Jeremy Rosario, OG Players

Production of Broad & High is funded in part by the Greater Columbus Arts Council supporting arts, advancing culture and connecting a community to artists events and classes at Columbus makes art dot com.

From these contributing sponsors and viewers like you.

Thank you.

This time on Broad & High meet an artist who is driven to help others in his work that he hopes will inspire conversation and encourage healing.

And hear a band that invites you to fully immerse your senses.

This and more right now on Broad & High.

Welcome to Broad & High, I'm your host, Kate Quickel .

Jeremy Rosario is an artist who uses his creative talent to connect people and lift them up.

Whether it be addressing a health crisis or a natural disaster, using art as a transformational tool is at the heart of everything he does.

Let's learn more.

Growing up in Puerto Rico, I was immersed in a really beautiful culture of people that are connected.

As a child, I grew up in poverty, and I always found art as a as an escape to allow me to dream and create innovation and and think different about everything that was in front of me.

Helping people in my artwork.

It was fueled by a necessity to redefine art.

You know, art, it's all around us is what we see, what we hear, what we taste, what we feel.

And yet, when we can use those tools strategically, it can really help change behavior.

There's nothing more beautiful than to love people.

And the moment that you show genuine interest magically, people open up and they share their frustrations, their heartaches, your joys, and it becomes part of a conversation.

The Grace Clinic is an amazing medical ministry, and as a platform they're providing free medical help as well as prescription medications for people without insurance.

I volunteer there as a translator.

Sometimes I joke about it, they're going to fire me.

But, you know, we're all volunteers.

Doctors are volunteers.

They are nurses.

And I think being an artist, I'm always inquisitive to I want to learn more about you.

You know, I'm really interested about you.

So tell me more about your life.

And you get to create relationships with a lot of those patients.

As I was engaging in conversation, I will ask the patients, Hey, today is last day you see me what words of advice or wisdom will you give me?

Okay.

And their eyes were like, Whoa, this is I've never been asked that, but here's why I wanted to do that.

I think that every human is so valuable.

And, you know, when I was growing up, I remember some of the people that grew up near me, regardless if it was poverty or stress or they all understood the power of connecting in some of the most beautiful wisdom came from those who were hurting the most.

Not from a CEO, not from a thought leader.

Instead, the salt of the earth.

This people that are just.

Just beautiful.

So I started this initiative.

I wanted to do paintings, oil paintings of a lot of these patients.

So I would talk to them.

You know, they gave me some words of advice.

I will write it down in my sketchbook, take a picture, do a couple of sketches.

And that became a body of work that was very moving for me personally as an artist.

The exhibit was really powerful because in the middle of the gallery I had two chairs and I had written between the two chairs.

Share your most treasurer advice?

And I didn't plan for this, but as people were visiting the exhibit, they were writing their own thoughts of advice and they put them all over the floor.

So in a matter of weeks, you know, the floor was covered with sticky notes and just beautiful messages of of hope and messages of positivity.

I'm working on this really exciting project with my daughter that we call the ABCs of Encouragement for Girls.

It's a book that it helps to inspire and build up and edify young girls.

We're creating art through words, through illustrations that are meant to encourage and help them feel secure.

Then each page is going to include a just a right building block of a word that allows any caregiver to spend some time unpacking what that word means to them.

Since I'm always experimenting with things, I keep a sketchbook, I'm doing doodles out of coffee and for the letter Q In the book, I want to this idea of being quick inspired by hurdles in track and field.

One thing that I'm inspired by, athletes do hurdles.

Obviously, you got to run a fast jump run real fast and do it again, right?

So the thought that there is space between hurdles, recovery, planning, go again.

I think it's a beautiful analogy for life.

And the message that I have an illustration is be quick to learn from yesterday and go for tomorrow.

You got it.

I hope that it opens this conversation about times in life when when you encounter a roadblock and how do you get around that or jump over it?

Right.

I hope this encouraged kids to open up about the realities that they're facing.

Why are they sad and share their hearts out and hoping that that we can change a generation?

