- [Narrator] Production of Applause on Idea Stream Public Media is made possible by funding by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.

(upbeat jazzy music) - [Kabir] Coming up, honoring an African American icon in Akron as we share the story of Sojourner Truth's historic speech and the statue it inspired.

Plus learn about the art of plein air painting from a Columbus artist and his dedicated students and get ready to groove to the debut single from Benny Lava and the Guavas.

It's time for another round of Applause everyone.

I'm Idea Stream Public Media's Kabir Bhatia.

(upbeat music) A major project years in the making pays tribute to the legacy of Sojourner Truth in Akron.

Meet the people behind the creation of a statue in her honor.

Idea Stream's Carrie Wise has the story.

(slow music) - [Wise] In 1851, Sojourner Truth spoke in Akron at a women's rights convention held at the Universalist Stone Church on High Street.

There she delivered a famous speech, challenging preconceived ideas about gender and race.

- She was one of the greatest orators who was able somehow to articulate, you know, when it came to the intersection of relationships of race, class, gender, why we should have equity, why women should have a right to the ballot box.

And so the legacy for Sojourner continues today.

There are many instances where we still have challenges when it comes to the right to vote.

And so that is why we honor her in the work that we are doing today.

- [Wise] Akron's own Woodrow Nash designed the Truth statue, which is a departure from his typical work, internationally collected and notably featured in a Beyonce music video.

- My art style is African nouveau.

I wanted to draw from my experiences, and being a black artist in America, my heritage and everything came from the continent, from Africa.

But the influence, concepts of beauty and everything like that was European.

I wanted to draw from those two influences.

Work that I do is more stylized.

The Sojourner piece is more realistic.

- [Wise] Working on the design with the help of Jeff Willis, Nash drew inspiration from old music and speeches.

(slow vocal music) - I listen to music from the Library of Congress.

Work songs.

These men were on chain gangs and old sermons from uneducated but inspired preachers that put me in a position where I could experience timelessness.

And it almost took me back to where she might have been and what she was doing.

- I have as much muscle as any man.

- [Wise] In making the case for equality, Truth, a former slave, told a crowd in Akron she could work as much or more than a man.

- I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed and can any man do more than that?

- She bragged about how she could outwork a man and out eat him and you know, all these things.

And I tried to put all that in the work.

- She had a way of presenting that was humorous and that's a side that people don't think about.

And so she really was engaging to her crowd.

So she used materials that were familiar to them, like Bible quotes and related it then to humankind about eating and about raising children and about the role of women in the community.

- [Wise] Her Akron speech has long been referred to as, "Ain't I A Woman?"

But historians have found those likely weren't her actual words.

- The words that you know, "Ain't I A Woman?"

in that speech, which has a southern dialect, was actually penned by Frances Dana Gage.

And Gage was the head of the second Ohio Women's Rights Convention here in Akron.

So she was actually there.

So in reading that, people believed that that is exactly what Sojourner Truth said.

- [Wise] But Gage's version of the speech was written 12 years after it was given.

Further study provides more context.

- Sojourner Truth, born Isabella Baumfree, was a native Dutch speaker.

So English was not her native language and she was not southern.

So you have to then look at the time period.

And so it's during the Civil War and Gage is actually appealing to the time period and trying to gather interest and sympathy, putting her in the place of a southern slave woman when in actuality she was born into slavery in New York.

- [Wise] A version of this speech published weeks after the conference in the Anti-Slavery Bugle, carries a similar message, but without the southern dialect.

Historians believe Truth worked on this version with the writers.

- The women are coming up, blessed be God.

- [Wise] Akron's tribute to Truth can help people make connections with this history more than 150 years later.

- It's complicated but it's simple.

Place matters.

You matter.

You have what you need to succeed where you are and you can go and help others.

- [Wise] This history has inspired the people working on the statue as well.

- It's going to become my legacy.

Very happy that I had this opportunity to create something that would live long after I'm gone.

- [Wise] Nash's design of the statue was cast in bronze here in northeast Ohio at Studio Foundry in Cleveland.

- In this particular case, I knew about Sojourner Truth.

I know Woodrow from other pieces that we've done with him.

I love the project and the justice of it all and so I'm happy to be part of it.

- [Wise] Foundry workers created molds from Nash's design and then they buried them in a six foot deep pit.

The team then poured bronze heated to nearly 2000 degrees into the molds to form the statue.

- We're doing it the old school style, so it's a combination of plaster and sand.

Actually we use a third ground up moles.

