[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.

(peppy music) In this edition of "The Art Show:" Hair, the crown you wear, (vibrant music) the art of exhibit curation, and celebrating baseball through poster design.

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

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music concludes) 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.

A haircut is a very personal thing.

But when that haircut is tied to history, culture, and community, it takes on a whole different importance.

Let's take a look at the process of doing hair in the African American community, and meet an artist who explores the themes of identity and growth through hair.

In Black and African pop culture and media?

Because that's like a hundred years' worth of history that you're asking me.

(laughs) What does hair represent in Black culture and popular media?

I think what's really important to keep in mind is that hair has an incredibly rich and complicated presence in the Black experience in America.

It's rooted in a history of pain, dispossession, and necessary change.

I think this is why I'm saying that hair is incredibly complicated in Black communities.

It's not just something that grows on our head, right?

(laid back music) (pensive music) So, to some of my clients, I'm their therapist.

To some of my clients, I'm their bestie.

To some of my clients, I'm their herbalist, 'cause I'm a natural girlie.

(laughs) And to some of my clients, I'm everything, they love me!

It's deeper than just a brand.

My brand is known throughout the city or tri-state.

But the behavior that my brand brings, that's what influences people to come to me.

I started doing hair as a little girl.

I taught myself how to braid, how to do a lot of things at the young age of 9 years old.

I would be doing my doll baby's hair, and my mother would be like "Well where's my gel?

Where's my grease?"

And then she'll turn around and then Barbie's all done up.

I'm a visual learner, so I'm visual.

If I can see something I can remake it.

I feel like the artistry of doing hair comes from being able to look at something or see a style and recreating it and making it your own.

That's the true artistry.

Right now I feel like my niche is extensions.

I love the art of extensions.

I love creating the illusion of natural hair.

A lace is a thin piece of, some people will call it mesh, but the right terminology for it is Dornier lace and it has small little knots in there, and when you apply it to the hair, it gives the natural illusion of scalp.

I specialize in natural hair, which would be dreadlocks and braids.

People assume that if you have dreadlocks you're an unkempt person, a not so clean person, that you don't put in enough time with your hair, and that's totally incorrect.

Black hairdressers, Black barbers, they had this level of economic and social independence and freedom because they are depending not on white society, so right?

They're not dependent upon that.

They're dependent upon Black communities.

And so, what happens is that, barbershops and hair salons, they become the locus of political conversation, of people hanging out, catching up on good gossip, on trading ideas.

(upbeat music) ♪ Vocation ♪ Mostly everybody can get a haircut.

That's where the common bond between, I don't care if you're white, Black, Spanish, what all races.

Everybody's welcome.

How I got into cutting hair when I was like in second grade the teacher asked me something, "What would you like to do when you grow up?"

I said a basketball player before, that's my first answer.

My mom also said it was like, "You should always pick something more realistic."

and my first answer was a barber.

Taper is like the cousin of a fade, if you could say that.

The taper has everything a fade does, it's just like a fade is more all around the head.

So taper is more of a section of the head.

So it's like the temple, a temp taper, a high taper, a low taper.

To where say a fade, a high fade, low fade is like all around your head.

See, a lot of people will go with the lineup.

The lineup is probably the most artistic part that's like that gives you the pop.

But I think it's the fade because the fade is like everything that someone else can't do.

Because it's what your eye sees.

Somebody be like, "How can you fade like that?"

I can't teach it.

It's like, your eyes can't see what my eyes do.

You can learn from somebody without even knowing you learned from somebody.

Just the words, just the conversation y'all have each day.

You wouldn't even know that you've taken from 'em.

I like cutting kids too sometimes because I wouldn't even know that I'm feeding the youth just by just doing my everyday thing.

My favorite part about being a barber in general is running my own shop.

They say, "If you do something you love, you never work a day in your life."

I live by that because I don't see it as work but this is business to me but I'd like to still stay with the business mind aspect of it.

If I ever do get tired of cutting, I want to see about a school, so I can put the next generation on.

That's what I'd like to do.

Even if you don't have the linguistic skills, you can sit down and, point and look, and they'll be, like, "Yeah, I got you, I got you."

right?

