Production of "Applause" on Ideastream Public Media is made possible by funding by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.

Coming up on "Applause", a literary legend from Lorain inspires a new generation of Ohio artists.

A painter from Springfield finds his artistic calling on the ball field.

And Progressive Field goes absolutely bonkers for banana ball.

Hello and welcome to "Applause", my friends.

I'm Ideastream Public Media's Kabir Bhatia.

We start with Lorain native and Nobel Prize-winning author, Toni Morrison.

She explored themes of slavery, family, and identity in novels like “The Bluest Eye”, “Song of Solomon”, and what many consider her masterpiece, “Beloved” Now her themes hang on the walls of Cleveland's Zygote Press, literally, in new work inspired by this late literary master.

In a literal sense, “The Clearing” is a passage from Toni Morrison's book “Beloved” While it's rooted in maybe a geographical location, since Morrison wrote that in 1987.

Others have expanded the concept of a clearing.

It's like a third space, if you will, a place for self-reflection, a place to feel safe.

In Toni Morrison's book, it was a place for ritual practice and sort of like a moment of a really expansive expression of freedom.

And it's really a site of liberation.

That's really the crux, I would say, where the title has come from.

And the show encourages people to find their own sense of what is a clearing in your, in your life.

And that can be a mental space that you revisit, or it can be a physical space that you carve out with the people you love.

“A Clearing: Word, Image, Body” is a group exhibition here at Zygote Press.

It highlights work that talks about themes of trauma and also internal exploration.

A lot of works deal with the body itself and then also how we navigate spaces within community while also sort of retaining a sense of identity as well.

For me, I love Toni Morrison.

I love feminist Black authors in general.

That's my jam.

That's what I'm really into.

Something else I was listening to was a lot of Toni Morrison's interviews and a lot of her introductions into her books and things.

And every single one of her books, though it's not about her family specifically, she writes from a perspective of something she wanted to know about her family.

So I tried to lean into my own family stories.

In a way that they are here and they're real and they're still living.

So this piece is called “Moving On Up.” So I wanted to think about migration of Black folks and where we leave, where we land, what we bring with us, what we bring with us mentally, spiritually, emotionally, etc.

And I wanted to do that through the lens of my own family.

I asked my family members to write about where they were from, and then where they moved when they got there.

And I thought about it as like almost the string theory of how like we're tangibly connected through all of these places.

Our history is like very rich in all these spaces, and what does that make me?

How do like this conglomerate of experiences and people and places give me what I have and make me who I am today?

Because I'm standing through their memories and through their experiences.

Black Classical came about as a way of showing or playing and exhibiting what people have talked about, and by talking I mean by living their lives.

It's listening to the folks that are in East Cleveland that don't get seen or heard.

All of their stories made me think of instruments.

So the entire process with this was I went to the ATM, I got small bills, and I walked around with my Game Boy camera, and I went up to folks and I asked them, is it okay if I take your picture?

I'll pay you for it.

And secondly, what brings you joy?

What brings you joy?

having my son back with me.

And the different answers that I got, there was so much energy, and I felt so much of what folks were going through just from that simple question.

And I will say that Judy was so excited that everyone around knows her.

She's like, they know me, the library knows me, they know my name.

And I asked her what brings her joy, and she said having a good time with good people.

Her joy comes through the picture so much that I wanted it to be just centered to where that is all you see, and despite what is going on around it, the joy is the center.

I think with any of my art, I want it to be an open dialogue.

And honestly, because I do create art for my community, I also want people in my community to look at it and be like, oh, you know what?

I like that.

You know, I feel seen here.

I love this piece.

This is really just coming out of something that I wanted to talk about when it comes to community and joy and dancing and rage.

When it comes to people who are misogynoir affected, you have misogyny, which is the hatred that women can experience.

Then you have misogynoir, which is the hatred that Black women can experience.

But I say misogynoir affected, which I did not coin, to represent people like me who can experience misogynoir, whether that is because they are agender or genderqueer, things like that.

It's just to include everyone in that umbrella who has had and continues to have that experience.

So right here we have Assata Shakur.

We also have Tracy Chapman here Oh, and Aretha Franklin.

But yeah, we have dancing, we have togetherness, you know, and I just really love this symbol of, you know, don't tell me how to be.

