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

(upbeat jazz music) - [Kabir] Coming up, all aboard the Pollinator Express at the Holden Arboretum.

Then we head to Lorain County for a history lesson about the tornado of 1924.

And the Cleveland Orchestra makes a dramatic statement with "The Miraculous Mandarin".

Welcome back to "Applause", my friend.

I'm Ideastream Public Media's Kabir Bhatia.

(upbeat jazz music) (light music) Branches, bark, and other finds in nature make up a new railway display at Holden Arboretum in Kirtland.

The Pollinator Express has arrived for the summer.

Meet the team of creative people who brought the exhibit to life.

(hand drill whirring) (light upbeat music) - There are four tracks, almost 500 feet of track.

Lots of trestles, lots of tree branches that supports and our Cedar Mountains that we sculpt here on site along with 12 pollinators that we have installed here.

So, the Cedar Mountains are these sculpted objects behind me.

That's sort of our backdrop.

It's a lot of support.

We park the trains in there at night in their tunnels so that they stay dry and away from the critters.

The track is made of treated lumber and we cut that and design each track for each garden that we go to.

So this is a very unique display designed exactly for this spot and for this garden, which is super cool.

And then we build these custom bridges, which are made of what we call ditch willow, which is sort of sustainably harvested in ditches, near water and things like that.

And it grows really straight so we're able to build these engineered correctly bridges.

It can be difficult, you know?

You kinda have to find the perfect piece out in the forest.

So a certain curve of a branch or the way the bark is curved or a certain texture that you need to find to mimic fur or the brick on a building.

So it does present its challenges, but it is fun to kind of find that material and present that to your audience and say, "Oh wait, that is all natural material.

That's really cool."

It can be very difficult 'cause sometimes you don't find the right piece, and so you have to sort of figure it out with what you have.

It's difficult, but it's a lot of fun.

(upbeat music) - Cranes move things.

They're freight, they move people, they move things.

But in a lot of ways, pollinators are exactly the same.

They're just moving pollen from flower to flower.

They're helping plants reproduce, a little bit more of a poetic connection.

But, you know, we love the trains, we love the pollinators and we think this will be a nice kind of marriage for people.

- So on the Pollinator Express, you get the pollinators that are not necessarily your typical ones.

So your bumblebees, your butterflies, and things of that nature.

You have your ruffled lemur, you have your milkweed beetle, you have a gecko, a yucca moth, all kinds of really interesting insects and animals that are pollinators that people don't always think are pollinators.

So it's very good learning experience to come and check out those pollinators they may not know of.

So they are usually a core of foam or some sort of wood that we've gathered, and then they're all sculpted by hand.

Our team of artists does that in our workshop.

And then they're all covered in a slew of botanic materials.

Everything from barks to seed pods to vines.

Anything we find out in the forest.

- I think when a lot of people think of pollinators, they think of bees.

You know, they probably think of butterflies.

But there are actually a lot more different types of animals and insects that pollinate plants.

And many have developed some really unique connections with the plants that they pollinate.

For example, behind me, we have a milkweed beetle with milkweed, which is actually a plant and maybe a pollinator that folks around this area might be familiar with.

But there are some really odd ones too from around the world.

We have a honey creeper bird with a lobelia flower, which is native to Hawaii.

You know, we've got a gecko that's in the exhibit.

There's a fruit bat.

There are all these really interesting types of animals and insects that do the same job, but don't necessarily get all the credit like butterflies and bees do.

(saw whirring) - Applied imagination mainly creates botanical sculptures and garden railway displays.

I studied sculpture at Northern Kentucky University and came on right outta school and learned a lot of it on site here.

We're in Alexandria, Kentucky, it's about 12 miles south of Cincinnati, but we travel everywhere from Morris Arboretum in Philadelphia to Tucson Botanical Garden in Arizona.

The company was sort of started in 1991 by Paul Busse.

He was the mastermind of all this and was really into trains and wanted to make his own buildings to put in his displays.

And it all came from just a love for trains and a love for model making.

