(upbeat music) - Hey other Akronites welcome once again, to Around Akron with Blue Green and wow do we have a fun show ahead of us today.

I'm gonna visit an artist who uses a spray can to create his masterpieces.

I'm gonna head to downtown Akron and learn all about the Bounce Innovation Hub.

I'm gonna head down to the valley and take a trip back in time to Hale Farm & Village.

While in the valley, I'm gonna head over to Blossom Music Center and learn all about that amazing location.

About to kick this show off today, I'm gonna sit down with Anthony Perez and he's gonna take us on a trip to a whole other universe through his spray art.

Let's go see what Anthony Perez is all about.

(upbeat electronic music) - Yeah, I guess is sort of like you just learn over time.

I guess it's called like can control where you learn exactly how much pressure to apply and how far, you know, how close and how far you gotta be away from it to get, you know, what your kind of wanting to get out of it.

There's always been that big stigma about it, you know, the spray that's because the majority of people they'll think of, they'll hear a graffiti and they'll just think of, you know, the little local kids, you know, just tagging or just spray painting something on the side of a building or something like that.

You know what I mean?

Not really the real art form of it, you know?

I think that's really what that comes from.

(upbeat music) It all comes from, you know, the hip hop culture, which grass roots is one of the only cultures in the United States that is completely, completely grown through grass roots movement, you know?

You know, it wasn't really necessarily controlled by any organization, any entity really controlled it.

It was always in the hands of, you know, in the hands of the artists that were out there doing it and stuff and, you know, one teaches another, and then, you know, it's just how you pick it up, you know?

It's how we have to progress.

(upbeat music) So I was always drawing since I was younger and then it was right around the time when I was in high school, that it was a group of people that I was hanging out with and they were break dancers and they were into the graffiti.

I kind of just started hanging around with them and I just kind of picked up the graffiti a little bit naturally.

And then I was always really good with the colors.

So, you know, I'd be the one that, you know?

So other people would draw stuff and then they would, they'd asked me to, you know, how to color it or help color, you know what I mean?

Figure out the color scheme and the color patterns.

So from that, it's just, I was just doing graffiti for a while and then, you know, just here and there, I'd stop it and then start it and pick it back up.

But I was always kind of naturally good at it.

I'm originally from New York.

So anytime I would go to New York, you'd see kind of like, you know, the, you know, the street artists, the spray paint artists, like on the little corners doing little, you know, doing little planetary systems and little, you know, little backdrops and landscapes and stuff like that with the spray paint cans.

It's almost like a form of speed painting, 'cause they're able to do it like maybe like 15-20 minutes, you know, like it's nothing.

It looks like it took them, you know, few hours, you know?

So I noticed that and then just one day I was like, oh, you know, I'mma try that and just get some, you know, get some paints and just get on YouTube, watch a couple of tutorials and just from there I just kind of took off.

(upbeat music) You know, I like the cosmos.

I liked the whole concept of space and you know, the whole, just the whole universe is, if you know, the universe is infinite.

You know, I guess technically any point in the universe is the center of the universe.

So you sitting over there is the center of the universe.

I'm just here, I'm the center of the universe.

You go to Cleveland that's the center of the universe.

You know, I just always been fascinated with, you know, with the cosmos.

Mainly what I do is with the poster board 'cause I like that you get these gloss colored poster boards and I'll use just the gloss spray paints and I can do poster boards and then I do some canvases here and there, but you kind gotta have like sort of different paints almost when you're doing the canvases, because the way it dries and the way you use the textures differently.

But yeah, just normally you can just use, like, I just use like little homemade stencils.

You just cut out little cloud cutouts and just, you know, you use the can to make clouds or spray paint different colors, you know, along the bottom.

And then you just use your fingers.

It's real easy to make like a water textures and stuff.

And then like I do planets or I do like mountains, you just crumble up, you know, just any piece of newspaper and set it down and dab it a couple of times and it'd just make the textures just all by itself, natural.

So you don't really have to think too hard about it.

That's another reason why I kind of like it too, because you kind of just improvise as you go along, you know, it's all just trial and error, you know.

Just once you realize that every piece isn't really gonna be sort of a masterpiece, you know, but every now and then you'll get a gem and you know, you stand, you need to sit back and watch look at it.

You're like, you know, it is, you know, that is pretty good.

That's pretty amazing but that's part of my favorite part about doing it.

It's not really sort of the end product.

My favorite part about painting is sort of when you're going along and your body sort of almost goes into like autopilot, I'd wanna say, and you know, you're just, you're just doing it.

You're not even really thinking about it.

And you know what I mean?

Then you stand back and watch, you know, because those are the times that I kind of have when I get frustrated the most is when you sit back and you look at it and then you sorta like over overthinking it instead of just kind of letting it just come out, naturally.

