Production of applause and ideastream.

Public media is made possible by funding by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.

Coming up.

We're going to be fashionably late for a date at Kent State.

Meet a tattoo artist from Columbus with a passion for toadstools and go to a Cleveland Heights music venue that once was a movie theater.

Hello, and welcome to a new edition of applause, my friends Im Ideastream Public Media's Kabir Bhatia.

You may have heard about Kent State University School of Fashion.

It was voted one of the best in the country by Vogue magazine.

But what you may not know is there's a museum right next door that houses a massive collection of clothing, textiles and decorative arts going back centuries.

We.

Clothing.

Tell stories, and fashion is also one of the most accessible art forms because we all engage in it.

And.

And it tells stories about who we are and where we live.

And the collection.

The museum collection does exactly the same thing.

This museum is a world class museum on a public university campus, and I love both of those aspects very deeply.

But it's not very well known either on this campus or within the broader arts and culture community in Northeast Ohio.

And really, my goal is to take the hidden out of hidden Gem.

The galleries and the objects and the garments that visitors see is only a fraction of our collection.

Our collection is made up of 30,000 objects, of which I myself have only so far seen a fraction.

Our oldest objects are textiles from the Byzantine period, and then we have garments kind of all throughout every century, all the way through present day.

And so it's a really fun journey of discovery.

The fashion timeline is actually our permanent exhibition here at the KC Museum.

These are historic garments from the 18th century.

And then it goes basically decade by decade up to the present day.

So you can see how fashions changed, but also with the information on the walls, you contextualize what was going on politically, socially, culturally, artistically, technologically at the same time.

So you can see how changes that were going on in society really shaped the way people dressed.

No matter how many times I say it, I always get someone saying, but where did you get all this from?

And I always say, our basement is not exactly true, but from our collection I say we kind of.

We hold our collection both in-house.

We also have offsite storage for the museum on campus.

Here we are in first floor storage.

The museum has four floors of storage from the basement on up to third floor.

And here is where we store all of our design everywhere.

And it's organized alphabetically.

And we have about 1600 garments in this space.

I have locations for everything.

I know what's in every cabinet and everything's tagged.

This is how we keep track of everything and has its inventory number.

And then that associates it back to the object record.

So I'm able to put my hands on or off my gloved hands on anything at a moment's notice.

People are always asking me what my favorite pieces.

And so it's by a designer called militiaman, who is actually an Italian designer from the 1960s.

It's kind of a minimalist and understated, but when the closer you look at it, the more you realize how much it has going on.

So it has these beautiful diagonal lines on it and they're stitched in to the piece.

And so it goes front and back.

You can see it's sort of a double faced wall.

There's different ways that I appreciate pieces.

There's some pieces that I think have a lot of historical significance or really speaks to their era, but this one is the one that I would imagine I could imagine wearing, which I'm absolutely not allowed to do.

But if I could, you know, if something disappears, joy, I'd this one.

Oh, great pieces like this too.

We have Queen Victoria's underwear.

I'm sure she's rolling in her grave knowing that we've shown it.

And they're her bloomers.

Some chemise and some lovely silk stockings.

And they all have the royal crest on it.

On it.

So, you know, it's Queen Victoria's.

This is really our sort of showstopper piece that we have at the museum.

I'm so the pink dress is a 1949 Dior dress that was called Venus.

So he gave some of the pieces in his collections names, and to this one was known as Venus.

And this particular dress belonged to Marlena Dietrich.

This is one of my favorite dwarf pieces.

It's a dress, but it's.

It is two pieces, a bodice and the skirt.

So this gets tucked in here, but it is just a beautiful straight skirt with this incredible pleating.

There just so many details.

It's a very subtle piece, but it has a lot of impact.

It's one I show students and they, as I like to say, they bring the energy and I'm able to impart to them, you know, the knowledge of the job.

I've been lucky that I've had so many students that have wanted to go on to this type of work, and so I feel like I'm able to prepare them for that by giving them a hands on working experience of what it is to work in a collection and what we're thinking about.

I was like, oh my God, like, they just have these beautiful doors right upon entry.

And then you come in, there's a grand staircase.

You could go up either side.

And I fell in love with what this museum has to offer.

I'm going to come back every day, not every day.

Like every week.

Like you'll come out of a class and there's a project and you're like, I don't even know where to start with it.

And then you could just be like, oh, let's take a walk through the museum before I go home and find some inspiration.

So it's nice to have that tool and just to think that that is just a walk away from my classroom.

It's really special.

Really is.

One thing I always say is that fashion is not just a designer dress, and great fashion doesn't only exist on the runways in Paris.

In New York, that great fashion is everywhere and it lives in our ordinary lives.

And I really hope that the museum, over time, can capture that vision through its exhibition, through its programs, so that our visitors and our students can see themselves in the museum.

The latest exhibition at the Kent State University Museum spotlights the early fashion illustrations of artist Leroy Neiman, on view through June.

I'm nice and cozy here inside the Idea center, but a few weeks ago, I went outside and noticed there's a historic plaque out front.

