(birds singing) - Funding for this program is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts & Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

(upbeat music) (dynamic music) - [Narrator] Coming up next "Off 90," an architectural gem that's the Winona Public Library.

A man from Manorville who makes rustic metal art.

105-year-old auctioneer in Rushford.

And a 1909 visit to Austin by famed orator, William Jennings Bryan.

It's all just ahead "Off 90."

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (dynamic music) - So are you charging people for these?

- No.

- Are you just giving them away?

- Actually, I gave.

- I'm Ann Rosenquist Fee, and I'm executive director of the Art Center of St. Peter, where the current exhibition is the fourth biennial "Changing Minds."

And "Changing Minds" is a showcase of visual and literary work by patients at St. Peter Regional Treatment Center.

- I am Dr. Soniya Hirachan.

I'm the executive director and the medical director for Forensic Services, which is a division within Direct Care and Treatment, which is part of Department of Human Services.

(cars faintly whizzing) Our work is primarily focused on those individuals that have been committed indefinitely, under a mentally ill and dangerous statute.

It's a long-term residential care setting.

And they spend anywhere between 10 to 15 years within our facilities.

(cars faintly whizzing) The Art Center has graciously agreed to host our patients' artwork.

Art is very, very...

It's deeply intimate to our patients, and it's very meaningful for them in their therapeutic journey, in their healing.

- That's a picture of the guy, Rick Ross.

He's a rapper.

I was thinking about drawing him because he's got a lot of good music out there that will help you to cope with a lot of your problems in your life.

- This is a pitbull.

It's a pitbull, it's a pop-art pitbull is basically what it is.

- Asian Hmong mythology, they always talk about anamorphosis, where the men morph into an animal, like a dragon morph into a human.

So that's Hmong mythology.

- I think that people come to this show expecting something morbid, some kind of representation of psychosis.

(bright music) And in fact, what they generally find are representations of hope and healing and very relatable topics.

And so I think, in that way, it changes people's minds.

It breaks down stigma about what it is to be living with mental illness.

- Having the opportunity to show their art is so rewarding for artists because they can show, "I'm more than just my mental illness," people can show off their talents, and art is really a way for them to express how they feel.

- My name is Deeres.

I grew up very hard.

I found out that I had HIV when I was 16 years old, but I grew through it, and it was tough.

Art helps me a lot to be stronger, to cope with a lot of stress.

It's about a person that's going through so much stress in they life that they come to God and they relieve all the stress in they life.

It's coming up outta they soul, and it's getting relieved through they nostrils.

The yellow in they eyes is from the color of them talking to God.

And it's just the healing of him.

- This is an Apache Indian chief.

It's one of my better paintings.

When I start something, I don't know if it's gonna turn out or not until it's all done, but this one ended up turning out, so.

- Art can be therapeutic.

For me, it's a way of releasing stress or release all the energy.

It could be a negative energy or it could be a positive energy.

This piece, we had a class here, so we do portraits, so I figured I'd do my portrait in chalk pastel and pencil pastel.

- So I'll just go lightly over the lines, - [Ann] The time in between the exhibitions, we're working with patients on a weekly basis to lead writing groups, drawing instruction, assisting them in recording their work.

So anything that the Arts Center can do to partner with the institution.

- [Kylee] No one really wants to be at the hospital, but finding things that people enjoy can help them pass the time better and really engage in something that they enjoy.

- [Mark] When you're sitting on a lot of time and you don't have anything to do, it takes a lot longer.

And it's just, when I'm busy, I'm painting, listening to music probably at the same time, and I get in the zone and I just start creating some really cool stuff, and I like it.

- This is so trippy.

- This is my favorite.

- I love that it's like, like they were saying about that one, it's realistic and then not.

The show, I think, is a unique opportunity for all those people who are kind of by default part of the treatment team.

And by that, I mean in these public spaces, we are where patients come on passes.

Us, the library, gas stations, so all of the sort of front-desk people at those businesses and institutions, we're part of the team, 'cause we know, in general, when patients come into our space and we know that it's part of our responsibility in this community to make them feel welcome.

- [Soniya] Our ultimate goal is for them to be able to live in the community.

(car engines rumbling) And that is where the city of St. Peter has been so crucial for us.

I think that's just been a wonderful collaboration.

(upbeat music) (dynamic music) - We're standing in front of, it's called the StarLab Planetarium.

It's an inflatable planetarium.

We are in a classroom.

Our inflatable planetarium lives in a classroom in the Jay C. Hormel Nature Center It's made of canvas on the inside, there's a projector with software that we can use to look at the solar system, look at planets, look at constellations, things like that.

We've had the planetarium for about a year.

So we just started implementing it and programming this past season, and we started doing public events in November.

