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.

Coming up, it's time to celebrate the 2023 winners of Cleveland's prestigious literary prize, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards.

Plus, prepare to meet the glass artist who creates the awards, Earl James.

And then let's delight to a beautiful bossa nova from Brazil, performed by Les Delices.

It's all about arts and culture, my friends.

Whenever you tune in for applause and I'm your host ideastream, Public Media's Kabir Bhatia.

The Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, honor authors, scholars and poets who dedicate their craft to stories of race and diversity.

The Cleveland based Prize was created in 1935 by Edith Anisfield Wolf to celebrate her family's commitment to social justice.

Today, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards are internationally renowned, featuring a who's who of literary giants.

Let's celebrate this year's winners with idea stream's Gabriel Kramer.

Saeed Jones grew up in the American South and cut his teeth in New York.

But this year's winner for poetry wrote his latest collection, living in Columbus, Ohio, Alive at the End of the World, captures the constant thought process of a queer black man in America, a society that will simultaneously celebrate and brutalize black art.

It's just hard enough to deal with, let's say, your personal grief or heartbreak.

But in addition to all of that, you know, whether it's state violence, climate change, white supremacy, white nationalist violence, violence against queer people, all of that's happening at the same time.

And but it also we can't turn society on and off and say, I need a moment to process my personal feelings.

Can white supremacy, like give me a day off, please?

Lan Samantha Chang is one of two fiction winners this year.

Chang is a midwesterner through and through, growing up in Wisconsin and now working as the director of the University of Iowa Writers Workshop, one of the most prestigious graduate level English programs in the country.

Her novel, The Family Chao, is a murder mystery centered around a Chinese-American family that becomes subjected to a stereotyped gaze by locals in their Wisconsin and small town.

Two parents, three sons, and each of them is wildly different.

I think that one of the things that was interesting to me about growing up in a family of four same sex siblings, I have three sisters was the way that each of us was so extremely different.

And I think I had that in mind when I wrote about the Chao brothers.

Each of them has experienced a different stage of their parents Americanization.

The history of World War Two may be common knowledge to many Americans, but what commonly gets lost is the story of the black Americans who fought in the war.

This year's nonfiction winner is Dartmouth historian Matthew F Delmont for his history book titled Half American.

As Delmont explains, Black Americans were vital to victory in World War Two because.

For African-Americans, they understood That the rise of fascism was not just a problem that was going to confront Europe.

It was really a national and international problem.

And it.

Was an active debate going on in the start of the war.

Whether black people should choose to fight this war.

Because they recognized the hypocrisy.

They recognized that the United States was.

Claiming to fight this war for freedom, democracy, while still having the segregated army, was still condoning.

Its kind of Jim Crow segregation and racism all across the country.

The next fiction honoree is Geraldine Brooks, a longtime journalist who stumbled upon the fascinating story of one of the most dominant racehorses in the history of the sport.

Lexington, whose success is due to the enslaved black Americans who groomed him in the simply titled Horse, Brooks paired her journalistic curiosity with her love of horses to put together a drama filled story rooted in historical fact.

The spine of the story is the story of the horse in the 1850s, because once I knew how absolutely integral to this massive national passion these Black horsemen were, and how much the wealth and prestige of the white thoroughbred owners rested on their plundered labor and expertize.

There was no honorable way not to foreground that story.

Lifetime Achievement Award winner Charlayne Hunter Gault is also a career journalist.

Her resume includes CNN, The New York Times and PBS.

She dedicated her career to telling the stories of black communities across the globe, stories that media outlets too often neglect.

Before becoming a world renowned reporter, Hunter-Gault desegregated the University of Georgia alongside her high school classmate, Hamilton Holmes.

The two of them became UGA's first black graduates in 1963.

Hunter-Gault will proudly tell you that she's a wife and a mother, but she'll be too modest to tell you the title so many others have for her a civil rights icon.

You know, when I hear that there are.

Younger.

Journalists who are looking.

