[Announcer] Funding for "The Art Show" is made possible by The L&L Nippert Charitable Foundation, The Robert and Adele Schiff Family Foundation, The George & Margaret McLane Foundation.

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In this edition of "The Art Show," The Contemporary Dayton moves into a new home.

(gentle music) Pairing words with images to comment on the Black Experience.

Take a tour of architectural jewels.

And meet the musical King of Reno.

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

(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.

For 30 years, The Contemporary Dayton has provided art for the Miami Valley Community and a community for artists.

Formerly known as the Dayton Visual Arts Center or DVAC, The Contemporary became one of the first tenants of the newly renovated Arcade in downtown Dayton last year.

With more than double the size of their former location, it's clear, The Contemporary is at the heart of the Dayton arts scene.

(gentle music) Hi, I'm Eva Buttacavoli, the Executive Director of The Contemporary Dayton.

Dayton's Contemporary Arts Center.

And, today we are in our new galleries in the Dayton Arcade.

Our name used to be the Dayton Visual Arts Center and we were actually founded by a group of artists and volunteers in the community 30 years ago that wanted to bring contemporary art to the community and to show local and regional contemporary artists.

When we decided to expand and also change our name, we really wanted to expand and evolve our focus to bringing to the community artists from all over the world.

So, now we present national, internationally known artists and Dayton and Ohio artists at the same time.

But what everybody has in common is, we are presenting contemporary art and what that means is artists that are living and working today and are dealing with the issues that we all are dealing with in our contemporary lives.

Things like, climate change, police brutality, the Me Too Movement, et cetera.

So, contemporary artists deal with these issues and that's really what we wanted to evolve our focus to.

The Arcade has been called the most emotional building in Dayton and we are lucky and excited to be here.

We feel like we made the right move at the right time.

The Arcade is a mixed use, retail, arts, innovation, tech, and academic entity.

That was exciting for us.

So, it's actually nothing else like this in the country that has this combination of academic and tech and arts.

This wonderful developer decided to renovate these historic buildings and they came to us asking if we would be interested in being the arts anchor for the Arcade.

So, just like moving in anywhere, moving into a new house, there were definitely some trials.

But we look back at it and we're very proud because we opened with even during COVID, socially distanced.

We opened with the University of Dayton band coming down the street anointing us, people walking from our old space in a parade.

Lines around the block.

People were so excited to see the space.

Moving into the Arcade has been a game changer for us.

So many things have changed, we've got big white walls.

We've got five different spaces to exhibit different artist's work.

We've got an enormous store front.

We've got a shop that faces the rotunda, the most beautiful part of the Arcade, but so many things have actually still stayed the same and are very DVAC and we think about that all the time.

That's what we used to call the Dayton Visual Arts Center.

Something that I think that really has surprised people is when they enter the space, if you had been to DVAC before, we always said, this wasn't like taking DVAC and putting DVAC in the Arcade.

This is a brand-new space, it feels different, it looks different.

We used wood from ash trees that fell during Dayton's tornados two years ago that was milled and created the floor in Gallery C and also was the material for our commissioned reception desk.

We reused light tracks from our old space at DVAC and bought new lights.

We reused furniture and shelving and some carpet remnants.

We have our DVAC sign in our back office, our great big DVAC.

With any beloved institution that has been around as long as us, there's a lot of melding or a lot of weaving of our past and our present and I think that's the evolution of DVAC to The Contemporary Dayton.

I will say the art that we have always shown and the art that we show is of the highest merit.

It is the best of the best that's happening in the community and in the world but it sure does make a difference to be in a brand spanking new space on beautiful walls with beautiful floors.

It really finally gives it the attention that it deserves.

We are free.

We are always free.

We are free and open to all.

The idea of DVAC and The Contemporary always has been, let's find ways for everyone to engage with the art, where we are creating as many ways as we can and reaching for as many ways as we can to have the public enter the work.

For all of the artists that we're working with now, we have been creating gallery talks whether it is on Zoom or live, live streaming them but always recording them and putting them on our website.

Here at The Contemporary Dayton, we want you to know that we are open and welcome to all.

Hopefully, you'll see something that stimulates your imagination, that confounds you, that surprises you, that makes you happy, that makes you angry and that's what contemporary art seeks to do.

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.

Our next story takes us to Houston.

Artist David Mcgee finds inspiration in literature, art history, and pop culture.

His paintings combine words with images to comment on the Black Experience.

Let's take a look.

The role of race in my work is a simple reaction to me being Black.

But I'm interested in artists who don't pledge allegiance to a tribe when it comes to what is needed in the work.

This whole idea that all of us have monsters in us and we have the capacity to make monsters.

My work has historically been about other social issues and the juxtaposition of certain images and language and bits and pieces of the wreckage that both of those deities invade into the body.