This is a very expensive piece of equipment, more than $40,000, which is not something that nonprofits come by lightly.

We are able to have those thanks to donations.

Paul and Joanne Morleen, Gary and Pat Ray, the late Ruth Wonderlich, and the friends of the Hormel Nature Center.

It's a really cool, immersive, interactive way of being able to teach.

It feels sort of like a full movie-type of situation.

It almost feels like you're in space when you're in there.

And so one of the things that we really want our students to take away is a care for nature, a care for the world around them, a curiosity.

And I feel like the planetarium really sparks that.

For sixth-graders, we teach them a little bit about constellations, we teach them about orienteering, how to find their way in the woods using a compass and a map.

And so thinking about the stars, it's a good tie in.

So they learn about the stars, they learn about the North Star and how you can sort of orient your way around.

And also it's just fun and engaging.

I wouldn't say that anything that we go over is super, super complex.

But we're talking a little bit about physics, we're talking a little bit about gravity, we're talking about how and why planets exist, where they are in relation to the Sun, we're talking about the solar system.

So we're talking about enough stuff that is a little harder to think about and wrap your head around.

So we try to gear it towards those older-age levels.

That being said, when we have our events, our public events, we have kids who are, I mean, infants, all the way up to grownups, and they all get a kick out of it.

(dynamic music) Every culture has different constellations and constellation stories.

So we talk about how the Greek stories are different from the Ojibwe stories, and how both of them do have a lot of similarities in they talk about seasonality.

So there are some constellations that have stories tied to a season because you can only see them when they're coming in at the beginning of fall, and then you see them in the whole sky, but you can't see them in the winter or the spring.

So we talk about constellations of different cultures, but yeah, Greek mythology's a part of it.

We can look at the universe, we can look at galaxies, we can look at planets close up.

It has lots and lots of different simulations for grade levels, big and small.

We do also have a geology unit downloaded, so we can talk about plate tectonics, climate change, other things like that.

Oh, as soon as they go in there, we have a simulation where we start on the outside of the universe and we zoom all the way through back to Earth.

And that's when you hear all of the oohs and ahs.

(laughing) Some of the planets are really cool, too.

They like looking at Saturn and the rings and things like that.

I've always believed that people connect with nature through joy and excitement.

And that's the best way to learn is really starting from there.

So I hope that people that go into the planetarium maybe have a curiosity for space, maybe wanna learn more, find it more interesting than they might have thought.

Maybe when I tell them the fun facts that I think are really interesting, they actually find them interesting, and then that can be that spark for them.

So I think that's a lot of what we try to do here at the Nature Center is feed that curiosity, get it started, so that way, they can continue on from there.

(upbeat music) (cars faintly whizzing) (frogs ribbiting) (melancholic music) - [Judy] Such a horrible thing to happen to any creature.

And it was so awful in so many ways.

(wind blowing) - [Reporter] It is one of nature's simple creatures, but in Minnesota's famed waters, a mysterious disease is deforming and killing hundreds of thousands of frogs.

- We certainly were concerned about human health issues also.

So we really wanted to look at every aspect of the environment of the frog.

It took over my life.

- Judy Helgen of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency is here to tell us more.

Dr. Helgen, you've had 14 test sites in Minnesota and you've discovered it's definitely in the water.

- Well, I'm Judy Helgen, I'm a retired research scientist from Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.

I wrote a book called "Peril in the Ponds," and that is telling this story.

(cicadas chirping) (inquisitive music) My colleague and I at Pollution Control were doing biological evaluations of wetlands.

1995, Cindy Reinitz at the charter school brought kids out here in August to do a nature walk, and they started picking up these deformed frogs.

And at first, they just thought they were injuries, but they found so many.

And she wanted to call somebody in the state to come and help, and so she called me.

- Last September, we reported that deformed frogs were turning up in Le Sueur County.

- Once it went into the news media here, I was getting calls from all over the state, and then it became national.

I mean, there were, what, 45 states.

- Scientists are scratching their heads over something that's been found in the waters of Minnesota, frogs born with deformities, - Even by the late '90s that had deformed frogs in 'em.

And international, I mean, what was happening in the 1990s was new, and it wasn't just this pond, it was much broader in impact.

So that's what made it even more and more serious.

- Every day, little creatures suddenly start becoming freaks, and then the hero or the heroine has to find out what's happening before humans begin to suffer.

- The most sensational frogs that went all over the world in the pictures are the ones with the extra legs.

But it turns out that most of them had missing limbs, or part of a limb, part of the foot was gone, or the total limb was gone.

And that was like 60% of the kinda deformities found here, but also nationally.

