one, two, 34.

Get my shoes on at the door, I'm Lapchick, 78.

Feels great.

I'm gonna shine after I do it, I'm gonna do about do it again.

Yeah, look at this guy with a beautiful collar about more than just for me, said, gonna share it with another guy to show you give that out?

I want to finish.

I'll take a look at, say, beautiful party that turns to a beautiful evening and look at the big, beautiful light.

And if you wanna see the come along with me, that's right.

Welcome to experience Michigan.

I'm the show's producer, Kelsey Zimmer, and thanks so much for being with us.

We have a great show for you today.

We're headed up to Saint Joe, Michigan, to find out about the ICE Fest, which was pushed back a couple of weeks as it was delayed because of the weather that we had a few weeks ago.

It'll be here in the end of the month.

We're also going to go over to Mermans Playhouse, which we were at for a lot of the holiday music that we brought you.

But we wanted to find out about their transition from their old place to the new place that they have in downtown South Bend.

But first, we're headed over to the State Museum to see the latest exhibition that is there today.

We're here at the Knight Museum with curator Cheryl, and I am so excited to be here because I'm going to Ireland in a few days and my future son in law is Irish, and this exhibit really focuses on Irish culture , tradition and history as well.

So tell us a little bit about what motivated the museum here to bring this exhibition, right?

Well, this exhibition is part of a much bigger project called the States of Modernity that's being organized by the Department of Foreign Affairs for the Irish Government.

This is a multi-disciplinary multi venue umbrella project with events all over the world.

We're providing the visual component for that particular program.

And we were working with the O'Brien collection, and what we wanted to do was use the events of 1922 in Paris, the Irish race Congress that was held there as a sort of jumping off point for this current exhibition.

So what we're doing is we're juxtaposing some of the artwork from Ireland's canonical modern artists with contemporary artists to see which themes resonate and which themes continue to make sense today.

And so you had mentioned that this piece is kind of the focal point of the entire exhibition, right?

A touchstone for all of the artwork here.

one of the aspects of Irish identity that really rises to the top.

If you look at artists from the early part of the 20th century, all the way until now is landscape.

How much the Irish really identify with the land is really quite remarkable.

So we wanted to choose this painting here.

By Patrick Graham called Approaching Storm.

It's a landscape from the May County Mayo on the west side of the country, and you'll see that resonated in some of the 1922 generation pieces like Paul Henry's Approaching Storm Over the Bog, and you see it even manifesting itself in figural paintings like Martin Gales women's work.

So even though that's a figural piece that has a very ambiguous kind of unresolved narrative, landscape really paint plays an important role in it.

And similarly, with the Sean Keating, again, a very figural painting.

But the relationship between the figure in the landscape is fundamental.

Now, before we head on into the other gallery, this painting has it just caught my eye?

Can you explain that or can you tell us what that's about?

Yeah.

So this is a painting.

It's a portrait of John Kennedy by Patrick Hennessey, and it was.

John Kennedy made a trip to Ireland a few months before he was assassinated, and so he's like Ireland's favorite son.

He was their big hero.

And so this is actually a painting that's made after a photograph that was taken while he was departing from Ireland, and then five months later, he was assassinated.

So the people in Ireland wanted a portrait made of him.

And so this is one of the this is one of two portraits, actually.

There's another one that's still hanging in the airport of that were made from the photographs that came from that.

It's lovely.

It's been caught.

My eye is it really is beautiful now in this gallery.

Sure, it's also continuing talking about landscape.

Why is the landscapes so important to to Irish culture?

Well, the.

And as important to a lot of countries as they gain their independence, we can see that with American landscape in the 18th century, in the 19th century, we see that also in France after their revolution in the Barbizon School .

It's so it shouldn't come as a surprise that it's equally important to the Irish as they gain their sort of political independence.

We're standing here in front of Paul Henry's painting of a bog with a storm over it.

And one of the interesting things about not this particular painting, but in the 1922 exhibition that was held in Paris.

As part of this Irish race congress, the French government bought one of Paul Henry's paintings out of that exhibition and put it into the Museum Luxembourg, which was their Museum of Contemporary Art.

So with that imprimatur of the French government on Paul Henry's landscape, that really exploded landscape as a sort of touchstone for Irish identity.

