- [Announcer] Funding for "The Art Show" is made possible by the Rockwern Charitable Foundation, the L&L Nippert Charitable Foundation, Montgomery County, the Josephine S Russell Charitable Trust, The Virginia W Kettering Foundation, the Wohlgemuth Herschede Foundation.

Additional funding provided by and viewers like you.

Thank you.

- In this edition of "The Art Show," the art of tattoo.

(cheerful music) Creating visual statements, (cheerful music) and a museum filled with fashion, (cheerful music) it's all ahead on this edition of "The Art Show."

(cheerful music) (cheerful music continues) (cheerful music continues) Hi, I am Rodney Veal, and welcome to "The Art Show," where each week, we provide access to local, regional, and national artists and arts organizations.

Located in the St.

Anne's Hill Historic District, St.

Anne's Tattoo strives to create a welcoming and laid-back atmosphere for their clients.

The artists who work there collaborate with clients to create custom, one-of-a-kind works of art.

Join us as we step inside the shop where the clients are the canvas.

(cheerful music) - I'm from Los Angeles, California.

I've been tattooing professionally for about almost 10 years now.

I had the amazing opportunity to move to Dayton about four years ago.

And I felt like it was time for me to open up my own shop.

My name's Alberto Carranza, and I own and operate St.

Anne's Tattoo.

When I found this location, it kind of all just clicked.

The area itself is historic.

This building alone, it's from the 1800s.

I love the history of St.

Anne's, which is why I chose to name it St.

Anne's Tattoo.

So my preference and style, for sure, would be black and gray.

Anything black and gray, I love to do.

I love photorealism.

I remember, when I was a kid, I was drawing a lot of portraits and stuff like that, so that's how I kind of got into the black and gray and realistic side of tattooing.

I'm gonna be doing three swords, which, again, is a little bit of a religious piece, and it's a black and gray piece that I'm gonna be doing on his chest.

- My name is Erin.

I've been living in Dayton since I was six years old.

I've always had an interest in art.

I went to our very own Stivers School For The Arts.

And tattooing was always super appealing to me.

Just the idea that you get to put art on somebody permanently was just so exciting.

I love interacting with people, and I love creating art.

So this was really like the best of both worlds for me.

I have a background in painting.

So originally, when I got into tattooing, color realism was super interesting to me.

Color realism, it's like painting.

I was like, "That's insane that you could paint permanently on somebody."

A lot of times, what happens is, I'll have a client send me inspiration.

Sometimes clients will just straight out send me what they literally want, and I'll work that design into a tattooable piece.

So that's kind of where that collaborative effort comes in as well, kind of like working with the clients to understand like what's gonna look best long term, what's gonna heal correctly, redrawing things, so they will work in a tattoo media.

So that can be kind of that collaborative effort with people.

I have been doing a lot of like ceramic and gold pieces.

They always kind of feel like an illusion tattoo, basically just making something look real on the skin, making it look shiny is like my favorite thing to do.

We're gonna be doing a porcelain bunny.

Super cute.

I'm super excited.

- My name is Deville.

I was born and raised here, and I've been tattooing for almost four years now.

I was a line cook during the pandemic.

And once everything shut down, all the restaurants shut down, I was laid off, and I was like, "Wow, I am 20 years old.

I have no skills.

I need to figure out something to do."

I knew I could draw, and I went to my girlfriend.

And out of the blue, I told her, "I'm gonna be a tattoo artist," and she looked at me like I was crazy.

And then she was like, "Okay, well, you need to start drawing."

When I first started tattooing, I really thought it was like bikers and like scary guys.

It's for everybody.

I tattoo soccer moms.

I tattoo college students.

Tattooing really is for everybody.

It's a way for you to reclaim your body and take back, you know, things you might not like about yourself and love your body again.

I do a style called neo-traditional.

It is basically, if you've ever seen the old-school sailor tattoos, they're usually one line weight, three colors max, usually primary colors.

Neo-traditional takes that and just explodes it.

It goes much farther with it.

I enjoy doing anything with comic book characters, anime, animals, lady faces.

I think they are the prettiest thing to tattoo.

- I'd always been a really creative person, but that's not something I ever considered like career-wise until I got my first ink.

I just thought it was so cool.

So yeah, I just started drawing all the time.

