[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.

In this edition of "The Art Show," building the sound of music in a classroom, (upbeat music) art that glows under the blacklight, (upbeat music) handcrafting skis for the slopes, (upbeat music) and larger than life portraits.

(upbeat music) It's all ahead on this edition of "The Art Show."

(lively cheerful music) (lively cheerful 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.

Tucked deep inside the campus of Sinclair Community College in Dayton is a place where the sound of music comes alive.

It's home to an innovative lab that teaches students how to build their own custom electric guitars.

It's also home to the National STEM Guitar Project.

Since 2009, funding from the National Science Foundation has helped teachers across the country bring electric guitar building into their own high school and college classrooms.

Sawing, sanding, stringing, and even a little playing are all a part of the hands-on experience.

So let's get ready to rock and learn how it's done.

This story is the first in the collaboration with Ohio public television stations that takes us behind the scenes of the arts.

Take a look.

(orchestra tuning) (light music) (lively rock music) STEM Guitar is a program that started out as a National Science Foundation grant that allows us as a team to teach teachers how to use the electric guitar as a vehicle to teach STEM topics to high school and middle school and even elementary school students.

It allows us to take the knowledge that we teach the teachers during the week of this training, and they could take it back to their school, and use the kits that are produced here at Sinclair that are really high quality kits.

So there's science, technology, engineering, mathematics, there's physics.

There's so much stuff that can be kind of derived from this program.

We're not here to train luthiers.

We're trying to get a sophomore in Bozeman, Montana to understand that Mrs. Johnson's fifth grade geometry class has merit.

There's two components to the program.

There's an academic component that was funded under a National Science Foundation grant, and that was the development of the curriculum, and the curriculum can be scaled from middle school, high school, community colleges as well as up to universities just depending on what it is that the students are studying.

The STEM Guitar Lab was formulated in order to supply guitar kits to the classes that are running those.

Sinclair has a unique place in the National STEM Guitar field, because we are the production center for those kits.

We use the same curriculum to teach the class, but we have the additional responsibility of making the kits and shipping them out all across the country.

(light rock music) STEM Guitar has shipped guitar kits to 48 states.

I think the only two states that we haven't hit yet is North and South Dakota.

They've even shipped some of the guitar kits overseas.

We sell kits to schools all over the United States, including Pago Pago, American Samoa, Canada.

Our kits have gone down to Medellin, Colombia for outreach programs.

So without the Sinclair Guitar Lab, there would be no STEM Guitar.

(moody rock music) [James] Here at the wood shop part of our facility, it's just old-fashioned woodworking, to be honest.

We will get a truckload of raw lumber, and we take those pieces, and we'll cut them into what we call billets, and they're different lengths for different parts.

So if I'm building bodies, I will cut that board down into 22-inch-long pieces, and we'll stack 'em on the rack.

When that's complete, then we'll start to assemble a body, and we'll pull pieces off of the rack, and then we will plane them to thickness, and then we will joint those, which is we will trim an edge, so that it's at a 90-degree angle to the face that we just made, so that when we glue them together, they're glued together at a 90-degree angle, and you get a nice flat board.

Those pieces are glued together.

We'll come back the next day.

We take those pieces out.

We will plane them to thickness again.

We will then sand them to a specific thickness.

(moody rock music) And then we'll put those in a stack that will go over to the CNC lab across campus.

-(moody rock music) -(saw buzzing) From the builder's standpoint and in a workshop like this, the very first thing they'll do is they will pick their bodies and their necks and their fretboards, which is the playing surface on the front of the neck.

Shaping the guitar bodies would be second.

Attaching the fretboard to the neck, and shaping the neck, and getting the frets installed is another major milestone.

Getting the body all smoothed out, and getting a clear finish applied to it to seal it and protect it is another major task.

(moody rock music) Soldering and joining the electronics components is another major phase of the project.

Joining the body and the neck together and then populating the body with all the hardware would be next after that, and then finally, stringing the instrument up, and doing the final setup and intonation to actually get it to translate from looking like a guitar to playing and functioning as a guitar should.

I like to pick that up at the end when it's all done, and to kind of give it a test drive and see how it plays.

(electric guitar music) (record scratching) A lot of individuals think that, and that's a common misconception in the engineering field, in any field, that you must know how to use something, or play something, in this case, playing guitar.

A lot of individuals think that you must know how to do that in order to build it.

A common analogy that I like to use is the individuals that build the space shuttle, they don't know how to fly the space shuttle, but they can put the space shuttle together.

The STEM Guitar Project is highly accessible at all levels, and in terms of requisite academic knowledge, we'll take all comers.