I think it's our role to create escapes through art, to help them transform their minds into into a new beginning, a new hope of encouragement and and purpose.

You can imagine, I mean, because we saw images here on TV of the devastation that a Category four hurricane brought to the island.

I mean, with my mom tells me when she opened the door after the hurricane, seeing hundreds of dead birds everywhere and like somebody had ran a giant lawn mower all over the island.

I mean, everything was down.

So I wanted to bring some help.

And the first thing that came to mind was creating a silkscreen piece of art to raise funds, to send supplies.

We were gathering boxes.

We were sending them to this location.

And I had a couple of friends who will gather them and then go and deliver it to houses.

The idea of getting myself out of my comfort zone to use the only tools that I have, which is art and thinking to to try to mitigate that need.

It was beautiful just to see the results of it.

But soon this became a bigger initiative that I really wasn't expecting.

That was just a phase one.

And the moment that things were moving good and people were getting what they needed.

We decided to go down because obviously it was a crazy need that people had.

So I put together a group of volunteers from Ohio to go and rebuild roofs in Sonia's house.

It was very evident how the cracks, you know, that town and downtown, like how it rains every day.

So water comes down, which is a fire hazard with, you know, the electrical.

So she was not turning her lights on and everything.

We knock on the door and told her, you know, we're here from Ohio.

We want to help.

Maybe work on your roof to seal it.

And her face eyes open wide.

And she started crying.

Crying.

And she said, you don't understand that yesterday I lost my hope in God.

And I've been crying every night, crying out, crying out, crying out.

And because of her circumstances into that, trying to show up out of nowhere, we found in the backyard a a garden gnome, the Santa Claus garden gnome wearing a Hawaiian shirt.

And I have a painting of him holding the we call it Nick because Saint Nicholas but wearing a Hawaiian shirt.

But in the execution of that oil painting, what you see is some monochromatic blue values behind the oil.

And it creates this really ethereal presence of the image.

And that was really meant to capture families live for over a year under blue tarps.

So when you got into the spaces and see how they lived in the inside of the home, had this beautiful blue glow that me as an artist, I was inspired by it.

But obviously people and you're living in this condition.

It's not is not favorable because, you know, it doesn't really keep you out of the rain.

You know, they don't seal perfectly.

But that painting I love because of the composition and it's a chalk and a message of of visual hope actually into the island and then seeing the blue around it.

It's a really powerful, I think then my my genuine passion and pursued for people I understand the power of the visual image, the power of color, the power of composition.

And a lot of times to really bring the right message to the heart of that person.

It may be a different media for different people.

It takes a little bit of courage as an artist because a lot of times I approach things.

I've never done those particular media before.

And a perfect example, I'm working on a really important our exhibit, probably a work that I'm extremely proud of, but it involves gluing objects into a canvas and it's a different mind twist and exercise in my mind because I'm gluing things down and I'm analyzing shapes, I'm analyzing values, stepping back in and really thinking about who said the right placement to communicate the emotions has been challenging for me, but I'm really happy with the result of where this body of work is heading.

We Puerto Ricans, we love people.

We love this experience.

And and it doesn't mean that my life is perfect.

You know, we all struggle with, you know, all the things of life, sickness and job loss stores, you name it.

You know, they're all in there.

But if we move away from from that and focus more in the in the emotional aspect of of connecting with a greater humanity, we can make a better world that's at the heart of how we like to approach art through life, because it's a part of me.

And if I don't do it, I won't be happy.

To see more of his work, find him on Facebook at Jay Rosario Dot Arte.

Spending time in nature means hiking for some and birdwatching for others.

Visitors to Aullwood Audubon in Dayton, Ohio.

You can also add viewing an art exhibition to the list.

Thanks to artist Thomas Dambo, a special family has made all woods hiking trails their home.

Dambo, who is from Copenhagen, Denmark, is the world's leading recycle artist.

He's been helping giant trolls come to life around the world for ten years.

The troll that hatched an egg is the name of his permanent exhibit at Aullwood and is one of only nine Dambo created exhibitions in North America.

Aullwood is a nature, sanctuary and form of the National Audubon Society.

