Beetle Threatens Anishinabe’s Ash Trees

  • Emerald Ash borer is a type of beetle that is threatening black ash trees. (Photo courtesy of USFS)

American Indians have been making baskets from the wood
of black ash trees for hundreds of years. Now, they see that tradition threatened by a beetle. The emerald ash borer has killed millions of ash trees in Lower Michigan over the past few years, and Indian basket makers are preparing for the day when their grandchildren may no longer find black ash. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bob Allen
reports:

Transcript

American Indians have been making baskets from the wood of black ash trees
for hundreds of years. Now, they see that tradition threatened by a beetle. The
emerald ash borer has killed millions of ash trees in Lower Michigan over the
past few years, and Indian basket makers are preparing for the day when their
grandchildren may no longer find black ash. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Bob Allen reports:


(Sound of museum)


The Anishinabe believe the black ash tree is a gift to their people, and they say
its carried them through many hard times. The story of the baskets is part of a
display in the Ziibiwing Center at the Saginaw Chippewa Reservation in
central Michigan.


Judy Pamp is assistant director of the Center, and she remembers how
important baskets were when she was growing up.


“If we ate it was because there were baskets to sell or trade, and it went from
that being the thing that sustained us to where now it’s more of a an art and a rare art,
and that you do in limited quantities.”


Pamp comes from a long line of basket makers, and she’d like to pass on the
skills to her granddaughter, but she says the baskets aren’t the most
important thing… rather it’s a sense of connection among the generations.


“You know the whole family pulling together, the whole community pulling
together to help one another out… that everybody was important and
everybody had their role.”


Some family members may be good at one part of the basket making, and
there’s plenty of work to divvy up. First, there’s going into a swamp to find a
black ash tree, cut it down and haul it out.


(Sound of pounding)


Then, there’s peeling off the bark, and pounding the wood into strips, called
splints, for baskets. All that can take 25 hours of hand labor. Then, it’s
another 6 or 8 hours to weave a basket. Without the trees, basket makers worry
they may lose that closeness of working together.


The emerald ash borer isn’t on tribal lands yet, but it’s in
two neighboring counties. Scientists say it’s only a matter of time before the
beetle invades the reservation and wipes out the ash tree. The invasive pest got
to the U.S. in cargo shipped from Asia. Despite quarantines the bug continues to
spread because people move infested firewood, timber or landscape trees.


Deb McCullough is an entomologist at Michigan State University. She
concedes ash trees in Lower Michigan are goners.


“Took me a while to get my mind around that. You know we’re going to see
somewhere probably in the neighborhood of four hundred million ash trees in the forests
of lower Michigan that eventually are going to succumb to emerald ash borer
unless something really amazing happens in the next few years.”


McCullough says they’re looking for a way to help trees resist the insect, or a
predator to keep it in check, but it might be years before a solution is found.
So, the tribes are looking at their own ways to deal with the ash borer.


(Sound of splint pulling)


One idea is to harvest a whole bunch of black ash splints for baskets and freeze
them to use later. That would keep basket making going for a while.


(Sound of basket maker)


Another plan is to collect and save seeds from black ash trees.


Basket maker Renee Dillard says someday maybe trees can be replanted from
seed, but she says that means forty or fifty years before any wood is
harvestable, and she doesn’t think she’ll be around then to teach her
grandchildren how to choose the right tree and pound out the splints.


(Sound of pounding)


“As a people, we’re pretty resilient and we can adapt to change. It’s just that we’re
losing an important part of that whole black ash process, and I don’t want my great
grandchildren to just make baskets. They need to understand the whole process because
it’s done carefully and prayerfully.”


Dillard follows the old ways. She lays down tobacco as an offering of thanks for the tree,
and she believes this calls her ancestors to witness her use of the gift.


The Anishinabe don’t know why the emerald ash borer is taking their trees at
this time, but their tradition teaches for every hardship there will be an answer
and something to balance the loss.


For the GLRC, I’m Bob Allen.

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Ten Threats: Demand for Drinking Water Increasing

  • Water diversion is an increasing threat to the Great Lakes. As communities grow so does the demand. (Photo by Brandon Bankston)

We’re continuing the series, Ten Threats to the Great Lakes. Our field guide through the series is Lester Graham. He says our next report looks at where the demand for water will be greatest:

Transcript

We’re continuing the series Ten Threats to the Great Lakes. Our field
guide through the series is Lester Graham. He says our next report looks
at where the demand for water will be greatest.


Right around the Great Lakes is where there’s going to be more demand
for drinking water. Water officials say as cities and suburbs grow, so
does the need for water. Some towns very near the Great Lakes say they
need lake water right now, but in some cases they might not get it. The
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Christina Shockley reports:


People who live around the Great Lakes have long used the lakes’ water
for transportation, industry, and drinking water. Most of the water we
use, gets cleaned up and goes back in the lakes.