(upbeat music) Just keep practicing and don't get discouraged, you know?

Especially with as much stuff as there is online, you know?

My daughter gets into it too.

And you know, sometimes she'll post something on, you know, her little Discord page or something like that.

She'll get like a little discouraged.

'Cause there's just so many art out there.

There's just so much stuff out there.

And I, you know, I just tell her like, you're still young.

You just keep practicing what you're doing for something you're not good at.

You keep practicing at that too.

when you find something that you're good at, you just keep doing it, keep doing it till you master that, you know, because don't let nobody tell you you're not as good or you won't be as good because you know, sometime, you know, it's, you know, like for example, like with me too, I can get on Instagram and there's hundreds of thousands of artists out there that I know I'll probably never be good at.

But you know, as long as you're comfortable with yourself and you know yourself, what you're capable of, you know, just keep pursuing, you know what I mean?

What you believe, you that, you know what I mean?

You're capable of, you know?

(upbeat music) - Next up I'm gonna head to Downtown Akron to the Bounce Innovation Hub.

Have you ever had an idea, but you don't know what to do with it?

The Bounce Innovation Hub can help you out.

Let's go see what they're all about.

(upbeat music) - It's world-class.

My clients come inside this building, they're blown away.

It's something that they didn't imagine.

It often exceeds expectation.

But for me, it's everything under the roof that an entrepreneur starting out needs.

From helping coach you, from meeting with practical leaders that have done it, that has the experience can tell you about the constraints and the pitfalls that you may encounter so you don't walk into those situations.

For me, it's been seamless to my growth.

So everything I need from marketing, to helping me generate sales, to helping me with my website, to helping me just understand how business works, giving me business advice, entrepreneurs, and residents, people that I can go talk to.

As you sit in a lobby, the people you meet are in some cases, having some of the same struggles and successes that you are.

So you can have benchmark discussions at the lunch table.

And so it's just an all-inclusive tool bag for what you need to be an entrepreneur.

(upbeat music) - Don't be afraid to admit what you don't know, and to go find the resources to help you.

There are a lot of resources here at Bounce they can fill in other than marketing and the entrepreneurial residents.

And there are programs here that can help kind of fill in any gaps that you might have in your knowledge base or your resume.

And so I think people get afraid when they have an idea, they don't know where to start.

They don't know where to go for help and to really, be willing to admit, "Hey, I don't know how to do that."

And there are people here at Bounce specifically that can help you, can fill in those gaps and you can take your idea and run with it if you're willing to ask for that help.

(upbeat music) - Bounce it's a complicated, yet simple premise of a opportunity for entrepreneurs to help them grow their business.

We do that through a series of programs.

We do it through an offering of space, an offering of support, a place that they can work with other entrepreneurs through what we call collisions and connections.

And it's a place that you kinda take a dream of a business and develop it in real life.

So you come in here where you have an ongoing business and you need space.

We have an incubator space.

If you have a software idea, we have an accelerator that's focused around building MVPs about building software, or if you're a small business and you need help kind of developing that business, whether you're what we consider an aspiring entrepreneur, or if you're an entrepreneur that needs help in understanding the basic 101 of building a business, that's our MORTAR program.

And then we have a next level entrepreneurial program for those small businesses that need space and need additional services.

First floor, we have a coworking space that offers a place for those connections and collisions to happen as you kind of work, you know, on your own, or whether you work with other individuals in the space.

We also have a makerspace that is on the first floor as well where people are making things.

We also have a new sports room, which obviously during COVID has been a little quiet, but it's something that, you know, could develop.

We have offices and we have conference rooms for rent, and we have a space that you could hold your conference as well.

(soft music) - With Bounce for me, it's been a great experience, right?

It hasn't been easy, but they've made it simple.

And that's what I think people should embrace.

Step out.

I think I was having lunch with someone today and they met me and they've set their business up, and what they said is they're flourishing, right?

It just have the courage to step out.

This is a great place to start.

It gets my full endorsement.

- So we became very active in the Entrepreneur in Residence program and the incubator, and been able to really use that, to leverage it so that we can act like a bigger company without having to invest in really the personnel.

So things like marketing and we're able to use Bounce resources.

We have a great entrepreneur in residence, Bill Flickinger, who is a former medical device guy, a serial entrepreneur to really help guide us and without having to bring in that expertise and really increase our burn rate.

So Bounce has been really instrumental in us being able to grow from being an idea to something that's about ready to go on the market.

(upbeat music) - Everyone in our community is welcome to come here.

I mean, even if you just walk in, you don't even know why you're here, but you've heard about it.

You'll wanna see what's going on.

We're welcomed.