And our mission is environmental education that connects children of all ages with nature, birds, wildlife and bird friendly farming.

I really love the intersection between science, conservation and art, and I think that if those things can work together, they can impact a much broader audience than any of those can individually.

And so I think it's really exciting to have art at a place like Aullwood, Thomas Dambo.

This world renowned recycle artist from Denmark, he's written this story called The Great Story of the Little People and the Giant Trolls and what he's creating is a worldwide fairy tale.

Everyone loves a fairy tale.

This story is all about what the little people need to learn.

We're the little people.

And I kind of love that perspective, you know, that we are the little people and the trolls are wise and they are teaching us.

And so Thomas goes around the world making his trolls and sharing this message of wisdom from the trolls to protect the earth, to take something that maybe you think is trash and make it something meaningful and something beautiful.

And that's actually what he did with her trolls here.

The name of the installation overall is “The Trolls that Hatched an Egg ” the trolls are named Bibbi, Bo and Bodil and all of their names start with the letter B because birds starts with the letter B, the story that Thomas wrote for Aullwoods trolls really revolves around this cardinal, this bird that the trolls befriend.

Bibbi, the daughter is out in the woods and she sees these metal things fall from the sky.

And she also notices this metal bird that she thinks is a bird.

But it's really an airplane because we're close to the Dayton Airport and these metal things falling from the sky were obviously the metal birds, eggs.

And so she ran and got her mother and said, Mom, these metal eggs have fallen out of the sky.

We've got to hatch them.

So they go off and they build this giant troll nest and they put the eggs in there and they try to hatch them and nothing happens.

So Bibbi very upset by this.

And she thinks the only solution really is to go up in the sky and get that metal bird to come down and get her eggs.

So she sneaks off into the woods and builds herself wings.

She's been watching how the birds fly.

So, of course, that's a little nod to the Wright brothers.

And she goes up to the top of the hill by the prairie and takes off up into the sky to find the metal bird and bring her back down.

So that's kind of the basics of the story of our trolls here at Aullwood all of the bodies are made out of old pallet wood.

We collected thousands of sticks and and pieces of logs and we pulled grapevines from farms next door to us and all kinds of crazy things.

And then Thomas built the faces of the trolls out of dollar store shelves he found in a dumpster in Denmark.

And so he built the faces and the feet in Denmark in his shop, and then he shipped them to us on a container.

And when you opened up the doors, there were just giant faces and huge feet in the back of the trailer.

So that was a lot of fun.

Thomas likes to have a certain number of volunteers.

He's done this for years now.

He knows what works well for him and his team.

Our volunteers had a lot of different skills.

They ranged in age from 18 to 81.

Some of them were engineers, many were retired teachers.

One was a college student, and they just brought this really fresh perspective and excitement that was very contagious.

And Anita contacted my wife and said, Hey, we've got this secret project coming up.

Do you know anybody who likes to work with their hands and who likes to be outside?

And my wife said, I absolutely do it.

There's a lot of prefabrication that went into each troll.

A couple of weeks were spent cutting a big water container pallets and painting those to be the wings and all of the fur and the skin had to be cut down from pallet boards and things like that.

The nest was a lot of fun to work on too.

There's a lot of troll language carving around the nest and if I remember correctly, Thomas Dambo has a book about the trolls that has the troll language in it.

So you could track down that book and translate the writing down at the nest and see what they had to say about it.

Since I was retired, I was able to do about four days a week for the whole I was here, pretty much the whole month.

Yeah.

And I enjoy I would have done more too because it was very exciting to come every day and see the progression because you really didn't know what they were going to look like when they were finished.

The dad got finished first, Bo.

My job from Bo is clean up on aisle five.

I basically was asked to pick up all I mean when they're working, this crew is amazing.

They're climbing all over the structure.

When they're working, there's wood flying everywhere.

So I collected the wood, made sure to get everything out of the stream.

And I for some reason I was put on stick patrol.

So when they did, the hair follows the trolls.

You were sent out into the woods and you had to collect fallen branches and then bring them back and cut them in certain sizes.

