(upbeat music) - What's brewing in the arts world?

Beer cans as a canvas, coffee inside a comic book setting, babies wearing customized headgear, and an out of this world exhibit at the Jewish Museum Milwaukee.

In this episode of The Arts Page, enjoy examples of award-winning beer can artwork, here in Milwaukee.

And more creative beer can canvases at three Ohio micro breweries.

Visit a coffee shop where you are the color inside the two-dimensional black and white environment that a muralist has created.

One artist is making medical gear much more fun and empowering parents with her personalized paintings.

Plus get a peek inside the "Jews In Space members of the Tribe In Orbit."

exhibition.

"The Arts Page" starts right now.

(upbeat music) Welcome to "The Arts Page."

I'm Sandy Maxx, It's time to pop the top on pop art, that you can find on beer cans here in the Midwest.

Many breweries are using eye-catching artwork to beautify beer cans and establish their unique brands by turning to artists to help them attractively draw attention in a very crowded market.

Gone are the days of simply having a company logo on a can.

To stand out among the competition, you need a can that will draw the attention of the average shopper.

Take a tour of three micro breweries in Ohio to see how each of them are collaborating with artists to come up with creative and meaningful packaging.

And masterpiece mystery fans, look for the PBS inspired beer label.

(label gun clacks) (upbeat music) - [Man 1] Right now beer cans are like pop art.

You go to the beer store and you're just confronted with all this crazy artwork.

- [Man 2] There's a lot of beers on the shelves these days, so you gotta have something that's gonna at least catch people's eye.

- [Man 3] When I wanna go buy a beer, I want to make sure that you know good label, good name, and the beer is good.

- Yeah.

- [Woman] Beer can illustration, it's kind of open-ended.

It's kinda like a movie poster in a way.

Just feels like I get to be more creative.

- [Man 1] We wanna make sure that the artwork stands out.

- [Man 4] People collect beer cans, like people will reach out to me like, "Do you know how I get this one can?"

(upbeat music continues) - Noble Beast Brewing Company.

Downtown Cleveland, Ohio.

The Noble, which is like a German classification of traditional European hops.

And then the Beast is the American Craft Brewing side, which for better or worse, there's no rules.

A lot more creativity.

- So I enjoy beers a lot.

I think I was drawing quite a bit here in my like downtime if I was here solo waiting for someone.

So the staff picked up on that and saw, let Shaun know.

And I think the first thing we did was maybe a flyer for an event.

- [Shaun] Justin designed a can label just for my personal camping trip.

- The Pappy's Pilsner.

Shaun and his friends will get together and do a bunch of different activities in the woods.

- [Shaun] It's a fun label because it's just all the little stories that have happened, or trips that my college buddies and I been going on for about 15 years.

- There's a cabin, there's tire swings, there's climbing up on trees, jumping into rivers.

So it's neat to throw all those different things on the can and kind of get a more crowded immersive view than I normally would on a simpler can.

- [Shaun] Thought why Waste is such a good label?

So we brought it out to market this summer.

So "Murder Ballads" is a Baltic Porter, and we've done well with that.

We've won two 'Great American Beer Festival' awards with it.

That's a can design that has also been super popular, and it's inspired by one of Justin's favorite artists.

- And that's a little homage of mine to Ed Gorey, who's an artist.

Who animated a intro series on PBS show, "Mystery."

Just spooky enough.

Like very accessible, but still kind of that edge where you're like, "Something weird is going on behind the label."

- So it's fun because every single can is as unique as the beer in it and it's a new process to come up with it, and kind of collaborate on that design.

A big reason of why we continue to can is it's just fun to make these new labels and it's another creative outlet.

- And I love seeing the beers out in the stores.

I'll see it at Hynes when I go there.

There's like one Hynes in particular that keeps it on the top shelf and I'm super proud about that when I walk by.

And I'm humbled and I feel excited that I get to do it.

