>> Production support for "Journey Indiana" is provided by Columbus Visitors Center, celebrating everywhere art and unexpected architecture in Columbus, Indiana.

Tickets for guided tours and trip planning information at Columbus.in.us.

And by WTIU members.

Thank you!

>> ASHLEY: Coming up, travel to Morgan County to meet an artist working in a unique medium.

>> BRANDON: Take a look at the stars with some Indiana astronomy fanatics.

>> ASHLEY: And meet the mascot mavens at Indy's Avant Garb Mascots.

>> BRANDON: That's all on this episode of -- >> TOGETHER: "Journey Indiana"!

♪ >> BRANDON: Welcome to "Journey Indiana."

I'm Brandon Wentz.

>> ASHLEY: And I'm Ashley Chilla.

And we're coming to you from the Goose Pond Fish and Wildlife Area, just outside of Linton.

Established in 2005, Goose Pond has become an important breeding and migratory stopover site for a variety of birds, including herons, cranes, waterfowl, songbirds, and more.

>> BRANDON: That's right.

And we'll learn more about Goose Pond and its many visitors in just a bit.

>> ASHLEY: But first, we're headed to Martinsville to meet porcelain artist Ellen Wilson-Pruitt.

Producer Jason Pear has the story.

>> There's a certain amount of alchemy still involved.

You never know until you lift that kiln lid and you can breathe a sigh of relief.

That's part of the fascination with it.

I have always been interested in art, dabbling with this and that, but I really didn't start studying art until after I got out of high school, just taking independent classes and so forth.

I discovered my porcelain teacher that I studied with at the Indiana State Fair, and I was totally fascinated by that.

So I drove for ten years to Indianapolis to take a class once a week and study with her.

And from the moment that I applied the paint to the porcelain, it was -- just the feel of it, it was just like this is for me.

Porcelain art is an ancient art form.

We still do it the same way.

We use china paint minerals, which mature at a particular temperature, which we mix with mineral oil and apply it to porcelain, and then it's fired in a kiln.

Most of our colors mature at about 1400 degrees.

So for a ceramicist, that's considered just warming the kiln up a little bit, but that's what we fire at for most of our applications.

Our paints are semitransparent.

So we have to do multiple firings, and we do layers of color, one on top of the other.

And being semitransparent, then you can see the underlying color and build that up.

Watercolorists find it very familiar to them.

Oil painters, it's -- no, it doesn't work.

[ Laughter ] ♪ The mineral becomes one with the glaze.

So it's totally permanent.

That's the thing that people have asked me, why did you choose this as opposed to watercolors or anything else?

And I tell them vanity because my pieces will look the same 500 years from now.

They will never fade.

The colors will still be as vibrant.

You know, I'm making pieces to be here long after I'm gone.

Most people think of china painting as Victorian ladies sitting around painting flowers on dinnerware, which is still done, and that's still fine.

But whenever I started painting, I wanted to do portraits and animals and things a little more different than the traditional florals.

I'm into men right now, you know?

Shifting into kind of a cowboy mode, and I -- I like painting familiar figures that people readily can recognize.

The portrait is unending.

Everyone's face is different.

Every face has a certain amount of character to it, and the same way animals are just portraits with fur.

They are just, you know, the substrate and the muscular structure and everything is the same.

And I just prefer to do that because, you know, every face is different, and it's always something new and varied.

♪ I work out of a studio in the Art Sanctuary.

There's approximately 20 studios of different sizes in the building.

The sanctuary upstairs is a gallery, and we have a variety of artists in the building.

It's just a great facility, and it's gotten known around as the art place in Martinsville.

And a lot of people say, Martinsville?

I didn't know Martinsville had any kind of an art reputation.

But we're trying to offer that to the community and the area.

We have a school that we operate in Indiana each year, and we hold it at the Morgan County Fairgrounds.

It's the Porcelain Arts School of Indiana.

And we are one of the last few schools of this kind still operating in the U.S. We bring teachers in from across the U.S. We've even in the past had international teachers.

And we draw students from across the United States.

We normally have 70 students and teachers, and for five days, we paint and fire right there at the fairgrounds, and it's open to the public to come and see, because with any art form, the main thing is if you understand it better, your appreciation of that art increases.

You know, in Indiana, it's very historical, because First Lady Caroline Harrison was a china painter.

And when she went to Washington, D.C., as First Lady, she took her china painting teacher along with her, and she fired china when she was in the White House.

And she, of course, was the First Lady that originated the White House china collection.

So Indiana has a very rich history of china painting, and we want to educate people and have them be proud that this is an art form that really has some regional importance.