- [Kabir] The Pollinator Express is humming along at Holden Arboretum through September 8th.

(gentle music) On June 28th, 1924, a tornado swept over Lake Erie and made landfall in Lorain, destroying hundreds of homes, churches, and businesses in its path.

A century later, the city looks back to remember the lives lost, the families that stood together, and the resiliency of a city that chose to rebuild instead of giving up.

(somber music) - What happened here, I think is seared into the community here.

(somber music) What happened to this community then is still in our DNA today by the folks who've passed down their family stories.

After this horrific tragedy, what did Lorain do is they came together and rebuilt very quickly.

They helped each other.

Neighboring communities came in and helped each other (uplifting music) and everyone became neighbors after the tornado.

There's markers all about town and why our architecture looks the way it does, but it also goes into like what the people of Lorain are built and made of.

(uplifting music) We had a few thousand people before the steel mill came, but then after, our population quadrupled.

So by 1924 we had 37,000 people here in Lorain.

And we're known as the international city, so folks were coming from all over, not only the whole country, but all over the world for the industries we had here.

So we were like, you know, a mosaic of a community.

The downtown was very busy, there were a lot of businesses.

We had several movie theaters and we were growing and just like mixing.

It was very fresh and new that we were this international community.

(light music) - My dad was born in Lorain in 1915.

So he was nine years old when the tornado came around.

In the Saturday, June 28th, 1924, it was hot, in the 80s, humid.

Thunderstorms were potentially gonna be rolling up like they do in a humid environment.

- The tornado came right off the lake.

So it did actually hit in Sandusky first, traveled over the lake, and then this was where it came back onto land.

People were swimming, enjoying the beach.

There were lifeguards on duty, and the lifeguard was actually one of the first people to spot the tornado over the lake.

And so, he notified everyone and they quickly got off the beach and he was kind of one of the important people in getting the beach cleared.

This was the bathhouse, the Lakeview Bathhouse.

This is the first place they thought to run because it was shelter.

So the tornado did totally destroy the building except for these pillars that remain.

But it was totally leveled.

(sad music) - Several folks unfortunately died in the bathhouse.

The tornado kept moving east through the neighborhoods.

When it struck in the downtown, the matinee at the State Theatre had just let out.

So they were estimated to be a thousand people in the theater right before the tornado hit.

- Grandpa would give my dad a dime or 15 cents to go to the movies on Saturday afternoons.

So he went to the movie in the afternoon.

And when the movie ended around shortly before 5:00 PM, he came out, here's a nine-year-old kid with maybe a couple of his friends, and he saw this big, black cloud just to the west.

So he just started running away down downtown, down Broadway, down through Downtown Lorain.

Looked back at one point, roughly around 10th Street, saw a tree go down behind him and he ran even that much faster.

But had he stayed for the next show, within moments, the storm had hit Lakeview Park, the neighborhoods between the Lakeview Park and Downtown, and then downtown on a matter of a couple of minutes.

The winds lifted off the roof of the building next door and threw it onto the theater, State Theatre.

- There were about a hundred people for the next showing in the theater at the time when the tornado struck the State Theatre.

So that's where 15 people died.

They were digging out people alive for days after.

Within a day, the National Guard had 1500 national guardsmen here from three different regiments, police forces from Elyria, Wellington, Lakewood, and Cleveland came.

Fire departments as well.

The Red Cross arrives shortly after, and they divide the city into districts and have nurses visit everyone in the home to kinda make case by case support for folks, if they needed financial assistance, if they needed food.

There was a large community presence here from the surrounding community and then Lorainites helping one another.

(sad music) - And then within hours of the next day, photographers came out.

They just recorded the destruction as well as some of the recovery.

And then even days later, pictures of people like ladies doing the laundry and their kids sitting next door to what's left of their house.

And they tell the story of how the city was destroyed, but then it started coming back gradually.

(somber music) And then here's one, "Dear friend, just wanting to let you know that I'm well and hope you are, too.

See what tornado had done over Lorain in four minutes.

Yours, Billy."

