Next on Gallery America for this Oklahoma City artist picking up art after a 65 year hiatus is just another way he's lived his life.

I don't I don't believe in the word old.

I believe that a better word would be opportunity to be an age opportunity.

A former manager turned artist has found his true calling in bronze.

What I like about it is it's figuring things out.

A fluid artist in Cincinnati found that art was the best medicine for a lingering illness.

I was in bed and debilitating pain.

Some days just I could not move.

But I made a goal every single day for that year to paint something, no matter how big and how small.

Hello, Oklahoma.

I'm Robert Reid and welcome to Gallery America.

The show that brings you great art from Oklahoma and around the nation.

Have you ever heard that saying from John Lennon that life is what happens when you're busy making other plans?

I sure know that feeling.

It's basically saying there's no time like the present.

And the first artist we're meeting today sure knows that.

Well, he wakes up every day wanting to discover something new.

And it's led to all kinds of amazing artwork.

I promise you, you're going to be inspired by this story.

Here's Brad browser and "the Age of Opportunity."

If I'm going to do this.

I'm going to do it right.

I've got to have a reason for doing it.

And I've got to have a goal in mind.

Because I'm kind of goal oriented.

I'm very goal oriented.

And so I decided that I would think about it on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

And I would paint on Thursday and Friday whether I felt like it or I didn't feel like it.

From every painting I do.

I learn.

I just experiment.

First time that I. I was able to make transparent water.

I almost cried.

I went in the house and I was so, so excited about something that I just discovered.

I'm Bradley browser.

Go by Brad Just anordinary person.

My background was an engineering and geology.

I taught for six years, and as a classroom, I taught one class in geology.

I taught one class in science seminar, and I taught, I think, three or four classes in physics.

We started a jewelry supply company.

We started a roofing company.

We built homes.

And I think we built 28 homes We took of food and clothing down to Mexico, up to an area that was oh, the folks are really poor.that really affected me.

It's been good.

I've had a wonderful life.

I intend to spend a few more years.

That's.

That's my goal.

You know, I. I want to enjoy it.

I want to be involving myself with.

With other folks.

I have no, no desire to be hermit-ized.

If there is such a word.

I'm Annis Brauser.

I met Brad 44 years ago.

Put it in neutral to start it.

Whoa.

As he says, we complement each other.

The things one of us can do well, that the other one doesn't.

And the other one does something.

The other one can't.

And it fits together.

And it makes a good partnership.

It actually started because Brad had triple bypass because we had gone to New York, and we wanted to see Broadway plays with our daughter and son in law, and he couldn't walk a block, and they found out that there was a blockage.

So after the blockage there wasn't a therapy recuperation period.

And he began to sit in the rocker recliner and he began to to lose physical strongess that he had before We got to do something to get him out of the chair.

And I was thinking, I need the remote.

I need to watch my shows.

She said, Don't you think it's about time you got started?

And I said, What do you want?

She said, What time go run out on you if you don't get started?

And this is September the 27th.

I looked I opened this up and there was canvases and all the paintbrushes.

What do you want me to do?

Well, you need to get back to painting.

I don't want to paint.

I quit that when I was 17 years old.

You know, I.

When I went to OSU in the fall of 1954 I really liked art.

And so I enrolled in two classes of art.

They posted a little sign that said there will be an art show this spring, and the first prize will be $100.

And I thought, $100.

Oh, my goodness sakes.

And I thought I could win this.

Over Christmas break, I went home and I painted a picture, took it into enter it.

I gave her the painting and she put her finger.

She said, You can't enter this.

I mean, this is my masterpiece.

How many what in the world?

And she said, It's still tacky.

You read the the rules say that it's got to be totally dry or you can't enter.

So I walked off with it, went back home, gave the paint away, gave away on a brush in the paint, swore I'd never touch art again.

I've there.

I've done.

When I first heard the story and heard tacky.

To me, tacky was not good.

That's the way I took it.

So I put things away.

But right above your head is your first painting.

Well, that was I waited.

I put it off until I felt well, they went to all this trouble.

The least I could do is to paint a picture.

Okay, so I painted this picture up above my head, and, well, you know that that went pretty well, so I went back on other.

Maybe I'll try this tomorrow or two.

I look at things and I say, I wonder who did those, because I could do that.

I'm certainly not an accomplished artist, but I'm I will hopefully, Lord willing, I'll be able to say that when I hit my 450 a painting or maybe on 500 now 200, I just finish my 240.

Well, this is number 241.

I pride our relationship on being a team I won't even know she's there and she'll come in and look over my shoulder.

And she said that that look right there needs to be some color that I really appreciate that because she gives a totally unbiased look at it and gives me suggestions that I might not think of.

oI *indistinct talking * You know, we have big conferences over naming so it's, it's the other part of success where you need organization, you need records, you need accountability, everything that I can't do.

She can do.