>> BRANDON: I think it is fascinating the fact that, you know, a thousand years from now, her art will not look any different because of the way that she does it.

>> ASHLEY: Yeah, and my grandma actually does porcelain china painting, and that's one of the things that I was really excited about, is that we can use it as an heirloom to give down to people, and it will always look the same.

This year's Porcelain Arts School runs September 12th through the 16th, and you can get all the info at the address on the screen.

>> BRANDON: Earlier, we caught up with Kalli Dunn to learn all about the Goose Pond Fish and Wildlife Area.

>> Goose Pond Fish and Wildlife Area is actually in an area that was originally a glacial basin.

Historically and geologically, it was a lake, known as Goose Pond Lake, and it's just a wet area.

It's constituted by soils that hold a lot of water and moisture throughout the year.

In the late 1990s, this area was enrolled into a conservation easement program, known as the Wetland Reserve Program.

Now, what that did is that program started the process of a wetland restoration on 7,000 acres of what is now Goose Pond Fish and Wildlife Area.

That restoration involved installing water control structures, 36 miles of levees throughout the property, and enhancing the wildlife habitat.

In 2005, the property was transferred to the Indiana Division of Fish and Wildlife and it became Goose Pond Fish and Wildlife Area.

The visitors center was opened in 2016.

It is a 6,000 square foot building that was constructed with environmentally friendly materials.

Our vast windows around here are designed for wildlife viewing opportunities straight from here.

We also have a large platform outside for people to view wildlife throughout the day.

There's a great opportunity for wildlife watching and birdwatching.

There has been over 260 different species of birds recorded on the property as being sighted at different times of the year.

Popular bird species sighted include a variety of shorebirds, sandhill cranes also migrate through the area through the end of February and March.

We also have American pelicans which draw a lot of people.

>> BRANDON: Want to learn more?

Just head over to friendsofgoosepond.org.

Driving out to Goose Pond, there is nothing for miles, and then all of a sudden in front of you, you see this beautiful building on top of a hill.

>> ASHLEY: And it really is a beautiful building and a beautiful location.

I mean, look around us.

It's absolutely gorgeous.

And up next, we're heading somewhere a little further away.

Producer John Timm introduces us to some Hoosier astronomy fanatics.

♪ >> The universe especially is exemplified by the night skies.

It's beautiful beyond words.

>> I think people are just naturally curious about the world around them.

I think it's in our nature.

>> We are literally living in a mode of dust in the universe, but we are very special creatures because so far, we are the only living beings in the universe.

>> I never fail to stop and just look up to see what's up there.

It's been something that I have always marveled at my whole life.

♪ I grew up out in the country, far away from city lights, about 30 miles west of Indianapolis.

And we had a big farmhouse, and every night on a clear night, I would go climb up on the roof, and I would have a horizon-to-horizon view of the night sky.

And I just taught myself the basics, the constellations, which point of light was a planet, which one was a star, phases of the moon, that sort of thing, and that just got me hooked because we had such a crystal clear night sky.

This is the 36-inch Link telescope.

It was built by Dr. Link, Goethe Link, who was a surgeon at Indiana University.

And back in the 1930s, he wanted to build his own observatory.

He decided to build this observatory here.

We are actually standing at the highest point in Morgan County.

Back in the '30s, this was far away from the city lights of Indianapolis, which wasn't nearly as big as it is now.

So it was a perfect spot for him to engage his passion.

It was quite a venture.

He paid for it himself, and he used it for his own personal use for about ten years.

And then in 1948, he donated it to Indiana University, and I.U.

used it for education and research for about four decades, and then they retired it in the late 1980s.

We offer open houses here at the observatory a couple times a month.

We offer daytime and nighttime open houses.

We open it up and let people tour around, and they learn the history of the facility and learn about Dr. Link and how he built it.

And then at night, that's when the really good fireworks start because especially on a clear night, we will open up the shutters, fire up the scope, and we can look at all kinds of things.

So we have public engagement events here at the telescope a couple times a month.

And then we also do multimedia presentations throughout Central Indiana and even the state.

We can see craters on the moon that are this big around through the eyepiece.

You can see mountains that are 15,000 feet high on the moon.

We can see the great red spot on Jupiter.

We can see its four biggest moons, which are known as the Galilean moons.

We can see the rings of Saturn.

And when people see the rings of Saturn, that really gets them excited because it looks so real.

They almost think it looks fake, like it looks like a picture because they are just not used to how stark it is, seeing it with their own eyes.

We can see galaxies 20 million light years away.

These are galaxies far, far away that you ordinarily couldn't see through a pair of binoculars or a smaller scope, but through this telescope, you can see spiral bands.

