(upbeat music) Tom - This week on Arizona Illustrated, artist Adam Homan gave up a career job to pursue his passion.

Adam - I just like the challenge and then making it look fluid.

Tom - We visit scientists on the front lines of protecting Earth from asteroids.

Melissa - Our goal is to reduce the uncertainty in our knowledge of where the near Earth asteroids are as an act of planetary defense.

Tom - Meet the legendary Tohono Oodham musician, Gertie Lopez.

Gertie - Waila is a traditional social music and dance on the reservation.

Tom - And a honey tasting class inspires neighbors to go into business together.

Celeste - I'm so lucky to do it with my bestie and we have our five hives now.

We started off with two.

(upbeat music) Tom - Hello and welcome to another all new episode of Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara.

You know, one of the things I love about Southern Arizona is that you can live here for years or even decades like I have.

There are always new places and experiences right around the corner.

- And today we're in this wild, wacky and imaginative place.

It's called Tin Town.

It's a creation of Patricia Homan who's been working on it since 1982.

Her son, Adam Homan is the focus of our next story and it's easy to see how this creative environment encouraged him to pursue his own career in the arts.

(Adam Homan) The process is everything.

Like that's where the joy is.

You kind of get out of yourself, out of your mind, and time slows down and you just really are completely focused on what you're doing.

completely focused on what you're doing.

And I think that's really the most exciting thing about creating art.

And then hopefully you have something beautiful at the end of the process.

When I was a kid, my parents took me to Star Wars.

I think I was six years old.

I walked out of the theater that day and my life had changed and I started studying like the model makers and the guys behind the scenes that really got me into kind of making things, fantasy things that excited me.

I just like the challenge of taking a rigid material and then making it look fluid or like it has life to it.

(Patricia Homan) I am Patricia Homan.

I am Adam's mom.

Well, when Adam was a little kid, he was always imaginative, and I believe I instilled a little bit of that imaginative in him with reading Dr. Seuss books and doing artwork.

And one of the pieces of artwork that we did when he was a little boy is we made these pickled people and we gave them to friends and relatives for Christmas presents.

His pieces bring joy to people.

And I'm lucky enough to have his studio here.

And every day a piece of joy comes out of that studio.

(Adam Homan) The modern adult world can be confusing and jaded and dark, and who needs more of that?

From my work, I want a positive feeling.

I want people to smile.

I want them to laugh.

I love childhood imagination.

It's pure, a beautiful thing.

Today I'm working on a jackalope, which is Arizona mythology.

The history behind it is that I think a taxidermist was doing a rabbit and they added deer antlers to it.

And then somebody got an image of that and it became lore.

Like these jackalopes are out there and exist and people claim they've seen them and its kind of a fun thing that's happened in Arizona.

I started making them years ago, and I'll find like deer antlers at the gem show or something and Ill incorporate them into the piece, sort of whimsical thing to do.

This one is going to be a little different.

I had to scavenge some cool parts for this.

I'm using stainless steel on it mixed with mild steel.

We're going to treat it and I'll show you how the chemical process works on it.

from the beginning.

I usually like to sit down and meditate and be in a calm space and let a positive idea come through.

I never create when I'm stressed out and so once I get the idea, I know the form in my head, what I want to create.

But I'm also keeping in mind that I have recycled parts, whether it's cameras, pieces out of gears, cash registers, typewriters.

It's always like, does that piece fit into the sculpture in a natural way?

(Patricia Homan) I think he did one of the love bots during Valentine's Day.

Every man wants to give his wife a love bot, or maybe the wife wants to give her husband one too, and works both ways.

(Adam Homan) For me, it's all about animation.

So I was a huge animation fan and the robots were always a part of that.

And so the love bot just became a sort of piece that, you know, the idea of giving somebody your heart and that expression to it's very sweet and kind and I don't know, there's always been something about robots that I don't know has stirred my heart and the idea that a robot is showing something very kind and human.

I like that sort of dichotomy.

It's I find it interesting and inspiring.

I figure I've done about 7000 sculptures since 1994, hasn't been a one man journey.

My family's been a huge part of that and supported me and have been encouraging.

(Dennis Homan) I'm Dennis Homan and I'm Adam Homan's dad.

and he was very creative and he was an only child, so he used to do a lot of stuff by himself, sit there and draw.

And when he was going to college, he wanted to become a teacher, end up getting a degree from the University of Arizona and English and creative writing.

So he started teaching school.

So he came home one day and he says dad he says, I don't like this job at all.

He says, But I would like to make my hobby, my career.

I was always raised and you get a job where you got every two weeks, you get a paycheck and you had benefits and things like that.

