Coming up next on Gallery America.

from painting, to creating jewelry to cultivating native plants.

Amanda Weathers follows her passions.

And she believes no one can tell you with successes except you.

That, a musician turned video game maker and a Chinese American painter with a unique story.

All that coming up now.

Hello, Oklahoma.

Welcome to Gallery America.

I'm Jonathan Thompson.

Today it's a beautiful spring day.

But you know what.

Every season has its own unique beauty.

A great way to experience that beauty.

It's a bike ride.

Our next artist certainly thinks so.

But she goes much further than that.

From painting to jewelry making to gardening.

Amanda Weathers stays busy.

And she tailors what she does to the season she's in.

Take a look.

I believe that life is all about following your passion, your passion and your purpose.

And if you're not living every day, then you're not truly living.

My name is Amanda Weathers, and I'm an artist in Oklahoma City.

I do a lot of things.

I do anything that lights me up.

gardening, jewelry making, painting murals.

I like to go on these adventures and adventures to me, is just anything you do that's out of your structure or ordinary routine.

So it could mean, I walk outside my door and I turn left instead of right, or I strap on a backpack and I decided it's time for an urban hike day and just run all my errands around town, on foot or on my bike.

And so one of my little adventures was going around the countryside and identifying plants.

And then I started a little spreadsheet with my boyfriend, and we got to really become acquainted with, like, native flowers and plants.

And he does permaculture.

So we're at blue House Urban Farm.

This is Amanda's flower farm.

And then I run the, nursery here that we do all native plants It's kind of.

We have, reciprocal relationship.

It's like I help her do the flowers.

So it's like we're doing planting, weeding, that kind of stuff.

And then she helps me run the nursery or helps me do some pot and potting up stuff.

And and so and just, I mean, it's, it's all one thing, but it's those two separate things really.

So yeah.

I came into gardening about close to 20 years ago, and really got started doing vegetable gardening first, and then just started getting more and more into, the plants themselves and, like, what they can d for, the environment around us.

And so I was like they got me into native plants.

for like ecosystem benefits that they offer that are providing habitat for insects and stuff like that, that we need to feed our local bird populations.

keeping those pollinators in the landscape at all times so that we are able to pollinate our food, So every plant we see around us is either 99% is either food or medicine of some sort.

Now that it's early spring and all the weeds are comin out, I've been going down rabbit holes on all the edible weeds that we have in our yards.

So chickweed and hen bit and dandelion those are all medicinal edibles.

And when you go outside and you look around your yard, it's it's almost like, why do we have, in fact, why do we have food insecurity?

There's food and medicine all around us.

So that's one of the reasons that it's really hard for me right now to clear my beds, because I want to preserve all the weeds or eat them before they go bad.

I. I used to live a life that was really structure around business and hustle and, you know, being successful, conventionally speaking.

And then I kind of unwound my life around 2016, took a step bac from being more business minded and starte living more in tune with nature.

And I realized that our bodies kind of mimic the cycles of nature.

So instead of forcing myself to sit down and work on book work or numbers when I really want to be outside, I'll reserve a lot of my o that energy for the winter time when I can deep focus.

So I'll do all my painting and my jewelry making and things that require me to sit down and focus in the fall, in winter and then spring in summer when I'm really alive and moving a lot, I'll be outside more, I'll do special orders.

Just like a regular florist.

Someone will message me and I can make a special order for them.

I also do, weekly subscription for regular clients.

That's businesses around town or individuals.

They'll get flowers weekly from me.

I do a little bit of wholesale to local for us as well.

a I'm not a formally trained floral designer.

I would always just kind of wing it.

And then I started looking into YouTube videos and tutorials on how to do flower arranging, they have you go around and build basically a bouquet in a spiral where you're adding height and depth and textur and making sure you have blooms that are fully open, blooms that are maybe not open quite yet.

Add some greenery that give some movement to the piece so.

But eve with all those rules and knowing there are ways that are more cost efficient, time efficient to do them, sometimes I just have days where I just don't care and I want to play around.

forgot my Eye protection.

So I've always like to bring natural material into my jewelry making process.

It started out with wire wrapping, and I would go crystal digging a few times a year.

and then I wanted a mor professional, maybe more solid material to translate some of my jewelry pieces.

And so I came up with this soft solder technique, which is actually a stained glass technique, which is also a technique my grandfather used when he owned his appliance repair business in downtown Edmond for 50 years.

Well it's interesting becaus I don't really wear a lot of it.

I'm wearing them for the interview.

But I in general, I really don't wear jewelry.

I like art that's accessible.

Several years ago, I made the decision to kind of step away from trying to be a more gallery focused artist because I didn't like the ide of making art just for exhibit, I wanted to to make art that was for everyone.

it's little treasures and trinkets that they can take with them.

I also do a lot of memorial pieces for people's, pets or loved ones.

