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In 1965, Dick Goddard briefly left Cleveland for Philadelphia. It wasn’t long before he realized his mistake. “I remember being on the air, and there was a se- vere thunderstorm over Kutztown,” he recalls. “I thought, I don’t know anyone in Kutztown. Here, if there was a thunderstorm in Galion, I would know somebody. It was personal.” Goddard re- turned to Cleveland after a few months and has been here ever since. May 1 marks his 50th anni- versary on air, first at Channel 3 and for the past 45 years at Fox 8. Weather Fan this month’s forecast on the people, places and things we love LAKE EFFEC T PUBLIC SQUARE Zoo Elephants Get a New Space to Roam [ pg. 18 ] SHELF Author Paula McLain Discusses The Paris Wife [ pg. 22 ] STAGES Eric Coble Debuts His New Play at CPT [ pg. 23 ] SHOP TALK Kimberly Monaco Moves from Metals to Jewelry [ pg. 25 ] 05.11 clevelandmagazine.com / CLEVELAND 15 COURTESY FOX 8 CONTINUED ON PAGE 16

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Page 1: Lake Effect, May

In 1965, Dick Goddard briefly left Cleveland for Philadelphia. It wasn’t long before he realized his mistake.

“I remember being on the air, and there was a se-vere thunderstorm over Kutztown,” he recalls. “I thought, I don’t know anyone in Kutztown. Here, if there was a thunderstorm in Galion, I would know somebody. It was personal.” Goddard re-turned to Cleveland after a few months and has been here ever since. May 1 marks his 50th anni-versary on air, first at Channel 3 and for the past 45 years at Fox 8.

Weather Fan

this month’s forecast on the people, places and things we love

LAKE EFFECT

PUBLIC SQUAREZoo Elephants Get a New Space to Roam

[ pg. 18 ]

SHELFAuthor Paula McLain

Discusses The Paris Wife[ pg. 22 ]

STAGESEric Coble Debuts His

New Play at CPT[ pg. 23 ]

SHOP TALKKimberly Monaco Moves from Metals to Jewelry

[ pg. 25 ]

05.11

clevelandmagazine.com / C L E V E L A N D 15

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8

CONTINUED ON PAGE 16

Page 2: Lake Effect, May

16 C L E V E L A N D / May 2011

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Q104 WILL GO TO THE DOGS AND CATS May 13 and 14 as the radio station hosts its annual APL Pledge for Pets Radiothon.

It’s been said people tend to resemble their four-legged friends, but can you match these Q104 radio personalities to their dogs? / / JAMIE SHEARER

In fact, he was the first meteorolo-gist on the city’s air-waves. In a world of wacky weathermen working for laughs, Goddard was the only one who knew

what an isobar was. “I was terrible,” he re-calls. “I was so uptight. My voice had to be up several octaves. … I used no punctua-tion. I just kept going.”

Dick Goddard is living nostalgia. He re-minds us of our younger days, but we can still watch him every evening. None of it goes to his head either. When after one of the evening forecasts his station announced the city was renaming part of Marginal Road after him, Goddard didn’t even stick around to say a few words. He may be an icon, but he doesn’t see it that way.

“Being on television, people know you,” he explains. “So many people have been so very good to me, but in 10 years people won’t know who I am. I don’t mean to be self-deprecating. It’s fleeting celebrity.”

In person, Goddard is more mischie-vous than his professional, on-air persona. He shares tales of the time Barnaby was schnockered at a long-ago Woolly Bear Festival and recounts some of the jokes Big Chuck and Lil’ John used to tell off-camera.

But Goddard never fools around with the weather. He doesn’t pitch a midsum-mer rainstorm as a sign of the apocalypse. He says he’s only suggested once that view-ers not leave their homes: the day before the Blizzard of ’78. He understands that a city’s beloved meteorologist scaring people inside has an economic effect on store traffic and restaurant reservations. But if Dick Goddard ever tells you to hunker down, do it.