And as I was mentioning earlier, you see it in things like the Sean Keating with the way that he is positioned in front of that mountain sort of coming out of it, as well as in this Jack Bates painting of and all where you see this figure that's just sort of immersed into the landscape reading about this legend.

And I do see that there's some codes at the bottom of many of the yes.

So there are several different kinds.

Well, there are QR codes at the bottoms of some of these labels.

This one in particular, takes us to a virtual recreation of the 1922 exhibition that happened in Paris.

That was, that virtual recreation online is made by Billy Shortall, who's at Trinity College in Dublin, and other of the others of the little QR codes.

Take us to musical compositions that were made specifically in response to these particular paintings, so these are brand new musical compositions that were made for this exhibition.

And we know that music is a very important part of our culture in life.

It is, indeed.

And so there will actually be a concert here on April 22nd featuring Marty Fahy, who is the curator for the O'Brien Collection, where we borrowed many of these paintings from.

And he's also a musician himself and a sort of amateur composer, and he worked with several other Irish composers, and they will be presenting a concert here on April 22nd.

That sounds wonderful.

Now, one of the things that I found that really struck me I found very interesting is that part of the exhibit, while a large part of it, it speaks about the Irish diaspora.

And it struck me because as an African-American, I've heard that connected to the African-American experience, but not necessarily to the Irish right tradition and their history.

So it really is a connection that between the two.

Yes.

one of the things that I like to say about this exhibition is you don't have to be Irish to love it .

There's a lot of beautiful paintings in here to look at, but many of the themes also continue to resonate with us today and that issue of immigration and emigration and the Diaspora is one of them.

So the Irish have they were occupied by the British for centuries and many of them in order to find some kind of relief frequently left.

So there's a large Irish diaspora here in the United States.

We have probably the largest population of Irish outside of Ireland.

And so yes, they're there in Australia.

They're in South Africa.

They're all over the world.

And so this diaspora becomes really quite important.

And that's also another important link to this 1922 Irish Congress that happened in Paris.

So this coming out, this kind of debut for Ireland on an international stage didn't happen in Ireland.

It happened in Paris.

And part of the reason for that was to bring all of this Irish diaspora together from all over the world to talk about this new autonomy and the importance of stating that the culture is important.

Our traditions are important, just like for every culture.

And it really is in the title.

It's not who did they say we are?

It's who do we say?

Exactly.

That's exactly right.

Yeah.

Well, I know we have one more gallery to take a look at, and I'm really excited about this because it's black and white photographs and it's by a female, you so.

Actually, there are other female artists here in the gallery as well, many Gelhardt, who's also got another landscaped, very abstract cubist and then Diane, a copper white.

Hers is also abstract and vaguely landscape as well.

And she's going to be.

We're hoping that she actually comes and does a program with us, but there's going to be a couple of virtual slow looks that my colleague Bridget Hoyt is going to host.

And one of them will be on this a copper white painting, and the other one will be on the Martin Gale.

Oh, that sounds great.

Well, I can't wait to see the photographs.

Sure.

Let's go.

So these are the photographs by Amelia Stein, and they are stunning.

Yes, what we really wanted to do was to when we were thinking of this 1922 generation, 2022 generation.

one of the things that we wanted to include was what would a similar exhibition look like now that 1922 exhibition did not include any photographs because that wasn't really on people's cognitive maps at the time, but it certainly would be now.

And you can see again several of the same kinds of themes that continue to resonate even in her work.

So, for example, this landscape again more landscapes of the turf cutting, which is the cutting of the turf from the bogs, the peat that would be set out to dry and then used as fuel.

Right now, the exhibition opened up on February fifth, and it is running until is it?

May 15, May 15th?

Mm hmm.

Yes.

And there is a whole slate of programs.

If you want more information, certainly visit our website.

We have lots and lots of information on there, including a downloadable catalog and downloadable CD with all of the musical compositions that have been made for the the artwork, but then also lots of programs, one of which is cocktails with a curator, and that will be David Acton.

In this particular part of the exhibition with Amelia Stein's photographs, we have two virtual slow looks, as I mentioned earlier with the Martin Gale and the Diana Copper White.

We have a lecture from Roshini Kennedy, who is an academic in Dublin, and she'll be here talking about modern Irish art.

And then, of course, the concert April 22nd.

All right.

