(upbeat music) - We're gonna see what it takes to make your dreams come true.

- As an artist, I am taking full control of my career.

- As a family, we decided we wanted to keep her art alive.

- If you don't know anything about what you wanna do, learn it.

- Life is done?

What?

You're my age, what are you doing?

This is You Ought to Know.

Welcome to You Ought to Know.

We are kicking off the year with the spotlight on a few people who are living their dreams.

We didn't have to go too far to find this first story.

After several successful careers, Rob Kall, father of our colleague Ben Kall, finally got a chance to pursue his longtime passion.

I went to my 50th and my 55th year reunion and there were some people there who were like, "Oh, I'm retired.

I'm done."

And it's like, their life is done?

What?

You're my age.

What are you doing?

But at 74 years old, Rob Kall rejected this idea of fully retiring and found inspiration to begin a new career as a mosaic artist.

I'm a pretty creative person and I like to be challenged.

I've found that working with this is really relaxing and challenging and fun.

Rob has had many careers in his lifetime.

He was an inventor, a writer, and he worked as a software architect, to name a few.

I try to go by this idea that a friend of mine wrote a book about, "Don't let an old person move into your body."

Little did Rob know that a childhood hobby would someday reemerge.

I always liked to collect rocks and when I was 10 I found a fossil and since then I've been collecting fossils and rocks and crystals.

I've had to learn a lot about rocks.

I've had to learn a bit of geology and it makes it more interesting to understand how the different rocks are formed.

One of my favorite minerals is labradorite.

That's one of the ones that really inspired me to get going on this.

I like the shiny stuff.

My process, it starts with getting the rocks.

The fun part of it is going out into nature and finding them there.

I'll take a sledgehammer to some of the rocks that I like and I'll smash it and I'll use that to cover the surface.

Some I'll use exactly as they are, and some I'll cut up.

I like to use the rough, natural surfaces.

I usually start with one or two or three rocks, and I'll go, "Oh, this could go good like this," and then I'll start looking for other rocks to embellish it and put around it.

Occasionally I'll come up with an idea, like I decided I wanted to make a dragon's eye, so I did some stuff with that.

Some say if you work doing something you love, it's not a job.

If you ask Rob Kahl, he couldn't agree more.

The best accomplishment of my life is my kids.

I think that they've come out to be great, they're great parents.

It's awesome.

And then there's the part of showing it to people.

It's great to meet people and to see people who walk up to it and just take a breath or go, "Wow."

That's gratifying.

It's gratifying to know that I'm making something that touches people and that's beautiful.

Our next feature is also about someone who's making beautiful art.

Step inside Ubuntu Gallery in Germantown and be transported to faraway places.

In 2017, I went to a tech conference in Las Vegas for an application called Tabloo that I managed for Booz Allen Hamilton.

I came across the gallery of world-renowned photographer Peter Lick.

I was really in awe.

My jaw dropped to the floor.

Can I build a gallery of this caliber in a low-income neighborhood?

And how can I share these images directly with my community?

My name is Steven C.W.

Taylor, and I'm an artist.

My degree is in criminal justice, and I used that degree to move to Washington, D.C., in which I became a youth correctional officer for the D.C.

government.

Ended up with a data entry position at Booz Island Hamilton.

I developed into a software engineer.

By the time I left in April 2021, I was a systems engineer senior overseeing and managing our mission-critical financial apps.

I petitioned my company to become a 100% remote worker, and moving back to Philadelphia was to test how far I can push my freedom.

What does he look like?

Yeah, maybe, maybe, but like America.

(laughing) How'd I get into the camera brings me to how I began traveling.

And I was gonna bet on myself, and I was gonna use photography/videography to do that.

Connecting with my childhood friend, he connected me with another one of his homeboys, and he introduced me to the traveling.

And I started to collect images from my travels, and that spurred more intimate wantings to absorb culture.

I didn't have the gallery in mind, but I did know that my images served as a living archive.

