[ Music ] (Mary) This week on State of the Arts a cowboy turned sculptor, a visit to a rodeo themed Tucson museum, and Route 66 in photographs.

All next on State of the Arts.

[ Music ] Thanks for joining us.

I'm your host, Mary Paul.

It's rodeo week here in the old Pueblo.

We may not often equate the culture and sport of rodeo with the arts, and neither did Oklahoma cowboy Ron Roberts until he turned 65 years old.

Now 80, he still works with horses, but he also works in clay and bronze, sculpting award-winning figures that represent a cowboy history.

Ron says that his work is proof that with determination, it's never too late to start pursuing a new passion.

[ Cattle sounds ] I grew up around horses, cattle, and been around it all my life.

Running wild horses, working cattle, doing the dock to work in the feed yards, working on ranches.

Every time I get a chance, I'm at the barn with the horses, with the cattle, with the rope in my hand, because I just love it.

I never thought about doing artwork, ever.

Somebody wants to tell me, you can do art.

I would just laugh.

I said, I'm a cowboy.

I don't even know how to draw.

I can't do art.

Michelle has worked out here with me for what, four years?

She's learning the ropes.

Look at you go.

You're a real cowgirl.

I'm Ron Roberts from Poteau, Oklahoma.

I'm 80, almost 81.

I rope every day I get a chance, and then to take up the extra time, I try to sculpt a little.

C'mon, big boy.

Retired at 57 years old, and then moved here 22 years ago about, and so I was going to rope all day long, train horses.

Well, that was okay.

I got to be about 65 years old, and all day long, riding horses is too long.

I had some heart issues, and had to have open heart surgery.

The lady that we knew in Colorado sent some clay, said, this is really therapeutic.

This will keep him down.

And I said, I don't know what I'm going to do with that.

I can't even draw.

And so it stayed in the house for four or five years.

And my wife Joyce said, you need to take that clay to the barn or something and get it out of the house.

So I did.

I took it to the tack room.

So I started playing with it.

I started cutting and carving.

And when I first started, it was not good.

But I got so frustrated that I couldn't quit.

Just keep doing it until it gets it right.

I believe that you can do anything you set your mind to if you want to do it.

When I first started off, they were pretty crude.

And as I got older, into working with clay more, every sculpture I do, I think, gets a little better.

It's something new, and it's something that surprises everybody.

But he does, I think, a really good job at it.

I'm Joyce Roberts.

I've been married to Ron Roberts for 60 years.

Going on 61, I guess you would say.

When he first called me and said, come down to the barn.

I've got something I want to show you.

Here's this big Indian head.

And I said, where did that come from?

And he said, I made it.

And I said, you didn't make that.

You've never done anything like that.

Where did it come from?

Come to find out he did make it.

When he gets started, he will stay down in his tack room all day long and sometimes late into the night.

Once he gets started, he doesn't know when to stop because he has it in his mind.

Yeah, it's looking better.

I've sculpted some and actually almost get talking to 'em because it feels like they're just almost coming to life.

Lots of times I don't even know what he's working on until I go down to him and look at it.

Ring on the phone, Joyce, come to the tack room.

I've got something I want you to look at.

She'll look at it all over because she's serious about it.

Most of the time she'll look at it and she'll go, Mmm, it's not, something's not right, Ron.

When she does that, I go, oh man, I got to do the whole thing over again.

I'm not really sure what it is, but I can tell that something is not right.

You've heard the saying you've been so close to the tree, you can't see the forest.

Well, that's what it is with sculpting.

You're so intricate with it that you just get blinded.

So that's basically what I do is kind of look it over and say, Mmm, I don't really like that.

That plays a key role because without that, they would not be very good.

When you're doing art, whether it's handling your kids or whether it's in your work, when stress points come up, we all have them every day.

It's how you handle those stress points that makes a difference.

If you handle them the right way, you're going to be hard to beat.

Something come up, wouldn't get it.

You know, it's OK.

I'm going to just take it and ride the wave.

But you got to remind yourself of that all the time.

That probably is the most important thing in life that I've ever learned that right there.

We've gone to a few art shows and he's done quite well when he goes.

But that's not what he really started doing it for.

He started doing it for basically himself.

I'll be honest, the only thing I want to be professional at in anything.

It's been a good family man and a good Christian.

Other than that, I play with it.

That's what makes me happy.