At the work that I've done, and in a sense, maybe I can use the word inspired by it.

I'm honored.

At the same time, I'm impressed with what so many of them are doing.

The thing that helps me the most keep on keeping on is that there is a younger generation that's coming after me.

Coming up in a few months.

Ideastream Public Media will broadcast a special about the 2023 Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards going even more in-depth with the writers.

The way Earl James layers liquid glass on the end of a hot pipe is an art form in itself.

For the past three years, he's created one of a kind glass sculptures presented to recipients of Cleveland's Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards.

On a recent 90 degree day, James stood in front of a hot furnace and shared his process for creating his striking art.

So first thing is, we put a pipe up to get it nice and warm.

So there's the pipe warmer there.

This is the glory hole here, which is where we do all the reheating.

Once the pipes are ready, we'll go to the furnace and we'll gather glass from there.

The temperature in the furnace is somewhere around, I think 1900.

In 1950.

This is my third year of making the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards.

It's fun, but it's also a little bit... you want to impress, you know?

And I try to do my best to make something of what they're asking for.

And there's recognition that the writers are getting and and this is a gift, just as a reminder, I think, of what they're offering.

So I try not to make some big impressive thing or something too small, but just something that you can put on a shelf but they can also see it as an art piece.

As much as I may engrave something on it, I'd still like it to have something that's attractive to look at.

So that's how I approach it.

And one thing that was mentioned was a little reflection of the cover image or the color on the cover, which makes sense, you know, so I took it and ran with it.

We'll look inside the book too, and try to find something that speaks to us and say, All right, we'll hit the book cover idea with color and maybe some patterns, but then what else is there that may give it a little bit of a little bit of us.

You know, I mean, it's my design, it's my look.

But still, what I take away from the book a little bit, I hope somebody can see that.

And in what I put into the piece.

Color has always been important and I felt good about color and glass, which is color and light really brings it to life.

It was easy to do it, but if I had to paint something, it turns gray so I can't paint.

But I can make it work in my opinion.

And my glasswork.

And so I've become more enamored with more forms and simpler lines, not as decorative as surface, and start to put the colors on now.

So a lot of pieces I started out with a white base.

It's almost like a canvas to work on.

So a lot of the colors will pop against it and then we'll spackle, put a little bit of this and that to give it some depth.

So that's what all these splotches of colors are.

Like the book horse, a lot of it the the face cover is sort of a salmon color on the face with a lot of pastoral feel to me when I when I see it.

And so that's what we're going to be trying to make this time, the one that sort of reflects that book.

I feel really good about it.

And I've seen when they receive their gifts, it's almost like they weren't expecting to get something in addition to their speeches.

They may already and it's on the table.

So but it's always something that they're holding and that's something I made.

And so that part reflects first, I mean, that and that person, you know, is holding it.

All right, let's find our pull it down so we can find our spots.

So we'll look for a presentation, face.

We'll flatten opposite that face so that what you're looking at is the side, which is so we'll need to cool it down enough to see the colors always look so nice when it's all this orange red glow almost there.

I think we're good.

A little more.

I was born in Jamaica.

I was about ten years old when we moved here from Rochester, New York.

And that's where I grew up.

How I got here, so I went to school at the Cleveland Institute of Art glass was my major with a minor in sculpture.

It was different.

I had never seen glass before, and I saw them making glass.

And then I thought, that is the most amazing thing.

It's it's one of those things that kind of gets your heart racing when you see that fluidity and it's hot, it's almost like watching someone pour bronze or metal and it's just hot soup that will become something solid.

So it was taking that mass of product or thing and just not forcing it, but just coaxing it into something, you know?

And when they were blowing glass in the paper and the smoke and all that, that's just beautiful to watch.

I love the material.

I love the process.

I love the I love the making of it.

People say, you know, they look and it's like, oh, my God, it looks so difficult.

And there's something to be said about that.

But in all these craft, it's a skill.

There's a stillness to it, you know, that you learn it and you can keep learning it.

