- Hello everyone I'm Matthew Ozanich and welcome to another installment of Destination Michigan.

We're coming to you today from For Arts Sake in downtown Mount Pleasant, a space that is filled with wall-to-wall creativity.

Now, if you've been following along with us over the years, you know that we have met some incredibly talented and creative individuals, artists, and makers working in a seemingly endless selection of mediums.

And everyone we've met have come across their passions in a variety of ways.

Some carry on family traditions, others discover new found passions all on their own, but no matter how they made their way into their field, they stick with it year after year because of how incredibly rewarding of an experience it can be.

In this episode of Destination Michigan, we're gonna meet a few people who exemplified Michiganders creativity as well as their entrepreneurial spirit.

So come along with us as we head across the state to meet the makers of Michigan.

We peruse the wide array of creations at the merchant and makers market in west Michigan, meet the duo bringing wood back to life at Detroit's Woodward Throwbacks.

At American Spoon they're taking creativity to another level with their tasty offerings and we'll meet the maker behind one of the most unique golf courses in the world.

(upbeat music) To kick off this episode, we thought we'd first take a look back and meet some of the makers from Destination Michigan past that have inspired all of us here at the show, and hopefully you at home as well.

I'll now hand things off to Stephanie Mills to take a closer look at what keeps their creative drive alive.

- [Stephanie] In Michigan, the spirit of making has been stitched into our historical fabric for generations.

- My grandmother, she was asking me what I was doing for work, and I was I'm still doing the corporate marketing stuff, but I'm working on trying to build barrels.

I wanna be a Cooper.

And she found that in 1620 is when the Smiths came over on the Mayflower.

And my 10th grade grandfather was the master Cooper on the Mayflower.

There was some coopering in the blood and it just took 10 generations for one of us to pick up the hammer again.

- [Stephanie] From the earliest settlers practing canoes for transportation to the loggers, as the state transformed that entrepreneurial tenacity rose with it.

- I've always been a firm believer that everything in nature should be utilized the best that it possibly can.

We have a responsibility as humans to do something better for the earth.

With everything that we do.

- [Stephanie] With the dawn of the automobile industry Michigan became a driving force, thanks to be inventive mind of Henry Ford, helping put the world on wheels.

That type of ingenuity has sparked the creation of hundreds of new businesses and industries right here in the Great Lakes State.

- We love that part of it, to serve people and to share memories with families and being part of their memories.

Yeah, I mean, we live here in paradise and we get to have a business in paradise.

And we don't forget about that, like we're very fortunate.

- [Stephanie] Over the years, we've encountered dozens of Michigan artists, crafters, small and large family business owners carving their own path of creativity.

- We're passionate about skiing and if we can share that passion for me that's everything.

And if we can allow somebody to have more fun, if you slid downhill and you have a smile at the bottom, that's all that counts.

- [Stephanie] Whether they're hobbyists or professionals, their stories inspire their vision often taking root and drawn from the natural landscape that surrounds us.

Innovation is in Michigan's DNA where there's a need Michiganders persist and find ways to build, create and make.

- In our modern world, people haven't gotten used to getting exposed to new talent and creativity through the internet.

Online markets like Etsy have made it easier than ever for people to share their creations with a worldwide audience.

While this new tech has been incredibly helpful for makers, it's still just can't compete with that in-person experience.

And at the Merchants and Makers markets in West Michigan communities are coming together to not only peruse the wide array of creations, but to also meet the people behind the magic.

So here we are today in Grand Rapids at the Fulton Street Farmers Market.

Now typically this market is full of produce from local farmers, but today over 100 West Michigan makers are filling these boots to sell their wares to all the folks here in attendance today.

So let's go ahead and take a quick stroll through the market and meet some of the makers.

- The mission of Merchants and Makers was to provide a fun experience for people to come together with their family, with their friends and shop locally.

So being able to shop all different kinds of unique things that are made, handmade and also curated.

We have merchants that portion is that.

So we have Merchants and Makers.