Sent to a friend in Blue Hill Falls, Maine.

So, the word got out all over the country.

- I think there's always something about anniversaries that make people reminisce.

So I know for years, anytime a bad storm would come by, folks who saw the tornado would talk about where they were.

Or if skies would get dark, they would get a little anxious and then talk about where they were that day.

There are fewer and fewer people here to still tell those stories.

It's really only just in their children and grandchildren that heard it that are now sharing them today.

- Hopefully, it will inspire another generation.

When I pass these on, when I'm too old to realize what I have, (chuckle) when these pass on to some other owner, that someone else will take an interest and pride in preserving that history.

We can learn from that history.

We need to preserve that history so we know where we came from.

(somber music) - [Kaitlyn] The lessons that came out of it are still beneficial to today about helping each other.

Everyone becoming neighbors, you know, learning how you come back and recover from that and don't lose morale.

I think those lessons are timeless.

(somber music) - [Kabir] Lorain hosts an official remembrance ceremony for the public on Saturday, June 28th, at noon at Lakeview Park where the tornado first touchdown in 1924.

(upbeat jazz music) Allison Loggins-Hull has the plumb job of writing new music with the Cleveland Orchestra.

On the next "Applause", meet the composer as she takes her residency into Cleveland neighborhoods.

Plus, get to know a Columbus artist who speaks with her ancestors through her art.

And Oberlin's Chris Coles performs a jazz elegy with some of his students.

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

(relaxing jazz music) (upbeat music) Okay, let's head to the Goodwill Art Studio in Columbus and meet this warm-hearted artist, Helen Taylor.

(light upbeat music) - I love my art.

It lifts me, you know?

It makes me happy.

It makes me feel like I'm accomplishing my goals.

See, when I first started doing art I didn't think I could do anything.

I had a lot of people telling me I could do it and I didn't have any faith in myself.

But now, I have a lot of faith in myself.

I like to send my stuff around the world to help somebody.

You know, there's kids out there that can't do what I do.

And they can't sew, they can't paint, and they can't draw.

And I watch a lot of kids shows and it touches me.

And when I do my art, I think about them kids.

I think about them kids across the sea, here in America that can't draw, can't spell, can't do a lot of stuff.

So I know I'm thankful that I can do what I can do.

I used to be scared of stuff, but I had a buddy that broke me out of that.

So I'm not scared anymore of stuff.

Outside of scary pictures on TV, I'm scared of that.

I change the channel all the time 'cause now I get into cartoons 'cause I'm a grandma and I like to be...

I want my grandkids to be proud of me.

And I want my providers and I want the studio and everybody to be proud of me, because I want them to know I not only do this for me, but I want to show them I appreciate.

I appreciate Nick, I appreciate Ed.

(upbeat music) Sometimes I have to ask for ideas 'cause I get stuck, (laughs) you know what I mean?

I'm doing my turtles now and I'm stuck.

I started out sewing, and then the sewing didn't go right.

So then, I did the ribbon thing with the turtles.

See?

This is the bottom.

This is the bottom.

And then I got the heads put up till I get the other parts, you know, the legs and the thing I was telling you about the turtle.

Before I started, I had to cut.

I had to cut these pieces before I could sew 'em together 'cause the material was real thick.

And when I make the shell part, me and Heather, she did the paste thing and then we glued all these different pieces.

Don't let nobody tell you you can't do it.

I had to start from the bottom to work my way up because I didn't have any confidence in myself.

People had confidence in me, but I didn't have any.

They kept telling me I could do it, and I kept telling them, "I can't do that!

I don't know how to do that!"

But now, since I've been doing it, I've been hyped up (laughs) 'cause I can't sleep at night because I'm thinking about all kinda ideas, you know, what to do next.

When they had the COVID thing, I was going nuts.

I was walking back and forth in my house going crazy.

I was fussing with my providers 'cause I couldn't come.

I was real mean.

My provider would tell you I was real mean.

I cussed.

I don't usually cuss, but when I get angry (laughs) it comes out.