You can see the structure of galaxies all over the night sky.

Once you look through this telescope, it is quite exciting.

There's just nothing like it.

When people come and see these objects for the first time, their -- their passion is just ignited.

A spark goes on, and that's what we are really looking for.

[ Bell tolling ] >> It's really cool how the stars just, like, fascinate anyone regardless of whether they are a professional astronomer or not.

When I was in late elementary school, I stumbled across a show on The History Channel called "The Universe," and I watched a whole bunch of episodes.

And I was just like, wow, this is cool.

And I was just transfixed by the things that I saw that -- the beauty that you can see in the night sky.

I was in a STEM mentorship program sixth through eighth grade, where I was mentored by a local, like, astronomy and physics professor.

And then in high school, I further continued that by joining my high school science Olympiad team, and I was their go-to person for the astronomy event.

And then because of that, through all of that experience, I was just, like, why not study in college?

Go to the left a little bit.

Last spring, I was approached by one of my professors, and he's just like the President of Astronomy Club is -- he's a senior and, like, obviously, he's graduating.

And we -- as far as I know, like, he doesn't really have a replacement.

Do you want to be president of the Astronomy Club?

And I'm, like, this is really cool.

It will give me a chance to, like -- actually, like, go to Astronomy Club and, you know, attend events, and do more, like, hands-on stuff with my astronomical knowledge.

I have done it twice.

You can observe with your naked eye.

You can observe with a telescope, and there are lots of different kinds of telescopes.

Like, I have probably like $100 telescope back home.

You could go to an observatory.

You could even -- like, going out to, like, a dark place, for example, like Lake Monroe, you can see some pretty good stars around there.

With the naked eye, I really like seeing Orion.

It's my favorite constellation.

Jupiter can be really cool, even with like a small, like, amateur telescope.

>> You can see -- >> Galilean.

>> Yeah, three of them.

>> Whenever I get the chance, even if I don't have a telescope with me, I like to just like stare up at the night sky and, like, observe the beauty that is up there.

Like, I would be that kid who would be, like, so transfixed on the night sky as I'm walking that I would walk into something.

>> That's super crude astronomy right there.

>> The universe especially is exemplified by the night sky.

It's beautiful beyond words.

So to get a chance to, like, stop and reflect on what you see up above, is a really cool thing to be able to do.

>> I think people are just naturally curious about the world around them.

And I think it's in our nature.

>> The center of the nebulous is hotter, and it thus makes it easier to excite that oxygen gas or the hydrogen gases.

♪ >> I have always had an interest in space.

I grew up during the Apollo program.

When I was a little kid, you know, I built the rockets, built the models, followed all that.

I remember in third grade, I had a notebook with all of the data I could find on all the planets.

After I graduated from Rose-Hulman, I was able to go to grad school and actually work on the Viking Space Program, the program that went to Mars.

I wanted to become a college professor from my days in high school.

And when I got the opportunity to come here to work at the Rose, it was just sort of like a dream come true for me.

And then a few years after that, they asked me if I wanted to work on the observatory, and obviously, I grabbed that opportunity as well.

And I have been doing this for 27 years now.

Up here in the Oakley Observatory, we have eight permanently mounted telescopes.

We have two 6-inch refracting telescopes.

We have four 17-inch reflecting telescopes, and we have two 20-inch reflecting telescopes.

The reason we have all of these telescopes instead of just one big one is really the essence of a Rose-Halman education is hands-on experience.

And so this way the students can come out and they can actually use the telescopes themselves rather than watch someone else do it.

>> We're going to be getting into imaging in lab, and you will be making your own pictures like this.

>> We offer a minor in astronomy, and we have an observational astronomy class that meets out here in the observatory.

We also have a very active astronomy club, and they meet once a week.

And we put on open houses for the public.

We also have special events.

♪ The students are the things that drive my passion.

They are really interested in astronomy, and it's a great opportunity to get them excited about things in the classroom, and also out here in the observatory.

There's just a lot of interest among the students for astronomy.

♪ >> Look up whenever you get the chance.

There's so much out there if you just take the time to look up and be wondrous about it and be curious.

>> And if you think back to caveman days, there was no light pollution and no TV and no Internet, you are sitting by the campfire, and all you have to do is look up.

>> Looking up at the night sky just reminds you that we're not the center of the universe.

There's a whole lot of other things out there that maybe we don't necessarily pay attention to.

It's awe-inducing, and it reminds me to be humble.

>> ASHLEY: You know, Brandon, we were talking about how Goose Pond is sort of in the middle of nowhere.

Wouldn't this be the perfect place to come out after the sun goes down and look out at the stars?