We'd love to have you come in and just try it.

I mean, it's a place that you can actually let your guard down, be comfortable, that you can have some conversations with folks, folks on our staff who understand what it's like to build a business, understand what it's like to be on the last dollar of funding, understand that maybe nobody's everybody looks at your business as not great.

Maybe there's some ideas that we can help you with.

Try to maybe connect you with another entrepreneur that might be in a similar space that might be able to help.

That's what we're all about.

So you don't, you can walk in the space without even knowing what the idea is and you may walk out with an introduction, a connection, a collision with somebody who might have a similar idea.

(upbeat music) - Next up, we're gonna put our time traveler cap on and head down to the valley to Hale Farm & Village, to learn what it was like back in the day.

Let's go see what Hale Farm & Village is all about.

(country music) - So we sort of have like three sort of facets of our work here.

We focus on daily life activities.

We focus on historical crafts and trades and then heritage breed farm animals, and farm practices with a focus on entrepreneurship and specifically how the canal impacted not only this area, but Ohio in general.

(country music) One of our major focuses here at Hale Farm is our, historical crafts and trades programs.

So some of the things that we featured here, we have a blacksmith who makes things out of metal.

We have our potter who throws cups and bowls and plates.

Our glassblower makes beautiful items out of glass.

So glasses, ornaments, other decorative items.

And then we have other crafts and trades that people might have done in the 1800s as well.

Things like broom making, spinning wool into yarn, taking that yarn and using the natural plants of our area to create dyes and then other things as well.

we'll sometimes have people making cheese or butter, people doing hearth cooking over either in a fireplace or over an open fire outside.

We'll sometimes have candle making and then other daily life activities that we're incorporating this year are things like mending clothing or making things like the pouches that ladies might've worn underneath their aprons as kind of like a pocket.

Other fun things include things like visiting the school house on weekdays or practicing your penmanship with a quill or a metal nib pen.

So every day there are different things that we like to talk about.

We like to show to people, and of course we have our animals as well.

So you might see oxen being driven.

You might see chickens just kind of free-ranging and plucking at the ground or sheep frolicking through the fields, so.

(guitar music) But once that the canal comes through, you now start seeing people who are producing wheats to turn into flour or producing crops that are going to be sold on a larger market because you go to your general store, the general store takes it to the canal.

The canal takes it to a market like Cleveland or Akron and in exchange now we can start getting maybe manufactured things or imported goods from farther away places.

(guitar music) I think one of the easiest ones or one of the best ones that we do here is we'll sometimes talk about cheese making and butter making.

I think that most all of us have some connection on some level to cheese or butter.

And this area at one point was actually known as "cheesedom" or rather the Twinsburg area was known as "cheesedom".

They made a large percentage of cheese that were sold throughout America.

And this idea of, you know, kind of showing these kids like, you know, there's a whole process to this, so you have to let the milk separate and then you have to skim the cream and that's where we get skim milk.

And then you have to churn it for a long time and, you know, hours upon hours of just doing one motion over and over.

And then we talk about how, well okay so that's something we can do in our own house, but how do we make it better?

(guitar music) Jonathan Hale and his family moved here in 1810, and they built a log house close to Oak Hill Road and then proceeded to build old brick, which is the farmhouse on the site.

It took him about 12 years because Jonathan was making all those original bricks himself.

And then three generations of Hales lived here and worked here.

His son, Andrew invested in things like sheep.

So he could sell the wool to nearby communities, to card and spin into textiles.

And then his grandson C.O.

kind of expanded the business in other ways as well.

So C.O.

built cabins that people could rent from like the city of Akron or Cleveland to come and kind of get out of the city for a little bit.

He also heavily invested in maple syrup production.

So we have like a small sugar house that he used to boil sap down into maple syrup.

Once C.O.

passed away, he didn't have any children of his own.

So the land got split up amongst nieces and nephews.

One of Jonathan's relatives, Clara Belle Ritchie received the land and was going to live at the Hale house.

And then basically when she was getting ready to pass away, she wanted this place to become a museum.

She wanted to preserve the story of her family, but also those early years of, you know, coming and relearning how to make things yourself like spinning wool and things like that.

And so she donated it to the Western Reserve Historical Society.

We now currently have about 90 acres.

When the Hale family arrived they had something about 500 acres.

And over the years, we had moved other houses here from other places in the Western Reserve in a process that we like to call preservation through relocation.

Basically these houses and these historic structures were in places that were in fear of potentially being, you know, removed from their original sites or even torn down.

And so they kind of came to this area so we could preserve the history of what was going on there.

(guitar music) That's one of the things that we do best is we really showcase that history isn't just a bunch of names and dates.

It's people who were living their lives and making it work and figuring out how to do something better or something easier, or provide something for their neighbors.

