(upbeat music) This week on State of the Arts, a new spin on the symphony, one-of-a-kind masterpieces in ice, and an artist highlights her Puerto Rican culture.

Stay tuned for these stories and more on State of the Arts.

Hello and welcome to State of the Arts.

I'm your host, Mary Paul.

We begin this week with a visit to the symphony, but at this Cleveland Orchestra, you won't be hearing any compositions common to a classical music program.

This is the Video Game Symphony, founded in 2023, where musicians perform a repertoire of soundtracks that appeal not only to young people, but to generations of gamers.

(dramatic music) For me, playing video games, there's so many factors that go into making a game memorable.

And one of the biggest factors for me is the music.

I grew up playing video games.

That was my introduction to music actually, really was through video games, specifically Mario, Zelda, Halo, you name it, pretty much everything that I could get my hands on and I was allowed to play.

Growing up, I was really into Skyrim and all those mid 2000s, late 2000s games that would come out and I had just plugged in so many hours, and the background music and I thought it was so cool.

And so I've always wondered to myself as time went on, where is this music even being recorded?

Is it being recorded?

How do you even play it?

(dramatic music) I think what's so great about the video game music genre and video games in general is that there is a lot of opportunity for you to be the hero of your own story.

And the music just really captures that spirit and conveys that to modern day audiences.

[Music] I've been playing video games since I was a kid.

I mean, I'm dressed as Aerith from Final Fantasy 7 right now.

It's cool to hear a lot of the music that I both grew up playing and play now.

Hearing it through the orchestra is just absolutely beautiful.

It's a rare thing.

(dramatic music) We're a bunch of music lovers that just absolutely adore this music.

We just want to give this music all the love and attention and respect that it deserves.

It is so beloved by so many people, a wide range of ages and genders.

And it's really important to reach those people where they are and bring this music to them.

It's me, Mario.

The Video Game Symphony is a full symphony orchestra that is fully dedicated to playing video game music.

And we at the VGS believe that this is the classical music of the future.

We kind of see in the classical world that it's underappreciated, it's underplayed.

And so in that sense, we want to do it justice, but it's also a celebration of how wonderful this music is.

We love sharing it with other people and we just love performing it ourselves.

There are some orchestras that are hired by the video game companies like Nintendo, Square Enix, and they tour and they play music from certain video game series like Final Fantasy or Zelda.

But there aren't a lot of grassroots orchestras that play this music and are dedicated to it.

We're just thinking, why don't we have that here in Northeast Ohio?

Why don't we have that here in Ohio?

So we want to bring that to this area for our audience and also to our players to be able to perform this music that otherwise they might not be able to perform ever in their lives.

We have so many people come up to us and say, "It has been my dream since I was a child to play this music and finally I'm able to."

I utilize this as a tool to educate the public.

A lot, oftentimes people come up to me and be like, "Why video game music?"

Or as opposed to focusing all of your energy on classical orchestral music.

It's just as intricate and complex as any other classical piece and it's connected to these fantastical worlds and emotions and it tends to pull from a lot of different cultures to cultures and time periods that you wouldn't necessarily get to expose to otherwise.

It navigates extreme spectrums of emotion and it's very accessible to the public.

So it's a great vessel to either reach the youth and even older folks too that often come to me and say how much they enjoy the music although they don't know anything about the video games.

I think what's so amazing about this group is that ability to separate the music from the video game and show it as it's completely unique original art form within music.

And in that way the genre is different than maybe some other genres where it's completely dependent on its surroundings and kind of you're able to separate it from that and you're gonna have an amazing product at the end of the day that audiences are gonna love.

We definitely slant towards certain genres.

Personally, I think the RPG and fantasy genre tends to have some of the most expansive and epic soundtracks just because of the nature of the drama, we do a lot of that.

Well, Final Fantasy music is just great overall but we have this arrangement of the opening and bombing mission so it was just this really challenging piece and I love it.

It's super active, it's super exciting, it has all these great brass moments.

You can't beat it, I love it.

(dramatic music) We do a lot of Nintendo kind of for obvious reasons because those are some of the best known and just kind of like some of the greatest tunes and soundtracks out there.

So a lot of Mario and Zelda and Pokemon but we're starting to get into more genres as we go along.

(singing) "I wanna be the very best No one ever was To catch them is my real test To train them is my cause I will travel across the..." It's exhilarating.

It's so hard to describe.

(singing) "These Pokemon to understand..." I get up here and I see the audience and I'm like, this is real, these people came for us and that is just so beautiful.

