(upbeat music) (mouse clicking) (keyboard clacking) (mouse clicking) (upbeat music) (car engine revving) (upbeat music) (car engine revving) (keyboard clacking) (mouse clicking) (tool whirring) (upbeat music) (hammer thudding) - I used to work in the Jeep plant and I was on the line and I was watching the floor doing the same job for 10 hours a day over and over and over.

And I'm seeing all these pieces just like fly by me that I know were going in the trash.

And I was like, what can I do with these?

So I took a handful home and I created my first junkie and that was it.

(rock music) So I create characters that I call Junkeez.

And I call them that because they're made out of at first it was like junk pieces things that we're gonna get thrown away.

I've kind of grown into making pieces with like antiques and vintage items now rather than just like trash.

But what they are are found object, repurposed sculpture.

Anything that I find that I think is interesting, I create characters with it.

And I kind of use hardware and things to put them together.

I love wooden fruits.

Like any, did you know, you've seen people's coffee table with a bowl of wooden fruit or whatever, anytime I find them, I have to get them.

Almost everything I use is metal and wood, rarely plastic or any kind of things like that unless it's like an accessory.

When I start making Junkeez, I might have an idea in my head based on feet or based on the body or whatever, but I really don't know who they're gonna be until I'm done making them.

And then I'll look at them and be like, okay, who are they and what are they doing?

So this is gonna be a little bear I guess or something, maybe a mouse.

(upbeat music) And I go to friends and Facebook and Instagram and wherever to have my community contribute to the name and what they're doing and stuff.

People love that.

When I go to make Junkeez, I either was inspired by a piece or part that I found somewhere to build the whole junkie into something or I just grab pieces and parts that I think will look good together and I'll start building and then it just comes together.

I put so much care and time into each piece and part that I make for the whole junkie itself.

I will try my best to make those pieces and parts fit somehow.

Even if I did screw something up, drill an extra hole, I don't consider it a fail, I consider it another challenge, another hurdle for me to try to figure out how to fix.

Yeah, I'm trying to figure out.

I'll throw some details on there real quick while I'm thinking of feet.

Just use more forks and spoons or something.

Why?

On occasion I will have to look for a certain piece or part because I have an idea of how I wanna put a certain thing together.

So I have to have like a certain shape of wood or a certain whatever.

You got to stay away from glue if you want things to stay together forever.

So I strictly use hardware.

If I ever use glue now it's for like a tiny detail that needs inset somewhere or something like that.

Eyeballs, on occasion I'll put glue just to make sure that they're in there, but they always have something that's still keeping them in there besides it.

But not until the past like 10, 15 years have I came into what I'm actually doing.

And how everything that I've learned all through the years and everything else, it has all kind of came together in my art.

It might have took me a week to make a small junkie a long time ago, you know, 10 years ago, but now I can kind of, I know what pieces and parts go together, I know what hardware to use, I know what drill bits I'm gonna need for this screw now and all that stuff.

I love making custom pieces because that's how I grow as an artist, I need challenges.

And as much as I try to challenge myself, it's never as good as when somebody else wants me to make something for them, 'cause first of all, I'm excited you want me to make something for you.

And then I am excited for the challenge because if I couldn't do all this stuff and be creative, I don't think I'd be able to function the way that I do.

It's always been my coping, my fun, my everything.

(tool whirring) I feel like since he's gonna be so plain and weird, his name's Carl.

(upbeat music) (gentle music) - [Jon] You can go to any type of museum and walk around and see beautiful artwork, but here we encourage our guests to go out and touch and feel and experience things that they've never seen before.

(gentle music) (upbeat music) - [Narrator] Want to see your favorite local story featured on our show?

Head to our website at wbgu.org/scenicstops.

Find the blue button and let us know where we should go next.

(keyboard clacking) (mouse clicking) (upbeat music) - Otherworld I would say is an immersive art exhibit.

It's kind of like those old Choose Your Own Adventure books.

I don't know if anyone remembers those.

You get to do kind of like a self-guided tour.

If you want to learn more about the lore and kind of like the storyline, there are certain rooms that are better suited for kind of like filling you in on information, but otherwise you can just explore, touch things, interact with walls or other motion-activated things.

There's just a surprise in every corner.

- What makes us very unique starts all the way down from our owner Jordan Renda.

Jordan got a start building and creating haunted houses and then he went to escape rooms and then one day just imagined this and built a 32,000 square foot immersive art entertainment experience that no one's ever seen before.

