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

(mellow groove music) (upbeat groove music) - [Kabir] Coming up, meet a Northeast Ohio artist who creates with a chainsaw.

Plus, we take to the skies with a group of daredevil pilots from southwest Ohio.

And listen for the uplifting vocals of the Cleveland Chorale on stage at the Tri-C JazzFest.

Welcome aboard this edition of "Applause," my friends.

I'll be your pilot today, Ideastream Public Media's Kabir Bhatia.

Ice Sculpting is an art form that's only around for a short while.

Sculpting takes skill, practice and patience to master, but the art can be as stunning as it is fleeting.

Medina native Aaron Costic is behind many of the ice sculptures seen around the region.

Ideastream Public Media's Jean-Marie Papoi shares his story.

(upbeat bright music) - When he was younger, we never thought of him as being artistic.

You couldn't even read his handwriting ever.

- [Jean-Marie] Ice carver Aaron Costic wasn't exactly drawn to the arts as a kid growing up in Medina.

- I kind of shunned art class, it really wasn't for me.

I got my counselor to let me skip art class, the required credits and take extra industrial arts class, which we know is woodshop.

That got me used to power tools and being comfortable, not being afraid of things like that.

It wasn't until I found ice carving that I started nurturing the art side of my brain.

And taking more classes, and practicing drawing, and things like that.

(saw whizzes) - [Jean-Marie] Meanwhile, Costic also developed an interest in becoming a chef and began his culinary art studies at the University of Akron.

- One of the classes was garde manger, which is using edible products for centerpieces like chocolate, cheese, vegetables, ice.

I in turn brought pretty good.

So I branched off in that direction and that's been 34 years.

(upbeat bright music) - Now there's a little story we tell.

Aaron came home to tell us that this is what he was going to do.

And his father looked at him and said, "How are you gonna make any money making ice cubes?"

And I knew since Aaron was very young, he always maintained several jobs always, since he was like 13.

I said, "Aaron, if anybody can do this, you can."

And I guess he did.

(Peggy laughing) - [Jean-Marie] Costic began practicing and learning the craft of ice sculpture through competing.

- And these competitions were all over the place.

And I went to a lot of them.

I would go like to 18 competitions a year.

And through all the practice, and preparation, and execution, and also seeing what everybody else was doing, I was able to make mistakes faster.

When you make mistakes faster, you learn quickly, you learn quickly.

(upbeat bright music) - He is really fast.

He's really fast.

So he does other mediums, but some of 'em are not always easy for him.

Like, wood, you work very slowly with.

- [Person] We'll see when I get to- - Ice, you just go at it.

And so he's a go at it kind of guy and that's why he, I think, that's why he excelled with the ice, 'cause you move very quickly and he was good at that.

- [Jean-Marie] Costic is an eight-time winner of the world Ice Art Championships in Fairbanks, Alaska.

He's also shown off his sculpting skills at three different winter Olympic games.

(upbeat bright music) - In the country world, you've got Reba or you've got Garth, you know, just different names that you say one name and you know what it means.

Well, the ice people have got Aaron, and there's others like that too.

But it's just so cool that, you know, he's just right up there, right up there at the top (mellow synth music) - Well, the ice is really a consistent material.

When you cut it, it does the same thing over and over and over again.

It's a lot more forgiving than say like stone or wood.

Then you can usually sand it back a little more, change something a little bit.

If something major breaks off, there's a lot of times you can attach a new piece and carve something new out of it.

- [Jean-Marie] Costic started his own business, Elegant Ice Creations.

And has been creating custom ice sculptures for weddings and corporate events across Northeast Ohio for more than 30 years.

He also offers ice carving classes where future sculptors learn from his seven step process.

- Every carving is seven steps to complete it.

And it's pretty consistent throughout, doesn't matter what the carving is.

Well, first is design, you have to have a design.

So you can either draw the design out or you can put it on paper and stick the paper on the ice and draw it that way.

The next thing you do is you cut out the silhouette or the profile.