If things are in order, I can operate.

I don't deal well if things aren't in order Whenever he called me, he said, Do you remember me?

Well, of course I remember he was one of my students that went to International Science Fair.

His name is Dustin Chilcoate.

It was a pleasure to be able to be in that classroom.

That was you know, not the conventional classroom.

He said, Why don't you have an art show here at my place?

I said, OK, sounds like a fun thing to me!

There's one that I have never seen before, but I love the the light on the path, the golden path.

The golden path, the one that sold was the turquoise path.

I had no idea, you know, that he had this within him.

The people that.

Write about old age, for the most part, have never experienced old age, and they don't really understand what the concept is, but they think they do.

I don't I don't believe in the word old.

I believe it a better word would be opportunity.

It'd be an age of opportunity.

Because you've been given the the gift of years added to your life.

This is a gift.

You have this knowledge to draw on and then put it to use .

Enjoy that.

I must say that our time with Brad and Annie was a real hoot.

I wish I had half their energy and maybe one of Annie's chainsaws.

You can see more of Brad's artwork on his website, Bradley brauser dot com or on his Facebook page.

Brad brauser fine art and go to his brand new Instagram account and follow him there at Bradley brauser Next, we're going to meet an Ohio local who sought his opportunity to go into a life of arts by leaving behind an office job and plunging into the ever experimental and exciting world of bronze.

Here is Fred McMullen.

I had several older brothers when we were little.

Of course, I followed their path.

One of the things they did was they melded, led in the basement My dad would come home with this box of tire weights, probably be very to use the lead for something We would melt those down and put them into molds.

I think one was called creepy crawlers or something like that.

They made great molds for the lead, and so I'd put those in there and it would be shaped like what mold was.

I think that started my fascination with the metal.

I remember trying to melt nickels with a propane torch to see what it would do, and that experimentation was just always something we did I've worked a lot of different jobs management positions, supervisory positions.

And for someone who's creative, it can become kind of a grind When I started doing the Bronze, everything just kind of clicked as something I enjoyed doing.

I liked the bronze process because there are so many steps in it.

It kind of uses all parts of your brain.

You know, melt in the metal to about 2100 degrees.

It's got to be skimmed off The molds have to be designed so that the metal will flow in correctly The bronze will solidify quite quickly with isotope molds, you know, within 1015 minutes.

I like to weigh at least half an hour.

They're still extremely hot when you pull them out of the molds.

A lot of times I'll just have a bucket of water.

We'll dip it in there and that's exciting to what you're and then that's when you get down to doing the fine finishing.

A lot of times people bought stuff and they just like it the way it is.

Other times if you want to sand it, buffet and polish it.

That's just personal preference.

It's it's just it's a great process.

To play around with What I like about it is that it's figuring things out.

Use that part of the brain.

If you're figuring things out, you're solving problems.

I like the creativity.

I'll have an idea, and I like solving the problem to get my idea to be made.

It's like solving a puzzle.

But three dimensionally, creatively, and with my sculptures where I have found objects.

I really enjoy those because it will sit around for a while until some kind of hits me and I'll figure out, Oh, I'll make a figure doing this with that piece of sound object.

And, you know, it's very gratifying when it works.

And then when someone else likes it, that's even better.

So this is my junk shelf, and this is where I throw things that I'll find that have an interest to me.

Mostly machine parts things like that.

And people will bring me things.

Someone brought me a couple of these which I have decide what to do with, but there are great form or cast iron fence part.

I think this is something I found in a barn that I had on a property.

You know, it's a hand forge hook.

It's just really interesting because it's not perfect.

It's not machine made, and it has a lot of character.

I don't let any interesting metal thing go to waste.

So the series is called Toil.

I like the human figures just because you know what?

It's man's life that kind of toil on getting through life.

So I ended up making figures that climbed or were laboring over something People that work hard for a living do their jobs well.

I find that as an inspiration, too, and I think that's reflected in my toil series.

You know, kind of as a tribute to them.

This is a figure I did recently.

I was thinking about solitude, so I wanted to make my representation of Rodin's The Thinker.

I found a image of this older African-American guy sitting on a bench contemplating mostly about the times we're in.

I'm curious what someone like that's perspective would be.

Who's seen so much through the last decades in America?

That's him.

That's my version of The Thinker I love birds and find a lot of inspiration from.

Those are just amazing creatures.

We'll go to the park walk and I'll just see a branch that is really interesting, just the way it's formed.

That starts me with, you know, I'll make the branch out of metal and then I'll find a bird.

And so I'll add those to the branch.

I'm just stealing from God.

But I think it's cool when you find something and it comes together, it really scratches that itch.

Of, Yeah, that's what I was after.

And then the best part of all is when someone else falls in love with it and they talk to you about it.

It spoke to you and you made it it's spoken to them.

And that's worth more than any financial gain.