Now 80 years old (or 27 Celsius, as God-dard likes to quip), he knows he doesn’t have much time left in his career, but God-dard also has no plans to retire. He says his fundraising efforts for dozens of Northeast Ohio animal shelters, which he has supple-mented for years with on-air reports featur-ing dogs that need homes, would suffer. But that doesn’t mean he hasn’t thought about what he wishes his final on-air words could be.

“To all you people who have been so good to me and who have helped the ani-mals, bless your hearts. I can’t thank you enough. For the few of you who have been my harshest critics, let me say this: You want to know what the weather is? Look out the goddamn window.” / / ANDY NETZEL

/ PUBLIC SQUARE :: ideas, gripes & good newslake effect[CONTINUED FROM PAGE 15]

Answers: 1. C “She knows the right time to work in the whimper to get what she needs,” Fee says. 2. A “He’s got a little attitude,” says Toohey. 3. D “They’re very much protectors for being such small little lap dogs,” Anderson says of Gert and her sister, Olive. 4. B “He’s 50 pounds, and he thinks he’s a lap dog.”

Wise Words Run-D.M.C.’s Darryl McDaniels talks arts and politics at this month’s CSU Arts Summit. / BY J IM VICKERS /

FEW UNDERSTAND how art shapes society like Darryl McDaniels does. As part of Run-D.M.C., he took hip-hop to the world, and on May 25, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee will discuss the intersection of arts and politics at a summit hosted by Cleveland State University’s Center for Arts and Innovation. We talked with McDaniels about revolutions, education and classic rock.

On the heated national debate about cutting federal funding for the arts: ”Over the last couple of years, I’ve learned that every revolution starts with the arts. ... I always say that the arts are more powerful than politics and religion combined. ... Maybe they spend money on this other stuff and spend so little on education and the arts because they’re afraid.”

On the importance of art in education: “I don’t know where it gets lost. These politicians, policymakers and lawmakers, they don’t understand the valuable tool [art] is. ... These are valuable, valuable mediums to change education and better society. When they don’t put the resources into it, [and] we take it upon ourselves to do it [and] get millions of people following us, they get scared of us and start calling us rebels and troublemakers.”

On some of his more surprising artistic influences: ”The creative catalyst for me was classic rock. ... So while all my friends in my neighborhood were grooving to ‘Say it Loud — I’m Black and I’m Proud,’ I was listening to John Lennon, John Fogerty and Bob Dylan. ... Before I ever started rapping on a mic, my influence came from the great singer-songwriters who weren’t afraid to talk about the issues of the world.”

Darryl McDaniels

visits on May 25.

1. Allan Fee

A. Manny

2. Jen Toohey

B. Jimmy Dean C. Lucy

3. Glenn Anderson

D. Gert

4. Kory

For the full interview, visit clevelandmagazine.com. Get CSU Arts Summit information at csuohio.edu/cai.

PET PROJECT

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/ PUBLIC SQUARE :: ideas, gripes & good newslake effect

clemetzoo.com

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THREE YEARS AGO, Moshi, Martika and Jo left their cramped home of dirt and stone to stay in Columbus. They returned in 2010 to comfier digs, but this month the elephants and their two new roommates, Shenga and Willy, will finally get to enjoy all the ame-nities of their new 5-acre, $25 million dream habitat. African El-ephant Crossing has two pools, a waterfall, two mammoth front

yards to roam and a heated backyard. Plus, the elephants have eight humans to feed them and clean up after them. The zoo’s newest attraction, which opens to the public May 5, is set to be the first and only large-scale, LEED-certified animal enclosure, allowing the world’s largest land mammals to leave a pygmy-size carbon foot-print. Here’s a map, so you can find your way around.

