, you're removing it to get to the white, but how close the lines are placed, how thick or thin they are, give you different values and different looks.

You can also get these boards without the black ink, so that's just white clay and you can add your own ink, and some people use ink, some people have used watercolors, and then you can do the same type of scratching techniques, and that gives you a different look than the traditional black scratchboard.

- [John] Supplies are fairly minimal.

You can work with a knife and a scratchboard.

That's all you really need.

There are a lot of different kinds of tools that will give you different textures and lines.

- [Rich] People have used X-Acto knives with scalpel blades, which are very good at cutting skin, are also very good for creating probably the finest lines that you can get.

People have also found that tattoo needles work very well.

I like the flat needles.

They have five or nine low needles in parallel, and they allow you to gently remove the black, so you can get different levels of gray more easily with them.

- [John] When I first started doing it, I was involved in cave exploring, and it was a medium that to me really portrayed the deep black shadows and bright highlights that you see in caves very well, and also allowed me to do a lot of detail in the geology, drawing the rocks.

I could get very fine detail with scratchboard.

As I grew to like the medium, I started noticing its affinity to much older engravings that you would see in old zoology textbooks from the 19th century.

I just loved the line work in those, and scratchboard was very similar in a lot of ways.

And having an interest in animals, especially reptiles, scratchboard was a great medium for me to use.

I like to do very realistic, authentic images of animals, and in order to do that I need photographs.

Scratchboard is a very slow medium, so you can't really take it out into the field and sketch with it like you would with graphite or with paints.

'cause when I do animals like a crocodile, I don't copy the photographs exactly, but I do need them to make sure I have the right number of scales in the right places and so on.

- [Rich] I kind of like everything.

I'm a bit eclectic.

I've done portraits, I've done animals, done a fair number of birds, done mountain scenes.

I've done a lot of architectural subjects.

My most common size is eight by 10 inches or five by seven.

I've also done 18 by 24, which are fairly large.

And the first time I did a really large board, I said, oh, I'm gonna make the smallest board.

I did a little one by one and a fourth inch board with an owl on it.

One question I get a lot is, "Well, how do you get color on the board?

Is it underneath?"

And the answer is no.

If it's a blackboard, it's white underneath, but after you've scratched away the black, you can come in with a dilute ink or watercolor.

- [John] I got a degree in fine art from the University of Cincinnati.

I was trained as a painter, and I discovered scratchboard about 20 years ago and have been doing it ever since.

I emphasize authenticity a lot, but I also want to be a good artist.

And for me, underneath every good realist painting, there's a good abstract.

You still have to have that sense of design, and I've been trying to combine the two into doing the best scratchboard art I can.

And I have achieved a master status in the International Society of Scratchboard Artists.

- [Rich] We emphasize the international.

Even though most of the members are from the US and another large chunk are from Canada, we've been getting more and more artists from other countries.

I thought it'd be great to have Cincinnati area exposed to scratchboard art.

I was the exhibition director for Middletown Art Center exhibition last May.

They have a really nice gallery space that could hold 80 to 90 works.

Then we had two days of, we call 'em workshops.

They're a little bit more of demonstrations.

We also have our annual membership meeting, and we have what's called Ask the Masters.

Some of our master members who are our most talented members do a little panel and answer questions around what they do, how they do it, offer advice.

It's a chance to learn from each other.

It's a way to both network and build relationships, but also learn and try out some things.

But I think people see and appreciate the fine nature of it, and I think they also see that, especially for animal fur, it's a really great medium, because you can get a depth and layering of the hair that you can't easily achieve like with pencil.

- One of the tough things about doing that sort of work, though, is that you you can get lost in the detail and you have to keep in mind the bigger image.

And sometimes it's tough to do that, to keep track of both far away and up close at the same time.

- [Rich] A lot of people walking by, if they see from distance and say, "Oh look at the photographs."

It's like, "No, no, these are not photographs."

I think they get impressed by the fact that someone can actually do that.

I have heard some artists who see it, say, "Well, that's really neat but it's not for me."

And that's true, you know, it's not gonna be for everyone.

But if you like drawing, if you like animal art, if you like shadows and values, rich contrasts of black to white, give it a try.

- [Bhatia] In Geauga County, the historic hobby of collecting model trains is humming along like a Lionel Express.

On the next round of "Applause," travel to the Corner Field Model Railroad Museum and meet the family making it go.

Plus get to know the French-born designer behind OCN Jewelry located in Cleveland's Detroit-Shoreway neighborhood.

And enjoy Americana from Akron in honor of the Shootouts debut at the Grand Ole Opry.

