[Announcer] Funding for "The Art Show" is made possible by the L&L Nippert Charitable Foundation, Montgomery County, the Virginia W. Kettering Foundation, the Sutphin Family Foundation, the Wohlgemuth Herschede Foundation.

Additional funding provided by and viewers like you.

Thank you.

This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

In this edition of "The Art Show," a light show transforms a city, (joyful music) sharing traditions through Judaic art, and birds come to life in vibrant detail.

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

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) 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.

Our first story takes us behind the scenes of BLINK, a four-day event that first started in October of 2017 transforming 20 square blocks of Cincinnati into an open-air art gallery.

Its third iteration is returning soon to Cincinnati, so we thought it would be a good time to revisit.

The original brought together the work of over 100 artists from around the world, and more than a million visitors were blown away by the large-scale interactive art and light displays.

Now let's watch how it all came together from start to finish.

[Narrator] BLINK, the largest light and art event in North America.

A spectacle two years in the making now comes down to the final months.

Producers kick into overdrive as they attempt to transform Cincinnati into the Future City, the ultimate goal of BLINK.

We're about 90 days out.

I don't know what that translates down into hours, but I'm feeling the weight of that.

It's go time.

Today is the first day of calling together all of the creative talent who are going to do light-based installations on the street along the BLINK route.

We've all been kind of working our different channels, and it's only now, just now, you know, a few months out, where we're all starting to get in the same rooms, which is so exciting because it's starting to feel bigger than any of us now.

This is going to be something really extraordinary.

[Narrator] Weeks later, BLINK apprentice artists submit their proposals for entry into the event.

We're using PVC piping to lay out the basic skeleton of all the petals, and that's our project.

[Narrator] Up against a deadline of their own, apprentices head into the workshop to put action to their plans.

We're in our final week working on the parade floats, and we're coming down to the wire.

It's very challenging work.

There's a lot of problem-solving, and it really tests a person's mental will.

You know, there's a lot of positivity and energy, and I think that they stop, solve the problem, and then keep moving.

So I think they're doing really well.

(stirring string music) [Narrator] Across town, the producing team attends one of many weekly meetings to discuss final details.

The weekly meetings were incredibly important because there are a lot of variables in the span of idea to execution.

Because it had never been done before, there were so many unknowns that consistently kept popping up, and we had to have that touch point regularly for all those parties to come together and level-set on what the course was.

[Narrator] Even in its preparation, BLINK focused on uniting people as one.

As such, many of the best local, national, and international artists came together to tackle a challenging vision.

There were some really tricky ones in there too that I was really, frankly, would've even taken out of the show early on, thinking it wouldn't be a great location.

But then their creativity took over, and they do what they do.

We knew that's when this would all start to unfold in a most beautiful way.

[Narrator] The final step brought the community into the fold.

Assembling dedicated volunteers is seldom easy, but Cincinnatians responded.

Their dedication would prove crucial for the kickoff parade, now only hours away.

As the sun went down, the curtain rose on BLINK.

♪ Follow the light ♪ (upbeat music) We estimated about 100,000 people turned out for the parade.

Everybody decked themselves out and EL wire and LEDs.

That was our one caveat, is you have to illuminate yourself.

Families who lived around where the parade started were kind of were coming out, and we had all these little light-up tchotchkes, and we were giving them to the kids.

I don't think the neighborhood has seen that kind of usage in a long time.

This wasn't a parade that you watched go by with these sponsors and their trucks.

This was a community event, and the people of the community showed up not only to watch, but they created amazing works of art, which I think is really an amazing outcome of BLINK.

(gentle music) [Narrator] As the parade spilled into Washington Park, Cincinnati was bathed in light.

Designed originally as a light, art, and projection-mapping event, BLINK throughout its fortnight run became something much, much more.

(upbeat music) BLINK for Cincinnati was a really unique moment where for four days, it promoted community in the true sense of the word.

It was one of those rare moments that togetherness was tangible and something that was prevalent in the landscape of the city.

All the months of hard work, all the meetings, all the prep work, all the planning, to see it finally happening and getting to share that with the city, it's really exciting to see it come to fruition.

I think there were no happier people in the city than that core group who pushed forward on their vision.

And I know to a person, they definitely got what they built and then some.

Just watching that rainbow of people with sheer joy on their faces, it was incredible.

