- [Kabir] Coming up on Applause, poetry brings men together in an unexpected place.

A Columbus artist finds inspiration in nature for her paintings and paper cutouts.

And listen for the Ohio Americana of Angela Purley from her latest release, Turn Me Loose.

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

(jazz music) - [Kabir] It is time for another round of applause, my friends.

I'm Ideastream Public Media's Kabir Bhatia.

At 2100 Lakeside in Cleveland, Ohio's largest men's shelter serves its residents with more than beds and meals.

The finding voice poetry workshop provides a platform for men to express themselves through writing.

- [Bizzell] We speak with voices unheard.

The atrocities are unheard of.

Disenfranchised, misused, mislabeled its thugs, it's the hate you give.

Prisoners in the land of the free shackled by invisible chains.

Most die for a living, the scattered remains of what remains, It's the hate you give.

Forced to smile through the pain, somehow finding comfort in the rain, it hides my tears.

The same shoulder you cry on carries the weight of 2000 years.

Traumatized, ostracized, fueled by rage and fear.

- [Annie] Finding Voice poetry workshop.

It feels like a sacred space.

And none of us leave the room the same way we came.

- The breaking of bread, color-- - Gives you more than, you know, even serving a meal, which is a lovely thing to do, but you actually get to engage with people.

You're not handing them something and then it's the next person.

You actually get to hear people and express themselves, and over and over and over again, all these years, it's just, it's the commonality of the human experience.

- Oh, they know (indistinct).

Oh.

- The shelter isn't just about providing beds, meal, shower, safety, but preparing an individual for appropriate housing and, you know, building up the individual inside.

So something like writing it can be so affirming for getting out who you are, just who you are inside, beyond all the labels.

And you know, what a person may think of you out on the street.

Now the individual emerges in this workshop.

- Who would like to read first?

So I kind of look at it as poetry is like, you know, you come to and serve soup at the soup kitchen.

It's a service position.

And so I like those kind of projects where it's like community facing, it's not loud and boisterous.

It's actually kind of generative.

And you'll get something out of it spiritually too.

- That broken silence tumbles everything.

It's a great resource to have given the circumstances that I was experiencing of not being able to live with family for certain reasons.

And I'm glad that it's here and it's been a useful resource for me, aside from just keeping a roof over my head and the meals that it provides here.

It's also given me an opportunity to volunteer, which takes my focus off of myself.

And it's a little cathartic, and it's given me opportunities to participate in some artistic, you know, expressions.

(downbeat music) - And I try to take advantage of all the activities that go on here.

It takes your mind off of other things and it makes it feel more like a community.

Writing is, I call it a my release, but it's more than that to me.

If I write something that I feel is, I'm not gonna say prolific, I'm not going to pat myself on the back like that, but if I write something that, that I think is very nice, I get real giddy with it.

You know, you'll see me giggling and stuff like, oh, where is he at?

You know, but it's definitely my first love and I've had a lot of love.

It's like the love that stuck around.

It's like the love that I still have, you know.

(audience applauds) - Never did poetry.

However, when we got involved with the different poets and their concepts and their ideologies and their ideas, it kind of opened up.

So, and what it opened up was this right here.

I was able to express the darkest parts of me, meaning that those were the pieces that I didn't share with nobody.

This was able to bring it out, and then bringing it out, it was kind of a release.

We sucked, we sucked, so grand our words are bland alone.

- So we two chat books plus this book, and now this book.

So we have been published a few times, which is, you know, it's lovely, it's such a bonus and it's such a powerful statement to see your own words in print.

So that's just like a, an extra, a boost to the experience here for the guys as they're passing through the shelter.

(upbeat music) - What I hope people get out of it is the deep humanity of the individuals who are writing this and who have been through trauma, have been through everything life can throw at you and original self comes through beyond all the hurt and trauma, something else is coming through, which is like a deep humanity of the people.

- If anything, maybe it just reminded them that, you know, they had stuff to say and they could write it down.

And it's just a small sliver of effort and momentum toward eradicating homelessness.

It's not like this kind of like mighty hammer.

It is just a simple gesture toward like communication and dialogue.

So I think people really respected it from that point of view.

But making a book of poems doesn't move the needle toward like solving homelessness.

- Check, check.

I used to think that poetry had to rhyme.

You know, it had to be one of those things.

And then I found out it just had to make sense in the end.

In a world of craziness and chaos, this can kind of give you a little ground one day out of a week because I think we all need that in some form or fashion.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] In June, an anthology titled "These Words Are Not My Home: Writing From the Unhoused" was published in collaboration with Literary Cleveland.

And if you are looking for ways to get involved in the Northeast Ohio arts scene, why not try our to-do list on for size.

Our weekly newsletter features arts and culture event ideas, as well as arts news from around the region.

Go ahead and sign up online at arts.ideastream.org, and thanks.

