- [Announcer] Production of "Applause" on Ideastream Public Media is made possible by funding by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.
(jazzy upbeat music) - [Kabir] Coming up, see what's cooking in Ashtabula to embrace healthy food that's grown here.
Plus, artists are using beer cans as their canvas at three Ohio breweries.
And the Cleveland Orchestra remembers the late Black composer, Julius Eastman.
Welcome to another edition of "Applause", everyone.
Thanks for watching.
I'm Ideastream Public Media's Kabir Bhatia.
(soft guitar music) Ashtabula is Ohio's largest county in terms of land.
It offers an abundance of natural resources, but for some, very poor health outcomes.
In the heart of an historic district near the shores of Lake Erie, a local business works to change that.
Harbor Gardens teaches how eating food grown locally can create a healthier community.
(gentle music) - I started looking at the data of Ashtabula County.
So Ashtabula County really has, sadly, some of the worst health outcomes.
Which, you know, when you look around and you think about all of this water, you think of all of this land, and we have this fresh air.
So it's hard to believe that we can have such poor health outcomes when we have such abundance of natural resources.
Harbor Gardens is a general store, it's a demonstration kitchen, and it's a meeting space, and everything is revolved around local food and local products.
Working with the shop, Sarah's the grower.
And from a healthcare perspective, I just want people to eat local food so that we can improve health outcomes here in Ashtabula County.
- The systems that we have in place now don't do as good of a job I think as we can with taking care of people, taking care of our ecosystems.
And I think we can do all of those things and we don't have to sacrifice, you know, ecological quality.
I think we can actually make things more beautiful, more productive, more abundant, and people healthier, all those things can happen simultaneously.
It doesn't have to be one or the other.
- Sarah's part of the shop is growing so much gorgeous food.
So we have a little food forest about four blocks from here.
And we grow a lot of food, we teach people how to grow food, and we are also working on the food forest concept as a way to get food to people.
- So when most people think about their garden, you know, they till it every year and they plant new crops.
But with a food forest, you're taking advantage of something called ecological succession, where essentially a plant community over time, it builds and builds until it has this multi-layered structure with trees and shrubs and perennial plants and some annual plants and things like that.
So it looks a lot like a forest, but you've selected each one of those plants to have a certain role and a certain function and to produce food or medicine or fiber, or something that's useful for people.
It's doing all of the things, the wonderful things that an ecosystem does to make the earth healthier, but it's also providing for humans.
- Along with the classes, we teach about cooking, canning, fermenting, because it's not just growing your own food.
Not everybody has to grow their own food.
You can get your food from your local farmer's market, or we have a resource here called the "Ashtabula Local Food Guide".
It's got over 100 farms who are producing food for local consumption.
So you get that food, but then you need to preserve it.
So we teach so many classes.
I have requests every day for learning how to water-bath can.
So you can do your own tomato sauce, you can make your own jams, jellies with water-bath canning.
We also do a pressure canning class, and then we also have fermentation classes.
So fermenting is one of the oldest ways to prepare food.
We try to have all of the resources where people can be quite self-sufficient, once they learn how to do it.
- For making the sauerkraut, everybody get a cutting board.
There's three or four back there, and I brought a couple, just in case.
I learned to can from my grandmother.
So I've been canning for the last 50 years or more.
And what we want to do is slice it as thin as you can.
You take whatever vegetable, we did sauerkraut, which is cabbage, and salt.
You put it under pressure so the liquid will come up.
Once the liquid comes up, you then put a weight on it.
If the liquid doesn't cover the full thing, you'll end up getting spoilage.
So you have to make sure your liquid comes above whatever your weight is.
And then you put a cover over it, and let it ferment.
(energetic music) Most fermented foods, if you ferment it, will have probiotics in it, and it's great for your stomach.
If you take fermented foods every single day that you know has not been killed by a processing, it'll help your stomach calm down, you'll do much better.
- Most medications that people are on, blood pressure medications, diabetes, most of the regular meds that people are on do not fix problems; they're symptom relievers.
Food is a problem solver.
That's powerful.
- And I noticed Gallo had some classes.
I just came in here this afternoon.
I was curious, found out she had a class on fermenting tonight.
So I brought some friends with me and we'd have wonderful evening.
I didn't realize it was this easy.
I could easily do this, and I trust it more than going to the store and buy something in a plastic bag.
- We're trying, through local food, to show people that it can be done regeneratively and that the way of the future as humans is to keep things local and take care of our local ecosystems and the people in them.
The way that's gonna happen is by supporting people who are doing that who are your neighbors, and kind of reestablishing these human communities as well as the communities in the natural world.
- Ashtabula County and all of the food that is grown here deserves to be celebrated.
And so, really this is about having some fun with food, and that keeps me going every day.