I've been a member of the Professional Rodeo Cowboy Association for, I don't know, 40 years, probably, entered, you know, like Cheyenne, Dodge City, some of the bigger ones, but I never traveled the circuit full time.

My priority was to make a good living for my family and to have the happy home life that I had all these years.

61, been married, that's a long time.

God bless her.

Yeah, I've had lots of blessing.

Two wonderful kids, four wonderful grandchildren, three great grandchildren.

And I'm getting to do what I want to do.

I'm going to keep kicking and keep doing it until I can't do any more.

There's a song about that.

Toby Keith saying, don't let the old man in.

If you don't let him in, you still crawling them horses and still roping.

You still travel with your family.

You can still be a T-ball coach.

You can do anything long as it makes you happy.

You know, if you want to do something, then go for it.

And while we're on the subject of Cowboys, art and the Tucson rodeo, did you know we have a museum here in town that documents that very history?

The Tucson Wagon and History Museum has been around for more than 60 years.

Here's a peek inside at some of its unique exhibits.

[Western music] The museum is located on the site of the original airport that the city of Tucson developed in 1919.

It became the first municipal airport in the country here on this site.

Moved to Davis-Monthan in the early 20s.

So it's, so the site's been the site of the museum and the rodeo and used to be the old fairgrounds.

I'd like to say that this is one of the hidden gems of Tucson.

Most of the people look at the Tucson Rodeo Grounds as just a rodeo grounds and our buildings as storage facilities.

And they really are storage facilities for wagons and a lot of other history of Tucson here.

We have four buildings within the confines of the museum right here, which holds different wagons and buggies and displays basically of Western culture, Western life of Tucson, Southern Arizona and the world, really.

There's stuff from all over the world here.

We changed the name from the Tucson Rodeo Parade Museum to the Tucson Wagon and History Museum, because there's people that were coming in looking for parade stuff.

They're looking for floats.

They're looking for horses.

They're looking for all of that.

Even though we're under the umbrella of the Tucson Rodeo Parade Committee, we dropped that name and just called it the Tucson Wagon and History Museum because that's what people just started calling us.

[Western music] This is one of the bigger barns when this this building was constructed like 1964, 65.

So I used to call it the big new barn.

So we now call it the Roscoe Christopher Barn, which we honored an individual in the committee.

This houses some of the bigger equipment, the industrial equipment, the stagecoaches, the freight wagons, the farm wagons and such in this barn.

[model train whistle] What makes our museum very unique is that, you know, we're 'walk up and touch it.'

The museum is not stuck behind glass, is not stuck behind stanchions, you know, roped off and that.

You can walk up and touch.

In some cases, if you ask us in a particular wagon or buggy, we'll allow you to do that.

It's a fun part of it.

We are in, we call the 'high end district.'

That's the barn we have here.

It's called the Stan Grimes Barn.

We named it after another individual that helped out for many years.

And it has a lot of buggies in the carriages of a little higher state.

Things that you would see back east in the big cities that, you know, that the people a little bit more wealth would be driving around in.

Of which we have the Maximilian.

You know, it's a carriage.

We call it the Maximilian because it would belong to Maximilian, who was the emperor of Mexico, one of the last emperors of Mexico from Europe.

And that carriage was in hiding for a number of years.

And the story goes that eventually moved its way to southern Arizona, into Tucson, and had been in this museum for 70 some odd year, 80, almost 80 years.

A number of our wagons and buggies, there's been a lot of movies over the years.

And one of the most popular movies everybody knows about is the movie Oklahoma.

The world will fly in a flurry.

When I take you out in the surrey, when I take you out in the surrey.

The surrey with the fringe on top, which up here, this is a two-seat surrey.

This and the one behind me also is in the movie.

And the whole musical, which Oklahoma was, is this is a central piece of it.

And people love seeing it when they come into the museum.

We've got people that worked at the El Conquistador Hotel.

We've got the exhibit of the original El Conquistador on Broadway, stopping in when that was a worker.

She was a worker there and shared a lot of tears about when they tore it down.

El Conquistador Hotel opened in 1928 and was in operation until the 1960s, where it was demolished.

The Chinese market is one of the unique things that's really got a connection here because I'm working with a gentleman whose father owned the grocery store right across the street from us.

Now it's raspados.

And I'm working with him as far as trying to get it as historically accurate as possible.

And it really relates to, you know, this part of town.

One of the things he mentioned is that you want to get rid of the candy by the cash register that was common for the Chinese markets.