And the next thing you know, you've got this gorgeous hairdo on Bo or on mom to help with her hairdo.

And then the one that's the funniest one is Bibbi, the baby.

I'd found a pine tree that had died, and I held it up.

So what do you think about this?

And she's perfect.

She stuck it right in the back of Bibbi's hair.

So if you go out there and you look around the back side of Bibbi, there's this one wild hair, pine tree sticking out.

We've had just an incredible response from the public.

I mean, our gate has gone up, I think, something like 700% since the trolls opened last November.

And I just love the reaction that the public's having.

People are coming here from all over the country, all over the world.

The trolls will be here at Aullwood as long as we can maintain them and preserve them.

And as Thomas says, someday they will go back to the earth.

So I think they'll be here for several years at least.

The takeaway from visiting “The Troll that Hatched an Egg ” is the belief that they can make something beautiful out of recycled materials or trash and that they too can do something to protect the Earth, to preserve the Earth, and to cherish the Earth.

We only get one.

To learn more, visit Aullwood dot Audubon dot org.

The OGE players short for observation generation is a band that is known for combining a loop station, a trombone, and sometimes a violin with smooth vocals and hip hop beats.

They recently visited our studio to record a session for “Broad & High Presents.

” Let's take a listen.

Observation.

Generation to generation.

Observation.

That generation of observation.

Generation by observation, yeah.

Generation was the definition of true, they say is to quality or state of being true.

Of that which is true.

It is the fact of reality of I guess me, you, you, they say it's about the real thing.

So it's in the fact that actually brings the fidelity.

to an original or standard.

that sincerity and actually what does it really mean?

Transcendence, a fundamental to of the mental on earth before we leave nowadays I don't know what to believe, do I believe?

But they believe that they believe is make believe.

TRUTH.

Sick of this earth wish I could leave on my way pray for the ones really in need.

Oops embrace truth.

If It's like you have no class.

Doesn't matter life so fast that time because it is true of the eyes if it's about you.

When I stand up in searching of my life, tell me, does it matter if it's true?

As if it's my truth, for instance, Ive been searching all my life, tell.

Does it matter what the definition of life is, ironically, has a double meaning behind one means lay down the other is deceive the iris.

Oh, if you searching then you will find this.

Recline and rest become motionless to reside with sex if its used with with.

Life with.

That's what they say.

You can get it from your highness lie means false or mislead with kindness, I swear some people are wearing blinders, diving into a pool full of piranhas, hitting notes like divas or primadonnas.

Yeah, I lay in my layers like onyx stone cold with the flow and kick it with shamans.

Yeah.

Most lyin out they, but it doesn't matter.

Like, so fast.

That's because it if it's true as if it's about you.

I think searching on my life tell me, it doesn't matter.

This is true or are they lies, if its my truth then wheres the lie.

I have been searching all my life, tell me does it matter .generation.

does it matter Of.

does it matter if its truth or are they lies.

if its my truth then wheres the lie, Cause Ive been searching all my life Does it matter if its truth or are they lies.

Cause Ive been searching all my life.

does it matter, does it matter To hear more from OG players find them on Instagram at the OG players.

Well that is our show.

Remember you can find all of our stories online at WOSU as well as on our YouTube channel for all of us here at WOSU, I'm Kate Quickel.

Thanks for watching.

On the observation.

Imma OG, OG, OG like Obi-Wan Kenobi, I'm the old G. You know me to hold up speed to move these on.

Dope beats that Don't see I'm the OG.

Go, deep then go eat.

Im the woody I go sleep with bo peep.

Yeah, the floor is so sweet cope for that broke.

They love it like a E. Own you, don't be funny you owe me.

You ODd off my dope you ol leach.

Yeah that's my vision that whole rich but I'm stuck in the back in the pen with some Old sheep.

Trippin like that you ingested the whole sheet burn it, passion now fasten yo whole seat.

Production of Broad & High is funded in part by the Greater Columbus Arts Council supporting arts, advancing culture and connecting the community to artists events and classes at Columbus makes art.

dot Com.