We're bringing an entirely new audience into the classical musical world which is something that is so important to me.

I want people to come to see us and hear this wonderful music and I want this to maybe be their first experience going to an orchestra ever and then maybe they'll go to more and more orchestras and support the arts in other ways.

(upbeat music) Max Zuleta has been sculpting ice since 1987.

As the owner of Art Below Zero in Milwaukee, he and his team create their work in a freezing cold medium that comes with a variety of challenges.

In order to become an ice sculptor, you need to have not only the artistic skills, the endurance to get the sculpture done, but the discipline.

(upbeat music) You're in a freezer for many hours a day or in a winter festival.

It's a very challenging material and there's a lot of logistical things that go along with ice sculpting, like the drainage of the water in an event, in a room temperature event.

So it's very hard, but it's very rewarding.

You do ask yourself continuously, why am I doing this?

It's gonna melt.

But the beautiful thing about ice sculptures is that, is that it teaches us that beauty is not permanent.

It teaches you to enjoy what you have in front of you and make the most out of it.

(water splashing) (water splashing) One of the secrets in a crystal clear block of ice, two of the secrets.

One is we purify the water.

We have a reverse osmosis system, a water softener and an industrial filter.

So this is better than Evian water.

It's super clean water.

And then the other secret is the motion.

These pumps make the molecules of water to freeze really, really, really tight together.

That's why the ice is so crystal clear and so dense, so strong.

And motion is the biggest secret.

There was no ice sculpting school in Venezuela.

That's usually taught in culinary school.

So the only way for me to learn was to try to learn from somebody.

So I was begging for like three months to a chef in Caracas in Venezuela.

And so he took me in, he taught me some basic principles of ice sculpting.

(water splashing) And then I started going to competitions all over the States and Canada and Europe.

My purpose in that time was just to learn as much as possible.

So I had to balance between doing my sculptures, trying to do well in the competition, at the same time trying to learn as much as I can and trying to learn of their techniques and tools.

In those days, we didn't have chainsaws or chainsaws were not applied to ice sculpting yet.

So it was like a handsaw and ice picks and chisels to be able to carve a sculpture with only a handsaw.

Oh, I have so many stitches all over the place.

And then it's also a physical job.

(clanking) These are 300 pound blocks of ice.

And at that point they felt like this is one of the most difficult things in the world.

Why am I doing this?

(laughs) What was the most difficult thing at the time, which was learning how to carve with only handsaws and chisels.

Now I have the technology, I have massive CNC machines and every tool that I can get.

(sawing) But having the skills of starting really, really, really hard and having the skills to create a sculpture with only a handsaw or a chisel, when somebody wants to start over, I'm like start with the basic tools and just create your skills based on very limited amount of tools.

And then eventually you develop and you can add more tools into it.

But you have a really good foundation for your technique.

(machinery) (upbeat music) 26 years ago, I had an offer to work in Paris or I had the option of buying a company in Chicago.

That deal didn't go through.

So I decided, okay, I'm gonna open my own company, but I'm gonna move a little bit north.

I mean, it's Milwaukee, Madison, Lake Geneva, all the way up to Green Bay.

And at this moment, I'm inspired by people, by the effect my eye sculptures create on people.

I am grateful that I come in in people's lives in very special times in their life, in their wedding or their anniversary or a birthday or a bar mitzvah.

I think there's a lot of things that we do that translate into you can do whatever you want.

If we can create this ice sculpture out of a block of ice, you can go home and do whatever you want.

You can create your own masterpieces into any material that you want and you can overcome any challenge.

(sound of torch) If you can amaze and inspire people, that's the best thing you can do.

(sound of torch One other beautiful thing about ice sculpting is that it allow me, like I have some ideas and I'm like, how can I get this out of my head?

How can I get this into a material?

And so at the end of the day, you feel like, oh, it feels good to be able to translate something into a block of ice.

We now travel to Florida for a story about an artist who uses her work to highlight her Puerto Rican heritage.

Ketsy Ruiz, known by the name of "Sketzii," works with paint and digital media, shining a light on her cultural diaspora.

I'm in Downtown St.

Pete or downtown anywhere else, Tampa.

And then I go to PR to kind of have my, to go home, like, and it's in the country, country, in a barefoot all the time.

And then this place, the artist residency, feels like that to me.

Like, if I can't go home, I'll come here to work.

(upbeat music) I think being a military brat is what influences the diaspora aspect of my work.

So I've been able to travel and visit lots of different cities, different places, meet a bunch of different people, but I'm from Hatillo, Puerto Rico.

