[MUSIC] In this edition of WLIW Artsbeat, [MUSIC] The growth of a creative.

The most rewarding thing is that every day is so different for me.

I think the most exciting part is when you're learning something new.

They're like, wow, I did that.

That's always the fun part.

Cookbooks throughout history.

Do you want to write down our favorite recipes?

Let's do it!

The exhibit was really an opportunity to share this great resource and make it more widely known and available.

Spreading joy through artistic expression.

Making people happy through entertainment.

That's really it.

Really.

When it gets down to it.

I just want the world to be a better place.

It's all ahead in this edition of WLIW Artsbeat.

Funding for WLIW Artsbeat is made possible by viewers like you.

Thank you.

Welcome to WLIW Artsbeat.

I'm Diane Masciale.

For Alexis Rivera Luna, Bob Ross is a big source of inspiration.

By watching his show, she developed the confidence to pursue art.

And now, she's a working artist.

Here's her story.

I've always had a love of nature, and I think I put a lot of that passion into my arts.

I went to University of Wisconsin Madison for zoology, conservation Biology, and environmental studies.

So I really love the animals, and I became a wildlife rehabilitator.

So I did that for 5 years at the Wisconsin Humane Society.

I started painting during the pandemic, watching the Bob Ross show.

(upbeat music) And I found out later that Bob Ross is actually a wildlife rebuilder too.

So he also took care of sick, injured, and orphaned animals.

One day I was watching Bob Ross and I thought, maybe I could do this.

And I just started painting along with him.

It gave me a lot of confidence and courage that I could do anything I set my mind to.

(upbeat music) The ideas come from nature a lot of the time.

So I spend a lot of time outside.

So whenever I'm out in nature, if I see like a beautiful sunset, I'll take a picture of it and then I'll try to incorporate those colors into my painting.

I'm constantly looking up at the sky, so sometimes I'll be surrounded by trees and take a picture and the perspective kind of gives me an idea of how I want to do the tree line.

But it also gives me an appreciation of nature.

When I'm trying to capture a scene, I feel like I'm really being observant out there as well.

I'm trying to be present when I'm in nature, trying to get different ideas and let them come to me.

So it definitely feels like it gave me appreciation and a peacefulness to my life.

(gentle music) I started just doing kind of the landscape stuff, but eventually I wanted to put a little bit more of myself into it.

I don't see myself represented in a lot of fine arts spaces or fine art shows.

So I started doing like silhouettes of women.

It felt really empowering for me as a woman and I really liked the idea of diversifying it.

Having different types of people so people can really see themselves in my work.

At first it was more so just I wanted to see myself, I wanted to see women and I felt empowered by the art that I was doing but I really wanted to have other people see themselves in my work.

I've meet so many people and they're always saying you know I can never do what you do I'm not an artist and I always tell them like everyone's an artist in their own way just because you don't feel like you can paint which Bob Ross always says everyone can paint But I do believe that everyone is an artist in their own way whether it's you know us playing a sport or cooking or watercolor there's ways of expression everywhere and as long as you keep it up and it makes you happy and you're passionate about it you can be an artist we all greatness inside of us and we're as tall as big as mountains and we're so full of color and life the abstract part of it like there are mountains with you within you almost like I guess everyone sees things differently when they look at their art or my art but for what for me when I see it it's like there are mountains within me and I think that's really cool.

I feel like I'm the most excited about my work when I'm trying something new.

I saw wood burning online once so I just bought a new tool and started to try it out.

I just thought it would be really cool and a different thing to try.

I'm always looking for new fun art projects.

So yeah, it was a bit of a process and a learning curve for me.

This is obviously a very different medium.

And at first I was like burning way too much and it looked horrible.

So I think like less pressure and just a lot of patience is needed for this one.

And it's cool with this tool.

I feel like I can use it different ways to make different textures and different styles of trees.

I tend to use this one the most because it's got a fine point to it, so it's really good for detail.

There's thicker ones that are flat, which is really good for shading.

I'll use that on the mountains to kind of cover a lot of space.

So, this one is really good for shading because it's flat and it covers a big area, so I'll use that for the mountain scenes here.

All this shading is nice.