I mean, I've had plenty of those moments in South Africa when I wanted something or needed something, and if I didn't have the word in Zulu or Xhosa, I could just point and say, or point to a picture, and I felt assured, even if that person had never done my hair, I knew I was a lot safer than walking into some salon that was perhaps owned by Europeans.

(bluesy music) In certain tribes, like the Maasai, the women shave their hair, the men grow their hair and style each other's hair.

And so that completely flips people's brains inside out in a society such as ours where we are just so conditioned.

One of the reasons why I created the HAIRitage series was to get Black people to love themselves again.

Because I feel like how can we expect other people to love and respect us if we don't really fully grasp that concept for ourselves in the way that we appreciate our hair the way it is?

I was inspired by my Aunt Dedra in Columbus, who spent much of her life with flowing long hair and now has accepted alopecia as a way of life.

And so I thought, "I wonder if she'll see herself the way I see herself, if she allows me to paint her."

So, I painted her, but before I painted her, I painted my mother.

The personal relationship with the subject matter definitely adds more to the life of the painting.

Well, especially if you are actually drawing them from life.

Because no matter how awesome a camera is, it's never gonna capture the way the human eye is.

(bluesy music continues) The idea that Black hair has not had some artistic space, it probably hasn't been at the Met or at the Gala, right?

Like, MoMA hasn't done an exhibit on Black hair.

(exciting music) It's not history, right?

It's everything, right?

It's about economic dependence, it's about survival, it's about, I mean, it is the good old American dream, in a certain extent, the idea that the harder that you work, we've got a lot of foundational myths as Americans, right?

The harder that you work, the more that you can achieve.

If you pull yourself up by your bootstraps, all these little myths.

"Oh, you pull yourself up by your bootstraps."

And meanwhile, while most of Black America is saying, "I don't have any bootstraps," right?

In this particular niche, with hair, hair is one of those places where, individuals can have that American dream, they can have that ability to be independent from, mainstream, i.e.

white economic forces.

They can be in service to the Black community, they can live a life of purpose, right?

And so, it's freedom, on so many different levels.

It is not something that should be seen as constricts individuals when it has a function, right?

It's not just something that grows out of our heads.

It has a function in our community, it has a function in the culture.

And a lot of people who do hair today, they are true culture bearers, whether, they know it or not, or whether you recognize it or not.

Passing those skills down generation by generation, no matter how long you have to wait at the hair salon, no matter how long you're sitting there at the barbershop, again, as I said earlier, it is a coming-of-age, and it's incredibly important.

It's an incredibly important cultural institution in Black America.

So what is hair?

Well, hair is the fibrous stuff that grows on the tops of our heads and a few other places.

Our hair is like that of other animals, except that the hair on the tops of our heads can grow and grow and grow.

(mellow music) 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 Columbus to meet two local artists who also curate shows at the Ohio State University's Urban Arts Space gallery.

Let's watch and learn how the approach to curating an exhibit can be as varied as the art and artists themselves.

This story is part of a series produced in collaboration with Ohio's public television stations that takes us behind the scenes of the arts.

(instruments tuning) (playful music) Art exhibitions are a process.

There are different processes for each one.

But there definitely is a lot of work.

So every show I've worked on, there has at least been work, at least nine months in advance to get it to where it's at.

When you're putting together big events, there's always gonna be a team.

And I think just in general we have to work collaboratively.

So even when you think about whatever happened before this exhibition, the artists, they work with different people to even get to the point that they are in.

The install team, or even installing the exhibition, there are nights, and you might be here until 2 o'clock in the morning.

But it's all for the enjoyment of the audience.

(playful music) I am traditionally a poet.

And so a lot of me transitioning into this curatorial and exhibition work has been about trying to figure out how I will engage people through physical installations of my work.

And I actually really struggled trying to think visually first.

So when I was prepping for the exhibition I have coming up "No One Teaches Us How to Be Daughters", I wrote into it.

So I wrote all of the different pieces.

I wrote them as poems.

And I was like, okay, how does this show up physically?

And some of them show up physically without any language.

But how does this show up physically in the space?

How would somebody engage with this?

How does this make somebody reflect, pause, insert themselves into a story?

How does this make them concerned with the stories of their own family or their own ideas of inheritance?