So we wanna have a good place that people can come have fun be together because we really want us to be an event for people to gather at, with the biggest goal being to support Michigan Makers.

- [Matthew] But these Merchants and Makers events, aren't just about selling products.

It's also about community, seasoned veterans with tables right alongside the newcomers, offering advice and assistance and getting a better appreciation of everyone's creativity.

- We have a great group of bakers some who have done this for 20 years and some who this is their first market ever.

We have the gamut at all of our markets.

So we have a vendor group, we do a lot of email exchanges.

If I hear someone new, it's like, oh, you'd really like to connect with this person who is new or who has done that type of product in the past, and might have some ideas for you.

But our vendor group is really awesome because people will post on there all the time all the displays they have for sale, or I need advice on what types of markets I should do this year.

So it's really great to be able to have that.

- [Matthew] And after over a year with hardly any events like this, visitors to the market were anxious to make their way up and down the tables.

- As you'll see when you go through the market, people like to touch things and see like, oh, it's this size or it would fit me this way, or it looks good with this outfit.

So people like to see things in person, but it's really the connection with the maker.

And that's a huge part of what we do in our advertising and our marketing is to make sure that people realize that every booth you see is a person's business, a person's passion, that they love it.

And so being able to connect with the person behind the booth is so great.

- It's huge for us, particularly a brand like ours.

It has a lot more to say about where our products came from, where the materials were from, how they were made, where they were made.

And so it allows us to really connect directly with customers who are interested in learning about up cycling or what about our process is different.

And it's a really great time to be able to support a whole bunch of other small businesses all at once.

The more that you can talk directly to people and hear about what it is that they are wanting and needing and what they like or what they're really interested in that really helps to make sure that you're connecting directly with your customers and consumers so that you can keep that really strong relationship and connection point.

- [Matthew] The Merchants and Makers also made their way to the mouth of the Grand River and Grand Haven for a perfect day for an outdoor market.

No matter how a maker gets their start, being able to communicate one-on-one and face-to-face with customers is a huge advantage, but visitors to the market, aren't just looking for something to hang on their wall.

They're also looking to inspire their own creativity.

- A lot of our makers still have full-time jobs.

So like they'll still work their full-time job and then do this kind of side hustle for fun.

And I think for some people it's just the extra money.

I think for some people, it's the ability to, if they work in a really, normal nine to five job to do something creative and something that they love and that makes them excited.

But I think that a lot of people take that step when they go to markets themselves and they see like, I can do this, this is fun.

And the community is so huge.

That's just like the biggest part and so many people keep coming back for the community to be a part of this feeling like today, I'm like emotional all day because it's like, look at we're all here in person together and get to see people after a year and a half.

And so it's been really great.

- Gatherings like Merchants and Makers are a great way for makers to introduce their creativity to the world, but eventually with a lot of hard work and a little bit of luck, they outgrow that table or booth and have to move on into bigger venues, expanding their operation and their reach case in point the duo of Bo Shepherd & Kyle Dubay of Woodward Throwbacks and Hamtramck.

- Woodward Throwbacks started pretty much as a passion project.

Me and Kyle met at a neighborhood cleanup.

We both shared a really big passion for biking around the city, exploring different neighborhoods cause as we know Detroit is huge.

One day Kyle was like, "Hey, let's start selling the stuff at the market" at the time we're just doing like small like wall signs and like things with like kind of funny neighborhood sayings.

And then it just kind of snowballed into a business.

- [Matthew] This passion project turned business has really taken off for Bo and Kyle so much so they were able to move their operation from a one-car garage into this beautiful space.

- We're in Downtown Hamtramck, which is a small two square mile city within Detroit.

So it's kind of wild, but when you get to our building, you enter to our showroom.

So we usually have our home decor, we have our furniture, some vintage items, and then you get to like the salvage warehouse.

We have over 200 salvage doors, we have a couple of windows, just a lot of things that we think are interesting.

And so that's kind of the opportunity for people who like to do to kind of see some of the materials that we have in stock.