That’s because the Great Lakes basin is like a bowl. All the water used
by communities inside that bowl returns to the lakes in the form of
groundwater, storm water runoff, and treated wastewater, but recently, thirsty
communities just outside the basin—outside that bowl—have shown an
interest in Great Lakes water.


Dave Dempsey is a Great Lakes advisor to the environmental group
“Clean Water Action.”


“We are going to be seeing all along the fringe areas of the Great Lakes
basin all the way from New York state to Minnesota, communities that
are growing and have difficulty obtaining adequate water from nearby
streams or ground water.”


Treated water from those communities won’t naturally go back to the
basin. Treated wastewater and run-off from communities outside the
Great Lakes basin goes into the Mississippi River system, or rivers in the
east and finally the Atlantic Ocean.


The Great Lakes are not renewable. Anything that’s taken away has to be
returned. For example, when nature takes water through evaporation, it
returns it in the form of rain or melted snow. When cities take it away, it
has to be returned in the form of cleaned-up wastewater to maintain that
careful balance.


Dave Dempsey says the lakes are like a big giant savings account, and
we withdraw and replace only one percent each year.


“So, if we should ever begin to take more than one percent of that
volume on an annual basis for human use or other uses, we’ll begin to
draw them down permanently, we’ll be depleting the bank account.”


Some of the citiesthat want Great Lakes water are only a few miles from
the shoreline. One of the most unique water diversion requests might come
from the City of Waukesha, in southeastern Wisconsin. The city is just 20 miles
from Lake Michigan. Waukesha is close enough to smell the lake, but it
sits outside the Great Lakes basin. Waukesha needs to find another
water source because it’s current source – wells—are contaminated with
radium.


Dan Duchniak is Waukesha’s water manager. He says due to the city’s
unique geology, it’s already using Great Lakes water. He says it taps an
underground aquifer that eventually recharges Lake Michigan.


“Water that would be going to Lake Michigan is now coming from Lake
Michigan…. our aquifer is not contributing to the Great Lakes any more,
it’s pulling away from the Great Lakes.”


Officials from the eight Great Lakes states and Ontario and Quebec
recently approved a set of rules that will ultimately decide who can use
Great Lakes water. The new rules will allow Waukesha—and some
other communities just outside the basin—to request Great Lakes water,
and drafters say Waukesha will get “extra credit” if it can prove it’s
using Lake Michigan water now.


Environmentalists are still concerned that water taken from the Lakes be
returned directly to the Lakes, but some say even that could be harmful.


Art Brooks is a Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of
Wisconsin- Milwaukee. He says the water we put back still carries some
bi-products of human waste.


“No treatment plant gets 100 percent of the nutrients out of the water,
and domestic sewage has high concentrations of ammonia and
phosphates. Returning that directly to the lake could enhance the growth
of algae in the lake.”


That pollution could contribute to a growing problem of dead zones in
some areas of the Great Lakes. Brooks and environmentalists concede
that just one or two diversions would not harm the Great Lakes, but they
say one diversion could open the floodgates to several other requests, and
letting a lot of cities tap Great Lakes water could be damaging.


Derek Sheer of the environmental group “Clean Wisconsin” says some
out-of-basin communities have already been allowed to tap Great Lakes
water under the old rules.


“The area just outside of Cleveland–Akron, Ohio– has a diversion
outside of the Great Lakes basin, so they’re utilizing Great Lakes water
but they’re putting it back.”


There are several communities that take Great Lakes water, but they, too,
pump it back. The new water rules still need to be ok-ed by the legislature of
each Great Lakes state, and Congress. Since the rules are considered a
baseline, environmental interests throughout the region say they’ll lobby
for even stricter rules on diversions.


For the GLRC, I’m Christina Shockley..

Related Links

The Costs of Eagle Poaching

  • The Bald Eagle and the Golden Eagle are both protected by federal law. (Photo by Jeremy Henderson)

The eagle has long been treasured as a national symbol, but the bird is also prized by poachers. Pow-wow dancers, new age shamans, and European trophy collectors are paying top dollar on the black market for eagle parts. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brian Bull reports:

Transcript

Eagles have long been treasured as a national symbol, but the bird is also prized by poachers. Pow-wow dancers, New Age shamans, and European trophy collectors are paying top dollar on the black market for eagle parts. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brian Bull reports:


Eagle heads, feet, wings, and feathers are prized for costumes, artwork, and ceremonies. Some collectors are paying roughly a thousand dollars for a golden or bald eagle carcass.


Mary Jane Lavin is a special agent with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. She says the birds are protected by the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. Violators can land up to a year in jail and
pay a $100,000 penalty.


Lavin says a better way to get eagle parts is through a federal repository program. The program sends out carcasses and parts from eagles that have died in the wilderness or in zoos.


“The demand is greater than the supply, and there is a waiting list but we’re doing our best to make sure that we can provide those things, that were acquired and died naturally so that
people don’t have to feel that they need to go out and shoot eagles.”