And I said, it's like, dad, I mean, you know, you're not going to have those kind of things if you become an artist.

And he just said, I know, Dad, but that's what I really want to do.

It'll all work out.

So I said, okay, I'll support you.

(Adam Homan) Now the downsides are there's no consistency.

When it's your job and you're supporting your family with something too.

You also have to think, is this going to sell?

There is a pressure that comes with that.

Like, okay, what do I do now?

And that's where, like repeat business is is huge for me.

The joy is far outweigh the challenges.

Every day I get to come to work and I get to be creative.

And for the most part, I can do what I want.

It's a blessing and I don't take it for granted.

A self-made woman is very, very important for a woman that has come through a lot of problems in her life to to make it to the top of whatever she does.

The self-made woman sculpture is probably one of the pieces I'm known best for, but the idea behind it is it's a female breaking free from her constraints, whether that be, you know, choose or choice there.

I always try to do strong female figures.

I feel like the Sacred Feminine has been trounced on for 3000 years.

And I really think the, you know, women coming into their strength and claiming their power is important in our society right now.

Well, when I started, I was working primarily with just mild steel.

I was very like adamant about fabricating everything myself.

And then over time, I started realizing like, gosh, I could recycle a lot here.

And I started kind of incorporating other things into them.

It is a challenge to like put a piece together and use parts and make them look like they all blend together into a design.

(Patricia Homan) His angel on the wash there that our neighborhood commissioned him to do.

It's an angel thanking all the COVID workers.

(Adam Homan) During COVID.

A lot of us had friends and family that were on the front lines and we heard the stories.

Our hearts just went out for him.

So we came up with this angel here behind me.

It's recycled steel with stainless steel that are mixed together.

I tried to make it look natural and integrate it and put it together for them and just about them, you know, shining the light during dark times.

And I felt like it was an appropriate thing to create and seems to be enjoyed by everyone.

So, yeah, it was a blessing.

Tom - Hollywood is fond of making apocalyptic films about asteroids like "Don't Look Up", "Deep Impact" or "Armageddon".

Now these films depict scientists who discovered a giant space rock on a terrifying trajectory toward earth.

Well, at the University of Arizona's SPACEWATCH program, real-life scientists are charged with monitoring the night sky for these hazardous asteroids.

Fortunately, they haven't discovered any imminent threats... yet.

(soft music) When we're observing, we drive up to the mountain in the mid afternoon.

Then we will start up and do a walk around both telescopes, make sure everything looks good.

The 1.8 meter and 0.9 meter telescopes that we use are on KITT Peak and the point nine meter telescope is actually the original Steward Observatory telescope that started off on campus in 1922.

One thing we need to do is choose our first target and then start up all the software that we need to operate the telescopes.

Then we also do a pointing to make sure that we're pointing exactly where we want to be pointing in the sky.

And then we're ready to start taking images of asteroids.

I'm Melissa Brucker.

I work for the University of Arizona in the Lunar and Planetary Lab, and I'm the principal investigator of Space Watch.

And we use telescopes on KITT Peak to measure the positions of asteroids to make sure they don't get lost.

(Melissa) Why don't we check out this one up here?

(Mike) Okay.

Can I zoom in?

(Melissa) Sure.

Lets go ahead and stack the blink, right?

(Melissa) It may possibly be rotating.

It looks a lot brighter in the in the last image.

(Mike) And the stars appear in uniform.

(Melissa) So at Space Watch, there are seven of us who operate the telescopes, including me.

And we can have anywhere between 24 to 38 nights per month on the telescope.

(Mike) I always click this button: ping all and dismount.

And these both should be normal.

So as the lead engineer, I go up to the mountain once a month to start the run.

Starting to run is an all day activity.

Where I go up there, turn on all the power, test all the telescope motions, rotate the domes, open the shutter, basically make sure it's going to work that night for the Observer, whoever that may be.

There are, I think, 88 steps total from starting up the telescope, observing all night and shutting it down that the observer has to do every night to use and then save the telescope at the end.

Everything looks good.

For me personally, it offers a way to introduce a cycle.

Life is full of cycles and this allows me to kind of get away from the daily grind, if you will, and just kind of observe.

And when the sun sets, the domes can open.

I do get that sense of awe looking at the night sky and it is amazing how dark it is on KITT Peak.

You can actually see the Milky Way in all its glory.

It's really great operating the telescopes and seeing the images come in.

Often the asteroids that we're looking at are not bright enough to be seen in one image.

So we take a series of images and then stack them together at the point where we think the asteroid should be in each image.