Down here, it was saladitos.

[MUSIC PLAYING] It fulfills my love for Tucson.

I'm a native.

I'm a fourth generation Tucsonan.

I love the history of Tucson.

It's a part of Tucson.

Everywhere we go and people will say, if I've been in different parts of the country and I have my Tucson rodeo parade or my Tucson rodeo, they'll go, oh, man, that's a really neat Tucson.

They got a great parade.

They got a great rodeo.

That just warms your heart every time you see that and hear it.

This is a special place to me in my heart just because the volunteers that work, you know, under me, I just give them a guidance.

I says, this is what needs to be done.

And they do it.

I don't have to be right on top of them telling them exactly what to do.

And so I take pride in keeping Tucson's history alive.

And I guess being a Tucson native, that's the main reason.

I've been doing this for quite some time, 18 years.

I started out by giving tours and I wanted something a little more hands on.

They said, OK, we got plenty to do.

Very nice group of people, very knowledgeable.

I learn something every day.

Most of Tucson doesn't know that we're here.

Last year's entry statistics, we found out that 92% of the visitors to this museum were from out of state, not even from Tucson.

I'm Dennis Eichenlaub, and I'm retired.

And we wanted to get away from Baltimore for the winter.

So, uh, we came to Tucson We've been here once before and we had a great time.

I really liked the idea of getting into the history of Tucson.

And this museum had a really nice combination of the old transportation as well as the little storefronts on the side and the tie-in to the parade, which unfortunately we won't see, but maybe another visit.

We've got people that will walk in that live just two or three blocks away, actually.

They come walking in saying, you know, we've always seen these buildings here and we see the sign, but I thought I'd just come in and see what it's all about.

It's like any of us, we never paid that much attention to what's in our front yard or back yard.

[music] [music] You can visit the Tucson Wagon and History Museum at 4823 South Sixth Avenue.

Now we turn our attention to Route 66, the Mother Road, as it celebrates its centennial this year.

Since 1926, this historic highway has paved the way for American road trippers, offering its steadily changing landscape from the Midwest to the West Coast.

One photographer from Cleveland has been capturing those images with his photographs for the last 22 years, starting with his very first photos along Route 66 in Northern Arizona.

Later this year, his photos will be released as part of the U.S.

Postal Service's centennial stamp collection.

[music] The very first photograph I ever made on Route 66 was Twin Arrows, Arizona.

And that's two giant arrows that are stuck in the ground.

They're basically telephone poles with the arrows cut out with plywood.

But it's an icon that's been there forever.

And I made it a goal to make my first photograph there, kind of symbolic of landing on the road and the arrows in the ground.

And it was so amazing to be there after all this time of dreaming of this road.

[music] In 2004, on the first trip, I traveled like Arizona, New Mexico, California, and just really started to fall in love with it.

The scenes along the highway were incredible, seeing old patina signs rusting away in the desert, and then getting to know some of the people along the way that have spent their lives there and are passionate about their businesses and the people that they meet on the road, it just really captured me.

So I've taken 42 trips now over 22 years, and comparing the first trip to this las, present trip, it's very different.

[music] Now, if we go back to the earlier days, one, it was a lot harder to travel then.

There wasn't signage.

It wasn't all ingrained in my head on how to travel it, but you could only follow a guidebook, basically.

So it was harder to travel.

You could get lost very easily.

And I was just kind of at my own free will to stop and, you know, make a photograph whenever I wanted.

There wasn't any schedule to it at all.

[music] This feels like a creativity of all my own when I'm out on the road and finding locations.

And sometimes I'm scouting them and figuring out on an app when the sun's just right.

So there's kind of like this planning and mathematical thing that goes into it and then, you know, showing up there and hoping the weather gives you a blessing and you end up with a great shot.

There's certain spots that if I'm driving by there, unless it's absolutely horrible light, I'm probably going to stop and make a photograph.

There's just certain places on the road that I'm really in love with that I just always want to photograph.

And then there's people, you know, I can't always visit everybody that I know along the road, but I have some really great friends that I must stop and visit every time.

I can't pass by them without, you know, stopping in and saying hello and seeing how their little slice of Route 66 is going.

[music] [music] So here we have a night at the Munger Moss, and this motel was built in the 40s, and they were celebrating their 70th year in business.

It was the second or third generation owners that were there at this point, and they had been there since 1971.

They had a huge celebration.

