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

(upbeat music) - [Kabir] Coming up.

Meet the musicians behind Renovare, changing lives through the healing power of music.

Plus, see how two Ohio artists share a similar yet different passion for public art.

And the Cleveland Orchestra strings go back and forth to the music of Bela Bartok.

Thank you for setting aside some time to enjoy another round of "Applause," my friends.

I'm Ideastream Public Media's Kabir Bhatia.

At the Northeast Reintegration Center in Cleveland, incarcerated women are picking up instruments with the help of Renovare.

This small ensemble brings music to places you might not normally find it, foraging relationships and fostering an appreciation for music.

(gentle violin music) - Pretty steady.

One of the things that Renovare does each week is teach in two different prisons, and we are teaching violin, viola, and cello.

For most of these men and women, they've never touched a string instrument before.

Learning to read music is a new thing.

Learning to play in a group is a new thing for a lot of them.

It's just a joy to be part of the musical communities that have formed as we are there for more years and develop more of a community and a routine together.

- [Pamela] I am someone that was always into heavy metal, rock and roll, you know?

Never in a million years would I thought that I'd be playing an instrument like this and actually liking that type of music and everything.

But within about three to five months into it, I got off my meds, and I have stayed off my meds, and I really contribute that to this instrument.

- [Danielle] It helps build my day with energy, it helps build my day with positivity, and I'm able to share God's love through his music and that energy that it brings me.

- [Heidi] Under normal circumstances, you don't get opportunities like this.

To be able to play a string instrument, Renovare has really given us an opportunity that's truly once in a lifetime, and I am so grateful for all that they do.

- Yeah.

Subtle, right?

But it does make a difference.

- Being part of Renovare, I think, really opened my eyes to how siloed we are.

There's all these communities, and it's so easy to stay in your own bubble around people who think and look just like you.

And I'm learning how much that is a bummer.

Like, we really need each other and need to be going to other communities and learning from one another.

So first time I went into prison, I was like, "How have I not been doing this?

How have I not gotten to meet some of these amazing people?"

- We're seeing all kinds of things I just didn't think about.

We're seeing mental health benefits of women saying that it's changed the way that they maybe use medication or not, or find that they can manage their anger that they might have struggled with.

We're seeing people connecting with their kids, whether it's their child was already taking some kind of music class or learning an instrument, and now they can bond over that.

Or we've even had kids of folks in our program start an instrument because their parent was playing it in our program.

- We've been doing mostly classical, but we also brought in some fiddle tombs just to kind of encourage a little bit of improv, and encouraging them to go ahead and think beyond that genre of I play violin, or viola, or cello, and it has to be classical.

Some of the ladies have made requests for things like pop music, Heathens, or movie music, "Beauty and the Beast."

And so we'll make a little transcription for them, and simplify it a bit, and bring that in so that they can play some of the things that they listen to all the time.

(uplifting orchestral music) - I grew up playing the cello, and I loved making music, and I knew from a pretty young age that I wanted music to be part of my life, but I started to feel this tension inside of myself as I continued on my musical journey because I was spending so much time in fancy concert halls and in places that felt very removed from most people's everyday lives.

And I felt for myself that I couldn't continue on sort of the standard path for what cellists are expected to do professionally.

Performing was the original heart of Renovare's activities, and as we've developed our teaching programs and our songwriting programs, we have diversified our offerings.

But I would say performing is still a core piece of who we are as an ensemble and how we're seeking to share our musical gifts.

(upbeat orchestral music) - Communities, like incarcerated communities, often get forgotten.

Like, no one thinks to go there and bring the concert or bring this new experience, and they don't have the option to go outside and go looking for it.

And so they are always so excited to hear music that maybe they have heard before in some cases, and some of them they haven't heard before.

Helps kind of humanize them a little bit that they're like, "Oh, we're valuable enough as human beings that you think that we deserve this experience just like anybody else out on the street would."