Special permits for possessing and gathering feathers can also be given to those with government-issued Certificates of Indian Birth.


For the GLRC, I’m Brian Bull.

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Life as a Wood Boat Builder

  • In Everette Smith's three story barn, a replica of a 1910 era racing boat is taking shape. The wood boat's deck is Spanish cedar that will gleam once the boat is finished. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Some people dream of making things with their hands while they spend their days at the office shuffling papers. Others know from early on that they’re supposed to create with their hands. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham profiles a man who knew his art would be of wood and water:

Transcript

Some people dream of making things with their hands while they spend their days at the office shuffling papers. Others know from early on that they’re supposed to create with their hands. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham profiles a man who knew his art would be of wood and water:


(ambient sound)


At just about any large of expanse of water, you’re likely to find a boat owner who’s found an old wooden powerboat and restored it. The gleaming mahogany or cedar deck is so shiny it looks like plastic.


Here at the Antique Boat Museum in Clayton, New York, thousands of people visit every year, but especially when the antique boat owners gather to show off their craft. John MacLean is the Executive Director of the museum.


“These antique boats are extraordinary pieces of furniture. People would pay a fortune to have this kind of craftsmanship in their furniture in their houses. They have to be fabricated so well and the craftsmanship has to be so good because they have to be watertight.”


The wood powerboats were built from the beginning of the 20th century into the 1940’s. But there are a few wood boats that are not nearly that old. A handful of people are still building the boats. Some are replicas of old designs and some are new designs that look like they might have been built 75 years ago.


Everette Smith is among the contemporary boat builders. He started building boats in 1971… when almost no one was building them. He remembers thinking every step in the process seemed to be a major accomplishment.


“I had finished putting my first plank on. I was so proud of it. I pulled the clamps off and I stood back. And it just went ‘pshhkt’ – it sprung off in a bunch of fragments. So, by the time you really get done with it, you know you’ve accomplished something. It’s a pretty remarkable thing. I think the moment, though, is the moment you first get in it on the water. I mean that is a magic moment.”


Well, that kind of seems like an invitation.


(sound of boat starting up)


I asked if we could take one of his new, but old-looking boats – a long racing boat – out on the water.


“We’re in the Saint Lawrence River in the middle of the Thousand Islands just off Clayton, New York. We’re in a reproduction of a 1910 Lierre number boat designed by Charles Mauer. There were originally twenty of them built, so this is number twenty-one. Top speed’s about thirty-five. You know, it’s a smooth ride, but it’s not fast.”


Fast enough. Water splashes the skipper and passenger every time the racing boat hits a wave. Smith jokes about how the original boats quickly added some windshields. Not this one.


Smith says, as a kid, he was inspired by a great uncle who used to carve canoe paddles for the kids in the family. His grandfather and father taught them to maintain and varnish the wood boats that they had then, and his father used to buy boat kits for Smith and his brother to build.


“I am sort of aware of how the older generation might be looking down and thinking about what we’re doing, and there are times I’m really happy because I know that my Great-Uncle George and my grandfather would love the canoe stuff and the small boat stuff. I think they would really dig that.” (laughs)


And Smith’s contemporaries also dig it. Rebecca Hopfinger is curator of special events at the Antique Boat Museum. She says wood boat builders are admired for their craftsmanship, and their determination to pursue their art.


“Well, I think some of the people wish they were Everette. You know, I’ve heard so many guys come through the front doors of the museum and say, ‘Oh, when I have some more time, I’m just going to work in my shop and try and build a boat.’ And, you know, Everette lives it, breathes it every day. So, there’s maybe a little bit of jealousy in a sense, but there certainly is a desire to the work like Everette does.”


Everette Smith says building wood boats just came naturally in a way that a lot of people who came of age in the 1960’s embraced. Smith says he recently read Bob Dylan’s autobiography and it stirred some of the old feelings that lead him to his career.


“And I realized, reading his autobiography, that the wooden boat thing for me was just sort of a natural progression from that time. It was interest in something that was wholesome and demanding and interesting and useful, you know. And it all seems to fall right in place. It was ‘Of course.’ I didn’t have to think it over, ‘Well, am I going to do this?’ It was just like, this is obvious. This is what I want to do. This is what I got to do.”


And apparently, he’ll keep doing it. Because in his shop: nautical hardware, long boards of hardwood, and parts of salvaged antique boat motors – all seem to promise that Everette Smith will be putting a lot more gleaming wood boats on the water.


For the GLRC, this is Lester Graham.

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Artist Teaches Kids Environmental Awareness

  • Gijsbert van Frankenhuysen helps kids not only appreciate art, but nature as well. (Photo by Chris McCarus)

A children’s book illustrator is taking his art to schools around the region. Through his illustrations, he’s teaching students about respecting the environment. But they also get excited about learning in general. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris McCarus reports:

Transcript

A children’s book illustrator is taking his art to schools
around the region. Through his illustrations, he’s teaching students
about respecting the environment. But they also get excited about
learning in general. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris McCarus
reports:


30 children are sitting on the floor with sketch pads in their elementary school classroom. They’re watching artist Gijsbert van Frankenhuysen. He’s standing at an easel, drawing animal shapes.