So wherever you are, there are ways to make connections.

And so, I wouldn't say you have to have had Physics 101 in order to be able to be successful at this course.

And that's the great thing about STEM Guitar is it's scalable.

So whatever your audience is, you can take the materials that we provide and the process that we're showing, and then make connections that are relevant to the students by saying, "Here's an example in the guitar of X, Y, Z topic "that we need to cover in class this week."

By having a little fall away, it means that the strings won't.

If you're talking about math, science, social studies, we, as educators, have guidelines that we need to make sure students are, you know, hitting those guidelines at the end of the year, but students have a hard time seeing those goals and those aspirations that they need.

So it allowed me to build my other classes around this one model to make sure that students are understanding what they're learning.

When you see a student strum a guitar for the very first time that they built, like you couldn't wipe the smile off their face with a, you know, with a fire hydrant.

It's just so amazing.

I think we try to tell people that come through the program that play guitar is play with as many people as you can.

Get plugged into where you can.

If you move to a new town and you can play guitar, you can find friends really quick.

If you can fix a guitar, you can find friends double quick.

And we're about 15 to 17 years into the project.

The goal here is to continue to teach teachers, no matter whether we're grant-funded, or not.

We wanna allow people to keep this thing rolling and going down the line, because it's such a great thing.

It's not just in Ohio.

So if you're watching this from California, or Florida, there's trainings potentially near you that you can come and take a part of.

I like knowing that my sphere of influence is larger than the small school that I'm at.

I like seeing the pride on people's faces when they complete at this week here at Sinclair, as well as the students in my own classroom.

And in terms of the actual guitar process itself, I really like all the quieter aspects of it, like the fret work, and working on the necks, and everything to get the guitar to go from looking like an instrument to actually working like one.

(light guitar music) (people chattering) Cool.

Building a guitar is not, it's not an everyday thing.

It's not, I don't wanna say it's not simple, but if you pay attention, if you ask questions, then you'll be okay.

Every class at the end of the day, if you walk in with 10 fingers, you walk out with 10 fingers, it's a good day.

(steel curtain door clanking) (steel curtain door thudding) [Rodney] 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.

Now, let's travel to Cleveland's Waterloo Arts District for an experience like no other.

This annual show literally glows in the dark with works from 50 local and regional artists, all created with fluorescent paint donated by the Cleveland-based DayGlo Color Corporation.

Let's go under the blacklight to check it out.

-(people chattering) -(bright electronic music) It's fun.

(Amy laughing) DayGlo paint's fun.

It's just so magical.

(bright electronic music) blacklight is not something that you experience on a daily basis, and it really is just a little bit of magic, and we could all use that joy in our life.

-(bright electronic music) -(people chattering) DayGlo, it's everywhere if you look around, safety vests, Tide detergent bottles, clothing, sneakers, traffic cones, hard hats, all sorts of apparel, printed materials.

You don't realize it 'til you start looking around and you see all these bright colors.

That's mostly DayGlo.

(bright electronic music) I like that for the artists, it gives them an opportunity to experiment, and work with a paint that they might not be familiar with, a medium, you know, that might be a little outside their comfort zone.

It's a hard paint to use as an artist, because you don't have whites.

And so, you really have to adjust, and, you know, some artists, they sort of made a name for themselves with a particular kind of artwork, and this show gives them a way to sort of step outside of that box and play around a little bit, which is nice.

(bright electronic music) We are actually a Cleveland-based company that was started in Cleveland, Ohio.

We supply pigments and dyes for all manner of plastics, packaging, printing, cosmetics, all all sorts of industries.

(bright electronic music) DayGlo has really came to Cleveland as an art project.

The Switzer Brothers, who founded the company- [Tom] They were experimenting around with fluorescent materials, they started doing magic shows, and then eventually, it turned into printing materials.

(bright electronic music) Doing posters advertising for Warner Brothers, which was the way that you advertised movies at the time.

They moved to Cleveland in the late 1930s to print movie posters for a company called Continental Lithographs.

So that's why they ended up in Cleveland, Ohio.

That eventually turned into the Switzer Brothers, which was the fluorescent company up until 1969 in which they rebranded it as DayGlo Color Corporation.

(bright electronic music) I love that this art show speaks back to those roots of the art that the company started with.

(bright electronic music) Yeah, we've supported artists in the Cleveland community for many years.

It's a fun medium.

I think people can make creative things with it.

You can play around with the color themselves, but they're also blacklight fluorescent, so you can color 'em with UV lights.

(bright electronic music) There's been art created with DayGlo for, you know, since the company's probably been around.

