- [Announcer] Funding for "The Art Show" is made possible by: The Carol Ann and Ralph V. Haile, Jr. U.S. Bank Foundation, and the Virginia W. Kettering Foundation, proud supporter of the arts in our community.

Additional funding provided by... And viewers like you, thank You.

- In this edition of "The Art Show", the love of classical music at a young age, creates an opera singer.

(upbeat music) Using intuition, an abstract artist makes bold and colorful fun art.

A husband-and-wife team, recycle lobster traps into something more.

And creating colorful fabric and turning it into one-of-a- kind pandemic masks.

It's all ahead on this edition of "The Art Show".

(lively upbeat music) Hi, I'm Rodney Veal, and welcome to "The Art Show", where each week we provide access to local, regional and national artists and arts organizations.

At a young age, the love of music was instilled in Maya Vansuch.

Her parents listened to all types of music but classical was the music that peaked her interest.

When her mom put in a videotape of an opera, Maya was enthralled.

That performance would help shape her career path as an opera singer.

Here is Maya's story.

♪ Willow, if he wants should be returning ♪ ♪ Pray tell him I am weeping too ♪ - I was born here in Dayton, but my father was in the air force.

For the younger part of my life, we lived a bunch of different places, and then when I was 12, we moved back here.

So really, Dayton is my home.

I would say that the love of music was really instilled in me from my parents.

They gave me a lot of exposure to classical music and other types of music.

What got me hooked on theater and opera and all of that in general, when I was very young, maybe four or five, something like that, we were moving, as military families do, and my mom needed to pack and keep me occupied.

So, she put on a videotape of Hansel and Gretel, at the Met, and I was enthralled, and Hansel and Gretel is a great story for little kids.

So, I just sat there and watched it and absorbed all the music and the fun storytelling and all of that.

I studied classical singing from the time I was 12 but I also was in choirs and did musical theater and all that kind of stuff had lots of different interests.

That's a typical age to start voice lessons.

You know, at that age I wasn't singing the same music I am now by any means.

I started singing, traditional English folk songs or things like that, and musical theater and we slowly brought in classical music, easier pieces, and then by the time I was in high school, late high school, I was singing classical music.

I wouldn't say there was an exact moment that I decided to choose opera as my career.

It eventually came to a point where I was like; I can't envision doing anything else.

So then, that's when I headed off to college (laughs).

When you go to school for voice, you have a private teacher.

We would work on technique and learning new pieces and all that kind of thing.

When I was young, I was working on simple things like how to breathe properly and how to form my mouth into sounds that weren't ugly (laughs) and things like that.

Now I'm working on very different things.

I'm working on how to expand my range, how to expand my breath support, for like holding longer phrases, you're always kind of building up on your technique.

You have diction classes and language classes.

I studied German, French and Italian, which are some of the most common languages you sing in.

O my beloved father I like him, he is so handsome, I want to go to Porta Rossa, - [Narrator] Upon graduation, Maya returned to Dayton and auditioned for Dayton Opera's Artist-in-Residence program.

She was selected with three other singers.

- I did basically two things.

Number one, I was a small role in La Cenerentola, which is the story of Cinderella, which was amazing, very fun.

And the rest of my time spent as the artist in residence was working on an outreach program for schools.

We had this little show and it's perfect for school kids and it really introduces them to classical music and opera.

♪ Long lay the world ♪ ♪ In sin and error pining ♪ ♪ Till he appear'd ♪ ♪ And the soul felt its worth ♪ ♪ A thrill of hope ♪ You're building your technique constantly, so there's certain roles that you're not ready for but we will be later down the line once you have more experience and all of that.

So, I would say that once you have some smaller roles, then you can move into slightly bigger roles and you keep building that, and then that's how you're ready for a lead role someday.

The process is very involved.

When I have a score in front of me and I'm learning a role, looking at it for the first time, I might listen to a recording of the show and follow along with my score so that I can see how it's all structured.

And then as I'm learning each piece, I'll work on the notes and I'll work on the language, if it's a foreign language, and just slowly build it up.

There's a lot of practice time.

And then after I feel comfortable with the piece, I will start working on memorizing, which is a whole other ball game (laughs).

A lot of time goes into that.

You have to sing it over and over and check yourself and all of that.

Typically, a company will give you a lot of time from the time you audition to when you are starting rehearsals.

So, you'll have many months, which is good, a lot of time to work on it, really get it ingrained in your head.

So, the voice is often unpredictable (laughs).

It's very, very effected by the weather, how much water you drank, whether you have allergies, a cold, things like that.

It varies a lot day by day.

You have to figure out how to work through those.

It's not always gonna be the same, but that's also what's exciting about singing is that it isn't the same every day because it changes and your body changes and yeah, you just get to work with it in a different way each time.

I love being on stage for many reasons.

I love the costumes and the set and bringing to life the story.

The interacting with other singers and the acting experience of it is really, really exciting to me.

Also just having the challenge of performing a role vocally is exciting, and to infuse your own emotions and how you feel the character would be thinking at this point or feeling at this point and all of that.