I primarily do fine line tatoos, a lot of very whimsy, feminine-like creatures, botanicals.

Most of the people I tattoo are women.

I think they're more drawn to more delicate stuff.

The needles, they're very thin.

It's a lot of really fine details.

It is newer, I guess, to the industry, but it's been around for at least 20 years.

I think it's just becoming a lot more popular.

There's a lot more artists that are willing to do fine line tattoos because they're starting to see how they heal.

- I'd like for you to come in and be as comfortable as possible.

When you come in here, I like you to feel like you're at home.

Whatever you need, I provide for you.

Mi casa es su casa.

If you are comfortable, then I'm comfortable.

The tattoo culture in Dayton is very, very diverse and very, very deep.

The longer I live in Dayton, the more I realize that Dayton is a little cultural hub for everything.

Growing up, if I have an interest in something, for some reason, there's something that tracks it back to Dayton, and especially tattooing.

We have artists in Dayton that are world-famous.

This might be a little controversial, Dayton is a better hub for tattooing than Cincinnati or Columbus.

There are world renowned artist here.

- I think what excites me is every tattoo is different, every client is different.

I love researching designs.

It's always kind of exciting, because everything is already been done, but not exactly, I mean, in your style.

So doing things in your own style makes it completely different, especially for your client.

It's almost like a personal kind of thing for me.

- When you finish that tattoo, and that person goes and looks in the mirror for the first time, and you can just like see and feel that excitement is like the best feeling in the world.

For a lot of people, tattooing is therapy.

So when I get to be here, create that piece, and at the end, you just see like how happy they are, is like, oh, it's the cherry on top for me.

- The most rewarding part is just being a business owner.

My father was a business owner around my age as well.

So being able to have keys to a building that I own has just been a dream come true, yeah.

- There's this amazing historical district where so much history has happened.

Stivers High School, my father went to that school the first day it was desegregated.

There's so much cultural through-line, and we're all building off of each other's cultural experiences.

- [Erin] Dayton is an incredible city.

I really do tell people like when they get to Ohio, like, "You have to check out Dayton."

We really are a hidden gem, I feel like, in the Midwest.

I've done a lot of things around the city with art.

So to get to tattoo here now and continue that legacy for myself.

It just feels really fulfilling.

- The most rewarding part as a tattoo artist for me is giving people their bodies back.

I've covered up stretch marks, self-harm scars, even just like, "Hey, man, I might just not like the way my bicep looks."

This is your life.

You have complete and total control over it.

You get to customize how you look.

I've had clients who, after I finish tattooing, they're crying.

They're giving me a hug and saying, "Oh my God.

I feel totally different."

I get to be so many different people's person that they look forward to coming to, they look forward to coming and seeing me, and they get to leave with a great piece of art.

I can't ask for anything better.

I've done so many different jobs.

I get to come here and draw on people for a living.

There's nothing cooler than that.

(hopeful music) - If you'd like to learn more about this or any other story on today's show, visit us online at cetconnect.org or thinktv.org.

Cincinnati-based artist Michael Coppage creates work that sits at the intersection of history, culture, and personal reflection.

Through layers of texture and form, his pieces invite us to slow down and to engage with stories that are both intimate and universal.

Let's sit down with Michael and explore the creative journey that continues to shape his evolving body of work.

- It wasn't until I started getting terrible grades in school and being punished, you know?

And back then meant being in your room, no TV.

So I started drawing, I picked up drawing, and realized it was something that I liked.

That led to choosing art as a major in high school and getting a scholarship, and going on to college.

Chicago had a huge impact on my becoming an artist.

Art was the safest space to be in.

When I was growing up, gang violence in Chicago was at an all-time high.

Back then, everyone had to make a choice, you know, to be or not to be in.

And risk came with both choices.

And I was fortunate enough to find like hip hop, you know.

And hip hop kind of is partly responsible for creating this really healthy third space where I could be part of a gang in the form of a graffiti crew, a break dancing crew, a rapping crew.

They put me in this place where, you know, I shared my sketchbooks with people who also like sketching.

And it was like this space that opened up for me because I really didn't like the two options I thought I had.

And all of the things that come with the culture, that I learned different methods of self-expression.

And I think that of those methods now kind of constitute my artistic practice.