So it's this dynamic that I have where I live in the in-between at all times.

I have to do like a base coat.

I can't leave it white.

Not my jam.

(sound of brushtrokes) That way too, if like the light, if I, once I do the outlines, like usually I do everything that's super matte on here, but if for any reason it's transparent or like something peaks through a crack, like you'll see yellow, you'll see another bright color, I don't ever want it to be white.

Like if I do white, it has to be intentionally, I put white on the canvas, not from the primer.

When I try to tell my stories, I have a really bright color palette.

And my color palette is reflective of the homes that you will see on the island.

And they're actually like color matches to like homes that are there.

So that's why I went with that color palette.

It's a very like Latino color palette.

It's very much of the culture, but then people interpret it as like happy.

They think my colors are happy.

So there's a lot of people who walk up to my work and they're like, oh, I love your work.

It's so beautiful, so bright.

It just makes me feel happy.

And here I am talking about like Hurricane Maria and how distraught I am that I couldn't be there to help out my family.

And like I'm crying underneath a flamboyán tree and they're like, it looks great, it looks happy.

And so that's probably the hardest thing to overcome.

The fact that like my color palette gives one sense of joy to people, but then what I'm actually talking about isn't just something that's pretty on a canvas.

It's like the metaphors are about really deep stories.

You know, things that I've been through, things that other people have been through that come from PR.

And so that's probably been the hardest thing to overcome is kind of explain that part of it.

And then as an artist, you don't wanna overexplain anything or you don't wanna feel like you're defending yourself.

So it's like, hey, take this for what it is.

And I love that you think that it's beautiful and that it's bright and that it looks joyous.

But like take a second to really look at it.

Take a second to really read it.

Look at the title, try and put together the pieces.

That's all that I can hope someone sees in it.

That's also why I think it's so important for me to tell the stories.

When someone else connects to it, they get it.

Like, wow, I remember what happened during Hurricane Maria.

Like I was there too, or oh, I know what it is to go back and forth with a suitcase since I was three years old.

I completely get that.

You know, my work is for the people.

So whatever somebody interprets is what they interpret, right?

So I'm not mad at all if what they interpret isn't what I was trying to say.

If their interpretation is something that connects with them, like their soul or their story, I love to hear that because I have heard things all over the place about my pieces.

And I go, wow, I would have never thought in a million years, that's what you've got from this.

And I love hearing those interpretations because then it makes me think, oh, I can think outside the box now.

Like, it doesn't have to be just what I wanted to portray in my work.

(chickens clucking) Being out here and being disconnected from city life and noises especially, helps a lot to concentrate.

It makes me wanna not look at my phone.

A lot of it is looking at your phone and scrolling and a lot of my daytime stuff is networking and like doing meetings and trying to figure out how to make the world a better place and all of these things.

And when I come out here, it's just me.

Like it's me, it's by myself, it's me and animals, which I love animals.

I think I like animals better than I like people.

So I guess that's another way that it influences me being out here, like the animals end up in my art.

I find my community, especially since I've been a professional artist for the past five or six years through social media, through Instagram specifically.

And that is how I talk to people.

That's how I talk to my community.

I also love going to different types of networking events.

I work with multiple nonprofits to talk to other artists, other people that are in the community, community leaders.

And it's very much a part of my work.

Now that I've been involved in several nonprofits, I've been able to do community type of projects and it started my paint and sip classes and it started my community murals.

It's something now that I didn't even think I'd be getting into when I first started as a professional artist.

And it's developed over time and it's actually my number one favorite thing to do with art is to have people involved with my pieces.

I'm all about sharing information and resources.

Like one, yeah, it feels good to do it for the community.

But two, when I see someone else, they have this potential and they're just kind of like lost in the sauce and they don't know exactly where to go with it.

And I'm like, I was you, I was you a couple of years ago.

Let me tell you about this, this and this.

You need to sign up here.

You need to fill out these forms.

You need to meet these people at these places.

It's just, it's cool to really watch someone grow.

I think it's really good to surround yourself with a community of people, whether it's friends, whether it's families, whether it's coworkers or a network of a community or something to have people around you who like recognize what your talents are and just keep telling you that same message over and over again, because it's a mind thing at the end of the day.

We are our own worst enemy.

So for anybody that feels lost in the sauce or has the imposter syndrome, we all do.

None of us know what we are doing ever.

You just have to like take the risk, go with it, see what works out and be okay with some things just not working out the way you want it to.

