(upbeat music) - In this edition of WLIW Arts Beat, an inspiring writing conference.

To the kids in my area, it was a huge, huge deal for them to go and to meet other kids and to meet the authors.

Watches full of style.

Looking at people's wrist is an obsession of mine.

It can be present day, it can be movies.

It really doesn't matter.

- A memorial that brings people together.

- I hope that it serves as a sacred ground for healing, for life.

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.

StoryCon is the largest writing conference in the state of Utah, and for the first time, students from Delta Middle School were in attendance.

In this segment, we hear more about their experience and all that they learned at this impactful event.

[music] We heard about StoryCon from the high school.

We had never done it before.

So once I learned more about it, I realized it would be like the ultimate experience for those kids in our school that were passionate about writing and reading.

So we learned more about it from Heather Clark.

She kind of did like a presentation for us and we decided to go.

And it was amazing.

Like the kids just loved it.

I was really excited about StoryCon, but I wasn't sure we had it in our budget, and I wasn't sure if the students could afford to go.

We live in a really rural area, and it's not close to us.

So I heard about the scholarship program, and we were kind of late to the game.

We didn't know about it until a little bit later on, so the deadline was coming up.

So I talked to the English teachers, and we picked our students, and we really worked hard to get those scholarships.

The students did all the work.

They wrote essays about why StoryCon would be a great experience for them, and it was really fun to see them get excited about it and work hard to get their own scholarships.

For me specifically, I'm a librarian, so I'm always trying to connect kids with the book that's best for them.

And it's important to get to know the students and to, as you get to know them, find those books that will inspire them.

And the books that inspire kids are books where they can connect with the character or they can feel like the character's gone through things that they've gone through.

And, or that the character's struggling with something they've struggled with.

So my job as a librarian is to kind of, and it's kind of magical, you just connect the students with those books that are going to change things for them and get them passionate about reading.

But it's the language arts teacher who really connects them with the writing aspect of it.

So I think we both kind of work on that wave, both kind of work on that as far as inspiring the kids.

StoryCon was amazing.

It was so much fun.

Everybody treated everybody so awesome.

It was just, it felt really just friendly for everybody to get together.

Probably the bones of storytelling and the lies and spies, it just felt really grounded.

It's the things that you don't think about in writing but are very prevalent in real life and it just felt really obvious but also not at the same time.

I thought the experience was educational and fun because we got to learn a lot of elements about writing that we didn't know how to implement into our stories and I really liked being able to learn more about one of my passions with like friends and family.

I really liked the horror session because a lot of my stories incorporate like horror or suspense and I would be able to like get the premise but I wouldn't be able to make the story itself scary and so learning how to lengthen the sentences and add suspense really helped me a lot.

I think students would like and should share stories that shows their interests and their creativeness.

My experience at StoryCon was, it was amazing.

You don't get to do this every day, you know.

I really liked all the sessions and the keynote speakers.

I think those were really impactful and I guess for me, if I'd like to become an author, they were really important.

I think other students, if they would like to, they should share stories from their personal lives, maybe a little fictitious or exaggerated, but still, because getting other students to see what you are feeling or doing, that can get a weight off their shoulders if they're struggling or thinking the same things.

I think StoryCon was amazing and that's something I will remember for the rest of my life.

So after StoryCon there were lots of students, even on the bus ride home, that had their notebooks out and were just writing, writing, writing.

And it was really fun to see them, I mean, shout out to each other, "Listen to this paragraph," or "Listen to this.

Do you think, what do you think about this character?"

And yeah, it really created a passion in them to, you know, tap into that creativity.

They've continued writing and they'll come in and show me their work and I mean it's great.

It's awesome.

I'm just really grateful that my students were able to go.

We would not be able to have done this without the scholarships and the people that donated to make those scholarships happen.

I know it doesn't seem like a lot, but to the kids in my area, it was a huge, huge deal for them to go and to meet other kids and to meet the authors.

They were so excited to meet the authors and it just made a huge impact on them.

For more information go to StoryCon.org.

And now the artist quote of the week.

[music] Randy D. Williams loves watches.

So much so, he founded his own watch company, Talley &Twine.

Made of the finest raw materials, each timepiece is a work of art that leaves buyers coming back for more.

We travel to Portsmouth, Virginia to learn more.

[MUSIC] ♪ Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping ♪ ♪ Into the future ♪ >> Talley and Twine started about 2014.

As an entrepreneur, the thing I get the most fulfillment from is creating.

Back in 2008, I was in a bad state financially.

I had just had my car repossessed and two of my investment properties, including the one I lived in, were in foreclosure.

So I was having a conversation with my cousin who lived in Chesapeake, Virginia.

