If you’ve been to the new Gem City Market in Dayton, you may have noticed bold, colorful patterns on its walls, like the grid of diamond shapes over the entrance. That’s the original artwork of Dayton textile designer Yetunde Rodriguez.

These was a time in the 1940’s and 50’s, when people arrived from Appalachia daily in Dayton in buses and cars. They came in hopes of jobs at factories such as National Cash Register, Frigidaire and GM. Many brought guitars, mandolins and banjos and settled in East Dayton. A new book and CD, Industrial Strength Bluegrass tells this history. Dave Barber has the story of the Mullins family, one of the families that sits at the center of this story.

A new book and its companion CD celebrate the history of bluegrass music in Southwestern Ohio. Community Voices producer Dave Barber explores a corner of that history in East Dayton, where transplants from Kentucky and other southern states settled after finding factory jobs and bluegrass music provided a soundtrack.

If you’re a gardener, you might be cursing your heavy clay soil right about now. But clay is an important part of our region’s artistic legacy. Join Culture Couch producer Susan Byrnes as she unearths some history about pottery made in Zanesville and Cincinnati.

This week Central State University presents a play that rewrites recent history. Local poet and activist Bomani Moyenda has written his first play, “What’s Done in the Dark.” The play creates a fictionalized case based on the police killing of John Crawford III and a community’s struggle for accountability.

“Walk This Way” is an exhibit at the Taft Museum in Cincinnati. It displays over 100 pairs of women’s shoes collected by high-fashion shoe designer Stuart Weitzman. Culture Couch producer Susan Byrnes takes us on a stroll through the show.

A decades-spanning poetic conversation between Dayton poet and the late Maya Angelou

Eli Harvey grew up in a Quaker community near Wilmington, Ohio to become a celebrated sculptor. And yet most Ohioans have never heard his name. Harvey mostly sculpted wild animals from close observation. The Historical Society in Clinton County has now digitized the art and writings of Eli Harvey.

Tiffany Clark of Mural Machine has painted a Gem City masterpiece.

We’re in the shortest days of the year. Twilight begins just after 5pm, and by 6 it’s dark. Throughout December, we experience only about 9 hours of daylight. Join Culture Couch producer Susan Byrnes as she explores the impact of light on two visual artists.