Or little mementos from their from their garden or their adventure as well.

Rocks and shells and, insect wings and stuff.

And that's why I love doing murals, because they don't belong to people who go to gallery exhibits.

Every person on the street owns that art, mean that's one of my favorite parts of doing mural work is gettin to know people in communities.

have just the best conversations and meet people from all walks of life.

Over.

So I have so many different interests and passions away that I've come to narrow down sort of where to put my attentio and focus at any given point is, my core values, which are creativity, community and service to others.

And so if I can use that as a way to separate any kind of work I do, whether it's, you know, I have no money coming in.

And so maybe I need to shift my focus from creative work to, like something of service.

So go clean someone's home or cut their lawn or, you know, put a message out that like, hey, I'm available for odd jobs.

So, there's value in all forms of work.

And I love I love working with my hands on my feet.

I don't care what I'm doing, but as long as they're underneath those core values, in 2019, I was working a lot.

And in the midst of working, I hurt my back somehow.

And it was sort of a twea that really got out of control to the point where I could, I couldn't, I couldn't move without extreme pain.

once I got my symptoms managed, I wanted to do something active again.

started riding my bike again, and it started first by going around a block, and that's all I could do.

But it felt so good to just get my heart rate up And then I had a friend of mine invite me to.

She had a women's writing group where they teach group writing, etiquett and just how to ride your bike with clipless pedals and increase your cadence and go up hills and stuff like that.

So that got me really inspired.

And I was like, well, this i where I want to put my energy, because this is really it's really helping me feel good and it's helping my body feel stronger.

I don't really have an big dreams to have a mansion or, you know, a Lexus or anything like that.

I just.

I want to live a happy, peaceful life and teach people about the world around us and work with people who are like minded.

You know, I changed my whole life.

When I was in my mid to late 30s, I had built this life of security and stability, what I thought was.

And then I realized, well, this isn't actually who I am anymore.

And that's okay.

Like, is it okay to start over?

It's okay to try new things.

That's the thin that we need to be going after instead of, you know, these ABCs of success, or what society deems is success.

Look inside, look at the things that light you up and start doing those things.

Now.

Yeah.

And don't be afraid to start over.

Don't be afraid to change.

Go after what's in your heart.

That's.

That's my motto for life.

You can keep up with Amanda by going to our Instagram at Amanda.

Underscore Zoe.

Underscore weathers.

Now we're in the Paseo district in Oklahoma City.

We're going to a place called sauced because they have something really special inside.

sauced has created an homage to the classic arcades of the 80s and 90s.

And you can play for free.

Inspired by games like this, our next artist, Jordan Davis has created his own video game.

It's based on events in his own life.

Check it out.

I started my first band in high school, called Mystery Girls from green Bay.

It was a garage rock band.

Our first record came out when I was 19 or so.

That kind of set me on my way.

So I'm mostly a musician.

That's kind of my main discipline.

When I finally moved to Milwaukee in my 20s, I started a band called Space raft.

So space raft is a video game.

It's an eight bit NASA game about my indie rock band.

And basically it's a kind of adventure where you're following the band around trying to retrieve the stolen master tapes of the new record.

I just missed because it was my first video game, I decided to stick to what I know.

Basically every stage in the game is a different venue or an establishment here in Milwaukee.

I just want to be a stand.

Video games have overtaken every other sort of entertainment media.

It's a it's a form of empowerment.

I think when you're giving the player the tools to accomplish task and to solve problems.

That's something that we can all relate to.

So I think that ther is some sort of self-expression aspect that comes along with interactive media, because we all choose to experience it differently.

And I think there's something kind of profound about that.

I felt a little intimidated by the visual aspect of this project when I got started.

I hadn't done any visual art outside of random show posters and probably about 15 20 years.

The first thing that I actually ended up drawing was the front steps of the Cactus Club.

I worked at Cactus Club for many years, so it was very much you know, it was it also lived down the street.

So it was part of my neighborhood.

It was I couldn't drive to the freeway without driving past it.

So I was very, very intimate with, the location with tile based eight bit artwork.

Everything is representational.

You know, you're not doing one for one of anything.

You're trying to represent your subject the best so that people interpret it the way that you want it to.

And I think I got it pretty close.

I think people that are familiar with Cactus Club, that have stood from that side of the street, across the street to look at it, will recognize it.

Our ex bass player, Serena, is a dear friend of mine.

He volunteere to be the villain of the game.

He, volunteered the premise that he would have stolen the master tapes in a fit of jealousy, and that we're basically tracking him down, trying to retrieve the tapes and put the record out.

So that involves, going to shows and cleaning up after our ex bass player.

It's just a lot of antics.

I guess you'd call them.

I had very little idea of how much demand there would be for a new enhanced cartridge.