I was in Atlanta.

And she said, "You know what?

Why don't you just come and stay with us for a while?

We got an extra bedroom."

And I took her up on the offer because I was clearly about to be homeless.

And I stayed because I realized that Hampton Roads had a lot to offer for me.

I met my wife and I started a business here.

I got my first watch during my senior year in high school on a trip to the Bahamas, a cruise.

Bought it for $40.

It was a guest watch and I just fell in love with it.

So for birthday and Christmas, my go-to-gift was a watch.

One day, I was on my lunch break at work at my last job.

I was talking to my wife and I asked her, "What do you think about me starting my own watch company?"

I couldn't find watches in the price point that I wanted.

I couldn't find the quality that I wanted or the design that I wanted.

And as a creative person, I just began to sketch out the things that I would want on a watch that I wanted to wear.

And that's how Talley & Twine was born.

Once I figured that I had a design that I would like to wear, then I began my research process.

So I got on Google and I realized that the next step for me was bringing the watch to life.

So bringing some real artists.

So I hired someone online to create a graphic design of the watch.

And then from there, I hired somebody to create a 3D model of the watch with the specifications, the size, the detail, the materials that will be used.

I use that 3D model and I gave that to manufacturers and began to get samples.

Talley & Twine is actually an intersection here in Virginia, it's in Portsmouth, and it is near the location where my wife and I purchased our first home.

We became homeowners and got our first taste of the American dream, and it was significant to us personally.

I felt that it could represent just the change that occurs in our lives, and the fact that we don't have to finish the way that we started.

As we've grown, I no longer sketch the watches myself.

We start with an inspiration board.

This is a model that is not released yet.

I pulled together some images that kind of speak to how we ultimately want it to look.

And then I give the direction for the design of the rover here.

I only feature the number seven on our watches.

So I want to build around this constellation cluster called the Seven Sisters and incorporate that into the dial of the watch to have a celestial themed design.

So I'll give the designer this and then they'll in turn give me back some examples and then we can tweak it from there.

This is just the various pieces that we need for assembly.

We assemble based on what that customer wants.

So we received orders this year from both Macy's and Nordstrom.

But overall I think we want to continue to keep that relationship with our customers and sell directly on our website so that we can reach back out to them and really bring them into what we call the Italian Twine family.

We started with our leather band watches, but now we have leather bands, metal band collection, and we also have canvas collection, which is our more casual style.

So I would like to say that we have watches for everything that you're doing in life.

We have about 125 skews.

No two days are the same.

It involves some form of overseeing content creation.

As a digital first brand, our content is the most important aspect of what we do.

So that's some type of photo shoot, video shoot, and coordinating that with our social media staff.

Also, you know, checking the sales for the day.

Like, how are we doing?

Are we slow?

Or do we need to get some type of promotion?

Taking a look at the ads, how much are we spending on advertisements?

A bunch of meetings and phone calls.

Who's wearing Talley & Twine?

A little bit of everybody.

[MUSIC] The most recent incident that comes to mind was that the new mayor of Atlanta chose to wear Italian twine during his inauguration and his swearing in ceremony.

He's putting his hand on the Bible, he has Italian twine watch on for you know one of my favorite cities.

Looking at people's wrist is an obsession of mine.

It can be present day, it can be movies, it really doesn't matter because to me I want to see how it fits, why did you choose this design and also trends I want to see what are people wearing, why are they wearing this and where are they going when they have this on.

This is a collaboration that we did with Tuskegee Airmen Association.

It's an officially licensed product.

We reached out to them probably last year and we've been in development for a few months after that and we finally dropped it this year.

Sold out twice already.

It just features the P-51 bomber flown by the Red Tails during the war.

And then it also has the red buttons to signify the Red Tails.

And on the back of the watch, you got custom engraving with the Tuskegee Airmen logo as well.

My former roommate from college and I are business partners.

In about 2019, he came on board as a partner.

He left his corporate job, but we also used to be roommates at Albany State University in Georgia.

We decided to do a $10,000 business scholarship, starting at Albany State, but also going nationally to other HBCUs for students who are interested in entrepreneurship and business.

♪♪ >> We've been extremely blessed.

Starting out with nothing, and last year, we did $2.6 million in revenue.

We're able to sell products nationally and internationally.

It's been a very rewarding experience.

♪♪ To see more watches, check out talleyandtwine.com.

Now, here's a look at this month's fun fact.

[MUSIC] On August 4th, 2019, a mass shooting occurred in the Oregon District of Dayton, Ohio.

In response, four local artists came together to create a public art memorial for those affected by the tragedy.

And with the help of the community, their vision was realized.

In 2024, the memorial was completed.

Here's the story.

