[ Music ] Coming up on State of the Arts, a sound ethnographer with Appalachian roots; science collides with visual expression; and old world influence in a timeless style, a new State of the Arts is coming right up.

Hello, I'm Mary Paul, and this is State of the Arts.

Interdisciplinary artist Brian Harnetty combines sounds, images, words, and music in his work.

In the last decade and a half, his projects have included albums with names like The Workbench and Forest Listening Rooms.

Brian's approach to the creative process centers around his deep appreciation of history and ecology combined with the need to be socially engaged, often in the great outdoors.

[ Music ] My process is always rooted in sound, and in addition to that, over the years I've become very much interested in archives.

So the archival work that I do is almost always in sound archives.

The other piece of it is that I became fascinated with working with people and not just archival materials.

I wanted to learn more about the living communities that the archival materials might reference.

And so I spent a lot of time in Shawnee and other small coal mining towns just talking to people and hanging out with them over, well, it's been 15 years now.

And I continue to hang out with them today.

So now many of those people are my friends, and I just love the social aspect of it.

So it's bringing together this historical archival piece along with the contemporary communities that are connected to those recordings.

I'm not always recording.

I'm actually most of the time I'm not recording.

And instead, I spend a lot of time building those relationships.

And then only after there's a certain amount of trust built up, and that can take a long time, will I ask if I can make a recording.

But a lot of the materials that I use are pre-existing recordings.

So oral histories, old folk songs, that kind of stuff, tape, phone messages, anything like that.

That's really informative.

And then the social part of it is that I often bring those recordings back to the relatives or the people that live in those same places.

And let them listen to those recordings and perhaps what I've made from it.

The first time I ever shared a new piece of music that I made from an archival recording, there were people in the audience that said, "It sounds like, you know, the ghosts of my ancestors."

And that really struck a light bulb in my mind.

And it also raised a lot of ethical questions.

I wanted to use the materials in a way that had a kind of archival stewardship instead of just taking what I wanted and then using it.

If I think back to the earliest pieces that I made, I was using samples of music.

And I was maybe chopping them up more.

I was using pieces of material that I didn't really understand or understand the contexts around.

And it was only later when I started to work that the communities connected to them, I realized that maybe a family didn't want that information out there.

Or just by getting the permission of a family member or reaching out to them, it just influenced the, I don't know, even the music that I made might not be as dissonant or harsh or something like that.

Maybe I was trying to think of those family members as my main audience.

Instead of some far off abstract audience.

Instead, it's this very close and personal thing that I started to make.

I love the idea of storytelling.

I think what I can contribute to it is adding the music as well and letting the music tell that story as well.

And then because I take so much time, oftentimes, you know, folks aren't able to spend a whole lot of time with the material.

But if I can spend a decade or more with it, I can really go into that contextual depth, you know, all of the other information around it.

When I was a kid, one of my favorite activities was to sit next to my dad, you know, while he was working on something.

He was a tinkerer and a bit of an inventor.

And his career was as a typewriter repairman.

And so those earliest memories of, you know, fiddling around next to him were lodged in my mind as an adult as well.

And so when he passed away a few years ago, I had an opportunity to make a new piece of music a commission.

And I had inherited his workbench.

So I took it apart piece by piece and then reassembled it in my own garage and then made music to go along with it.

I asked myself, what is the sound of that workbench?

What is the sound of my father's life there?

And then can a workbench contain all kinds of memories in it?

Almost like a very personal archive.

So before I was working with formal archives, and now it's the most personal kind of archive that I can think of.

And I think the objects might be considered as junk by other people, but because I have this connection through my father, these things are extremely important.

They're like relics of a kind, you know?

And so I began to make that piece and we filmed the workbench in a lot of detail, almost like doing like a, you know, like taking a visual meditation on the workbench.

And then the music is sort of elegiac and slow moving at first and builds up.

And then in between, interspersed is the voicemails of my father over the past year of his life or so.

