- Summertime is a good time to travel.

And on this episode of The Arts Page, let us take you to some creative destinations.

First, find out where The Fab Four are still fascinating music fans over 50 years after their last performance together.

Go behind the scenes and behind the signs with a personal tour by the owner of the American Sign Museum.

Travel with an artist to an Amazon River village to learn how craftsmanship can build a community and its culture.

The Arts Page starts right now.

(upbeat music) Welcome to The Arts Page.

I'm Sandy Maxx.

John, Paul, George, and Ringo.

Four iconic names that are as relevant as ever.

The Beatles only performed about 65 concerts in the US during their career.

One of those shows at the Milwaukee Arena in 1964.

The recent Beatles docu-series by blockbuster filmmaker Peter Jackson called The Beatles: Get Back reignited interest in the band's music and in their creative process because it gave a truly inside look at the recording of their Let It Be album.

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio has an exhibition now called Get Back to Let It Be.

Music fans can feel transported back to 1969 with audio, high definition film clips and custom larger than life projections.

Plus one of a kind memorabilia from the band's personal collections.

Reporter Kabir Bhatia has a look.

(upbeat music) - [Kabir] We got a behind the scenes look at the new Beatles exhibit from The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame that aims to help visitors get back to a pivotal moment in rock history.

More than four years in the making, this immersive experience was curated to compliment Peter Jackson's 2021 docu-series Get Back.

♪ Get back ♪ ♪ Get back ♪ - We hit upon Get Back, Peter Jackson's docu-series as a very worthy project that we could curate and build an exhibit that would complement his epic docu-series.

- It's footage that was shot originally, Michael Lindsay-Hogg for the Let It Be film, which was a period.

It was a piece, a moment in time that was captured and delivered, but the chance for a filmmaker today to rewatch the raw sort of see a different story within it.

And then what it comes back to is, you know, you're telling a story, he's telling a story of these four artists that we all know so well, but he's giving you a different view.

- [Kabir] The exhibit brings you into the studio during rehearsal sessions with the Beatles and puts you right on the rooftop for that legendary 1969 concert, the last public performance of the band.

♪ Don't let me down ♪ - The goal of our exhibit was to make it an immersive experience, bring you closer to the Beatles during that period in '69 than ever before.

- Then the others, they're larger than life.

So on screen, they're bigger than you or I, and you really feel it.

And it transports you in a magical way.

♪ What she done with ♪ - The rooftop concert at Apple that was the Beatles final public performance as a band.

And we want you to feel as if you're on the rooftop with them.

- Cause it just feels like you are really there on top of the roof top the way like the TV curves around like that.

And they sound and like, I mean, I don't know if you saw me over there.

I was like, like boppin'.

And I was like, oh my gosh, like, it feels like I'm there.

♪ Don't let me down ♪ - Where they're were on the roof top in London.

That was amazing.

- Again, just the fact that it was the last performance that they had and that people just came out of their offices.

And the one guy was annoyed.

- [ Kabir] Walking through the exhibit, you can see instruments, manuscripts, records, and clothing that were used by the Beatles, all loaned directly from Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and the estates of George Harrison and John Lennon.

How amazing is it that that stuff survived 50 some years.

Usually that that should have been thrown out.

- Well with the Beatles, they realized in the moment how much history they were making.

And they did keep a lot of keep a lot of things.

And you know, everything in this exhibit has been meticulously maintained and documented.

- Seeing Rocky, George's guitar was probably my highlight.

I've ever since I found out about Rocky and him painting that I got super excited.

And when I saw they had it here, I got thrilled.

- I thought it was cool seeing John Lennon's glasses in person.

I didn't think they would have that here.

I was surprised at that.

- I think it's amazing that we're half a century later, we're still not even relevant.

Music actually gets better when you listen to it many years later.

- The time with my son and seeing his smile on the as he's watching the rooftop band, that was great.