I could not walk two steps without stopping and looking and listening.

There was one that really surprised me as a crowd favorite that was the Rosemary Clooney 'cause it was so...

It just had this fun, campy, over-the-top cool factor.

But what really carried that piece was the soundtrack.

They did a mashup, you know, of some of Rosemary's songs, and people just, they just fell in love with it.

To see an entire city rally around an event and kind of have the same train of thought, like, this is something beautiful, this is something positive, it was amazing to see.

What was I think beautiful about BLINK, while we had music and audible components to the event, there was a voice-driven soundtrack to the festival of the dialogue that was consistently happening.

And so you heard things like, "This is a place that I wanna be a part of and I wanna live."

Just really special moments like that were cool.

[Narrator] The voice-driven soundtrack was courtesy of one million-plus attendees, who came out over the course of the event.

Many were simply blown away by what they saw.

I'm from Cincinnati, and I have never seen this.

It's a nice community feel.

It's people of all different races, cultures, ages, and everyone's just excited to see what's going on with BLINK.

I think something like this, it's Cincinnati's way of saying, "This is our style.

Come enjoy our style of art, our music."

And you will find that it's different, but at the same time, it's really doggone cool.

It really is.

(laughs) I visit New York City often.

It's a place I've fallen in love with, and things like this don't necessarily make me want to relocate too bad.

It's a really, really cool thing.

I've lived here all my life, and there's places that, you know, that I'm going now to explore that I never went to before.

And seeing what BLINK has done this year, incorporating all the different neighborhoods, all the way from OTR down to the Banks, you know, that's exciting.

I think it's something to come see, come visit.

I think that's the vision of a future city where everybody can come out in unity to enjoy a whole host of things from different cultures.

[Narrator] "The people of the future city are united and enlightened.

In the blink of an eye, their hearts and minds glow with the radiance of transcendent knowing."

Those are the opening words of the BLINK Future City Manifesto written in a fit of passion by BLINK producer Dan Reynolds of Brave Berlin.

And while they may have started out on paper, they ultimately penned a cityscape with light.

BLINK by name was conceived to be a moment in time, but it's obvious its philosophy and art will stay in the hearts and minds of Cincinnatians for years to come.

The future city is just getting started.

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.

Nancy Schwartz-Katz is a Cleveland-based artist who specializes in Jewish art, specifically marriage contracts.

Her intricate paper cuttings bring to life the story she tells.

In 2023, Nancy was the recipient of an Ohio Heritage Fellowship in Material Culture from the Ohio Arts Council.

Here's her story.

(bright piano music) I grew up in University Heights, Ohio, and I'm one of five girls, and I think I always drew.

I liked functional art, and Jewish art, like what I do now, is a functional art.

I wanted to really explore being able to draw, so I transferred to Parsons, which had the best drawing program.

My dad convinced me to take a year out of New York, so I moved to Cleveland.

I received three phone calls in one week.

Three completely different people had phoned me who had seen my sister's, my cousin's and my girlfriend's ketubot, which are Jewish marriage contracts that I had created in my early 20s as gifts.

And I thought, "Three people, one week, who did not know each other, there's a job here."

So I got a $500 loan, which was a lot of money back then, to pay for advertising, and I started my business creating Jewish art.

What I think draws my ketubot apart from other people's ketubahs is that I really work with the couple to create something that's uniquely all about them.

So I'm illustrating the story of their life.

It's that moment right now where they are when they're getting married.

When I meet with them, I take the information of what their interests are, what symbolism.

Do they want a paper cut?

Do they want a painting?

What shape?

What size?

Do they want a square?

Do they want a rectangle?

And then I stop them, and I say, "Okay, so tell me what you'd wanna incorporate in your ketubah.

So we have an idea of the design, so let's figure out what we're gonna tell in your story."

Paper cutting's very interesting.

It's like drawing.

Paper cutting has been going around for centuries, you know, invented by the Chinese.

And I have my papers made for me, so I'm able to cut on one side where it's a little smoother, and the other side is more porous, so it has more texture to it.

I do a drawing, and then I interpret the drawing for paper cut so the lines are continuous and then thicker and thinner depending on how it's gonna be cut.

And I coordinate the imagery from one thing to the next, which is actually similar to my gouache.

Gouache is an interesting material to use.

It's a crossover between an acrylic and a watercolor.

