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

(playful music) - [Kabir] Coming up, meet the artists behind a massive mural project in Cleveland.

We explore the artsy side of the Cleveland Cavaliers, and the Cleveland Orchestra looks back fondly on memories of childhood.

(jazzy music) Hello, and welcome to Applause.

I'm Ideastream Public Media's Kabir Bhatia.

Along Woodhill Road in Cleveland, a long brick wall surrounds a service facility for the regional transit authority.

The community helped select this spot as a place for public art in a big way on Cleveland's East Side.

Six local artists transformed the wall into a vibrant representation of the history and culture of the surrounding neighborhoods.

- This is a 728 foot wall and essentially a lot of brick.

It's directly across the street from what was once Woodhill Community Center and Morris Black Public Housing Project.

And it's almost a perfect wall because Morris Black is being demolished.

But this is an opportunity to sort of memorialize that this area and memorialize pieces of this area, which are being either demolished or reimagined, and the folks that lived here and contributed to making this area what it is.

- I got immediately attracted to the scale of this mural.

I've not done one quite this large before, so I was already very interested, excited.

And then also just felt like it would be such a great piece to make for the community here.

- Tim and I have worked on a few projects in the past and we've been trying to work on something large and we saw this as an opportunity for us to really come together.

So we applied, we put together a proposal, and we honestly didn't think we were gonna get it.

It started off with a lot of meetings with people in the community, kind of learning about the neighborhood and hearing stories that might be kind of untold.

- Essentially what Derek and Chad are doing here are creating like, what I like to call these little scenes, and you're seeing different images and things that you would see if you were driving all around the neighborhood.

So it's very location-based.

So you have Woodhill, Buckeye Shaker, you have Shaker Square, but it's also very, I guess, life-based.

You have pictures of people barbecuing or skating or getting their hair cut.

Very much everyday life stuff.

- This section that we're standing next to, this is like to honor the Woodhill homes that are just right across the street, and they're actually going to be torn down.

And even before that, there was an amusement park called Luna Park.

So that's kind of like the, as you can see here, this the kind of transition from Luna Park into the Woodhill homes, trying to show different time periods in this mural and they're kind of all interwoven together.

- We were in actually another group that also applied for the project.

Chad and Derek actually came to us and was like, hey, would you like to be a part of this?

We know your worth and I thought that was pretty honorable and awesome.

- Originally me, Dayz, we were on a team and we had applied for this wall along with like a few other teams.

So it's really dope to be a part of something that gets to like pretty much stamp that history or showcase that history on such a grand wall.

- I've lived in this housing project at one point in time.

I feel like here I am, once again, giving back to another neighborhood in Cleveland that I lived in so we are like helping change the dynamic of our city, the love movement.

Show how much we love our city by painting and beautifying our canvas, our temple.

- The challenge is always kind of like, I love a good challenge and pushing myself to try new things and going bigger, but with this one, I feel like my friends needed me and I was here and I was actually a finalist for this project as well.

So the fact that I was also called on to assist was just perfect and I feel like it was just like a challenge that was calling my name.

- This is actually the first project that I have used spray paint.

And that was one of the things that I actually wanted to learn, that I've never used before.

This was one of those kind of ventures where I had a chance to work with other artists in doing this project, but also I got a chance to learn a new technique that I can carry on to my next projects.

- This wall for so long was just a brick.

It's not even relatively pretty brick, it was just a brick wall.

Now for it to be a highlight for people that has their commute back and forth, they get to see it every day.

I think it's just a nice little thing for them and a little moment for people to appreciate art in their everyday lives.

- The more color we add, the more paint, we hear people driving by stopping saying thank you or honking their horns, coming to take selfies, coming to take pictures with us and just, I don't know, you just feel the love while we're working on it.

- A lot of times I think in Cleveland, there's a lot of people who don't actually get to go and see art.

I've been able to help, I guess how you could say change the landscape of my neighborhood, beautify the area I live in.

The streets is my canvas.