Trunk SpaceThe Cleveland Metroparks Zoo’s new African Elephant Crossing opens this month, offering a more natural way of life for the pachyderms that call it home. / BY JOHN HITCH /

1 Savannah Range:

“They will look in a lot of places like truly wild elephants,” general curator Geoff Hall says in regard to the open views. A buried salt lick and giant rock to rub their hide against let the elephants act like their wild brethren, too.

2 Aviary: Check out

what the Taveta golden weaver and several other bird species that live here can do with palm fronds. “We chose community nesters because they are more interesting to watch,” says educational curator Vicki Searles.

3 Night Range: “It’s a gigantic

sandbox,” Hall says of the elephants’ private backyard. The elephants can come and go as they please and push the sand around however they want. Radiant heat sources ensure they can play on the dunes all winter.

4 The Sydell L. Miller

Elephant Care & Visitor Center: Animal keeper Meghan Sharp says the seven spacious pens provide room to work with the animals. Meet-the-keeper programs will allow visitors to see the daily care the zoo’s elephants receive.

5 The African Village: Afri-

can elephants are endangered, and there are “certain areas [in the world] where they conflict with humans,” says zoo director Steve Taylor. The kgtola, a Botswana meeting place, teaches how humans and elephants can coexist.

6 Crossing Gate: “Sepa-

ration between the animals and the guests just doesn’t feel right,” says architect Jón Steffánsson of CLR Design, the Philadelphia firm that designed the habitat. So, humans and elephants take turns sharing this crossroads.

7 Mopani Range: This

mix of mud pits and trees offers the elephants a place to get some shade and a welcome change of scenery. “These are very intelligent animals, so the more variety we can give them, the better off they’ll be,” explains Taylor.

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One Man BandDylan Baldi ditched college for Cloud Nothings, one of the most talked about new indie-rock names of 2011. / BY JEFF NIESEL /

/ SOUNDS :: musiclake effect

MORE INFO myspace.com/cloudnothings

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MILES & TRANE @ 85 — RE-IMAGINEDMay 5Tri-C Metro AuditoriumTCJF SoundWorks, led by saxophonist Howie Smith and bassist Glenn Holmes, joins forces with tenor sax legend Benny Golson, drummer Ndugu Chancler and others to celebrate the 85th anniversary of the births of Miles Davis and John Coltrane. Free, East 30th Street and Woodland Avenue, Cleveland, tricpresents.com

TRI-C JAMFESTMay 6State TheatreMedeski Martin & Wood be-came a jam-band era favorite by forging jazz, funk and hip-hop into ornate grooves. Hammond B3 master Dr. Lonnie Smith and jazz guitarist Will Bernard will join the trio for a night of unleashed spontaneity. $25-$45, 7 p.m., 1519 Euclid Ave., Cleveland, playhousesquare.org

SMOKEY ROBINSONMay 7State TheatreJazzFest makes R&B part of its lineup, as Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee and “King of Motown” Smokey Robinson — the voice behind 37 Top 40 songs — takes the PlayhouseSquare stage. $30-$50, 8 p.m., 1519 Euclid Ave., Cleveland, playhousesquare.org

[ TO SEE ] 3Tri-C JazzFest performances we recommend

Y ou’d never guess Dylan Baldi is an in-die rock star. Wearing black-rimmed glasses and a half-zipped hoodie, he looks like any other 19-year-old. The difference is he’s spent a hectic 18 months making a name for his mu-sical identity, Cloud Nothings.

“It’s actually been really stressful,” says Baldi, having just returned from a whirlwind tour of Eu-rope. “Even today, I woke up and answered emails all day, and then I have band practice. I’m con-stantly working on stuff and responding to people about inane little things. ... It’s a lot of work, but I think I can handle it.”

It all started in October 2009 when Baldi, a frustrated music student at Case Western Reserve University, recorded a couple songs in his parents’ Westlake basement and posted them online. He was hoping for a way out of school, and he got it. A New York promoter heard the tracks and recruited him to play a bill featuring up-and-coming acts Real Estate and the Woods. That meant Baldi had to write more tunes and put together a band.