Covers more area, I don't have to do all these tiny, tiny lines.

And then this is a textured one where it's just got the lines on there.

And I started doing the trees with it, but I think it just, it's too uniform, and I don't like how it looked, so I ended up using it for the water here, just to kind of give it some movement.

The most rewarding thing is that every day is so different for me.

I think the most exciting part is when I'm learning something new.

They're like, "Wow, I did that."

That's always the fun part.

With doing art, it really doesn't feel like work to me.

A lot of people say, "Don't you get tired of it?

Does it take the joy out of painting?"

But it doesn't feel like work.

I love going to art shows.

I think it's a great space to show off my art and meet new people who like my art and make me feel like I'm doing the right thing, I'm in the right spot.

I get to see a lot of the familiar faces come to a lot of the same art shows.

They get excited when they see me and they're like, "Oh, you've got new stuff and look at what you're doing now."

But all the other artists, I feel like we learn from each other, we boost each other up.

It's a really good space for artists and a way to express ourselves and show people what we can do.

Check out more of the artist's work at happyaccidentsbylex.com.

And now, the artist quote of the week.

[MUSIC] Up next, we take a trip to the Ohio State University Libraries in Columbus to get an inside look at the exhibition Essential Ingredients, Cookbooks as History.

Recognizing the culinary arts and the historical and cultural record that recipes contain, the exhibit celebrates over 200 years of American cookbooks.

Take a look.

We're here in the Thompson Gallery located within the Thompson Library at the Ohio State University.

With me is Jolie Braun, co-curator of this incredible exhibit.

Hi Jolie.

Hi Kate.

Thanks for having us.

Well, tell me about this collection and how it came to be.

Yes, thank you.

So "Essential Ingredients: Cookbooks as History" was really inspired by the fantastic collection of cookbooks we have here at The Ohio State University Libraries.

I'm a curator in the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, which is the special collections unit that houses more than 9,600 volumes of cookbooks.

So the exhibit was really an opportunity to share this great resource and make it more widely known and available to folks who would want to come in and see it.

I should also mention that "Essential Ingredients," the name, was inspired by a quote from Julia Child.

So we have this really lovely quote that you'll see when you walk into the gallery, where she talks about the importance of historical cookbooks and preserving and studying them.

And so this was a great opportunity to welcome attendees in and let them know kind of what we were thinking about cookbooks as more than just a collection of recipes, but thinking about them as historical objects.

That's wonderful.

I love that whole message.

So tell me a little bit about what we'll see today.

So the exhibit is arranged thematically and each case has a different topic.

The first few cases are really thinking very nationally or internationally about how cookbooks respond to or reflect major events throughout the country or throughout the world.

So we have a case on social movements that has a cookbook about temperance and another one about the suffrage movement.

There's a case about global crises that has cookbooks about World War I and II and the COVID-19 pandemic.

As you move through the gallery, the focus shifts a little bit and gets more specific and we think about cookbooks and the personal stories they can tell.

So there are cookbooks that tell you about local histories such as community cookbooks from various towns in Ohio.

And then there's also cookbooks that have been personalized in some way, whether it's by the author who has written a cookbook as a memoir or someone who owned the cookbook and made it sort of a unique object through their marginalia and notes.

That's amazing.

Just so many stories to be told with cookbooks at the center.

I see some familiar cookbooks in this case.

Can you tell me about what's in here?

Yes, so this is our iconic cookbooks case and as you noticed there are some familiar beloved titles that have gone through many editions over the years such as "The Joy of Cooking" and Betty Crocker but there are also some maybe lesser known cookbooks that are really significant to the history of the genre.

So one example is this book right here called "American Cookery" by Amelia Simmons.

It was first published in 1796.

Our edition is from 1815.

And one of the reasons it's significant is because it's considered the first American cookbook.

And the reason for that is it was the first published by an American for an American audience.

And it features indigenous ingredients such as cornmeal, pumpkin, cranberries, things like that.

- That's amazing.

What a great piece of history that kind of came from a cookbook.

That's fascinating.

Yes.

Well, I'm so excited to see more.

What's next for us?

I would love to turn you over to my co-curator, Beth, who's going to tell you a little bit more about some of the other items in this exhibit.

