Artists of Western Minnesota

(lullaby music) - [Voiceover] The following program is a production of Pioneer Public Television.

This program on Pioneer Public Television is funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota, on November fourth, 2008.

Additional support provided by Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen in honor of Shalom Hill Farm.

A non-profit, rural education retreat center in a beautiful prairie setting near Windom in southwestern Minnesota, shalomhillfarm.org.

The Arrowwood Resort and Conference Center.

Your ideal choice for Minnesota resorts, offering luxury town homes, 18 holes of golf, Darling Reflections Spa, Big Splash Waterpark, and much more.

Alexandria, Minnesota, a relaxing vacation or great location for an event, ExploreAlex.com.

Easy to get to, hard to leave.

(instrumental music) - Welcome to Postcards, I'm Dana Johnson.

Today, we travel to the Potato Eaters' Gallery to visit with John Stout, who talks about his sculpture art, and shows us an exclusive peek at his windmill home that he built by hand.

Then we join Donna Jean Carver, an artist who is inspired by animals and using creative mediums.

But first, we visit Jean Menden, a silversmith from Boyd, who uses pieces of history to create one of a kind hand crafted jewelry from sterling silver artifacts.

(tools rustle) (tool whirs) - I went to Norway in 1976 after I graduated from college, and while I was there, I realized that the Norwegian people wore gorgeous jewelry, both sterling and gold.

And I was just intrigued by it.

The design of their work had such a flow to it.

And such beautiful, relaxing curves, like in rose mulling.

And that just really stuck with me.

I think I started silversmithing probably about 10 years ago.

I saw an ad for the Milan Village Art School beginner silversmithing class, and I took that class, and I totally loved it.

So the next year when I signed up for the advanced silversmithing class, I went to the class with one thought in mind, and that was to learn the skills the best I could.

And not come out of there with a whole bunch of jewelry, but to come out of there with some solid basic skills.

Basic designs of that time, I just started setting some cameshons in a bezel setting and making simple pendants.

Um, from there my work traveled into multiple soldering steps per piece, and the filigree work that I do a lot of now.

The sterling silver flatware, is beautifully designed, and nice and heavy, and a great deal, many grams of silver, in a sterling silver spoon.

And what I started doing was basically make some little pendants out of the pretty handles.

And I set some stones on these spoon handles, and people really enjoyed them.

They liked the re-purposing, they liked the vintage look.

(classical music) A sterling silver spoon, by the way, is pretty thick, and what I do is I heat that up and I pound it flat, and that is the basis from where, how I build a pendant.

I lay the design and the bezel and the stone on top of that flattened sterling silver spoon bowl.

The reason I do it is because you get a thick, heavy, well-balanced piece of jewelry compared to purchasing sheet like other silversmiths do.

(guitar music) Flatware designs from the late 1800s are very intricate and they're beautiful, and many of them have lotus flowers or roses, tulips, all kinds of beautiful, beautiful flowers.

And nothing is designed that beautifully anymore.

I think that maintaining a link to our past is a, is a real calming and a pleasant thing.

I actually preserve the monogram if it's someplace, um, where it would look good.

Just because it's a piece of history of that piece of silverware.

Kinda part of it's life.

There are wonderful things in nature that can be turned into jewelry.

(guitar music) I do draw interest from my farm and from nature.

I have in the past made a number of feather and leaf pendants.

And I took a maple leaf and kinda shrunk the design down in my mind and stylized it a little bit, and sketched it out on a piece of sterling.

Actually on a spoon bowl, because it's nice and thick.

And, I cut it out and texturized it, and I had laid it over a piece of copper, and it made a gorgeous leaf pendant.

Well, in my shop today I have a very interesting, custom-made piece I'm working on.

Um, a gentleman called me a couple of weeks ago, and wanted to have a necklace made for his wife.

With their names on one link, and their four children's names and birthdays also incorporated into this necklace.

So I would say, I probably have it about half way done.