(Sound of magic marker)


“So we’re gonna make an oval shape right here, with 2 ears on it. And then you can color it black and you give him 4 short black legs. Make sure you make em black. That’s what they have. Look at that. One sheep.”


The children look up at the easel, then back down at their sketch pads, then up at the easel again. They’re comparing drawings to see whose come closest to the artist’s drawing, and they want Van Frankenhuysen to show them how to add body parts to the sheep.


“What do you want me to show?”


“Tails!”


“Hooves!”


Van Frankenhuysen has spent the whole day at this school.


(Sound of applause)


He gets this kind of response everywhere he goes, and he visits about a hundred schools a year. This student, Emily has just seen, step by step, how the artist turned blank pages into the beginnings of a book. He’s already illustrated childrens favorites like Adopted by an Owl, the Legend of Sleeping Bear and 16 other books.


Child: “I learned about aminals.”


McCarus: “What about them?”


Child: “That they’re cool to make.”


McCarus: “Do you ever see any of the animals out in nature outside?”


Child: “I see horses and cows and owls at night. And I hear ’em by my house.”


(Sound of sheep)


Back at his home on a farm in central Michigan, Van Frankenhuysen’s wife Robin walks through the barnyard past the sheep and horse the artist uses for painting. She roams the property trying to call him in to the house for dinner.


(Sound of whistling)


But he doesn’t hear her. Since they bought this farm 25 years ago they planted thousands of trees and made 3 ponds. There are lots of places to hide. But it’s not like the couple is trying to get away from people and be alone in nature. They’re happy putting them into one big mix.


It wasn’t until a couple days later that we finally caught up with van Frankenhuysen. He doesn’t miss the chance to show kids the wonders of nature. He says learning about it can make classroom lessons easy.


“I have boys, young boys, that normally don’t do any journaling, because they thing it’s for girls. And then they see what I do. And I write down the stuff that happens on the land. If I find a birdnest, I make a drawing of it, I put it in my book, I write it in. A deer, a fox, anything that I see. And now those stories are kind of turning in to books that we sell. And I’ve had several kids that now they’re doing it. And I don’t know if in the back of their mind, they’re thinking maybe I can make a book out of this when I grow up. It doesn’t matter! They’re paying attention. They’re writing this stuff down. I think it’s all good stuff.”


Many states are cutting education budgets. Often art is the first program to go. But state education association spokeswoman Margaret Trimer-Hartley says parents demand art. Learning it creates interest in science, literature and even math. She says van Frankenhuysen makes children better students overall. He supplements what regular teachers might not be able to provide.


“His work has given all of us an appreciation for nature and the flora and the fauna around us. Now his lessons can give us all a greater appreciation for the issues of conservation and protection of that environment.”


The warm, playful illustrations in his books touch both children and parents. In person, van Frankenhuysen is just as disarming. He’s modest when he explains why he goes into classrooms to teach kids to draw year after year.


“It’s the only thing I know how to do. I don’t know anything else. It’s painting. It’s fun.”


It really isn’t the only thing he knows how to do. His drawings are just the beginning. The trick he’s mastered is to get kids to start thinking about themselves and their environment.


For the GLRC, I’m Chris McCarus.

A Snow Sculpting Pilgrimage

  • Gary Tessier of Team Manitoba works on the team's 16-foot-high snow sculpture in Gatineau, Quebec. (Photo by Karen Kelly)

Every year, snow sculptors from the U.S. and Canada travel
to northern cities to carve huge works of art. They often depict things such as legends of sea monsters and native spirits. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports, these artists are driven by a shared passion for the outdoors:

Transcript

Every year, snow sculptors from the US and Canada travel to northern cities to carve huge works of art. They often depict things such as legends of sea monsters and native spirits. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports, these artists are driven by a shared passion for the outdoors:


(sound of chipping and scraping)


Gary Tessier is jabbing a spade into the side of a towering block of snow. He and his team are here to compete in a snow sculpture competition in Gatineau, Quebec. It’s just across the Ottawa River from Ottawa, Canada’s capital. The team has 50 hours to transform this 16 foot high block of snow into a work of art. They work from 8:30 in the morning until 10:30 at night – shoveling, scraping and sawing.


“Basically, fundamentally, you use a good sharp spade and these homemade sander kind of things. A whole variety of tools and uh, it doesn’t take much.”


The team is creating a sculpture based on a legend of a fiddler from their hometown of Winnipeg, Manitoba. The fiddler drowned in the Winnepeg River and the legend has it that people can still hear his music in the rapids. Gary uses the spade to follow the outline of a fiddle drawn in black magic marker on the snow.