(bright electronic music) There's a lot of different styles of artwork in the show.

And so, I think it shows the public how this paint can get used in a lot of different ways.

-(light music) -(people chattering) And then we also give people the opportunity to create themselves by painting on our community wall, and we'll be doing workshops.

(people chattering) I am originally from Erie, Pennsylvania, and that's currently where I live.

Being an Erie person, Cleveland is a city that I was very excited about.

And so, I recently had an exhibition here, and now I'm here as the artist-in-residence for the DayGlo, and it's been an interesting kind of point of history.

I'm still learning a lot about the DayGlo paint, and, you know, experimenting with it, but it's exciting.

-(light electronic music) -(people chattering) This specific artist-in-residence, I'll be here on the weekends, and inviting people to make with me, and I'm inviting them to make a bug.

-The best.

-Yeah, I think on the...

Thinking about my practice, I ask people to reflect on a time that they felt squashed like a bug, and when was something that gave them wings to keep going, and then they get to create, and the tables in here will be set up as a makerspace, and we'll be getting to use the DayGlo paints to paint, and they'll be able to decorate, and design their own bug.

(participants laughing) The bugs that are donated to me and the archive that I'm growing will be a part of a further exhibition, but they'll also be quilted and finished here, and then put up in the space.

(upbeat electronic music) The collection and archive that I have will become a swarm, or a mass that'll become this swarm of resilience.

(upbeat electronic music) Eric's work is very generous, and it is not only healing for himself, which sometimes you see in an artist's work, but also feels like it is extending that hand to other people, and asking them about their own need to reflect on their strengths and kind of what gets them through a difficult time.

[Participant] Final form.

I appreciate this show, because it has two parts.

It has the community arts aspect as well as the professional gallery.

So seeing a wide skillset can help educate more people on the material, which is why we're all here, which is nice.

-(upbeat electronic music) -(people chattering) I love to see the artwork.

It's very fun to get artwork coming into your gallery.

It's almost like Christmas morning.

You're like getting to see what people have made.

But then I just, I love the community aspect of it.

I just love seeing, you know, little kids, and just everybody in the space enjoying themselves.

-(light electronic music) -(people chattering) The artists really love that DayGlo is our company, you know, and feel very proud of that.

So you could, you know, use other fluorescent paint, but the artists, part of the reason they really want to be in the show is that DayGlo donates the paint to us.

They can use it even beyond what they've made for the show, so it allows them to kind of experiment with other work.

But I think people really love that DayGlo is our Cleveland company.

(Amy chuckling) (light electronic music) (people chattering) (lively cheerful music) 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 Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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

Are you ready to hit the slopes?

Since 2007, the artisans of Slant Skis in Lake Tahoe, California have handcrafted eco-friendly snow skis with a standout design.

Let's go behind the scenes with the owner of the company to see how it's done.

(light energetic music) I've always been very passionate about skiing, and I used to break a lot of skis, and I wasn't really satisfied with the quality of construction and craftsmanship of skis on the market, so it motivated me to make my own skis.

And building a pair of skis, and then going out, and skiing on 'em is one of the most satisfying things that I know how to do.

(energetic upbeat music) Slant Skis are made by skiers, so we get to ski on what we make every day, and it makes the whole process really fun.

(energetic upbeat music) There's lots of different types of technology that go into a ski.

First of all, you have the ski shape, different width skis.

Wider skis would be better for powder.

A more narrow ski would be better for all-mountain, or everyday skiing.

(energetic upbeat music) Most ski ideas start out on the mountain just when you're skiing, and when you're daydreaming about skiing, you come up with ideas for shapes and art, and then you take those ideas, and you bring 'em into the office here, and we design our shapes on computers, and then we take those computer design shapes, and we cut them out on our CNC machine, and then all those shapes come together in the form of a ski.

(spirited electronic music) First, we start with material prep.

We need to cut out the base material.

We need to cut out the different composites to length.

We need to transfer the art onto the top sheet, and then we bring all those ski layers together in the press and layer them all with epoxy, and once they're all together in the press, that's kind of where the curing and the hardening happens, and after they're in the press for an hour at about 180 degrees, they're finally cured, and then from then, we just need to cut them out, and shape the skis, and then they'll be ready to ski.

(spirited electronic music) We're super small.

We only make about 300 pairs a year, and it's not very often that you have a locally made ski company.

Most skis are mass produced overseas.

We make skis out of bamboo cores, different other composites, triaxial fiberglass, carbon fiber, and we utilize bamboo top sheets in a lot of our skis, too, as well as nylon top sheets.

Depends on the different ski models.