Four years later, I had the opportunity to open a gallery that led me to leave my job as a software engineer with the supreme confidence that I had built the requisite question set to furnish my future.

This series of photos, the OG number one and the OG number two, take us to Quijado County.

Quijado County is outside of Nairobi, and I had the privilege, the distinct opportunity to spend the night in the bush with this tribe of Maasai, who are sheep and cattle herders.

In the beginning of our encounter, the elder has much apprehension to my presence, and then throughout the night, amongst conversation and talking and familialness, he softens and kind of like allows me to take his portrait, which was a very special encounter.

My photography is large to make it immersive.

I want people to disappear within my work.

Not many photography exhibitions were at very large scale.

And not only were they not at large scale, they weren't printed on acrylic.

And acrylic allows 3D depth onto 2D surfaces.

So not only could a viewer be transported into a space, but with the Lumichrome fine art pieces, which are the acrylic pieces, you can actually now walk into the piece.

My piece, The Isaac, which is the biggest piece in the gallery, people often say, "I feel like I can just walk into this thing."

And that's always really, really cool.

My hope for the gallery is that it becomes world-renowned and recognized for what it does.

It's very unique in the sense that it's a single artist gallery.

My work houses and furnishes the gallery, and it exists within low-income space.

As an artist, I am taking full control of my career, and from a community aspect, a very intentional idea to facilitate access to the arts.

Every interaction that happens in a gallery happens directly with the artist, the founder, the owner.

They always smile at the camera.

I hope to show up for my community of Germantown the same way that it's always shown up for me.

It's been an ever-present confidant, companion, and has allowed me the space to live my wildest dreams.

Not everyone can step out on faith and live their dreams.

It takes preparation, especially if you believe that your dreams are out of reach, but they don't have to be.

Therapist Dante Barfield joins us now with some life-changing tools to help us move forward in whatever we decide.

Dante, so good to see you again.

I'm so glad you're here because I think a lot of people, as we've found out in this show, people who are trying to achieve or seek out these second chances in their lives, they have these false beliefs that they tell themselves.

You know, I'm too old to do this.

I'm not educated.

I'm going to fail.

So how do we counteract these narratives that we're telling ourselves?

Well, great question.

First, I like to keep it simple, you know?

Just go to the happy opposite, you know?

If you say you're not good enough, just say you are.

Remind yourself that there is a positive way to spin this, you know?

So finding a way to be your own positive self-critic, not your negative one.

And second, I think everybody has done something kind of cool they might like, you know?

So going backwards.

Be willing to go back and look at something great you've done, you know?

I go back to a third grade spelling bee.

I spelled Tris-catech-a-phobia and that day won me the spelling bee.

And when I feel like I can't do something, I remind myself of what eight year old Donse did, right?

So it knows most.

You spell that at eight?

Yeah, yes.

Oh my goodness.

Great spelling bee.

Yes, I love spelling, right?

So finding something that you've done and holding onto that, that is gold, right?

So I think everybody can find a way to go backwards and look at the good, find a way to be positive.

There are some paralyzing thoughts, right?

So we can get ourselves stuck in a place and then we just cannot move past that.

How do we get ourselves unstuck?

Well, stuck.

That's the body.

Our brains are telling the body a whole bunch of horrible things that make it heavy, right?

We're not saying body don't move.

We're saying I'm not good enough.

I smell funny, whatever it may be.

I like to tell everybody thoughts are like train stops.

We're not getting off.

I want you to get off at the end destination.

These thoughts are heavy.

They weigh you down.

But you do not have to stick with them for 10 seconds or 30.

Give them two.

Give them one.

And get into your body.

Take a deep breath.

Do the butterfly technique.

It's one of my favorite things to do.

Give yourself a hug.

Pat yourself left to right five times.

Close your eyes.

Think about something happy.

Think about something positive you've done.

Think about the end destination of why all these thoughts are even there.

You might realize getting regulated and getting out of our heads is how we get unstuck.

Our thoughts are not going to move our bodies.

Only our bodies will.