So essentially, like, if you were to stamp it with like a cookie cutter, that's what you're doing.

You're cutting the exact silhouette out.

After you cut out the silhouette, then this is the hardest step is blocking in, pushing levels back and leaving levels out.

And that is the part that takes the most amount of experience.

Once you're done blocking in it, it kinda looks like a robot, like a square robot.

And then you'll round it, sand it, detail it, and clean it.

(torch hissing) - [Jean-Marie] Inside the expansive facility in Broadview Heights, all of the ice is created in house.

34 tanks can freeze sixty-eight 300 pound blocks over the course of three days.

- Whenever you're ready.

- Multiple freezers hold completed sculptures before they're transported to an event.

(mellow synth music) During the winter months, Costic and his team are busy preparing for ice festivals around the state, including in his hometown.

The Medina Ice Festival is one of Ohio's largest and longest running ice centered events.

(mellow synth music) - It happens downtown, it's a free event and it spans over the third weekend In February, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

Friday night, we have speed carving where carvers go head to head for 20 minutes.

The crowd picks who moves on.

We have a fire and ice tower, big chimney made out of ice that we fill with wood and light on fire.

And then the ice and the fire do battle.

And then we have some competitions on Saturday and Sunday, as well as some live demos.

- [Jean-Marie] About 100 sculptures are on view during the Medina Ice Festival.

Some created from one 300 pound block.

Others may consist of 10 to 16 blocks put together.

Though he now mainly competes in friendly speed carving competitions with friends, Costic continues to delight audiences with his favorite art form.

- [Announcer] Let's make some noise- - But it's so unique because the light passes through it.

And as the light passes through it, it catches the refractive angles.

Like on this eagle right here, you can see the light is getting caught in each of those lines, but that doesn't happen in any other material.

- Yeah.

- You know.

Other materials make shadows, which are interesting, but the ice has that.

And the ephemeral quality is also something that people are amazed by, you know.

It's here just for the moment.

(mellow synth music) - [Kabir] The 30th annual Medina Ice Festival takes place this year, February 16th through the 19th, downtown on the square.

As a student in Cleveland in the 1980s, Danielle Dixon didn't connect with the classical artists she learned about in the classroom.

Over the years, she's developed her own realistic style and along her creative journey, started writing poetry too.

Dixon finds inspiration for her art from the novels of science fiction writer, Octavia Butler.

- Creativity, it was always a part of of my life because as a kid, I was an only child.

So my mother was like, "I wanna get you all the crayons you want and the manila paper and the paints.

Oh yeah, go to town, I'm not having any more kids."

So, you know, it was always a way for me to keep myself busy.

I had never really stopped drawing and painting.

I just got better at it.

You know, I just found that with art, I could kind of just create my world the way I wanted it to be.

My mother tried to get me into the School of the Arts when it first opened in '81, but somehow we got our dates mixed up and we missed the date for the audition.

But once I got to high school, I really hated the school I was going to.

And she's like, you know what, let's audition again for School of the Arts.

So that was a big deal because now, we were focusing on the technical side of how to draw and getting the basics down and not just kind of going for it, you know, by sight.

And getting to practice it over and over every day actually helped me to increase my skills quite a bit.

I was really deeply into my own world (laughing) as a kid.

And when I was in school, they're like, oh, well you know, you need to research other artists and what they're doing, and their techniques, and their this and that and the third.

And I think because they told me I had to, I think I rebelled against it even harder.

Plus the artists, I think that they were exposing me to, I just didn't see anything I could get from that.

You know, like the Michelangelo, you know, the statues and the fig leafs and all that stuff, you know, I had no interest in any of that, no interest in that.

You know, we didn't get to the art that I wanted to see.

So when people did cartooning, or graffiti, or the things that really drew my eyes in, they were like, that's not real art.

I never really did graffiti, but I liked the style.

You know, it just seemed vibrant, and rebellious, and all of that.

And I wanted all of that.

(upbeat groove music) So I always wanted to draw realistically, especially in my earlier adult life, I still wanna draw what I see, however I want to add meaning these days.