What's meant for you, I truly believe in what's meant for you so you should just go for it and not worry about what anybody else has to say.

In Sparks, Nevada, the work of multimedia artist Ana Perez-McKay features patchwork designs that examine history and truth.

Through the lens of her solo exhibition titled "Uncharted," we take a look at her evocative creations.

(upbeat music) I'm Ana Perez-McKay.

We're at the Depot Gallery, which is managed by Sierra Arts and my show is called "Uncharted" and it's a series of 18 pieces done with printmaking and paint, quilting and crochet, reflecting on truth and source and history with the ways that things can get misconstrued and flattened and oversimplified.

The crochet pieces that are seen in the work are made out of fibers that are mostly embroidery floss that I found in my grandparents' house.

I spent a year in Ireland and my family is from there and I was able to find some materials that had belonged to women in my family.

And then the patchwork is done with different sources.

Some of them were from my own collection, other projects in the past from thrift stores and some of them were really old stock from Mill End Fabrics here in Reno.

The wood that I used was willow from the Truckee River.

My girlfriend actually went and foraged a bunch of these willow sticks for me.

I really like displaying these pieces kind of as tapestries on the wall.

And the best way to do that is with some kind of dowel, getting local sticks from near the river is so much better than buying a dowel that's gone through a factory and been resold back to me.

It's kind of a really simple reason for using that wood, but also I think it really ties in with the rest of the show as well.

I was thinking a lot about the literal truth and meaning in objects and in cultures and experiences that can be transformed when they're duplicated and regurgitated and changed and how culture treats people and society is able to support and degrade different groups.

And Sierra Arts put out a call for artists when I put together a proposal that kind of brought what I had been working on and thinking about together.

They encouraged artists to propose a couple of community engagement events.

What I came up with was a mending circle that would take place in the gallery, which would just be open to the public, encouraging people to come and have a space that's like calm and peaceful to kind of all work on mending stuff together, to share skills.

Also, when I was in Ireland, I went to a couple of knitting circles.

Everyone was working on their own little project.

I hadn't met anyone before, but it was just such a lovely, warm environment.

I really feel like connecting over craft is a really lovely way to connect people and to celebrate handicrafts and things that we love to do.

And then I also hosted a workshop at Laika Press in pressure printing, which is the technique that I used in this show.

It's a technique that I chose because it let me print directly from these lace objects that I have been making without putting ink or shellac or anything on the lace itself.

So this process happens when you put down a layer of ink, just flat on a flat surface, then put your paper on top of that, and then the lace on top of that, and run the whole thing through a press.

So that the lace presses into the paper, presses into the ink, and that picks up an impression of the lace on the paper.

My grandma did a lot of knitting, and she showed me a little bit how to do that.

When I was younger, I fell in love with crochet a little more, and it was just a hobby that I picked up and really, really did a lot of when I was in elementary school.

With sewing, I also learned to do that when I was pretty young from with my mom and my aunt.

I was a very quiet and reserved kid, and I liked my quiet hobbies.

And then I didn't do it so much for quite a few years, and then I really kind of rediscovered my love for it more recently, being able to make my own designs and pull together these materials that kind of have sentimental value and have this history that I'm really thinking about.

I started doing this work when I was in Ireland, did the dice piece there, but I was kind of reminiscing about Reno and wanting to make something kind of playful.

And then I was designing more floral-based charts when I came back to Reno, reminiscing on the natural beauty that I saw in Ireland.

And I had a lot of time to work on those charts and to do some stitching when I was volunteering at the warming center here in Reno.

Women and people with kids can come in and just sleep in a safe, warm place for the night Just to get them off the streets for a little bit of time.

Being an artist in Reno is really interesting and has inspired in me a lot of reflection on my role as an artist and as someone who gets to be in a gallery, especially in contrast with a lot of the living conditions that a lot of my neighbors are being subjected to at this time, especially with homelessness and with various threats to people's way of life.

As people who love art, it would make more sense and be more of a true approach to wanting to see more art in the world, to do what we can to make life easier for people in our community so that as many people as possible are able to make art and to love art.

Even though I'm being represented in a gallery and I have a degree in art, anyone can do craft and do art and have it be really special and meaningful.

It's been really nice to talk to people about using textiles and reusing fabrics.

I'm really hoping to inspire just reflection on the ways that we think about the world, like caring for the earth and caring for each other, preservation of natural resources.

That's really important to me.

Thank you for joining us this week for our tour of the arts across the country.

I'm Mary Paul and I'll be back next week with another new episode of State of the Arts.

(upbeat music)