Well, Sheryl, thank you so much for the tour.

Like I said, I am so excited to be going to Ireland.

But if you're not able to go, at least you can come here to this night museum and get a little piece of Irish history and culture.

So I am joined by Danielle right now from Saint Joe, Michigan.

Danielle the ICE Festival is happening.

And first of all, what is the weekend and what are the dates that it's happening?

Definitely.

So we did reschedule it normally is our first weekend in February, but it is now.

The last weekend we had a little too much winter weather and we had to work with snow removal and vanilla ice covers again.

But you can catch this ice festival February 25th through the 27th in downtown Saint Joe.

Yeah, because I was thinking to myself, Isn't this normally earlier in the year when it's a little bit colder, you're not too worried that it's going to warm up too much, you know?

You know, with Michigan, the weather is so finicky.

So we're, you know, fingers crossed everyone's going to do their snow day dances and hope for some colder weather at the end of the month.

But we should be.

We should be good.

We just had to make sure our ice and our carvers could get here.

So and I maybe it's only because I've lived in the area for like seven years now, but I feel like Saint Joseph, Michigan, and maybe it's always been this way.

But I feel like that as a town, you guys have really come together to really try and promote the town as a whole over the last couple of years, even more so than before.

Is that accurate or is that just something I'm picking up on?

Yeah, definitely.

I think it's always been, you know, we've always had this importance of community and seeing Joe.

I've been with you today about eight years now, and I would I would say that's pretty accurate over my time here.

I've really seen it kind of grow into that, but we always think, you know, we're just one of many beach towns on Southwest Michigan's amazing shore.

So the you know what we can do to provide, you know, things for people to come and visit us for a day and also go to South Haven Target.com and there's all these amazing towns within such a short drive.

It's really cool.

And also, yeah, we have the beach, but there's all these other things that are happening inland a little bit, so it's really fun to promote just the community as a whole.

I think it is a beautiful downtown.

My wife and I love walking around there.

We've been there several times over the winter.

So if we want to come along February 25th to 27th and enjoy the ICE Festival and what is actually going to be happening?

Yeah, definitely.

I'll give you a quick rundown.

So what's really cool about our ICE festival is that we actually have professional ice carvers come in, so they're kind of all from without the country like so we got some from Michigan, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Ohio is where our ice comes.

That's where ice providers from.

So on Friday night really kicked things off with our professional individual carving comes.

That's presented by Cathy Tracey down here, but they take these frozen blocks of ice and turn them into this one block of, you know, amazing art we've seen, you know, dragonflies, moons, stars like these really cool, elaborate like Phoenix's and different things like that.

But that's for about three hours.

So they can they can work on theirs.

And then we've got a fire, an ice tower at 7:30 on Friday night, which is literally what it sounds like.

It's this giant tower of ice that we make a bonfire in the middle of the night and have that wrap of the evening on Friday, but that's presented by one of our awesome hotels in the area, Tru by Hilton.

And then on Saturday, you can see even more professional competition.

So we've got teams of covers.

So those same covers that we're carving on Friday night.

Team up in teams of two.

And they actually take these huge eight blocks of ice.

So I'm about 53.

These things tower me, you know, like so these they're like all over downtown.

It's really cool to watch, but that happens from 7:30 in the morning to 4:00 p.m.

So you got plenty of time to watch that ICE interactive happen also on Saturday.

We've got our frosty tic-tac-toe of frozen fish toss.

Yes, they're real frozen fish, ice bowling and ice thrown that's available all weekend long, but some of our interactions are only available from eleven to four.

We've got a really cool magic pour that happens at a couple of different locations on Saturday and then, of course, a snowbird scavenger hunt that really makes you go out and view all of the ice sculptures.

So we have about 39 this year.

I think just like carved ones and then on top of the ones that are created for the competition.

So we've got quite the amount of ice displays this weekend, you know, February 25th to the 27th.

And really a really cool thing to view is the scavenger hunt.

You can see all of them.

And then Sunday is really the day that everything is done.

So if you want like the perfect viewing day, I'd say definitely Saturday evening or Sunday.

So obviously that's a lot of information for anybody watching if they want to go to one place to get all that information just in case they might miss some of it or they want to just, you know, be sure what you said .

Where can they go?