(energetic music fades) Almost getting an extra row.
(upbeat music) - [Kabir] In recent years, beer cans have become a different kind of canvas for artists to show off their work.
Let's travel to three Ohio breweries where the artwork on the cans is as important as the beer inside them.
(label machine clicking) (playful music) - [Kristian] Right now, beer cans are like pop art.
You know, you go to the beer store and you're just confronted with all this crazy artwork.
- [Shaun] There's a lot of beers on the shelves these days.
So you gotta have something that's gonna at least catch people's eye.
- [Kha] When I want to go buy a beer, I want to make sure that, you know, good label, good name, and the beer is good.
- [Grace] Beer can illustration, it's kind of open-ended.
It's kinda like a movie poster, in a way.
It just feels like I get to be more creative.
- [Keith] We want to make sure that the artwork stands out.
- [Justin] People collect beer cans.
Like, people will reach out to me, like, "Do you know how I can get this one can?"
(playful bright music) (cans rattling) - Noble Beast Brewing Company, downtown Cleveland, Ohio.
The Noble, which is like a German classification of traditional European hops; and then the Beast is the American craft brewing side, which for better or worse, there's no rules, a lot more creativity.
- So I enjoy beers a lot.
I think I was drawing quite a bit here in my like, down time, if I was here solo waiting for someone.
So the staff picked up on that and saw, let Shaun know, and I think the first thing we did was maybe a flyer for an event.
- [Shaun] Justin designed a can label just for my personal camping trip.
- [Justin] The Pappy's Pilsner, Shaun and his friends will get together and do a bunch of different activities in the woods.
- [Shaun] It's a fun label because it's just, all the little stories that have happened are trips that my college buddies and I have been going on for about 15 years.
- There's a cabin, there's tire swings, there's climbing up on trees, jumping into rivers.
So it was neat to throw all those different things on the can and kinda get a more crowded, immersive view than I normally would on a simpler can.
- Thought, "Why waste such a good label?"
So we brought it out to market this summer.
So Murder Ballads is a Baltic Porter, and we've done well with that.
We've won two Great American Beer Festival Awards with it.
That's a can design that has also been super popular, and it's inspired by one of Justin's favorite artists.
- And that's a little homage of mine to Ed Gorey, who's an artist who animated a intro series on the PBS show, "Mystery".
Just spooky enough, like very accessible, but still kind of that edge where you're like, "Something weird is going on behind the label."
- So it's fun, because every single can is as unique as the beer in it, and it's a new process to come up with it and kind of collaborate on that design.
A big reason of why we continue to can is it's just fun to make these new labels and it's another creative outlet.
- And I love seeing the beers out in stores.
You know, I'll see it at Heinen's when I go there.
There's like, one Heinen's in particular that keeps it on the top shelf, and I'm super proud about that when I walk by, and I'm like, humbled and I feel excited that I get to do it.
(upbeat country music) - Missing Mountain Brewing Company, located in Cuyahoga Falls right on the Cuyahoga River.
Everything about this place is great, except the only thing it's missing is a mountain.
We've brewed probably over 120 different varieties of beer.
So each of those beers have to have a name.
We use a lot of pop culture.
There'll be just some things that, maybe something funny that was said in the brew house.
With that, we could have some pretty cool can art to 'em too.
- You can just be creative, really flex your artistic muscles.
I kind of think of it as this generation's album artwork.
You know, there's no rules.
Everybody does something different.
It's really up to the artist and the brewer and how far you want to take it.
- "I'm up, let's get it," actually comes from a rap song.
It's the attitude that we want to have.
It's another day, we gotta get up and we gotta attack it.
He said, "I got it."
(fingers snap) - Starting a new day, so I went with the rooster.
I thought he was cool, iconic, doing his call.
- The art that he came up with was amazing for it.
It's got to be either number one or number two top label.
(upbeat piano music) Zwickel Trickle is a hazy pale ale and we knew this was gonna be a flagship and we were gonna have it on there, and we wanted to make sure we had a good name for it.
- The zwickel is the tap on the tank.
You know, it's beer coming out of the zwickel.
- And that little zwickel valve was just ever so, just dripping beer and wouldn't seal all the way properly.
Well, you got a Zwickel Trickle.
The name stuck.
- Doing illustration, it's an art form.
It's like a vacation job.
Have to be in a fun mind state to work on it and make something fun.
I love working on Missing Mountain and doing can art.
I wish I could do it, you know, all day long.
(upbeat music) - The brewery is located in Sandusky, Ohio.
I'm from Vietnam.
I moved to Sandusky 2011, and then I start out Small City Taphouse 2014.
And then suddenly one day, I said, "Eh, let's open a brewery."