(peppy music) When approaching an exhibition and curating, I like to really think about how we can make the exhibition as immersive as possible to really articulate what the topic is, especially in my case.

A lot of the things that I deal with is Blackness, and Blackness is such a complex topic.

And unless you're a part of that community in particular, you might not understand.

(peppy music continues) I think oftentimes, when it comes to exhibitions, we just think about sight and hearing.

But what happens when we bring together all the five senses and really make you feel like you're a part of the exhibition to help increase understanding.

(peppy music continues) "No One Teaches Us How to Be Daughters" starts with a story of a family member of mine who had gone missing.

And then I was really stuck on this idea of what it means to be missing.

And what that means as a Black person, what that means as a Black woman.

What are all of the different ways that we go missing within ourselves?

So again, just this idea, one single idea that is freaking itself into a million different ways.

And then it hits the visual piece after I've written into it.

"Tapestry: Narrating a New Thread" was the first exhibition we had at Urban Arts Space that we were able to have a hand in.

And I was able to place where everybody went really considering flow, regardless if all the pieces are in the same space.

It's not gonna make sense.

There should be a story.

It can be a story.

So how do we think of curation as storytelling?

And then going into "Irrepressible Soul," which was a very ambitious project, 27 artists.

It was like, I have to tell this story and I have to immerse everybody in this story.

And from there it's just navigating working with different artists, working with different organizations, having a vision, and then this past year, working with other people to help their vision show.

(upbeat music) I think so much about the folks who came before me.

For me that's mostly specifically the women.

But I think so much about lineage and the value of the stories of people who have come before me and so one of the things that I hope for is that people might have a process of reflecting on their own and maybe having their own kind of investment in the preservation of stories of people they might still have access to in those embodied archives.

Especially because I think history and retelling is so fickle and so there are some things that are only accessible for you, and if they are not archived and they are not preserved, they will be lost.

Some things are preserved through oral storytelling.

But that feels especially important to me as a Black person is to be in charge of actual documenting and archival of my matrilineage.

So I hope that regardless of how folks identify that they might have a more vested interest in preserving stories of folks around them.

(pensive music) You can't approach each show the same.

Every show is different.

Every vision is different.

There's a different story in each show.

So really sitting back and understanding what that exhibition statement is, what the purpose is, the vision, and then going from there.

I think that has been the biggest lesson.

(pensive music continues) The most rewarding thing about doing this work is to really see see the impact it can have on the artists in the show, on the community that's viewing the show, or in some cases, like with Ajanae or Arris, helping their vision come to light.

I really enjoy helping, I enjoy putting together shows, which for me are reflective of a certain experience in the culture.

I think the reactions I enjoy the most are children's.

Because I remember being a kid and going to art shows, and I'm like, "Wow!"

But I could only imagine coming into an immersive space when I was a child.

So seeing the children's reactions, that's my favorite part about it.

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.

Our last story combines art with one of America's favorite pastimes: baseball.

The minor league Lake County Captains recently teamed up with graduates of the Cleveland Institute of Art.

The result is a series of unique, collectible posters that highlight each matchup of the season.

The designs have been a big hit with fans, leading to merchandise like stickers and T-shirts, along with exposure and career opportunities for the artists themselves.

Take a look.

(bright music) I think one of the things that's so great about minor league baseball is you get to really experience the local culture in ways that you ordinarily wouldn't get to do and bring them all together in a baseball park.

-(bright music continues) -(crowd applauds) I think sports is a great form of storytelling.

There's always an arc with every game I think.

That lends itself to art and illustration really well.

(bright music continues) I think bringing art and sports together is very important.

People don't see how much art is interconnected, the logos in our mascots, in our merchandise, in our stadium, it's all over.

(bright music continues) So we're the High-A affiliate of the Guardians.

They handle all the players and everything that goes on the field, and we handle everything that happens off the field.

Lake County was a really, really great opportunity.

The Guardians are a tremendous organization and we've been so proud to be associated with them.

In the last two years we've really been working with a lot of local artists and trying to build up a whole different element to Captains games that maybe weren't present before.

We came in last year and started working with all of the local artists.

A lot of the younger artists as well who are still in art school.

We have been really, really excited about the artists and finding a lot of really great gems and brilliant artists in this area.