(upbeat instrumental music) Working on hand-made chain can be a very frustrating and difficult thing to do, and hopefully I will solder these chains together without fusing it all into one big molten ball.

(upbeat instrumental music) Generally I start with some 16 gauge sterling silver wire, and that is wrapped around a mandrel to get the correct shape for your link.

(upbeat instrumental music) (sander whirs) Then I sand the edges so that they're flat and flush, walk over to my soldering table and get going soldering it closed.

(upbeat instrumental music) (soldering flame blows) After the solder has blown, then I take it off.

Dunk it in the water so it cools off.

Put it in the pickle which is a chemical that helps remove some of the mess you've just put on with your soldering.

(upbeat instrumental music) After I take it out of the pickle, I bring it over to my pounding table, and I pound it flat.

(hammer clinks) And then I pound on it to get the texture.

(upbeat instrumental music) The next step is to take it over and grind off the excess solder, and then take it and buff it.

Polish it.

And add another link.

(tool whirs) (buffer runs) (upbeat instrumental music) The final step in joining these two rings that I just made is to hook them together with a smaller sterling jump ring.

(calm instrumental music) I need to get both ends perfectly flush, and then I'm gonna hold them with a cross locking tweezers, which also acts as a heat-sync.

I'm gonna hand that over the edge a little bit right there.

A little tiny piece of solder will do the trick right here.

(tool hits table) (solder tool blows) (tools clink) (lid taps shut) And they're hooked together.

I now have two little links on my chain.

(slow guitar music) You do have to start over if you make a mistake.

Most of the time, but remember, the silver is never, you never throw it away, and it is never gone.

It can always be flattened, molded, domed into something else.

What I feel about what I do is, I would like to make high-quality, yet affordable pieces, that people actually wear.

That stand the test of time.

I don't do trendy work, I really try to do classic timeless designs that people can wear forever.

- Now let's take a seat with John Stout, and find out why he started making his sculptures, from concrete.

Also, we hear a story from special guest, Bill Ratner, a nationally renowned voice talent, from Minnesota.

(guitar strums) - I think I get my ideas from feelings, and not so much from anybody's photo, or any picture or any place I've been or anything I've seen.

(guitar strums) I think art is a, is a great way to show, or to commemorate, or to identify, um feelings, and um, and ideas that are otherwise unresolvable, and um, painful maybe, or puzzling maybe.

These themes that I've just mentioned are expressed in a lot of my art.

Basically, I suppose you could call it the mystery of life.

One thing that works with sculptures is that you can incorporate the feeling of a body moving into it.

I think the viewer actually begins to feel that feeling.

To feel the feeling of the body moving, just sort of automatically, it's like, sort of empathizes it's way into the viewer.

I was working on a job, building a house I think, in, in Minneapolis somewhere, and all the sudden, the idea for this came to me, so then I built it.

It took a long time to build it.

Uh, this thing, it's electrified, and uh, it's a model of a huge, a huge, ah, screw, the type that would split things apart if it screwed into them.

And it's also, it's driven by a model of a, of an internal combustion engine.

So on the inside, there's a piston that does up and down, and there's valves that open and close, and there's overhead cams and all this stuff.

(guitar strums) This whole thing, together is called The Royal Screw.

And the reason it's called The Royal Screw is um, is just, again, it's part of the nature of the way that I see life.

Uh, in the background of this thing, uh, I have kind of a mural.

In there you can see there's an oil pump.

But then a little bit over to the right, you can see that we're not in North Dakota, but we're somewhere maybe in the Middle East, with oil wells and army tanks and overturned armored vehicles, and bleeding bodies.

And really this, uh, this piece altogether, the mural in the back and the smoke from the whole works.

This actually is commemorating the experience of, of my son.

When he was young, he went to the Gulf War.

The first big oil war that we participated in, um, and his vehicle was blown up and overturned and blood did pour out of him.

And he did get a purple heart.

