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

(upbeat music) - [Kabir] Coming up, we share the story of the Master Carver of Tuscarawas County, Ernest 'Mooney' Warther.

And we remember the artistic legacy of Michelangelo Lovelace, whose paintings are on view in Akron.

Plus jazz man, Dominick Farinacci, celebrates his mom through music for Mother's Day.

Hello and welcome aboard for this round of "Applause."

I'm Ideastream Public Media's Kabir Bhatia.

Ernest 'Mooney' Warther was an esteemed son of Dover, Ohio and a skillful wood carver.

The work of this turn of the century artist is the foundation of the Dover Museum in his name, from his wooden steam engines to his celebrated Plier Tree to his wife Frieda's Button House and the Family Arboretum.

Ernest Warther Museum & Gardens is a treasure of Tuscarawas County.

(graphics whirring) (gentle piano music) - He knew no strangers and he had a big booming voice.

He talked to anybody about anything and you could hear him a mile away.

- [Ernest] One time, Abraham Lincoln said that you tend to go to work, start right where you are, but there is no better place.

- He was kind of a showman, we're a small town.

He kind of had to advocate for his own art.

And so I think that personality helped sell his art to others and kind of get that popularity.

- His hair was bigger than the rest of him.

(laughs) He was only about 5'8.

He was rather small, lot of hair.

- He always said you could tell what direction the wind was blowing based on which way his hair was going that day.

So his story really begins in 1885 when he was born here in Dover to parents who just came from Switzerland in 1883.

Now, unfortunately, when he was just three years old, his father passes away in an accident, and that leaves his mom with five kids.

And so as soon as he could started working and that was at age five as a cow herder.

So he was born originally as Ernest Warther, no middle name, but that cow herding job earned him the nickname, 'Mooney', because in Swiss Mooney means bull of the herd.

And as he collected the cows, everyone kind of joked 'cause he was the little leader of all of these cows taking them out to pasture each day.

And that just ended up sticking with him for the rest of his life.

(upbeat piano music) Taking the cows to pasture, one day he finds a pocket knife in the dirt, picks it up, starts whittling to pass the time watching those cows and he never stopped.

- When you come into the lobby, his workshop is attached to the lobby.

So you can see where he started with his carvings and where he accomplished all of it.

We have the big picture windows you can see out to the gardens and where the button house is.

In the first room that you come into is the early years when they got married and was raising the family and is working the steel mill for the first 24 years.

And some of his original tools that he used in carving.

Replicas of the steel mill that he worked in here in Dover was the American sheet and tin plate.

He worked there for 24 years and then after the mill was torn down, they moved out of Dover, then he carved it about 15 years later and it's a scale replica and all the little parts move and operate, so you can see how the men worked the steel.

He grew up along the railroad tracks, so it was a good place for him to hang out and the hobos would come into town and that's where he met the first hobo with the pliers.

- So the story of the pliers really begins when Mooney's about 10 years old, and he meets a stranger who cuts him a pair of these pliers out of a single block of wood, hands 'em over, but doesn't tell him how he did it.

And of course, Mooney was enamored with whittling at this time.

And so while he took those cows to pasture, he figured it out and he found out that if he makes 10 cuts in a single block of wood, he could make a working pair of pliers as well.

From there, he masters it.

He'll go on to carve about three quarter of a million of those in his lifetime.

He would hand those out to school children, anybody he would meet.

A lot of people would challenge him and say, you know, I don't believe that you can do it that fast.

'cause he could guarantee you a set in 20 seconds or less.

And then in 1965, he was on "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson" and he clocked his fastest record at 9.4 seconds for a single pair.

So less than a second per cut.

And of course the single pair wasn't enough for him.

He began experimenting with multiples.

- [Carol] The theater contains the plier tree, and that was his first big item that he carved.

- [Kristen] In 1913, coming home from the mill, he visualizes the block of wood that he needs to shape out and the tree that he'll ultimately create.

And then he places in that block over a 64 day period, 31,000 cuts, and that unveiled a tree of 511 pair of pliers.

(upbeat jazz music) - [Carol] Then he started with trains.

- There was a rail line that passed his home and he was able to go down and look at the engines and started memorizing them.

- [Carol] And then he'd read in the encyclopedias about different things that happened in the stages of history of steam.

So he'd carve something and then he'd read about another one and how the steam developed over the years.