“I’m working on one of the what do you call that? La manche… du violin… comment t’appelle ca? The fiddlehead! The fiddlehead. When we’re finished, hopefully it’ll be two fiddleheads and the fiddler surrounded by the water that well, he lost his life in, but went on to forever playing music.”


Gary and his sculpting partner Real Berard have been going to snow sculpting competitions for 25 years. They both work in the arts, Gary as an administrator and Real as an artist. Gary says they spend most of their time indoors, hunched over, working at a desk. Which is why he looks forward to a week outside, even if it’s 30 below.


“This is like a pilgrimage, literally, it clears my mind and clears the body, too, of all kinds of awful things. It’s just a reawakening, like a rebirth every time, it’s beautiful, it really is.”


And on the best days, Gary and Real say, the sculpture takes over.


Tessier: “You’re sort of going with the flow, going with the line and going where it’s going.”


Berard: “Yeah, and you see quite often, like we follow the lines. It seems like a snake. It wants to go someplace and there’s no way that you could… it’s stronger than your mind.”


Tessier: “Sometimes you try and fight it and don’t listen – this is really where this thing has got to go – and then ultimately it doesn’t work.”


Kelly: “That’s when you make a mistake?”


Tessier: “Yup, and it shows.”


Not that they’re that concerned about making mistakes. Of course they want the sculpture to look good, but they say they don’t care about winning, which was tough for Denis Vrignon-Tessier, Gary’s son, to accept. He’s 22 and has been with the team for 4 years.


Vrignon-Tessier: “Like at first, in a competition, I’d be like, ‘Oh, I’m going to be real disappointed if we lose,’ and stuff and then just being with them every year, they’ve just showed me that really, it’s not important.”


Kelly: “So what is it about?”


Vrignon-Tessier: “It’s about being here and spending time with them, just joking around, hearing what they have to say. Yeah.”


In the end, the sculpture has two giant violins. There’s a fiddler kneeling in front of them, playing in a swirl of water.


It doesn’t win.


The judges seem to like the sculptures with lots of details carved on them. But Gary and Real like bold, smooth shapes that will last for a while. And sure enough, after a couple days of freezing rain and warm temperatures, a lot of the detailed work on other sculptures is worn away. But the fiddler and the violins stay strong – ready to play into the spring.


For the GLRC, I’m Karen Kelly.

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Creating New Life in Urban Core

  • This old industrial building once housed a company that manufactured refrigerator coils. Now, planners are hoping to revitalize it by making a place where artists can live and work. (Photo courtesy of the Enterprise Group of Jackson)

For many cities in the Rust Belt region, the glory days of manufacturing have long passed. These communities are now left trying to figure out how to revitalize their downtowns. One city is hoping a development for artists will create new life and draw people back downtown. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar Charney reports:

Transcript

For many cities in the Rust Belt region, the glory days of manufacturing have long passed. These
communities are now left trying to figure out how to revitalize their downtowns. One city is hoping
a development for artists will create new life and draw people back
downtown. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar Charney reports.


The city of Jackson is in South Central Michigan, about an hour west of
Detroit. Four blocks from its downtown, next to the old armory and the
remains of an old prison wall, there’s a smokestack and a rundown complex of
industrial buildings.


(key & sound of door opening)


“The last company that was doing full blown manufacturing in this complex of buildings was Acme
Industries that focused on refrigeration coils. We’re gonna walk straight down here.”


(footsteps on stairs fade under)


Kay Howard is a ceramic artist. She and her husband Phil Shiban are getting a tour of the
buildings. Since the early 1900’s when this complex was built, it’s been home to many businesses,
but since the 1970’s, its been basically abandoned.


“At the top of the stairs step to the right. Don’t step on the white board. It covers a hole in the
floor.”


(steps & sounds of glass & floor tiles crunching


Green and yellow paint peels and curls off the walls. The floor is littered with broken glass from
the building’s windows. And there are piles of bird droppings, broken lightbulbs, and rotting boards.
But Kay Howard and her husband are thinking about living here.


“It has so much that can be held onto. I hate seeing buildings knocked down or left in disrepair
when they could be reused and revitalized, and this just screams to have something done with it.”


These buildings are slated to become the Armory Arts Project. The plan is
to turn this 147-thousand square foot complex into an arts facility. It
would become the home to cultural organizations, arts-friendly commercial
businesses, studio space, and residential units that designed to meet the
specific living and working needs of artists, musicians, dancers, jewelers
and the like. Neeta Delaney is the project’s director.


“The driving force behind this is community revitalization. The impetus for this whole development
was really the existence of several tax-free renaissance zones.”