(relaxed music) - Missing Mountain Brewing Company, located in Cuyahoga Falls right on the Cuyahoga River.

Everything about this place is great, except the only thing that's missing is a mountain.

We've brewed probably over 120 different varieties of beers, So each of those beers have to have a name.

We use a lot of pop culture.

There'll be just some things that maybe something funny that was said in the The Brew House.

With that, we could have some pretty cool can art to them too.

- You can just be creative to really flex your artistic muscles.

I kind of think of it as this generation's album artwork.

You know, there's no rules.

Everybody does something different.

It's really up to the artist and the brewer and how far you wanna take it.

- "I'm up, let's get it."

Actually it comes from a rap song.

It's the attitude that we want to have.

It's another day, we gotta get up, we gotta attack it.

He said, "I got it."

- Starting a new day.

So I went with the rooster.

I thought he was a cool iconic doing his call.

- The art that he came up with was amazing for it.

It's gotta be either number one or number two.

Top label.

(upbeat music) - Zwickel Trickle is a hazy pale ale, and we knew this was gonna be a flagship and we were gonna have it on there, and we wanted to make sure we had a good name for it.

- The Zwickel is the tap on the tank.

You know it's beer coming out of the Zwickel.

- And that little Zwickel valve was just ever so, just dripping beer and wouldn't seal all the way properly.

"Oh you got a Zwickel Trickle."

The name stuck.

- Doing illustration, It's an art form.

It's like a vacation job.

To be in a fun mind state, to to work on it and make something fun.

I love working on Missing Mountain and doing can art.

I wish I could do it all day long.

(upbeat jazz music) - The brewer is located Sandusky, Ohio.

I'm from Vietnam.

I moved to Sandusky in 2011.

And then I start out small city tavern 2014.

And then suddenly one day I say, "Eh, let's open a brewery."

Back in 2015, when I hang out with my buddy, he call me, "Cocky little Asian guy."

Putting letter by letter, That's how I come up with the brewery name: Cocky Little Asian Guy.

Clang, yeah.

And then now, everyone loves it.

And they all want to come here and drink good beer and eat good asian food.

I got all my family support me, and they back me up behind it.

So here we are.

- [Woman] Papa Bui and Mamba Bui are Kha Bui's parents.

- Every Father's day weekend I always want to release a beer, represent my dad.

And Mother's day weekend I always want to represent my mom, to release a beer for her, because I love my mom and my dad.

- It was just kind of an homage to his parents and the inspiration they've given him for the whole company.

And he just really wanted to have something that showed them.

And there are two versions of them, one where they're dressed in traditional Vietnamese like royal garb, and then the original is where it's just them.

- She's good with that.

So my mom looked like my mom.

She looked pretty awesome on the can.

Yeah.

(upbeat rock music) - So Back To The Wild is a local wildlife rehabilitation center and they did a collaboration with them on this beer.

The 80's vibe, you find those tank tops at a thrift shop that's just kind of like a vignette of a bunch of wolves and a mountain.

And one's big and the other one's small.

It's kind of like Napoleon Dynamite-ish.

- I think that label is one of the badass labels.

When she get that done, I look at, I's Like, "Damn, that's awesome."

- Usually somebody asks me for something, I deliver it to them, and I have no idea what they do with it.

Cause sometimes people that contact me for work I don't get to meet ever in person.

So doing something like this and then getting to come down, like when we were at the anniversary party here and seeing people walk out with big crates and stacks of the can that I did, it's just cool to see people walk out with it.

Seeing our beer can, people sit with it for a long time and look at it.

It's so much more engaging.

Cause they're not just like, "Oh that's cool, scroll."

They're sitting there and drinking, and keep looking at it, and take another drink, and talk to people about it, which is just what's very cool to see to sit back and watch people engage with it in such a different way.

- Beer can art isn't just something micro breweries embrace.