- 1913 is when he began the evolution of the steam engine.

Completely his idea.

- [Carol] And it started with 250 BC and it was around the room up to 1942.

- So he wanted to make sure that when he carved the evolution of the steam engine, that he was capturing them in their full essence.

And that was also included mechanizing them.

And so they're all run off of an electric motor with a leather sewing machine belt.

That's how we continue to run them today.

- They're all pressed fit together.

They're not glued.

So they all have a tight fit and they're solid.

- [Kristen] The evolution itself is carved across 40 years.

You can think of it as probably about 35 pieces in there for the most part.

So none of the works in the museum took him longer to do than a year, and he knew that he could carve about a thousand pieces a month.

I would say his average is about six months time of actual carving time.

Most of them are right around that 6,000 piece mark.

The smaller engines obviously are fewer pieces, but then you get something like the Erie Triplex, and that's over 9,000.

- He was considered an artistic genius as well as a mechanical genius to be able to operate 'em like that.

(gentle piano music) Frieda was very fun, loving and very artistic.

- Frieda were originally born Frieda Richard.

She was one of 13 children.

She was born in Switzerland, immigrated here with her parents when she was just a young girl.

It was a European and particularly Swiss tradition that the oldest daughter would receive her mother's button box.

So she got the idea that she could make jewelry out of buttons and so as she was wearing these, everybody was like, "Oh, she likes buttons."

So then she just started acquiring buttons from everyone, - [Carol] Lots of buttons.

She had boxes of them everywhere, even under the steps, she had boxes and up in the attic and she had strings of them hanging in the dining room.

Frieda and Mooney married in 1910, built the family home and all this while she's just collecting buttons, just word got out small community and eventually after the kids were a little older, she had some free time finally, she was like, "I'm gonna go through all these buttons."

And then that really sparked the idea for putting them into patterns.

So the button house, she put all of her buttons in there.

- Grandma had started the gardens when the kids were little for vegetables, and then she canned a lot of that and stored it.

Eventually it turned into flowers.

(upbeat jazz music) At the age of 68, he retired because he finished the evolution of the steam engine.

So for four years he didn't carve, but he was restless.

So my dad and him sat down and they discussed and they came up with the idea of carving the Great American events in steam history.

So that was things like the Lincoln Funeral Train.

(upbeat jazz music) And the driving of the golden spike.

The John Bowl was the first passenger train in the US.

(upbeat guitar music) Then we have a new display that we opened last September, and it shows the evolution of the knife making because he started making the knives for carving and then it developed into kitchen knives.

During World War II, the commando knives he made.

- [Carol] He would contribute 1100 commando knives for World War II.

And so he was nicknamed the Smallest Defense Plant in the United States.

- Most years we average about 70 countries throughout the world, and we keep a registry that people can sign in.

- There's kind of like, I guess groupies.

There's people who really get into Mooney and the history and everything that he created.

- Our biggest method of advertisement is word of mouth, people telling other people about it.

- He had opportunities, he had offers for quite large sums of money at that point in time, but he turned them all down.

And that's why thankfully I have a job and we're all still here and all the carvings are still here.

But he felt it was very important to have everyone come to the city of Dover to see his carvings.

And that's why we have such a great relationship with the city.

- People are just fascinated and amazed that someone can actually do this from scratch.

And with only a second grade education.

It's not like he was mimicking someone else who had done it already.

He had all this idea in his own mind so it's truly amazing.

(upbeat guitar music) - [Kabir] In June, the Ernest Warther Museum & Gardens celebrates its new national historic marker with a dedication in Dover.

At the Akron Art Museum, the late Cleveland artist, Michelangelo Lovelace is in the spotlight.

Three years after his death from pancreatic cancer.

He's honored with a solo exhibition celebrating his work.

Throughout his life, the Cleveland Arts Prize winner documented urban living and its hardships.

Ideastream producers spent time with Lovelace back in 2017 to explore how his environment influenced his paintings.

- I come outta the King Kennedy housing projects and when you come outta the projects, you know it's cash rule, you know?

So if you're not making no money, you know you're not doing nothing.

So I got in some trouble with the laws, you know, out there young selling weed.

And a judge said, you know, what can you do?

So I told him I could draw.

He said, well, you come back down here again.

I'm sending you to prison.

You better stick to drawing.

- [Kabir] And stick with it, he did.