I don't think that there's a way to talk about this show without talking about diversity too, and talking about what we expect either as people of color or when you listen to people of color, their stories and what they go through.

Zygote as a function, as an institution, but also more so in this gallery space is a free space for ritualistic practice, almost.

It's a free space for artistic practice.

And that is the clearing in a more simplistic sense.

“A Clearing: Word, Image, Body” runs through October 30th at Zygote Press in Cleveland.

Here on "Applause", we like to cover a diverse slice of Northeast Ohio, geographically and culturally.

So, do you have toy trollitis?

If you do, there's only one cure.

Pay a visit to the Troll Hole Museum in Alliance.

There you'll discover the Guinness World Record troll collection of one zany lady who you're about to meet.

Now, why would I have a comb?

Combs were last week.

When you collect trolls, it's like, why trolls?

And all the people I polled and myself, it's something about the eyes and something about the hair.

Me personally, I believe it goes much deeper, that troll dolls represent some universal concepts of kindness, goodness, and cooperation.

The majority of them are made, you know, with their hands out like they're hugging.

You know, that's kind of a pretty positive message to put out there, especially with, you know, a lot of toys, a lot of different messages going out, but the trolls are all about happiness and loving one another.

In the 1950s, a fellow in Denmark, he was a wood handyman and he crafted this iconic image of a troll doll.

So this iconic image went viral.

So these iconic dolls copied in many different variations with more pointed ears.

They have certain characteristics you can recognize them by.

They have 4 fingers, 4 toes.

They have, of course, the big ears and big noses.

And the original ones had tails, which I don't have one here because those are really expensive and I'm too cheap to buy the really expensive ones.

Expensive and rare ones.

When I started this project, I'd managed to amass about 2,000 trolls, and that was because I had a significant other and he went out and started buying collections of trolls, 300 or 400 at a time.

So that's why the numbers jumped Now I've amassed over 40,000 pieces— trolls, troll dolls, and troll memorabilia.

And the interesting phenomenon is that they continue to roll in on a fairly regular basis of donations.

A lady in Spain likes to make her own custom trolls.

She did the tiniest, tiniest ones, like less than half an inch.

A lot of folk artists go out and get natural materials.

Pine cones, there's pine cone trolls, wooden trolls, wax trolls, and then the Smoky Mountain trolls were created by Ken Arnsback.

He immigrated here with his family, settled in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, went out in the woods, took a piece of wood, wood, and sisal, which is rope, and created these folk art trolls with big noses, long tails.

Well, my favorite troll was one of the, what I call primo trolls, one of the Damm trolls, but it's the bigger size.

So that was my first troll that I got that was the more rare and unusual and made in Europe.

What I grew up and what I got into was the battle trolls.

The ones that are kind of a combination of a GI Joe, like a troll and maybe a turtle.

Very nostalgic in some ways.

Very cool.

So many different varieties and different setups, and a lot of the like dioramas and stuff upstairs are cool to look at and see the different pieces too.

I like the fact that a lot of them are from like my era when I was younger, and that was cool to see.

We discovered historic East Main Street in Alliance, Ohio is the cheapest commercial real estate, so we were entrepreneurs and gonna do something with that and with an art district.

We did a lot of research, and you need a hook, and a Guinness record is a good hook.

My husband had the bright idea to say, wow, you have enough troll dolls, we could get a Guinness record for the troll dolls, and from there we'd have our hook.

So we started with the Troll Museum, then we did Wisecracks Comedy Escape Room, Mad Dog's Crazy Cat Cafe, where you pay to play with cats in a unique environment, and then in the last years we've launched Stick, Stones, Bones and Magic, a metaphysical shop.

And then we had 2 event centers.

And so people come to visit quirky, unusual things.

And that's how the trolls kind of took over.

Part of the tourism is the Football Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

So we created our own Troll Hole of Fame with our Wall of Fame of custom troll dolls and a construction of the Benson Stadium.

But we have a bunch of unique custom troll dolls as well as the franchised teams all had troll dolls.

That was one of the big sellers in the '90s was get a troll doll with your team spirit on it.

And then the Rockin' Troll Hole of Fame where we have Dolly Parton who was just inducted.