- When people are living in the area that like, looks like it's kept up, looks like it's important, looks like love is put into it, they treat the area different, they treat each other differently.

I feel like a lot of the times, this type of energy is gone into areas that already have the resources to be gray areas and then you got areas that are just forgotten about.

And it's an opportunity for people to actually see that they're not forgotten about.

It's people that care about the community, it's people that care about this part of Cleveland.

- I grew up down the street from here and I also live now around the corner from here.

We didn't really have a lot of public art on the east side when I was growing up and we certainly didn't have public art that I felt like I resonated with.

And I feel like this mural is an opportunity to see pictures and images of my life, things that I resonate with, things that I know my family and friends will resonate with.

And I think the impact is giving folks a reason to feel like this is theirs 'cause it is.

And while everything is changing, this is still theirs.

- [Kabir] The new mural can be found along Woodhill Road in Cleveland at the RTAs service facility.

Daniel Arsham is a world renowned artist whose passion for pop culture inspires much of his work, including for his favorite NBA team, the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Let's head inside Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse where Arsham is making his mark.

- Your rocket mortgage has a massive art collection that's in the entrance foyer of the building as you walk in.

- It hits you in the face right when you walk in and it definitely makes it a more unique place to be 'cause it definitely helps us kind of stylize different areas of the building and make you feel like you're in a very unique setting no matter where you are.

- [Daniel] That's an interesting thing to put art in the context of sports.

People don't go to an arena to necessarily see artwork.

- [Chris] And there's over 100 of pieces of art in this building, 22 total artists.

There's also six plus artists that are also from the Cleveland area so we wanted to make sure there was a local tie to all of that art as well.

- The Gilbert family has basically loaned their collection to this arena museum.

(upbeat music) - We always talk about blurring the line between pop culture and basketball and he's definitely helped us kind of put that into hyper speed over the last few years.

- I'm third generation Clevelander, father and grandfather both went to Cleveland Heights High.

I moved out of Cleveland when I was quite young, but spent the summers here as a kid and was always a fan of the Cavs.

- [Chris] So our collaboration with Daniel Arsham really started with our ownership group in terms of their relationship with him in terms of some other projects that they had worked on him with.

So Dan and Jennifer Gilbert and Grant Gilbert, who works day to day here at the Cavs, had this idea to bring 'em in.

- The Gilberts were art collectors, were interested in the art world and were collectors of my work before I came to know them.

So after the 2016 championship, the arena was renovated and as part of that, a number of artworks were added to the building.

They commissioned that moving basketball work, which is in the main atrium here and that's sort of how I got to know the family.

- We had an NBA brand, we had a lot of positive stories behind it with LeBron and the championship.

And so it wasn't necessarily like it was baroque, it was just taking a different look at it and trying to make it more consistent, more reductive, something that we thought could last a test of time and something we could all kind of rally around for a lot of years to come.

- An opportunity came up a couple years ago through my artwork that was in the building to begin a longer relationship with the team, really through discussions with Grant Gilbert, basically telling him this is what I think we should do for the jerseys next season and at some point, he said maybe it'd be interesting for you to come on board and actually advise us on design.

- Daniel, he was an obvious choice I think in terms of some of the work that he had done with the Gilbert family previously, but he has Cleveland ties, world renowned contemporary artist, it just made sense.

- I have an exhibition that's ongoing now at the Cleveland Sculpture Center.

This is an exhibition that includes works around sports and music, two core themes that I've worked with in my career.

So in a lot of my work, I'm looking for links to the present, things that we could associate with this era in time.

When I'm creating a kind of archeological object, I want something that looks like it's from now and obviously there's sports, a basketball, we can say it's from the last, I don't know, 100 years, it's not from 300 years ago.

And so these elements of sports are also markers of a particular moment in time, which makes them very valuable within the work to kind of locate the work in a particular era.

This was a new thing for the league.

There were creative departments within all the teams, but there wasn't really an outside visual person that was present in any of the NBA teams.