Self-taught, Michelangelo began painting the issues he faced every day in the King Kennedy Estates, near East 55th Street, in Woodland Avenue, in Cleveland Central neighborhood.

- Everything I do is from experience.

And that's what I was trying to do with my work and have been trying to do with my work, is tell that urban inner city story of what it's like growing up, dealing with poverty, dealing with crime, dealing with drugs, having so much of this to overcome, to keep your dream alive.

- [Kabir] Michelangelo studied at the Cleveland Institute of Art while working with famed Cleveland outsider artists, Reverend Albert Wagner.

To sharpen his skills, in 1992, Lovelace took up residency at a once bustling art complex called The Hodge, located at East 74th Street in Cleveland, St. Clair Superior neighborhood - Hodge became my home.

It became my art studio, my art school actually.

And it became a place to nurture your dreams, to nurture your skills.

- [Kabir] While Michelangelo found support at The Hodge, many of the issues that plagued the central area where he grew up were prevalent in the neighborhood he now called home.

- This is one of the highest poverty areas in the city along with Central.

So it has high poverty, high child poverty, just the disrepair of housing, vacant lots, closed businesses.

- The developers had a great idea with the opening Hodge up, but I don't think they talked to the community.

And the community was in turmoil at that time.

The crack academic had really gotten bad.

You had a lot of young people standing on the corners, selling drugs and hanging out.

There wasn't a lot of shopping places to go.

I found that most people found the neighborhood to be very dire, you know, very desolate, you know, hope was not there.

- [Kabir] Even so, Michelangelo stuck it out for 17 years, polishing his skills.

- I felt like it was a story to tell, you know, I mean, why is they standing on the corner?

Why is these houses abandoned like this?

Why is the white flights like it is?

- I think it's a testament to him about the power that he observed, even in the negativity, even in the face of kind of desperate circumstances, and was able to hold up a lens to that for all of us to see and connect with.

- [Kabir] Michelangelo's hard work paid off.

In 2013, he received the Creative Workforce Fellowship of $20,000 from the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture, with support from Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.

Two years later, in 2015, he won a Cleveland Arts Prize.

With the money from the grant, Michelangelo went shopping for a new place to live and a better life.

- [Michelangelo] I wanted to be someplace that was viable.

You know, I wanted to be someplace that people wouldn't be afraid to come into the neighborhood.

- [Kabir] Michelangelo wound up buying a home in the Cudell neighborhood on the west side of Cleveland.

He put down his brush and rolled up his sleeves, transforming the house into a live work studio, - Having a home to call your own and have your own driveway, backyard, front yard.

There's banking, there's supermarkets, there's shopping stores, there's restaurants, everything in walking distance.

And that's what I needed.

I wanted life to be more convenient.

Now everything's right around me, you know, and the convenience is just perfect - When you compare it to where he was.

There's markedly lower crime in all categories.

There's much more diversity.

And if you think of those as indicators of vibrancy of the neighborhood, that could relate to both what attracted him, but also what we might see reflected in his work going forward.

- [Kabir] From his new home, Michelangelo is expanding his range of topics and mellowing a bit.

- There was a time when people were saying he's angry at artists.

I'm very content now.

I don't feel abandoned or ignored.

So you're not just in the community, you are part of the community.

That's what it feels like.

- [Kabir] Perhaps most profound is that his approach to painting is evolving.

Recently, Michelangelo has been experimenting with a new technique.

- I now call my new work through reverse the process where I'm painting imagery, I'm laying down in paint, laying down color.

And as it moved me, then I go into the drawing and I put my drawing on top of my painting, which allows me to bring out my message even clearer.

And this works remind me that I'm back to the basics and I'm being who I really am and a much, much happier artist.

- [Kabir] The solo exhibition "Michelangelo Lovelace, Art Saved My Life" is on view at the Akron Art Museum now through August 18th.

Bobby Selvaggio was raised by a northeast Ohio music legend, his dad, Pete.

On the next "Applause," Selvaggio shares how his son Julian inspired his 12th album.

- I'm proud to see that he's become a creative that knows what he wants and he's doing what he wants.

- [Kabir] Plus Columbus artist, Blakk Sun, transforms his memories of prison into poetry.

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

(gentle jazz music) You can watch past episodes of applause with the PBS App.

Let's head now to Columbus to meet self-trained artist, Brenden Spivey, who sees his art as a means to spreading joy.

