Production of applause and ideastream.

Public media is made possible by funding by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.

Government Coming up, collectors from across the Buckeye State are united by a love of buttons.

A group of young artists takes a crack at America's pastime.

And the Cleveland Orchestra performs Tchaikovsky's joyous second Symphony Hello and welcome to another round of applause, my friends.

I'm your host.

Ideastream Public Media's Kabir Bhatia.

Coins, Stamps, sports memorabilia, antique cars, comic books.

People in Northeast Ohio and around the world collect all kinds of things.

But how about buttons?

These came free with my shirt.

Well, people do collect buttons and in the process have uncovered a world of history and art in miniature form.

Collectors from across Ohio gather in Sugar Creek, just south of Canton, for an annual show and competition where it's all about the buttons.

Welcome to the world of botany and I hope you enjoy it.

There's so much to this hobby.

It's fascinating.

I didn't know anything about it.

If I gave it a try and discovered it was actually a lot more than I a lot more interesting than I thought it would be.

You know, everybody has to like something.

I guess that's my thing.

But I really, really enjoy it.

It's button collecting is an unusual hobby.

My mother gave me a bag of buttons one night.

I jumped them out and just knew enough to know that I had some old ones.

It doesn't cost you a lot of money to collect clothing, but you can get them at flea markets, garage sales, estate sales.

You can.

You can find everywhere old family members.

And, you know, I went through everybody's button box.

A lot of us keep them in folders or in drawers or on shelves.

But I said to myself, I want to enjoy them every day.

And it's quite a conversation piece when someone comes over and says, What is that?

The tin of buttons when you're a kid playing with those.

And to me, when you go to the show, the beauty and the craftsmanship that is in these buttons, and then you can see the history of it, there's every kind of button you can think of that fits on a button as long as there has been buttons on clothing.

There has been, ladies and probably gentlemen to that collected them.

If for nothing more than to put in a tin and save them for when they needed them.

Collecting buttons is mostly women.

I'll just say that we won't go in the ages here.

And men, maybe 5% collect buttons.

But for some reason, I just.

You know, I'm an artsy kind of guy, so I. I like buttons.

I really like them.

I would guess there's probably 30 different materials or more that buttons have been made out of rubber metal, early plastics, celluloid, ivory, carved bone enamel, black glass, clear and colored glass, you name it.

It's been made.

This button is made in the probably 1800s.

It's hand-painted on ivory in the center, and it's a metal button and it's encrusted with all sorts of beautiful jewels.

These are China buttons and China buttons go all the way back to about 1840, and they don't make them much anymore.

It's very similar to Glass, the composition of the chemical composition is very similar.

They are so beautifully well done and artistic, and some of them may be our memories of people that lived.

Certainly when during the Civil War people had early tin type buttons made of their loved ones and they would wear it inside on a vest, wasn't convenient to carry a picture of someone.

This is an early tin type representation.

My favorite is the Black Glass Buttons and there are so many made because in England, France and the Americas began to produce a lot of black glass.

It was after Prince Albert died and Queen Victoria went into mourning.

In 1861, she had jet buttons made of a hard anthracite coal, so she wore black the rest of her life till she died in 1901.

So the commoners all were to wear black, but they could not afford jet buttons, so they began to manufacture the black buttons.

There was so much black glass produced that it is economical to purchase.

I collect a little bit of everything.

Goodyear Rubber Buttons.

I have a large collection of Goodyear rubber buttons, so Goodyear never made buttons, but he owned the patent for vulcanized rubber and so they had to put that pattern on and those were hand stamped.

So there's errors.

So I collect those errors because they're rare and they're hard to find.

And this one here is one of my favorites.

So those black marks were hand stamped.

And this one, they actually left out and oh, it says God here and there's no space in between that.

So that is a hard to find button.

It's probably one of my favorite Goodyear buttons.

Welcome to the showroom.

We call it the showroom because it shows two things that are very near to our heart.

Buttons that are yes, for sale and competition trays that have been judge and are hung for all to see and study by about half of the collectors don't compete in our club.

They just love buttons and they collect them.

And you know, they make their own do their own thing with them.

But I am drawn to the competitive thing.