A renaissance zone is what Michigan calls its tax-free areas that were
created to spur development. Delaney says the project costs would
have been around 14-million dollars. They’re whittling down the out of
pocket costs by packaging together tax credits they get for cleaning
up a old industrial site, for renovating historic buildings, and for
creating low income housing. However when they approached developers with
the idea, they were told there was no way to make a go of it. But a
non-profit group from Minneapolis called ArtsSpace Projects Incorporated had a
different opinion. Chris Velasco is the director of Artspace.


“It’s not going to nor is Artspace designing it to generate
Money, but it will cover its costs.”


Artspace has successfully turned dozens of dilapidated buildings in a
number of different cities into affordable places where artists can live
and work. He says while Jackson doesn’t have a reputation as a bastion for
the arts, their market research showed there was more than enough demand
for such a facility in the city.


“If we were to create a multi-purpose arts facility use space in there we would have arts and
organizations 3-deep for every space that we create.”


He says that’s because artists have a hard time finding affordable spaces
where they can raise their kids that can also accommodate the tools of
their trade such as kilns, 10 foot tall canvases, and metal working
equipment. And he says the Armory Arts Project could fill that need.


“Isn’t this gorgeous? Oh my. Oh, this is just awesome.”


Project director Neeta Delaney leads the group to the top floor of one of
the old buildings where sunlight is streaming in through the broken
windows.


“Isn’t it great? Oh my. It is so beautiful, absolutely beautiful. And you think about residential units
up here. Live-work space, you know. This has got to be ideal.”


“This is the space that sold us on the building.”


That’s Steve Czarnecki, the CEO for the Enterprise Group of Jackson. It’s the umbrella
organization for economic development in the area that oversees the counties renaissance zones.


“Because when we first came up here, what else could you imagine this to be except a
place for artists.”


And he says once they figure out how to lure artists to Jackson it will be
easier to lure desirable high-tech business and their employees to the community.


“I think we have to increase our Bohemian Index a little bit here to attract those kind of people.”


See, artists have a track record for moving into old warehouse and industrial areas where
rents are low, fixing it up, and making a community hip and attractive.
The rub is they often then get priced out of the market. But rent at the
Armory Arts Project, like other ArtsSpace projects, will remain low.


And for artists like Kay Howard and Phil Chiban, affordable housing is one
attraction of the project. They support themselves on his pension
payments and her pottery sales. But there’s another reason they’re
interested. The couple is drawn to the idea of living with other working
artists.


“You get kind of solitary as an artist and you really need that contact and comradery and so forth,
so the idea of living in a community-type setting with other artists is very exciting.”


And she’s also excited about the prospect of being part of a project that recycles an abandoned
building and one that could bring excitement to a
downtown in need of new life.


“This has character you can’t design or duplicate. And look at the metal doors. Isn’t this amazing?”


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tamar Charney.

Dancers Mimic Nature’s Form

  • Dancer Anna Beard performing in Dragontree Waterfall Tea at the Matthaei Botanical Gardens in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Photo by Beth Wielinski.

The arts have long been used to draw people’s attention to things… a woman’s mysterious smile, social injustice, or details in the world around us. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar Charney reports…one choreographer is using dance to encourage people to become more aware of nature:

Transcript

The arts have long been used to draw people’s attention to things – a woman’s mysterious smile,
social injustice, or details in the world around us. As the Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Tamar Charney reports…one choreographer is using dance to
encourage people to become more aware of nature:


(water trickle)


It’s really cold and gray outside. But the tropical conservatory at the Matthaei Botanical Gardens in
Ann Arbor is green and lush. The air is thick with humidity, warmth, and sweet-scented pollen.
The horticulturalists are sweeping up dead leaves, replacing plants, and removing wilted
blossoms. But occasionally the workers lift their heads from what they’re doing to take in an unusual
sight.


There’s a group of dancers, ranging in age from 7 to 70, rehearsing a performance among the
garden’s plants, waterfalls and walkways.


(sound of rehearsal)


They lean against vine-covered walls, prance down paths, and splash water from a fish pond.
Occasionally a dancer’s arm brushes against a branch setting the leaves of a bamboo, papyrus, or
orchid plant in motion. Shirley Axon is an environmental activist and one of the dancers. She
says it’s quite an experience dancing in a lush conservatory instead of a barren stage.


“It’s thrilling…the humidity, the green, the shapes of the plants…
the light, and then to think that we can climb the trees and the walls.”


The dance piece is called Dragontree Waterfall Tea and its creator is Jessica Fogel, a professor
of Dance at the University of Michigan. After choreographing a dance piece for a celebration at
an arboretum over the summer, she realized she just couldn’t imagine going back inside.


“At first I was going to do a snow dance, and then that seemed very unrealistic.”


Eventually she decided an indoor conservatory would be more practical and more comfortable for
both the dancers and the audience. She created this piece by absorbing the shapes, colors, smells,
and stories behind the plants in the garden. Movements the dancers make often mirror the
curves of a plant’s leaves. The dancers also use gesture, props, and pantomime to call attention to
how we use a plant.