So as opposed to just drawing a pretty picture, I want something that means something.

So I did not become aware of Octavia Butler until like 2017.

Octavia Butler's books took things that had happened in history and just looked at how they could come back around again.

And then I found that there were other books that were considered futuristic, and more fantasy, more sci-fi.

So I just became fascinated with her stories.

Yeah, this one brought me way outta my comfort zone.

The original portrait that I did of Octavia in the chalk, where it was literally just her face that was more my comfort zone, you know, I just kind of drew what I saw.

Although I do interpret the colors and the shapes a little differently, so it's not like photorealism or anything, but it's not very challenging.

With this one, I got the idea like, hey, Octavia was a afrofuturist, and sci-fi, and all of that.

Hey, what if I, you know, could put like an orb of light in her hand because part of her story is all dealt with shaping worlds.

So if she's shaping something that's not together yet.

And you know, to represent the, the sci-fi and afrofuturism, that made it a little more fun.

Although it was a little more challenging because there's a lot of room to fail.

(Danielle laughing) I searched for you, Octavia.

I found you in sound bites, interviews and symposiums.

You told us when we don't see ourselves in the story's future, just write ourselves in.

I wonder if you know that all you touched, you changed.

I dabbled in writing poetry in college, but it wasn't good.

(Danielle laughing) Okay, it was, some of them were interesting.

They had potential, I'll put it that way, they had potential.

Once I picked it back up again, once I had moved in at my aunt's house and there was no room to really paint and I was overly concerned about messing things up 'cause I get messy when I draw and paint.

So I ended up switching over to using words 'cause it had to come out some kind of way.

I started writing, but I didn't share anything with people, 'cause I was thinking, nobody wants to hear what I have to say.

But I got so much warmth and encouragement and you know, people wanting to hear more.

And then that petrified me 'cause I didn't have more, I didn't have more that was good.

At that time I had like four good poems and that was it.

And one of 'em was 20 years old.

So, you know, I'm like, oh I, you know, I better get to writing 'cause they were expecting more, you know, (laughing).

It became another way, another outlet, you know, for me to get something out 'cause I needed to create.

And the whole process of making time for it has been one of those adult things that I've never really been successful at.

(Danielle laughing) And I think that's how, there's so many years that go between doing successful pieces of work though artistically because I haven't made time for it.

You know, I've had to create the meaning basically and just sit down and say, hey, I'm gonna do this.

And we are gonna have to figure out how to do with what we have.

Or find a way to take that scoop full of peanut butter and cover the whole loaf of bread, I don't know.

But this has to happen.

And I found it by putting art as a priority, it's opened some other doors for me.

- [Kabir] While balancing her art with full-time jobs, Dixon is also writing a memoir on lessons she's learned throughout her life from family members.

(mellow groove music) - [Narrator] GroundWorks DanceTheater celebrates its silver anniversary this season.

On the next "Applause," we share a portrait of the artist behind the award-winning troupe, David Shimotakahara.

- It occurred to me that dance was, at its essence, an act of labor.

That's the only way you can do it.

- [Narrator] Plus the Cleveland Orchestra breaks out the banjos and the mandolins inside Severance.

(classical orchestra music) All that and more on the next round of "Applause."

Okay, gang, get ready to fly.

In Waynesville, Ohio, there's a historic airstrip where a crew of daring pilots take flight.

Let's travel to the Red Stewart Airfield to see how the sky becomes their canvas.

(mellow classical music) (airplane chugging) (mellow classical music) - One of the great things about flying, when you're up there climbing, descending, loops, rolls, it's fun, you can just do what you think you want to do.

(mellow classical music) (airplane chugging) And like other mediums, it has certain things that it does well and it has certain limitations.

You know, managing the airplane's energy to do what you want it to do is a fun challenge.

Every day is a little bit different.

(air whooshing) (airplane chugging) (twangy guitar music) My name's Emerson Stewart and I'm a flight instructor at the Red Stewart Airfield.

I grew up right here.