I'm kind of a competitive person, so I like to compete.

We can divide buttons into animals, plants, objects, people and other things.

Or we could say any topic that you'd like, anything if you collect roses.

We have buttons about roses and they're gorgeous.

So any topic but controlled by size.

Got to get that right.

We have a judging sheet, so the first thing will be the focus of the tray.

So if it's horses, a sort of material, the first thing you would judge it on is the horses.

Again, if you can tell different breeds of horses too, then you're going to go through and count the number of different materials, other material, embellishment.

There's just a lot of things involved in the judging.

So and we had 151 trays entered this time.

These lovely flowers all got nice, nice, nice ribbons, but these did not get ribbons, but they got something even more wonderful.

They got good notes on why they didn't get a ribbon, how they can improve their tray for next time.

And that's just priceless.

All the dealers are very, very excited to help you.

And if you know the first question they ask you when you go up to a table is, so what's your interest?

What are you looking for?

And then they're pulling stuff out, showing you, you know, they just they're so knowledgeable.

And these are these are my best friends.

It's almost 20 years now that I've been going to meetings and, you know, I wouldn't have kept going back if it wasn't that community feeling, family, friends.

There are so many things happening in the arts and culture community in our region.

It's almost like you need a to do list.

Well, lucky for you, we make one and it's free.

It's called the to Do List, and it's filled each week with local events like button shows for you to enjoy.

It also spotlights regional artists and gets you up to date on the local arts news.

Sign up online at arts dot ideastream dot org and thanks.

What are local art students doing out on a baseball diamond in Lake County?

Maybe a friendly pick up game.

Maybe they're painting the bass lines.

Actually, the Lake County captains are a minor league baseball team, and they've got major plans when it comes to giving opportunity to young artists.

But they aren't playing baseball.

During the last few seasons, the captains have hired students and graduates of the Cleveland Institute of Art to celebrate America's pastime in a different way.

I think one of the things that's so great about minor league baseball is you get to really experience a local culture in ways that you ordinarily wouldn't get to do.

And bring them all together in a baseball park.

I think sports is a great form of storytelling.

There's always an arc with every game.

I think that lends itself to art and illustration really well.

I think bringing art and sports together is very important.

People don't see how much art is interconnected.

Like, you know, the logos in our are mascots, in our merchandise, in our stadium.

Like it's all over.

So we're the high end affiliate of the Guardians.

They handle all the players and everything.

It goes on the field and we handle everything that happens off the field.

Lake County was a really, really great opportunity.

The Guardians are a tremendous organization and we've been so proud to be associated with them.

In the last two years.

We've really been working with a lot of local artists and trying to build up a whole different elements to Captain's Games that maybe weren't present before.

We came in last year and started working with all the local artists.

A lot of the younger artists as well who are still in art school have been really, really excited about the artists and finding a lot of really great gems and brilliant artists in this area.

When I heard from the Lake County captains that they were looking for local artists, I actually heard from a few other friends at CIA that also got the email.

It felt kind of random to me.

I remember I was like sitting in school and I got an email.

At first I was like, Is this a scam?

I don't know what it is.

We looked more into the Lake County captains because they're were like, Oh, isn't this the local baseball?

Like the minor league team?

I talked to a friend who had done the art program before and we're really excited that they actually reached out to us like seniors in college for a professional gig.

I decided to do it.

I was really excited about it.

It was my first opportunity of like working with somebody to create something.

I felt really validating that they chose us to do merchandise to be sold in their stores.

This is my first time doing any sort of freelance work and it was really great to figure out how that works, and especially not being somebody who's too into sports, doing more research with that and figuring out how to make something that is very much me, but also represents something else too.

I graduated CIA in 2023.

I studied illustration.

I just graduated from CIA.

I was an illustration student.

I'm really interested in product and packaging design.

I didn't watch a lot of baseball, but I did play a lot of softball since I was in third grade, I think.

I've never been a sports person.

I went to a spring training game.

I went there thinking, Oh, I'm going to be bored this whole time.

It's not going to be fun.

I'm just going to go to be with family or whatever.

And then I ended up having like a really good time.

It was great.