The transition from Chicago and doing art in high school, to Memphis, where I went to undergrad, and learning more about materials and techniques, just expanded my vocabulary, my creative vocabulary, you know?

And I knew how to rap, I knew how to break, I knew how to do graffiti.

Okay, let's throw some pots.

Let's learn how to shoot some photographs.

Let's learn how to make some prints.

Let's learn how to woodwork.

And so to me, that just kind of opened up this world of creative solutions to ideas.

I had a terrible injury as an undergrad student, where I sliced a tendon in my thumb with a wood-cutting gouge.

So after I declared my major as sculpture, I couldn't make, quote, unquote, "sculpture."

So I had to figure out a way to be a sculptor in consideration of the reconstructive surgery I just had to have mid-semester.

So my teacher just walked up to me one day, and he said, "Hey, try to use this."

And he handed me a wad of linoleum, and it was cutting strips, and I asked him what I was supposed to do with, and he says, "Oh, just weave a basket or something."

And he showed me a couple of things.

I kind of looked at it as a physical therapy of sorts.

It just helped me understand what I could do with more materials, because I never was able to define myself as a sculptor or a photographer or a painter.

It freed me from having to choose.

Instead, I just kind of chose them all.

A lot of my work is inspired from what I hear people say, from language that people use.

I take a little bit more time to investigate how they make me feel, what they mean to me, and how I think that contributes to maybe some of the problems that we have within society when it comes to this country's relationship to its Black citizens.

I really just mind my real life, my real life experience for things that create the sort of discomfort that my work is alluding to.

And I figure out a really clever, simple way to deliver that, to make it palatable for a viewer.

This work that I'm making cuts through maybe some of the conceptual fluff and just get to the heart of it, because it's really important for me.

And hopefully, it communicates with some experience they've also had in their life.

I think a lot of folks experience conceptual work, and are left with a bad taste in their mouth, because sometimes it's too cerebral, it's too abstracted.

(dramatic music) How do I thread the needle of making really strong conceptual work, where I can get the kind of institutional collaboration and visibility that I need to advance my career, while, at the same time, not leaving behind the experiences and the people who helped make a career possible to begin with?

(cheerful music) So in 2025, I was selected to be the artist-in-residence at the Lloyd Library and Museum, which is a botanical research and scientific library.

I decided that I was going to make a book titled "The Green Book," after the Black "Negro Motorist Green Book."

That book was a book that helped Black people access recreation and leisure safely.

There's the external life that many people experience, but there's this internal life, this part of our experience that we don't share, that we kind of hold closer, because it happens in sacred spaces.

I'm visually transcribing the poetry using my family's archive and the Lloyd's archive to produce a book about this life that we experience that we don't talk about very much in the arts.

Cincinnati has been a blessing in disguise.

There's so many resources here for ideas for artworks, for films, for all sorts of things.

And I think that living here was probably the best thing to happen for my career.

(cheerful music) I started my professional practice in Cincinnati, and it's helped me be extremely strategic.

Cincinnati is so close to so many places, from Detroit to Nashville, to Memphis, to St.

Louis and Indianapolis.

I mean, even Canada is within, you know, less than an eight-hour drive.

So there are 30, 40 places I can reach just by living here that help, you know, expand my regional voice and my national voice.

So it's a really great location to be based.

And I mean, if Dave Chappelle can do it, then, you know, why can't I?

(laughs) (horn blaring) - You may have heard about Kent State University's School of Fashion.

It was voted one of the best in the country by "Vogue" magazine.

But what you may not know is that there is a museum right next door that houses a massive collection of clothing, textiles, and decorative arts that span centuries.

Let's take a trip up to Kent to explore the museum and some of the many treasures it plays home to.

(cheerful music) (cheerful music continues) - Clothing tells stories.

And fashion is also one of the most accessible art forms because we all engage in it.

(cheerful music) And it tells stories about who we are and where we live.

And the collection, the museum collection does exactly the same thing.

(cheerful music) This museum is a world-class museum on a public university campus, and I love both of those aspects very deeply, but it's not very well-known, either on this campus or within the broader arts and culture community in Northeast Ohio.

And really, my goal is to take the hidden out of hidden gem.

(cheerful music) The galleries and the objects and the garments that visitors see is only a fraction (laughs) of our collection.