(upbeat music) - [Ira] When we first started in 2018, there's probably a group of 20 artists, and fabricators.

But I think now we're up to, I wanna say close to a hundred if not a little over a hundred.

'Cause we also have guest artists that paint murals for us.

- [Jon] You can go to any type of museum and walk around and see beautiful artwork, but here we encourage our guests to go out and touch and feel and experience things that they've never seen before.

We take you from one room to another and it changes world and dynamics from the colors, lights, sounds, and full on experiences.

(upbeat music) - [Ira] When we're designing stuff, we want it to be very immersive.

So it could be something like an, something as simple as opening up a door and then making the room come to life.

Or something as simple as a scale shift, you feel like you're so much smaller or so much bigger than you are.

(electronic music) I think the best thing about being a part of the fabrication group is being able to work at this scale.

I don't have the resources at home to build a 12-foot tall monster or anything like that.

So just the scale of it.

Another great thing about being a part of this team is seeing people enjoy the stuff that you've made and really interact with it, appreciate that something was made by hand, by people, by artists.

(electronic music) - You walk in and you're completely changed in every aspect of where you're coming from.

You can for example see it as you're in a sleep study.

The next minute you're in a child's bedroom.

And from a child's perspective, right, when we were kids, you could see a monster underneath your bed.

But we bring that vision of what a child could see to life, all the way to just traveling into a complete different dimension.

When the guests first come inside, we have our box office staff that will give you your wristband and check you in.

What they're gonna do is explain to you that there are games and puzzles to be solved while you're inside with your family.

Also that everything is meant to be touched and played with because you may not know that you may be touching something that will give you a clue to the next puzzle piece that you need to help figure out.

Also, we have staff that are inside the exhibit at all times so that when they can see guests trying to figure out what the puzzle or the experience is, that they can walk the guests through all of that.

Also on our online, when they are buying their tickets, it explains that these things are meant to be played in touch with and that there are games and puzzles to be found.

This place is for everyone.

It's a unique experience.

You can have a child from the age of one to grandma and grandpa up to 92.

Everyone has something to admire about this place.

- One time there was a grandpa who came in with his grandkids.

He kind of like walked through the door and was kind of taking everything in.

And as I went around, there's this room that we've since redesigned, but all of a sudden this guy was just like running around with his grandkids and it was like, I think that's what this is about, getting back to that place where you're like carefree.

- You can treat it as the coolest playground to a very unique art experience of just observing and looking at the art.

We try to make sure that we encompass everyone.

We have things from just our daily tickets where guests can come in day to day with their families to every so often we'll bring in known DJs to come in and we can turn it into a concert venue.

We have something for everybody when they come here to Otherworld.

(calming music) It could take on average up to 90 minutes to experience the entire exhibit.

However if you decide that you're really immersed into every puzzle, every unique thing that needs to be touched and played with, it could take you up a little bit longer.

- [Ira] We're trying to like foster a sense of play.

People are very glued to their screens and I think we offer a really good space to be able to interact and experience something that's a little different than just sitting and staring at a screen.

- We're in the business of creating smiles.

Outside, we can't control what happens out there, but while somebody is in our space, we give them a place to escape reality and just be immersed with their family and their friends and to try something unique different and feel like for just a few moments I didn't have to look at my phone, I didn't have to worry about what's going on, but man, that was a really good time and I can't wait to tell my friends.

(gentle music) - TimberFork to me is a creative studio.

This is just a place for me to come and let loose of all those things that I bring home from work and then just creatively let it all out.

(keyboard clacking) (mouse clicking) TimberFork is a creative studio.

And we focus on a lot of different things from design to build.

We run the production pottery studio out of here.

I came up with the name TimberFork as I was searching for ideas for the business and I started thinking about inspiring things from my childhood and one of those things was climbing this big cottonwood tree in my parents' backyard.

And I would sit in the fork of the tree and I started thinking of how I could incorporate that and TimberFork was born.

(relaxing music) So I built the studio to house a project that was restoring a 1958 Shasta Airflyte travel trailer and to house many other creative endeavors.

(wheel whirling) Generally speaking, everything is made by hand.

A potter's tools can be made from a variety of materials or found even.

I was just working with the Japanese potter who came in and his tools look very rudimentary compared to what we get.

I do prefer working with the tools that I've made myself.

We use a sponge and a wooden tool and a needle tool and a wire.