♪ Let it be ♪ - [Kabir] Now it's been over 50 years for this, 60 years since the beats auditioned, I believe for EMI.

Why are we still talking about this?

- You know, it's the most impactful iconic band in history is one of the reasons.

The other one is the catalog is still vibrant.

People are still loving it and listening and using it.

And I know it sounds like a cop out, but it's the Beatles.

You know, it's the Beatles.

So that's why we're still talking about it.

They're still hyper relevant.

And I think that still admired by musicians and fans and then it's generations upon generations.

So there's this incredible connective tissue that the Beatles bring to the world of music.

- The Beatles Get Back to Let It Be is on display at The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland through March of 2023.

Also in Ohio, you'll find the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati.

Bright lights, big letters.

If you know what to look for, the designs of signs tell stories about the history, technology, economy and culture of our country over the past hundred years.

(upbeat music) - I'm Tod Swormstedt.

I'm the founder of the American Sign Museum.

This is my self proclaimed midlife crisis project.

I worked on a magazine for the sign industry for about 28 years.

The magazine's called Signs of the Times.

It actually goes back to May, 1906.

And my great-grandfather was the first editor.

So I left the magazine in 1999 to start the museum.

What this is, is this sets up the history of signs from the earliest hand carved wood through the light bulb period through the neon period into the plastic period.

Well, every sign museum worth its salt has to have a big boy.

Now this is an early version of the big boy.

If you look at his back pocket here, it's got a three-dimensional slingshot.

The later versions, the slingshot was more like an embossed into his pants.

The big boys now don't have a slingshot at all.

It's politically incorrect.

He's got striped pants.

The ones now have checked pants, saddle shoes.

And the other thing is that the big boys now are not quite as well fed as this big boy.

This section here is called the light bulb period or the pre neon period.

The light bulb was introduced in the late 1890s.

As soon as the light bulb was introduced, you had light bulb signs.

Now all of these examples here are signs that use light bulbs.

Sometimes they're exposed like on this boot.

And this boot is what we call a trade sign.

Trade signs were signs that were in the shape of a symbol where the symbol represented the business.

Obviously a boot, this was a boot store.

If you look on this side of the sign, you'll see there's a bunch of light bulbs.

If you come on the other side of the sign, you'll see that the letters have neon illumination.

Well, when we found this sign, it had neon on both sides, but as we were trying to fix some of the broken tubes, we discovered that the sign had originally been a light bulb sign.

So we restored this side back to the way it was originally and left this side with the retrofit and neon to show how a sign could be updated with a new technology.

Another type of light bulb sign that has the lights inside the sign is this Kelly Springfield Tires sign.

Now it uses these little glass buttons we call them.

These are cast glass with a stem on the back that's threaded.

So you screw this into the sign cabinet and printed on the rim of the glass patented July in 1910.

Now we move into the neon period which really began in the mid to late twenties.

This corner of the museum is fifties neon.

If you look at this sign here, this cow sign, this is a great example of what we call animated neon.

Now, the way you do animated neon is you do layers of it.

If you look at this cow head here, there's three layers of neon stacked on top of each other and they're flashing on and off in a sequence.

1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3.

This animation effect is really obvious in the swishing tail.

And of course we saved one of Columbus' icons, the big bear sign.

Now this sign was found in Chicopee, Ohio.

This sign probably dates to late fifties into the early sixties.

And then we move into what we call the plastic era, which really kicked in after World War II.

This sign, it's what I would call kind of a transition sign because what happened is when plastic was introduced, neon held on even to the sixties and seventies.

So you see a lot of signs in the 1950s combined neon with plastic.

The very first plastic signs were just flat plastic sheet.

Then they started doing some early what we call vacuum forming where the sign face was a little bit rounded.

This Colonel Sanders sign, KFC sign, up here would be a good example of that.

Then they started doing a little bit more complicated vacuum forming where the letters could be actually raised like this Emerson Television and Radio.

You can see Lowe Brothers and an extreme example of that is the Shell sign.

