- [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.

- In this edition of "The Art Show," redefining contemporary dance, (bright music) abstracts that shine, and transformative public art.

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

(cheerful music) (cheerful music continues) 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.

The Dayton Dance Initiative is a bold collective of professional dancers transforming the city's contemporary dance landscape.

Through partnerships with composers, writers, and visual artists, dancers are stepping into the roles of choreographers to craft unexpected and compelling performances.

Let's take a closer look at how these creatives are bringing their ideas from studio to stage.

- So, how to describe contemporary dance.

Oof, I've been working on that one for about 15 years.

The things that I notice between, I think, contemporary forms and classical forms, one of the main differences, I feel, is the sense of abstraction.

There can be a concept or an idea within contemporary dance that is not narrative-based.

It's purely it can be form, it can be pattern, it can be music, it can be media.

The heartbeat of Dayton Dance Initiative is that it is a dancer-led, artist-led organization.

It began by one former Dayton Ballet dancer's dream, Jocelyn Green Watson, in which there could be a platform for collaboration between Dayton local dancers.

We have the Dayton Ballet, which is a beautiful ballet company, and then we have Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, which is a beautiful Black historic modern dance company.

Rarely did they get to be in the same space, collaborate, co-create, cross-pollinate, exchange ideas that are nuanced to their dance culture.

So Dayton Ballet dancers, Dayton Contemporary Dance Company dancers, and some dancers from the ballroom world came and collaborated and created around 10 original works in which they all danced together.

Their first show was at the PNC Arts Annex in Downtown Dayton, and the community gave basically a resounding yes.

This is what we want.

Dance in the summer.

- I've been with DDI for four years.

It started after I graduated from Wright State University in 2021.

This was post-COVID.

The year after I graduated, I emailed the Dayton Dance Initiative Gmail.

Josie replied and said, "Yeah, join!

Would you wanna help me with this, this, this, this, this?"

And essentially I became DDI's first intern in addition to a choreographer.

I had a feeling that DDI was gonna be this really great place, and from the get-go, that was the feeling.

And the way that we work at DDI is extremely collaborative.

It's one of our three tenets, is collaboration.

You kind of know as a dancer going into the process that the choreographers are gonna need help from you to keep things going along.

A lot of times, the dancers generate movement in the rehearsal process that ends up making it into the piece at the direction of the choreographer.

- It was a pleasure putting out our call for artists this year.

We had a call for interdisciplinary artists.

And we had, I think, over, we had over 50 applicants.

Karen Maner, for example, is one of my childhood friends.

I saw her application come through, so it was a pleasure.

And after getting to know these applicants and then getting to know my dancers, I went very much on sort of intuition and instinct as to who would work well together and then who would slightly challenge the other person but not too much.

- The work I created for Dayton Dance Initiative this past summer was "Bolero," which is, the composer is Maurice Ravel.

It's a very famous piece of music, and I've always wanted to choreograph to it.

And the current artistic director of Dayton Dance Initiative, Jennifer Sydor, had remembered a year ago I had told her I wanted to choreograph my own "Bolero."

And she approached me this past summer to see if I would wanna do it, and I immediately said yes.

- As a writer, I had never gotten to work with another artist on creating something, and I was really drawn to Dayton Dance Initiative's CoLab because it was so far outside of my normal artistic practice.

Getting to create alongside a choreographer, so someone in a completely different discipline than I'm usually working in.

Just leaping into the unknown really appealed to me as an amazing way to grow and challenge myself as an artist.

- [Isaac] So, collaboration particularly on "Bolero," was, one, incredible because it was a genuine collaboration, it was not combative in terms of trying to get a particular idea out there, but it really helped shape the entire work from start to finish.

- Right from the get-go, knowing that this was going to be a piece of writing that had to work somehow with choreography, that really changed the way that I wrote.

I wrote a lot shorter than I normally do.

I was trying to write something that would have a lot of negative space in it so that we would have a ton of flexibility and the ability to shape the narrative around what the choreography was doing.

Something that really drew me to DDI is that I'm not a person who comes with, I don't have formal dance training, but I love dance.

It's everything.

Dance can do anything.

It can be classic, it can be experimental, it can represent any experience, any lived human experience, because it's one of the most human activities that we do.

- [Jennifer] I think that if I can create a place where the dancers feel safe and they love each other, that they're gonna get on stage and they're gonna believe it with their full body, and then the audience, we feel that.

And particularly in the annex, when we're so close, you can feel their breath, you can see the light behind their eyes, you can feel sometimes the body heat coming off them, the sweat.

I want the audience to feel lit up inside and inspired.

I also want them to feel a sense of hope in the younger generations.

- [KC] I have spent time away from Dayton, I've spent time freelancing, doing other jobs.

DDI is something that I have always made time for.

I turn things down so that I can do DDI, because it feeds me in a way that no place ever has.

- [Jennifer] As far as my vision for the future, I wanna do one sort of impactful new thing each season.

So just incrementally doing one new, slightly varied thing each year is my goal.

And, again, it's to provide more opportunities for the dancers.