I was, I think I went for my first airplane ride when I was four days old.

I started flying the glider when I was 13.

Sold it when I was 14.

Sold an airplane and got my glider rating when I was 16.

And I've been flying ever since.

My grandpa Red was the fellow that started the airport back in 1946.

It was a pretty simple little place for a while.

The thing that makes the airport unique is that we're still doing the same thing we've always done with the same equipment we've always done it with.

We started off with little light airplanes in the '40s and we're still using the same sorts of little light airplanes.

Part of what makes the place special is the people that work here are excited to make the place go and want to be here, helping to make the place continue.

(rain pattering) - Red Stewart Airfield is awesome.

It's uncomplicated.

It's in the middle of a cornfield.

And years ago, they decided to put a little grass strip of runway in there.

You show up, you make sure the airplane's ready to go.

You jump in, turn the key, and you're flying in next to no time.

- I guess the obvious thing is it's a grass strip.

It's very low tech, it's old fashioned airplanes.

Most of the airplanes out here don't even have an electrical system.

You got a hand start 'em, it's pure flying.

My name's Brett Hunter.

I run a little flight department over in Springboro, Ohio.

And on the side I do some aerobatics, including air shows.

- Everyone shares one thing in common, their enthusiasm and passion for flight.

And when they arrive here, all the formalities disappear.

You don't have a battle of egos or anything like that weighing the atmosphere down.

It's fantastic.

Hello, I'm Robert Tico LaCerda.

I started flying aerobatics back around 1990 or so.

First time I'd been in a small airplane, it was also the first time I did aerobatics.

We did loops and rolls and loved it from the very get-go.

(mellow groove music) (twangy guitar music) (airplane chugging) (twangy guitar music) (twangy guitar music) - [Announcer] Don't worry, they're turning around, they can fly (indistinct).

(twangy guitar music) - Saturday evening of Labor Day weekend, we have an annual air show.

It's good to get people out, give them a little entertainment and show 'em what little airplanes can do.

- It's a unique air show in that it's a very up close and personal air show.

Accessibility for the performers to the fans and vice versa, I think is unmatched.

- Well, you wanna start with something that grabs their attention, something loud and maybe dramatic.

(airplane whizzes) (upbeat guitar music) You wanna finish with something that grabs their attention that they remember you with.

(airplane whizzes) (upbeat guitar music) Somewhere in the middle, try not to repeat anything.

- [Emerson] Part of the fun of planning it is you figure out what your airplane does well, what it looks nice doing, and you figure out how those pieces can fit together.

- During the season, yeah, you'll work on the sequence and if you're gonna add anything new, create something new, you wanna practice that individual part way up high.

Find out where the problems are, where the gotchas are.

Start bringing it down low where the altitude makes a big difference.

(wind gusting) - [Emerson] So transitioning into say that I'm not thinking of it as, you know, oh, we're diving now, it's exciting.

I'm thinking of it more, okay, I have altitude and I'm gonna trade it, and I'm gonna turn it into air speed.

At the bottom of that dive, you pull back, and so now you're converting back to altitude.

- [Brett] Positive Gs can feel like an elephant sitting on you.

To just lift your arm is an effort.

And negative Gs feels like all the blood's rushing to your head.

So you actually wanna try to relax.

When you're getting started for the year, you're coming off a cold couple winters, you know, you need to get G tolerance.

You need to make sure that you're in tune with the airplane.

- What this particular aircraft does very well is a knife edge pass, which is basically you're tilting the airplane up on its side and going along the ground in a knife edge.

- Well, airplanes are convenient and make it nice to go point A to B, straight line and a little faster than your car.

But it's a lot more fun to come see what an airplane can really do, see what you can do.

Upside down, I don't know, it just, you can't do that in a car and get away with it more than once, right.

It's a bit of like a rollercoaster, but you get to design it and it's smooth.

- They're gonna do it, opposing front rolls.

Oh boy, here we go.

Watch, right to left.

- It's fun showing off for the crowd.

We're careful about the way we do things, but yeah, if it makes people smile and entertains them, absolutely, yes, it's satisfying.

