[ Music ] Coming up on State of the Arts, a paper maker preserves a centuries old tradition, and a group of enthusiasts works to preserve a much more modern one.

These stories plus more, next on State of the Arts.

Hello, thank you for joining us this week.

I'm Mary Paul, and in today's show, we're talking about the artistry behind everyday items.

From paper to mugs, let's meet some artists who work to craft objects that are both beautiful and functional, starting with paper.

For this story, we take you halfway across the globe to Fabriano, Italy, where fine art paper making has held a prominent place since the late 1700s.

Master paper maker Sandro Tiberi currently runs his own workshop in Italy, and he talks about his life's work that he's passing down to the next generation.

We are very honored to have all of you here, okay?

Thank you for your visit, okay?

Absolutely.

Such a privilege We are very proud for our history, for our tradition from 13th century.

[ Music ] And it's beautiful to have this history, but for me, it's very important to see the future, because if we think we are very in the past, we are now.

We live now, and we live in the future.

For this reason, I make an evolution of my techniques, and I start from this concept.

For me, the handmade paper making is not only a way to produce paper, but is a real language, a real, artistic language.

Okay.

[ Music ] I begin my work like artisan and craftsman, but in through I have inside me a powerful that must be go hard outside.

And artists, to be an artist is this, is to put out this energy and create.

And I'm very lucky, because this kind of work is perfect for me, because I start with water, and I create all what I have in my mind and my heart.

This is the mold.

This is the deco, and with this, you can form the paper in this way.

You have to adjust the weight, and after you make the filtration, you must move in plane, the mold in two directions.

In this way, you can create a paper that have the same mechanical resistance in this inside and the other side.

This is possible only with handmade paper, because with the machine, the fibers go in the direction of machine.

In the fine arts academy, three students make the final test of their work in my laboratory.

And I'm very proud for this.

And stay with me for a month.

Work with me and with my wife, and create something unique work of art.

I teach a lot of people.

Some of these people begin to be an art maker.

And I'm very proud for this, because the tradition goes ahead.

But what is for me most beautiful to teach is the artistic part, the languages.

This is what for me is exciting, and I love to teach the creative techniques.

For me today was exciting.

You are artists.

I'm an artist, and for me to be an artist means this.

Create a movement together.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

To have the same languages and create a current.

This is perfect for me.

When Charles asks me if it is possible to come here, I'm very excited for this.

Because you are in all over the world, you have contact with other cultures, and I'm a little part of this project.

It's very beautiful for me.

Nearly all of us these days have a full array of photographic equipment in our pockets, all packaged within our cell phones.

We use these tools like the panoramic camera, often without a second thought.

But streetscape photographer Thomas R. Schiff puts a lot of thought through his lens, so much so that he's created a special panoramic camera to capture images we may take for granted.

I've been a photographer ever since I was a little kid.

I started taking photographs when I was in grade school.

So just a little kid with a Brownie camera.

Maybe 35, 40 years ago I started photographing storefronts, because I always thought it was very interesting to get a picture of a storefront window that had a display in it.

But also there was a reflection in the glass, which showed what was behind the camera.

So you had kind of two pictures in one.

And I think right around that time I thought about, well, what if I had a panoramic camera, and I could photograph something directly in front of me, and also something to either side of me and to the rear of me.

Lately, the last 20 years or so, I've been shooting photos with a panoramic camera.

That's a camera especially made to take a picture in a 360-degree angle.

I've always been attracted to the built environment.

I've always enjoyed photographing buildings and bridges and viaducts, overpasses.

Then when I switched to color photography and panoramic photography, I continued that.

I discovered a lot of really great buildings around the country, and I set out to photograph as many as I could.

When you look at some of my photographs, you'll notice that they're not taken at an eye level.

They're kind of a bird's eye view.

Panoramic photography has kind of taken off lately with cell phones.

People discovered you can set your cell phone as a pano and make these wide pictures of everything in front of you.