Um, but he lived for a few more years and then he got cancer, apparently from all the black smoke, this was the diagnosis of the doctors at the university.

Uh, he got oral cancer, and died very quickly, in a matter of months.

And so, um, so for me the idea of The Royal Screw is uh, you know my son and many other sons and daughters go to war for oil, and we get to have cheap oil to power our industry and commerce, and our frivolous trips, but many of our children and many of their counterparts, uh, get screwed.

(slow guitar strums) - [Voiceover] This commercial message will be 60 seconds long.

- It was 60 seconds, and I held my breath, and a 53 Olds 88 drives across the screen.

A happy family of four waving out the window.

And I ran into the kitchen and said mom, I know that a minute is 60 seconds.

And she said oh, did you learn that at kindergarten?

No, I said, the man on TV.

Oh Boxcar Bob.

No this man was invisible.

Oh, the announcer.

The announcer?

The announcer, and then that voice went into my head.

Deep and authoritative, calm, dignified, and highly intelligent.

And the hold my parents had on me, on my manners, my thoughts, my very development as a human being, they had unwittingly given over to the glass teat, the boob tube, the vast wasteland of television.

And I was now a member of the first generation of our species to be raised by a machine.

An RCA Victor 17 -- - The reason that we have story telling events here is because of our good friend, Bill Ratner.

He's gotten into telling stories, and he tells stories all over the country.

And on the radio, and on TV, and everywhere.

And it's really a cool thing to just tell our stories, you know, for free, what the hell.

So speaking of storytelling.

So when I was a kid and I wanted to build a windmill, I really did.

And now when I was grown up, I wasn't sure I could do it, but my son Jeremy said, go ahead dad, just build the bottom part this year.

And I said, okay, that's a good idea.

So I built the bottom part, and then built the top part.

And the whole thing is uh, it's a process of you know, building, building for nothing.

So it's just, I don't know, I like that sort of beauty.

I like the beauty of ah, simplicity, strength.

And of course I didn't copy it because those guys were good back then, and I'm just a kid, haha, in the 20th, 21st century.

21st century kid.

- On our last stop, we have a chat with local artist, Donna Jean Carver, and take a peek at her one of a kind wall murals.

(country music) - I'm not sure what it's about.

(laughs) I just love to paint, I like, I've always liked animals, and uh, it seems to be a compulsion with me.

When I turned 70, I decided I'm just gonna do whatever I want, no matter what anybody else thinks, so that's what I've been doing.

So, I've, like I've gone into.

Like I said, gone back to my farmer daughter roots, where I started painting on denim, and and feed bags, and a lot of farm pictures.

Most of them have roosters in them because I like roosters.

(country music) Well, I've been painting most of my life, off and on.

I took time off to have children and various other things.

I didn't actually get back into painting seriously until the last, well after I turned 70 which was three years ago.

I mean, it just seems to be a compulsion with me.

I have to paint, I have to do something, and I really love the painting.

The time goes by fast when you're painting.

It's a good thing to do I think.

(cap clicks) (paint squishes) I paint mainly in acrylics, I like it because it dries fast.

Some people don't like that aspect of it, but I do.

This is my new favorite brush, my fan brush, and it works really good for making chicken tails.

As far as techniques, I don't really have a lot of techniques.

I start from the background and work my way up to whatever's in the foreground of the painting.

Um, other than that, I don't think I have a whole lot of techniques.

(brushes stroke painting) And I just basically make this all up as I go along.

Because, chicken tails don't have to be any specific way.

So... Well I started out just painting on canvas and then I went to the painting on the denim and the feed sacks.

That's just a recent thing, so.

Mostly it was canvas, or the wall.

(laughs) (percussive music) The wall murals, I'm not sure exactly how they started.

Um, I moved in here, they had all these nice, freshly painted blank walls.

And I thought they would make a good canvas for some painting.

And then um, I decided I want a window in my bedroom.

So I painted the giraffe window over my bed.

