- Welcome to "Kalamazoo Lively Arts."

The show that takes you inside Kalamazoo's vibrant creative community and explores the people who breathe life into the arts.

- [Announcer] Support for Kalamazoo Lively Arts is provided by the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation, helping to build and enrich the cultural life of greater Kalamazoo.

I'm Jennifer Moss here at Miller Auditorium, on today's show we meet Tracy Klinesteker, a pastel artist, Laura Ceballos and Darius Gardner, graphic designers and co-founders of RagCloth and Rachel Miller, who was principal harp with the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra.

This season looks a little different as we work to showcase the arts In safe and creative ways.

We're introducing a new artist in residency series where, we will dive deeper into an organization for three consecutive weeks, lifting the curtain on the creative process as we go.

So we start with the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra.

- Well, today that conversation is with Rachel Miller who is the principal harp for the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra.

Thank you so much for talking with me here today.

- Thank you for having me Kim.

- So Rachel, like when I think of harp if I think of, (all laughing) Cheer up, happy music.

- What do you think of, when you think of harp?

- Is it kinda like this?

- [Kim] Yes.

(all laughing) - I would say probably awe inspiring for me.

- Now, I see that you have a little injury there today.

- This is just fitting for our interview.

So I was just cutting an orange and- - Not a good thing for a harpist, right?

- No, a little factoid.

When you play the harp, you use eight of your 10 fingers.

So no pinkies, 'cause they're too short.

So yes, this what we would call our second finger is a very important finger to use when playing the harp.

- I would love to hear the history of the harp you happen to know that?

- I do roughly, the harp is actually one of the oldest instruments in all of humanity.

We find versions of the harp before biblical times basically, the harp that you see here is a more modern instrument.

It came about the late 18 hundreds and this is called a Concert-grand pedal harp.

So, this harp is definitely, a feat of engineering as well as art, just with all of the various mechanisms, and I actually have seven pedals at my feet to be able to change the pitch of the string.

- How do you even tune it?

- How you tune it, is with this little device it's called a tuning key.

And I just attach it to the other side of one of these pegs of the strings that are around the arm and you either you tune it.

Well, my fingers, just making an appearance today.

(plays chord) You just turn it whichever way you need to in order to make it sharper or flatter.

There are 47 of these strings, so in the beginning, when you're learning to tune it's definitely an event.

Now, it takes me, I don't know, five to 10 minutes depending on how quickly I need to do it.

- Do you have to tune it before each performance?

- Absolutely, the harp is very temperamental.

It's made of natural material, so mostly wood, the strings are got in the middle here, and then while there's plastic nylon strings at the top but all of these materials are highly affected by the humidity or the weather or temperature changes, and movement, so every time you move the instrument, it goes off tune.

- So you've got your hands going, you got your feet going, what do the pedals do?

- Basically, if you have a basic understanding of the notes on the keyboard, right?

The white versus black keys.

So my strings would be like the white keys.

I only have one geographical location for each note name.

So basically, I have, and just moving them.

I have C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C, the C's are red, the F's are blue or black, and then all the white notes in between.

If I wanted to have a sharper, a flat or a black key I would actually need to move a peddled to adjust that note named string.

So if I wanted a C flat or a C sharp, I would need to move my C pedal to adjust that string.

(plays key) So here's a C natural and I've just moved my pedal to adjust it a pitch higher.

So each string actually has, three different sound possibilities, which makes it pretty complicated I would say the hardest part about learning this instrument is, figuring out the pedal situation.

- You've been playing well with the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra for now, is it three years?

- Yeah, I guess so, since 2018.

- What was the audition process like for you?

- Auditioning is terrifying.

(both laughing) The audition process that day, I was feeling very prepared, which is always useful.

Usually, you're given the list of extracts or pieces that they want you to play, several weeks ahead of time.

And that particular audition I had had the time to prepare thoroughly, which is always a huge component of doing well.

My last name is Miller and the Miller Auditorium was always a place that I wanted, I always wanted to play just 'cause funny.

(laughs) So I think I had a little bit of an attitude that day.

(all laughing) I was like, I'm finally getting to play at the Miller Auditorium.

So I guess I would say contributing factors: preparation, confidence, and comfortable, feeling comfortable.

- So Rachel, what does it look like, to be part of the whole, you know, the whole Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra?

- From my perspective, visually, I'm usually in the back and so I get to see everybody, conductor, the violins are usually right in front of me, the brass and horns are usually to my left, the percussionists are so entertaining, right?

And I'm talking a lot about watching, right?

And you're like, how do you have time to watch if you're playing well?

The life of a harpist is a lot of counting.

I came to terms early on that the harp is like the glitter of the orchestra.

So, you're not always going to hear it, but when you do it's the icing on the cake, you know?

So I take that role very seriously.

You're not gonna be playing all the time but when you do it's really just, a gorgeous atmosphere that adds to this texture of sound that is the orchestra.