And then of course the audience is a huge part of it.

And it's so exciting to feel the audience.

They're enjoying your performance.

Very exciting.

I have a crazy head and I am quick and lively.

I love to shine; I live to have fun.... - If you'd like to learn more about this, or any other story on today's show, visit us online at cetconnect.org or thinktv.org.

Columbus artist Brenden Spivey, was looking for a stress relief.

He found looking at artwork therapeutic so he decided to give it a try.

His bold canvases are as colorful and fun as his personality.

(gentle upbeat music) (brushes tapping) - I've never really given myself, like a label.

A lot of people say that I paint with joy, energy so, those who know me know that I can be very energetic, and I think a lot of that personality comes out in some of the colors that I use, shapes that I use.

There's never gonna be anything overly dull or dramatic.

(brush scratching) I like action.

So, you'll see large swipes, bright colors, texture.

So that's kind of how I view my work.

(hands scratching) (spray can hissing) So, I'm a big fan of abstract, which is kind of ironic 'cause that's what I do.

It was more about the...

I didn't like the literal interpretation necessarily of, like, skylines or barns and trees.

I liked being able to have my own vision of what the art piece meant because I think abstract painters paint with intention, but we also paint with intuition, so I found it really, kind of fascinating just to see like what do I see going into the piece versus what they said that they saw.

(upbeat music) 2017, I was looking for something a little more productive to do as far as stress relief.

You know, I used to run and lift, and not that that's not productive, it just takes a lot of time and dedication.

But I wanted something a little more, so I think for me, looking at artwork was always kind of therapeutic, so I wanted to give that a shot and not being trained to do this was kind of, it was different.

This is the Hayley Gallery.

(bright upbeat music) For me, this place is very homey, and what I like about it is I can find everything that I want.

So, if I'm looking for abstract art, if I'm looking for glass, I'm able to find that here.

So, it's not just a gallery to me, it's, like a home.

So, I will have rotations of art work in, so I typically will have between three to five pieces at a time in.

This one is called, "Rise Up."

So, this kind of all goes back to some of the movements that we were going through, social unrest and all of that stuff, so I wanted to give something, if you look at the tones of browns and earth tones.

So, it's kind of pushing you a certain direction without necessarily taking you all the way there.

We wanted to kind of get involved in the whole Black Lives Matter movement.

Not necessarily through protest and those means, but how can we use our artistic voices to make a very strongly stated message without saying words.

And the two murals we did, the first one was at the Ohio Theatre, and it was a compilation of fields of flowers and young children that were black, and she was picking flowers, and the young boy had a paintbrush.

And then I came in as the artistic abstract sky of shapes and color.

And Will came in with the cityscape, and it just...

I think it was a really great fusion of all of our talents together because normally you would not have an abstract painter mixed with two more traditionally trained artists.

But I think that to me, that's what made the work so powerful.

Spencer, that's awfully close, buddy.

So, spencer is my double doodle.

High five?

Yes!

He's another reason that I do a lot of the things that I do.

You get all the treats.

I get joy out of seeing him enjoy things in life, and it's the money that comes in from art sales helps put him into daycare, pays for his vet bills that are so expensive, and just overall, just everyday things for him.

Like, that's my buddy.

can you lay flat?

He brings me joy, and I think having more joy in my life I think has also probably helped my art work transcend.

You don't see how handsome you are.

I think another thing that kind of drove me to wanna become a painter was being told that painters are born this way.

Artists are born artists, and they're artists their entire lives.

That for me, was a personal challenge.

So, not only was I wanting to get out there and paint and find a way to relax, I wanted to prove somebody wrong.

And it's been a hit so far so, I was right.

You don't know what you're capable of until you do it, and I live my life that way.

And I want to get out there and just try it.

- Did you miss an episode of "The Art Show"?

No problem!

You can watch it on demand at cetconnect.org and thinktv.org.

You'll find all the previous episodes, as well as current episodes, and links to the artists we feature.

Husband and wife duo Nadine and Glenn Lahti retired to the Florida Keys, but they soon found a new way, an artistic one, to pass the time on the islands.

They decided to recycle thousands of lobster traps into art.

(lively music) - I'm Nadine Lahti, this is my husband, Glenn Lahti.

- We're here at the Lobster Trap Art Gallery in Islamorada.

My wife and I retired back in 1996, I believe, and bought a home in the Keys and we just didn't do much other than fish snorkel, relax.

And then one day I was walking and I picked up some lobster trap wood along the road.

I said, I'm gonna make some frames for our family.

So, we made them lobster trap frames and they go, "These are great, you could sell these."

And I go, "you think?"

And this is what happened.

(bright upbeat music) Every year, when they take all of the lobster traps out of the water, they repair them.

And what we do is we collect about a hundred truckloads of used traps that they can't repair.

Some of it is very weathered.

Some of it has barnacles.

We leave the staples on, nails, we leave the shells, everything just like it was a working trap.

And then we use the lobster trap rope to highlight the frame.