As far as the process goes of making pottery, you know, we get all of our clay locally.

Right now we're kind of dabbling.

We really like this dark brown clay we've been using.

It provides like a really rich earthy feel.

However, we're pretty well known for our red wear.

And I like the vintage aesthetic that it provides and it looks really good with that clean white glaze and it kind of gets that nostalgic feel to the mug that we're going for.

We start on the wedging table and we cut it up into pieces and make sure the clay is very workable.

We really focus on preparing the clay.

A lot of testing.

We certainly have made some mistakes along the way and have learned from those.

Just a lot of trial and error.

I like to think of working with the clay is somewhat of a dance.

You have to center your mind before you can center the clay.

Working with clay can be extremely relaxing once you get past the hard parts, which is centering.

So if you center your mind and take a deep breath and you can breathe that into the clay, and then you just have to work.

As calming as that sounds, a lot of what we do though is throw a ball down, make the pot, take it off, throw the ball down, make the pot, take it off.

(gentle music) So to keep the mugs consistent, we measure everything out by weight and then the process is really just very repetitive, the same motion over and over.

And depending on what we're making, we measure it out into very specific sizes and weights.

We generally have a good rule of thumb now with our experience to know how much clay that we'll need.

Then the other unique thing about them is everything is one-off.

Even though we may make things look the same, every single mug feels a little bit different to each person because everybody's hand sizes are different.

Even though in the factory they make all the handles exactly the same, not everybody's hands are the same.

We wanna make a quality product that people can feel that somebody's heart and soul went into the making of the product.

And then we go through the process.

So we'll slap the clay down on the wheel, get it centered up, open up the vessel, pull the vessel up, whatever we got to do, cut it off.

And from there, we then wait for it to dry.

It becomes bone dry.

Then we load it the kiln for the bisque firing, which is the first firing.

Then out of the kiln it comes and we apply glaze.

And then we fire it again.

And one thing we do here at TimberFork, which we're kind of known for is customizing the pots with an iron transfer decal.

We print on something called a water slide decal.

And it's got to have just the right iron content in the ink.

The ink transfers to the water slide decal, we take that out, we soak it in water, and then it just slides onto the work and then we have to fire it again.

And then it's the iron content in the ink that leaves the image behind on the mug embedded into the glaze.

Like anything, pottery is a skill that can be learned like riding a bike and you can learn it and come back to it years later and you'll still have that skill.

Austin is a former student of mine and now he works for me.

I learn a lot from Austin here in the studio.

This guy is a wizard at making mugs and spiral wedging, which is a form of Japanese preparation of the clay and he's mastered it.

He's really good at it.

TimberFork to me is a creative studio.

This is just a place for me to come and let loose of all those things that I bring home from work and then just creatively let it all out.

It's where I hang out with my son.

It's where he thrives creatively.

It's where I connect with people.

There's a lot more than just making pottery that goes on here.

If I could have TimberFork become something, it's just a creative entity that is putting good into the world through making.

I wanna live in a thriving creative community.

I believe that this leads to innovation and allows people to be free thinkers and maybe more accepting of others around us.

I think creativity helps people become empathetic.

That's what I want to see in the world.

So that's what I want TimberFork to put out there.

- 577 has something for you no matter what you're looking for.

If you are looking for peace, if you are looking to feel rejuvenated, if you need to be creative, this is the kind of place that you will find all of those different things.

(keyboard clacking) (mouse clicking) (gentle music) That's the hardest part about all of this is to narrow it down to one thing, because Virginia really didn't want it to have a lot of boundaries.

She wanted it to be a lot of things to a lot of people.

Every day at 577 is completely different.

For the day to day for me personally as the executive director, I'm responsible for overall leadership of the organization, vision and direction of where we're headed next.

Where are we coming from is what we're doing today rooted in what, where we came from in the past.

When we talk about 577, we like talking about the people that created this space.

We also like talking about the land itself.

This was originally Indigenous land.

Before any of us were here, it was being taken care of by Indigenous folks who lived here and lived in harmony with nature.

The house was built in 1935.

It has a lot of similar architecture to the Wildwood property in Toledo because those were cousins of the Stranahans that were building the property here.

577 is our address, but historically, it's what her grandchildren would call this place when they would come visit grandma.

Virginia Secor Stranahan was very interested in the arts.

She thought it was important for people to experiment with history, culture, the arts, the natural world.

And so all of those components are what make up the 577 Foundation today.

