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Public media is made possible by funding by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.

Coming up, a young black painter challenges stereotypes in Youngstown.

Gear up for Cleveland's Dia de Muertos celebration with the man that made it happen.

And the groovy group Annadale gets the single shot treatment in Akron.

Hello and welcome to applause.

I Ideastream public medias Kabir Bhatia my friends.

Speaking of friends, Youngstown artist Autumn Joy Ellis recently finished a series of portrait paintings where the subjects were her friends and family.

Alice's portraits of people from her hometown make you smile, but they're also thought provoking.

Let's explore her show, titled Echoes of Us, at the museum that first inspired her.

The Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown.

And.

Yesterday.

I've come here for years.

I spent a lot of time really just perusing the galleries and the halls.

And, you know, sometimes it's not just to look at the art, it's just to be around it.

It's a place of inspiration, but it's a place of aspiration as well.

As an artist myself, wanting to be a part of it, eventually I said up, I think I want to try painting.

I want to see if I can.

It was more so just to see if I can do it.

Think I want to reflect who we are now and make sure that we are also include it.

And I think when I chose to put people that I know and local people, I wanted to elevate people who I know never considered themselves to be on the canvas.

Most of the people on this canvas had never even been to this museum before.

They came here to look at their exhibit.

The ones that are meaningful mostly to me, would be Michael and Braylen.

This piece is important.

It's the one that got me the show, but it's also the first large piece of large scale.

I'd never done a five foot canvas before.

And then the other piece that I very much like is Michael, because I like the joy that it relates.

I like the smile.

I like the happiness that's in it.

There's narrative to her work.

She's talking about her culture and social justice.

I want to really have people focus on the fact that you can see a bunch of black people on the wall without it being something that's being forced on you.

We exist here, too, but it's okay.

Sometimes we have these these biases in our heads, and we don't really acknowledge them or remember them or think of them.

And sometimes the person that you're scared of is actually a happy, joyful person.

It has no intention, no harm, no intent to hurt you.

He's just living his life.

We all want to live our lives and be happy.

I think she's very brave.

It can be scary being the person who speaks up about topics that maybe are sore subjects, and some people want to look away from these kinds of important topics.

I'm very proud to help this institution have a platform for an artist like Autumn.

I would, on my random visits, come across the mid-year exhibition, the national Mid-Year Juried exhibition has been going on for over 80 years, almost 90 years.

And so I would just look and walk the exhibition and say, wow, these are, you know, amateur people who submitted some people from here.

So I was actually intrigued by that.

We've had really amazing jurors.

Edward Hopper has toured the show before, and we get entries from all over the United States, usually from at least 20 different states.

I thought maybe I had a chance.

So I submitted two pieces and one of them got in when I saw her work in the media, and I saw that it was accepted, particularly the painting that was accepted.

It's just beautiful and so I asked her, can you produce a whole gallery of these?

And I said, yeah, but I was honored.

It was an amazing experience.

If you want to do it, sometimes you just have to like stop with the excuses and just do it.

It was something that I honestly, I'm still processing, so it's hard to really articulate the emotional aspect of it because I go through a range, so I can't just say I was elated or I was excited like it's it's heavier than that.

So there are deeper feelings that come with walking in and seeing, you know, an entire exhibition of your own.

Adam Joy is a great local talent.

And I think her work speaks to what is at the heart of the art scene in Youngstown and greater Youngstown.

Just recently acquired it was on loan for a while, but this was these are all local people.

And so it is literally the epitome of what I want to do one day.

I look at it every single time I come here because the scale, it's just one day when I have more space.

I, I would love to do a piece with just multiple people.

It's very cool.

I like the shadows and the lights or needs of the pictures themselves.

the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown is free and open to the public Tuesday through Sunday.

Alas, poor Yorick.

Oh, hi.

Sorry.

I thought we were in break.

Kate and I were brushing up on our Shakespeare, but actually, this Mexican sugar skull comes to us from Cleveland's annual Dia de Muertos celebration.

And the local artist who leads that festival each fall is Hector Castellanos.

Lata.

Since 1990, Hector Castellanos Lara has made a tremendous impact on the arts community of Northeast Ohio.

From his work on parade, the Circle and Chalk Festival in Cleveland's University Circle to his beloved Dia de Muertos celebrations in the Gordon Square Arts District.

Castellanos loves to share his Latino heritage.

Born in Guatemala City, Guatemala in 1954, Hector Castellanos Lara is the son of a bohemian artist and a young entrepreneur.

My mom was a designer for a newborn's clothing.

Her name was Marta Reyna Lara.

I remember my mom coming with materials, you know, in the evenings and carrying and measuring everything.

There's a lot of sewing through with the embroidering, with beautiful designs.

It's in my genes, for sure.

I cannot deny.

His artist father, Gustavo Castellanos, was a free spirit who died young at his mother's bidding.