One of the shortcomings of that is when you look at a lot of those pictures, half of the pictures are above the horizon and the other half are below the horizon.

So you have a lot of pictures of stop signs and pavement and parked cars.

So it kind of clutters up the image a little bit.

And I've discovered that if you could raise a panoramic camera up 10 or 15 feet, you can avoid a lot of that.

The camera used is just regular Kodak roll film.

It's motorized, and when you turn the camera on, it goes in a circle.

And at the same time, the film unwinds and moves through the camera.

So the camera movement and the film movement are synchronized.

I started maybe 25 years ago.

I'd go to California and I'd take as many photos as I could of different things, maybe some art museums, some libraries, some movie theaters.

So if you do that over 20 or 30 years, you'll have enough photos for 10 different books.

Movie theater is very interesting because they were designed as being a place for people to escape to kind of a fantasy land away from home.

I did a book of Las Vegas, and if you've ever been around there, the casino owners have spent millions and billions of dollars to make the buildings attractive because they want to kind of pull you in.

I found that the most interesting architecture is usually in the big cities and concentrated on going to Los Angeles.

San Francisco.

Chicago.

New York.

I found a few gems in small towns as well.

There's some interesting libraries in little towns that you've never heard of.

After a few years, I realized that Frank Lloyd Wright was a pretty big presence in the world of architecture, and I discovered that he was going to be a project all to himself.

He had a career that spanned about 70 years.

He was a real workaholic.

He died at age 92, and he still had several unfinished projects on the drafting board.

In fact, one of his most well-known buildings is the Guggenheim Museum.

Frank Lloyd Wright built 11 structures in Ohio.

There's a doctor's office building in Dayton, and the rest are houses.

I started photographing the Westcott House probably in 2005 when I first met Marta, and it was handy because it was only an hour and a half drive from Cincinnati, so I could visit it at different times of the year.

I could take photos in the fall and the spring with winter snow.

I'm still doing panoramic photography, although I've kind of slowed down in the last few years.

I just produced a book on significant architecture of America civic buildings.

So I've photographed a lot of state houses, city halls, county courthouses, the U.S.

Capitol building, and the Supreme Court, and that was my Ohio 250 and America 250 project.

I've enjoyed traveling around the country, taking a lot of different photos of mostly well-known architecture and some not so well-known, and my hope is the viewer gets a sense of the building in its entirety.

A lot of times when somebody takes an architectural photograph, they usually back up in the corner to get as wide a view as they can, but you don't see what's on the left or right or behind you.

So when you put the camera in the middle of the room and make a 360-degree photograph, you see everything all at once, and that's a little bit different way of viewing it.

Now let's be honest.

How many of you have looked at an arcade game as a work of art?

We now head to Unlimited Video Game Superstore and Arcade in Florida to meet a group of people who do recognize the artistic value of video games.

Through preservation and restoration efforts, they ensure these classic games can be appreciated for generations to come.

Preserving some of these games can be considered an art in a lot of ways.

It's a fine line between keeping it original, keeping it correct, and making it good.

One of our jobs here is to maintain these games in a way that preserves the feel of these games when they were made, while still allowing them to operate into the future.

It all makes sense when you sit there and actually start playing on it.

All the bad graphics and clunky mechanics and lack of depth, all of it immediately disappears as soon as you start playing it, and all you can experience is the gameplay that it was meant to be.

It is a hobbyist-driven industry.

There is no financial motive for any company in the world to put resources and effort into figuring out how to preserve and repair these games.

But there are individuals out there who work on these as passion projects.

There's definitely technique in knowing the right equipment, right tools to use to keep it going on and not just throwing it away, as many would probably do if they're like, "Oh, this doesn't work," and not knowing how to fix it or what ways to go about fixing it.

Nowadays you kind of see the money aspect of video games instead of, "Oh, how can we become one of the best video games?"

Man, there's a lot of legwork and hard work to really make this become what it is today.

[MUSIC] I think all games are worth preserving, in all honesty.