So it was a really fun evening celebrating the motel and the folks that owned it that had been there forever, Bob and Ramona.

And I just loved the light.

It was just the right time of day.

The sun was already down.

It was blue hour, but the blue kind of had this nice sort of cyan-ish sort of color going on to it as well, and it just came together beautifully.

[music] It's interesting on the road.

New things rise up, and, you know, people come on board with new ideas in a Route 66 sort of way, and it's an amazing thing to see somebody celebrating the road with their own unique ideas.

And then there's those places that get hit by the wrecking ball, and Walmart goes up, or Walgreens, and it's heartbreaking to see these icons of the road get lost, because once it's gone, it's not coming back.

[music] It's just constantly been growing and evolving and making photographs and starting to do some fine art prints.

And then one day the phone rings, and I pick it up, and the person on the other end says they represent the United States Postal Service, and they've been searching for a photographer to use for the centennial stamp collection that they're creating, and they love my work, and they wanted to work with me.

So after I picked myself up off the floor, I said, "All right, let's do it."

[music] They kind of came to be already prepared with some stuff that they had seen on my site, that, "Well, you know, we saw these, and we feel like these might work.

What else do you have?"

So I did a deep dive into my archive and probably gave them way too many photos.

[laughs] But, you know, it's like you've got to think about, "Okay, how does this translate on a stamp?"

And then you have to think about, "All right, we want to represent each state."

And then you also want to show a wide view of what Route 66 is.

[music] It was an interesting process.

It was a lot of fun.

The people I worked with there were fantastic men.

And I was honored because they felt that I had taught them a lot about Route 66 along the way.

[music] I'm ecstatic.

One of the biggest things to me is that I want to bring Route 66 to the masses.

I want people to get out there, travel the road, experience America at a slower pace, see the places, meet the people, and support it and help it thrive.

And I feel like this really makes that opportunity happen by allowing, you know, the whole United States to see Route 66 on stamps.

So I'm grateful.

I'm just really grateful.

[music] Next, we meet visual artist Steve Nighthawk of Reno, Nevada.

A descendant of the Shoshone, Washoe, and Paiute nations of the Great Basin, he uses a combination of pencils, charcoal, and paint to create lifelike art based on the people and animals native to northern Nevada.

[music] My name is Steve Nighthawk, and I do artwork.

I am part of the Washoe Shoshone and Paiute.

I can remember drawing birds in elementary school, and you jump ahead, what, 40, 50 years?

I'm still drawing birds.

I do coyotes, I do wolves, I do hummingbirds, Lake Tahoe, Pyramid Lake.

I mean, it just goes on and on.

There's no schedule or list.

As well as doing artwork, I collect art, and as I look around, I'm seeing six different artists here.

I'm here at my living room art gallery.

I pretty much grew up in Reno.

I moved away about 20, 22 years ago to do some archeology work in Oregon.

And I thought, "Oh, yeah, I'm going to go home."

I didn't really realize what Arttown was, but I knew I like art, so I got involved in doing art shows, going to see other artists, different venues.

And to actually have a poster of Reno, it brings it all home.

The Arttown poster is an art piece that's connected to our mountains, our lakes, our rivers.

The centerpiece being not just a basket, but the outline of Reno woven into the basket.

The basket is very important to Native people.

The basket is based on a Paiute design.

They've been making baskets for thousands of years, and they're well renowned for their work.

And from there, I worked out incorporating music notes, a movie, real piano keys coming from behind, all the way down to dance, Hollywood, Bell Arena, and last but not least, the earth on the bottom.

Some pictures, I have to do research of the background of the main subject, and that's always fun, because when you do that, you learn something that you really never knew before.

This particular picture is a decoy, a duck decoy.

The photo is from actual decoys that were discovered in a cave that date back 9,000 years.

So that's the main subject that I use.

And then I also try to use landmarks.

In this particular piece, I used Pyramid Lake as the backdrop, the mountain line, part of the beach, and the sky, light to dark sunset.

The picture is always complete once I actually do step back and take a look at it.

I'll just go over it once, and if it's good, it's good.

And this one is good.

I'm happy, I'm glad.

More than once, after I do finish a picture, I'll look at it, and I'll think, "That is very good."

I can't say that.

Someone else is doing it, I'm doing it, but I'm just amazed at it.

I think as long as I have that, I will be able to continue.

Thanks for joining us this week for State of the Arts.

We'll be back next week with more art stories for you.