- [Narrator] Production of "Applause" on Ideastream Public Media is made possible by funding by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts & Culture.

- [Kabir] Coming up, a Cleveland Heights artist weaves her life into art one strip of paper at a time.

The scenic designer at Bowling Green State University takes us on a backstage tour.

(soft music) And a jazz master performs with one of his top students at the Tri-C JazzFest.

(upbeat music) Hello and welcome to another round of "Applause."

I'm Ideastream Public Media's Kabir Bhatia.

Cleveland Heights resident, Lauren McKenzie, creates art as Lauren Pearce and pours herself into her vibrant mixed media figures.

She has developed an art making process that supports her creativity and her health.

(soft music) (paper rustling) - Being a young black mom ,and then being on my own, and a single mom, I think it has forced me to like really, really get to know myself and a lot of the times that takes place when I'm in my studio, forcing myself to see myself, just naturally progressed through my work.

This kind of series started in 2022.

I lived in Arizona for a year, the hardest, best year of my life so far.

And it was honestly that time there being completely alone and with myself that I was able to hear myself really for the first time.

That's also where I found out I was autistic.

I love nature.

There is something so healing about being outside.

I love it.

It is where I feel like I completely unmask and I think in the process of being in nature, and allowing myself the space to unmask it was like something exploded from me.

And then I thought about just myself as I'm healing and unmasking.

I'm thinking about the younger version of myself.

I wanted to be a fashion designer.

I grew up with my grandmother buying paper dolls every year, and I'm like, "Oh, what if I make a paper doll series, but incorporate my love for nature in that thing?"

So I think this honors the little girl in me, especially not knowing then that I was autistic and incorporating all those different things.

And what I love about this series specifically is that it takes so long for me to create.

It is forcing me to slow down, to be more intentional about my practice, which I really, really love.

I avoid burnout in that way because the goal is, yes, I love making money, who doesn't?

Pay their bills.

But, really, this series just honors the thing that I've always been trying to do, and it forces me to pay attention to each step of the process and to also enjoy the process of creating.

I think that we have this need, especially as black artists, and especially since George Floyd to shell things out.

It's all about production.

Everything needs to be moving fast instead of it being about the quality of the work, and what the work is actually trying to say.

So yeah, the series very much honors the young me, being able to feel pride, and myself, and how I look is super important.

And growing up being a young black girl, getting these paper dolls that they never looked like me, and thinking about those, and although, my grandmother loved me and the gesture was very kind, there's a lack of like seeing me, and I think that that's really important that now I get to see my full self, and celebrate my full self in a way that I didn't get to as a little girl.

(soft music) The work that I'm working on right now with the paper series, it's all inspired by bugs, and it's a collaboration with my niece Avile, who is 11, and very much my little mini me.

So I sent her pieces of the bugs that I wanted to do.

Then she created her design of the thing and then I took her design and then did my own interpretation of it, sketched it out.

And then the next step is literally taking pieces of paper that I'm creating abstract textiles of you know.

It's random, it's which I love, because it's taking figurative work, and my love for abstract work, and fashion, the textile work and creating this overall thing.

So, right now, it's bugs, which is still from nature, but it's an emphasis on like transformation and metamorphosis of evolving as a woman.

It's very time consuming.

After I do the abstract textile portion of it, then I'll go and do the figurative portion of it.

Then once that's dry and complete, that gets cut out, that gets mounted, and then the background comes, and the hair comes, and the hair is super important to me, and working on trying to create more texture because texture is very important to my community, especially when it comes to hair.

It's constantly evolving, which is what I love too.

I feel like this is also the first series that I have not gotten bored with, which is interesting because it takes so long to make each piece.

There's reds, there's turquoises and oranges.

There's one that's gonna be oranges, and creams, and browns.

This one will be black, and orange, and cream.

I tried to keep it in a similar family, so at least there was some fluidity through it.

But yes, this is the brightest that I've done in a while, 'cause most of the work has been in the more like mountain desert tone kind of range.

I have so many ideas.

I want to mess with metal work and sculpture work big time.

But I also want to make these pieces into like real clothing designs and have a runway show, that has been on my bucket list for sure.

But I also want to create paper pieces that are three dimensional with this, with sculpture busts.

So I wanna do more play.

I'm trying to play.

I do think that this thing saves my life every single day.

I can always tell if I am not in the studio, there's something off with me.

There's a disconnect that's happening.

I will feel really, really dry if I spend too much time outside of the studio.

So being in here every single day, it's a remedy for me.

- Lauren Pearce's latest work is now showing in a group exhibit at Buffalo AKG Art Museum.

She has a gallery show in Chicago in March, and you'll find her in northeast Ohio in her new space at 78th Street Studios in Cleveland.

Who doesn't love a good idea?

Have you got one, about Northeast Ohio Arts and Culture, perhaps?

Send your idea our way to our email address arts@ideastream.org.

And thanks.