- We make so many different things and our processes a lot of times based on the materials and not necessarily the finished piece, for example, I got these old components of these old school built-ins and my process on that is more, what can I do with these?

Cause they're not in good enough shape to like really I can fix them up as it is, but it makes more sense for us to re envision what we can do with the parts and pieces.

It's a lot of trial and error and a lot of experimentation, which is super fun for me and a lot of our staff, also our staff are artists and they really like the freedom that we give to them and express their and their design.

So a little bit different every time, which is the fun part about it.

- [Matthew] Both Bo and Kyle had to make some big life changes to make Woodward Throwbacks, the operation we see today, but they took that leap and they went for it leaving behind the security of their previous careers to pursue their goal no matter what.

- I wasn't made for a corporate environment, let's say.

So when I was in the automotive industry, I was the third African American female interior car designer ever in the company I was working for.

So now that I'm in another male dominant field construction, I'm kind of used to it but at the same time, it's just like, I don't think that there should be any gender barriers when it comes to the career that you choose.

He left his full-time job in graphic design before I left my full-time job in the automotive industry.

And so, I feel like he really kind of like bootstrapped and put everything together.

- [Matthew] The creative effort at Woodward Throwbacks is a collaborative one.

Seeing the two work together on a new piece, we can get a glimpse into their creative process, which plays off both of their strengths.

- Kyle was like the exact opposite of me where he's very structured.

We create goals together, but he's the one that really spearheads us into the right direction.

You're like the foundation of this business.

You're the rock, you're my rock.

- Thanks for that.

Her energy is great, she's so good with all the clients, she's got good style and she's got like awesome design capabilities and her potential is just like haven't been tapped into yet.

We haven't gotten to the point, our business where we've been able to really utilize her skills and like now she's gonna like flex her skills a little bit more.

It's great to see her do that.

Her first few projects that she's doing, like these design projects, they're awesome.

Like I'm sitting back, I'm just like watching them in full I'm like oh my God these things are gonna be like insane.

- [Matthew] Bo and Kyle's creations come from items recovered throughout the city.

These collected items provide not only the raw materials for their pieces they also act as a source of inspiration for them and their artists and for Bo and Kyle to find the right items for their works.

Well, it's a little bit like searching for a treasure, but without the treasure map.

- A lot of people do ask us, like, how do you get your materials?

And the first one I think is just like, we're going into like abandoned homes and like industrial buildings, but we constantly have contractors and demo crews as well as homeowners constantly contacting us about materials that they would rather see repurpose than tossed.

- It's really fun like you're a kin kid in a candy store sometimes.

- And we've been training our employees as well so when we go into these buildings, they're thinking about like, okay, how can I take this?

Deconstruct it and make it something you know seeing like the deeper opportunity in some of the materials that we're gathering, the city is like a treasure.

- Like people throw this things away - Yeah and the city is some type of like treasure hunt it just needs us to like find it.

- [Matthew] With each new piece they create and ship out the door.

A small piece of Detroit's history goes right along with it.

What this dynamic duo has created in Hamtramck is really incredible.

And it continues to grow now while Bo and Kyle don't always see eye to eye their shared passion and dedication to what they do is what keeps Woodward Throwbacks thriving.

- And we definitely do sometimes say like, oh, this is awesome and sometimes doing together is kind of like frustrating too.

But most of the times it's pretty awesome.

- Yeah we have moments where I'm just like, and I think you have the same with me.

- Yeah, we're seeing this room in this building that we own and we bought and refurbished and this team and this company we've created, but in a lot of ways to us, I think we're so deep into it.

It feels like it's been a really long time, even though it's been such a really short period of time.

It's super cool for us to like have our pieces all over the country.

I think that is something that Bo and I don't really get to attach to, or like emotional about, because like we don't have the time for like that moment of reflection and be like, wow, we have a lot of our like hand work in all these places all over the country now.