- [KC] For the future of Dayton Dance Initiative, I think it's both mine and Jen's hope that we can support an ever-growing number of artists, every year, we have more and more interest.

- Cincinnati-based artist Rebecca Barker has been painting since childhood.

For over 20 years, the artist crafted realist scenes inspired by her mother's quilt collection.

But recognizing a longtime interest in the abstract, Rebecca decided to try something new and has established a new distinctive style for herself.

Let's explore this fascinating shift and how Rebecca's artistic past continues to inspire her creative future.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) - My name's Rebecca Barker, and I am an artist, I paint abstract paintings.

My family were craftsmen, they made Christmas tree ornaments.

So I grew up with paint and art all over the house.

Also went to art shows from very early age, so I knew what an artist does.

And it was the only thing I excelled in, in art, you know, in school.

My mom painted the Christmas tree ornaments from when I was a baby, and it was something that just kinda took off.

We had a dairy farm just north of Oxford.

It was a family farm, and they had open houses to sell the ornaments.

And they became very well-known for their ornaments.

Many people have the Barker ornaments, and especially in the tri-state area here.

I just grew up in that sort of atmosphere.

I had the art supplies and my mother and father pushing me to be an artist, which is unusual.

They never said, "You can't make a living as an artist," but I knew you could because I've seen many of their friends and them make a living that way too.

So I pursued it full force.

I grew up on a farm, so I loved animals and nature.

My mother was a collector of antique quilts, and she did a little bit of quilting in her spare time.

But (chuckles) I love quilts.

So when I was doing the landscapes, I would put quilts inside the landscapes.

All quilt patterns have old-fashioned names, and the quilters know these names.

My favorite is probably called Delectable Mountains.

That is the Delectable Mountain quilt pattern.

There's one called Grandmother's Flower Garden, which is very traditional.

And I did that for 25 years.

Full-time business.

Eventually, I did a lot of licensing with that, and it took off nationally.

I also started doing the big quilt shows that were all over the country, so a lot of traveling.

But I also had a lot of mass-produced stuff, like calendars and puzzles and my own line of notecards and greeting cards.

You pretty much name it, I had images on things.

I don't do the puzzles, they drive me crazy.

(laughs) But yeah, it's really an honor, of course.

They're very different than what I'm doing now, because they're realism and there's no abstract to it at all.

It's kinda weird how I totally switched my style.

It got to the point where I wasn't doing new things and my creativity, I felt, was not flowing.

I always liked abstracts, and I said, "I'm gonna try doing some abstracts," just, you know, see what happens.

At first, I thought this is gonna be easy, but it was not.

Abstracts are actually quite hard too.

(chuckles) They have the same elements as the regular art, but it's different.

You have to leave some of the elements out.

So, after a couple years of practicing with the abstracts, I feel I've developed my own style.

I work in acrylic paints, and they're on boards.

After priming it, I usually start out by putting a layer of gold or colored foils because I like shiny.

Once I've got that down, I'll put a layer of epoxy so it seals everything and then it also makes it smooth again for me to go ahead and paint over it.

Then I'll come in with all kinds of things like metallic-colored tapes and also glitter.

Along with the acrylic paints and the tapes, I finish 'em off, unless there's gonna be a realism part added, like birds or trees or nature.

Sometimes I do moons or suns.

After everything's down, I'll put in another one or two layers of the epoxy, which is the mixing of the two resins.

I pour 'em and stir, stir, stir and then apply them with a gloved hand and smooth it all out, and it dries flat.

The main reason I use the epoxy is, one, it looks kinda cool.

It looks like they're under glass, and it magnifies the paint just a tiny, tiny bit.

And also, since I'm using tapes and all kinds of materials, collage, you might call it, it seals it so it won't come off someday.

I think the style is definitely me.

I feel very happy most of the time, and I try to show that in my paintings with the bright colors and the shiny.

And also my love of nature.

I get a lot of inspiration by looking at aerial views of landscapes.

That's where the rivers pictures come in or map pictures.

My Cincinnati picture, for example, is probably my most popular painting.

I used to paint in the patterns of the fabric in my quilt paintings, so people would actually think I glued fabric on my work, but I did not.

Occasionally, I'll do paintings that repeat that sort of pattern in parts of the painting.

I never start out knowing what a picture's gonna look like.

Especially just the pure abstracts, they just sort of evolve as I go.

If I hadn't just run out of ideas with the quilt paintings, I think I would've stayed with them.

And it's what I was known for doing and I enjoyed the quilters very much.

It was kind of a good thing.

I myself and other artists, I've noticed, get kinda stuck.

And they think, oh, this is what sells, or this is what I've done for so long, so I'm gonna keep doing this.

I really encourage artists to try new things, because I have done that myself, I have tried this new style that I'm working with, and it's just so much more creative than it was if you just stick with the same thing all the time.

And I'm glad I had the courage to try something new.

- [Rodney] Did you miss an episode of "The Art Show"?

Not a problem.

You can watch it on demand 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.

- Some see abandoned parking lots as eyesores, but others see an opportunity.

Our next story takes us up to Cleveland.

We'll meet a group of artists bringing new life into an empty lot in the city's AsiaTown.

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

Check it out.