Of course, you can always visit us online at Sanctuary dot com for specific best information you can go to seemto Today.com Backslash Ice Fest, and it's actually right on our main page.

So as long as you find Cincinnati's website, you'll find the complete schedule.

So Saint Joe today dot OK.

I would really encourage people that seeing the sculptures sculptures when they're actually complete is wonderful, but seeing these amazing artists actually do it.

I mean, just to see it all coming together and wrap up warm because it takes time watching them do it is amazing.

I think it's pretty cool.

You know, some of these guys also, you know, their chefs year round.

Some of them do really awesome sand sculptures.

They do like elaborate pumpkin carvings in the fall.

It's pretty awesome to see.

Like I said, these things tower us.

You know, we've had phenixes.

They had a really cool astronaut moon one year.

There's Mario and Donkey Kong and unicorns like literally anything you can imagine.

I think we've had a praying mantis right outside the welcome center, so it's really awesome to see what they come up with, and a lot of them come up with the idea like right on the spot.

So yeah, kudos to them.

I see a block of ice.

They see what I can become.

Wonderful to see it.

So once again, it's February 25th.

The 27th Saint Joe Today.com is where you can find out all the information about the run down of everything.

And of course, I think Saint Joe is a great example of that.

When a town comes together and when a town works together to get lots of people to come visit it, it benefits the entire community.

Most definitely, and we are so thankful to be a year-round community here.

You know, beach town.

And so we've got great events that we do in the summer.

But we also have these awesome things that happen in September through May.

So you can check us out any time and we've always got something going on.

I love it.

So St Joe today.

Com.

Danielle, thank you so much and good luck at your eyes, first of all.

Thank you.

This past holiday, we were at Mermans Playhouse, where we were so thrilled to be able to bring you the beautiful sounds of the season with the amazing artists and talent that we have in our community.

But we also promised that we would be back.

And here we are with Steven and Mary, and just so glad to be here because you both have such a big heart for this community and bringing music to this community.

So I thought it was so funny how 2019 we were at Maryland's Playhouse featuring holiday music.

Then again in 2021.

So now no holiday music today, but just kind of want to talk?

What was your journey these past two years?

Because the world has changed and things have also changed from Everyman's Playhouse these past two years?

Well, I guess to begin with, we switch locations and and that was all inspired from the whole COVID thing was shut down, turned out, left that place on Milwaukee Avenue, which was wonderful, but we always wanted to be downtown.

And so we thought, Well, this is the time that we didn't have to leave the scene.

The scene left us so, so we thought, Well, OK, let's do it.

And we went and we recreated the Playhouse for.

Brought all the things, the esthetic stuff.

That we could that were sort of that evolved over many, many years to kind of.

Represent our esthetic, you know, and our passion for the music and and art and literature and dance and and everything, you know, and and so we just brought a little bit smooched in here and there and and people came in after we had accomplished that.

Of course, we didn't bring everything that was over the other place.

It was sprawled out all over and we this is just one room.

And in this one room, we brought a little bit of what was all a little bit of the piano, a little bit, you know, and and people walk in and go , Oh, you brought the Playhouse?

Well, I mean, can I just say it is such a beautiful space?

And again, thank you so much for sharing your space with with us during the holidays.

But one of the things that amazed me doing this show is that there's so much out here in our community, and a lot of times people don't know that.

And so I think this is great that we have it an opportunity for people to know all of the amazing talent that is coming through here, not just in our community, but again all around the world and all around our country.

Now I often thought like we were watching you guys when we did the show, I was watching you while your trio, your jazz trio playing.

It was so amazing, and I kind of thought, you know, sometimes you see this talent.

Do you think they could be anywhere they could be in New York or Chicago, on the West Coast, they could be anywhere.

And I think it's really awesome that you have decided to be here.

Why do you decide to be here in our community?

Well, part of the reason was the central location, you know, and I was out on the road quite a bit.

I lived in New York and all over the place and Mary's from the Michigan area.

And she worked enough.

We all worked enough to know there aren't very many places to work, especially if you aren't just playing the usual fare, whatever is selling, if you've got some, if you've got a vision and you're working on something, it's just lost between the cracks of the culture and you, you die, you know, or you try something else.

So that's that's a huge part of it.

But I actually grew up in South Bend, Indiana, and I went to really high school and and I left during right at the at the end of the seventies, the late seventies and I left.