“I got an email asking me to play that show, and I really only had one song,” Baldi recalls. “I had never even been to New York. But [the show] was great. There were like 400 people there.”

Baldi then wrote the songs for his debut, last year’s Turning On, in a week and recorded the al-bum in his parents’ basement over a weekend, playing all the instruments himself. He dropped out of Case, embarked on a national tour and inked a deal with Washington, D.C., label Carpark, which in turn reissued Turning On, a brisk bit of ramshackle pop that recalls early Guided by Voices.

For his second album, a self-titled affair that brings out Baldi’s pop-punk impulses, he went to Baltimore to work with producer Chester Gwazda.

“I just drove to Baltimore on my own and stayed at his house for a week,” Baldi says. “He is a real nice guy, although I was more comfortable playing at my home alone than in front of a guy I never met.”

Baldi plans to spend the rest of the year touring and has an EP slated for release by early fall. “It’s still melodic and accessible,” he says. “It’s not as direct, but you can still tell that it’s me.”

And even though he’s been touring steadily, Bal-di still makes time for local shows.

“I’m proud of being from here, and there’s not a lot of music that people talk about that tends to be from here,” he says. “I like hanging out in Cleveland, and I like the people here. I want people to know there’s good music here, and it’s not con-fined to Brooklyn and LA.”

Dylan Baldi, the 19-year-old behind

Cloud Nothings, recorded his debut

at his parents’ Westlake home.

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Knowing ErnestAuthor Paula McLain’s new book peers into the private life of one of America’s most celebrated writers. / BY AMBER MATHESON /

/ SHELF :: bookslake effect

MORE INFO lesroberts.com

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A small, brown velveteen chair was, for seven months, author Paula McLain’s only link to the outside world. She carted her books and notes — “like a pack mule,” she says — to the Cleve-land Heights Starbucks every morn-ing at 9 and disappeared into a very

different coffee klatch: the cafes of 1920s Parisian literary circles.

“I was there and not there at all,” she says of that time, which resulted in a historical fiction novel about Ernest Hemingway’s first wife, Hadley Richardson, called The Paris Wife (Random House, $25).

“Hemingway himself does write about that time in his life, but Hadley offers an outsider’s perspective,” McLain notes. “She’s not a striver; she doesn’t have these crazy ambitions that make her susceptible to the influence of others.”

In Richardson and Hemingway’s relationship, McLain discovered a complex portrait of a joyous but inevitably troubled marriage between one of the modern age’s first celebrities and a quiet, older wom-an without much life experience. And McLain didn’t sugarcoat the story in her retelling. To her, there’s beauty in the truth of their experiences.

“I’ve gotten some flak from readers who want her to be more feminist,” McLain says of her portrayal of Richardson. “She seems to have no ambitions for herself, and she’s passive.”

But McLain says that view doesn’t do Richardson justice. “She has this quiet strength,” McLain adds. “She’s not a modern woman. She’s not Zelda Fitzger-ald. … I felt like I had this obligation to her — the real woman, who I was discovering from her letters and from the biographies.”

McLain doesn’t shy away from difficult stories; she’s lived her own. The poet, memoirist and fiction writer is a child of the 1970s and ’80s California fos-ter care system. Writing was always her escape from the troubled world around her, “a way for me to in-sert myself into a happy ending,” she says, “because I saw no happy ending for me.” Now an accomplished author — The Paris Wife was No. 1 on the Indie Best-sellers list, which tracks sales from hundreds of in-dependent bookstores throughout the nation — the mother of three may have finally found some inner peace of her own.

“I love language; I love good stories,” McLain says. “I loved writing this book, and now it gets to have this wonderful life. People are reading it and loving it, loving my Hadley. These are my people. It’s so exciting.”