Back in 2015, when I hang out with my buddy, he called me "cocky little Asian guy."
Putting letter by letter, that's how I come up with the brewery name: Cocky Little Asian Guy, CLAG, yeah.
And then now, everyone loves it, and they all want to come here and drink good beer and eat good Asian food.
I got all my family supporting me and they back me up behind it.
So, here we are.
- [Grace] Papa Bui and Mama Bui are for Kha's parents.
- Every Father Day weekend, I always want to release a beer, represent my dad; and Mother Day weekend, I always want to represent my mom, to release a beer for her, because I love my mom and my dad.
- It was just kind of an homage to his parents and the inspiration they've given him for the whole company.
And he just really wanted to have something that showed them.
And there are two versions of them, one where they're dressed in traditional Vietnamese, like royal garb, and then the originals where it's just them.
- She's good with that, so my mom looked like my mom.
She's, you know, she looked pretty awesome on the can, yeah.
(upbeat rock music) - So, Back to the Wild is a local wildlife rehabilitation center, and they did a collaboration with them on this beer.
The '80s vibe, you know, you find those tank tops at a thrift shop, that's just kind of like a vignette of a bunch of wolves and a mountain, and one's big and the other one's small.
It's kind of like Napoleon Dynamite-ish.
- I think that label is one of the badass label.
When she get that done, I look at it, I was like, "Damn, that's awesome!"
- Usually somebody asks me for something, I deliver it to them and I have no idea what they do with it.
'Cause sometimes the people that contact me for work, I don't get to meet ever in person.
So doing something like this and then getting to come down, like when we were at the anniversary party here, and seeing people walk out with big crates and stacks of the can that I did, it's just cool to see people like walk out with it, see you know, a beer can people sit with it for a long time and look at it, it's so much more engaging.
'Cause they're not just like, "Oh, that's cool," scroll.
They're sitting there and drinking and keep looking at it and take another drink and talk to people about it, which is just, it's very cool to see, to sit back and watch people engage with it in such a different way.
(soft piano music) ♪ Here's to finding out the answers ♪ - [Kabir] 19 year-old Ava Preston has studied with some of northeast Ohio's top jazz players.
On the next "Applause", the acclaimed vocalist performs.
♪ Something about you makes you so ♪ - [Kabir] And salutes where she got her start.
- [Ava] Tri-C is, honestly, one of the best camps that I've been to.
- [Kabir] Plus, a group of competitive dancers from Africa is making moves in Akron.
All that and more on the next round of "Applause".
♪ No, I can't explain ♪ ♪ The little touch you can't contain ♪ ♪ And I waste time, but never change ♪ ♪ You wormed your way inside my brains ♪ ♪ Oh, tell me ♪ ♪ Why you're running through my head ♪ ♪ 'Cause lately ♪ - [Kabir] You can watch past episodes of "Applause" with the PBS app.
(old-time piano music) As a professor at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, Erin Beckloff is keeping the craft of letterpress art alive.
She loves to educate her students and the public about this historic art form.
- Letterpress printing is a method of relief printing.
While technology shifted, letterpress printing was the method of printing for over 500 years.
And it's no longer economically the fastest way to print, but there's something that people are still connecting to, and I think that's why it's become an art and a craft.
My in-laws gave me a small printing press as a wedding gift.
So I got this little printing press and I didn't know how to use it, and so I started reaching out to people in the letterpress community for help.
Because you can search for it on the internet and there are some videos, but it's so much better to go and meet with someone.
And I started to find that there were other people that cared about this, and there were other people that had printing presses in their basements or garages.
And it wasn't just people in their twenties and thirties, it was also people in their eighties.
So it was fantastic to find this community that wanted to help each other.
There aren't really secrets; it's everyone wants to help letterpress printing survive, and so everyone's willing to help each other out, be it by finding equipment or teaching a technique or learning a new process or talking about how to mix ink, everybody helps each other.
Letterpress printing, as it became an art form or a craft, it still has that limited constraint of working with the wood and the metal, and the wood and metal type and the ornaments.
And your collection tends to influence your aesthetic, as a shop.
If you think of someone like Hatch Show Print down in Nashville, Tennessee, they're using blocks that might've been used on a Johnny Cash poster, and now they're being used on a contemporary country music poster.
And to think about that that collection is then influencing your aesthetic.
When I started to acquire type, I became very interested in wood type.
I love the beauty of the letters.
I love that so many of the wood type fonts were made over 100 years ago, and we're still able to use them today.
I like how big and bold they are, and that was just something I really connected with.
My dad actually makes wood type the same way that it was produced for hundreds of years by all the wood type manufacturers.
So Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum, most people have seen Hamilton on a little drawer pull, that's that group.
They made type using this pantograph method, which is a dual tracer and router.