Hector entered the School of Medicine at the University of San Carlos in Guatemala.

But this was the 1970s, and his country's political situation was dangerous.

1974 I was in my first year in school.

Amazing.

Those days there were unstable, a situation with the students and the government, also because there were some political issues that were so critical and many of my friends were disappearing.

Castellanos, Lara's mother and younger brother, had already escaped to New York City because the situation was so unstable.

My mom decided to bring me here to the United States, to the side to get my papers done.

She was already a resident here in those days, so I came to the United States, New York in 1977 when I was 22.

So that's where I lived for the first 12 years.

Castellanos, Lara's medical studies did not transfer to the U.S., so he followed in his mother's footsteps in clothing design, working for an American footwear business in the 1980s.

By the third year, they knew that.

I know how to decide to draw and take photographs, so they hired me to another department to do just that.

So that opened the door for another level into the artistic field.

By then he had married and his wife Liz had family in northeast Ohio.

And they told us, there will be nice if we can move to Cleveland because, you know, it's more quiet city, very affordable housing.

If you're raising children, you know you have a better opportunity.

We decided to come in 1990.

It was in Cleveland where his artistic life began in earnest.

One of his earlier exhibits harkened back to his beloved Guatemala.

People always asking me why I don't make a scene from Guatemala, and what a model is one of the most important art there is.

Very easy to recognize because the Mayan population, they dress with these beautiful dresses representing different local areas where they live.

All the ideas that I have in my paintings come from my mind, you know, from my head.

Usually don't go and take photographs or see the scene and draw it or sketch it.

No, I just think in front of the paper or canvas and I start putting together what I remember.

You know, in this case, people from the market, people with sombreros or people taking a good rest in the sidewalk.

Those are the scenes are part of the daily life.

And what the mother in the late 90s, a chance meeting with the Cleveland Museum of Art's Robin Van Lear led Castellanos, Laura to the pageant of a lifetime CMA's parade, the circle.

I have been part of the family working for almost 22 years with parades and so-called preventing floats, making giant puppets, also training school kids to teenagers to adults in the Cleveland Public Library.

Also, I did it for many years.

So much fun.

So much creativity.

Every year.

Robin Van Lear has these great events like Parade, The Circle.

She has the Chalk Festival.

So that was another invitation directly to me.

And I say, yeah, I will try these new media.

Since then, I haven't stopped.

A fellow Latino artist, Salvador Gonzalez, invited Castellanos Laura to help him create a new festival for Northeast Ohio.

In 2005, Dia de Los Muertos at the Saint Joseph at Arts Hall on East 33rd Street.

Gonzalez retired two years later, leaving the festival in Castellanos Lauder's hands, 2008.

We started here in the West Side, Triana Public Theater.

Raymond Buggin was so excited about it.

Mattson, the cold steel man from the church doorway also.

And we started doing face painting.

In the beginning, we thought it's going to be mostly children, you know, and teenagers.

But now there were adults coming in some grandpa's people from all colors.

They honoring our loved ones.

It goes to everybody, you know, it's not just one country, you know.

And even they have different customs or ways to celebrate.

And in one way or another, we sympathize to remember them that way at least once a year is something very good.

You know, it's something that will be very positive for the new generations, because we can tell our kids about who was grandpa, who was the uncle, who passed away 20 years ago.

You know, so does stay in their memories and they will continue and pass it on to another generation.

That's why it's so important to keep this festival alive.

Arts education is a big part of his career, as he works with area schools on projects like traditional sawdust carpets for the Holy Week of Easter.

His most recent activity is at the Art House in Cleveland's Brooklyn Center neighborhood, working with young immigrants currently living in Akron and Canton.

Castellano slaughter christened it the Gateway Project.

The idea was to welcome the refugees.

Welcome everybody.

Immigrants, to go through this installation, and we're going to have some wind chimes made out of bamboo materials like you can see.

There is no walls, so you can come to different directions inside.

And that was the main idea.

You know, we don't need walls, you know?

So, we just need, like, a, a form part of this installation.

They can see, new elements.

They can feel people like, happy, welcome and, gathering at the same time.

During his three decades living in northeast Ohio.

Castellanos.

Laura has witnessed incredible growth in the Latino arts community.

One of the main things for me to tell them all the time is like, I don't stay with one discipline and the art.

You know, you're a painter.

That's great, you know?

But, explore other other disciplines because that opens the doors in other directions.

I jumped into making massive jam pop as a float, or I go and make sawdust carpets, or I do chalk art.

I really motivate them to explore more because they give you more chances, more opportunities in life, especially in the arts.

Dia de Muertos is free and takes place Saturday, November 1st at Cleveland Public Theater on the city's Near West Side.

So that last story comes from the Applause Archives, a treasure trove of Northeast Ohio arts and culture.

And it's all yours to discover with the PBS app.

It's accessible from any smart device, and it's free.

You can watch all of our applause programs, both recent and long past.