I just figured I'd be making work for till my time.

My days are done, you know, in some form or another.

An exhibition of Earl James' work in sculpture is on view now until October 20th.

At 60 Ball's Gallery in Cleveland's Kingstown neighborhood.

The Cleveland Public Library aims to be a community living room, which includes, of course, arts and culture.

On the next applause, we go inside the library's biggest art exhibit to date, a dazzling display featuring thousands of floating flowers.

Plus, we pull back the curtain on a scenic shop of epic proportions.

And jazz legend Wynton Marsalis composes a new concerto for The Cleveland Orchestra as principal trumpet Michael Sax.

All that and more on the next round of applause for.

Watch past episodes of applause on the PBS app and let's enjoy a splash of color as we travel to Columbus to meet another glass artist.

But Beth Himsworth's method of art making is quite different from what Earl James is up to.

Take a look and compare.

As I was living in South America for a long time, I would come home on different visits and my mother was making stained glass and she kept telling me, Oh, this is so much fun and you should do this.

And she made windows and lamps, and I just kept saying, Mom, no, I don't.

I don't follow patterns.

I don't measure anything.

There is nothing about stained glass that attracts me.

My husband died when we moved back here.

We went on a double date with some friends and we went to a place that did Glass Mosaic, which was really fun, except that it was with those little tiles.

And I made a tray and I took it and I showed it to my mom and I said, Here, look, I said, she goes, It would look a lot better if you made it of glass.

I said, Oh, you know, what would?

And so she gave me a box of glass, and I went down to my basement with a glass cutter and started building things up and started making mosaic out of it.

And it was just really fun.

I just became fascinated by the colors, the different different kinds of translucence and the incredible possibilities the glass has.

And then eventually I thought, well, I kind of I really like the mosaic.

I like working with glass, but I'd like to have it be a little more painterly.

I wanted the colors to kind of blend together better, and I didn't know how to do that with glass, so I started getting interested in the Fuzed glass, and with Fuzed glass I was able to overlap and interplay in ways that I hadn't been able to do before, but it still wasn't quite what I wanted.

And I kept experimenting and experimenting.

And then just by chance, I heard about a class by a guy who made the world's largest stained glass window at 4000 square feet at him.

KERRY And he is an amazing instructor, and he shows you how to make your own sheets of glass and how to get the colors to kind of meld together.

So I could add, you know, five, six, eight colors if I want a glass into a sheet.

And as it melts together, then with with Fred and I had little pieces of glass, it turns into something completely different.

And so with this whole body of work that we're looking at today has been made with that technique, when I try to explain to people that fuze glass is warm, glass is kind of hard to figure out.

Oh, they'll say, Did you blow this?

And so what's what's really important to know about glass is that this is cold glass.

It is.

It is worked cold.

It's put together cold.

And it always stays flat like that.

This is a piece that my mother made years ago.

And then Hot Glass is the typical thing you think of as being in a kiln, you know, with the blown glass and that kind of thing.

And it fire it.

It's really, really hot.

It's around 2200 degrees.

So what I do and fuze glass is called warm glass because my kiln only goes up to 1700 degrees Fahrenheit.

And so at warm glasses able to it doesn't it melts in terms of being like a really thick molasses type texture.

And so it can bend and move, but it doesn't become an actual liquid that you can blow as as in hot glass.

And so in order to make things that have that have these kind of characteristics with texture, I have to make a clay mold.

And with the clay mold, then I can lay this on, melt it together, and then I can make things out of it that I want to make.

And so I was talking before about this idea that I wanted to get more texture and more overlap into my glass.

And this is sort of an early attempt at that with Fuzed Glass trying to get things on top of each other and things to mold together.

And it's so much easier now with the class that I've taken.

But this is was my first attempt at trying to figure out how to make glass a little more interactive with an overlapping with the different colors.

So this is warm glass, hot glass and cold glass.

Well, at the studios on High Gallery, we are the only artist owned and operated gallery in Short North.