So you can get a little thicker, and you can really kind of move the paint in a way you can't with watercolor, and you can layer it.

I love that layering effect.

Over the years, I've been creating social commentaries, and so every year I try and create something about what's going on in today's world.

Fairmount Temple had caught fire.

So Fairmount Temple knows who I am, and they asked me if I could brainstorm with them for something for their windows.

And I said, "Well, why don't we take this imagery?

I can make this painting, and we could put it on the windows."

And simultaneously, while that is being put up, I won this amazing award.

A day and a half after I received this amazing honor, the war in Israel breaks out, the brutal murdering of people and the kidnapping of all the hostages.

And I felt such an obligation in my heart to do something to make a difference.

So my friend texted me saying, "Hey, the Jewish Federation wants me to work on this, but I told them I'd only wanna work on it with you because you're the idea girl."

I said, "Great," so I thought of the ribbon would be an easy way to do this.

And on the ribbon should have all the faces of the hostages, so it needs to be a really big ribbon, and then "Bring them home now," which is the statement that is being used over and over again because they need to be brought home.

I mean, they're being abused.

It's just such a horrific thing going on that I needed to bring that awareness.

So I wanted the faces of the individuals to really be in a person's face.

I made the children's faces larger, and next to the children's, you'll see a lot of the elderly and so because these people, these like our family members.

Well, to start talking about the letter project, I have to talk about my mobile.

I was asked to be a mentor to the Jewish Arts and Culture Lab.

So they were discussing creation and the meaning of the Hebrew alphabet, which is the Sefer Yitzirah, the pairing of the letters.

And so I envisioned this whole mobile of the letters coming off and being out of like glass or plastic or something and having it then be on a mobile, and it turns.

So a few years later, I'm sitting in my family room where we have a ton of books, and I'm looking around.

I'm like, "Oh, what am I gonna do?"

So I'm like, "You know what?

I'm gonna illustrate Lawrence Kushner's 'Book of Letters.'"

So much comes from the Hebrew alphabet.

The Hebrew alphabet builds, the letters build on one another.

So each letter is about living life and about building your life and what do you want in your life.

And it's okay to make mistakes and move back and try and fix it as anybody.

So they're really for everybody.

You don't say anything when you say, "Aleph, that's the first letter of the alphabet."

So I illustrated it as like messy around it with all the letters behind it, and then Aleph stands out.

And Bet is beginning.

That's the second letter.

So you're beginning to go somewhere.

And then Gimel is going.

It's like the waves, the water carrying you to Dalet, which is the next letter, which is the door, Dalet, door.

And you're peeking from which door in life do you wanna go through to make a difference.

And then He is the fifth letter, and what's interesting about He is that it starts...

It talks about the different kinds of people in the world.

Nancy's a born storyteller.

She loves going back into history and especially Jewish culture and especially writings from the Torah.

The letters have intrigued her always and when each of the letters tell a different story.

[Nancy] I became fascinated, and I fell down this rabbit hole.

I created the series more as like for the layman for everybody to understand.

And then through teaching, I'm able to help people grow and learn.

I had such great mentors.

And so if I can inspire and help people grow and learn something new, then how great is that?

So Nancy is really a born educator.

She connects with people on so many levels.

So she, in terms of her own paper cutting and her craft, she creates beautiful pieces that are made out of such intricate papers.

Many of them she selects from all over the world, and she likes to share that, the joy of paper cutting, with the community.

This is a time where we really need to be speaking together and understanding each other's cultures, understanding each other's histories, and realizing that we need to talk and have a discussion.

And I think Nancy's pieces really beckon that.

My work is so rewarding to me because I'm able to bring meaning and bring awareness to a larger audience.

It's so important on so many levels to bring awareness of different diverse groups and what they're all about.

You're bringing awareness.

You're bringing respect.

And acceptance is important when you have such a melting pot of people, as we do in America.

And maybe we could all live together in peace and be supportive of one another and respectful of where we come from.

If you crave more art goodness in your life, the podcast "Rodney Veal's Inspired By" is available now.

You can find it on Spotify, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Learn more and find show notes at thinktv.org or cetconnect.org.

Our next story takes us to Tampa, Florida to meet printmaker John Costin.

He shares his process of creating life-sized, hand-colored prints of large, elegant birds like the sandhill crane.

Take a look.

(joyful music) One question I get a lot from people when they see my work, they look at it and say, "Well, why do you do etchings?