It's essentially contaminating our mix and what that does is make it more porous and more breathable, which is what we want.

And we try to make this as weak as possible.

So that it'll pour as well as it can.

Having said that, it's weak enough that if we try to do it out of the ground, there's not enough strength.

So we ram it up in stand as a buttress against the pressures of the molten bronze.

(machinery squealing) - [Wise] After everything cooled, workers opened up the molds with axes and sledge hammers before moving onto the finishing work.

The completed statue will reside in a park plaza steps from where Truth once stood in 1851, inviting people to reflect upon her legacy for years to come.

- I wanted to spark empowerment.

I wanted to spark a sense of I may not be like others.

Sojourner Truth wasn't.

She was Dutch speaking out of New York.

I wanted to spark that it's okay to be different and unique.

I wanted to spark that you can always speak up like Truth.

Always live in your truth.

You are good enough.

- [Kabir] The completed Sojourner Truth statue was slated to be unveiled in Akron this spring.

(upbeat music) Dayton artist Caitlin Cartwright grew up in the Miami Valley, but her award-winning art is inspired by her international travels.

Those journeys have led her back home to use her art as a catalyst for social change.

(relaxing music) - Geography is very important to me.

I tend to move around a lot.

I've lived in a lot of different places.

I love to just kind of be inspired by what's around me.

I call it like my visual vocabulary.

Part of being in different places is connecting with different people who may or may not live a similar life to you or have similar problems, issues.

So I love to be able to find a way where I kind of come into that story too and where I can connect to that and then kind of build out from there and create this visual narrative.

I think that when people have that experience, when you can see yourself in somebody else's story, that's kind of when, you know, empathy is born and when connection can be made.

The art I make, it tends to be kind of large format, narrative, colorful, it's painting, collage, drawing, kind of a combination.

People are often struck by the boldness, color.

I use a lot of silhouettes, which can be a little striking.

I think too another thing I've heard back from people is they just wanna know more like what's going on.

Like something is happening, there's a narrative and they're ready to kind of like dig deeper and look deeper into what's going on in the picture.

(relaxing music) I'll often start with like kind of an image in my head or a moment or an emotion and I like to sketch it out first in my sketchbooks.

From there kind of build it out.

I work on either paper or board for the most part.

I'll start laying down a color.

I work with latex house paint a lot, so I kind of tend to lay the color down and then go back in a little bit of drawing, paint along the way.

I often add collage elements too.

So then I'll bring in, you know, different papers, cut stuff out, try it out.

Before I glue anything down, it's probably like living on there for like a week or two, just seeing and like moving like an inch.

So it's just kind of an additive process.

I'm vague on like taking time away, coming back.

I always like photographic 'cause I feel like even just with my phone you can kind of look and see, like just you see in a different way.

I always ask myself, is there anything else that can be put in here or is there anything else that doesn't need to be here that I should take out to fully tell the story concisely?

Growing up my parents were always like really big on like every weekend, like getting in the van and driving somewhere, you know.

(laughs) They were great about, you know, kind of pushing it, like traveling and everything.

So it's always been important to me.

When I graduated from my undergrad, I just kind of had this feeling like I needed to do something else.

On a whim almost, I did a couple Google searches and I ended up in Madagascar for a year working at a kind of an orphanage.

And one of the things that they were big on was using traditional arts to help the young moms get back on their feet and become small business owners.

I just loved this kind of like new community work thing that opened up for me and I loved that feeling of discomfort, having to basically kind of start from scratch, build a community and form those bonds cross-culturally, just going into a different culture and community and living in that way.

And it was just, it was amazing.

I joined the Peace Corps after that.

And so I was in Namibia for a few years working at a school there.

I was like in an extremely rural area.

The success rate of graduating from high school was pretty low at my school.

It was something like 60% and it's a difficult place to be a girl.

We started a girls' club and it started out as a safe space to talk and everything and it grew and we expanded from the school.

These kids, it was so great.

They became like small business owners.

We got the grant from the US Embassy, we were able to buy a camera so they would take people's pictures and then people would pay and have that photo and then there's a traditional art of basket making and it's passed down intergenerationally.

So girls were able to connect to their moms and grandmas and learn how to do it.

And then those were sold within the country but also back in the states.

Was able to kind of help pay for school fees and books, which was cool.

And now I'm still in contact with the girls.

I'm blown away by what they do.

For example, this one girl, she's currently in Cuba studying to be a doctor.

There's a couple I think getting their nursing degrees.

There's one getting her degree to become a math teacher.