The American Sign Museum is a history of America.

This sign is a really good example of that.

Now, obviously it's in the shape of a Sputnik, and it's for a shopping center called Satellite Shop Land.

If you remember, the Russians had launched Sputnik in 1957.

That prompted all this interest in rocket ships, outer space, planets.

I call it the Jetsons period of design.

This guy opened a shopping center in 1962, so he took his rough sketch to a couple sign companies to ask him what it would cost to build that sign.

And they just kind of looked at him and said this guy's nuts.

So he ended up actually building the sign himself in his garage.

The globe is actually two half globes of plastic.

All these spikes and all the letters he did himself in his shop.

(Jazz music) So let's take a walk down Main Street.

(jazz music) We'll walk past this McDonald's sign from Huntsville, Alabama.

This was built in 1963.

(jazz music) We have a policy that we don't like to repaint signs.

We will restore the neon on a sign, but we like the batino of a sign.

The irony about this sign is this was for Earl Scheib.

Earl Scheib was a cheap place to get your car repainted, kind of a precursor to Macco.

Any car, any color, 1995.

So when we got this sign, that globe was completely stripped of paint.

This ring was gone, the cars were gone.

So we completely restored this sign which is very unusual for us.

The only thing we did leave that was original was the bullet hole.

Here's where the bullet came out and a little tougher to see is where the bullet went in.

It's right at the ring level right here is where the bullet went in.

(jazz music) Every sign museum's gotta have a McDonald's sign.

That's an American icon, but so is Howard Johnson's.

This particular sign was built in 1958 and came from upstate New York.

Now there's a little story behind those characters on the top.

Simple Simon met a pieman going to the fair.

When Howard Johnson started opening up his restaurants, he wanted to particularly cater to families.

So his ad agency and their wisdom picked the nursery rhyme to highlight on the top of the sign.

We're often asked if we have more signs.

Well, yes we do.

Most of these have been restored.

Sometimes when we get a sign, it isn't working condition.

It's not likely that it is, but we do have a working neon shop, which repairs a lot of the glass for the signs.

And even some from Ohio.

This Roby's nightclub sign is from Toledo.

Sterling Rubber Products is from central Ohio.

And we even have a sign from Columbus.

The well known Rife's Market.

Signs are everywhere, and I don't think people really think about who actually made or designed that sign.

So if you come to the museum and you leave with a new appreciation for the people that made these signs, then I would say we've accomplished our mission.

(jazz music) - From an American road trip to the Amazon jungle now, follow the journey of Nevada based artist, Tia Flores as she visits Peru, to teach a community to embrace sustainable craft making as a creative way to preserve their culture and create commerce.

(drums beating) - What brought me to the Amazon jungle was a friend of mine by the name of Barbara Land.

And she was doing some research in South America and fell in love with that particular part of the country.

And she was working with a group, a family group, in this village called Ayacucho village, which is in deep in the heart of the Amazon jungle.

And as she was working with them, she noticed that they wanted to perfect their craft so that they could bring a sustainable income to their economy.

So she reached out to me and asked me if I would be willing.

And after several years of declining, I finally agreed to go.

My desire to go there was to work with the women there and help them perfect the craft so that they could bring some more money to their economy by selling natural wearers that they were able to create there in the jungle and sell to tourists coming by from all over the world.

And that was a really enticing thing for me because I really believed that the arts can really improve an economy and make it sustainable.

So it was right there where my belief system was.

So I was very excited to venture into the jungle.

We're actually in the Peruvian side of the Amazon.

So how we traveled there was from the United States into Lima, took another flight into Iquitos.

The only way to get to Iquitos is either by boat or plane.

And we took a boat and takes about three, four hours as you travel up the Amazon River with a motor boat.

And then we're able to get into Ayacucho village and the environment and the people were just amazing.

(drums beating) You're surrounded by this abundance of beauty in life, and you see life cycle in its natural form how everything has a purpose and a reason and timing.