- I would describe aerobatic client as being an art.

I mean, it's a lot of science, right.

But it doesn't feel like that at the time.

It feels like I'm up here drawing shapes in the sky.

(airplane chugging) - It's an affliction, if not an addiction, the airplane thing, for sure.

I wish it were as reasonably priced as gardening, but yeah, no, it gets in your blood and you can't get it out.

It's a constant itch.

(mellow classical music) (airplane chugging) - I like to do aerobatics.

Aerobatics are fun, they're thrilling.

But I like to just go fly around.

Sometimes I'll just go fly around low and see the sights.

I don't know, I'll go out by the lake and it's kind of fun, sometimes you can find an eagle or something.

(mellow classical music) (airplane chugging) (airplane chugging) - [Kabir] We're coming in for a landing.

I hope you had a pleasant journey on the Applause Airship.

I'm Ideastream Public Media's Kabir Bhatia sending you off with a soaring performance by the Cleveland Chorale at the Tri-C JazzFest.

Safe travels.

- [Chorale] Hey, hey - Come on, put your hands together, Cleveland.

- Yeah.

- Woo.

- Come on, clap your hands, everybody.

- [Chorale] Hey, hey, hey.

Hey.

- We need the Lord in this time, in this world.

♪ I need you in the morning, hey ♪ ♪ I need you when I let you rest ♪ ♪ You're the one that gives me peace ♪ ♪ When the world is on my shoulder ♪ ♪ I need you in the good times ♪ ♪ Not only when the times are bad ♪ ♪ No matter the situation, you come and take it over ♪ ♪ What would I know about meeting you ♪ ♪ If I hadn't lost my way ♪ ♪ And now every morning when I wake up ♪ ♪ Take time to say, Lord, you know we love you ♪ ♪ Tell 'em love ♪ ♪ Lord, you know we love you ♪ ♪ Say, Lord, you know, know ♪ ♪ Lord, you know we need you ♪ ♪ In the midst of our days ♪ ♪ In the midst of our days ♪ ♪ So won't you come ♪ ♪ So won't you come right away ♪ ♪ I need you, I need you in the morning ♪ ♪ I need you when I lay to rest ♪ ♪ You're the one that gives me peace ♪ ♪ When the world is on my shoulder ♪ ♪ I need you in the good times ♪ ♪ Not only when the times are bad ♪ ♪ No matter the situation you come and take it over ♪ ♪ What would I know about meeting you ♪ ♪ If I hadn't lost my way ♪ ♪ And now every morning when I wake up ♪ ♪ And I got to take time to say ♪ ♪ Lord, you know we love you ♪ - Come on, everybody, clap your hands out here, Cleveland.

♪ Lord ♪ ♪ Lord, you know we love you ♪ ♪ Lord, you know we need you, yeah ♪ ♪ Lord, you know we need you ♪ ♪ In the midst, say ♪ ♪ In the midst of our day ♪ ♪ So won't you come right away ♪ ♪ Come right away, come right away ♪ ♪ Say, we love you ♪ ♪ We love you, we love you, we love you ♪ ♪ Really, really do ♪ ♪ We love you, we love you ♪ ♪ We love you ♪ ♪ We love you ♪ - Help me say ♪ Say, we love you ♪ ♪ We love you, so Lord, please come right away ♪ ♪ Say, we want you ♪ ♪ We want you, we want you, we want you ♪ ♪ Lord, we need you, oh yeah ♪ ♪ We love you, we love you, we love you ♪ ♪ Say, we want you ♪ ♪ We want you, oh lord, please come ♪ ♪ Right away ♪ ♪ Say, we need you ♪ ♪ We need you, we need you, we need you ♪ ♪ Lord, we need ♪ ♪ We need you, we need you ♪ ♪ Hey ♪ ♪ We need you ♪ ♪ Say we need you ♪ (mellow sonorous music) - [Narrator] Production of "Applause" on Ideastream Public Media is made possible by funding by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts & Culture.