- A lot of these women come in broken, they come in with a lot of trauma in their lives, and to have something like Renovare come in to provide them culturally something different that they've been accustomed to allows them to really grow in a different way.

I've noticed that the women have really grown.

As individuals, they're more confident, they're able to do something that they thought they would never be able to do.

And I think it's been a pretty amazing journey for a lot of the women here that have participated in the program.

(gentle music) - The name Renovare comes from words in Spanish and Latin and other romance languages that means to renew or to restore.

And that's something that we hope that we are part of as we use our music in different spaces, whether it's our own restoration or those of people who are getting the privilege of performing for or writing songs with or teaching.

(gentle music) - There it is.

- Okay.

- [Rebecca] Nice.

- [Kabir] Often we hear about stories from viewers like you.

If you have an idea for "Applause" to share, please let us know.

Send an email to arts@ideastream.org, and thanks.

Let's turn our attention to a pair of artists with a passion for public art.

We go to Columbus first, where Andrew Lundberg has created his own unconventional style and he wants to let viewers in on his secrets.

(gentle music) - I worked for design agencies all around the city for 15 years.

Really enjoyed it, but at nighttime I'd always been sculpting and painting.

It's kind of just been my nature.

At one point, you know, as it goes you kind of, you change and you evolve and you start thinking of the different things.

It was kind of time to do something different.

So I bought an Airstream, and I moved to Franklinton.

I just parked it up against one of the warehouses.

It was a risk, but it was worth it because I could actually fully invest myself in it.

I still did some freelance for a while to keep going until I had enough work to sustain it.

I did a lot of painting and a lot of sculpting and that was kind of nice to be free.

I didn't have long to do it, you know?

Money was always tight, and I had to figure that out, but it was a great time, and, you know, and then the company evolved and became, you know, what it is now.

But yeah, it started in an Airstream.

(laughs) I looked like, I'm sure, the crazy guy on the hill, like what is he doing?

Now, we do sculpture, but we're a job shop, so we also do a lot of other things.

Everything from large tables.

We've done huge conference room tables, sign jobs.

Anything to add a little bit of an artistic design bend.

So we don't typically do anything that's already thought out or flushed out.

So they come to us, and they want a design.

So the cool thing about us is we design it and build it, so it gets the little nuances because we're a part of it for all the way through.

(upbeat rock music) As far as the aesthetic of it, oftentimes we like to show the labor.

So there's something I heard a long time ago, it was like in the '50s or whatever.

It was kinda the west coast against the east coast, and the west coast was always very, their stuff was very polished, very colorful, shiny plastic.

And the east coast was much more like, show the nails, show the labor.

And I always loved that, and I always thought, "Well, I like people to see the labor that goes into it," because this takes countless hours and a lot of people to make it happen.

We did a huge sign just out of nails one time.

I mean, it was 5,600 nails just pounded into a wall.

But there's something about that, like once you see it, you're like, "Well, somebody had to do that."

And, you know, to me, the labor is on the process is just as important as the product.

But if I can pull off both, where you see a really cool product and then you're like, "Wow, that must have taken a while to do it."

I think that kind of hits all cylinders for me, you know?

Having the experience in my old world, you know, working with clients and knowing how, you know, you have to take what they say, and turn it in, and evolve it, and give it back to 'em what they hadn't necessarily thought of.

Well, one thing I realized over the time is that you're not just hiring a designer.

I'm an artist, so I do hand sketches, and just something about the hand sketches still feel very malleable, you know?

Like, when I show a client the sketch, we can really talk about it and we could figure it out.

If I went right to digital, and everybody does this now, they just show a 3D already finished look, there isn't much room for discussion.

So I think that's really helped me to go from sketch.

Once we get that nailed down, I might even sketch one more time, and then we go into the design phase and then the build phase.

So, I don't know, there was something about that that we could really talk about it and obviously, people kind of pick us because we have a little bit of a same flavor, or, you know, they kind of like our aesthetic in a way.

I really like the oversized object thing.

We just did "Slingshot."