“That the papyrus plants can become scrolls upon which messages are written, and that tea comes from these
camellia bushes and can be drunk, and that coffee does come from these beans and chocolate from the trees. So we do play with
those ideas as well, the function of the plants.”


Fogel says we often forget that we depend on plants and
nature for food, medicine, and even paper.
And she hopes this performance will remind people of
our reliance on the natural world. But some parts of the
dance just play with nature.


At one point in the performance, dancer Anna Beard climbs over a wall and down into a waterfall
in the conservatory.


“I step into it and bit by bit I work myself into the water until finally I’m completely immersed in the waterfall.”


She says it’s supposed to be a bit surreal and a bit surprising. She dances soaking wet with the
waterfall splattering down on her body.


“It’s more about existing with the setting and interacting with it instead of just placing some
movement in front of it as a backdrop.”


And unlike a performance in a theater, changes in the garden can affect what the dancers do or
don’t do. During rehearsals, a branch a dancer was supposed to lean against died and was cut off,
another plant grew to be in the way of a dancer’s arm, and some ground cover the dancers were
told they could walk on turned into a path of slippery mud.


Dancer Raphael Griffin says as she performs in the conservatory, she has to be very cautious of
the impact her movements make. The rock ledges are uneven and the plants fragile. And she
says that sense of the dancers treading lightly on the environment is something she hopes the
audience picks up on.


“Just a better awareness of nature and how the human body can interact with nature and yet not
ruin it either.”


Most of us will never get a chance to frolic in a conservatory like Raphael Griffin and the other
dancers in Dragontree Waterfall Tea , but as one dancer pointed out there’s nothing stopping us
from going out into our own backyards to enjoy and appreciate the line, movement, and form in
the natural world around us.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tamar Charney.

Recapturing Music’s Roots

  • Frank Youngman playing on the Sound Garden. Photo by Tamar Charney.

These days a lot of modern music depends heavily on technology. Guitars are electric and beats electronic. But since ancient times human beings have found a way to make music with the things they found in nature. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar Charney has the story of one man who is helping his neighbors rediscover the roots of music:

Transcript

These days a lot of modern music depends heavily on technology. Guitars are electric and beats
electronic. But since ancient times human beings have found a way to make music with the
things they found in nature. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar Charney has the story of
one man who is helping his neighbors rediscover the roots of music:


In the woods behind Frank Youngman’s log home in Cadillac, Michigan there’s a small fire in a
fire circle. The smoke is wafting around logs that hang from the trees that surround the fire. It
curls around old car springs and break drums that also hang from the nearby trees. And big
hollowed out logs are propped up just inches off the ground.


On this cold, snowy Saturday there are five teenage boys and two adults banging on the logs and
car parts with sticks. And making music on what Frank Youngman calls his Sound Garden.


(music)


“I was out cutting firewood with our kids one day. And we were throwing it in the back of the
truck and it kept hitting each other. The logs were hitting each other. I just started noticing they
had all these different pitches and so I said, ‘kids throw ’em back out here.’ So we start laying it
out on the ground and we sorta constructed this crude xylophone. And pretty soon we were just
playing. I’d start a grove and they’d start playing and the four of us were on our knees around
these logs on the ground playing and we had a blast. After that, I kept thinking, wouldn’t it be fun
to have some instrument out in our woods here that when were walking by on the trail or skiing,
you could just stop and play a little bit.”


And eventually he built it. Youngman is a music teacher and band director, so he had an ear for
picking out the right logs with which to build his dream. Small logs are arranged to create
primitive xylophones and marimbas. Big logs act as bass drums. And the pieces of scrap metal
are miscellaneous percussion instruments. And any chance he gets, he’ll drag people out here to
play.


“Someone will start something just a click, cluck, cluck. Real simple little thing and then
someone layer in on top of it and it’s been fun cause they start to get the idea that we can slow
down and let it happen over a longer period of time and let it develop.”


He says after a while the people playing will start communicating and sharing musical ideas with
looks, nods, and beats.


(music)


As the rhythm gets going Ryan Newson and Mike Filkins emerge from their sullen teenage shells
and begin dancing and grooving to the beat. Like many people in town they first thought Frank
Youngman’s Sound Garden was really, really weird, but slowly they came around.


“You can’t explain the fun of playing it. You just have to go out there. The diversity of sounds
you get when hit stuff that you’re not even used to. When you play a drum set all day you just get
eight or nine different sounds you can play with, but with this it’s just a new set of sounds you can
screw around with and do what you want.”


The experience of playing the Sound Garden can vary from time to time. Frank Youngman says
night time playing has a different vibe from daytime playing. He thinks the Soundgarden’s best in
winter because the snow muffles the sounds and the woods are quiet, but then again other seasons
also have their appeal for instance warmer weather brings a chorus of frogs.