And so you trace the pattern of the letter, or the ornament, decorative ornament, and then it cuts the type out of end grain maple.
And a lot of my style and aesthetic came from the fact that my dad, Scott, of Moore Wood Type, started making type the historic way.
And so I started really exploring how these ornaments could be used to create form and solids, and even letter forms and characters.
And so I really like to use my dad's ornaments as a main component of my work.
But I love the traditional tools of letterpress printing, the wood and the metal type.
The metal type's really small and can get this very crisp line.
And some of the fonts are only available in wood and metal; they never made it to the computer, which is just special.
And I just love the history that you know is in every letter that you're setting.
It's been used before, and so being able to give it life by continuing to print with it is just something that I connect to, as a tool and as my main driving force of my aesthetic as a printer.
(printing press clinking) Letterpress printing in a lot of ways is almost meditative.
You become one with the press that you're using.
And if it's your own press especially, you start to hear and know the quirks of the press, and they all have their own sound.
You know, each press has its own rhythm and music to it.
And especially when you're running one of the larger presses, like my Chandler and Price, C&P, with the flywheel, you can feel that motion, and I stand against it and you just, you're a part of the rhythm of the printing, and so you're feeding it the paper and it continues to run and you hear the cha-chink, cha-chink of the cast iron, or you hear the little glitches of the gears, and it's a wholly immersive experience.
And it really makes you slow down, because you can't go faster than the press.
After getting my very first press, I had a business for about a year, trying to sell commercial work, and that just really wasn't for me.
I tried to do the craft fairs and the art fairs and I just really loved making, and I really love people.
And so I came back to my alma mater, where I received my undergrad in graphic design, and they had a letterpress shop that was sitting unused.
And so I had the opportunity to teach a class, to teach students how to be letterpress printers, which quite honestly, I was still learning myself and continue to today.
And I started teaching letterpress as an elective.
And I had a great, I mean I had great groups of students for every semester.
So nine years, every semester we've offered letterpress printing, sometimes multiple sections.
It's wonderful to watch my students pull their first print.
Because they pull that first print off the press and just kind of a light goes on.
Watching them discover how fascinating letterpress printing can be is immensely satisfying and joyful for me.
"Pressing On: The Letterpress Film" is a documentary about the survival of letterpress printing, and specifically the community that have kept it alive.
It is both the older generation that held on to the equipment and the knowledge through a time when letterpress printing was not popular, and also the new generation that are continuing to keep it going.
So I would say I'm a member of the new generation, and as I became a part of the community and started to make these connections with these 70 and 80 year-old printers, I knew that that knowledge was gonna get lost if we didn't record it in some way.
Through making the film, I got to see the way letterpress had been a part of all of these people's lives since they were young.
So some of the older printers in the community had become apprentices when they were 12 or 15 years old with their families.
And so I got to hear the way that letterpress printing had driven their life path, and how special it is to them to know that there's a young generation that still cares about this process, this medium, this trade that they love.
The printers that held this knowledge, a lot of it was never recorded in books.
I've taken on this role as educator and filmmaker and created a shop at a university, and they seem to connect to it, and so many of them have gone on to actually buy their own presses, which I never imagined!
You know, I love that it's a part of their lives, but now they have their own presses that they're learning how to use, learning their presses' quirks, and I love to see that engagement and that they want to continue to help be a part of the letterpress community.
Using letterpress printing equipment is what's keeping it alive.
Having a wood type font sit in a drawer or behind glass somewhere isn't gonna keep it going.
When you're continuing to print it, it not only is putting oil back into the wood and keeping those characters in good condition, but by printing it, you're then sharing it with more people, which is keeping letterpress printing alive.
So it's both the use and the people that are continuing to keep letterpress going.
- [Kabir] Hey, we're always on the lookout for arts and culture stories about northeast Ohio, so feel free to send us your ideas to arts@ideasstream.org, and thanks.
(poignant orchestral music) It is almost time to say goodbye for this round of "Applause".
I'm Ideastream Public Media's Kabir Bhatia, leaving you with the Cleveland Orchestra performing the work of late Black and gay composer, Julius Eastman.
Here, Franz Welser-Möst leads the orchestra in Eastman's recently rediscovered symphony from 1983, "The Faithful Friend: The Lover Friend's Love for the Beloved".
(poignant orchestral music) (poignant orchestral music continues) (poignant orchestral music continues) (poignant orchestral music continues) (staccato music) (shimmery music) - [Announcer] Production of "Applause" on Ideastream Public Media is made possible by funding by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7sa7SZ6arn1%2BrtqWxzmiYrKCklq%2B2uMBmn56ZnKm1unnEmqusZZGjsW6uxJ6pZpuRo3qivtNmprGlYKKucA%3D%3D