And at some point we're trying to get Justin Timberlake and maybe Jimmy Fallon because they're good friends that laugh and joke and have Jimmy Fallon present Justin Timberlake our induction into the Rock 'n' Troll Hall of Fame.

So my background is mental health nursing, but I always knew that enjoyment and laughter is the best therapy, and so it's very enjoyable to work here and share my passion with the people, and it inspires them to then go out and be creative and do things outside the box.

You don't have to be mainstream.

A lot of people get into thinking they have to do something mainstream, and trolls are certainly not very mainstream.

You can find the Troll Hole Museum on East Main Street in Alliance.

Now let's crisscross the Buckeye State to Springfield, where an Ohio sports fan turns his passion for football, basketball, and baseball into award-winning paintings.

My name is Gary Blevins.

I am an artist.

I cover most of the range from sports art to landscapes to portraiture, a little bit of everything.

The world around me is my subject matter.

Patty, my girlfriend, will tell you that as we travel, I'm always looking out the window telling her to get a picture of that, get a picture of that.

My art is an attempt to be realistic.

I capture what I'm trying to capture.

I have this vision of what I want to do, and most of the time I can do that with my style.

I went to the Dayton Art Institute for 2 years as a full-time student.

After that period, I went to Ohio State.

I came out of school, started my own art supply store right here in Springfield, and I only lasted about a year and a half because I didn't realize you had to have customers to have an art supply store.

I always told myself that I would do one painting a year, no matter what it was.

I did people's cats and dogs and houses, and I did that for a a number of years because I started a family.

Can't eat paint and canvas, so I got jobs.

But the whole thing turned around in 2002 when I got affiliated with Ohio State.

I was working for a printing company, and a gentleman came in from a marketing group out of Cincinnati, and he was having cards printed that were of Ohio State players.

He said they were looking for someone that could do a painting of the stadium since they added 19 rows to the top.

And I told him that I could, and he looked at me and, yeah, yeah, right, buddy.

I went home and I did a watercolor of the stadium, and when he came back to pick up his order, I presented him with that watercolor, and he said, we can use that.

And at that point, I decided maybe you can do something with this art stuff.

Well, as far as detail in my paintings, to me, it's one of the most important things.

Creating that detail using a small brush, even though it's going to take a lot of time, taking the time to do it and make that painting something that people want to dive into and really look at it up close.

Wildlife is always a challenge for me because, first of all, the environment has to be right.

There's a lot of questions that you have to ask yourself to put them in the right location, and then trying to figure out how do you do fur.

I have a tiger jumping out of water, and I'm thinking, how in the world do you paint water?

So you have to figure those things out.

I enjoy doing the portrait work, doing famous people, people that are right here from Springfield and local people, and doing a lot of historical type paintings.

I recently did one of the Wright Brothers with Harry Toulmin, who was the attorney that did all the patents for them.

The subject matter of art that I really enjoy.

I really enjoy sports.

That's probably number one.

When we talk about sports art, it is totally different.

I think artists have to know the sport and understand the sport.

There's a lot of detail to sports art.

When you talk about logos and uniforms and all the things that go with it, All those things help tell the story, and I think it's necessary to put all those things on there.

A lot of people probably don't recognize color is important to those teams, and you have to have those colors right, and they'll let you know if you don't.

So I was named the United States Sports Artist of the Year for 2025.

The award that I received comes out of Daphne, Alabama at the United States Sports University, and they have an art museum and the art archives at that museum.

I currently have 14 paintings hanging in the museum now.

I've had my work in several places really across the country.

I've had painting shown at the Brandywine Museum in Chadds Ford, a painting of the Wyeths.

I've had paintings displayed at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

I've had paintings displayed at Arlington, Vermont at the Norman Rockwell studio where he did his most famous work, which is— I'm most proud of that one.

And I've also been displayed and I have permanent paintings hanging at the Terry Redlin Museum in Watertown, South Dakota.

Springfield's special to me.

I was born and raised here.

My artistic space is Gary Blevins Art Gallery at 145 West High Street in Springfield, Ohio.

We've been here for 3 years now.

I just wanted a place where people could come and look and enjoy the artwork, maybe learn a little bit, read some of the stories that are next to the paintings, and just enjoy the art.