BY NOW, fans of author Les Roberts know Milan Jacovich pretty well. The private investigator has been the main character in Roberts’ crime series since 1988. In his latest book, The Cleveland Creep (Gray & Co., $24.95), Jacovich tries to locate a 28-year-old with a camera fetish. / / ELISABETH GEISSE

Q| What sparked an interest in mystery and crime? Probably watching all those Alan Ladd, Robert Mitchum and Humphrey Bogart movies. I never wanted to be a cop, but I was always amazed at how crimes get solved. And there’s nothing more dramatic, in terms of fiction, than some sort of crime.

Q| Is Jacovich your alter ego? In a way. He’s Slovenian, and I’m not. He’s 6 feet 3 inches tall and 235 pounds, and I’m not. He played football, and I didn’t. But he and I are very much alike some-times in looking at life as black and white. ... You’re either a good person, or you’re a bad person.

Q| What’s next for Jacovich? I’m currently working on a book about local Cleveland politics. It’s fascinating because every day I watch the news and read the paper and think, Oh my god, I’ve got to put that in there, too. I think every Greater Clevelander will know what I’m writing about.

Q +A // Les Roberts

WEATHER Dave Lucas(The University of Georgia Press, $16.95)

There is an eerie quality to Dave Lucas’ collection of poems based on memories and landmarks from his Cleveland upbringing.

From “Lake Erie Monster” and “River on Fire” to “After Love” and “You Asked What the Heart Can Carry,” Lucas’ eloquent metaphors and strong imagery create a sense of romanticism, passion and mystery about the place we call home and show how deeply it has rooted itself in him. / / LAUREN COHEN

THE LIAR SOCIETYLisa and Laura Roecker(Sourcebooks Fire, $9.99)

Cleveland sisters Lisa and Laura Roecker’s debut novel is surprisingly fun given its grim subject matter. Magenta-tressed heroine Kate Lowry in-

vestigates the shady world of her private school after her best friend dies in a freak accident. Kate is Nancy Drew minus the preppy perfection, and her endearing quirks draw the reader into the story. Though written for the teen crowd, many moms will probably devour it in secret. / / SHANNON BOWENS

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Call of the WildEric Coble’s My Barking Dog brings a ghostly coyote into the lives of two lonely people. / BY ERICK TRICKEY /

ericcoble.comMORE INFO

MORE INFO

Eric Coble and his wife were walking their dog in Forest Hill Park when, off in the distance, they spotted a coyote. Some-how, improbably, it had made its way into suburbia — and connected with Coble’s imagination.

Growing up on a Navajo reservation where his mother was a teacher, Coble sometimes heard coyotes howl at night. His friends passed around a children’s book that celebrated the coyote’s key role in Navajo mythology: the selfish trickster, but also a key figure in the world’s creation. “He’s the spirit of chaos,” Coble says.

So that urban coyote in the park became the invisible star of Coble’s new play, My Barking Dog, which premieres May 12-28 at Cleveland Public Theatre. The stark piece, titled after the Latin name for the coyote, Canis latrans, includes only two actors and minimal props. Its edgy magical realism fits the avant-garde CPT.

“It’s a very strange, dark little show,” Coble says.The characters, Toby and Melinda, live alone in the same apart-

ment building and meet on the back steps while awaiting their ghostly canine visitor. She works a solitary night shift at a printing plant; he’s unemployed, his only connection to others the fickle Wi-Fi signals his laptop steals.

“I write a lot about solitude,” says Coble, who knows the subject well because he writes full time from home. “[It’s] one of the major issues of our age.”

The coyote’s visits drive both characters to bizarre obsessions and plot shifts that startled Coble’s fellow members of the Cleveland Play

House playwrights’ unit at a recent reading. “It’s very fun watching people watching it who have no idea what’s coming,” he says.