Wonderful.

I can't wait.

Thanks, Julie.

Hi, Beth.

Hi, Kate.

Thanks for showing me more of the exhibit.

Why don't you tell me the theme of this case?

This case is called Cookbooks and Global Foodways and it's really dedicated to showcase the ways in which American cooking and cookbooks have always been made up of foods and recipes from around the globe.

From indigenous American foods, from immigrants, diasporic people from Europe, from Asia, from Africa, from other parts of the Americas.

Wonderful.

I love that so many people are represented.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Do you have any favorites in here?

I really love all the cookbooks in this case.

It's hard to pick one.

It is hard to pick one.

Some of the ones that I particularly like are this one, "Aunt Babette's Cookbooks," which is really the first cookbook that was dedicated to Jewish foods.

It's published in Cincinnati in 1886 and it's clearly marketed towards Jewish Americans, but it's also very assimilationist.

We know that it's associated with the beginnings of the reform movement and it's just a fascinating book.

I bet.

Another one of my favorites is the beautiful one over there, Chinese Japanese cookbook, which is understood as being one of the first both Chinese and Japanese cookbooks published in the United States.

The authors are two sisters.

They and another, the third sister are understood as being the three of the most important Chinese American authors in the United States.

That's incredible.

Look at that gorgeous cover art.

I know, I also love the cover.

It's stunning.

Yeah, it's beautiful.

Wow.

But probably the one that I most I've spent the most time leafing through is this, the National Cookery book, which is actually created by Ben Franklin's great granddaughter.

Oh, you're kidding.

In 1876.

And she was organizing the Women's Pavilion for the Centennial Exhibition and created this cookbook, which was, as is the whole case, designed to showcase how American cooking comes from all sorts of different cultures.

So there are recipes for for kugel, for dolme, for sauerkraut, for risotto, from all over the world and there's a special section of it dedicated to indigenous American cooking where there are recipes for baked bear, boiled mud turtle, and many recipes for Indian corn.

That's incredible!

I would imagine with an American cookbook like that there might be a recipe for apple pie.

Oh yes there is.

In fact actually speaking of apple pies we have a whole wall dedicated to apple pies.

I can't wait to see it.

So when Jolie and I were planning the exhibit one of the things we really wanted to do was to showcase the evolution of recipes from the 18th century to the 21st century and we decided that the best way to do this was apple pie.

And so this wall has examples from apple pie recipes from as early as 1815 to the last one which is 1989 and that one right there is from the cook book that Jolie was talking about at the very beginning.

And this is the National Cookery Book apple pie recipe.

That is fascinating just to see the way that one simple recipe has changed over the years.

Yeah we like the fact that it changed but also there were obvious continuities as well.

The essence of apple pie remains the same.

Yeah exactly.

That's amazing I love the pie wall.

I see you might have an interactive station over here can you tell me about that?

One of the parts about cookbooks that is so interesting to us is that it's deeply personal and so we wanted to have a place where visitors could come and provide their own personal recipes, cookbooks that they wanted to recommend or that they loved, recipes that had been handed down from generations.

So it's a place to write this down and then put it on our cookboard so that we can have it for posterity.

I love that.

Let's check it out.

Okay.

Jolie is already there.

This is great.

Well Beth and Julie, thank you so much for showing me around this exhibit.

It makes me want to go home and bake an apple pie.

Do you want to write down our favorite recipes?

Let's do it!

[music] Discover more at library.osu.edu [music] Now here's a look at this month's fun fact.

[MUSIC] In this segment, we travel to Virginia to meet Cabana Black, a creative in every sense of the word.

From music to theater to fashion, Black looks to bring people together and spread love and joy.

>> When I realize that love is the key.

♪ People wanna talk about us ♪ ♪ People wanna lie on us ♪ ♪ Try to bring us down ♪ ♪ Tell us we can't be what we dream ♪ For me, growing up was very hard.

I thought I was worthless because I was talked about so bad for being too Black, for being too skinny, for the feminine mannerisms.

And I remember the first song that I sung, the people were crying and they were praising God.

And I was so in awe that something I did, did something for them that I was like, I gotta repeat this.