“In the spring, its great when the spring peepers. I’ve gone out by myself and you start hearing all
this sounds of springs birds and the peepers are just deafening at night sometimes and even they’ll
get a rhythm going and you get thousands of those things – rrrepperr rrrepper – they just get this
kind of pulsing rhythm and I’ve gone out and played with the peepers which sounds kind of
Crazy and maybe it is.”


Whether or not its crazy, the Sound Garden resonates with teenagers and adults alike, according
to 17-year old Mike Filkins.


I can imagine there will be people trying to build these now. This is just unbelievable. I was very
surprised how much it took off and how many people like it.”


And, in fact, a second Sound Garden has been built. After word got out about Frank Youngman’s
backyard one, the director of Cadillac’s Convention and Visitors Bureau suggested he create one
for the town’s new riverside Greenway. It’s just been finished in time to ring in the New Year
during Cadillac’s first night celebration.


(music)


“It’s a pretty primitive experience, you know, but I think it does kind of get back to musical roots
in some ways. It starts with rhythm – beating on a log – whether its signaling, talking over great
distances or just listening to each other and just responding.”


(music)


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tamar Charney.


WEB INFO: For more information about the Sound Garden or Cadillac’s First Night celebration
which include demonstrations and a Sound Garden performance, www.cadillacmichigan.com.

Urban Artists Fight for Graffiti

  • Graffiti artist Juan Carlos Noria imagines his artwork as a gift to the community. Artwork provided courtesy of JCN at them-art.com

Graffiti has been a part of urban life since ancient times. There’s also a long history of trying to get rid of it. In many North American cities, civic leaders are experimenting with new ways to eradicate graffiti. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports, urban artists are determined to keep it alive:

Transcript

Graffiti has been a part of urban life since ancient times. There’s also a long history of
trying to get rid of it. In many North American cities, civic leaders are experimenting
with new ways to eradicate graffiti. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen
Kelly reports, urban artists are determined to keep it alive:


About twenty artists, most of them men, spread out on either side of a canvas wall set up
in the middle of a parking lot. They wear baggy jeans, baseball caps and gas masks. The
ground is littered with spray paint cans as they splatter color across the canvas.


(sound up)


The artists build on each other’s ideas. Horizontal purple stripes are transformed into an
exotic bird. Pen and ink drawings peek out beneath layers of orange and brown, slowly
disappearing under the paint. This is Ottawa’s first graffiti fest, organized by
local artist Juan Carlos Noria. He arrives by bicycle, wearing splattered jeans and
carrying two backpacks stuffed with spray paint.


“This is our way of giving back to the city true expression and unfortunately I do agree that some of it
is ugly but it’s like a hammer, you know? It’s a tool for building or destroying.”


Noria is a full-time artist who sells oil paintings and sculptures. But his best known work
might be his graffiti. He creates detailed pen and ink drawings on white paper. Then,
late at night, he glues them to downtown buildings.


His drawings depict the plight of humans in the modern world. One shows a man using
one hand to pour coffee into his mouth, as he pounds a hammer with the other.
Another depicts a person surrounded by bubbles representing thought – about money,
heartbreak, and the passage of time.


For Noria, this sort of unexpected art is comforting in a city that prides itself on
cleanliness.


“My living room isn’t this clean, you know? And a lot of these Ottawa streets are super
clean. In an alley that is vacant, it’s almost like a mark that a human being has been there
and I think that’s important, you know?”


But to many other people, graffiti is a sign of crime, decay and danger. That’s prompted
Ottawa to join other North American cities in introducing a graffiti management policy.
The plan includes a special phone line to report graffiti and tougher fines for those who
are caught.


The city estimates it spends about 250 thousand U.S. dollars cleaning up graffiti on city
property every year.


Paul McCann is head of Ottawa’s surface operations office. He says the biggest problem
is tags – initials or names scrawled in marker.


“I’m not talking about the nice graffiti art that a lot of people appreciate but the problem
is the tagging. Some of it is gang related. It’s not in the right place, it is considered
vandalism if you don’t have permission.”


McCann says there’s been a sharp increase in tagging. And it can make residents, and
tourists, feel unsafe. But he draws a distinction between the taggers and the so-called
serious artists.


While graffiti will never be tolerated in places like the parliament buildings, McCann is
looking for areas where graffiti can flourish, such as skateboard parks. It’s a strategy
that’s been used in other cities, including Toronto and Montreal. And it’s something Juan
Carlos Noria is eager to support.


“Graffiti is a movement of the youth. We must embrace it, say it’s not going to go away
so let’s give them spaces to work in and I think that by offering them these spaces, the
older artists will realize these are gifts, so they will in turn speak to the younger artists and
educate them and that’s what it’s all about.”


For Noria, graffiti offers a public venue to vent his frustration about pollution, capitalism,
and the ubiquity of advertising. Not long after the graffiti fest, one of his works
appeared on the wall of an abandoned theatre. It depicts an angel imagining a beautiful
gift as it sends a spray of paint onto the building.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Kelly in Ottawa.