- [Announcer] Production of "Applause" on Idea Stream Public Media is made possible by funding by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.

(upbeat music) - [Kabir] Coming up, artistic expression in watercolor is good medicine in Wayne County.

Plus, an artist from Puerto Rico lends a helping hand to a clinic in Delaware, Ohio.

And Wish Queen shares a sunset performance from the rooftops of Cleveland's Battery Park.

Are you ready for another round of "Applause," my friends?

I'm Idea Stream Public Media's Kabir Bhatia, and you know I am.

(upbeat music) - Moving from Maryland to Ohio was hard on Emily Nulph's mental health journey, but she found a road to recovery by attending art classes at the MOCA House, a program in Worcester through the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

It's bringing healing to people through watercolor.

(soft mellow music) - Art is a way of expressing ourselves.

Sometimes, it comes out a little different than what we think, but then it's like we're looking at it abstract, and we can see something in that.

That's what art is, experiencing your talent and getting things out that are bothering you.

My husband's always very surprised when I come home with something.

"Look what I made today, look what we did."

And he knows that I'm happy here.

I'm very happy here.

You know, at one time before I came here, I would've been afraid for anybody to know I had a mental problem or bipolar.

But today, I think people are realizing there is hope and it's nothing to be ashamed of.

I didn't ask for it, but I'm dealing with it.

And I'm dealing it through MOCA.

(soft mellow music) - MOCA House is the place where people who are working on their mental health recovery come to have social opportunities, activities, to work on life skills, and so one of those life skills that we encourage is art.

In that art program, people can express the feelings of depression they may have or the anxiety symptoms that they have, and they can get encouragement from each other through the art process.

- I came in one day when they were having art.

And at the time, I can do art by myself, but I was having a problem in a group setting.

But Jackie put me on a little table by myself, and, eventually, now I'm sitting right with everybody else.

- When Emily first started, she came in, and she was very tearful, very depressed.

And she moved here from another state, and she really didn't have anyone.

She didn't have any friends here.

- I mean, it was a big move, Maryland to here.

And I left my, I'm a breast cancer survivor.

I was in a group with breast cancer people.

I didn't have that here at the time, and I just felt totally lost when I got here.

- Sometimes, you know, we don't know what's going on in somebody's life before they come to art class, right?

- Right, right.

- Right.

What is water color?

It's paint and water.

And you've gotta get that paint to move to make it work.

Okay?

I really believe in art therapy, even though I am not a trained art therapist.

But I see when people are doing art, they lose themselves in it.

I like to say your soul.

And lots of times, some of the trauma that's going on in your life gets swallowed up in your art.

So, art here can be beautiful, but it can also show some other aspects of our lives that are going on.

We're just gonna close our eyes.

Put your feet flat on the floor.

Make sure your rear end is flat on the seat of the chair.

And then, remember what we do?

We take some deep breaths.

And a way to remember the kind of breath we wanna do is we breathe in through our nose like we're smelling a rose.

(Connie inhales) And then we breathe out.

(Connie blows out) - [Emily] If I have anxiety, I know to deep breathe.

I know to meditate.

They give us tools here.

It's like a toolbox we have.

And we just open this toolbox up and get it out.

And it helps us.

It reminds us we do have the tools, we just have to use them.

This place makes me feel happy, and I'm not lost anymore.

(hopeful music) - [Kabir] Hey, we're looking for ideas about all arts and culture great and small in Northeast Ohio, so if you've got an idea to share with the IdeaStream Arts team, send an email to arts@ideastream.org.

- [Kabir] Recently, we learned how grand church organs are built with a story on the Schantz Organ Company in Orrville.

Now let's head to Dayton to see how organs like these actually work when played inside a church.

Since 1963, the Casavant pipe organ has delighted the parishioners of Westminster Presbyterian in downtown Dayton.

Dan Nachtrab of "Think TV" shares the story.

- [Dan] Located on the corner of Wilkinson and First Street, Westminster Presbyterian Church is home to a unique part of Dayton history.

The Casavant Organ, known for its array of sounds, colors, and pitches, is the largest remaining pipe organ in the city and is deeply rooted in the church's musical history.

- The first organ was put in in 1926.

It was an E.M. Skinner organ of about 3,000 pipes.

It lasted until 1962.

It was evidently a very encased organ.

The sound did not get out well into this large room, and they made the decision to completely buy a new organ.

Casavant has always been, through the years, one of the top organs built.