There's image, there's language and when they cross, it seems to cause abstractions.

So what you can do is you get a famous figure and you label it with a name that doesn't go with that.

I had an exhibition at the Menil alongside of, I can't believe I'm saying this, Salvador Dali.

And so they asked me to do something for it, so I made a painting of a great funk musician named George Clinton.

I gave him a Dali-esque mustache.

Salvador Dali is a famous surrealistic painter.

I'm at the Museum and there's these two white ladies looking at the painting for a long, long time.

And I was looking at them look at it.

And after a long pause, one of the other white ladies says, "I didn't think Dali was Black."

"Neither did I!"

And I just said okay that's the best thing I've ever heard.

So I do things where if I'm talking about Camus or Jean Genet.

Putting an African-American in the prison suit and just writing Genet under that, where I can parallel that with Genet's life as a little petty criminal in Paris.

Why not Snoop Dogg as Van Gogh?

Why can't that be that person?

Poetry and novels and reading were keynotes to how I begin to re-imagine everything.

And I think how I read affects how I can spend long hours painting a thing, 'cause my internal clock is boundless, I'm not structured, I don't really care.

As you get older the imagination begins to wander and my imagination was wandering.

I had to physically move myself out of where I was painting.

And I went to Bolivar, not too far from here, it's a little peninsula off of Galveston.

I had an idea about what I was gonna paint about 'cause I've been fascinated with this one book my whole life, "Moby Dick."

So I said I'm gonna paint a whole show about "Moby Dick."

And it turned out to be one of the best experiences I've ever had.

Not just the work which after three months or so, it came.

I mean, I could see it.

Juxtaposing the different chapters of "Moby Dick" to my own experiences in these level of paintings.

And one painting led to another, and then from that, another set of paintings came, called the Urban Dreads, which were about how urban spaces have affected African Americans and most people.

Those paintings freed me from the emotional weights.

The subject matter doesn't change, the style may change and you can swerve back and forth.

You can't be labeled but who needs to be labeled?

Yeah.

(gentle music) (upbeat music) 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.

Just imagine, one square mile of a city packed with more than 800 historic buildings restored to their former splendor.

And to visit, you don't even need a passport.

If you're a fan of 20th century architecture, it's time to lace up your sneakers.

We're taking a walking tour of the Art Deco District in sunny Miami beach, Florida.

(gentle music) The Art Deco Historic District was put on the National Register of Historic Places and it was significant because it was the first neighborhood of 20th century buildings to be put on the National Register.

My name is Howard Breyer, I'm a volunteer tour guide with the Miami Design Preservation League.

We'll be doing an Art Deco walking tour of the historic district of Miami Beach.

Two events in the latter half of the 1920s changed the course of history for Miami Beach as a resort.

First in 1926, a major hurricane had a direct hit on the city.

Hundreds of people were killed, much property was destroyed or severely damaged.

Then in 1929, the stock market crashed and many of the wealthy people who were coming here also lost much of their money.

So the nature of Miami Beach as a resort changed in the 1930s.

If you look up and down Ocean Drive, most of the buildings that you see were erected as hotels in the 1930s primarily for a middle-class clientele.

Art Deco was a style of architecture begun in Europe early in the 20th century.

There was a big exhibit in Paris in 1925 that featured Art Deco architecture and design, people from all over the world went to that exhibit and brought Art Deco home with them.

Miami Beach has about 800 Art Deco buildings, one of the highest concentrations of any city in the world.

The Breakwater Hotel across the street was erected in 1940 and I'll point out a few of its features that are common to Art Deco buildings here.

Number one, the front facade is symmetric, meaning if you fold it in half, it's the same on both sides.

Often Art Deco buildings here give a sense of movement.

The Breakwater looks almost like a ship.

The Breakwater sign being its mast.

The railings on the roof line looked like the railings on the cruise ship, so it almost looks as if it's about to leave its foundation and then go out into the ocean behind us.

The next building we'll look at is the original Congress Hotel, immediately across the street.

If you look at the roofline, you see it goes up and steps on both sides.

That's called the ziggurat.

That was first developed in Mesopotamian architecture, later adopted by the Egyptians and Egypt in architecture and design was popular in many places around the world in the 1920s and '30s because of the discovery of King Tut's tomb there in 1922.

Next, you'll notice the ledges over the windows.

The nickname for those are eyebrows.

They served a very important function.

They provide shade for the interior, keeping it cooler, especially important for when these buildings were not air conditioned.

And finally here, if you look at the Congress Hotel sign, the font that the letters are in was a very popular font in the 1930s.

So our next stop will be in the lobby of the original part of The Victor.

The architectural features that we see in the lobby are original.

So the first feature we'll look at is the floor.

The material is called terrazzo was first developed in Italy.

It's stone chips mixed in with the composite.