What other, I love that butterfly hug, but what other tangible things can we do so that we can actually start to see some measure of change and forward progress towards whatever it is our destination is?

Well, this one might be a little heavy, but everybody has a life before the moment right now, and be willing to go backwards.

Be willing to get past your past.

Be willing to admit and be okay with some of the things that have happened to you that weren't so good.

Some of the things that have made you feel like you really aren't good enough.

Allow yourself to be honest that you might not have accepted it.

You might not have let it go.

Find somebody to talk to about it.

It doesn't have to be a therapist.

It could finally just be a friend you tell.

What's been going on and what happened?

Let it go and free yourself and be honest.

I like this.

So, go back, find a moment when you were a winner or felt really good about yourself, the butterfly hug, and then also find a good outlet, a good buddy or a therapist in some cases.

And in your practice, you have met many people who have successfully transitioned and been able to follow their dreams or make a big career change.

Did they struggle with some of these similar beliefs?

Yes.

I only meet stuck people, right?

And I'm blessed to find people who have now done what they were told to do.

Maybe be a doctor, a lawyer, follow their parents' goals and dreams, to let themselves go and become a nurse, operate a beach stand, open a taco truck.

Oh, my gosh.

I love it.

Dante, thank you so much for all of the advice that I know that we can all use in any area of our lives at any time.

Dante, thank you so much again.

Thank you as well.

If I didn't know it was you, I would think that... There's nothing funny about this.

Who are you?

Who am I?

Living your dreams means creating your own script.

Our next story features a well-known television host who's writing his own second act.

After QVC I intended to retire and I'm casting a play and it just kept going and I kind of learned to do it all myself and I thought I'm gonna stop doing other people's plays and do my own.

We decided to do a call for theater partnerships so we've worked with TheaterXB on a new production by Robert Bowersox and it's extremely important that we have this and we can bring in new audiences.

One day I opened a paper and it said do you want to be on national TV so I went and auditioned and five callbacks later I got hired by QVC as one of the first 11 hosts and then the night before we went on the air they came to me and said you're gonna be the first face on QVC.

It was an interesting process for me as an actor to create a person like that to make you want to pick up a phone and call.

(upbeat music) After 23 years, we decided to part ways.

I was ready for a change anyway.

And I had bought a house in Key West just to escape to.

During the summer, everything closed up 'cause it's really hot down there.

But a friend of mine and I, we created the Key West Summer Stage.

So every summer for nine years, big hit.

Around 2012, I started saying, "Well, I gotta do my own stuff."

So I produced one of my plays, "A Person of Interest."

This lovely lady came in to audition for the femme fatale in the play.

She got the part.

I thought she was great.

And we have not been apart since.

My wife, Melody Moore, is the one that auditioned for me and has become my producing partner.

She's also co-founder and vice president of TheaterXP.

When we left Key West, it was about time.

And I'm from this Philly area, so it takes a while to move into a place and meeting people and networking.

But, I always like working with my own material.

You write it, you hear it in your head, and you want to see it done.

It's a birthing process.

And this show, Growing Flowers on the Moon, the idea came from a conversation I had with my great aunt Helen.

I was named for her husband who died very young in her life and she never remarried.

And I asked her, "Why did my father name me after her Robert?"

And she said, "Well, you seem a lot like him."

And then she said, "It's been 50 years.

I wonder what would happen.

How would I feel if my Robert walked through the door?"

And that was the spark to start writing the play.

I set the play in a southern estate house in Savannah, Georgia.

Melody and I came up here, met George Boudreau, who's the executive director of the Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion.

And the parlor room was exactly as I envisioned the room that the play takes place in in my head.

I was really kind of amazed.

We try and support history and culture.

And one of the things we do is through theater.

It's very popular.

When you perform at Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion, it is very intimate theater.

It's like 40 people in our Victorian parlor, and we're still looking for other actors, actresses, and writers who want to put on shows like this.

I think you kind of have to do it all yourselves these days.