So from my very practical experience, lot of counting, lot of really enjoying listening to my colleagues, yeah.

- And that's what it looks like, celebration, joy, fun.

Thanks so much for talking with me here today, it has been so much fun.

- Well, let's talk to you, Tracy Klinesteker, you are a pastel artists galore.

Describe your pastel work.

- I am a photo realistic person, a photo realist.

I like to paint things that are real, I like to make them look real, I like the control of making it look perfect as close to perfect as I can.

- How do you, where do we even start?

- Well, you decide what you're going to paint.

You take a photograph that you like or something like that or you can paint outdoors, plein air and you figure out your paper, what color do you want, what kind of, you know, size you want that kind of thing.

And it's a sandpaper almost the paper is like sandpaper because it needs something to hold the pastel onto it.

Pastels are chalk but never called them chalk to a pastel painter, they will be very angry, because they are not the chalk you see or use in the classroom or on the sidewalk, it's a completely different thing, and they are like very fine ground.

So it's like painting with butter, it's seriously textural.

- I've heard that they- - It's wonder.

They are dangerous, the dust can be dangerous to you, it's toxic.

So, to work with them, you either wear the gloves, wear gloves with like, you know, surgery gloves or something or you can use gloves in the bottle which is a cream that you put on and it protects your skin from the dust.

And I like this because I'm clumsy in gloves.

So, this really lets me get into the tight corners that I need, and you don't wanna blow on your painting when you're working on them because you don't want to dust the arrow, you know, spray out 'cause you don't wanna breathe it in.

But it also creates a lovely texture when you have to overlay 'cause you can scumble which is, dragging it across the sandpaper and making this texture.

It's like sand, it's just the texture of it, is just, oh, I could eat them, they're wonderful, anyway.

- Do you start with a photograph to bring your work to our eyes?

- Yes, I do, I start with a photograph and then I try and figure out what kind of composition I wanna do from the photographs so I crop it and change it and color correct it and all that.

And then I use this, which is a composition piece.

So you can figure out if it's gonna be vertical or horizontal or square.

And I look at that and decide what, where I'm gonna go.

And then I use this, which is a red piece of plastic with red.

And you look at your photograph with that and it makes the photograph black and white so you can see the values, where dark and light is.

And then I decided what size I'm gonna do it, I use the proportional scale to see what kind of size I need and how big I wanna blow it up or how small I wanna make it or what size is it going to be.

And then I draw the preliminary drawing on the board after I put a grid on it.

So I can go square by square and make sure the shapes are in the right place, and they look right and then I draw it and I usually draw it with a pastel pencil and that I make the grid on it, and then I'd draw the shapes and draw the painting onto the board.

So you get just a drawing and then I just fill it in, and sometimes I change it as I go but I usually fill it in and I use, pastel pencils like I showed you, some are without wood.

I use pastels, which is, this is a hard pastel and this is a soft pastel, and the difference is the binder.

The hard pastels have more binder to them so they're harder.

- You have a working title Martini on the rocks.

- It's all my favorite things in one painting.

I love rocks, I love feathers, I love shells, I love Martinis, and I love everything having to do with Martinis the accessories and star and all that and that's my favorite Martini glass in the painting.

So I put it all together in a still life, and I thought I'm gonna paint this.

And I just placed everything in what looked like a balanced photo, and I took the photo, and then I gritted it out and drew it out, and it was painted on black paper.

And it took me about six months to do the painting.

And I started in the lower left-hand corner.

And that took me that one piece of raw white rock there took me a week.

- How important is the shadowing, and the reflections, and the fine detail that I see here?

- The reflections, those were really hard especially, on the shaker piece that's next to the glass.

That was very hard because reflections are distortions.

So it's not the real shape it's been distorted.

It was the first time I did reflections so it was the first time I did anything like that.

This subtle colors, it's a tonal painting.

There's not a lot of color to it.

A lot of it is just black and white but there's this hint of browns and pinks in the rocks.

And that was kind of hard to do 'cause I like colors so it was like, I got to hold back from using these bold colors 'cause I wanted to be very soft and tonal.

And the detail in the wine, the Martini glass stem was hard to get the highlights correct on that, so I worked really hard on that painting.

- Put the name on it, Martini on the rocks, have your Martini and move on like that.

- Call it a day, yeah.

- Thank you for this process.

- Well, today I'm talking with Laura Ceballos from RagCloth Design, Shop in Kalamazoo, as well as Darius Gardner, who is the co-founder and designer.

So thank you so much for talking with me here today.

- Absolutely.

- Thank you for having us.

- So first of all, tell me and design which is why we decided to kind of stick more to design at least now.

- And what about you Darius?

- I entered college as an art major and I just I enjoy some time to time illustrating, drawing on things, denim jackets, shirts, what have you, and trying to find quirky ideas to come up with.