All the fruit that's produced by the different trees, a particular monkey eats that particular fruit or it drops into the water for a particular fish.

And I'd have to say that people are just as amazing because they love that environment.

They cherish that environment.

They're stewards of that environment.

The majority of the people who actually live in the river villages like Ayacucho are residents of Peru.

And what they've done is they've chosen to, you know, venture into that environment and to live that lifestyle.

They're basically, they're just three, four generations old in there, and they're still figuring out how they, you know, what they bring to that environment and how they can be good stewards of that environment.

And it's really exciting to see them, you know, bring their own style to that craft making.

Because of the diverse, natural materials that everybody has access to in the Amazon, you're able to make all different kinds of crafts from a simple thing as a bracelet by using Palm and cording that, and, you know, decorating it with seeds to beautiful elaborate necklace.

Basketry is just amazing there as well as, you know, necklaces and bracelets that, you know, might use the spine of a particular like snake or piranha.

You know, the piranha teeth, that's really popular.

My first trip to the Amazon was in the summer of 2018.

I was able to return in the spring at 2019.

And again, in the spring of 2020, right before the pandemic hit The president of Peru had put a mandate that no travel could take place.

So to get home was basically, it was in two parts.

Our first main objective was to get out of the jungle.

Boats were prevented from traveling.

So how do we get safe passage out of the jungle and to the city of Iquitos?

In fact, the minister of tourism and the police, the federal police, met us to guide us to Iquitos.

And then once we got to Iquitos, that was the next step.

We knew the only way to get out of Iquitos was by plane, and we needed to get to Lima.

And at that point, we needed permission from the embassy.

We were very lucky 'cause through our conversations and working through local officials here in Reno, and Senator Cortez Masto, we were able to secure a seat on a repatriation flight through the US Embassy to fly out of Peru and get back safely to the United States.

As an artist, I could really tell from this experience how much it influenced my artwork and how much it really wanted me to take a deep dive into my own craft making and to utilize the natural materials that I have around me and how I can incorporate that into my art.

So that was an exciting part to experience that.

- We take a musical trip now, as we meet musician and Alverno college percussion teacher, Carlos Adames.

He shares with us the special sounds and styles of Latin American music.

Milwaukee PBS producer Mariano Avila brings us this story.

(Latin music) - When you talk about Latin America, it's a whole continent and it has so many so much diversity on rhythm, on music.

So I would say we owe it to everybody in Latin America.

I think the foundation is the clave.

You know, everything is surrounded by the clave, and it's not just only the instrument.

It's also the rhythm.

So two types of clave.

You have the son montuno, and you have the rumba clave.

So son montuno.

(clave clapping) And the rumba clave.

(clave clapping) You can travel through different rhythms like Bombay, and you can put the clave on it.

You can put, you can play tamboritos from Panama and you can put the clave on it.

You can play rock and you can put a clave on it.

So there's different styles of music that you can actually go along with or that have been influenced by the clave in some way.

For example, let's go to the background and let's play just a regular son montuno and how it transitions to your salsa, right?

So.

(drums beating) From there we go to the salsa.

(drums beating) So you have the clave in there, which is a straight three two clave.

If we play it with, for example, a rumba clave for wan co phrase which was one of the rumbas, you will sound like this.

(drums beating) If I do the son montuno clave and I play it on a bomba, for example.

Sounds like this.

(drums beating) Go for example, Panama with tamborito.

(drums beating) So that's an idea of what it sounds like on a different rhythm that originally does not have it, right?

So you can, but it fits so that it's kind of like a cool vibe that the clave has always that you can put in different rhythms.

I want to think that if there is an American dream, it's to actually be happy and successful with what you want to do in life.

- [Mariano] Do you think the American dream has clave in it?

- I think it has had clave for many years.

You know, it's just the thing that it needs to be amplified.

(Latin music) - Thank you for watching.

I'm Sandy Maxx.

Please join us next time for another half hour full of art on The Arts Page.