(cheerful music) Our collection is made up of 30,000 objects, of which I myself have only so far seen a fraction.

Our oldest objects are textiles from the Byzantine period, and then we have garments kind of all throughout every century, all the way through present day.

And so it's a really fun journey of discovery.

(cheerful music) - The Fashion Timeline is actually our permanent exhibition here at the KSU Museum.

These are historic garments.

It goes from the 18th century, and then it goes basically decade by decade, up to the present day.

So you can see how fashion's changed, but also, with the information on the walls, you contextualize what was going on politically, socially, culturally, artistically, technologically at the same time.

So you can see how changes that were going on in society really shaped the way people dressed.

- No matter how many times I say it, I always get someone saying, "But where did you get all this from?"

(laughs) And I always say, "Our basement."

(laughs) Not exactly true, but from our collection.

So we kind of, we hold our collection both in-house.

We also have off-site storage for the museum on campus.

(dramatic music) - Here we are in first-floor storage.

The museum has four floors of storage, from the basement on up to third floor.

And here is where we store all of our designer wear.

And it's organized alphabetically.

And we have about 1600 garments in this space.

I have locations for everything.

I know what's in every cabinet.

And everything's tagged, this is how we keep track of everything, it has its inventory number, and then that associates it back to the object record.

So I'm able to put my hands on, or my gloved hands, on anything (laughs) at a moment's notice.

- People are always asking me what my favorite piece is.

And so it's by a designer called Mila Schön, who is actually an Italian designer from the 1960s.

It's kind of a minimalist and understated, but the closer you look at it, the more you realize how much it has going on.

So it has these beautiful diagonal lines on it, and they're stitched into the piece.

And so it goes front and back.

You can see it's sort of a double-faced wool.

There's different ways that I appreciate pieces.

There's some pieces that I think have a lot of historical significance or really speak to their era, but this one is the one that I could imagine wearing, which I'm absolutely not allowed to do.

But if I could, (laughs) if something disappears, Joanne, this one.

(staff chattering) - (laughs) We have Queen Victoria's underwear.

I'm sure she's rolling in her grave, knowing that we've shown it.

And there're her bloomers, some chemises, and some lovely silk stockings, and they all have the royal crest on it, so you know it's Queen Victoria's.

(cheerful music) - This is really our sort of showstopper piece that we have at the museum.

So the pink dress is a 1949 Dior dress that was called Venus.

So he gave some of the pieces in his collections names.

And so this one was known as Venus.

And this particular dress belonged to Marlene Dietrich.

(cheerful music) - This is one of my favorite Dior pieces.

It's a dress, but it is two pieces, a bodice and the skirt.

So this gets tucked in here, but it is just a beautiful straight skirt with this incredible pleating.

There are just so many details.

It's a very subtle piece, but it has a lot of impact.

It's one I show students.

And they, as I like to say, they bring the energy, and I'm able to impart to them, you know, the knowledge of the job.

I've been lucky that I've had so many students that have wanted to go on to this type of work.

And so I feel like I'm able to prepare them for that, by giving them the hands-on working experience of what it is to work in a collection and what we're thinking about.

(cheerful music) - I was like, "Oh my God," like, they just have these beautiful doors right upon entry.

And then you come in, there's a grand staircase, you could go up either side.

- And I fell in love with what this museum has to offer.

- I'm gonna come back every day, not every day, but like every week.

(laughs) - Like you'll come out of a class, and there's a project, and you're like, "I don't even know where to start with it."

And then you could just be like, "Huh, just take a walk through the museum before I go home and find some inspiration."

- Yeah.

- So it's nice to have that tool.

- And just to think that that is just a walk away from my classroom, it's really special, it really is.

- One thing I always say is that fashion is not just a designer dress.

And great fashion doesn't only exist on the runways in Paris and New York, that great fashion is everywhere, and it lives in our ordinary lives.

And I really hope that the museum, over time, can capture that vision through its exhibitions, through its programs, so that our visitors and our students can see themselves in the museum.

(cheerful music) (cheerful music) - 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) (cheerful music continues) (cheerful music continues) - [Announcer] Funding for "The Art Show" is made possible by the Rockwern Charitable Foundation, the L&L Nippert Charitable Foundation, Montgomery County, the Josephine S Russell Charitable Trust, The Virginia W Kettering 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.