My Barking Dog is the 42-year-old Cleveland Heights playwright’s 100th produced script. (His works include 65 plays and various ra-dio, TV and comic-book scripts.) It’s a departure for Coble, who often writes farcical social satires with eight to 20 characters. A more typical Coble work, Side Effects May Include, co-written with Seinfeld writer Marc Jaffe, was staged in CPT’s Big Box workshop in March and plays April 30 at the Ratner School in Pepper Pike. It’s a comedy about a woman whose Parkinson’s disease treatment gives her an overpowering libido and her husband, who also turns to pharmaceuticals to try to keep up.

My Barking Dog is more darkly comic, disturbingly funny and haunting. Coble’s stage directions insist that the coyote must never be seen.

“It’s going to be so much more effective in the audience’s mind,” Coble explains. “They’ll see their own coyote. There’ll be 100 differ-ent views of coyotes in that room.”

STAGES :: theater & dance / lake effect

Eric Coble’s new play premieres at Cleveland Public

Theatre May 12-28.

THE LAUGHING TREES will be there, of course, but those who check out this month’s Rainey Institute stage production of Mufaro’s Beauti-

ful Daughters, will also find a few surprises in the ad-aptation of John Steptoe’s acclaimed children’s story.

“We went way beyond the book,” says theater di-rector Christopher Luciani, who has been teaching at Cleveland’s Rainey Institute for 15 years. “We created a lot of new characters, stretched out the suspense.”

An after-school program, the Rainey Institute of-fers performing and visual art classes to kids. Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters, which will be staged May 20-22, is the institute’s culminating production for 2011. The tale traces the rivalry between two African sisters as they race each other to a neighboring kingdom in hopes of marrying the king. As they encounter magical

tests along the way, the sisters reveal their true selves. “It’s simple but very ancient,” Luciani says.

The production features more than 40 of the Rainey Institute’s performing arts students, including 14-year-old Horizon Science Academy freshman Ati-va Witten, who is looking forward to the challenge. “This is going to be my first role ever being mean,” she says of playing Manyara, the evil sister. “I’m usu-ally the nice one, so this is going to be a different experience for me.” / / ELISABETH GEISSE

SIBLING RIVALRY

raineyinstitute.org

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/ CREATIVE THINKERS :: people you should knowlake effect

clevelandpublicart.org

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MORE INFO

Late at night, when he was just a kid, Donald Black Jr.’s father, who did not live with the family, would occasionally stop by his son’s bedroom and set up a chessboard.

He would wake little Donald, the two would

play chess, and he would say things like, “I can tell you been practicing,” and “What-ever piece you been practicing with, I’m taking that piece off the board so you can get better.”

It was, essentially, one of the few authen-tic interactions the younger Black had with his father as a child. “It wasn’t that he was

completely absent,” Black explains, “but he was not completely present either.”

Those sporadic, late-night chess matches — they lasted from the time Black was 7 until he turned 16 — have burned an im-pression on the artist that is just now com-ing through in his work.

He’ll explore it this month with an art installation of six chessboards in the Cleve-land Public Library reading garden as part of Cleveland Public Art’s See Also program.

Black, a photographer first and foremost, has captured images of abandoned Cleve-land buildings and their windows. Those photographs decorate the 4-square-foot chessboard playing surfaces, which rest atop solid, 3-foot-tall cubes. The base of the

Chess games with his father inspired the art installation Donald Black Jr. will unveil this month at the Cleveland Public Library reading garden. / BY MATT TULLIS /

Knight Moves

cubes will be decorated with images of the six different chess pieces.

“I’m now consciously creating [art with] the game of chess [in mind],” says Black, who has made chessboards and pieces since he was younger as a way to stay con-nected to those memories of his father. “I’m attracted to the patterns of the windows [in my photographs], from the one that is bro-ken to the one with the bullet hole in it to the one that is frosted to the one with the vine over top because, visually, they kind of look like chessboards to me.”

Black began attending the Cleveland School of the Arts in the fourth grade. He left Cleveland at 18 to attend Ohio University and then moved to New York City. He was there for five years, all the while visiting galleries and museums that were full of artists telling stories about who they are and where they had come from.