So we get end up with a dot for the asteroid and a line for each of the stars.

SpaceWatch was started by Professor Tom Gerhels and Bob McMillan in 1980, and we have gradually moved towards doing follow up of newly discovered high priority asteroids rather than doing survey.

(Bob) I retired on paper in 2019.

But I'm still around.

I'm kind of proud of the fact that I have helped to steer SpaceWatch into evolving priorities.

When we started out in the early eighties, it was a real struggle and we did have a surprising amount of hostile peer review and I think Space Watch helped to make the search for hazardous asteroids respectable.

Another milestone that occurred for Space Watch was that in 1997 98, NASA created a funding program specifically to search for hazardous asteroids.

So we have a NASA grant that funds our observations, and it is part of the Planetary Defense Coordination Office.

So our goal is to reduce the uncertainty in our knowledge of where the near-Earth asteroids are as an act of planetary defense.

And some of the more famous asteroids we have looked at are Didymos, the target of the NASA's DART mission, the double asteroid redirect test.

The goal was to nudge the asteroid by impacting it with the spacecraft.

So they wanted to deflect the asteroid so that if it was one that could hit Earth, it would be moved.

So we're not super heroes, but by being funded by NASA, we do fall under the under the auspices of the planetary defense officer.

What makes this job fun to me is being able to be part of the entire cycle of operations, from designing the equipment to building it, to testing it, to using it, to submitting the data.

I really believe in what I do, that there are rocks flying around in space and one day a big one will hit us.

It's inevitable and I don't lose sleep over it.

But I am glad there are people looking and I hope that we can build a system that gets better and more efficient every year and one day might help save civilization.

It's great to be a part of that.

It's pretty exciting to observe an object that is a potential asteroid.

And when you actually see it on the screen, blinking across the images, youre like: “I did the job and and I'm saving the world.

” (laughs) Tom - Gertrude Lopez is a celebrated musician who's been a force in the local music community for decades.

And she's revered as the only female band leader in the Tohono O'odham Nation, writing and performing a traditional style of music called Waila with her band, Gertie and the T.O.

Boys.

And now she's inspiring a whole new generation of musicians.

Gertie - Music just kind of came into my life the way I never tho would, that you can do anything you want with it.

My name is Gertrude Lopez, better known as Gertie.

My name is Gertrude Lopez, better known as Gertie.

I grew up on the Tohono Oodham Reservation, just 10 miles south of Casa Grande, a village called Chui Chu.

Daddy had a mariachi group, and he also had a Waila group.

So we went through both practice and just heard the music.

He went to a bar, and somebody needed some money.

And so he-- and they were selling their accordion for $50.

Me and my brother, Steve, taught ourselves how to play it, because nobody in our family knew.

But we knew the music, so we just fooled around with it and came up with our own stuff.

One time, it was only men playing the Waila music.

I currently am the only female band leader on the Tohono Oodham Reservatio Now, there are many female accordion musicians on the Tohono Oodham Reservatio and drummers and bass players, I call us 'women in the Waila world'.

Faith - I've known Gertie since I was about 19, 20 years old.

I started working on the Tohono Oodham Nation when I was 19.

At that time, Waila Community was huge.

I started hearing about Gertie and the T.O.

Boyz, and then I would hear them sing.

It was a female vocalist, songwriter.

She sings in O'odham, English, and Spanish.

So I was like, "This is awesome."

So I would go and look for Gertie and the T.O.

Boyz.

Gertie - Music has been so important to me because it's just been a big part of my life.

Ever since my dad started teaching us, we started listening to the Waila music that he played.

Waila is our traditional social music and dance on the reservation.

Waila music consists of like Polkas and Chotes and Mazurkas.

The main part is to teach the young people.

I will find the resources to help the people, whatever instrument it is.

Right now I'm currently teaching a young woman sax player how to play some Waila music.

I don't know how to play the saxophone.

I really wish I did.

And I might still might learn, but we're working on it and hopefully she'll be learning more songs.

I always tell them, "I'm going to teach you this gui you leave, you play it the way you want to play it.

Not the way I told you to.

I just teach you the basics.

You do what you want to do with it."

And I'm always telling the guys that on the stage, "Just do it, man.

Just do it.

Don't get off the stage and say, 'Man, I should have played it like this.'

Just do it."

[Singing in Spanish] Faith - She's preserving our Tohono Oodham culture, our traditions, and most importantly, it's about the well-being.

It's about the wellness that she's bringing into the com Just hearing the music by itself is healing and also learning it and being able to share it with someone else and continue that music is also healing.

A lot of our youth don't feel like there's a place for them, but when they hear the music and they hear the tradition and the stories behind it the history they find their connection.