That's what drew me into entertaining.

♪ We are, we are, we are, we are, we are, we are ♪ - This first row, come right here.

Y'all gonna walk down, clap, and the second row, follow them.

So the first row would be here, and then the second row would be behind them.

So the play is "Aware, Where's My Christmas Tree?"

This is his third year.

It is a cross between Annie meets the Scrooge.

Well, Church, so you make me have control.

So you're going to be like... I wrote it because of my situation with my mother.

She passed right after Christmas, and it was a way for me to maybe hopefully get the feeling back.

And who are we talking about?

Shaq Gang!

Me, Shaq Gang!

And the Biggie!

Some people be like, "You're doing too much.

Why don't you just focus on this one thing and conquer this one thing?"

So it would bug me because I felt, you know, guilty for one.

I started feeling like, "Well, maybe I should slow down a little bit.

Maybe I should focus on one thing."

And then one day I woke up, I said, "Wait a minute.

My singing, my photography, my fashion, my writing, my creative directing, my hosting, my modeling, all those things are me and I need to use my gifts."

And that's when I realized I'm here to create.

I am a creative.

(upbeat music) - Well, we're at Downey Grove Cultural Arts Center and you know, Anderson Johnson, born in 1915, was a blues singer, a pastor, and an artist.

And he made his home a sanctuary, not just for the word, but for his music and for his art.

And he took things and he painted chairs and the front part of the doors, the houses, the frame, anything that could be painted.

I think it's just really cool that they would take his whole house, break it up and put it in a way that people can come and enjoy it.

I really related to him.

The energy of the room, his purpose.

It's almost like therapy.

Maybe this was his way of making him feel so good, you know?

You go through things in life and sometimes when you create something, it makes you smile.

That's how I feel about my music.

That's how I feel about writing.

That's how I feel about doing plays.

That's how I feel about when I model.

♪ Every day, every day, every day, people ♪ - This feels like me inside out.

Like, it seems like he just completely, if he went in, he took it all out and said, "Kibana."

And I think it's really amazing for me.

Like, in my house, there's vinyl all over the wall.

Like, there's vinyl everywhere because I love music and I try to surround myself with encouragement.

♪ We gotta let, we gotta let, we gotta let our ♪ ♪ colors, we gotta let, we gotta let our colors free ♪ That's it.

Oh, yes!

That's it, that's it.

Kebana is, he's consistent, but it's not like I have to stay in this box.

And I respect that a lot because a lot of artists aren't really interested in doing that.

The song is about not letting your color fade, but this is for everyone.

If I was Puerto Rican, if I was Indian, if I was white, it's basically saying don't let who you are culturally fade.

The things that each culture has to bring to the table that makes us America.

♪ I, won't let my color fade ♪ It really bothers me to the core that people don't like you because of your color.

It makes me super emotional because I feel like where does it come from?

You know, why does that exist?

Like why do we do that?

And for me, Michael Jackson and Prince and Tina Turner and Janis Joplin and the Beatles, all these people embody awareness, how to expand your mind, how to be more global.

And I just want to do my part.

Never get caught up in yourself.

Realize that this play, the purpose is to give love over hate.

And the goal is to get Mister Leehart back to love and to forget about hate.

♪ Hello sunshine ♪ ♪ Good night moonlight ♪ ♪ Rainbow promises ♪ ♪ Oh... ♪ Making people happy through entertainment, that's really it.

Really.

When it gets down to it.

I just want the world to be a better place.

I know it's so corny, but I really, really do.

I really do.

But I realize that love is the key.

That love is the key.

And I, I think it's time for a change.

With that being said, I'm not going to close the book with a yes.

[applause] ♪ I'm so happy ♪ ♪ I'm so happy ♪ ♪ Hello sun rays ♪ ♪ Goodbye cold days ♪ [music] And here's a look at this week's Art History.

[music] That wraps it up for this edition of WLIW Artsbeat.

Visit our webpage to watch more episodes of the show.

We hope to see you next time.

I'm Diane Masciale.

Thank you for watching.

[music] Funding for WLIW Artsbeat was made possible by viewers like you.

Thank you.

[MUSIC PLAYING]