(laughs) - [Interviewer] And that was 'cause you couldn't do your artwork?

- Yeah, I was angry for them days that we couldn't come.

I wouldn't talk, I didn't eat.

I turned on the TV and I went through...

I even watched some scary pictures 'cause I was so angry, you know, 'cause I couldn't come to the art studio.

'Cause this makes me happy, you know?

Knowing that you can come to a place where you can be yourself at the art studio.

Knowing you are accomplishing your goals and you're making other people happy and making you feel good inside.

When you do your art, there's something inside of you that's telling you I could do it.

(playful upbeat music) (light music) - [Kabir] Jackie Weatherly was an advocate for fiber artists during her days living and creating in Dayton.

She's since moved on, but her artwork has left a lasting impression.

(light music) - I went to school at Meredith College in Raleigh, North Carolina and did studio art.

One of the classes there was the silk painting class that they offered, and I was hooked at that point.

Textile art for me is, it's all about the visual part as well as the tactile part, being able to actually feel the material and the cloth and painting with a dye on silk and watching it travel across the material is very fascinating for me.

You can add salt for texture, you can use resist to make a tight line.

You can use all kinds of different diffusants so it can either travel or not travel.

And it's just, it's a versatile material and it's just a lot of fun to work with.

It can be very challenging.

(chuckles) If you're looking to do something perfect like with oil painting or acrylic, you're not gonna get that with dye because dye tends to travel all over the material.

And if you use a resist, which is a kind of a gutai type of thing where you draw on the silk to keep the dye from flowing, then you can do a little more with that.

Otherwise, it's its own animal.

(light upbeat music) Usually I have an idea in mind what I wanna paint off.

Have my own photograph of a flower or an animal or something, and I'll transfer that by drawing it on with a resist.

And then painting with the dye and if you put salt on for texture effect.

And then same for the resist, you have to wait for that to dry or you can iron set it.

The dyes that I use are Jacquard Red Labeled dyes, and they require to be steam set so that they don't run when it get wet and that type of thing.

You wrap it up in newsprint and stick it in a steamer for about an hour and 45 minutes, and then pull it out and then rinse it.

And then heat set it with an iron after that.

And it should be good for wearable art.

I do make scarves and ties and a hand painted silk that I'd make into a pendant or a pen.

(light upbeat music) (gentle music) My favorite piece was the green sea turtles that I had made for a show at Meredith College.

We used to live at the beach back in the '90s, and the sea art is a lot of what I focus on or nature flowers and just the outdoors, Mother Nature mostly.

I do some photography on the side and oftentimes I'll take some photographs of my own flowers and I'll take them to a website called spoonflower.com and upload the imagery to that and do some mirror imaging and printing on either cotton or silk or linen and make yardage from that.

I do some free hand machine embroidery, non-traditional quilting with those fabrics.

And I've also made handbags.

(light music) There was a piece that I had down at the Dayton Visual Arts Center, and it was a silk piece that was attached to the top of the frame.

But the sides in the bottom were loose so that when people walked by, the air tend to pick it up and pull it away from the actual frame.

And people stopped and turned around and looked at that and they weren't quite sure what to make of it.

And one gentleman actually walked up and pulled the corner up and looked underneath it to see what was going on underneath the piece.

And then he was like, "Okay, nothing there," and he walked away.

I wanted to be different from everybody else.

And a lot of people do watercolor or oil painting or acrylics.

So, fiber arts is just a different art form.

(light music) - [Kabir] Almost time to go folks, but we've got more in store.

Thank you for watching this round of "Applause".

I'm Ideastream Public Media's Kabir Bhatia, leaving you with music from the Cleveland Orchestra's latest recording.

Here's Franz Welser-Möst leading the orchestra in a selection from Béla Bartók's "Miraculous Mandarin".

(orchestral music) (suspenseful orchestral music) (suspenseful orchestral music continues) (suspenseful orchestral music continues) (orchestral music) (light music) - [Announcer] Production of "Applause", an Ideastream Public Media, is made possible by funding by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.