When I talk to them, it's super focused on like, I wanna go back and make a change in my community.

So it's wonderful.

I love it.

After Namibia, I got a degree in sustainable international development.

It just became clear to me, art can be used as a tool of like community building, change, wellness, and the benefits that it has and how it can serve as a tool to better communities basically.

I was in India for several months documenting artisans and the work that they do as intangible heritage, that's something that, it's not a monument but it can get lost.

Everything is like handmade, impeccable, brilliant.

So documenting that process was exciting 'cause the initiative that I was working with was trying to get the city, which is Umdabad, to be a world UNESCO heritage site.

And just recently it got that status, so that was cool.

I work at Preble County Art Association and I manage education over there.

It's a community arts nonprofit and more of a rural farming community.

What we're trying to do is bring creative experiences to people and connect people with creativity.

One of the things that's really exciting to me is seeing the spectrum of people that connect with and what they bring to the artistic experience and what they can get from it.

I'm of the opinion that art is crucial.

Not everyone is an artist, but I think everyone can really benefit from having art in their lives.

I'm a big advocate of everyone trying it out.

You think you're not an artist, like, have that creative moment and use a different part of your brain and be proud.

Like, oh look, I made this.

And beyond that, art is an incredibly important tool that not only reflects what's happening in society, but can spur change too.

Right now I'm just really excited to be making work and making work consistently, you know, 'cause that hasn't always been the case.

(upbeat music) I'm in the space where my life is allowing me to work consistently, which is wonderful and I love it.

And Dayton has been a really embracing space, you know, to do that, which is great.

I've been thinking a lot recently about the girls from the girls' club.

I wanna find like a project that connects back with them.

Doing something with that is kind of like my next project that I'm excited to jump into.

(peaceful music) (upbeat music) - [Narrator] Many may think of stained glass as a lost art, but it's alive and well in Trumble County.

On the next Applause, meet an artist who's sharing her love of the craft with the community.

Plus explore a kaleidoscope of creativity from this collage artist in Dayton.

And former Clevelander Elisa Weilerstein returns to her old stomping grounds at Severance.

All that and more on the next round of Applause.

(fast cello music) You can watch past episodes of Applause with the PBS app.

(upbeat music) If the air is crisp and the skies are clear in Columbus, chances are good you might see plein air artist Joe Lombardo outside with paintbrush, paints, and easel in tow.

Let's head outdoors to watch this passionate painter and some of his students capture their surroundings on canvas.

(upbeat piano music) - Plein Air is French for open air, but really it just means to paint on site outdoors.

So we go to the scenery that we wanna paint and we set up there.

I was a student at Columbus College of Art and Design, did a whole bunch of landscape paintings and the instructors there said, well, if you wanna be a landscape painter, you need to get outside and really do it.

And I never really had thought about that, but I always enjoyed hiking and outdoors.

I'm a bird watcher.

And so I heard him saying, you know, I could combine my two favorite things, painting and being outdoors.

And so I tried it and kind of no turning back from there.

(upbeat piano music) (paintbrush scratching) I love painting here at Schiller Park.

We've got a great autumn day.

It's a little chilly, but that's good.

And the beautiful fall colors.

But rather than painting the changing leaves, I like the bricks.

So I've got brick alley, brick buildings.

I love the orange and reds that the brick offers.

I like a scene that's very kind of almost chaotic.

A lot of information.

I call it all city clutter.

Like eh, just a bunch of city clutter.

And I like to kind of get lost in that and have to paint my way out of it.

(upbeat music) The challenge in that chaos forces me to think more abstractly in the painting.

'Cause there's no way I can paint all of that stuff in the two to three hours that I'm making the painting on site.

And so it's like a puzzle or a problem to solve.

Like how do you convey all of this clutter simply or abstractly on a flat canvas with gooey paint.

As far as process like where I get started, first, I just sort of pick a location to journey to for that day.

So I'll go say, all right, today I want something urban.

You kind of get there with a general idea of what you might want, and then you go scout around.

Sometimes I'll walk around for 30 minutes searching for my scene.

There are a lot of different things to make a painting about, but it's sort of like I'm searching for what today's painting will be about.

That could be color, or lighting, value, lights and darks.

Just an interesting subject is something that I didn't expect to see that day that I think, oh, there's my painting.

(upbeat jazzy music) Then I select a palette.

And so I have a set of colors that I always carry with me, but I'll mix and match 'em and create what's called a limited palette where I use a certain set of those colors.