Why not do a painting and do reproductions?

Why not do that?"

And I tell 'em, "They're not the same."

There's certain visual qualities that etchings have that these other processes don't have.

Most people do not know what etchings are and what is involved.

So I just say, "Well, he's kind of like a modern day Audubon."

What Audubon did with plates, with birds, John makes his birds life size.

They're all hand-painted.

They're extremely, extremely detailed because he goes out in the field, and he studies feather patterns, leg patterns.

Like, for example, the sandhill crane that he just did, he spent 40 hours drawing those legs.

So I would tell people, "If you want something very detailed and bright and beautiful that you need to go see my husband's work."

(laughs) My favorite thing about the work that John does is being able to just see him create it.

It is incredible to me to watch something start as an idea and just watch that idea come to life.

It is watching something magnificent unfold.

It's like this magical side of art that I get to bear witness to.

(intriguing music) We're in Ybor City.

This is sort of the outskirts of Ybor.

This building was constructed probably about 1904, 1905, and this building was a dry goods store.

In the late '70s, I was an electrician, and I had a great career there if I wanted to go that direction.

But I always had an interest in art and went to school at USF.

And while I was there, one of the classes I'd taken was printmaking.

I met John 24 years ago, and it still blows me away the things that this man can do that I've never seen anybody else do.

And when other printmakers see his work, they are overwhelmed that he's using, you know, large plates, making birds life size, multiple plates, and hand-coloring them as well.

So I'm his biggest fan, I believe.

(laughs) I like large-scale etchings.

I like the intensity of them, something you rarely see.

Most artists that do etchings, they're of this scale, small, small scale because they're so intense to work on, all the technical things that you have to do to do a plate that size.

To work large is much more challenging.

One of the most interesting things that I have learned looking here and being a watercolor artist and assistant is color theory.

The way that John knows colors so intricately blows me away, just on top of all of his other skills.

The colors that he uses down to the shades of black are so specific so that they really create a depth, a dimension to these birds that brings them to life that really makes them pop off of the paper.

I look at a lot of these pieces as a scientific experiment where you have the series of variables, and they all have to be completed just right to get the right result.

So I document everything.

That way somebody can come behind me that I've worked with and trained and can achieve the same results long as long as they adhere to my notes that I take.

(upbeat string music) With every bird that we work on, John and Janet share their knowledge and interesting things about them.

Most of them are life size, so I get to see these birds up close in his etchings, so my knowledge of birds has really grown.

My interest in birds started when I was young.

Our family lived in Blue Ridge, Georgia.

We had a farm there.

Because of that, I was exposed to a lot of different birds in the area, and that piqued my interest.

When we moved to Florida, I had the chance to see a lot of these larger species of birds.

That created an even stronger interest in birds, seeing these up front, close, and personal.

It's kind of weird to be emotional about birds because before I met John, you know, I did not know much about birds.

I feel that when you look at a piece with just one subject like that, you empathize with it more.

So you're not just a distant observer.

You're there in that bird's space.

It takes on a character, personality.

One of my goals is for the viewer to connect with that subject matter.

That's one of the reasons why I just use one bird.

I'm hoping that maybe indirectly from them connecting with that bird, they might have more of a care about the environment they live in.

(gentle upbeat music) It amazes me.

Some people will say, "Oh, well, is it just a print?"

'cause they see that it's signed and numbered.

No, (laughs) it's a handmade piece of art.

There's nothing done with a camera or computer.

It's all handmade.

It's fine art, and it's amazing.

(gentle upbeat music continues) In addition to my own work, I've been collecting antique prints for 30 years.

I have an interest in how other naturalists approach that.

You know, how did they... Why did they do it?

How did they do it?

And I feel that I wanna add to that with my work.

That's one of my goals, knowing all these things that had happened before me and then adding my own thumbprint on there, a contemporary view.

(enchanting music) If you miss an episode of "The Art Show," we've got you covered.

It's available to stream 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.

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

Until next time, I'm Rodney Veal.

Thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) [Announcer] Funding for "The Art Show" is made possible by the L&L Nippert Charitable Foundation, Montgomery County, the Virginia W. Kettering Foundation, the Sutphin Family Foundation, the Wohlgemuth Herschede Foundation.

Additional funding provided by and viewers like you.

This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

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

Thank you.