- We were the first team to ever do it.

A couple teams have kind of followed in our footsteps off of it.

It's becoming less and less unique I'd say now that people have seen the dividends that Daniel has has brought.

- So I came in in 2020.

Obviously we redesigned the logo, we kept the original C, but the Cavs logo was redesigned and I am responsible for basically anything visual that the team does.

So all the jersey designs, the court designs, our social media.

My design firm redesigned the Cavs team shop last year with our great basketball run here.

- Last year, we relaunched our whole logo set and launched a new set of uniforms, our core uniforms.

The big elements of that was just more reductive, more elegant, more elevated in terms of the brand so everything was simplified.

I think the other big piece was color-wise, we went to the more traditional gold versus that mustard gold that we'd had throughout our championship runs and for the last maybe six or seven years before that.

Coming outta that as well, the uniform set, you can see it's a lot cleaner.

- Part of my responsibility here is to also design our City Edition jerseys.

- And the purpose of City Edition jersey is to shine a light or tell a story around something that we have civic pride in or is a cultural gem within northeast Ohio.

- The first edition was based on this collaboration that we did with the metro parks.

So the land was sort of rendered in geological striations of the grass and the dirt and the earth of the metro parks with references to Lake Erie.

- [Chris] That's why you had the blue for the water, kinda the brown accents.

That was where that idea came to fruition.

So we partnered with the Metro parks in terms of being a part of people's lives and how impressive it is and is a part of people's general lifestyle here.

- [Daniel] This year, we focused heavily on Playhouse Square.

- [Chris] Which is the largest theater district in the United States, outside of New York.

- And so our City Edition jerseys this year paid homage to that.

There's details from the curtains in the theater that are on the sleeves and the pinhole lights on the outside of the land graphic.

I'm trying to think about ways with our city edition that we can shed light on other great things in the city.

- It's been one of those things where there's just so many natural intersections between them who bring a million people downtown every year.

We try to bring as many people down here depending on how many shows we have every single year.

It's where we're trying to accomplish the same thing in terms of bringing people down to Cleveland and entertaining them and making their lives better.

- It's been really exciting, obviously, to engage both with Cleveland, with the players and the fans.

I think basketball, obviously it's an American sport, but it's something that is really international.

I spend a lot of time in my career traveling in places like Japan and South America, all over Asia and Europe and basketball has this sort of international feeling about it.

It translates everywhere.

And I think part of that is also the design and the language of the jerseys and it's really just the graphics that surround that.

So I've tried to really bring Cleveland out into the world as well.

- [Kabir] The Cleveland Cavaliers are back in action at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse.

Daniel Arsham's new City Edition jerseys are set to debut Sunday, November 17th.

There are just so many things to do in northeast Ohio when it comes to arts and culture.

If you are feeling overwhelmed, why not let our free weekly newsletter lend you a hand?

It's called the To-Do List and you can sign up online at arts.ideastream.org.

Kids need to move and a great way to get them moving is through the art of dance.

In Columbus, there's this cool dance studio teaching the young folk how to pop, lock and glide.

- Music is not meant to be heard.

It is meant to be felt.

So let's go ahead and get warmed up.

I didn't know I was gonna be a dancer growing up.

I wanted to be a elementary school teacher and this ended up being what I'm doing so it's like killing two birds with one stone.

Ready, go, side, side, side, side.

My name's James Alexander.

I'm the owner of Flavor'd Flow Studio.

So here at Flavor'd Flow, my main focus is to introduce the dance and pass it down correctly in the culture of hip hop.

There's a lot of stigma, negative stigma around hip hop culture and the dance due to the media and that's not really what hip hop culture is about or even the dance.

In hip hop culture, we have three main dances to the culture.

There's breaking, which is the original style of hip hop culture.

Then there was popping, which is a west coast, came from Fresno, California and Northern California.

And then we have locking, which came from Los Angeles, California.

Here, I teach breaking and popping.

Five, six, seven, eight.

Start doing a little turn.