So that's influenced by the atmosphere and the color of the scene.

I also will do a thumbnail sketch, which is, you know, a small sketch like the size of your thumbnail and kind of plot it out.

This is the chance to get through any pitfalls.

So if you're gonna put something right in the middle, you wanna learn that in the little studies so that you don't trip over that idea later when you have all your paint on the surface, which is much less forgiving.

And I'd say to kind of step back a little bit in the process, I say we paint from carefree to careful.

(upbeat jazzy music) I think a bit like if you're doodling and you scribble and then you're looking at that scribble and you add an ear and an eye and you got a bunny, that's how I paint.

I start off, I just make a wild scribble of color and paint and then I step back and I say a window here and a horizon there.

Landscape.

(birds chirping) I have fun painting pine tree limbs.

I know that.

So I, when you're excited about something, it always makes it easier.

I don't know why that is.

So keep it in mind.

That goes to when I talk with you guys about painting what you wanna paint, not what you think you can paint.

Just go for it.

Because if you're excited, you're gonna do better.

(relaxing music) I teach a lot and I've taught a lot over the years, and I think many people understand this, that teaching is the highest level of learning.

And so when I have to explain things that I'm doing to my students, it confirms to me those concepts.

And sometimes I have to figure out even what it is.

It is like either something that I'm seeing in work, others' work, or my students work, my own work.

And I have to try to uncover or reveal to all of us what that is.

And that's kind of what teaching brings to my art.

Nah, that's too small.

That's like a delicate splatter.

Need a bigger splatter.

- [Student] Yeah.

- Okay, now what to do about these?

Let's give 'em the finger, see what they become.

(relaxing music) For a while I was making paintings that were very light, known as high key paintings.

And I just, I kind of spent that.

And so I thought, all right, what do I do next?

And so I go and I started making paintings that were low key, very dark, and in these explorations, I call 'em my New Eyes or New Joe.

So my students that have worked with me for a long time, we now say, "Is this new, new, new, new, new, new, new new Joe or old Joe?"

And there's all these comparisons of all these different steps in our growth.

And so I'm always pushing for that next turn in my path and bring my students along with me.

And I should say, I call 'em students, but really they're artists that paint with me.

(relaxing music) Yeah, but, and so you guys know I steal from all of you.

(students laughing) Or I learn from you is the right way to say that, but.

(relaxing music) Plein air is, it's a good way to work.

I think it is maybe the hardest way to paint because you have so many distractions.

But those distractions, you can spin that and say, those are experiences that are happening to me that wouldn't happen in the studio.

So you gotta get outta the studio and make those memories.

(upbeat jazzy music) - [Kabir] Looks like it's that time again for our Applause program to come to an end, but not before we get you into a groove with some Akron Pop and Soul.

I'm Idea Stream Public media's Kabir Bathia sending you on your way with the debut single from the fun loving Benny Lava and the Guavas.

Here they are with the song "Get Along."

♪ I don't care for flashy clothes or jewelry ♪ ♪ You can have your fancy cars and scenery ♪ ♪ Because I ain't got nothing without you and me ♪ ♪ Girl you got that something that just sets me free ♪ ♪ And I wanna get along with you ♪ ♪ Because that's what we're supposed to do, baby ♪ ♪ And I want you to get along with me ♪ ♪ Because that's the way it's supposed to be, baby ♪ ♪ I don't care for diamond rings and ocean pearls ♪ ♪ You can have those things and you can rule this world ♪ ♪ 'Cause I ain't got nothing without you my girl ♪ ♪ Girl you got that thing you know wrecks my world ♪ ♪ And I wanna get along with you ♪ ♪ 'Cause that's what we're supposed to do, baby ♪ ♪ And I want you to get along with me ♪ ♪ Because that's the way it's supposed to be, baby ♪ (upbeat funky music) - [Singer] Oh, yeah, that's the way it's supposed to be, baby.

That's the way love's supposed to be.

(upbeat funky music) ♪ I don't care for flashy clothes or jewelry ♪ ♪ You can have your fancy cars and scenery ♪ ♪ 'Cause I ain't got nothing without you and me ♪ ♪ Girl you got that something that sets me free ♪ ♪ And I wanna get along with you ♪ ♪ 'Cause that's what we're supposed to do, baby ♪ ♪ And I want you to get along with me ♪ ♪ Because that's the way it's supposed to be, baby ♪ (upbeat funky music) (logo whizzing) - [Narrator] Production of Applause on Idea Stream Public Media is made possible by funding by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.