Let's make our way to Bowling Green State University and it's Wolfe Center for the Arts.

That's where the students of BG's theater department take the stage.

And where the school's scenic designer makes her magic.

She takes us on a tour as part of our special series "Behind the Scenes, Art Across Ohio."

- The shows that we've been working on in the scene shop all semester long started off with a show called "John Proctor is the Villain."

It took place in a classroom setting.

The second show that we did was an opera called "Cendrillion," and it is the Cinderella story, but told in a little bit more modern way.

And then the final show that we did this semester was the musical, "Heathers."

My name is Kelly Mangan.

I am a scenic designer, scenic artist, and prop coordinator in the Department of Theater and Film.

Before you start designing for a show, you kind of have to become the director in your head too.

You have to know the script backwards and forwards.

I don't sketch as my first ideas.

I start cutting apart little pieces of paper and gluing them together.

For "Cendrillion," we talked about the fact that the entrance from outside into the living room was really, really important for everybody that came to the house.

So I put that up on a series of platforms so that all of the audience could see what was going on.

This is the first floor of the Wolfe Center.

This hallway houses the scene shop and the costume shop.

We'll start here with the scene shop where we build all of the scenery for all of the shows.

We usually try to have about a month and a half of really dedicated build time for each of the shows.

We don't always get that.

Sometimes we have to build a show in a month.

Sometimes we get two months to build a show.

A lot of times we're overlapping.

We might be building three different shows in each of the shops.

The students do almost all of the work in the scene shop, the shop foreman.

and the technical director there to make sure that it's done right and safely.

But the students are hands on all of the time.

We don't have any problems with students cutting the wood, measuring the wood, looking at the drawings.

They all know how to read floor plans and elevations of the work that we're gonna do so that they can know how to build their own cut lists.

They know the tools that are appropriate for those cuts.

Then after it's built, it all has to be put back together, so that we can sort of test fit it.

Then it all comes back apart again and gets laid down on the floor to be painted.

In the back of the scene shop, we've got a dedicated paint room where we can use that space to mix paint, do samples, and basically prep for all of the stuff that we have to do for scenic art for a show.

And when you're painting, especially like wood grain, it's funny because if the director walks in and you're only half done, most of the time you'll get this comment of, "Is that what it's gonna look like?"

Because a base coat for wood is really ugly.

It's bright, it's not what you expect it to be.

That big brush that can do that blend doesn't get into all of the nooks and crannies.

And so you have to get out smaller brushes and the process is not always pretty.

You have to trust that there are steps that you follow.

You put your base coat down.

Well, even before that you have to put another base coat down, because we reuse flats all the time.

And so I might be painting on a flat that's, one of them is blue, and the other one is yellow, and the other one is purple.

I have to get that back to sort of a general color.

And so I base coat usually with white or cream.

And then I'll start with the bottom coat of the art finish.

(mallet pounding) (upbeat music) In this costume shop, costumes is not just what you think of in terms of a garment.

It's hair, it's makeup, it's jewelry, it's shoes, it's hats, it's all of that stuff that is about the actor and what they wear.

The students will build in the costume shop as much as they do in the scene shop.

They get their hands on all of the stuff that we do.

The students will pull garments that we have in stock, and hem, and do the alterations.

Tech week is actually the most, I think, exciting part of all of it.

You know, we get to see all of the planning that we've done for weeks, and weeks, and weeks come to fruition.

- This is a standby.

(murmurs) (people chattering) - [Actor] Plus, it's perfect for right now.

We're reading "The Crucible" in class.

- [Actors] Yellow leather, red leather, yellow leather, red leather, yellow leather.

(actor faintly signing lyrics) - [Kelly] And the opening night is a little bittersweet, because it's on its own.

It's like sending a kid out the door to go to kindergarten.

It's like, but you got no more control.

What's cool is listening to the audience, and listening to the cast, and the crew, after the show talk about how proud they were.

They say you shouldn't go home whistling the scenery because it's not about the scenery, it's not about the costumes, it's not about any of those things individually.

It's about how it comes together for the whole show.

- [Kabir] "Behind the scenes, Art Across Ohio," is a collaboration between public television stations across the state.

You can watch stories from Dayton, Columbus, Bowling Green, and Cleveland on demand with the free PBS app.

Located in the Discovery District of Columbus is the Phoenix Rising Printmaking Co-Op.

Core member, Karen Albanese Campbell, works there, creating prints inspired by her international travels.

(soft music) - A lot of my work is, it's really drawing from my imagination, but it's not like surreal or anything.

But it's putting together landscapes and figures in unexpected ways and it's always got a real strong narrative in it.

'cause I'm really, really drawn to the storytelling part of art.

My work has a lot of pattern in it, and it has a lot of color.

When I was in college, I was really influenced by, when I first discovered Japanese art.

I often go back to just making patterns or compositions that feel Japanese to me.