I was gone all through the eighties and nineties, and I would periodically visit my family and things like that.

And and every time I would, I would always stumble on something very unique and I would I would fight off the urge because there was there was no way I was ever going to come back to South Bend because it just seemed like there was nothing here for me.

It was just it was a cultural wasteland.

And but every time I would come back, I would discover something that and I would think, Oh, that can't be solved, then no, I can't, you know?

And and then so this last time and now it's been almost 20 years.

And Mary and I got together and we started to we we invested in South Bend.

And but it was because we saw the potential to we know artists here.

We know musician of the year.

We know, we know that there are some people here that don't that are very apathetic and don't care about anything.

And they just those people are everywhere.

They're in New York there, and they're those same people are everywhere, and there are the hungry minded and they're right here in your own little neighborhood, right in our own little town.

And there's a beautiful culture here of people that are incredibly diverse and interesting and intellectual and and thoughtful and considerate and beautiful, you know, and deserve stuff like this to to exist in their community.

And we believe in that 100%, you know, and that's why we have devoted the rest of our lives to establishing that once and for all.

And we're hoping that one day we'll be able to back away from it and it'll just kind of be its own.

It's not yet OK. Not yet.

But um, how can people learn more about the series that are coming and the days and hours that you're open?

Well, the only thing that's consistent with being open is our Tuesday open session, and those are seven to nine ish.

There are a lot of that with the local people, and it's each one's a little different, very, very different as every Tuesday and everybody volunteers, it is the house band.

So we're all volunteers.

It's all volunteers for the love.

But more Americans play how the other four members playhouse that.

Org OK?

And you can go on the upcoming concerts page, which I'm always in process of updating to see, you know, very hard at work.

So it's not out today, but it's just everyone else.

Yeah, right?

But as far as when the usually the touring groups are Thursday, Friday or Saturday, OK, and every now and then a Wednesday if we have to squeeze somebody in.

So.

But if that's not consistent, it's like once you just kind of got a check in, just check in is pretty much follows the artists touring.

We don't have anything just but it is pretty.

It is.

We are actually booked through the starting into August already for an artist, for a touring artist once a week.

So we're doing it touring artist once a week and a local artist or chamber group once the other big thing is coming.

It's this this coming, hopefully this summer.

But for sure, next summer is that we'll be doing live performances out on the in the atrium or out on the deck.

On the east, race is going to be called the Whitewater.

Jazz series or music series, oh, that's nice, and it'll be, you know, touring artists and everything, you know, big bands, wow, we're going to get a show.

Well, shut and we're going to get a band show out there and we're going to.

And we're also going to be able to bring it into the atrium or out here where the ice cream place is and the and so the they'll that is going to be at lunchtime here and that's working with WCF.

Yeah, when we're BW ETF, the gas station, David.

Oh, that's wonderful.

Yeah.

David Matthews.

And hopefully we'll get some other underwriting from from other people and we'll be able to afford it.

You know, Americans piano, of course.

And anyway, so we'll have a lunch time series too, where we have duets and trios.

And, you know, two maybe even like, you know, Notre Dame's choir.

Yeah, no.

Any choir, things like that.

Any choir that we can, we can put it together, Cosima.

Oh, yeah, gotta bring that out here.

But then they're putting the whole every lunchtime.

I want to try to have something going out there, good or bad, whether you just brown bag, you get your lunch or whatever, you brown bag it and just come on and hang out.

Well, I think the big thing is, keep checking that website because there's so much going on at Maryland's Playhouse and from South Bend, from our community.

You just want to say thank you.

Thank you for what you're doing.

And please keep doing it.

It's our pleasure.

Well, that's it for today's show.

Thanks so much for being with us.

Remember, if you're out experiencing things in Michigan, be sure to post about it and use the hashtag Experience Michigan.

That way, maybe we can share it with our audience, too.

If you have other ideas, you can hit us up on Facebook or email us and we'd love to find out about what you're experiencing in Michigan.

So until next time, have a great week, everybody experience.

Michiana is made possible in part by the Community Foundation of Saint Joseph County and the Indiana Arts Commission, which received support from the State of Indiana and the National Endowment for the Arts.

This wnit, local production has been made possible in part by viewers like you.

Thank you.