It would be a shame to lose any game in any regard because I think everything has its value, whether or not the game is good or bad.

There's some games that are older that I never played back then that I find super cool and better than a lot of games in modern times now.

I understand that people value older games not just for nostalgia factors, but they want to keep it alive.

They want to keep the art of gaming available to everyone.

[MUSIC] Being able to fix that thing that brings them back to those memories or goes into that timeframe when they had a good time, because it's interesting how they take very big cautionary steps when it comes to pieces like the Mona Lisa to preserve it, because it is a famous piece and it was done by a great artist for someone to come in and be like, "Man, Pac-Man on the Atari, I haven't been able to find that anywhere and now I can actually have it."

So us being able to restore that so that that one person or many people that do come in here, being able to have that themselves and continue to keep those games alive.

[MUSIC] I have a Galaxian in my arcade right now.

The cabinet's in great shape, but the side art's starting to peel.

So what do I do?

Do I glue it back on, making it really difficult to get off in the future because it's original, or do I buy new side art for it and put it on so it looks perfect but it's fake?

These are the types of artistic choices that need to be made for this type of situation, and it's not always an obvious answer what you should do.

[MUSIC] The whole look of the arcade cabinet kind of gets that, the feel of its arcade cabinet.

There's just a blank black cabinet and a heavy game.

It would still be functionally an arcade cabinet, but when you walk up to it and you see either Simpsons on the side or Blitz on the side or Mortal Kombat character, it just brings more of that, the whole feel altogether.

[MUSIC] I feel like if we didn't preserve these things, no one would know where this rooted from or maybe what a good game is.

Also, it's just that the people that did have those games growing up, it would be heartbreaking knowing that there is no more Doom 3s out there in the world because everyone decided to throw them out or if there was no more Mario Parties on the GameCube.

It's kind of those memories attached as well to those games that me growing up had.

It would kind of fade with that if no one cared to or want to keep these things alive.

[MUSIC] People nowadays getting nostalgic for games that came out in 2011-2015.

So I think of course there's always going to be some people enjoying older games and finding passion for that.

[MUSIC] I feel confident that as time goes on, future generations will see how things are going now and it will continue more as a domino effect for more and more people to want to preserve games, for more and more people to see the beauty and the art form of the medium, and for more and more people to take care of it in a better sense as well.

From arcade games to the funny pages, next we meet Jeff Stahler, an editorial cartoonist who's syndicated comic, "Moderately Confused," can be seen in newspapers all over the country.

But when he's not poking fun at the foibles of daily life, he can often be found capturing the everyday in watercolor.

[MUSIC] Watercolor is the toughest medium.

You can't back up.

Once you've started, you cannot put another color on top of it.

It makes mud.

So you have to work very fast.

A plein air artist is the type of artist that will work in the environment that they're outdoors typically.

Plein air is a French word and means outdoor painter.

And I started doing it only about four or five years ago.

Schiller Park is a beautiful park.

It's a 22-acre park that sits in German Village.

It's a park that attracts a lot of dogs, a lot of people, a lot of walkers, a lot of runners.

It's so nice to plein air paint because you get outside, you get away from it all.

It's very relaxing.

Not that the cartooning is, it's just a whole different animal.

[MUSIC] I'm a graduate of the Columbus College of Art and Design.

I graduated in advertising with an illustration minor.

I worked for several years in advertising, but I always wanted to cartoon.

I did some cartooning for a magazine, actually a weekly newspaper in Columbus, Ohio.

I was able to open another door and it opened for me in Cincinnati, Ohio.

And I was a cartoonist for them at the Cincinnati Post for 22 years.

An editorial cartoon is a cartoon with a point of view, trying to find a little bit of humor in it.

But typically it's going to fall on an opinion page so it wants to have, and an editor wants to have an opinion associated with the cartoon.

It might not be funny, but many times I'm hoping that it is.

[MUSIC] When I got into editorial cartooning back in the early 80s, I think I was right at the beginning of the Reagan administration.

So I've worked through all the presidents since then.