And you sort of get to recognize the sound quality of his voice, which of course I love, but as it changed and as he moved through the stages of life into death or whatever, you know, it was weirdly capturing that, just in our day to day conversations.

[ Music ] [ Music ] This is a surveyor's compass that belonged to my great, great, great grandfather who was the county surveyor in Perry County.

And here's his notebooks.

And I'm making a new piece from these family archival materials.

And it's really made me think a lot about the land, about the history of that land and what it means to survey the land and finding different ways of thinking about that as well.

So that's this piece.

[ Music ] All right, this is your dad.

Give me a call when you can.

Uh, usual number.

Bye-bye.

From growing crystals on insects to creating the world's first glowing flower shop, Tyler Thrasher uses science to create works of art that truly dazzle the eye.

Let's visit his moonbeam conservatory where this artist gets experimental.

[ Music ] At some point, people started calling me a wizard.

And I think they mean it.

Once you own that, once you're able to back out, whatever, I'm a wizard.

People stop questioning it.

You can just do whatever you want.

People are like, well, that's on brand.

I'm Tyler Thrasher.

Describing myself is always a bit of a challenge.

I've kind of summed it up.

Equal parts artist, equal parts citizen scientist.

I think everything else I do kind of falls under that umbrella.

You'll notice that I have an affinity for weird creatures.

Things that I think traditionally are found to be repulsive or disgusting that I think are incredibly fascinating.

The process of crystallizing something is kind of similar to growing rock candy.

You take a compound molecule and you dissolve it.

So you separate it into its ions.

You make a solution.

So you have this like hot water, this sort of soup.

You are just kind of making the environment for this, you know, darn near perfect pattern to form.

I take things like dead insects or skeletons and I just submerge them.

And then as the water evaporates or the vessel cools, these ions come back together and they form that molecule from there.

It forms this network.

That's what a crystal is.

It's a pattern they'll form on anything.

It doesn't matter.

I just happen to have a thing in between all of that and that system.

And then they just grow from there.

Nothing dies for my work.

I take insects or specimens that died of natural causes and I crystallize them.

I don't know where to say where I got started, but I guess I can condense it down really quick.

Okay, so let me see if I can do this.

So I went to college in Missouri, started caving to fill up my free time.

Fell in love with caves, fell in love with nature.

I was going to school for computer animation and I realized like right before I was about to graduate, I don't want to do this.

So I just filled my weekends with like extracurricular, creative projects.

Growing crystals was one of those.

Found a dead bug in the backyard, grew crystals on the dead bug, shared it online.

It went viral.

And then I made a bunch of crystallized dead bugs.

Traveled around the country with those bugs.

And then that helped fund all the other things I do.

This is Moonbeam Conservatory.

In our shop, we have a little over 13,000 glowing flowers.

So we work with different florists and farmers to get our florists dried and preserved, and then we make it glow in the dark.

Almost any color combo you can think of, we have, when we started making Moonbeam Flora, I had no intentions of making like the world first glowing flower shop or anything like that.

I just made this glowing flower and I was like, this is cool.

I want to share it.

People kept buying them.

This space became available.

And I don't think we knew what this was going to be.

It was just, we're kind of like, hey, we're going to try to make this work.

I like to tell people that the Moonbeam Conservatory has three phases.

We get a lot of people in here that just like, they just think it's like a flower shop.

Come on in.

You guys been in before?

Are you familiar with the stuff in here?

Okay.

So you're just in time for some pretty cool stuff.

There's the daylight phase where you can see all the colors and the natural textures of the dried flowers.

And then the second phase is what I call the black light phase.

We have these UV floodlights, these black light floodlights installed so we can charge up all the flowers.

And then I usually let the flowers soak up that energy for a couple of minutes.

A lot of the flowers are fluorescent, which means that they are actively glowing and visually vibrating under the black light.

So I will flip off all the black lights and show the third phase of the store.

In three, two, one.

Nuh-uh.

[laughter] [inaudible] [laughter] So how much for everything?

[laughter] What's also really cool is all these little glowing balls on the ceiling.