So we decided to give you a bit of history about our building and a new segment I like to call what it was.

This building here.

What it was, was a bunch of things.

It's been a furniture emporium.

It was offices for Stouffer's.

The Cleveland Public Library was here at one point.

And that's actually appropriate because this building was designed by Walker and Weekes.

They also designed the main branch library.

It's just a few blocks away.

But for me, the most exciting tenant was radio.

That's where Alan Freed mentioned the immortal words rock and roll.

And because of that, that's why we have the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame built right here in Cleveland.

So after Alan Freed left town, he was replaced by a young guy who would eventually become the great Casey Kasem.

And then it took 60 more years before they got a replacement.

The great me.

That's because this building is our home.

The Idea Center, home of Idea Stream Public Media.

Is there a building in your town with an interesting history?

Maybe a bank that used to be a theater or a post office?

That was a concert club.

Tell us what it was by emailing Arts at Ideo stream.org.

Speaking of emails, have we got an email for you?

Our weekly to do list.

It's free ideas on what to do in Northeast Ohio every single week Arts, culture, arts and culture.

You get it all.

To sign up, head over to Arts Dot ideas stream.org.

Anyone who's seen me in short shorts knows that I have no shame and no tattoos.

But if I did get a tattoo, I'd go to Columbus, where Chris Kirkpatrick puts her own personal spin on the Art of the ink.

I think that it feels sometimes like permanent jewelry or like this adornment, or even like armor a little bit.

So there are so many different ways that tattoos can, you know, make you feel and make other people feel, you know, it can kind of send a message in a way.

My name is Chris Kirkpatrick.

I am from Columbus, Ohio.

I mean, I grew up in nature a lot.

I also grew up reading a bunch of fairytales.

So yeah, just kind of getting lost in those worlds of, like, just fantasy and nature and and magic.

I definitely started my sketchbook.

I don't use an iPad at all.

I'm very old school when it comes to that.

I don't I don't do the technology thing super well.

I just start off with a sketch in my sketchbook.

When they come into the shop, I take that drawing and make sure they like it.

You know where if it fits, you know where it's supposed to fit.

And then I make a stencil out of it after I put the stencil on.

I almost always tell somebody to live in it for a little bit while I'm setting up and kind of look in the mirror and move around just to see how it looks from different angles.

Mush crash is a mushroom photography Instagram account that I run with Ryan, my boyfriend.

We we go out on a hike and pretty much immediately we start looking for mushrooms.

We try to get our fun goggles on.

Well, I mean, we just saw it for the first time.

Like, a few weeks ago.

It was just like a little.

It was like a bread roll.

We.

Yeah.

We had never seen it before, and then we just identified it.

And then we've just watched it grow.

Same with this one.

This started off as a little cluster.

It was like a very compact, you know, and we've just watched it, grow over the last what we super fun.

It doesn't matter what kind.

You know, it could be like a poly pore or a slime mold or an actual, you know, a mushroom with, like, a cap.

You know, classic mushroom.

We are looking at all of it.

I love photography, so we're it's like a multifaceted hobby for us.

It's we get exercise, it's educational.

You know, we're learning new things.

We're being creative with the photography kind of stuff is potentially in the back.

But we could also.

Okay.

Are you ready?

I'm ready.

Okay.

Here we go.

Well, I love how mushrooms have this sort of dual.

You know, they can be so cute and magical.

You know, the stuff of fairy tales, literally, like, cutesy around a little gnome or whatever.

But they're also really dark.

They're, like, associated with death and decay.

And I think I just really love that dichotomy of, like, that's where the magic is, because I'm such that's what life is.

And, you know, people don't want to think about the dark stuff too much.

They are connected.

And, mushrooms just do a really good job of they bring me so much joy.

But like, in that I realized that they're literally coming out of something decaying, you know, and and it's crazy because, you know, they're breaking it down so that it can turn into soil and then there can be flowers or whatever.

You know, it's just it's a really cool reminder of like, cycles and how everything's connected.

And, you know, it's like you only have one life, you only have one body.

It's just skin.

Just have fun where you can, you know, it's already thrilling to get a tattoo, but then to not know, to just go into it blindly is just really exciting.

Essentially what it is, is that it's an oracle deck and each card has a design.

And I sit down with the client and, you know, I explain some stuff to them and we do a little reading and they draw three cards and then they get 1 or 2 or all three of those designs tattooed.

Oh sorry.

I've been dreaming of that.

Yes, that's a good one.

And I've tattooed that one twice now.

So if you did get that one, you would be the last, the last one to get that one.

You know, it's like, well, if you're not going to get a spontaneous tattoo now, then like when are you going to do it?

I would love for my tattoos to make people feel beautiful in their body and powerful and happy.

You know, I feel like that's the goal, really, because they really are fun.

I don't think I know how to, like, not stay busy or, keep creating things like, I have to create.

I just have to be making something.

There's a really great quote by Martha Graham, and she just talks about keeping the channel open.