It seemed funny to me to mak something for outdated hardware, and the more that I kind of researched it, the more I realized that it wasn't irrational.

And there was a lot of people out there that are interested in this stuff.

I just think that, like old technology record players, cassette players, old gam consoles, they all have value.

The same way that we would write a piece of music for a piano which was invented in the 1700s.

I have friends on every corner of the globe that are currently working with the console.

It's really nice to have a sense of community with any creative endeavor that you go into.

And game development can be an incredibly solo pursuit.

You know, it's a lot of tim spent alone with headphones on, poring over details that others may not find interesting, but to be able to relate those experiences to a broader community of developers and players and create this feedback loop, it's really satisfying finding connection with people and communicating intentions.

I think that's what art is in general.

Finding that through games is no less fulfilling than it is through painting, or through playing guitar or through doing anything else that you might fill your days with.

Oh.

Now we're in the Plaza District, which our first artists, Amanda, help revitalize as an arts hub.

Like Amanda, our next artist is well known for her murals, but her background is much different.

Artist.

Fei fei Lin grew up in China before moving to the United States as an adult.

In her art, she explores both cultural and personal truths.

Check it out.

Art means everything.

Since I have memory.

And since I was a child, like six years old.

And I know that is my destiny.

I'm living my dream and an artist.

And this is my job and my passion and everything and everything.

For artist Fei fei Lin, her unique upbringing and diverse cultural experiences have not only defined her discovery of self, but expand her journey as an artist.

I think, and very grateful.

Like the way I grew up in the Train me as even though in China traditional Chinese culture and family, they think girls just need to be like doing small things and the gentle obey and all this box, you know, rules.

But how I grew up is absolutely wild.

Basically during the 1980s in China and, even before that, you know, they have like this one child politics.

But my year is very special, this back in the 1987.

So they allow some of the families means like have the second chance.

Is you your first child is a girl.

So you have a second chance to maybe to have a boy.

So that's how I come along.

And because of my parents, like, really hoping I'm a boy.

So the way I raised, I grew up, you know, they treat me like boy and they train me.

You have to be tough.

Fei fei's parents gave her the opportunit to explore the dynamic contrast between her own individuality and her traditions.

She found her path within her life and her art.

So when I entered high school in college I had the opportunity to travel to all over the world and study art, especially Europe.

My very first collection of artwork or our theme is called Green Leaves series.

And that time I was, in college, twenties, young.

And so I, I paint a lot of glass goose, green leaves really thick like brushstrokes and building up on layer of each other, you know, so, usually like this showed in the museums and galleries.

Actually, I sold out every piece of it.

And then I moved to America.

Then I finished my master degree and I started to explore public work.

I painted a lot of, like, large faces, but I'll face down or thinking, you know, and don't really necessarily have like gender, like reflection.

It just a person.

In America, Faye discovered a new dimension to her art.

This journe led her to embrace and express some darker truth the reality, the truth, or the dark.

Like how to see, like the darkness of people don't want to see.

But I want to open all this for those doors.

Let them to see the beauty of it, you know, embrace it.

I have, you know, a big lost of my life.

I lost my partner in car accident.

And, all these come together and taught me.

We have to tell the truth.

You know, the truth sometimes can be very dark, but dark darkness is part of our life.

And it is essential for.

For me to express through art.

Because I think we need to understan life is not only about the sun.

The bright side of it, the balance part is like the dark part of it.

So, I'm not fruit fre to to express through my work.

And some people, viewers see, my work is like, wow, what is that?

You know, the the kind of like, refuse to know the truth.

But when I tell the truth, th understand and do accepting it.

And do you feel moved?

I think spirituality and art help me through the darkest time, losing like most important person in my life and that is getting to a different level to how to produce my art.

I think is beautiful in a way very powerful and can influence people more because a lot of people out there through so many different difficult situations and they need to understand, like life overall is beautiful and art can heal people.

I don't want people just see the work.

Oh, everybody love it.

No, that is not my goal.

I think that is challenging.

Part of it is most fun part of it.

You have to be comfortabl where show authentic, you know?

And that's my goal for the rest of my work.

In my next piece to this is like a journey you ride, oh, journey down, but just different, like a form sketches or drawings.

You know, people probably think, oh, it's not necessary, but just remember when we wer a child, everybody like to draw, you know, that is your your inner power for me, like as professional artist, this is my job.

I think art is very essential for every aspect of life.

And could be anything.

Doesn't need to be certain forms.

And I think is very powerful spiritual food for everybody.

Well, that's all the time we have for Gallery America.

Thank you so much for joining me on this ride.

We're about to get started on our next episode about the guy who made this: Klint Schor.

As always, you can see past episodes by going to our website a OETA.tv Slash Gallery America.

And don't forget to follow us on Instagram at oeta Gallery.

We'll see you next time.

Until then, stay arty.

Oklahoma!