Those are flower heads.

So I grew up very isolated.

I also grew up very bullied.

I really didn't have anywhere to fit in.

Now the people that come to the shop, it's like I made a space for people that I think kind of exists on the fringe a little bit.

[Music] I have three assistants.

I have two that make the flowers.

Working here, you never really know what your day is going to look like.

It's kind of nice to have a little bit of that chaos.

There's so many colors.

We can virtually make anything.

So we've made some pigments that I don't think exist anywhere else.

I couldn't have dreamed this job up, but it is definitely a dream job.

We have to like create contraptions to get the ideal finish on the flower, like our spinning bucket.

We made this like sort of cardboard, like arena sort of Thunderdome prison thing.

And we put a potter's wheel in the middle with a five gallon bucket screwed to it.

We can spin all the flowers and kind of choose the spin rate.

It's all the extra paint flings onto the cardboard.

It's definitely a collaborative effort.

We all contributed in a way.

And so it's really fun to look and go, Oh, you know, one person did this, one person did that.

What if you were in a field of that and you weren't moving, but you heard it rustling really fast at you?

Would you just take off running in a random direction?

We are so silly and goofy.

There's such an atmosphere of like friendship.

It's so fun to get to brainstorm all our crazy ideas.

Exactly.

So I've written a couple of books and the last book I wrote, I co-authored with my friend Terry Mudge and it's called The Universe in a Hundred Colors.

And we spent a couple of years researching very specific, very niche colors, you know, like Baltic amber, cosmic latte, which is the average color of the observable universe.

Just all kinds of really fascinating colors.

A hundred of them.

We did rough drafts on every chapter and our editor said they were terrible.

You know, we weren't writers at the time.

My name is Terry Mudge.

I am the founder and scientific director at STEM cell science shop.

It was sort of a store I always wanted to walk into myself.

Our job is to tell the story of everything from a scientific angle.

This is a particle accelerator from the University of Wisconsin.

It was originally called Aladdin and it would create a very intense magnetic field in the middle, which would guide electrons at extremely high speeds.

So this is a film from NASA.

It's from the sixties and it's actually from the clean room when they were building a satellite.

And so we have the original copy of that film.

Tulsa really is a place where a lot of unpredictable things can happen.

It's just the right size and has just the right spirit.

There's this just really integrated web of people who are just making stuff happen.

I first met Tyler in about 2012 ish.

And we've been kind of friends ever since.

So we spent two or three years writing the book.

We originally started with this massive list of colors.

And eventually we had to whittle that down.

We went through maybe five or six rounds of editing, polished them up really nice, turned it into a book.

We have very different writing styles, but I think they compliment each other nicely throughout the book.

I think it's really rewarding in that I feel like I'm part of the process of encouraging more people to get interested in science and how things work around them.

We do a lot of events at Moonbeam Conservatory.

I didn't know this concept of a third space.

People call it that.

People come in and treat it like that.

First space is your home.

Second space is your work.

And third space is somewhere that's detached from both of those.

Somewhere that contributes to your life.

Somewhere that fills you up, that isn't home or work.

Tulsa has a really tight knit community.

There really is no competition.

We all support each other, help one another.

Tyler's got his art studio and said, "Hey, let's do concerts here and see if people show up."

Each one has pretty much been sold out.

[cheering] [music] You know, this is a new community event.

Music and art, pulling people together.

I'm just happy to be a part of this community.

It's kind of daunting.

When you want something or you have an idea, there's this fear.

What if people hate it?

What if it does not match my expectations?

What I've learned over and over again is I hope it doesn't meet my expectations.

More often than not, I like what it became more than I originally thought it would be.

Because you don't know.

You don't know anything.

You learn along the way.

To me, that's the fun part.

It's like A to B. Everything in between is the good stuff.

[cheering] [music] I get so many people that come through here that are like, "I'm glad someone that looks like me is doing this and they're doing it well."

And for me, that gave me a sense of purpose.

We needed more science representation.