To see more of Fred's artwork, visit his website, Ben Tree Studios dot com.

Last we're standing Ohio to meet a Cincinnati artist who works with fluid art.

Now, when she found herself suddenly facing an illness, she discovered how a daily regimen of creating her art, no matter how she felt that day, helped her overcome it.

Meet Tiffany Moyer.

When I sit down to paint, I try to shut off my head.

I try to shut off all of the thoughts that are in my head.

And I really try to allow my intuition to guide me throughout the process.

So I sit with my music and I let myself connect to the music in a way that allows me to start picking paints like the colors that I want to use.

Sometimes there's just a color like purple.

Purple is the color of the day, and then I start matching colors to that.

That I think would compliment it and kind of express, I think, what I'm feeling or how the music's helping me feel.

And once I have colors selected, I put them on two cups and I mix up like a water medium that I pour into the cups to kind of slowly, slowly add to get to the consistency that I want.

And it's like a constant like check check.

Is it is with consistency?

That took a lot of trial and error.

What is it that I'm trying to achieve?

What's what's going to make all of the paint run off the canvas?

What's going to hold that tighter?

What's going to blend the paint?

So it's like it's a process of what color do I want to stand out mostly in this painting.

It's during that time that the energy of the music is going into the paint.

The energy of me is going into the paint.

Through that process, if I really take my time and focus on what I'm doing.

That's when I get the best results, I think.

It's almost like a meditation in a way.

While I was like really connecting to the music, I would see patterns of colors.

I would see sequences, and I really fell in love with mixing colors and kind of letting these, like, images that I had already seen in my brain come out and to the canvas without thinking about them.

And for the first time in my life, I found something I really enjoy.

I'm really, really passionate about it.

And right after I started painting, I got really, really sick and it started in my neck.

It was like a pain in my neck.

The pain started to go into my back.

I had spasms.

This lasted for about a year.

I was in bed and debilitating pain.

Some days just I could not move, but I made a goal every single day for that year to paint something.

No matter how big, no matter how small, my illness just magically got better one day and and I think it was pushing through the pain on the days when I was like, I don't know if I can do this.

And I got out of bed every single day and painted that.

I was determined to learn through one of the most painful parts of my life because I really I was like, Oh, this makes me so happy.

In a way, I almost feel like this, this medium especially saved my life.

After he makes the paint, sometimes I'll go walk around the front of my punching bag to kind of like, take some time to let the paint really interact with each other before I die for it.

But I have a friend who was trying to teach me to box.

He started to explain that boxing is sort of like meditation in a way.

And when you really get lost in the process of, like, the rhythm of punching you, your mind goes blank.

Similar to art.

The beginning of Vivid, I've been a punching bag.

I had no idea what I was doing, but I started to really enjoy it sometimes as well.

I if I feel like I'm lacking energy to move the energy around inside of me, I'll start punching the boundaries.

Kind of like it loosened up, like break up the energy let's get the creative juices flowing a little bit more.

I had nowhere else to put my punching bag except for in my studio, so it kind of came together in that way.

And I was like, this is really adding another element to the creative process.

There's a lot of different styles of pouring the paint onto the canvas.

Some people will take individual cups and kind of try to do a design that way.

I think I fell in love with the dirty water because essentially it's just like taking four or five colors or however many colors into a cup, and you take that cup and poor onto the canvas.

I do one cup and then I start to move the canvas, see how the paints interacting with each other for another cup, and see how that's interacting.

And then it comes to life as I start pouring.

So there's nothing ever inside of my mind before I start pouring.

It comes to life as I start pouring, which I really enjoy.

Now, before I was like, I really want it to look this way.

And I can't.

It doesn't do it that way.

This paint has a mind of its own, and I it's really taught me to accept that I can't control.

There's some things I can't control.

So it's really almost a reflection of the lessons that I'm learning in my own life is how it comes out onto the canvas as well.

I really try to take time out in between every pore to kind of see like, what do I want to add?

What is it that I want to add to this?

So once I feel that the piece is balanced, I stop worrying Fluid art is always going to be my passion.

I think what I love the most about this medium is that I can have two artists that use the same colors, and it comes out completely different because every artist, I think, has their own style.

And I finally found that style on.

It feels really good.

I don't think society sets people up to believe that they can make a career out of the arts.

And I think I want to prove to people that yes, you can and you can follow the art, you can live your life stream, you can live your purpose through the arts, and it's OK it's going to be difficult at times, but it's going to be OK. You can do it last.

I'm going to leave you with a little bit of homework straight from Brad brauser Try something new.

Just do something different.

You know, it makes life more interesting.

Slows down time.

You could take an art class or hang out with Pistol Pete like Brad did, or punch a punching bag like Tiffany or dye your spaghetti blue like Annie did when she had us over for dinner.

For me, I'm going to go ride that thing.

See you next time.

Stay arty Oklahoma !