(spirited electronic music) Having a eco-friendly ski is super important, because we wanna continue our sport for as long as possible and to use renewable resources whenever possible is always our goal, and bamboo is one of the best materials as far as sustainability and just for the end quality of product.

It's really green for the earth to use bamboo cores rather than cores from, say, a hardwood tree that's 30 to 60 years old when you harvest it.

When you harvest a stalk of bamboo, it's just like cutting a blade of grass from your lawn.

You're not killing the entire organism.

You're just taking a part of the plant basically, and then it can grow back to its full height within a year.

(light rhythmic electronic music) People are in Tahoe to have fun in different ways, skiing, snowboarding, canoeing, kayaking, whatever your sport is, and, you know, that culture, that lifestyle, I try to represent that in my skis, and, you know, have exciting graphics of the local area, or exciting art from local artists, and I think that kind of comes through on the skis.

(light funky music) For our art, we have eight different artists, and each artist follows a ski design, and it kind of evolves with the artist year after year.

So each model is kind of evolving with the artist as time goes by, which is cool.

(light funky music) It's super important to have cool graphics on your skis, because that's your first impression of the ski.

So it grabs your eye like, "Hey, where are those?

"Something different, something beautiful, "something unique," and that's what we're going for.

And also, when you get on the skis, then that same like beautiful experience should happen while you're skiing also.

(light funky music) Our entire team is made of skiers, and riding up the trail lift is a really good way to advertise for us, 'cause people are like, "Hey, what's that on your feet?

"Something different, and I like the way they look," and then you can be like, "Hey, we make 'em just down the hill, "just around the corner.

"Come check out the factory, see our manufacturing process, "and you can see all the models we have here."

(gentle electronic music) With the collaborative process, we work with different artists that create the graphics on top of the skis, and then my artistic input is the actual shape of the ski.

I design the different shapes, and they're all quite different from each other, but the shapes of the skis is really what makes them glide through the snow and have different properties that are beneficial to the different skier and different snow types.

(gentle electronic music) I think form and function are almost the same thing when it comes to ski, because the different shape of your ski totally impacts how it skis on the mountain, and then your input to the ski also affects how the ski skis the mountain.

So it's kind of a balance between ski and skier, and you have to find that ski to match your skiing style, and to find a ski that matches your terrain style, too.

(gentle electronic music) In the end, it's about having fun.

I mean, skiing's fun.

This is all for fun, right?

I mean, I love building skis, I love skiing on skis, I love everything in between.

Like I'm super passionate about skiing, and I get to do what I love every day.

I love going to work.

(gentle electronic music) (gentle electronic music fades) [Rodney] 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.

(lively cheerful music) Our last story takes us to the Hampton Roads area of Virginia.

Brodrick Antoine is a Navy sailor with a passion for creating portraits, and recently, he got the call to work on a larger than life canvas.

Here's his story.

(lively rhythmic music) I'm Brodrick Antoine, and I created this mural.

(lively rhythmic music) (jaunty piano music) Tony, the owner of the shop, he called me up, and asked if I would be willing to create a mural for him, you know, portraits 'cause that's what I specialize in.

It was the owner's choice who to put on the wall.

Well, we kind of bouncing ideas, came with our final five after putting some thought into it.

(lively music) I did the portraits.

Another artist came in and filled in the background, so it was a collaborative piece between the both of us.

(lively music) It was my first experience with a mural this size.

It was something that I experimented with at first, but it came out pretty good.

(funky upbeat music) I work with graphite, mostly 18 by 24 size portraits, not this scale at all.

(funky upbeat music) I actually started with paint at first.

Pencil kind of grew on me, but I'm bouncing back between the two.

(funky upbeat music) It's a little different dealing with the media, 'cause a pencil, you know, it has a point.

This is a lot messier, a lot grittier.

(light rhythmic music) Someone contacted me on Instagram.

I think he saw this mural, and they wanted to do a mural on their basketball court.

He had a very strategic layout of how he wanted it placed, you know, where he wanted it, what he want, what else, the emblems that I put on the court, you know, and he had everything spelled out exactly how he wanted it.

It's magic after that.

I really look up to, well, not just athletes, just anyone that has that strong passion in what they do.

I would like to speak to inspire other people and other artists to get out there, and, you know, explore, and do what it is that you're passionate about.

(lively rhythmic music) And that wraps it up for this edition of "The Art Show."

Until next time, I'm Rodney Veal.

Thanks for watching.

(lively cheerful music) (lively cheerful music continues) (lively cheerful music continues) (lively cheerful music continues) (lively cheerful 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.

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

Thank you.