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

- ♪ I went to the kitchen closet ♪ ♪ Reached in for my broom ♪ ♪ Thought I ought to do something to straighten up my room ♪ ♪ Summoned up some courage, right down to my last ounce ♪ ♪ If it up and kills me, I'm gonna clean this house ♪ - [Bhatia] A vibrant and diverse group of artists is breathing new life into Zanesville's downtown district.

One of the creative forces behind the artist colony of Zanesville, or ArtCOZ, is painter and mixed media artist Paul Emory.

(pulsating music) - [Paul] The artists that I love the most are the impressionists and the German expressionists.

So that's one of my inspirations, and I'm somewhere between that and representational painting, and I think it fits real well with my subject matter, because people can identify with it and they don't feel like it's outside of their realm of understanding.

(pulsating music) A lot of it I paint from life, like landscapes and rural things like that, but also anything that I find interesting that might make a good painting, you know, an experience or an event.

Something that I see in the street, I might pull the car over, do a little sketch real quick to remember it by, bring it to the studio and blow it up on a canvas.

(pulsating music) When I was in undergraduate school I made a lot of collages and constructions, mostly cubist collages from the Cubist period.

And then when I went to grad school I met a painter that did figurative painting, and I got excited about painting again.

So I started doing figurative paintings, and now I'm kind of heading back where I started with gluing down things again and making constructions and collages again in combination with paint.

And it's been really fun to explore the technique again.

(chill music) This photograph is where it started, from White Cottage where I grew up, and then I noticed I've been thinking about and taking drives to graveyards, and I decided, well, this would be a great graveyard, and I've had so much fun.

I mean, I've got paintbrushes.

(paintbrush thuds) I did have a paintbrush.

Just odds and ends, and it just seems interesting and poetic to me that the steps to the church, taking the steps as we do through life.

It's fun now, because I'm still not just totally non-objective.

I'm using figurative subject matter and gluing things into the painting, and it's making an interesting combination.

A lot of them now are about the problem of trash and plastics.

And I think it's fun as an artist and exciting to express problems we have that need to be dealt with, and we know we have 'em, but now with plastic and trash everywhere, I'm picking stuff up and thinking about my next piece and maybe making paintings out of trash completely in the future, chunks of plastic and anything I find on the street that can be worked in.

One thing I like about the area that I'm painting about, I know it so well, and you can see that in my work.

You can see the interstate that I painted here from one of the bridges.

You can see some of the farms, some of the people and some of the situations that I've experienced.

I am telling stories in my paintings, and of course I exaggerate to make 'em more interesting.

That's part of being an artist is the exaggeration for the emotional impact.

I've been here in Zanesville since about 1985, after I got out of grad school and out of the army, and I guess I got addicted to the old buildings here.

I had a studio down here and it's been torn down since.

But then I started buying buildings.

I just love putting old buildings together, and while I'm putting the buildings together, I'm working on paintings at the same time.

So, that's how it kind of evolved.

And then I started asking painter friends to come and join me, 'cause I felt like I was sort of alone here and I needed more help to save the buildings.

So eventually I started recruiting other artists that I met in schools.

And Mike Seiler is one of 'em, but there's a whole variety of painters here and sculptors, traditional, modern, postmodern.

So now we have quite a group and I'm really proud of it.

(pleasant guitar music) The support of each other is really great, the camaraderie and looking at each other's work and feeling good about rehabbing our downtown, because nobody else wanted it.

And it's beautiful that the artists always seem to come into a neighborhood like this, see the potential and imagine what it can be, and it all starts with imagination, and build it up to where it is now.

I think the people of Zanesville are very down to earth and very honest, and they seem to appreciate the artist colony, which I'm very happy about.

They don't reject it.

They fit right in and they have a good time here.

I think when they look at my work, they will identify some aspect of their own life that they relate to, and they'll ponder it and hopefully think about it more often and come back again and look again and still stay interested in it.

When you make a good painting that you think is good, it gives you a sense of purpose, and it makes you feel good about your destiny or what you're gonna do with yourself.

And then being in shows and having other artists like your work is very rewarding.

- [Bhatia] Okay, it's time to go.

I'm Ideastream Public Media's Kabir Bhatia, your humble host of "Applause."

We leave you with a performance by Cleveland's Baroque Orchestra, Apollo's Fire.

Recently Jeannette Sorrell's acclaimed group staged a wedding celebration with a twist of Jewish Klezmer music tossed in.

Here's Apollo's Fire with music from the program, "Traditional Ashkenazi Wedding Dances."

(dynamic orchestral 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 & Culture.