Well, it was a tragic night.

And the first thing we thought was, "How can this happen here?"

A young man opened fire in the Oregon District.

He killed nine people and injured dozens more in 34 seconds.

In that moment, everything changed for the worse.

As I watched the shooter walk down the side of the building, fully armored, as he entered onto the curve, he just started shooting.

So I'm like, "This cannot be real."

He walked where we was at.

Me and him was face-to-face as he had the gun, as my father was right here.

My father was shot five times, and not one of those bullets hit me.

Never knew that would have been my last night with my father.

I know that many of us are hurting right now and are uncertain of where we go from here.

Nan Whaley, who was mayor at that time, she pulled a few of us together and said, "We need to do a memorial, not to mark the tragedy, but to help heal our community."

And we felt like we needed to do a national search because we wanted to get the best that we could.

I knew that being community-based is that it's going to take some special talent to put this together.

Terry called me.

He had a vision of a way we could contribute to healing.

And being an artist that believes in front-facing work to serve community, he was talking my language.

I had worked with Terry and Sierra separately on different projects and they are amazing artists and they also are community artists and so I felt like we aligned in our overall artistic mission.

As we started on the project I brought to the team's attention that I really do think that we should add James Pate.

And from the moment we met with him he jumped right in and began to contribute to the process.

He's got a unique outlook and history and understanding of the local culture, much as anybody.

I was sort of like, what was it, Ringo, the drummer that came to the Beatles after they was, yes, I was like Ringo Starr.

Yeah, I wasn't the original drummer.

Out of 61 applications and a national call for art, which included designers, architects, public art firms, our winning design is awarded to these four Daytonians.

So they are Terry Welker, Jess McMillan, Sierra Leone, and James Pate.

Thank you.

So I felt like we had the dream team.

We're all very different from each other, but we all love and respect each other as well.

We each bring something different to the table creatively.

My part was to lead the mosaic that the community would create.

We modified the seed of life to represent nine seed shapes for each of the victims, as it is a symbol that represents all life and death as a cycle and as an idea that there's more than just us.

We begin by taking two inch by two inch ceramic tiles and breaking them into three or four pieces but the tiles get put back together so it's when you think about the analogy of a broken community being put back together it's like sometimes we get broken but we can get fixed.

Having the mosaic events where we have over 5,000 people participate created that bonding sharing opportunity.

In the end it's not just for artists it's for artists in 10,000 hands.

The message I was sending if you lost anybody to violence come and place a tile down in honor of your loved one because I didn't want it to make this seem that it was just about us.

I had people that came from all over the state of Ohio some from out of state to come and place a piece in honor of their loved one and just in the support of the families.

While we were doing it we had to take it one day at a time.

It taught me more about grief than I've ever known and how grief is the universal language.

From the moment we're born we experience loss.

It really is a glue that binds us all together.

My work came in with interviewing families.

They were quite grateful that we were all present at some of those sessions, that they could talk to us and see us.

They could see that we cared and that we remembered because that was the one thing they said, "It seems like people will forget.

They'll forget our loved ones.

They'll forget.

They won't remember."

And that's why my piece was entitled "Remember to See."

For them, that was their word.

They said over and over.

The bench itself, we call the unity bench.

Instead of having a number of individual benches, this was one bench that we all sit together on.

The unity bench really became a key element.

- The feature component of the memorial is nine growing seed-shaped structures that represent the nine people who were killed that morning.

And all together, when it comes together, it took on a different appearance.

It looks like an eternal flame to me now.

Today is the fifth anniversary of the tragic event that is burned in our hearts and minds.

And so it is only fitting that today we dedicate this sacred space.

At the unveiling for me, to just see the parents, the relatives, did they have peace?

And was this a place that they would come to and sit and remember their loved ones?

And also for our survivors, did they feel seen?

It's been five years.

Five years, that's a long time to hold something and bring it across the finish line for peace and healing.

I kept saying that this marks the end of the process, but I soon realized the completion of the memorial was just the beginning.

The memorial to me, it shows the resilience of Dayton, Ohio.

I hope that it serves as a sacred ground for healing, for life, and I hope that people love it and cherish it.

There's a lot to discover.

All the symbols, all the words that are in the mosaic, the poetry that's engraved in the steel rings, and knowing that there's 5,000 people that did it.

My big hope is that it causes people to pause and think, what can I do to change the world moving forward with a tragic event like this?

to know that it's possible to move on and make your life better.

We can reclaim our joy and our happiness.

Find out more at 8-4memorial.com And here's a look at this week's Art History.

♪ 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.

♪ Funding for WLIW Artsbeat was made possible by viewers like you.

Thank you.

[MUSIC]