We learn those crafts and it became easy for us to multitask and put it all together.

So if you want to do something, there's only one person that's stopping you from doing it.

That's yourself.

Now if you don't know anything about what you want to do, learn it.

When you see your own work, as we say, on its feet, I'm really happy to see it up there and it's fulfilling.

But there are so many times where I hear a line delivered well and I go, "I wrote that?

Wow."

Now to a son's tribute to his late mother's life, legacy, and art.

Dina is most known for her metal sculpture, welding scrap metal that she found either at scrap metal yards, where they typically sell metal by the pound, but she was this lady artist who showed up looking for what she called "interesting scrap."

And then she also went to flea markets, and that's where she found a lot of rusty old tools and chains and more novelty items.

She created these artful assemblages that were based on the lessons of abstract expressionism.

She was always thinking about the three-dimensionality of a sculpture and that it should work from all directions.

When Dina passed away 11 years ago, other than having cancer, she was in great shape.

She was dynamic and active in making the most ambitious work of her career.

And it just all suddenly stopped.

And it was so jarring that as a family we decided we just couldn't let it stop there.

And that we wanted to do something to keep her legacy and memory and art alive.

My father and I partnered and found this incredible building in South Philadelphia and then renovated to house the three functions of the building.

The Dina Wind Art Foundation and all of Dina's sculpture and paintings.

My jewelry business.

and then also my own studio art practice.

We are on the second floor with Dina's sculpture on the one side and my sculpture speaking to it on the other side.

What I think is so cool is the found object connection between the two, but in my case, you can clearly see that my focus is really storytelling and narrative.

This is called "Whiskey Rebellion."

It was a series that I did last year and was shown at the Museum of the American Revolution.

It's all Revolutionary War heroes and soldiers.

They're whiskey decanters from the 1960s that were collectible.

In a lighthearted way, I wanted to just, you know, poke a little fun at them and question that heroism.

Using the language of jewelry, using the language of monuments, and creating these pedestals out of self-help books and business books, contemporizing the whole thing, and just saying that, yes, they were heroes, but there was room for expansion and interpretation from a more modern perspective.

I went to art school in the '80s and found myself making jewelry.

The jewelry was found object-based, which I definitely got that gene from my mom.

She started wearing the brooches that I was making as a proud mom, and within a few years she had this "aha" moment where she took her sculptures, which up until then had always been based on pedestals or the floor, and she said, "John, I'm gonna create brooches for buildings," which were essentially wall reliefs, but she had never hung her sculptures in that way.

I just love that connection.

She inspired me, and then I inspired her in return.

This is the ultimate Brooches for Buildings installation of Dina's.

It's School of Fish.

She worked abstractly.

She was not thinking about fish when she started making these forms, but I think after the fact she looked at it and suddenly went, "Oh, they really do look like fish."

The saw blades become fins.

Then she leaned into that idea and created waves with this, you know, rusty old chain and thought of the entire wall as her canvas to create this installation.

This is a fragment of Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

It was originally 18-foot square, hanging overhead with spaces for viewers to walk through it.

And the story is that when a car was in an accident, the insurance adjuster would come and decide, is this going to get fixed or is it trash?

And by keeping the word trash on the sculpture, she's saying, I know what you think, but I know it's really beauty.

Today, what people so appreciate about Dina and her work is that in the 1970s and '80s, when it really wasn't so common for a woman to be welding and creating these big, bold, rough, sometimes dangerous sculptures, she was fearlessly creating that work.

So both that choice of medium and then also the environmental message that was so important to her in her work, I think that set her apart, and those qualities have continued to make the work relevant today.

With the foundation, a lot of younger artists are discovering Dina for the first time.

It's really gratifying to hear them respond to her so positively.

People can see her work in the Philadelphia area at over a dozen museums, most prominently the Woodmere Art Museum.

Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, New Jersey is another great spot to see her work.

We really are a museum of Dina's work.