And while you're there, check out our local music show, applause performances.

If you're having trouble logging on to the PBS app, send an email to Arts at Ideo.

Stream.org.

Columbus artist Kelly Booz prefers to paint the places most people never even notice an empty parking lot, an overgrown area along the side of the road, an abandoned back yard.

That's where she finds her inspiration.

As a painter, I'm interested in our relationship to the spaces around us and our immediate surroundings, how we relate and interact with places that are familiar to us.

So a lot of my work for several years has been really about these areas that are quite empty or quiet, things that you might easily pass by that don't receive a lot of attention.

But I find those to be areas that are quite peaceful and places for introspection.

Being in those places allows for careful attention, noticing, and just the act of seeing and looking and using imagination to think of maybe a different future for that space.

Or imagine the history of a space.

My process usually involves first just experiencing a place or a space that I'm interested in, or that's familiar to me.

Really.

If I just see something that I'm curious about or stumble upon, something that maybe I haven't noticed before in a place that I've been many times, that act of noticing is intriguing to me, so I'm usually compelled to, either just take a photograph, a video, do a drawing.

A lot of times an image will strike me as just seeing something and thinking, I want to paint that.

So it kind of evolves from there.

I've always just loved drawing.

Drawing feels like my first language rather than even even speaking or, writing.

I do a lot on site, and then a lot of times I'll come back to the studio and kind of piece together images or memory or those sketches or thoughts that I had, like combining all these fragments to kind of collage together for like a unified piece.

A lot of the areas that I paint or the images that I'm interested in feel silent and they feel still.

So I want that sensation to pull the viewer in, to be more introspective of their own interpretation, of maybe their own surroundings, or their experience of the work that is present in front of them.

And a lot of the images are either obscured or they're kind of ambiguous.

So there's this underlying familiarity that I think is nice for other people to relate to.

Some of the public art projects that I've done in the past have been a result of more of a collaborative community effort with organizations or partners here in Springfield.

I do like being part of a larger project that's just not my artistic vision.

It's a group effort, and that way it's more representative of us as a community rather of just an individual.

As an artist.

I really find inspiration from just about everything.

I know that's such a broad answer, but I truly believe there's just like there's nothing that's boring.

And no matter what small detail you happen to come across, you can drill down into kind of the inner energy of whatever that thing is.

For inspiration, I mean a vacant parking lot.

I focused on painting vacant parking lots for a very long time, or just something I see when I'm walking to my studio.

I think the art making process for me is quite analogous also to like a meditation practice.

And in that sense, artmaking is a way of thinking, a way of just being and experiencing the world around us.

I think even just viewing art, appreciating it is similar in that way that you're creating meaning, you're making interpretations that connect to your lived experience.

I don't have everything figured out at the beginning.

I almost never do.

Right now that I'm in graduate school, I work with a lot of undergraduate students and one thing I see, for a younger generation of artists that I think would be helpful, is just the understanding that it is a practice.

It's not kind of a finish line that you get to.

It's an ongoing process.

It's a it's kind of a lifestyle.

It's a way of thinking.

It's a way of just being in the world.

opening doors through dance.

On the next applause, a ballet company in Berea welcomes all on the dance floor on the next round of applause, making dance more accessible with North Pointe Ballet.

It's great because we can show that being part of a story ballet is such a special experience.

Want to.

another special experience.

Local honky tonk Corey Grinder and the Playboy Scouts get cooking at the Idea Center.

All that and more on the next round of applause We got to wait.

Not honkytonk it.

I need to and even turn off the stand.

Find the where the side We've got some traveling music taking us out for this round of applause.

Thanks for watching.

I'm idea streams Kabir Bhatia.

Akron band Annadale is a fan favorite, as seen by their performance at the Porch Rocker Music Festival.

And look, we were there too.

Any hope?

Here's Annadale, captured by the Akron Recording Company in a single shot.

Cuz I can feel the bite.

Birthday.

Taste me like I sip on the ashes.

Every once the sauce opens.

We love to good.

Just enough to eat it I live in your life.

Just a great long life.

Every night you know you need me like.

You never can gonna like you.

You.

Oh my heart I wanna know what it like to do it.

That I like to be made you.

I know I'm gonna find you.

Oh, baby, you.

Oh, there you are.

Better I you.

Hey, you.

I know I learned of the slow burn I need your love.

Oh, to do the rush for.

To burn the air out.

It's all so bittersweet.

You look so good.

Just enough to me.

Yet I living a lie doesn't make me alive.

You make me love life.

Don't ever love.

Yeah.

Make a long life.

For you.

Oh my heart I want it.

But it's I 25 I love you, me, me love.

Like.

Oh, I'm gonna find you, baby.

You never I know I'm gonna die.

Love you baby.

She.

She me.

Every way you feel.

You love you.

Production of applause and ideastream.

Public media is made possible by funding by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.