So I think, you know, there's a lot of lessons we can learn from the past and I'm happy that we're part of that.

And I'm happy that I get to be a part of that as well.

(guitar music) - Now, to wrap this show up today, I'm gonna head to one of my favorite locations, Blossom Music Center.

I'm gonna learn about its history, its name and about the Cleveland Orchestra.

Let's go see what the Blossom Music Center is all about.

(birds chirping) - The first time I walked in here, I thought this is the most beautiful outdoor venue I'd ever seen.

It's just driving in from 77 South felt just like there cannot be a rock and roll venue out here in the middle of this gorgeous park.

It was incredible.

I was blown away.

I was blown away by this lawn.

And then when the concert started, I just remember thinking the acoustics here are unbelievable.

For an outdoor venue is just fantastic.

It's a gem.

(orchestra music) Back in the 40s and 50s, when the Cleveland Orchestra became one of the great orchestras of the world under the music directorship of George Szell the orchestra wasn't a full-time orchestra.

In fact, during the summers, they probably had to get other jobs and things like that.

And George Szell was very keen that we have a year round orchestra and started looking for a summer venue 'cause most of the great orchestras at the time the Bostons and the Chicagos were year round at the time.

So back in the mid 60s, they started looking around for place to build an outdoor venue.

They looked at, I think it was a 80 different sites.

And George Szell was flying around, taking a very keen interest like he did with everything with this orchestra.

They found, they settled on this site.

There was drainage issues initially, and they had to hollow out all the space behind me.

Eventually in 1968, the building opened on July the 16th with a performance of Beethoven's ninth.. (orchestra music) Peter passed away just a couple of years ago.

He always talked about, this was the one that put them on the map.

He was a very young man when he designed this.

I think he was very nervous young man being around George Szell designing this too.

But it certainly he has done well.

They did an enormous amount of work, and he's always very proud, proud of what happened here, both with the acoustics and the designers.

So iconic.

(orchestra music) - We have rehearsals usually at Severance before we come out to Blossom.

This summer is a little bit different.

We'll have, you know, two to three rehearsals for a concert before we come out here and play the show.

And usually the day of the concert, we'll have a dress rehearsal here, a couple hours before the concert.

So actually, if you can, if you come early, as soon as they open the gate, there are people out there that hear us in the dress rehearsal.

And they're hearing the end of the concert before we start.

That's a normal week.

We'll have a couple of rehearsals for each concert and of course you have to prepare on your own before you even get to the first rehearsal.

That's one of the amazing things about the Cleveland Orchestra is the level of preparation, the seriousness that we take the music, and it doesn't matter where we play, whether it's at Blossom, whether it's at Severance, whether it's a high school in Downtown, we like take the music really seriously.

And that starts with practicing at home.

(orchestra music) The Cleveland orchestra is like a giant chamber.

It's almost like a quartet in that everybody is listening, everybody's participating.

And so it's like, you're having a great conversation with friends.

And so whenever you hear the audience at the end, it's almost like you're reminded of that people were able to take part in that conversation.

And so it's wonderful that, you know, art is like that, that we're able to sort of have this great thing that we're presenting, but at the same time, people are able to take part of it.

And so I think that's really special to see that.

(audience applauding) (people talking indistinctly) I think the stereotype orchestra musician is someone who lives, breaths music.

And of course we take it seriously, but at the same time, like when we're, when we leave, we're normal people.

I fish.

I mentioned the hiking and skiing and that kind of thing.

And hiking in the Metro Park, in the national park here in the Ledges.

We're normal people.

And so like, we just have this amazing job and able to make music for a living, which is a gift.

(orchestra music) - Picnic on the lawn is encouraged.

You can bring him food and drink and settle out.

And the people tends to spread out on this lawn.

Our audience don't like to touch.

So that's a good thing.

They spread out nicely and claim their space on the blankets.

And some of them have pretty spectacular picnics going, you know, in the old fashioned sense.

(orchestra music) It just works.

I thought what a great name for an outdoor venue.

And then I realized there's a family involved.

It's an absolutely beautiful coincidence.

They decided that the Blossoms have made a huge gift to Cleveland orchestra.

This would be a great name for the space and that, and it just fits.

It just fits perfectly.

(orchestra music) - Thank you once again, for watching this episode of Around Akron with Blue Green.

Now if you have any questions or comments, or just want to drop me an email, you can reach me at www.AroundAkronWithBlueGreen.com or you can catch me on social media.

Thank you and have an amazing day.

I'm gonna head to one of my favorite locations.

Now to wrap this show up today, I'm gonna head to one of my favorite locations.

Argh!

Argh, getting funky.

Need some oil.

(upbeat music)