Not only with who they are, you know, through the cultural respect of it, of the cultural knowledge that's passed down for the singing and the dancing, but also the musicianship and the artistry that helps them feel like they have a voice, they have a purpose in life, and it just makes them feel good.

a purpose in life, and it just makes them feel good.

So that's, I think, one of the most powerful things that Gertie brings to our community.

Gertie - Every one of us has to find someone, or somewhere, or something to keep us going.

Don't ever feel alone because you're not alone.

A lot of people feel the way you feel sometimes.

We just don't know how each others are feeling.

So I'd like to pass that onto th that stay positive and just make some good music out there.

[Music] Tom - Sometimes a new person or experience can change your life.

And that's what happened to a couple of friends in Tucson.

A honey tasting class opened up a whole new world that taught them about one of the most fascinating and essential animals on the planet, bees.

[Bees buzzing] [Upbeat music begins] (Celeste) We became beekeepers for the fun.

(Portia) It's something out of our busy day as moms.

And, you know, I think I've always wanted a hobby.

(Portia) “All right, here we go.

” “Im going to smoke the entrance here.

” (Celeste) It's definitely like a huge passion of mine now.

You know, like, I was interested and was like, oh, you know, I totally want to learn something new.

And I think it's been great.

(Celeste) I'm originally from Canada, Im a Tucson transplant and I just love it here.

I volunteer with the Pima County Master Gardeners and I am a hobbyist beekeeper.

(Portia) “Today we're going to to see if we can pull off any of this honey on this super here.

” (Celeste) I'm so lucky to do it with, you know, my bestie and we have our five hives now.

We started off with two, and, you know, we've kind of grown into a couple more.

It's just been incredible.

[ Soft electronic music ] (Portia) Interestingly, I lived on a somewhat of a farm in Iowa, and horses, chickens.

And my neighbor had bees.

I've always been interested in them.

I just wasn't really ready to take the leap until she talked me into it.

(Portia) For my 40th birthday, we went to Miraval and she took a honey tasting class.

(Celeste) They had their resident beekeeper talk a lot about the bees, and I was just so inspired by these bees and their story and all of the different types of honey.

And I was like, I want to learn more.

I talked to the beekeeper after and we joined the Tucson Backyard Beekeepers and then the Southern Arizona Beekeepers Association It was important to have that local mentorship, because without that we would have really had a hard time dealing with the Africanized bees that we have here.

Portia was, finally came around.

She's very convincing, this one, very, very convincing.

And I didn't she knew I did have the land to support the the beekeeping hobby.

We made a promise that we weren't just going to dive into this.

We were going to educate ourselves first.

We are urban beekeepers.

We're very conscious of the safety of the neighbors.

That's the most important thing.

[Soft piano music] We always have a marked queen.

So, you know, especially as beginners, when we go in, we can tell our queen with her specific gentle genetics is there because she's got her little green paint mark on her as opposed to going in, finding a random queen, and be like, I hope it's ours.

We take a European style queen, we find the Africanized queen, and unfortunately, we have to kill her and then we put a gentle queen in there and she's usually the hive will accept her.

But it is a process that can be very frustrating for us.

And so we're hoping that this that they'll take the queen, the new queen that we provided them.

(Portia) “Its not that heavy so were good.

” “Going on ” (Portia) The beehive itself is just basically the structure to support the colony.

So we give them everything that they need to build their comb and to raise their brood and to store their honey.

At any point in time, we could go out there and have a dead colony.

That's just what can happen.

Or they can abscond, which just means that one day you go out there and your entire bees are gone.

They're just gone.

They haven't swarmed, but they're.

But they're gone or they're dead.

There's so much involved in, you know, an onlooker might not see all the details if there's so much, you know, Devil's in the details for sure With beekeeping.

[ Soft music ] [Machinery whirring] (Portia) When you see that honey pouring right out of that spigot, it's just.

That the better.

It's a great feeling.

It's such an accomplishment.

And you're like, Man, we really help the bees do this.

We're taking care of them.

Yeah, because it's hard work.

But then to have that reward and just see, like, that gold and honey.

Yeah.

And taste it.

There's nothing like fresh honey.

It is great from the hive.

Yeah, It's the taste of success.

It really is.

Successful beekeeper has given their hives the necessary tools to be successful.

And we get a little piece of that, and that's nice.

(Celeste) My kids asked if I like our dog or my bees better, and I told them my bees!

[Both laugh] my babies, I love them.

[ Soft music, bees buzzing] - Thank you for joining us here on Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara and we'll see you again soon.

(upbeat music)