There are lots of builders who make beautiful instruments.

At the time they purchased this Casavant organ, they looked into other companies and they just felt that this was the best made at the time.

- [Dan] Robert M. Stouffer, Westminster's organist and choir master at the time, traveled to the Casavant factory in Quebec.

Working closely with the company, Mr. Stouffer auditioned the organ, making sure everything met the church's specifications before it was shipped to Dayton.

- [John] And so the organ was installed in 1962, dedicated in January of 1963.

It's comprised of two organs.

The chancellor organ, which is up front in the choir loft.

That's the main organ of four keyboards for the hands, one for the feet and then one keyboard back in the balcony, or the gallery as we call it.

Two keyboards for the hands and then a pedal board for your feet.

And all the pipes, front and back, can be played from up front.

But back in the gallery, only the gallery organ can be played.

The first organ had 3,000 pipes, the Casavant, 7,000 pipes.

- [Technician] This is one of the original stops from the original organ.

- They're arranged in what you call ranks.

A rank is a set of pipes that has a particular sound, particular color, particular pitch.

And they're arranged in 122 ranks in this organ.

The most unique feature of it would be its size.

And to be able to have the variety of sounds, soft and loud and really loud sometimes.

You actually make an organ sound by piling pitch upon pitch.

Eight-foot pitch, which means that the pipe is going to be eight foot in length, makes the same pitch as if you went to play the same note on the piano.

Four-foot pitch, playing the very same note, automatically plays it an octave higher.

Two-foot pitch, two octaves higher, and so forth.

There are 220 stop knobs that one uses to pull out to make sounds.

There are then buttons that can be preset with those knobs, so the organist can readily make a change quickly.

There are 32 notes that you play with your feet, usually the bass part, but not always.

Sometimes, there are higher pitches, and you play the tune with your feet.

The largest pipes are 32 feet long, and they're actually on their side in a chamber.

And the smallest pipe would be the size of your pinky.

There's a great big fan, or a great big blower, in the front in a room that receives filtered air.

And there's also another fan, or blower, in the balcony in the gallery.

And that blower runs air through the lungs of the organ called reservoirs.

And then the air is up underneath every single pipe of the organ.

And all you have to do is press a key, and there it is.

It plays.

The instrument has pipes that are cantilevered out into the choir loft, which makes the sound of the organ very clear and crisp.

And then there are shutters in rooms behind those cantilevered pipes.

And you can control expression with those by the means of a pedal that we use, the organist uses, that opens and closes shutters like you would open and close a venetian blind.

In 2002, a new console was placed in the choir loft.

And renovations have gone on for a long time with this instrument.

It's a large instrument and always in need of something.

We have capable organ technicians that are always on call and here frequently because, you know, the bigger the house you live in, the more you're gonna have go awry.

And the same thing goes with the organ.

Either in tuning or some mechanism isn't working quite right.

(note sounds) - [Technician] Okay.

- [Technician] You gotta lower it.

- [John] They tune it by changing the length of the pipe.

Certain pipes have a little collar at the top, and so they have a mechanism they use to make the collar go up or down, and they tune it.

They have a beating reed inside the pipe, and there's a wire that is up against that reed, and they raise the wire up or down to tune.

Impact of the organ has on the church is extensive.

The people are delighted to have an organ that has substance to it, that has variety to it, and also an organ that will attract nationally-known organists to play.

And also we use our local organists to play noonday recitals in October and May.

So it's had a wide impact on this community and the church.

(whimsical music) - [Kabir] Troll dolls have entertained for generations.

And in Alliance, they've got a museum all their own.

On the next "Applause," step inside the Troll Hole Museum to meet the woman behind this Guinness world record-winning collection.

- [Museum Operator] Their ears changed a little bit.

- [Kabir] Plus, meet a Shaker Heights chef who's packing a chutney punch with the south Indian flavors of her homeland.

And enjoy a portrait of the late Cleveland artist, John W. Carlson, whose final series of paintings captured his passion for the blues.

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

(blues music) ♪ You know 'bout that blues, baby ♪ ♪ I got them old walkin' blues - [Kabir] you can watch past episodes of "Applause" with the PBS app.

Here's an inspiring story about a Delaware Ohio artist whose mission is to help others with his work.

Jeremy Rosario helps at a local health clinic.

He volunteered after Hurricane Maria.

And now he has a children's book to inspire young girls.