When I heard from the Lake County Captains that they were looking for local artists, I actually heard from a few other friends at CIA that also got the email.

It felt kind of random to me.

I remember I was sitting in school and I got an email.

At first I was like, is this a scam?

I don't know what it is.

We looked more into the Lake County Captains because we were like, oh, isn't this the local baseball, like the minor league team?

-(bat cracks) -(crowd cheers) (upbeat music) I talked to a friend who had done the art program before.

And we're really excited that they actually reached out to us, seniors in college for a professional gig.

I decided to do it.

I was really excited about it.

It was my first opportunity of working with somebody to create something.

It felt really validating that they chose us to do merchandise to be sold in their stores.

This was my first time doing any sort of freelance work and it was really great to figure out how that works and especially not being somebody who's too into sports, doing more research with that and figuring out how to make something that is very much me, but also represents something else too.

[Emily] I graduated CIA in 2023.

I studied illustration.

I just graduated from CIA.

I was an illustration student.

I'm really interested in product and packaging design.

I didn't watch a lot of baseball, but I did play a lot of softball since I was in third grade, I think.

I've never been a sports person.

I went to a spring training game.

I went there thinking, oh, I'm going to be bored this whole time.

It's not gonna be fun.

I'm just gonna go to be with family or whatever.

And then I ended up having like a really good time.

It was great.

Posters and artwork makes a game, an event, and we want every day in Lake County Captains to be an event.

We give the artists all the same brief.

We tell them we want you to express yourself.

We want you to tell us what's great.

We want you to develop these pieces.

They just wanted me to choose one of the other teams.

Celebrating the game.

Celebrating the vibe of what a game is.

It was very open ended.

I like the Sky Carps from Wisconsin because their mascot was a goose, but their name isn't directly geese.

I think it was really creative, so I wanted to include them in the poster as well with the Captain as a battle poster.

So designing the Sky Carp, I wanted to include its wings so it looked like it was in action, ready to go.

(laughs) Since I know how to play softball, I could make my own reference poses for the Captain with his batting.

He kinda looks like he's gonna hit the goose, but he's ready to battle back.

You know?

I looked at a lot of pictures of mascots, and they just, made me really happy.

I did a lot of doodles in my sketchbook of them.

I think I was just looking through and seeing which team seemed to have the most fun name honestly.

And loons are really cool to me.

I think they're really interesting with their red eyes.

I thought that'd be cool to capture.

So I came up with the concept of the mascot for the Lake County Captains sitting next to the loon from the Great Lake Loons.

And the loon is looking kinda sad because there's a home run hitting by from the Captains.

And the mascot from the Captains is like, really excited about it.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) I'm impressed that these are students.

The one that makes me giggle the most is the one that has the Captain who looks like he's in an old time bathing suit.

(bright music) I love the waves and the monster that it's getting split here.

Love that one.

(bright music continues) We want to use this to showcase these great artists.

And if we can give them a leg up, if this can be an opportunity where someone else sees their work and gives them a great opportunity, that's our goal.

I've always been taught that you need to send out a bunch of cold emails and really market yourself to be good as an artist.

And so to have somebody reach out to me and see my work and want to work with me for something was really important.

I was really excited to add it to my portfolio because it gave me a chance to be like, I can do some vector art, I can do some poster designs, I can make T-shirts.

So it gave me a chance to have not only different mediums but also different applied arts.

It was also my first freelance opportunity, so that meant a lot to me to really start getting out there and doing work for clients.

I've had some employers and clients ask about this project since it was actually used in stores for merchandise that people purchased.

I think it was one of the things that made American Greetings look at me for my internship there.

It was definitely a great opportunity.

It was a really fun project.

(bright music continues) (game announcer speaking in the background) Knowing that this is a vehicle that students can use to get exposed, their craft elsewhere is quite an opportunity.

I think that that's a great thing that they've partnered up like that.

I hope it continues.

We want to build art into this stadium, into our program, into our team.

We have plans to create murals throughout the stadium.

So we are here as a resource for artists to be able to expand and we hope that they come to us and we'll continue to outreach to them and we'll build this into something very special.

(bright music continues) (upbeat 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.

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) (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.

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

Thank you.