Out of 7,000 worldwide entries just last year, local artist and filmmaker, Alyssa Borkowski was one of the 10 winners in the Pap's Blue Ribbon 2022 Art Can Contest.

Borkowski is a recent graduate of the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and you can see more of her art on her Instagram account.

Her handle is @neatcoolfun.

From beer to coffee now, let's visit a coffee shop that is two-dimensional, but certainly not a flat experience.

The 2D cafe features black and white cartoonish walls and furniture, designed and painted by renowned Florida muralist Chad Mize.

The colors in this creative and unique environment come from the customers.

And the cuisine.

(relaxed music) - When we expect people to feel when they come in here is that "wow" effect.

Ours slogan is, "Be the art."

Because we want our customers to become the focal point of our art on that wall.

So when you take a picture, it's you inside this comic book that we created.

- So when I first walked into 2D Cafe, I stopped at the door and I'm looking, I said, "Oh my God."

It was amazing.

I felt like I was inside of a cartoon.

Yeah, it was really awesome.

(giggles) My job duties here consist of being a barista.

I make all of our drinks here.

I make lattes, teas, matcha.

I've had matcha all over the city.

We have the best matcha.

(upbeat music) - We saw this concept first a couple years ago in a Forest Magazine article.

The first 2D cafe originated in Tokyo, Japan.

And it blew our minds.

We started thinking that how cool would it be to bring that amazing concept and experience to us here locally.

Chad Mize is a very well known artist here in the community in St. Petersburg, Florida.

And we wanted to commission someone that was gonna make it very unique in his own art.

And also make it very St. Pete, and he did an amazing job with that.

- I've been a self-employed artist for 20 years now.

Recently, probably in the last eight years I've been doing mural work.

So I do large scale murals for corporate and interior clients.

And so that has really opened up a world for me where it's more about people's general seeing my art, they don't have to go into a gallery to see my art.

They can be in a restaurant or walking down the street and seeing a mural on the side of the street, which is really powerful.

So for so long in my career, I toyed with other styles of work and kind of put this in a little bit of a backseat like the free-flow doodle style.

And probably in the last five years, I've realized that it was my strength, it was something that was natural to me.

And I feel like when I put that out there that's when my career really elevated, because I was doing what was most natural to me and like you could kind of see that.

You can see like, "That's what he should be doing."

So I worked with Disney this past year.

Did a piece with them, which was awesome.

And then COACH, they all hired me for this type of style that I'm doing I call it my free-flow style.

(upbeat music continues) - When we started collaborating together with Chad, we wanna give him free range, and for him to go with his own unique amazing style that he has.

However, we wanted our cafe to be a European bistro.

Therefore, we wanted to incorporate European elements in the design.

- When you add these personal touches to it, you can do little Easter eggs and hide things and I did add my dog Cookie in here, she's in the piece.

Then also the owners, the Maria's gave me a couple things to add that are personal to their life and that was kind of cool too.

- We wanted to make it unique and also bring some of our own cultures and families, and the things that are important to us personally, to the design and the art.

My wife is from Grease, her name is Maria.

So we're both Maria's.

- I love humor as well.

So there's a lot of humor and like tongue and cheek in a lot of my work.

- [Maria] It's playful where you can almost get the sense of you don't know what's real or not.

- Typically when I do like a restaurant, I'll have like just one wall.

So to actually give free range of a whole space, and cover every surface, that was a big undertaking, but it was exciting at the same time.

to date this has been the largest interior piece that I worked on.

- [Maria] We had to come up with ideas to really bring the 2D effect to life, so we actually created these columns and arches and the keystones that make the 2D effect even more complete.

- It totally transformed the space, adding those arches.

And then because it's so tall you wouldn't typically have like a clock go all the way to the ceiling, based on the size of these ceilings.

So we kind of did the patterns and stuff to fill in the top portions, which kind of gave that another element of the type of work that I do, which is pattern based work.

(cheerful music) - When we develop our menu, we wanted to incorporate both of my wife and I's culture in it.