And every month we have a different show in the front of our gallery.

So I happen to be the member who is doing a show in September.

It's called From the Earth.

And the reason it's called From the Earth is because we had to pick a title a year ago.

I had no idea what it's going to do, so I knew I wanted to experiment with some new things, but I didn't know how it was going to go.

So I thought that was generic enough to encompass what I really like to do is nature subjects and leaves and bamboo and things like that.

Having spent 18 years living in the tropics, I just love nature.

It's like when you live in a place where it's all around you, it becomes so much more a part of your life.

So living in Ohio, I happen to live in a good neighborhood that has lots of trees, but it's still not the same.

And I'm always like trying to recreate pieces that have that that kind of jungle feel to it.

Well, this I'm hoping that's going to be my favorite piece when it gets done.

I really, really love Monstera Leaves.

So this is sort of like inspired by the first project that I made with Two Leaves, and I'm trying to see if I can get it to work.

Okay.

With five now glass, when you put it in a kiln and it melts, it wants to level out.

Glass only wants to be this thick.

And unfortunately when you so when you pile up glass, it will just flow all over the place and drip off the sides so that it has to have dams.

So this these walls that I can structure around the piece and I and I line so that they won't stick to the dams.

These walls will help the glass to continue to stay in the same framework in order to keep this this leaf, this part of the leaf flowing into that part of the leaf, you have to put a space around it of the clear glass.

So the clear glass will then hold it in place.

So I have to put in a whole lot of different pieces in order to to make the shape that I'm looking for.

And then there are all these gaps.

So how are these gaps going to fill in?

Some of them will fill in, okay, just by melting.

But I want to make sure that especially in gaps from one leaf to another, that there's enough of a line there that you can tell which leaf is on top and so on.

So basically what I need to do is to take the glass frit that I made in my grinder and and then I have to brush it into the cracks.

So as I brush it into the cracks, then it kind of fills in, in places that where I want it to blend.

It looks pretty obvious like now that I have this brought them to the blocks, but once it's all melted together, you don't really see that much.

So I have to check it one last time, make sure there's nothing more I need to do, and then just close it and we'll find out in about 30 hours if it came out the way we wanted it to.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

So far so good.

Well, it all came together pretty well.

Now I just need a piece of glass as a scraper.

I'll get some of this paper off, and then the next step is it's going in my sink to get a bath and get the rest of this off.

And then we'll see how it turned out.

It's kind of heavy now.

You can't see the top very well because it's in the shadows.

It will be a little bit brighter than that.

And this is a piece that's intended to be front lit.

So it under a spotlight.

I think it'll pop out pretty well.

I see people standing just kind of staring and they look at how the pieces come together and they look at the negative space and the positive space.

And sometimes I've had art glass artists come in and they'll look at a really long, slender piece of glass, and they'll be like, How did you got that?

I don't know.

You know?

And it's because I practice with a different kind of technique than they're probably using.

And part of it for me is not being a classically or academically trained artist.

I don't have the limitations of this is how it's supposed to be and this is what you can't do and this is what you can do.

So I'm always experimenting and playing around and then hopefully I can come up with some things that are are kind of unique in that way.

I hope that it encourages them somehow.

I hope that they look at it.

I hope that they feel a sense of, Oh, yeah, this is cool.

This is this is like life.

And this is something that that kind of makes my day feel a little bit better.

I really feel like it's a part of our humanity to be engaged with with nature.

It's part of who we are.

And when we live these these busy urban lives, we get disconnected from that.

So I really feel that through art, we can get a little bit better connected and begin to just appreciate a little bit more of the world that we live in.

This vibrant edition of Applause is coming to an end.

My friends.

I'm ideastream Public Media's Kabir Bhatia, But before we exit stage right, let's bask in a bossa nova from the 1959 film Black Orpheus, performed by Cleveland's acclaimed classical troupe, Les Delices From the concert "Torch Songs Transform."

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.