But I think that we're just like really honored that we get to like do what we love every day and we like exploring these old buildings and we like seeing all this old pieces of history that people don't get to see and like the fact that we get to go see it and then more often not get it and then have our hands on top of it it's just like a dream job for most of us that work here and that we're pretty blessed for that.

- As we've seen so far in the program, creativity comes in many different forms across the Great Lakes State, but now we're gonna trade in the metal and the wood for the fruits on the trees for decades at American Spoon, the Russia family has been crafting an incredible variety of products, bursting with both color and flavor.

Stephanie Mills made a visit to their facility in Petoskey to catch a glimpse of their culinary creativity.

- When we began, we started making fruit reserves in small 28 gallon copper kettles.

Those small batches were kind of fundamental to the rare quality that we achieved.

So today we make jam 60 jars at a time because we have seven or eight cookers.

We can produce about 5,000 jars of jam a day.

- [Stephanie] 5,000 Jars of sweet, delicious jam, grown, harvested and prepared here in Northern Michigan.

This is American Spoon, a small family business with a big collection of decadent Michigan made products.

- American Spoon was founded by my dad, Justin Rashid and his chef partner Larry Forgione.

And they partnered in the early eighties to make what they hoped would be America's finest fruit preserves with Michigan fruit.

When we began making jam, we were making jam in the basement of a local candy shop.

And after that first summer, the neighboring restaurant owner who proudly sold pies every summer shared with my father that has pie sales had tripled that summer.

So my dad said, aha, we need to get this out in the open where people can see us making jam.

- [Stephanie] As a kid Noah Rashid spent a lot of time watching his dad and Larry grow the business from the ground up.

Today he helps run it from sweet to savory at American Spoon they make something for everyone's palette.

- In so many ways, we have stayed really close to our roots as a jam maker.

But our product range has certainly expanded.

We make mustards with Michigan sparkling wine as the acidifier and make wonderful sauces, barbecue sauces.

We're introducing a coffee cake now we have a partnership on a chocolate bar.

So we've really just expanded into our customers' pantry in a lot of ways.

And we like to make a really elemental, essential products that will stand the test of time and that people can cherish have at home and give as gifts.

- [Stephanie] Despite a limited growing season, Michigan farms grow one of the widest selections of fruits and vegetables in the country.

They also grow three times more tree fruit than any other state in the region and twice as many berries.

- And it was my dad's belief among the things that made Michigan so special was Western Michigan fruit, and really the unique microclimate we have in West Michigan for fruit culture.

So I think that's the essential piece of our puzzle that we really stay true to is sourcing really special fruits direct from Michigan farmers and preserving them as simply as possible to celebrate the beautiful fruits we start with.

- From early spring strawberries to fall apples, knowing what's in season is critical in production and often leads to the development of new products on store shelves.

- Creativity is a weird thing it's kind of different every time seasonal is one of the great touch points.

So what's in season, what's cool?

What's new?

What's coming out of the farms?

We have great relationships with a ton of farmers all throughout Northern Michigan.

- Those relationships are the foundation of the company, but at the same time are the more precious, there's no more exciting time here than really the late months of summer when every day foragers are coming in with wild blackberries and blueberries and farmers are arriving with peaches.

- [Stephanie] So whether your craft is painting or baking Northern Michigan's lush landscape gross inspiration for makers in a variety of ways.

- The critical difference for us really is great Michigan fruit varieties that we love that were bred for flavor originally and that we've remained faithful to.

And then just our cooking process, small batches, developing recipes ourselves specific for fruit so that the cooking process is really tailored to enhancing the unique characteristics of the fruit we've started with.

So whether that's red Haven peaches or rebel blueberries, or early glow strawberries, we're really fine tuning and tailoring recipes around celebrating those fruits.

- We've met makers so far in today's show whose creations are fueled by the natural landscape that surrounds all of us.

However, in the case of our final story today, this maker's canvas is the natural landscape.

And instead of a paintbrush, their work was created with bulldozers and earth movers to make a true work of art near the Northern Michigan town of Roscommon.

Courtney Jerome now introduces us to the creator of The Loop at Forest Dunes.