So we have a few dishes that represent our culture.

And I was born euro ian in South America.

So we have in our menu for example, six different kinds of empanadas, which is something that I bring from my culture, and our 2D mocha is very popular.

It's actually white and dark chocolate with a coffee, so goes with a theme.

- It's very welcome and cozy inside the 2D cafe.

You just walk in and you're kind of you just see all the sites at once, and you kind of wanna explore and see all the bits of inspiration of where this cafe might be.

I just think that it's a really fun addition to downtown St. Pete and it's a fun place where people can come and hang out.

- Well if you go down central now and you see all the development and it's just so filled in.

This is definitely part of the mix.

It definitely stands out on its own, but it also is part of the whole creative culture that is in St. Pete.

We're inundated with color so much, so to come into a space and it be very stark and black and white but also very busy, there's a lot to look at in here and I would hope that someone that came in here would leave with an inspiration of their own.

- Working with Chad Mize, it was great.

It was a breeze.

He did an incredible job of making a 2D cafe so unique, so St. Pete, and so ours at the same time.

- It's just really cool to like leave your mark, and help a business with its artistic vision.

and it's been awesome for me to be part of that.

- Creativity and commerce in the St. Petersburg community.

Another kind of charming creativity is happening in Florida, to help families at an important part of an infant's life.

When a baby gets diagnosed with a misshapen head, what looks like a helmet is prescribed to wear for several months to reshape that baby's head as it grows and develops.

This can be scary for the parents, but what would it look like if this functional medical head wear could be fun and personalized?

Florida artist Kelli Sorg has a unique fulfilling job to work with families on this.

Here Sorg shares her fast-paced helmet painting process, and explains how her art helps parents provide more effective treatment for their babies.

(gentle music) - This cutie pie is our son Darwin.

He's six months old.

Right now he likes chicken and rice, and music is his new big thing.

(gentle music continues) Good job Bubby!

You a rock star.

You're my rock star.

When my wife and I found out that Darwin had to wear the helmet, it was actually a sense of relief.

We believed that maybe we were doing something wrong.

As first time parents, we didn't know.

And then when we were able to talk to the physician, they were able to tell us that the flatness on his head was caused in utero, and that actually gave us even more relief saying that we didn't do anything wrong.

So we were actually quite happy and excited that there was something that we could do to help him out.

- The official term is cranial remolding orthosis.

A lot of people will call them star bands or helmets, but realistically they're orthosis.

It's kinda like braces for your body.

And they're used for reshaping baby's heads.

Babies wear helmets for 23 hours a day.

It's one hour off for bathing and cleaning and depending on the severity in the age of the child will determine how long it takes for the remodeling to happen.

It could be between four and six months.

A lot of times it's faster, especially when they're compliant and wearing it full-time.

When they're not compliant, not so much.

(chuckles) So I have cards of local artists and basically I just say, "Here's an option if you wanna have your helmet painted.

We have artists who are happy to paint it for you."

- My name's Kelli Sorg, and I paint helmets for babies that need them for corrective issues with their heads.

And I enjoy bringing a little bit of sunshine to their helmet journeys.

I started painting helmets, I believe was September of 2016, and I painted over 70 helmets in that time.

(Upbeat music) I've always enjoyed art.

I knew for college I wanted to pursue that, so I took graphic design and fine arts, I got a degree in both.

They really helped me with the helmets, because I can use my graphic design to make a digital proof for the parents to see ahead of time.

We can make changes to that easily while they're waiting for their helmet to be made.

And then once I pick up the helmet, I can use my fine arts skills to execute that and return it to them more quickly.

So to paint one of these helmets, non-toxic is my first priority.

When I first get it, it's got a very shiny coat on it so I need to sand that off.

Before that to make sure I get every little spot, I take a crayon, non-toxic crayon and I color over everything on the helmet.