And as it dries, it could be molded into different shapes and dyed various colors.

Most of the terrazzo floors in Miami Beach Art Deco buildings are the original floor.

And finally, these are considered classic Art Deco chandeliers.

The Essex House Hotel, it's another Art Deco building.

This was erected in 1939.

You can see the terrazzo floor like we saw in The Victor.

You see these three arrows in the floor.

Up until 1950, illegal gambling was popular in many Miami Beach hotels at its height.

In the late 1940s, up to 200 Miami Beach hotels featured illegal gambling.

So sometimes the hotel would put an indication in the floor of where the gambling was taking place so people wouldn't have to ask at the front desk.

Miami Beach is noted for its colorful buildings.

When these buildings were first erected, they were painted primarily neutral colors, off-white was the most common color.

For the most part, the colorful buildings didn't come into play until the early 1980s.

Today, the current trend is to go back to more neutral colors, especially white, which is in line with the overall design trend in the United States today.

(upbeat orchestral music) (upbeat music) "The Art Show" is going to be traveling around southwest Ohio.

You might see this logo in your neighborhood.

Follow the travels of "The Art Show" on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram @thinktv and cetconnect.

And check out "The Art Show" hashtag.

Now, let's travel west to meet the musical King of Reno.

Corky Bennett is a Nevada-based musician and entertainer who loves to play the accordion.

With his instrument, he's traveled across the country, delighting audiences for decades.

Here's his story.

My legal name is Leighton Wiley Brumble.

A lot of people know me as Corky Brumble, but even more people know me as Corky Bennett, the King of Reno.

(gentle accordion music) I grew up in a little town called Sequim, Washington back in the '40s.

When I was seven years old in 1949, I heard a guy play the accordion on the radio.

And I didn't know, but it was Dick Contino.

And Dick Contino in those days was a huge, huge star.

I heard Dick play and I go, "Wow, that's awesome."

So I said to my mom, when I grow up, I wanna be an accordion player.

She says, "Corky you can't do both."

So I became an accordion player.

(gentle accordion music) About three years later, my dad brought home a little 12-bass accordion.

He says, "Here, play this, try it out."

So I play it a little bit, he says, "You like it?"

I go, yeah.

The next week he signed me up for music lessons at a music store, downtown Seattle, and I took to it pretty quickly.

About three months after I started, they put a bigger accordion on my lap and he says, "How do you like that?"

I go, "Wow, that's beautiful."

He says, "Well, that's good 'cause your parents just bought it for you."

And I started crying.

I thought that was so cool.

My parents had bought me a big boy accordion.

(gentle music) I was in a band called the Buckaroos and we were a little country band and I was 11.

We played for the Kiwanis Clubs and the Rotary Clubs and things like that.

Our moms made us satin shirts with fringe all over.

We wore cowboy hats and cowboy boots, we were slick.

The accordion is my favorite instrument in the world because you can play so many different styles on it.

You can play polkas like, (polkas accordion music) or you can play jazz.

(jazz accordion music) Country music.

(country accordion music) Or you can play like Cajun music.

(Cajun accordion music) The first gig I ever had in Reno, Nevada was at the old Golden Hotel.

This was in 1963 and then it turned into Harrah's Club.

That's how I honed my craft was doing shows in Nevada.

I do a lot of comedy in my shows.

I just like making people happy.

I was playing at this place called the Hardy House on California Avenue.

And it was packed.

It was like a Friday night.

A guy comes up to me and says, "You know Corky, you're the King of Reno."

I go really, well.

A brand was born.

I became the King of Reno.

(gentle accordion music) The accordion works just like the human body.

The bellows are your lungs.

And they push air over reeds, and the reeds are like your vocal chords.

And the more air you push over it, hardly a pump or pull, the more air you're pushing over those reeds and they get louder or softer, just like your voice.

And then when you press a key, (gentle accordion music) that's like opening your mouth.

That's how the music comes out and the sound comes out of the grill here.

This is the bass side.

This would be like the left hand of the piano where you play a note, then you play a chord.

(accordion chimes) The thing about the accordion is it covers the whole spectrum.

It can make people laugh, it can make people cry, it can make people happy, sing along.

The accordion is great that way.

It's the most versatile instrument there is.

(gentle accordion music) ♪ Goodbye, Joe, me gotta go, me, oh, my, oh ♪ ♪ Me gotta go, pole the pirogue down the bayou ♪ I get emotionally charged up by music.

When I'm playing at home, I play things like "Rhapsody in Blue," Gershwin songs.

I play like "MacArthur Park," a Jimmy Webb song.

I love that kind of music.

It's my whole world.

There's nothing more important to me.

(gentle accordion music) (upbeat music) If you wanna see more from "The Art Show," connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

You'll find us @thinktv and cetconnect.

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

And that wraps it up for this edition.