- I've actually built six of the top a hundred golf courses in the world, which is crazy.

- [Courtney] Meet renowned golf course architect Tom Doak.

He's a Traverse City resident whose work has taken him across the world from Australia to New Zealand to Tasmania he's traveled far, but today we're exploring a project of his that's close to home.

The Loop at Forest Dunes Golf Club in Roscommon.

- The golf course aficionados have really flocked to the loop.

If you can't afford a trip to Scotland or Ireland, you can come right here to Forest Dunes and a lot of these golf course aficionados have said that The Loop is the most authentic golf experience that they've had here in the United States.

- [Courtney] Why is this course such an experience you might be wondering, well, it's the only one in the US that's reversible as in, yes, you can play it backwards.

Tom designed a course, that's equally challenging and enjoyable from both directions.

It's a concept that's a bit tricky to wrap your head around and it took the right partner to make it happen.

And Tom found that partner an owner of Forest Dunes, Lou Thompson, Lou was looking for another course to attract people to their destination golf facility.

- So I wanted something that's gonna make people wanna stay and play the next day, because it'll be a second course to the existing course.

And I wanted something that's gonna wow.

And I went home and I started working on a plan to try to build a reversible golf course without talking to Lou about that.

I started to put down the plan with the golf course drawn Normally, like I talked him through all that and he looked at that and he said, he liked that and he thought it looked like a good golf course, but he didn't really wow.

And then I pulled that plan off and I had another one under it.

And I was like, this is the next thing you play it backwards the other way around.

And he got really quiet for like a minute or two.

And then the first thing he said was "Okay, I'm blown away, I never expected that."

- The loop opened in June of 2016, it opened to rave reviews.

It was named the best new public course in the country by both Golf Digest and Golf Magazine.

- [Courtney] Okay, so let's break it down into how these courses are played.

- We alternate directions daily, on even calendar days, we play it as the red routing on odd calendar days, we play it as the black routing.

Basically you start from the same vicinity each day.

The red routing goes in a counter-clockwise manner and you go around the outside first for the front nine.

Then come back through the inside.

The next day, you tee off in a little different area and you go around the inside of that arch first and then back around the outside.

The T's are just flat areas of fairway because one day when you're playing it, it's a tee box.

The next day you may be in that same exact spot and it's just part of the fairway and part of your approach.

- And the fairways most people love it because their ball rolls they drive at 20 yards farther, cause it just rolls out much farther off the same drive, but it makes it harder going into the green because it's harder to control where the ball stops.

And that's really what all the old courses in the UK, that's what they're like.

And, golf is more about trying to control the ball instead of just hitting it as far as.

The best feedback I've gotten in right from day one is how completely different it is the next day.

- A lot of people when they're playing the course for the first time, spend most of the rounds turning around and looking back to see, well, how's this gonna play tomorrow?

What's it gonna look like tomorrow?

And we try and get them to really focus on, hey, play it today, you'll see it tomorrow but it is, it's totally different and it's mesmerizing for people.

They might play the whole course and not even realize that it was the same course that they played yesterday, except for if they see a certain landmark like the halfway house or a particular tree.

- [Courtney] Tom's drive and passion have certainly paid off.

- I have wanted to be a golf course architect since I was like 12 years old the middle of my freshman year in college, I thought, I really wanted to try to pursue this.

It's like right after I was in college was the time that Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer and those guys got well known to be golf course designers too.

At some point you get to the level where other people are doing all the work and you're just flying around checking on them and I never really wanted to get there.

So I haven't, we are still a pretty small company, but we've gotten to work all around the world and on some pretty spectacular things.

- We certainly hope that through our travels today, we may have inspired you at home to pursue your own creative adventures.

It is never too early or too late to take all of those ideas bouncing around in your head and make them a reality.

No matter the medium, there's a creative space to be had for all in the Great Lake State.

And just like that this episode of Destination Michigan comes to a close and from everyone here at the show, thank you so much for watching and we'll catch you next time.

(soft music)