Posters and artwork makes a game, an event, and we want every day in Lake County captains to be a vet.

We give the artists all the same grief and we tell them we want you to express yourself.

We want you to tell us what's great.

We want you to develop these pieces.

They just wanted me to choose one of the other teams celebrating the game, celebrating like the vibe of what a game is.

It was very open ended.

I like this guy Carps from Wisconsin because their mascot was a goose, but their name isn't directly geese.

I think it was really creative, so I wanted to include them in the poster as well with the captain as a battle poster.

So designing this guy card, I wanted to include its wings so it looked like it was in action.

Ready to go.

Since I know how to play softball, I could make my own reference poses for the captain with this batting eye here, and it kind of looks like he's going to hit the Yankees, but he's ready to battle back, you know?

I looked at a lot of, like, pictures of mascots and they just, like, made me really happy.

I did a lot of like, doodles in my sketchbook of them.

I think I was just looking through and seeing which team seemed to have, like, the most fun name, honestly.

Loons are really cool to me.

I think they're really interesting with their like, right eyes, so but that would be cool to capture.

So I came up with the concept of the mascot for the Lake County captain's sitting next to the loons from the Great Lake.

Loons like Balloon is looking kind of sad because there's a home run hanging by from the captain's and the mascot from the captain's is like, really excited about it.

I'm impressed that these are students.

The one that makes me giggle the most is the one that has the captain who looks like he's in a all time bathing suit.

I love the waves and the monster that it's getting split here.

I love that one.

We want to use this to showcase these great artists.

And if we can give them a leg up, if this can be an opportunity where someone else sees their work and gives them a great opportunity, that's our goal.

I've always been taught that, like you need to send out a bunch of cold emails and really market yourself to be like good as an artist.

And so to have somebody reach out to me and like see my work and want to work with me for something was really important.

I was really excited to add it to my portfolio because it gave me a chance to be like, Oh, I can do some vector art, I can do some poster designs, I can make T-shirts.

So it gave me like a chance to have not only like different mediums but also different applied arts.

It was also my first freelance opportunity, so that meant a lot to me to really start getting out there and doing work for clients.

I've had some employers and clients ask about this project since it was actually used in stores for merchandise that people purchased.

I think it was one of the things that made American Greetings.

Look at me for my internship there.

It was definitely a great opportunity.

Those are really fun projects.

Knowing that this is a vehicle that students can use to get it exposed their their craft elsewhere is quite an opportunity.

I think that that's a great thing that they've partnered up like that.

I hope we continue.

We want to build art into the stadium, into our program and our team.

We have plans to create murals throughout the stadium, so we are here as a resource for artists to be able to expand and we hope that they come to us and we'll continue to outreach to them and we'll build this into something very special.

The Lake County captains won the 2024 Midwest League Championship and play at Classic Park in East Lake.

For many artists, a specific life experience can be a catalyst that inspires new work.

Maybe it's a trip overseas or the flight of a bird.

It could be anything for Columbus artist Christine Pedro Abbott.

It was the simple act of cleaning someone's home and the birth of a child that started her on a journey of creating art that celebrates the importance of community.

As an artist, I really consider myself a maker.

I'm always making things so even when I'm not in the studio, I'm patching jeans or I'm making a card to give to somebody.

I just I never not wake up in the morning and just want to work with materials and make things.

And so for me, that's how I kind of connect to people and move through the world and think about my role in the world.

I am a multimedia artist, primarily printmaking, and I've been working with imagery of interior scenes for over ten years.

So the artwork started after an experience cleaning another couple's home, and I was in their space kind of over and over and over again and part of both kind of the caring for their caring for them through caring for their space and just visually seeing it over and over and over again.

It just came out in the work.

I explored other motifs, but I returned to that imagery when I had really my second son.

So at that point I was a little bit more ready to do a deep dive in the studio.

After the first kid, you get a new identity, the second kid you just give yourself away to it.

And so that's about the same time I started working at Phenix Rising Printmaking.

I found a really supportive community there.

A lot of other artists, moms who just understood where I was at and was very supportive, and it just was really a natural thinking of imagery and just the practicality of working in a printmaking studio.