Popping is more known.

A lot of people, because of the media, have called it popping and locking, pop and lock, which is actually two different dances.

With popping, in the seventies, it was just a muscle isolation.

It was just a quick hit of the muscle.

Now a lot of people look at it as the robot, the waves, the muscle isolations, different things like that.

- I've been dancing for about...

This is gonna be my seventh year dancing.

I came to Columbus in June.

I found this place in August and it's been wonderful.

It's probably been my favorite dance studio to go in and practice from.

Here it's more relaxed.

It's more about the art than anything else.

That's kinda what I found out unique here.

It's like visual poetry.

I mean, if song comes on, you hear the beat, your body starts bouncing and you're like... And you just like get to it, it's just exciting.

- With B-Boy, B-Girl, originally that meant Bronx Boy, Bronx Girl because that's where it originated from and then it moved out of the Bronx and they started calling it breaking or Break Boy, Break Girl.

And the term originally means to break out and dance.

When the media picked it up in 1982, they started calling it break dancing because we danced to the break of the music.

Coincidentally, that's what we do dance to.

So breaking, the original style of hip hop, started in the late sixties in the Bronx.

When it started, it was only dancing on your feet.

When California started picking it up, they really started putting in the power moves.

And now it's almost a must that you mix all these together.

There are four parts, main parts to the dance.

There's top rock, which is like dancing on your feet, that's your introduction.

And then when you get down to the ground, you got your footwork, which stands on your hands and feet.

Go back to squat.

Five, six, seven, eight, and go.

Freezes, of course, just stop in motion and power moves, which the power moves are what breaking is known for.

The windmills, the head spins, stuff on your hands.

And I think this is where a lot of the misconceptions of breaking came from is that it's freestyle, which it is, but I think a lot of people think freestyle is doing whatever you want, however you want.

And actually, with breaking and popping and all this stuff, freestyle is freestyling with the moves given.

- My name is Lucy and my Big Girl name is Misfit and I've been dancing for two years.

The thing that I love about it is that I get to make new friends and Jamie, which is our instructor, he doesn't just teach dancing, he teaches like behavior and stuff, which I really like.

Another thing that I really like about like going to these classes and stuff is that it's not all choreographed where he teaches you these moves and then you can mix 'em up and make 'em into something else.

- Flavor'd Flow is all about having flavor in your flow and flow is just about how you put your dance together and what you choose to.

So what you learn in these moves is how you flow with it.

So just like I try not to teach choreography, I don't want you to learn my dance, I want you to learn the dance.

And then I want you to flow and put your flavor style into however you want to.

Nice guys, spin and freeze.

Teaching the young ones, I want to also instill a lot of the values and virtues such as courage, self-esteem.

- Well, I've always loved music and dancing, but I got ADHD, so I'm always active and I always have energy.

So this kind of gets my energy out sometimes for the next day so I'm not all crazy and grubby in the morning.

- If you give them character, personality, and hard work, they're gonna fulfill their dream and work hard at it.

I see you guys all growing and I love it.

I'm super proud of each and every one of you guys.

This is the best way I can give back.

If I can change someone's life, I've done my job I feel.

- [Kabir] Here's what's driving down the road for the next round of applause.

In Warren, the industrial pride of Trumbull County is on display at the National Packard Museum.

We learn about the Cadillac of automobiles before there was a Cadillac.

- They're big, they're beautiful.

What more can you say?

Because you get 'em out on the road and you float.

- [Kabir] Then we dance to a Columbus samba inspired by a night of Chinese food and whiskey.

All that and more on the next round of Applause.

It's time to make like a tree, my friends.

I'm Ideastream Public Media's Kabir Bhatia, leaving you with a charming piece of music performed by the Cleveland Orchestra from the Adela app.

This is Gustav Mahler's Turn of the Century Ode to Childhood is Symphony Number Four in G Major, enjoy.

(orchestra plays) - [Announcer] Production of Applause on Ideastream Public Media is made possible by funding by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.