When I am sanding it with a little hand sander, I can make sure I haven't missed a spot cause the paint will peel right off if I don't have it as a rougher surface.

Then I can start painting.

I return them within within 24 hours so the child can get started wearing them as quickly as possible.

Since it is a medical device.

- We went with the fighter pilot.

And we kind of designed it off of "Top Gun."

Kelli actually did a fantastic job sending us over proofs and ideas that she had on her Instagram page.

So we were able to sit one night, or actually two nights and go through and pick different designs and pick different things and customize the helmet for what we liked, which was really fun for us.

- Parents who are happy looking at the helmet are more likely to keep the helmet on appropriately.

Compliance is through the roof whenever they're enjoying what they're looking at on their child, because let's face it, babies are fine in the helmets, parents are not.

So if the parents are happy, everybody's happy.

(gentle music continues) - Being a new father and being a physician, I understood that the treatment plan actually involved compliance.

Painting the helmet was a very simple solution for me to swallow the pillow of having my child with the helmet for four months, to be very honest with you.

(Darwin giggles) - When we got the helmet back from Kelli, we were absolutely in love It looked even better than it did on the sketch ups and the designs.

- Yeah!

Yeah!

- Strangers now, they don't even see the helmet.

They all believe it's part of his outfit or whatever he is doing.

They see right through the helmet.

The painting job worked.

It did exactly what it was supposed to do.

- I've always enjoyed using my art for children.

My son never had to wear a helmet, but as a mother, I can understand and I have some empathy for parents who do have to go through that.

And I feel if there's something I can do to help make that a little easier, and just a little more joyful for them, and that the people around them will be smiling at their child and seeing these really fun designs, that makes me happy.

- As a new parent, you wanna do everything that you possibly can for your child.

This was something that we saw from the very beginning, and we did everything in our power to prevent the misshaped head.

We were awake until one, two o'clock in the morning, every 15 minutes moving his head, turning his head.

For us, This gave us our lives back and it was a solution for his future because if as new parents we had an option of fixing something that could be fixed and we chose not to, it would be very difficult for me to be the dad that I want to be.

- I can't help them in a medical way, I can't help them every day on a personal level, but I figure if I can use my talent to help in this way, that really makes me happy.

- To see more of Kelly Sorg's paintings, go to her Facebook page called, makeitsnappyart.

Have you gone to the Jewish Museum Milwaukee's exhibition yet titled, "Jews in Space, Members of the Tribe in Orbit."

You can see it now through February 5th.

And curator Molly Dubin tells us about a special program happening this month.

- [Interviewer]] Tell me about the program, "star Trek going boldly beyond Barriers."

happening January 12th.

- Really excited about this program.

In the exhibit we mentioned that it was pioneering in so many ways, for people who remember the original and it's important to talk about it, and identify it as the original because there have been so many spinoffs and additions, But it's a show that came on the air heading into the height of the civil rights movement.

And it was a show that during a very tumultuous time, in the United States was looking to a futuristic utopian society, where there wasn't prejudice, where people were accepting of one another.

Where there was collaboration for the betterment of the galaxy.

It is virtual.

We've been doing a hybrid, some in person, some virtual, some combination.

for the virtual, It really enables us to reach a broader audience which is fantastic.

You don't get that in person physical connection, but people from all around the world tuned into our programs during the pandemic and that's something that we've continued.

So you register for the program, and in advance, you'll receive a link to be able to join the Zoom session and you will get a presentation that is visual, it is educational, and allows for some great dialogue and questions.

- [Interviewer] Well thank you Molly, for telling us about that Star Trek program happening January 12th at 7:00 PM.

And "Live long and prosper."

- Thank you.

You as well.

- Plan your visit and see the schedule of this exhibits events when you go to the website jewishmuseummilwaukee.org/jews-in-space.

Thank you for watching, I'm Sandy Maxx Please join me the first Thursday of every month for a half hour full of art on, "The Arts Page."

(upbeat ending music)