And they're all a challenge, and some of them are easier than others.

[MUSIC] I started as a one-panel cartoonist doing editorial cartoons, so I got the science of that type of gag down.

I felt very comfortable then moving on to doing "Moderately Confused," which is social commentary on a different level, but appearing on comic pages.

I'm contracted to do three to four editorial cartoons every week, and I do six daily panels for "Moderately Confused."

So it's a total of nine to ten cartoons I do every week.

I work four weeks in advance on "Moderately Confused," whereas an editorial cartoon, I do it, I put it out the next day.

[MUSIC] You have to have thick skin in this business, but, you know, it's so rewarding, it's so much fun, and people always ask, you know, "So what's your favorite cartoon?"

And it's the one I did today.

[MUSIC] And finally today, what's more of an everyday item than a mug?

We're about to meet an artist who designs them, but they're far from ordinary.

This Milwaukee designer is a cartoonist, illustrator, and collector.

He takes inspiration from vintage toys, classic horror movies, and vinyl records to create Tiki mugs with an aesthetic that combines all his passions.

I've been drawing my entire life.

I prefer to say I'm a cartoonist, that's kind of where my heart is.

I love, like, you know, the old 40s, like Walt Kelly, Pogo Comics.

There's a tendency to have nostalgia more for times that you didn't live in than the ones that you did.

[MUSIC] I collect a lot of toys, specifically, like, vintage monster toys.

Frankenstein and Dracula, that kind of thing.

We, as kids, took the 'collect them all' in the back of the, you know, action figure package as, like, dogma.

There was a period of time about, like, 1964 where they started marketing classic horror movies in a way that they never had before.

So you had model kits and toys and clothes and all this stuff.

I've always really been fascinated with that time period.

Also, kind of overlapped with the peak of, like, Tiki culture.

I design Tiki mugs.

I always wanted to make characters.

I always wanted to write stories.

I like to make each mug a character.

I'm always looking for some other outlet to keep it fun.

[MUSIC] The Black Lagoon Room is, the bar in our basement, is what is named after.

I was working in the music industry for years in Chicago.

We moved up here ten years ago, and I really just still kind of wanted a creative outlet.

I'd done a lot of illustration and, you know, concert posters.

I did album art.

I did all kinds of stuff when I was in the industry.

I thought it'd be fun to start making some stuff, so we made some glasses for the home bar.

That kind of morphed into shirts and enamel pins and patches, and now our primary focus is Tiki mugs.

We had a moment a few years ago where we kind of decided we would like to open our own Tiki bar.

We were kind of seriously looking at spaces around 2019, and we knew a couple of people who, for their businesses, had designed Tiki mugs.

We just decided to try a design.

The week that our first mug was delivered was the week that everything shut down for COVID.

So we didn't do that.

Our first mug was the creature from the Crab Ring, which is like a little monster coming out of a Chinese takeout box.

Our second was our thirsty creature, which was a monster hand coming out of water holding a Tiki mug.

We did another one called a Trick-or-Tiki that was a little pumpkin pale with a Tiki face on it and it the text on the back.

Our most recent mug, "Mai Tai'd Til I Died," is a little tombstone.

I don't like to release anything that doesn't have a fun name.

[laughs] There's a surprising amount of Tiki events around the country.

We do Tiki Oasis in San Diego, which is the biggest Tiki event in the world.

We're in Ohio for Mai Tai Mayhem.

I mean, I couldn't do it without the support of people.

There's people that will wait in line to get into the event, to come to our table to buy one specific thing.

I mean, we had a lady show up at a show in Chicago a few years ago, who drove from Kansas City to Chicago, just to get this one thing that we only had there.

Just knowing that it resonates with people like that.

I mean, I get messages all the time from people that are like, "Oh my God, this is the coolest thing and I love it."

Or, "Half my collection is your stuff."

That kind of thing.

It's just so amazing.

And that wraps it up for us today on State of the Arts.

I'm Mary Paul.

Thank you for watching.