I'm not Japanese, you know, it's only been my exposure to Japanese art that was so formative for me, and especially Japanese prints.

And so now I go back to that with printmaking, and I circled back to printmaking many years out of college.

One thing that people always say about my work is, "Oh, you do so many different things and you have different styles."

And I'm pretty much like, "Yeah, at this point I'm just gonna do whatever I want."

(laughs) So it's some of this and it's some of that, and I'm trying to bring it all together.

When I first get an idea for a new piece, I'll just keep playing with it until I find the story that's in it, and can put all the pieces together.

And I just keep doing small doodles and sketches and stuff until I feel like, "Oh, I think this has legs.

I'm gonna, I'm gonna run with this one."

Now that I'm working a little bit bigger.

You know, that's more of an undertaking, but get it up there full scale, and then just keep developing it.

And drawing is really important to me.

Even though I'm trying to simplify and abstract more, I still think that printmaking is essentially a drawing based medium.

And it's just really important to me that I bring as much skill and thought to that initial drawing and design phase of the print.

Once you have your idea, know where you're going, you know, you're choosing everything deliberately.

What technique am I going to use?

What paper am I going to use?

You've gotta know what your palette is.

What are my ink choices going to be?

So you have to make those choices for every single project that you do.

Once I do all of that, then it's just a matter of like working the steps with printmaking.

'Cause it's printmaking is indirect, you know, there's all the thinking and the conceptualizing, and the drawing up front, but then making the final image.

It's like if I was painting it, the paint would just go right on the canvas, and I could scrape it, and move it around, and paint over it, and do all of those things that are just real direct marks.

But what I'm doing as a printmaker, is you have to think it out and put it on a plate first, and then put it on a piece of paper.

So there's all these steps that happen that influence the way your final image looks.

When you do something in a series, the first one always looks very different than the last one you do because by the time you get to the last one, you've figured it out.

(laughs) So right now I'm working on this very imprecise technique called pressure printing.

And that is, you know, typically, you put ink on a plate, and you put your paper right down into it, and, instead, put your ink on your plate, and you put your paper down.

But then you put your, whatever's gonna make your image behind your paper, and then you put it through the press.

And so when you pull it up, what you see is, like, a shadow of what was here.

Pretty simple.

It'll do irregular things to the way the ink hits the paper around whatever your image was.

And this is a good example of that where, you know, then you put this blue layer on, and I could not predict how that was going to be impacted by what came before, or what's already on the paper.

And it just feels very much like, it's like a metaphor for life.

Every step that you take influences the next step, but not in a way that you thought it was going to.

I make prints like a painter and I think like a painter.

And I love this way of working.

I like working with tools, and just the kind of problem solving that uses a different part of my brain.

And I like the community of print makers too.

'Cause paint painting is very solitary, you know, very solitary.

I have so much compassion for the displaced people around the world.

And I feel something when I look at photographs and when I watch the news and it really stirs up my, ah, all my emotion, and I'm frustrated that I can't do anything.

I mean as an artist, like what can I do?

I am processing how I feel about these world events through the art that I make.

And it's not always as specific.

Sometimes it starts to spin off, like the first piece maybe had specific ties, but then I'll make another, and another, and another.

And it begins to become more, so many steps away.

It becomes more abstracted from that original idea or that original event maybe that inspired it.

I did a whole series about people sleeping outside, you know, which can be camping in our first world understanding, or it could be because you don't have any place else to sleep.

When I think about people who are displaced or you know, people walking, a lot of my pieces have people walking.

This piece, I wanted it to be bigger.

I wanted to it to reflect a broader kind of scene.

The colors go from darkness to light, from dark sky to light sky.

There's a body of water, there's an island, there's crossing over, there's another larger place, there's a horizon, there's lots of horizons.

And the roads kind of go over the horizons.

And because I'm trying to keep it just more simple, more abstracted, you know, it does inspire you to ask, "Who are they, and where are they going, and where did they start?"

I mean, these are the questions I'm asking as I'm working and trying to figure out what's the story in the piece.

- [Kabir] We come indoors from the cold on the next round of "Applause."

Cleveland City Hall is home to local politics, but it's not just the mayor and city council getting to work.

We hear from a select group of Cleveland artists transforming city hall into an art gallery.

- It's a space where when you're in it, it feels like a museum itself.

- [Kabir] Plus, Les Délices delights us with a classic overture from one of Mozart's most loved operas.

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

(upbeat music) Thanks for watching this edition of "Applause."

I'm Ideastream Public Media's Kabir Bhatia.

We leave you with a performance featuring Warren, Ohio, Jazzmaster, Sean Jones, and his student from the Peabody Conservatory, Thomas Schinabeck of Shaker Heights.

Here they are at the 2024 Tri-C JazzFest, performing Schinabeck's composition, "Earth and Joy."

(upbeat music) (people cheering) (soft music) - [Narrator] Production of "Applause" on Ideastream Public Media is made possible by funding by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts & Culture.