Off to Columbus, where artist Leah Wong makes paintings and paper cutouts that capture the beauty of natural light.

Born in China, Wong got her MFA in painting from Ohio University in Athens.

Let's watch as this artistic bobcat creates her cutouts.

- In China, I was just traditional European Western oil painter.

I didn't speak English when I came to the US 30 years ago.

And the thing is that I couldn't recognize the word, but I can't recognize the number.

And then the English become abstract lines.

Just, just the lines.

When I start to see the world, much, much, much, much infinite, much bigger my work, just feel like, woo, I can do a lot of things with my skills.

I'm glad I was trained like painter, I know how to draw.

I do, I know how to use color.

All this technique I had training become, I don't think anymore, it's just there, 'cause it is important for me to not to think about technique, but when you need it, it come out.

The inspiration of the light, the water, the air, we can't see them because we can't see air.

We need it.

Water, we can't hold until you freeze in container.

But water is flow, but it's very important.

And all this nature of light, without light, we have no color.

We have no, we can't see anything.

So all this kind of things start to inspire me to think, every day we have a pattern, but every day is different.

So the, I just look every day I look sky, oh sky, the cloud.

So a lot of shapes that come out is the creatures from the cloud.

The cloud is morphing, it's a blossom.

They start to move and moves different shapes.

I think that's beautiful.

This is a, my library, visual library.

This is not for show, it just for my notes, but if I look connected together, this one reason, some reason, maybe five years ago, this one, 20 years ago, there are a lot of elements still shared.

A lot of times, the structure of our mind and imaginations is there, but it's how to compose.

How do you interpret what you have right now?

It's your personal.

This one, I remember this 2003 during the Iraq war, this one, I hear the bombs, you know, during the time, every day, every day, every day.

I just feel that all the bird, all the stuff puts together.

It just, that's my failing.

And, but I like the movement, the, you know, when I see the bird fly like, like group like this and it become my, my kind of notes.

Creativity has no time.

It is no time, it is all related.

We do cycle like the earth going on and turning, turning, turning.

There's end, what is the end?

Can you tell?

My day is the other place night.

My night is other place daytime.

So what is he true time?

All depends what you look at.

So to me, I don't have a time there.

It is kind of liberating.

So whatever works and works communicate with you today should communicate with you 20 years from now.

Positive and negative space is whole.

It's one thing, it's not a separate thing.

So when you cut out, you leave, you spark become negative space, but negative space against a color, that color is show a shape.

So the, you put together become whole.

So basically, what I think when I create those cutouts, layers by layers, layers, you live shadows together, the visual complexity become much more interesting.

And then you see things change your perspective.

Because when you see negative at some point become positive, when you see blue you shift a little bit, become a yellow behind.

So it's not the same anymore.

It is one all related to each other.

So basically, see this is one line, right?

So I cut, if I cut this one, I cut this area.

I was thinking about the thickness of this one.

I'm not cutting out, I'm cutting this shapes of this one.

So basically this line, this thing and this thickness is all deliberately designed.

It look casual, look easy, but not easy.

'Cause took me to think a lot more to cut one area than, it look very simple, easy.

But the minute I cut it off, I have to make sure they're balanced.

They don't drag each other.

And this hole, tiny little holes represent a shape.

Kind of focus much more, because I have to think lot more than one shape.

This one triangle here, I'm cutting three lines.

I'm looking at this line, I'm looking at this line, like this same time because the thing that once you cut it out, you can't put it back.

So I think very carefully when I spot it, I can, I got it right away, and if I don't do it now, I maybe do other thing, I forget.

So then when once I do it, I would look back.

Sometimes I forgot to eat, to drink, at times, it flies.

And I like that part of, kinda like, you sort of in this space and sometimes it pop, you know, when I work, work all of a sudden something just pop out.

I said, huh, I said, oh, I'm gonna try this one.

Not for show, not for anything, just for me to look at that looks like.

- [Narrator] How about we now head to Cincinnati where Creon Johnson rocks the mic daily as Dayo Gold.

He loves to represent his home in the Queen City through his words and his music.

- What inspires me to write it was really just, I didn't know how to really just get out how I was feeling a lot of the times.

I think I'm a great communicator, but it's some, it is just something is I don't quite know how to articulate the best at the current moment.

And I think when I'm just hit with some overwhelming emotions like that, what I've found is the pin and the pad man, it's, that's what really helps me get that out.

(downbeat music) When I started rapping and I saw how you use those, you know, those different kind of like formulas within communication, I was like, whoa, this can go way farther than what I even expected.

I think you really just gotta be familiar with, you know, the English language.

I was always, I always loved English class growing up 'cause I loved using different words and you know, like articulating myself better than the next person.

But I think when you, you know, weave that into your actual hip hop and like, you know, your raps, that shows your intelligence as well.

How you can relate to, you can be saying the same thing, but it means two different things and it, the way you said it or the way you perceive it, that would be the only thing that makes that change.