What I liked about that is it's a huge slingshot, but it has that mischievous kind of kid-like nature, right?

So you feel creative or you feel like a kid when you're looking at it, and there was really something captivating about that.

Plus, it was interactive, but it wasn't interactive in a digital way.

It was interactive in an analog way.

We're kind of doing where you sit in the stirrups and you get pictures looking like you're gonna be shot into the river.

- [Interviewer] Do you remember where that idea came from for the slingshot?

- No, you know.

I think probably after a nap, I woke up, and a lot of good ideas come after a quick nap.

I think that's where it came from.

"Misfits by Nature," the idea there was just, I had to have something to do with a tree.

So since this one was also in the arts district, it was a tree made all of firewood.

Quite elaborate.

It's just not firewood, it was all sculpted to be firewood.

As you go up the tree, there's nine stained glass birds, and they're all very misfit in color.

There's mismatching color, and they all light up from the inside, and that's kind of the artist, and the tree was kind of the community or Franklinton and how it grew up.

It's great to take a material that's used for one thing and completely use it for something else.

That's kind of the artist's way, you know?

You take something commonly seen and you find a new use for it.

I love that, that really gets me going, that process.

Pilot dogs have been around since the 1950s, when Franklinton was rough, rough, rough.

And they're walking around the whole neighborhood, walking their dogs in some pretty crazy stuff.

So I basically did a maquette, I sculpted a small maquette, took it directly to them, and right away they just said, "Yes, this is what we need."

So we did a bronze piece.

It was a full guide dog and man walking the dog, and it was full size and had puppies going out.

It was really nice.

And the way it worked was so authentic.

I think I was built for this just because it's how my mind works.

I've tried other things, and they don't necessarily match up like these do.

This is just the way I think, so it's natural.

(upbeat music) I really like the teamwork aspect of it.

I really enjoy the fact that, like, I know somebody who's just a fantastic woodworker, and we have a project that needs to deliver that.

And I know that craftsmanship and that eye is gonna go into it.

So, you know, we don't do every piece all the time.

We certainly do a lot of the sculpting components, but it is great to kind of build a team of different talents to put it all together.

And that, I've really enjoyed that part.

That's inspiring.

The whole slingshot was built with all Franklinton people.

Even the foundation was dug by one of the Franklinton neighbors.

(upbeat music continues) There's a lot of combination of other people to make even what we have work.

I don't need every piece of the puzzle.

Sometimes, when you just have just the necessities, it almost is the mother of invention too.

You know, I don't, it doesn't have to be elaborate to make elaborate.

You know, you can start with very simple things, an angle grinder, and a welder, and some metal, and it's what you see.

(upbeat music continues) It still fascinates me that I can go from a sketch to a full-size something.

You know, that process is almost magic sometimes.

That we went from nothing but a thought to, you know, eight months later, it's standing right there.

It just blows me away every time.

(upbeat music continues) - [Kabir] Last summer, auctioneers from the "Antiques Roadshow" descended on the city of Akron.

On the next "Applause," we take you back to the roadshow stop at Akron Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens.

Then we go inside a Cleveland auction house for a look around.

Plus, we celebrate spring in Ohio with the music of the Zakk Jones trio.

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

(upbeat music) You can watch past episodes of "Applause" with the PBS app.

American sculptor Jon Barlow Hudson is an internationally renowned artist based in Dayton.

Let's examine Hudson's process as he creates a recent work of public art.

(gentle music) - My professional label would be public sculptor, and I've wanted to do that for a long time because you reach more people by making work for public places.

Of course, I just started out making small sculptures, that was great fun, but it's like a dollhouse.

It's all fine to make a dollhouse, but that's for dolls.

You need to make a big, real house in order to use it to live in it.

So same with sculpture.

A little sculpture is fine for a maquette or sitting on a table, but to experience it with your whole being, you need it to be of a scale that you can relate to it with, climb on it, or bump into it.

I've got public sculptures throughout the states, from Maine to California.