We have games that they can do, like Where's Waldo in one of my paintings.

I have a hat, blankets, I got a canoe, and, and different items that they have to find in that painting.

Because what I was finding was when kids come in to look at paintings, they have a tendency just to kind of glance and walk by.

Well, this makes them stop, really look at the detail, and look at the paint, look at all the elements that it's going into that painting, and I find that exciting.

I never would have dreamed that I would have an art gallery with just my art.

When I was in school, I felt like other students appreciated my art, but they were art students.

That's a different thing.

So I never thought I would have a community support me.

I never feel like I finished I can look at every painting and go back and say, I should have done this and I should have done that.

I have to put that detail in there and make that thing go all the way, and I'll still leave something out.

It's a struggle, but it's something I strive for.

On the next Round of "Applause", we're traveling to Tuscarawas, where nestled in the foothills of Appalachia is an artist enclave that's been around for a while.

Like no other.

This building that we have here is not in every county.

We get people say, we really don't have a facility like this to help artists.

We took the IdeaMobile to the Tuscarawas County Center for the Arts in New Philadelphia, learn what this Dover landmark once was, and marvel at a very large cuckoo clock in Sugar Creek.

All that and more on the next round of "Applause".

Thanks for watching this round of "Applause", my friends.

I'm Ideastream's Kabir Bhatia, rounding third and heading for home with a very different kind of baseball.

It's called Banana Ball, and if you know, you know.

But if you don't know, check it out.

We joined a sold-out crowd at Progressive Field for a Banana Ball game between the Party Animals and the upstart Indianapolis Clowns.

Banana Ball is basically baseball, but think of it like SNL.

There's a new, like, entertainment skit going on every single game.

We're still playing competitive baseball, we're still trying to win the game, but anywhere on the field that you want to look, there's something going on.

And our whole goal is to turn one person at least into a fan of Banana Ball.

What makes it so popular is the fan engagement.

So this season alone, I've been able to make it to 12 different games, which is absolutely fantastic.

I'm probably like close to about 30 games total over the last few years.

So I honestly love every bit of Banana Ball.

It's just the true entertainment.

There's always something to watch.

No matter what during the games, it's nonstop entertainment the entire time.

I mean, catch a foul ball and it's an out, so who can't love all of the rules of banana ball?

We dance on the field, we have a good time, we're standing no matter what, high energy, and you could never be bored.

It's not a regular baseball game, but at the end of the day, it can be pretty competitive and you're just gonna have a lot of fun.

I'm never ever gonna sit here and say that we are better than the MLB, and nobody here is gonna say that to you.

To you either.

We are still going out there with talent.

We have pitchers throwing in the 90s.

We have hitters that are hitting 30-plus home runs a year.

We have all of the competitiveness that you could want.

Maybe not at the level of the MLB, but we're pretty close.

We have like 80% of our rosters are minor league players.

So everybody here is still good at baseball.

It's just how can we showcase it in a different way?

Mone Davis is an amazing woman.

She was the first Black woman to be in Little League World Series.

In 2014, I played in Little League World Series, and I was the first girl to earn a win and throw a shutout in Little League history.

Give it up for Mone Davis!

What a legend, Mone Davis.

We started off as the Negro Leagues Clowns.

Back in the Negro Leagues, they were a team that barnstormed for African Americans who could not play in the major leagues.

So some of your favorite players like Hank Aaron have been a Clown before he went on to be who he is.

We have a couple guys that travel with us sometimes, like Bill Heward.

Hes absolutely an amazing person, and he's still alive and still here to tell us the stories that he would be able to witness back in the day.

So we are here purely for the honor and the respect that we have for the people that paved the way for us to be here today.

The clowns were a team in the Negro Leagues, like all of the teams in the Negro Leagues in the '30s and the '40s and histories even prior to that.

Not just an opportunity for African Americans and Blacks to play big-time professional baseball and travel and show the world their skills.

I literally get chills about it.

It's just incredible.

This is a dream I never knew because I wouldn't possibly dreamed it.

You know, it's just crazy.

Indianapolis Clowns are back, and they're doing such a wonderful job of honoring the past and educating people about the past in a wonderful, thrilling way.

Production of "Applause" on Ideastream Public Media is made possible by funding by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.