This led him back to the game of chess and the city of Cleveland, where he re-turned three years ago.

Now Black, who teaches art and chess to inner-city kids, uses the game as a way to in-terpret life. For Black, the queen is freedom, the king is stability, the bishop is wisdom, the rook is honesty, the knight is a unique approach, and the pawn is risk-taking. “All of that is based on the conversations me and my dad had a long time ago playing chess,” Black says.

Black’s work was chosen out of six art-ist proposals, says Tiffany Graham, project manager at Cleveland Public Art.

“One of the things we loved about Don-ald’s work is it was so personal,” Graham says. “It was telling a story, his story, but also looking at everybody’s story. He’s creating connections between people and looking at chess as a strategy for life.”

The chessboards will be installed this month with an artist reception set for June 9. They will stay up until October. Black is also making about 1,000 chess pieces that will be part of the exhibit. He wants and expects people to stop and play chess on his boards, and he wants them to take a chess piece home with them.

The first match, though, has been re-served for Black and his father, who have reunited and begun developing a stronger relationship, one that has them talking just about every day and seeing each other a couple times a week.

“We play chess every time we see each other,” Black says.

Chess made an impression on Donald Black Jr., pictured here with a 1944

set from Mexico that’s part of the Cleveland Public Library’s collection.

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Skeleton key and locket $35

Precious MetalsMetalworking, found objects and natural stones are a beautiful combination for jewelry designer Kimberly Monaco. / BY JENNIFER KEIRN /

etsy.com/shop/monacoMORE INFO

After the death of Kimberly Mona-co’s father 25 years ago, her mother gave her a box of his trinkets, in-cluding an antique

rosary with black onyx beads trimmed in lacy silver filigree.

“I may burn in hell for this, but I took it apart and made necklac-es and earrings for my mom and me,” Monaco says. “It was a way to have a little part of him.”

The project sparked Monaco’s interest in jewelry design, though it remained a hobby as she mar-ried, had children and started a company with her husband. That business provided metal finishing for nuts, bolts and other metal parts, and it added metalwork know-how to her jewelry hobby.

“My husband taught me to weld, which translates into sol-dering,” she says. “That’s where I got my interest in using hardware and playing with metal.”

Monaco’s husband died a few years ago, and the company was dissolved, so she channeled her energy toward turning her jewelry-making hobby into a business.

Today, her necklaces, earrings, bracelets and hairpins blend metalwork with semiprecious stones and found objects such as skeleton keys, compasses and old-fashioned bobby whistles, which she picks up at flea markets, tag sales and on eBay. She sells her pieces at local art fairs such as the Hessler Street Fair, online at Etsy and in retail spots like Mezzanine Gallery in Little Italy and Westlake’s Sparkle boutique, found inside Vanity Lab hair salon.

Her work plays on contradictions — such as industrial-looking metal combined with a deli-cate freshwater pearl — and pulls together disparate elements. The “Lucky Charms” necklace incorporates stamped metal, semiprecious stones and found objects on a thin silver chain. The prices are reasonable at $20 to $50 for a necklace and $15 to $25 for earrings.

Monaco, 49, lives in Lakewood with her daughter and 3-year-old grandson, Carter, caring for him while her daughter works full time and goes to school. She sneaks in jewelry-making while Carter is at preschool or asleep. The stories she reads to him each night inspired Monaco’s Fables jewelry line. The necklaces invoke fairy tale images like a vintage thimble and acorn — made with a pearl and a bead cap — similar to those Wendy and Peter exchange in Peter Pan.

But catch Monaco in another year’s time, and her style may be completely different.“My work is evolving all the time,” she says. “It has to. You can’t just stay stagnant.”

SHOP TALK :: style-makers /

Kimberly Monaco looks at flea markets, tag sales and eBay for items to use in her whimsical pieces.

Fables necklace$42

Happy flower bobby pins$10

Olivine Swarovski briolette earrings$24