And to celebrate that, on the second Tuesday and second Saturday of every month, there's an hour-long tour that I've been leading, and it culminates with some refreshments on our sculpture deck.

You get two in one.

You get Dina's art, and you get my art as well.

Both are anchored in the love of found objects and assemblage.

It's a cohesive and fun and surprising tour.

- Now I'd like to welcome back to You Oughta Know, chef and podcaster, Eli Cope.

Eli, we had you on around this time last year to promote the first ever Tasties.

- Yes.

Remind us what the Tasties are.

Well, at the core, the Tasties are a celebration of Philadelphia's incredibly rich and diverse food culture.

Restaurants, bars, hospitality professionals, it is a night that we come together once a year, get everybody in the same room, and we just celebrate each other's successes.

We support one of the winners of last year, he came up on stage and said something so profound, and I just keep it in my back pocket now.

He says, "Philadelphia chooses collaboration over competition."

Aww.

And that is really the essence of the awards themselves.

Yes, you know, there's four nominees per category, and only one will take home the prize, so to speak.

But the whole night is centered around celebrating our industry.

From the ceremony itself, where you get beautiful bites and drinks from the moment you step in to the after party, you know, it's just, it's a creative night with just so much energy and love and, you know, it's just, it's just such an amazing feeling to be there.

I love it.

I think we are seeing video from last year's tasties, which you guys had such a great turnout.

What can we expect from the second year?

Yes.

Last year we sold out.

We hit our market for 400 people, which is amazing for the first year.

It took a lot of convincing.

You know, we didn't have the footage that we're looking at now.

We didn't have the photos.

We only had words to describe what we're doing.

And then this year coming up, we are expanding what we're doing.

We're offering more seats this year, looking to grow a little bit more.

And we're growing on our successes, but we're also adding elements to the awards, such as, you know, last year, one of the things we wanted, we wanted to be fun.

We want the awards ceremony not to be this like sort of classic stodgy award ceremony.

We actually have actors on stage, their stage is built like a restaurant as you can see right there, that's the stage and we have actors that do little skits in between.

The winners and the presenters will come up on stage and then they'll move over and they'll sit on stage, they get served a little glass of wine, a little snack until the next winner and presenter comes up.

So the whole thing is really meant to be fun.

It's for Philly by Philly.

So that's what's really special about the tasties.

Yeah, I love that comment about Philly being a city of collaborators.

This year you're going to have a future taste maker award.

Talk to me about that.

Well, again, we just want to grow on the awards and, you know, mentorship is so important.

You know, mentorship, whether you're coming up, you know, as chefs, we're just restaurant hospitality professionals.

We are natural mentors because we have to put thoughts and the right teaching into the next generation.

Otherwise, we won't have that, right?

The industry, just the labor in general, is kind of in a crisis mode.

It's been that way for quite a few years.

So being able to support the people coming up is really important.

And this award is going to three different individuals who are under 30 years of age.

They show great promise and their employers nominate them and then we take that information and we select them.

And it's a scholarship.

So you get a thousand dollars.

You call it a grant, scholarship, whatever you wish.

And they can use that money for continued learning.

They can buy, you know, if it's a chef, it could be cookbooks, it could be tools.

It's a wine professional.

They could do courses.

If it's hospitality, they could also, you know, use that money to help them grow in their career because we want the industry to be full of professionals.

You know, the industry is naturally very transient.

People come, people go.

But having true professionals dedicated to the industry is so important.

I love it.

Okay, lastly, when, where, how can folks get tickets?

All right, so once again, it's at Live Casino Inn Hotel.

They have a beautiful event space on the second floor.

You can get tickets by going to deliciouscitypodcast.com, and you can see the tickets right there.

It goes from, the ceremony starts at 5 p.m., doors open at 4 30, and goes until 9 30 or 10.

I love it.

Eli Culp, thank you so much for being here and chatting with me about the Tasties.

Hope to see you again next year.

I know, right?

Me too.

Thank you so much for having me.

And that's our show.

Thanks so much for watching.

Good night, everyone.

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