I have public sculptures in 27 different countries, and there are at least 22 throughout China.

Each different project has a different geography, environment, plants, architecture, function.

So maybe in one context, stone would be most appropriate, or stainless steel, or, like downtown Dayton, the yellow piece that's powder-coated aluminum.

That street used to be a canal full of water, used to transport, create energy, and so on.

So today the street is a canal for vehicles, which create eddies in the air as they race by.

So "Fluid Dynamics" seem the appropriate concept for that location.

"Paradigm Shift" is a mirror stainless steel piece where a technology center at Sinclair is teaching new technologies.

And so we are in a paradigm shift from the mechanistic to the informational or electronic age.

So that piece vortexes up one direction and midway changes and vortexes the opposite direction.

Sometimes, depending on the piece, I like to surprise people.

Like if you take the bronze tree of books at our Yellow Springs public library, I started out with this stack of books and made this spiral trunk, and then they spin off the top.

And then, within the tree, I put what were then contemporary things like a cassette recorder, and cassette tapes, and audiovisual tapes.

And I also made a bookworm climbing through a book.

And then there's a book with the title of my mother's published novel.

Those are elements to discover.

It's that discovery that's really fun.

Public projects tend to take a lot of time in particular because you've got committees, and regulations, and all that stuff, and you put a whole package together, it ends up being six months, or a year, or two years, or some such thing.

Let's go to the "Common Good," for example.

(upbeat music) (angle grinder whirring) I spent a good two years on that project, and that wasn't that big.

I had the stone, a very large granite service plate from Wright-Patt Air Force Base.

I got it for the cost of getting it over here, and it sat for almost 20 years, I think.

Well, that's pretty good.

I waited until this opportunity came that I could give it a home.

The impetus for the "Common Good" sculpture was Tim Riordan, the city manager for Dayton, also Cincinnati.

And after he retired, Tim got to thinking that he wanted to honor the public servants that he had worked with over his career.

As a committee, we came up with the idea of a bunch of quotes, and we decided to run the quotes around the stone so that you have to walk around the stone to read it so as to engage the viewer.

And then the seats, of course, engage you.

There's quotes inside, and then you see that you can sit in it.

And because there's an interconnecting hole, you can talk through the stone, which is the idea of communicating, breaking through walls.

In public service, it's all about communication and coming together.

It's not a environmental sculpture, it's more about communicating an idea to the people and the community.

- My name is Tim Riordan, and this is a project I've worked on for a couple years.

The name of the piece is "The Common Good."

We had a lot of discussion about what we should name the piece, and it really just felt this is what we work for, this is what we do, we do the common good.

And I wanna start it out just by saying a thank you to all the public servants who do such good work for our city, schools, county, state, and country, and the world.

And I just think it's great.

(crowd claps) - Hi, congratulations.

You're welcome.

- Why is public art important?

I think it's important 'cause it's a way of embodying energies of that time, which is then communicated with people down through time.

So, you know, you have Roman period and the Greeks or the Egyptians, all these different energies of that time we get to see because of the sculpture and creative works that were made.

(truck rumbling) It enriches our experience of being human, our history in the world.

It shows how our culture got to be what it is, and those people are communicating with us today, and I want to do that with my work, so that's why I like to build big sculpture.

(gentle music) - [Kabir] Thanks for watching this round of "Applause," my friends.

I'm Ideastream Public Media's Kabir Bhatia.

We're going to sign off today with music from the Cleveland Orchestra's Adella app.

The orchestra recently performed a Bela Bartok's string quartet.

You may ask, "Well, how did an orchestra do that?"

The answer is a new string orchestra arrangement by Cleveland Orchestra violist Stanley Konopka.

Check it out.

(intense orchestral music) (intense orchestral music continues) (intense orchestral music continues) (intense orchestral music continues) (intense orchestral music continues) (upbeat music) - [Narrator] Production of "Applause" on Ideastream Public Media is made possible by funding by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.