The larger pieces, we put a lobster trap tag to give it authenticity.

We always say, we collaborate with nature.

We have different mediums that we put in each frame.

We started off painting, showed our work in art shows.

Robbie's where they feed the Tarpon.

And he started to get very popular with people.

My wife does mainly the animal paintings: turtles, manatees, birds, lobster, and I do the landscapes and seascapes or anything with a palm tree of beach scene or lighthouse is one of my things.

- Well, I just love the animals, sea creatures, the birds, I mean, they're just so beautiful down here and people get a memory of the Keys.

- And then we started doing underwater photography in depth about three years ago.

And we've taken probably hundreds of thousands of pictures.

Everything is shot in the Caribbean.

Most of it, here in the Keys.

It's all Caribbean fish, Caribbean lobster, Caribbean octopus, vivid colors.

We have a lot of turtles and then unusual things like octopus, people are like, "wow, where did you get?"

You know, it's really unusual.

So, it would be- - "Keys-y"?

We call it "Keys-y."

I don't know if that's even a word "Keys-y" or Caribbean or tropical art.

We just love what we do.

We love enjoying it.

We can't wait to get back on the water, take more pictures, and we love that people love it.

(gentle music) (upbeat music) - "The Art Show" is gonna be traveling around southwest Ohio.

You might see this logo in your neighborhood.

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When the pandemic hit, designer Melissa Michelson, adapted her business model to support her family.

Using her creative talents, she craft reusable masks to add a little fun and fashion during the pandemic.

(gentle upbeat music) (sewing machine clattering) - My name is Melissa Michelson.

My brand is Love Mert.

It's a sustainable accessory brand that I started 20 years ago.

I source my materials mostly from secondhand shops, and then I also source recycled bits of leather from a couple suppliers that get giant amounts of offcuts from other productions and then I buy 30, 40, 50 pounds at a time.

My stuff really does well in small, independent batiks 'cause everything's just handmade versus mass produced.

(gentle music) I was always passionate about fashion and wanted to be a designer of some sort.

And I've always been an artist and grew up in a family of artists.

So, I guess it was hard to escape.

So, I kept making things and over the years, things have evolved aesthetically and I started messing around with screen printing fabrics for a while, and then I fell into marbling and I thought marbling's an ancient technique they've done for thousands of years.

And I thought it would translate really well on fabric.

And I started making some really cool pieces of fabric that I was turning into other products like canvas pouches and some really nice home textiles, pillows, and whatnot.

And then I started making some eye masks and those were doing really well for me, just like relaxation eye masks in a heart shape.

And then the pandemic happened, and so, I thought this fabric would be really beautiful to make a mask out of because if you're gonna wear a mask, a lot of people want to have something unique or that speaks to their individuality, I guess.

I mean, we all have to wear them right now, right?

So, you might as well wear one that's kind of fun and colorful.

The process of me making a mask starts with marbling the fabric.

It's a little bit of a wet process.

It's a messy process.

It got many steps.

I kind of use the water as my canvas.

You have a tray of water.

The water has a little cellulose in it so it makes it a little bit gelatinous.

When you place the paints on top of the water, the paints float, and you're able to kind of move them around and they disperse with each other.

They push each other around you layer and layer it.

And then once you get what you think is what you want, you get your fabric and you lay it down and you pull it back up.

And the result on the piece of fabric is amazing.

And you never get the same thing twice, although I can kind of control color combinations in a little bit of technique to do a production run of sorts, but everything's always gonna be a little different.

(upbeat music) I wonder to myself when I'm selling them like how much longer will this be going?

And I think this whole pandemic thing has taken a lot of us by kind of surprise and we are all a little bit confused and just trying to make our way through every day.

I was worried that my business was gonna get hurt by it.

And I thought, what can I do in this state of where we're at to prosper and make sure my family's taken care of?

Because the mask thing it took a while to actually happen during this pandemic.

And it wasn't necessarily right then and there like, "I'll make masks."

It's actually been really interesting because it's bringing way more people to my website than I ever used to have travel to my website.

And people are going there because they found out about my masks, however they did, and then see all my other work.

And so, I'm actually trying to design a mask so that when all this is over, because it will be, it can serve another purpose.

So maybe it ends up being like headband or something.

The sustainability has been there with Love Mert since day one.

And yes, I'm making products, but I'm trying to do it as consciously as possible and artfully as possible.

- If you want to see more from "The Art Show", connect with us on Facebook, twitter, and Instagram.

You'll find us at thinktv and cetconnect.

And don't forget to use "The Art Show" channel on YouTube.

And that wraps it up for this edition of "The Art Show".

Until next time, I'm Rodney veal.

Thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Funding for "The Art Show" is made possible by: The Carol Ann and Ralph V. Haile, Jr. U.S. Bank Foundation, and the Virginia W. Kettering Foundation, proud supporter of the arts in our community.

Additional funding provided by... And viewers like you.

Closed captioning in part has been made possible through a grant from The Bahmann Foundation.

Thank You.