So printmaking, by its nature, repetition is a big part of that and you can do a lot of preparation at home, but the printing aspect typically happens at a print shop.

It's a more communal way of making work.

And so between kind of the supportive community and then I was in my same space over and over and over again.

So it made sense to use repeated imagery to kind of describe this experience, because I include collage with the printmaking allows me to work in my home studio and at Phenix and not be too rigid about the process.

I almost feel like there's a compost part of it where I'll work on something and maybe it's not a resolved piece in itself.

I just throw it in the band of of creative compost and then I always have something I can pull out and respond to as well.

And that's a way for me to I know I continue to reuse materials and then also relates to the way that I prepare to print.

So I actually am currently working a lot with just recycled materials, a.k.a.

trash.

I feel that just as much as it's kind of feels very natural as an artist to kind of see my everyday world in a from that perspective.

I said that way, but why should I have to kind of reach so far with materials?

So I kind of feel like I can express some of that perspective with with the materials.

That said, I work with kind of most high end fine art, paper and inks.

I'm not making trash to make trash.

They are just part of the process.

And another reason why I like to work with recycled materials and I encourage students to I work with students.

So I spend a lot of energy thinking about the creative process and encouraging other people engage in it is because you owe it nothing.

So you you I feel like you just like psychologically just feel the freedom to experiment with it.

With the collage, you just cut it off if you don't like it.

This allows me to be present and I'm kind of my season of life is to not be so tied to a very prescriptive way of working.

I think as an artist that you don't have to look very far for inspiration.

I think seeing your experiences through the perspective of an artist really brings them to life and they really are a way to connect with other people.

The experience of being at home with young children is not unique to me at all.

And so and of course with COVID just being at home, period.

So kind of and what an interior space means kind of between public and private, inside and outside.

And I also on top of that, kind of see a metaphor, just the metaphor of a window as a very kind of timeless metaphor, especially when you work two dimensionally.

So that's a way of framing things just in pictorial space.

So there's a lot of just really straightforward overlap there, but also the metaphor of a worldview kind of your land sitting up in the world.

So in my work, I want to continue moving forward to really manipulate where the viewer feels, whether they're on the inside looking out or on out looking in, and really think about how often porous that is and how that relates to community and kind of the way that we relate to the world outside of us.

And again, for me, it's not an answerable question.

I just I have that for that to be the case.

I have been living in the same house for over ten years now, and I feel that much more engaged in our neighborhood.

So when I walk in our neighborhood, these are friends of mine, so or the house, even if I don't know who lives in there.

That neighborhood we live is pretty tight knit.

It's likely that I'll know someone who knows someone there.

And so that really influences the way I think about neighborhood as a person of faith.

Like, I really also think about it just conceptually, much more broadly, much more broadly than kind of the people who live near me or the people that look like me or have a similar perspective to me.

And so for me and my work as a way for me to just be curious, I really think I don't think I've come to a place where I have answers.

I think we're at a place culturally with so many kind of tectonic shifts.

The idea that I could answer a neighbor who is my neighbor, I think that's actually a really good question.

I don't think that's a question that's like really truly answerable.

And in the nature of that, that's really rich creatively.

So yeah, so that's kind of what informs my work in the direction that I'm going in.

On the next applause, meet an artist who is celebrating 45 years as a dancer in a wheelchair.

Mary Verde Fletcher proved the doctors wrong when she was a child.

And decades later, her dance company is doing the same When we set foot or wheel on stage and we work together, people are seeing ability everywhere.

right along with dancing wheels during a recent rehearsal that will leave you breathless.

Plus, an incredible concert combining Afro futurist funk with some serious classical chops.

All that and more in the next round of applause homey clothes and keep me warm.

I've had enough of you right there watching me is what I do know is I'm so glad we've had this time together.

Thanks for watching this round of applause.

I'm Ideastream Public Media's Kabir Bhatia inviting you to stick around for this joyful performance by the Cleveland Orchestra, which can be found on its Adella app.

This is Tchaikovsky's ode to his home away from home.

It's a second symphony known as the Ukrainian Production of Applause on Ideastream.

Public media is made possible by funding by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.