We needed more BIPOC artist representation in Oklahoma.

These are the things that fascinate me.

And people come in and they share that sentiment.

And I don't take that for granted.

The Moonbeam Conservatory has three phases.

The second phase is the blacklight phase.

[ambient chatter] It feels like I've been trusted with this narrative, this experience, this resource.

And it just, I don't know, it's just kind of humbling.

It just feels really good.

This is something like I've never experienced before.

It's almost like you're transported into a different dimension.

It was a long journey and probably cut a couple of years off of my life.

Just the stress.

But I am very proud of what we've made and the whole journey to getting here entirely worth it.

And it's crazy.

I think we just got started.

From the experimental to, well, about as traditional as you can get, we now go to Milwaukee to meet a painter whose work is deeply influenced by the masters of the old world using a timeless style to capture scenes from nature and daily life.

I'm always kind of thinking about what do I need to do to get the piece to like a complete vision of what I have in my mind.

I'm always pursuing something that I'm able to reach.

I think about at every stage, what do I need to do to get to that point?

And kind of pushing past a lot of the common self-doubt that comes with doing anything that's kind of difficult.

My paintings tend to be mainly portraits.

In landscapes, in architecture.

I'm always trying to challenge myself and try something a little bit different or new.

Applying some lesson that I learned in a previous piece of art or something like that, and not just trying to take shortcuts.

A lot of my work kind of draws inspiration from my immediate surroundings.

I find that wherever you look, you can find something that's worth painting, something that's beautiful.

I feel like every piece that I complete kind of helps me get closer to understanding where I come from.

This is an attempt to make a still life painting based on some objects I kind of have at home.

I've set up my reference so that it actually is literally framed by the frame that I intend on using for the final piece.

So it makes it very easy to kind of understand the composition of the picture.

And make sure that it's going to be something that I'm satisfied by the end of it.

I was born and raised in Milwaukee, and I've always been interested in art.

At some point, I kind of took a detour in my career, and I taught English in Spain for a couple of years.

While I was there, I really connected with the sort of classical and traditional arts culture over there.

I noticed a trend in a lot of the masterworks that I saw, where a lot of these artists were drawing inspiration from their immediate surroundings.

And that kind of got me interested in drawing inspiration from my own hometown.

My style is really derived from my admiration of other artists.

The artwork that I find most effective articulates something that's kind of elusive.

Probably one of my favorite pieces of art, which is called The Song of the Lark, and it's by Jules Breton.

It's in the Chicago Institute of Art.

It's such a gorgeous combination of figuration and landscape and storytelling that it just draws me right in.

And I feel like that's something that I want to really aspire to.

That's what I continue to chase.

There's this kind of saying in the art community that your personal style consists of the mistakes you make while trying to imitate your master.

And that kind of applies to me because I'm often trying to experiment with different methods of painting and styles of painting.

This is actually my most recently completed oil painting.

This is kind of an experiment because it's using a different style than I've ever attempted before.

It's a divisionist style.

It's kind of like a pointillism, but with oil paint.

I wanted to represent a major landmark in Milwaukee, but try it in this kind of style and color palette.

I found the frame and I felt that this kind of painting really suited it.

I felt like I really wanted to attempt that.

And while I still have some issues, I think, with how it turned out, I think it's one of my stronger pieces overall.

[music] Gallery Nights are neighborhood events where local businesses offer their space for artists to display their artwork.

Gallery Nights are really, really good opportunities for artists of every level to share their art with other people.

It's a way for an artist to connect with their community and get feedback on their work.

And in general, I think it's just a very impressive thing to see how Milwaukee supports its art community.

Long before I was a participant in Gallery Night, I was attending them and just enjoying being able to kind of explore the city and discover new local art.

[music] It goes to show that artistic inspiration can come from a variety of places.

From the classics, to the chemistry lab, to the overlooked everyday sounds.

We hope this episode has planted a little inspiration in you.

Until next time on State of the Arts, thanks for watching.

I'm Mary Paul.