She was extremely well traveled.

She was extremely well educated.

She was relentlessly curious and she wanted everyone around her to be so as well.

She and her husband Duane bought this property in 1935.

Prior to that it was a gentleman's farm or a hobby farm.

So people would come here to escape the rigors of business life in Toledo.

In order to have a functioning gentleman's farm, they needed to also have animals and they needed to have some machinery.

And so in the same property, they built a barn, which we use today for classes and for the welcome center and the curiosity shop.

But back then they were using it for all of their wagons, their machinery, the things they needed to take care of a small hobby farm.

When they bought the property, they bought it to raise their six children.

So they raised their six children here starting in 1935.

Around 1985, as she was getting on in years she said, I don't know what to do with this property.

I want it to be for the community, I want it to be green space, I want people to be able to have access to the river, and so I wanna give this back to the community.

The circle where we have our community gardens currently was the riding rink.

So the reason that they're in a circle and the reason that the dome is positioned where it is, is a nod to the history of having horse riding rinks in a big circle right in the middle of the property.

So it almost looks like a sun with rays radiating out of it, and it's because that was a round area that was already rounded when she came.

The gardens themselves, no, we did not have nearly that number of gardens.

Although she did have gardening staff and she did have people that came in to help her out with the gardens.

(lively music) We are trying to promote best practices in growing and in natural environments.

So that's part of the reason that we're keeping things organic.

That's part of the reason that we focus on pollinators.

A lot of the pollinators that we focus on here are on the endangered species list or are close to being endangered.

So the honeybee in North America right now is not in great shape and there are lots of reasons that that might be the case.

But either way, regardless of what the reasons are, it is important to us that we're focusing on ways to educate people about the importance of having really healthy pollinator populations.

So the log cabin was built around 1803, 1804, so it's by far the oldest building that we have on our property.

It is not original to the spot that it's in right now.

On the day that it was moved, they had a whole processional of a fully formed log house on the back of a flatbed truck.

And in the very front of the processional was Virginia in her golf cart leading the way.

She was a preservationist as much as she was a visionary.

She also wanted to make sure that we kept an eye on history.

The geodesic biodome is something that Mrs. Stranahan saw when she was on a visit to Aspen, Colorado.

She saw it at John Denver's house and wanted one here in Perrysburg.

What's fascinating about that structure is that it's extremely strong.

It's similar to a Buckminster Fuller design.

So for the architecture buffs out there, they'll know that that is very much one of the strongest.

The hexagonal pieces that are all over it are making that structure really strong.

On the interior, we have a pond that helps regulate the temperature of the interior.

The koi fish in there, some of them are over 20 years old.

It's a family favorite for people to come and feed the fish.

Because of the structure, you can have arid plants growing in the same place as tropical plants.

And I think what's wonderful about it is that we can show people that might not have the means to travel the way that Mrs. Stranahan did.

Where else are you going to see a banana plant?

Where else are you going to see that size cactus?

To be able to have those here, for people to be able to see the variation of plant life in the world is just really fun for us to be able to have.

(gentle music) We couldn't do this without volunteers.

We really couldn't.

The talented people that come through here that just wanna be involved are incredible.

We qualify our volunteers so we find out what they're interested in, what they're good at, what kinds of things they wanna work on, what they wanna learn about.

What are you curious about?

We do that with every single person that comes to volunteer here.

Sometimes they wanna work in the curiosity shop because they love books.

Sometimes they love being outside and they would never want to hang out in the shop all day.

They wanna be outdoors.

And so we accommodate that as best we can.

Other people are just social butterflies and want to welcome visitors when we have open houses at Virginia's house.

They wanna show people around, they wanna talk about the architecture.

And so we try to find a good sweet spot for every volunteer that's coming.

The 577 Foundation is open seven days a week from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM.

We make sure that the park and the grounds area is completely free.

We've got a nature play area, which is really good for children's brain development.

Classes do carry a fee with them because we think it's important to compensate artists for the skills and abilities that they're teaching other people.

But again, we subsidize those and we try to keep those costs really low so that they are accessible to everybody that might wanna come and be curious about art.

I would say that 577 has something for you no matter what you're looking for.

If you are looking for community, if you are looking for peace, if you're looking to feel rejuvenated, if you need to see nature, if you need to connect with another person, if you need to be creative, if you need to rest, this is the kind of place that you will find all of those different things.

(gentle music) (upbeat music)