>> BRANDON: Yeah, I mean with so light pollution, it really is an ideal spot to do that.

>> ASHLEY: And if you would like more info about the groups featured in that last story, just head over to our website, JourneyIndiana.org.

We will have the links to all of them.

>> BRANDON: And finally, we are headed to Indy to visit a unique workshop that crafts mascots for colleges, companies and more.

Producer Jason Pear has the story.

>> I mostly grew up in New York, in Queens -- Jamaica, Queens.

When I was in New York, my friends and I would hang out at the Museum of Modern Art.

Claes Oldenberg was a huge artist then, and he did these big soft sculptures.

He was all about making soft things that you would normally perceive as hard.

So he made soft ashtrays and soft toilets, and seeing that was really important to me.

And I kind of -- I started making soft sculpture plants and soft sculpture this and that.

So that's kind of how I got into really kind of art sewing.

>> Eventually, Jennifer moved from the East Coast to the West.

>> Somehow or other, I wound up in Seattle, where was there was a group called Friends of the Rag.

And we made these kind of high concept, crazy costumes for events around Seattle, including the opening of the Seattle Aquarium where I made -- well, Seattle is known for salmon.

And salmon are kind of known for their sex life.

They go upstream and they spawn.

So I made the sexy salmon.

So that was one of my first projects, and, you know, it was kind of a mascot.

>> Following the success of the sexy salmon, Jennifer's phone began to ring.

>> I started getting calls for mascots.

The first one was a big chocolate chip cookie for a teensy chocolate chip cookie company in Berkeley, and that was the beginning.

>> It was the beginning of Avant Garb, originally headquartered in Berkeley, California.

Now located in Indianapolis' Stutz Business and Art Center.

>> We are a small batch artisanal mascots.

And because we're that, we pay attention to detail, and we are interested in our relationship with our clients, and keep in touch with them.

Because you know, if the mascot doesn't look good, the client doesn't look good.

You know, it's important for them to always be, you know, just pretty much in top form.

So we bug them every six months or so, and say so how's your mascot?

>> Not surprisingly, there aren't a lot of folks doing what Avant Garb does.

>> It's a teensy world.

It's a teensy world.

I think there are 10 or 15 in the country.

You have to be able to think three-dimensionally.

I say think with your hands, and it's an unusual skill now.

>> The unusually skilled crew at Avant Garb is small, just a few folks, including Jennifer's daughter Anne.

>> Who has been around mascots all of her life.

She never intended to work here, but I asked her if she could work about -- I don't know, eight or nine years ago, just work for a few months, and she graciously said yes.

And she's still here!

>> The designs, like this one for the University of Buffalo, come from Tom Sapp based in Atlanta.

>> He is so good at really pulling in what they want.

What colors are their logos?

What are they trying to push?

What do they imagine?

And he's able to make a drawing.

Once we have the drawing, which is really the most important because we can't make a mascot if we don't know what it is.

I mean -- so we get the drawing, and then we take off.

We sculpt.

We pattern.

We really pull in all of the skills in the art world that you need.

We're working very, very low tech.

Are you kidding?

A ruler with inches and a pencil on craft paper.

That's where we start.

It's pretty primitive.

But where we end is a complete finished character that people believe is real.

>> Over the years, they have made thousands of mascots, including a number that call Indiana home.

>> Lots of people have gone to the Children's Museum, and we make Rex for the Children's Museum.

There's tons of soccer fans.

We make Zeke for Indy Eleven.

We make mascots for I.U.

East and I.U.

Northwest.

Jinx, Jawz and Jazzy for the IUPUI Jaguars.

>> And for these, and all the mascots on Avant Garb's wall of fame, there is at least one common denominator.

>> If we don't create it, it doesn't exist.

You can't buy mascot shoes.

We make the shoes.

We make the shoelaces.

It takes forever.

I mean, people always say how long does it take?

And I have to say a bazillion hours, because we actually have no idea how long it takes.

You can't think of a detail where we haven't talked about it and done it, yeah.

>> But despite the long hours, the Queen of Fuzz wouldn't have it any other way.

>> I really love it, beginning to end.

I mean, I feel like I was called to this.

I love it beginning to end.

[ Laughter ] >> BRANDON: Need your own mascot?

Just head over to avantgarb.com for more information.

And before we say good-bye, let's spend a little more time exploring the Goose Pond Fish and Wildlife Area.

♪ >> Production support for "Journey Indiana" is provided by Columbus Visitors Center, celebrating everywhere art and unexpected architecture in Columbus, Indiana.

Tickets for guided tours and trip planning information at Columbus.in.us.

And by WTIU members.

Thank you!