However, that doesn't mean he's opposed to taking on more difficult issues in his work.

(pensive music) (canvas rustling) (brush clattering) - I've never really given myself like a label.

A lot of people say that I paint with joy, energy, so those who know me know that I can be very energetic.

And I think a lot of that personality comes out in some of the colors that I use, shapes that I use.

There's never gonna be anything overly dull or dramatic.

(canvas rustling) I like action, so you'll see large swipes, bright colors, texture.

So that's kind of how I view my work.

(canvas rustling) (water whooshing) So I'm a big fan of abstract, which is kind of ironic 'cause that's what I do.

It was more about the, I didn't like the literal interpretation necessarily of like skylines or barns and trees.

I liked being able to have my own vision of what the art piece meant, because I think abstract painters paint with intention, but we also paint with intuition.

So I found it really kind of fascinating just to see like, what do I see going into the piece versus like what they said that they saw.

(upbeat music) (brush rustling) 2017, I was looking for something a little more productive to do as far as stress relief.

You know, I used to run and lift and not that that's not productive, it just takes a lot of time and dedication.

(laughs) But I wanted something a little more.

So I think for me, looking at artwork was always kind of therapeutic.

So I wanted to give that a shot and not being trained to do this was kind of...

It was different.

This is the Hayley Gallery.

(gentle guitar music) For me, this place it's very homey.

And what I like about it is I can find everything that I want.

So if I'm looking for abstract art, if I'm looking for glass, I'm able to find that here.

So it's not just a gallery to me, it's like a home.

So I will have rotations of artwork in, so I typically will have between three to five pieces at a time.

In this one is called "Rise Up."

So this kind of all goes back to some of the movements that we were currently going through, social unrest and all that stuff.

So I wanted to give something and you look at the tones of browns and Earth tones.

So it's kind of pushing you a certain direction without necessarily taking you all the way there.

We wanted to kind of get involved and then pull Black Lives Matter movement, not necessarily through protest and those means, but how can we use our artistic voices to make a very strongly stated message without saying words?

And the two murals that we did, the first one was at the Ohio Theater and it was a compilation of fields of flowers and young children that were black and she was picking flowers and the young boy had a paintbrush.

And then I came in as the artistic abstract sky of shapes and color and will came in with the city scape.

And it just, I think it was a really great fusion of all of our talents together because normally you would not have an abstract painter mixed with two more traditionally trained artists.

But I think that to me was just, that's what made the work so powerful.

Spencer, that's an awful close buddy.

So Spencer is my double doodle.

High five.

Yes.

He's another reason I do a lot of the things that I do.

You can get all the treats.

I get joy outta seeing him enjoy things in life and it's the money that comes in from art sales helps put him in daycare, pays for his vet bills that are so expensive and just overall, just everyday things for him.

Like, that's my buddy.

And you lay flat.

He brings me joy.

And I think having more joy in my life, I think has also probably helped my artwork transcend.

You do not see how handsome you are.

I think another thing that kind of drove me to want to become a painter was being told that painters are born this way.

Artists are born artists and they're artists their entire lives.

That for me was a personal challenge.

So not only was I wanting to like get out there and paint and find a way to relax, I wanted to prove somebody wrong.

(laughs) And then I hit so far so I was right.

You don't know what you're capable of until you do it.

And I live my life that way.

And then I want to get out there and just try it.

- [Kabir] I know it's hard to believe, but we've got even more arts and culture stories beyond what you see here on "Applause."

Find out for yourself by signing up for our weekly arts newsletter, "The To-Do List."

You can do that online by visiting arts.ideastream.org.

All that said, it's time to go.

Thank you for watching this round of "Applause."

I'm Ideastream Public Media's Kabir Bhatia, sending along Happy Mother's Day wishes.

Northeast Ohio jazz man, Dominick Farinacci celebrates his mom, Nancy, a cancer survivor with his composition, "A Prayer For You," on his new album, "Triad."

Farinacci performed the tribute in our Idea Center Studios in 2021.

Enjoy.

(gentle jazz music) (gentle jazz music) (gentle jazz music) (gentle jazz music) (gentle jazz music) (gentle jazz music) (gentle jazz music) (gentle jazz music) (gentle jazz music) (graphics thudding and whooshing) - [Narrator] Production of "Applause" an Ideastream Public Media is made possible by funding by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.