(instruments tuning) (bright music) - We are here because there's a lot of opportunities in this space.

Currently, it's being used as kind of a community gathering spot.

And as a recipient of the Transformative Arts Fund, me and my team are excited to be working on a series of public art installations that's gonna elevate this space.

- Jordan Wong and The Sculpture Center as well as a number of other community partners and artists have been working on this site in AsiaTown to transform it literally from an empty parking lot to a space for cultural gathering, for meeting, for play, and just for the neighborhood to be activated with people in it.

- I have had the privilege to do several, you know, public art projects here in AsiaTown.

And to be able to share some of the things that I grew up, you know, seeing as a kid that resonate with me and also are part of my exploration, you know, as far as cultural identity and belonging, to share that with the families and residents, especially the kids in AsiaTown, it's an honor, it's a privilege.

So today's April 23, and we are aiming to finish the project before the end of September and have it connect with the Mid-Autumn Festival later this fall.

The project is called For Those Who Call Here Home: Transforming AsiaTown with an Outdoor Community Space.

(people chattering) Based on previous conversations, we learned a sentiment from the community, specifically this one parent, that if you build only things for adults, it really leaves out the children.

However, if you focus on creating things for your children, for kids, it actually brings the family together and therefore, you know, unites the community.

(bright music) Our project is focusing on five public art installations.

One of them is an entrance gate, which the community has voiced a desire for a landmark signifying AsiaTown.

The large-scale light box.

It's dark here in AsiaTown at night, and, you know, we wanna create more safety and well-lit areas.

We're also focusing on elements of play in regards to these unique seating installations, these playful seating, as well as ping pong tables and our planter series that we've invited three emerging Asian artists to create artwork for.

So, our three selected artists are Thao Nguyen, Lydia Guan, and Nick Lee.

These three artists, they have their own distinct visual language and interests as far as, like, conceptual exploration, but the three of them use color quite brilliantly and have strong, just, abilities in drawing and painting and image making.

- I'm really interested in better representing the Japanese American community just because we're not being fully represented in our galleries and institutions.

So, my initial idea was to paint a tiger.

Tigers aren't native to Japan anymore, but they still hold significance in Japanese art.

I relate to things through objects, and that's why I often do still lifes or I have my figures holding something Japanese-related.

I love the culture in AsiaTown and the history, and I think it's important that we give back to our community within Cleveland, especially on the East Side.

We really wanted to revamp the space and to make it more welcoming and friendly to our local community.

You can see that it's a little run-down at the moment.

Art can change a lot and make people more excited about visiting AsiaTown.

- Growing up and having immigrant parents, I think, has really taught me to work hard and just be very passionate about what you do.

And in this piece that I'm making, it's actually about first-generation Asian Americans and that familiarity of when you visit your hometown overseas.

I also want the birds to represent people in different backgrounds and environments that we grow up in, and that we're all connected as one.

For me, birds are a huge symbol of just freedom and growth, and the impact of just wildlife is a huge memory for me.

It's always been a dream to do something related to AsiaTown, and I saw this opportunity come up, and I just thought I would apply and just see what happens.

- She's the master behind all the cooking, she's the inspiration.

(Lydia's mom laughs) - Growing up, I did a lot of cooking with my mom.

That's just something I like to do and I like to look at, so I like to put that into my art.

When I see the food that my mom makes, which is mostly all Cantonese dishes that she grew up with and she learned through my grandma, aunties, it kind of passes down through me, and when I see that food, it just really makes me feel at home, so I like to feel that in my artwork.

I'm very familiar with AsiaTown.

Every weekend, we would come, and that's how I spent most of my childhood.

I love being in a group and collaborating with other Asian artists.

Growing up, I didn't have very many Asian friends around me, and working with very skilled, very talented artists, I'm very grateful.

- It's late June and it's going well, and we are very, very busy.

Drawing.

A lot of drawing.

(warm music) (warm music continues) (warm music continues) (people chattering) Today's the big day.

Celebrating all five public artworks for AsiaTown completed by me and my team for the Transformative Arts Fund.

It's also Mid-Autumn Festival here in AsiaTown, so there's a lot of festivities and celebration today.

- It's a bit overwhelming to see everything come together and see the community really take a part of it, and we were really excited for this moment, and it's really great to see it all come together.

- I think seeing it from the sketches and finally viewing it in real time, like, it all coming to life, like, I mean, I feel very happy just seeing it all filled up with people instead of it just being empty.

- MidTown did a really nice job.

I'm really happy with Jordan's lead and making this all come to life and then working with Thao and Nick.

They did a fantastic job on their pots.

Our work came out amazing.

(cheerful music) - We're just so happy that it all came together.

It has been a year and a half of planning.

And people are using this space exactly as we had intended.

- [Jordan] This is, like, what the neighborhood has needed for a long time.

It's been incredible, it's been an honor.

- My hope is that this space will become a permanent park and that this asphalt will be replaced by more naturescape and green space.

(cheerful music) (cheerful music continues) - 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.

(cheerful music) (cheerful music continues) (cheerful music continues) (cheerful music continues) (cheerful music continues) (cheerful 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.