You know, it doesn't matter what what anybody else thinks about your work.

It doesn't matter.

You just have to keep the channel open and keep keep the energy flowing and keep it moving and just keep creating because there's nobody else out there that that will or can make what you can make, you know, and you have to like, honor that that like if you don't get it out, it will never exist.

So yeah.

Milwaukee artist Kim Cunningham grew up with a stutter, but found a different way of speaking through photography.

Today, she travels the Midwest with her camera, searching for the beauty in what's been abandoned.

My focus on my tography is finding beauty and places where you would expect to see it in.

My favorite type of room to explore and abandoned buildings would be the boiler room.

I'm fascinated by these big machines or these big, like, pieces of equipment.

We all register, seeing differently through our eyes.

And for me, I want people to be able to look at what I see is still see beauty in it.

Like an old staircase with paisley peeling paint and, you know, dust flying around.

There's something that looks like beauty to me.

And I see that kind of thing.

And for me, that always has this sense of, like, a wonder and mystery.

I hope that people can see what I see.

The staircase seems to me that seems like there is hope, just like the top of the staircase where you see that your bottom was dark.

Something can be hopeful.

If there is something interesting up there.

Those kind of things draw me like open doors, open windows, lights, and the fear of distance that kind of draws me.

This is my nephew.

I talk to him a lot, and he's younger, so he's about a year and a half old here.

He's now grown married with with with two, beautiful kids.

So it's interesting looking back on these photos.

So I started, in an art at an early age, and I always wanted a camera.

And I was 13.

I got my first camera.

Of a small Vivitar 110.

And I would just take it everywhere and take photographs.

So this is a photo.

I took a 1995 of my father.

Downtown, when I was in high school.

I love tech.

And, my focus was my photography.

My parents would take me out at night and drive around so I can take photographs.

I was taking pictures, actually, of the using years building, and my dad just kind of leaning into leaning at the building, waiting for me to finish taking my photo with water and everything.

And I thought, oh, it's a great photo, dad of great.

He's leaning there is great, great, great, you know, pose.

I took that to my father.

And it's all my favorite photographs, that I've ever taken.

I was a shy kid.

I didn't talk much because I had a stutter.

And sometimes you'll be able to photograph things, and that would kind of help me kind of explain, you know, how I feeling or how my my thoughts are.

One of my undergraduate degrees is in photography during that time in college.

So I think about how my photography is being viewed and what I was actually trying to say communicate to people.

So it made me think about just not only just, oh, I'm photographing this, this, this.

Maybe I should think about what I'm doing and why.

I kind of look more and more to myself.

So I keep coming back to Gary, Indiana.

Initially it was because it was easy access.

The the city has a, smaller tax base than most cities.

And Waukee, when a building closes down as boarded up and, you know, police patrol thing patrol around it to make sure no one goes into the damage to damage it.

And Gary Graham Building closes down or the owner is now move away and they'll take care of it.

You know, it doesn't get poured up.

You just kind of starts to decay and it's own.

It's like this, this, this weird husk just dying on a vine, almost.

And I started getting really interested in those buildings because I kind of thought, well, the beauty is still there.

It's just hidden underneath the decay.

Not only just the spray paint hidden, you know, behind the broken windows or broken glass.

One of my favorite buildings in Gary was called Memorial Auditorium.

It was a, building where they would have concerts and plays.

You know, I think mentioned Frank Sinatra performed there.

I think they mentioned MLK may have spoken there as well when I was in Gary in 2020.

One of my first trips, I saw that the building was being torn down there in protest, turned down, so one wall was already down.

I figured, let me just go inside and take a look.

I walk inside and there's this pink piano just sitting in a lobby area.

I used that photograph in a contest that the Barnett Gallery was having on, just for local photographers and, inserted into the to the finalist stage.

And there's a contest where people come in and vote for their favorite photograph.

So actually won second place, which I was very happy about.

In a world where everything is so superficial and everything is all very TikTok or social media focused.

This may seem corny, but go outside, look around there things that you may not know.

It's there, right right in front of you.

There's another round of applause up ahead.

Cleveland's Terminal tower shines brightly in a new painting from an artist with a passion for our city's skylines.

On the next applause, meet painter Ashley Sullivan, who grew up on a farm in Grafton.

up far from city.

you think of the romance and the drama of big city living and There's nothing that beats just going out in the city at night.

Plus, Diana Cohen leads a quartet in a percussive performance at Chamber Fest Cleveland.

All that and more in the next round of applause.

both Well, it's the saddest part of my week.

Time again to say goodbye, my friends.

Im Ideastream public media's Kabir Bhatia.

Don't forget to send us those ideas for what it was.

And speaking of what it was, our closing music comes from Cleveland Institute of Music alumnus Joel Negus and his Heights Theater Studios, located in the old Centrum movie theater off Coventry Road.

This is a selection from his own work entitled Mourn.

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Do.

Hotel room.

You do.

You.

Do.

Production of applause and ideastream.

Public media is made possible by funding by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.