And then I just kept going until I was out in the hall.

Painting murals.

(laughs) There's over 21 of them, I think.

if I counted correctly.

(tribal music) Well, the giraffes are probably the favorite, because I really like giraffes.

They're so graceful, and ah, beautiful animals, I think.

(tribal music) Well, I'm not sure what to say about the lion mural.

I just decided to paint a mural of lions, and ah, because they're really beautiful animals.

And sort of combined everything into a family of animals.

Lions, pride of lions.

(tribal music) Elephants are big.

So if you want to paint a mural of elephants, you gotta have a big space.

So that's why I decided to put them in the living room.

It's kinda fun when I do the studio hop, and when people come to visit, and that sort of thing.

They'll walk in here, and they'd just gasp when they see the elephants, because it's kind of amazing, I guess.

Everybody doesn't have a heard of elephants on their living room wall, so.

(tribal music) I have a lot of colored fish on my bathroom wall.

One thing I like about it is it reflects in the mirror.

So it's like having a mural on both sides of the bathroom wall.

(tribal music) Well, I'm not quite sure where I got my love for all of these safari animals.

It's just always been there, I, when I was younger I would look at books with animals in, and then of course when Animal Planet come on, and the internet also, you can get a lot of information from there.

I do watch Animal Planet a lot, and National Geographic also has a lot of animal stories.

So, that's where I get a lot of the inspiration.

(guitar strums and bells chime) I do like the cows too, because they remind me of my dad.

And then there's the roosters, which remind me of my mother because she had a collection of ceramic roosters, and ah, oh I guess I liked them all.

In my dining room, I have a window with Holstein cows in the field.

And that is basically to remind me of my father, who milked Holstein cows until he was 80 years old.

And ah, I just like Holstein cows.

(Bells chime and guitar strums) People ask me all the time how long it took to paint the murals, because they seem to think it'd take years, but it didn't, it only took me a couple of months.

For one thing, you can't put a lot of detail on the wall because it's too rough.

So, it goes faster than a lot of the canvases would.

So it only took me a couple of months to paint them.

(slow guitar music) I get my inspiration from a lot of different places.

I could be watching TV and be looking at a magazine.

Uh, riding in the car, I see something.

Sometimes I'll even stop and take a picture if it's something I think I might want to paint.

A lot of places.

(laughs) I usually have way more ideas than I have time to put on canvas.

Sometimes I'll even make notes and put em aside, and half the time I don't get to them because I'm too busy doing other things, but as far as inspiration goes, that's never a problem.

There's always something in the back of my mind, going around.

(laughs) (slow guitar music) The more recent work that I've done is really inspired by my growing up on a farm.

Um, and I started using the denim, and the feed bags and things because we never had any money, and we always had to... My grandmother always said, make do with what you have.

So if you want to paint a picture, and you got a piece of denim or a feed bag or something, then you paint it on that.

I mean, now I can afford to but the canvas, but that's where it came from.

Um, and of course, the farm scenes are very nostalgic and it takes me back to my childhood.

(slow guitar music) I don't really wanna send a message, I just really want them to enjoy looking at my paintings.

I never understand people that say there's some sort of message to their paintings.

It's, I just want people to enjoy them, that's all.

- That's all for this week.

For more information, go to our website.

See you again next time, on Postcards.

- [Voiceover] This program on Pioneer Public Television is funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November fourth, 2008.

Additional support provided by Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen in honor of Shalom Hill Farm, a not-profit, rural education retreat center in a beautiful prairie setting near Windom in southwestern Minnesota, shalomhillfarm.org.

The Arrowwood Resort and Conference Center.

Your ideal choice for a Minnesota resorts, offering luxury townhomes, 18 holes of golf, Darling Reflections Spa, Big Splash water park, and much more.

Alexandria Minnesota, a relaxing vacation, or great location for an event, ExploreAlex.com.

Easy to get to, hard to leave.

(instrumental music)