- Growing up in Puerto Rico, I was immersed in a really beautiful culture of people that are connected.

As a child I grew up in poverty, and I always found art as an escape to allow me to dream and create innovation and think different about everything that was in front of me.

Helping people in my artwork, it was fueled by a necessity to redefine art.

You know, art, it's all around us.

It's what we see, what we hear, what we taste, what we feel.

And yet when we can use those tools strategically, it can really help change behavior.

There's nothing more beautiful than to love people.

And the moment that you show genuine interest, magically people open up and they share their frustrations, their heartaches, their joys, and it becomes part of a conversation.

The Grace Clinic is an amazing medical ministry.

And as a platform, they're providing free medical help, as well as prescription medications, for people without insurance.

I volunteer there as a translator.

Sometimes, I joke about it, they're gonna fire me.

But you know, we're all volunteers.

Doctors are volunteers there, nurses.

And I think being an artist, I'm always inquisitive too.

I wanna learn more about you.

You know, I'm really interested about you, so tell me more about your life.

And you get to create relationships with a lot of those patients.

As I was engaging in conversation, I will ask the patients, "Hey, if today's the last day you see me, what words of advice or wisdom will you give me?"

Okay.

And their eyes were like, "Whoa, this is, I've never been asked that."

But here's why I wanted to do that.

I think that every human is so valuable.

And you know, when I was growing up, I remember some of the people that grew up near me.

Regardless if it was poverty or, or stress, they all understood the power of connecting.

And some of the most beautiful wisdom came from those who were hurting the most.

Not from a CEO, not from a thought leader.

Instead, the salt of the earth, these people that are just beautiful.

So I started this initiative.

I wanted to do paintings, oil paintings of a lot of these patients.

As I would talk to them, you know, they gave me some words of advice.

I would write it down in my sketchbook, take a picture, do a couple of sketches, and that became a body of work that was very moving for me personally as an artist.

The exhibit was really powerful because in the middle of the gallery, I had two chairs, and I had written, "Between these two chairs, share your most treasured advice."

And I didn't plan for this, but as people were visiting the exhibit, they were writing their own thoughts of advice and taping them all over the floor.

So in a matter of weeks, you know, the floor was covered with sticky notes and just beautiful messages of hope and messages of positivity.

(pensive music) I'm working on this really exciting project with my daughter that we call "ABCs of Encouragement for Girls."

It's a book that it helps to inspire and build up and edify young girls.

We're creating art through words, through illustrations, that are meant to encourage and help 'em feel secure.

And each page is gonna include just the right building block of a word that allows any caregiver to spend some time unpacking what that word means to them.

Since I'm always experimenting with things, I keep a sketchbook what I'm doing, doodles out of coffee.

And for the letter Q in the book, I wanted this idea of being quick, inspired by hurdles in track and field.

One thing that I'm inspired by, athletes who do hurdles.

Obviously, you gotta run real fast, jump, run real fast and do it again, right?

So the thought that there is space between hurdles, recover, plan and go again, I think it's a beautiful analogy for life.

And the message that I have in the illustration is, "Be quick to learn from yesterday and go forward tomorrow.

You got it."

I hope that it opens deep conversation about times in life when you encounter a roadblock and how do you get around that and jump over it, right?

I hope that this encourages kids to open up about the realities of what they're facing.

Why are they sad, and share their hearts out.

And hoping that we can change the generation.

I think it's our role to create escapes through art to help them transform their minds into a new beginning, a new hope of encouragement and purpose.

You can imagine.

I mean, 'cause we saw images here on TV of the devastation that Category 4 hurricane brought to the island.

I mean, like, my mom tells me when she opened the door after the hurricane, seeing hundreds of dead birds everywhere.

And like somebody had ran a giant lawnmower all over the island.

I mean, everything was down.

So I wanted to bring some help.

And the first thing that came to mind was creating a silk screen piece of art to raise funds to send supplies.

We were gathering boxes.

We were sending 'em to those locations.

And I had a couple of friends who will gather them and then go and deliver to houses.

The idea of getting myself out of my comfort zone to use the only tools that I have, which is art and thinking to try to mitigate that need.

It was beautiful just to see the results of it.

But soon this became a bigger initiative that I really wasn't expecting.

That was just phase one.

And the moment that things were moving good and people were getting what they needed, we decided to go down because, obviously, it was a crazy need that people had.

So I put together a group of volunteers from Ohio to go and rebuild roofs.