So, when we talked about doing this, it was really a way to take those ideas that we had just sitting around and putting them out there for people.

But in school I studied film, so, my major in background is in some studies, and that has a way of tying into it because it helps me to recreate, one of our most popular Christmas cards was a re-imagination of the graduate but- - I love that Christmas card, by the way.

In interiors I noticed that only one of your prints that I could see online, he had a face.

- Yeah, so that's funny, so that's interesting.

It's intentional because they're not portraits of people, and so, it wasn't supposed to be somebody.

And what's interesting about that is in high school I was nominated to design the graduation program or the program cover for senior graduation.

And so I went to Comstock High School which is predominantly white, right, like four black people.

And so I'm drawing this thing and I've come to this point where it's got a face.

And I remember debating how to do this face because I can either give it black features and really turned the school upside down or I make the whole school mad and give it or I make all my people mad and give a quick feature.

So, I remember I went with no features at all and I just put the graduating gear in the face.

And I think that somehow has stretched the last 10-12 years of what I've been doing and just giving it no face because it, you know.

- So take me through the process for your jazz series.

- So this one came from just a pose that I saw that I really liked and being really into being into, I am huge into the seventies, I am like, I just think that like, all my uncles were so much cooler than me.

It was just the time of seven gold chains, couple of pinky rings and just so swagger.

And so when I was doing this piece I wanted a guy who was just cool in it than I was right?

And so he's got on the spectator shoes, he's got a bottle of Johnny Walker black because it's better than red, but it's not too bougie it's not unattainable, you could get black for a decent price, right?

So the process is really, I find the thing, these are all digital, so we draw them on the iPad with Apple pencils.

We use ProCreate, a lot of people's some use some other things, but I insert the image, I go over what I wanna do with it, and then I get the basic outline and then I change everything, you know, I might change the color to suit the color, the size.

There's a lot of layers the way that people who use procreate know, there's a lot of layers we use in this.

So this whole piece might be, you know, 20 layers.

It might be, you know, one layer for just shoes.

I usually, I have a layer each a shoe just because if I mess up one shoe, I don't wanna mess up the whole layer.

- Smart!

- So I'll have a layer, each force shoe I'll have a layer for the stool, I'll have three layers for the bottle, and yes, so it was probably, as many layers as they allow me, and then I flattened the layers so that I can have more layers.

And then I sent it over to Laura who- - So then I will open it on illustrator on my computer.

And if I have to like, read sometimes the sizing gets a little messed up.

So sometimes we do have to play around with the sizing and then I print them and then I have a really cool scary industrial cutter that I take my stack of paper and I enter all of my things, so everything can be equal, and then I cut some for me.

- She actually, got me into this program.

She told me one day, she said, I think you're gonna love this and I was like, no I don't really wanna pick up a new thing, I don't feel like learning anything new right now.

- And then later he's like, - Yeah, we claimed it - For hours.

- Yeah, for hours.

- And I'm like, okay.

- Well, you know, part of it was pandemic had kinda hit.

And so I started and now, it'’s a rabbit hole that I, and I actually, you know, she's got a lot more techniques that are, She works smarter a lot more than I do - Now, Laura why don't you show me something a piece maybe that's close to your heart that you created.

- It's the Kalamazoo, the landscape of Kalamazoo, right?

- Oh, I love that.

- So I started working on this piece originally, like, almost a year ago, probably.

I was inspired by when I was working at this card shop, you know, we would get these cards and that would have all these other cities and their cool buildings and landscapes and we have like New York and Chicago and Atlanta and the big cities.

And I was like, oh man, like, that be kind of cool if we had a Kalamazoo one 'cause there's some interesting buildings in Kalamazoo you know?

So, you know, Darius was just talking about layers.

Each building individually is it's own layer or its own file that indent them together in one file.

And each it's a lot, there was a lot when I was originally drawing it especially like, things like this I have a lot of lines in details or even this little tiny state sign all the little dots for the lights and things like that.

It took me quite a while, but I do enjoy the final product and people really liked it.

I was kind of hesitant to put it out originally, because I wasn't sure if people were gonna enjoy it, but you know, it's buildings, people recognize, you know they see it and they're like, oh, I, you know, I've been to Bell's, I've been to Raddison, I've been to these places, I know these buildings.

- Well, Laura and Darius for RagCloth Design Shop.

Thank you so much for talking with me here today.

I learned a lot, I love your prints.

- Thank you.

- Thanks for having us.

- Thank you for joining us, on this week's episode of "Kalamazoo Lively Arts" check out today's show and other content at wgvu.org.

We leave you tonight with a performance by Rachel Miller, principal harp of the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra.

I'm Jennifer Moss have a great night.

(Relaxing harp music) (fingers snapping) - [Announcer] Support for Kalamazoo Lively Arts is provided by the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation, helping to build and enrich the cultural life of greater Kalamazoo.