And I think that is amazing to me.

I think a huge event that really shaped who I am was when I had to drop outta school.

First of all, I didn't really want to, I didn't want to at all.

Like I was known for my grade.

So when I had to relay that message to my family, it was like, well then what are you going to do?

I felt that was a, I was real lost at that point in my life.

But my mom, she's always been there.

It's like, she's really the strongest person I know.

And she really instilled that confidence in me early.

Like, don't let anybody drift you off what you really, really want to do.

And it was a lot of spur of the moment things going on in my life that really made me just reevaluate who I am.

And when, you know, I just stripped that all away and I got, you know, just by myself and I could just think for myself.

It just came, it was music, it was always music.

And you know, once I got that, that stereotype of me just, you know, being a black person, you want to do hip hop out of the, outta my mind, it made a definite.

There's this quote, and it stuck with me ever since I read it.

It says, "hip hop didn't invent anything, "it reinvented everything."

(downbeat music) It takes everything that's going on in the culture, it takes everything that's going on in politics, and it puts it all in this one place where anybody and everybody can listen to it.

Hip hop has influenced me in ways I can't even count, to the way I dress, to the way I wear my hair, my conversation, my word choices, and it's also educating me, I think that's probably what I got from the most from hip hop.

(downbeat music) I really want people to try to grow from the inside, not from the material things that's been going on.

I want that little light bulb to just flicker in your head when you listen to my music.

Like, I ain't never really thought of it like that.

If I can affect you that way, just by my lyrics, by my presence, by me, you know what I'm saying?

Getting you to hear something you never even heard before, then I won.

At the end of the day, one of my nicknames in high school was Tre Day.

So when I was thinking of that as a rap name as at first, but I'm like, there's so many Tre Days as well.

Like I can't do that.

But I wanted to keep Day in there somehow.

So then, you know, when I was on my, you know, my research, I came across Dayo.

And Dayo means, joy arrives, in Yoruba.

And then that's when it hit me.

What's up everybody?

It's Dayo Gold.

I'm in good with some good people.

I'm go ahead and hold it down, let's get into it.

(hip hop music) (rapping) It was two people around me, and I saw Dayo and I was like, Dayo Gold.

And they just both looked up, they was like, yeah, that's it.

I like how people put together what they're saying the most over the top of the beat, 'cause it's like the beat has his rhythm, but then the rapper has his own rhythm as well.

But the thing is, he has to co-exist that within that rhythm that's already laid down.

So that's what I like about music, it's like a whole story.

(rapping) When it comes to writing to a song, I think it all depends.

Sometimes it'd be a day where I have to pause the beat.

Like I know where the beat is going, I'm familiar with it and then I have to just pause it and write.

But then it's sometimes, I have to keep the beat going and it's just on repeat and I'm just like, I gotta find what I really want to say and then it just be a wave that just comes over me.

And I just, I can't stop writing.

When I piece together, you know, the music and the beat and it's all coming together as a final project, you feel complete.

You feel like, I feel like I'm doing my purpose.

You gotta strive to be the best.

And that's what I, that's what I do.

Like, I got this self-confidence in me that as soon as I get on here, I'm gonna change everything.

Like nobody did it the way I did it.

- When I say Dayo, y'all say Gold.

(cheering) Dayo.

- Gold.

- Dayo.

- Gold.

- Dayo.

- Gold.

- Dayo.

- Gold.

- Let's go.

- I want be the person that no matter what, he was never thinking for himself.

He was always in that head space where wherever he did, it was for the next person.

It was for the next generation.

And I think when people think on that, on that caliber, that's when they push the culture forward.

Like, this is what I came here to do.

This is what I was born to do, so this is what I'm going to do.

Once I just, you know, kept repeating that every single day I approached the mic, it was more just like everybody in the room with me.

I'm not in the room with everybody else.

Someone once asked me if my life was a book, what would I title it?

So I didn't quite have an answer then, but with me going through life, I had to restart all the way over.

I came from a place of nothingness.

It was a low time for me, but it took me finding myself.

It took me taking it day by day, step by step, that it led to my true being.

So after some thought, I figured I'd title it, From Black To Gold.

(hip hop music) - [Narrator] Here's a look at what's coming up next time on Applause.

When times are tough, for some, art comes to the rescue.

We hear from a handful of northeast Ohio artists who say art has saved their lives.

- If it's what you are really here to do, it not only saves your life, but it is your life.

- Plus a pianist from Iceland joins the Cleveland Orchestra for a rollicking work by Maurice Revell.

All that and more on the next round of Applause.

Time to close things out with some music.

I'm Ideastream Public Media's Kabir Bhatia handing it off to an Americana songbird from the 614, Angela Purley.

She and her band Spotlight her new album, "Turn Me Loose."

This is her song, "Here For You."

(singing) - [Narrator] Production of Applause, an Ideastream Public Media is made possible by funding by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.