In Sonia's house, it was very evident how the cracks, in that town, the town of Humacao, it rains every day.

So water comes down, which is a fire hazard with, you know, the electrical.

So she was not turning her lights on and everything.

We knock on the door and told her, "You know, we're here from Ohio.

We wanna help, maybe work on your roof to seal it."

And her face, eyes open wide.

And she started crying, crying.

She said, "You don't understand that yesterday I lost my hope in God, and I've been crying every night, crying out, crying out, crying out" because of her circumstances.

And today, 12 strangers show up out of nowhere.

We found in the backyard a garden gnome, a Santa Claus garden gnome wearing a Hawaiian shirt.

And I have a painting of him holding the, we call it Nick 'cause Saint Nicholas, but wearing a Hawaiian shirt.

But in the execution of that oil painting, what you see is some monochromatic blue values behind the oil.

And it creates this really ethereal presence of the image.

And that was really meant to capture families lived for over a year under blue tarps.

So when you got into their spaces and see how they lived.

The inside of the home had this beautiful blue glow that me, as an artist, I was inspired by it.

But obviously people that, you're living in this condition, it's not favorable.

'Cause, you know, it doesn't really keep you out of the rain, you know.

They don't seal perfectly.

That painting I love because of the composition, and his chuck and the message of visual hope, actually, into the island.

And then seeing the blue around it, it's really powerful.

(pensive music) I think that my genuine passion and pursuit for people, I understand the power of the visual image, the power of color, the power of composition.

And a lot of times to really bring the right message to the heart of that person.

It may be a different media for different people.

It takes a little bit of courage as an artist because a lot of times I approach things, I have never done this particular media before.

A perfect example, I'm working on a really important art exhibit.

Probably a work that I'm extremely proud of.

But it involves gluing objects into a canvas.

And it's a different mind twist and exercise in my mind 'cause I'm gluing things down.

I'm analyzing shapes.

I'm analyzing values, stepping back and really thinking about is it the right placement to communicate the emotion.

So, it has been challenging for me, but I'm really happy with the result of where this body of work is heading.

We Puerto Ricans, we love people.

We love this experience.

And it doesn't mean that my life is perfect.

You know, we all struggle with, you know, the things of life, sickness and job loss, or you name it, you know.

They're all in there.

But if we move away from that and focus more in the emotional aspect of connecting with a greater humanity, we can make a better world.

That's at the heart of how I'd like to approach art through life.

'Cause it's a part of me.

If I don't do it, I won't be happy.

(bittersweet music) - [Kabir] In the middle of the pandemic, Grace Sullivan found her voice.

Now as Wish Queen, Sullivan is out playing for the public in places like Cleveland's Battery Park for this golden-hour concert overlooking Lake Erie.

Here she is with her new single, "Magic."

♪ All the things you said before ♪ ♪ About all the things you loved about me ♪ ♪ Add you to the broken list ♪ Of men who once adored me ♪ Now something in your eyes has changed ♪ ♪ The way you say you feel about me ♪ ♪ Can't accept this new arrangement ♪ ♪ I'm starting to panic ♪ You don't look at me like I'm magic anymore ♪ ♪ When did lovin' me become such an awful chore ♪ ♪ You don't look at me like I'm magic anymore ♪ ♪ But you said you always would, baby you swore ♪ ♪ All the dreams I held for us ♪ And all the dreams we shared together ♪ ♪ I remember when it felt like I was your queen ♪ ♪ We sit, we talk, the spark is gone ♪ ♪ You're cold now and you're so withdrawn ♪ ♪ I never thought you had it in you ♪ ♪ To be so mean ♪ You don't look at me like I'm magic anymore ♪ ♪ When did lovin' me become such an awful chore ♪ ♪ You don't look at me like I'm magic anymore ♪ ♪ But you said you always would, baby you swore ♪ ♪ I held the water ♪ It was clear and cool - [Kabir] For more on Wish Queen's story and new album "Saturnalia," listen to our podcast, "Shuffle," your backstage pass to northeast Ohio's independent music scene.

That's it for now, my friends.

I'm Idea Stream Public Media's Kabir Bhatia, reminding you there's always room for more "Applause" with the PBS app.

♪ You don't look at me like I'm destined to be yours ♪ ♪ You don't look at me like I'm magic anymore ♪ - [Announcer] Production of "Applause" on Idea Stream Public Media is made possible by funding by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.