It was on everybody's mind, and that's why we ended up partnering with, oh, Minnesota Health Department and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences was one of our big partners because their concern really was, "Are things that are going wrong in the environment also a problem for humans potentially?"

And they were great partners for us.

Well, we had a contract with a lab that did a test with very early stage tadpoles.

And they were finding a lot of deformities from Minnesota sites that had deformed frogs in 'em.

And they also discovered, thank goodness, because they discovered that if they passed the pond water through an activated charcoal filter, it removed the activity that would cause deformities in the lab embryos.

(inquisitive music) They happened to sample people's wells, and the wells happened to cause deformities in the lab test.

The guy from the national lab called me at night one time to say, (laughing) "The well water caused deformities."

And we immediately got the people activated charcoal filters, 'cause right at that time they also found out that the charcoal filtration would get rid of the cause, whatever it was.

They concluded that something was in the water and it was chemical.

- [Reporter] It's a biological mystery that's been puzzling scientists here in Minnesota and around the country for years.

- One of our managers came into a meeting and slammed his stuff down and said, "How did we ever get involved with deformed frogs?"

Because we had so much media attention and we had controversy.

And we had to do press conferences and there were things that were happening where some people didn't want us looking at chemical pollution, for instance.

And so there were a lot of crosscurrents.

And besides, the whole biological monitoring idea was tenuous there in the mid-'90s.

I think now, as I said, it's a very well-established program at the Pollution Control Agency.

But there was a feeling that DNR should be doing this, and we were feeling, "No, this is potentially a pollution problem, we should be doing it."

But there were times when we almost lost our jobs, (laughing) I'll say.

You had to believe in what you were doing, no matter what.

I finally had to say it, "We can't do interviews," because it was taking over the total job.

I mean, "Nightline" and "CBS News."

I mean, I was glad to do it, but at the same time, all of a sudden, a truck rolls up and someone says, "Well, 'CBS News' is down in the parking lot and they wanna talk."

And at that point, I said, "We really have to draw the line and do our work."

But it was good because it put the story out to everybody.

(frogs ribbiting) I think everybody was kinda worn out trying to figure this out and without coming up with answers, and the Pollution Control Agency just shut it down, and I think it was 2002.

The problem hasn't gone away, but nobody's looking.

(children faintly speaking) (inquisitive music) Well, you have to be passionate about what you do.

You have to get out and look, because if we're not looking at the frogs, we don't know if they still have a problem.

And that's sort of the bigger picture is, if we're not looking at the health of the environment, we don't know if it's healthy.

And so I think that's the big story to me, that you have to go out and look.

(upbeat music) - This is a tenor saxophone.

And this one in particular was made by a guy who used to do instrument repair in Winona and now is really a world-famous saxophone technician.

It looks really old and beat up, but I think I've had it probably 10 or 12 years, and still playing great.

(upbeat saxophone music) - My name is John Paulson from Winona, Minnesota, and I play music, write music and teach music.

I'm gonna play a chorus on the saxophone without any blues notes, and then get bluesy on the second chorus because you'll be able to hear what I'm talking about.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) Okay, now with the blues.

(upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) Basically a lifelong saxophone player, I started when I was 10 years old.

The most popular guy in the class raised his hand when it came time to pick instruments.

I'm not even sure I knew what it was.

He's a doctor at the Mayo Clinic now, and I'm still a saxophone player.

(laughing) (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music) That's a soul that I had all written out, and then I spent about a year learning it.

Composing is, I believe, it's as personal as all the different people who do it.

For me, the creative element is pretty mysterious.

One of my strongest points with my music is melody.

And a lot of times, I'll just be getting warmed up on the horn or I'll be in my office studio here getting ready to practice, and a lick or a melodic idea will kinda come forth.

And then I start to work with it.

And sometimes I write these little snippets down and other times I'll spend a whole afternoon trying to tease it out and see what I can get with it.

And sometimes that's easy and sometimes it takes days or maybe even weeks to keep coming back to to make it happen.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) The term, big band, has meant jazz.

One, two.

(fingers snapping) A-one, two, three.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) That means a lot of different things.

And it's a general term that refers more or less to the instrumentation, which is fairly standardized now with the five saxes or woodwinds and four trumpets, four trombones, piano, bass and drums and guitar.

The tree of jazz is branching out into all sorts of things.

My music is a mix of blues and ballads and Latin influences and even funk, funk music.

It's all sort of twisted.

(upbeat music) I work with things here on the computer and try to hear the way that the music is gonna sound with computer-generated sounds.

But to hear them, (laughing) these people actually play it, is really exciting.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) I feel sorry for trumpet players because they only have those three buttons and it just seems like it's boring, (laughing) 'cause there's all this great stuff on here.

(upbeat music) This is "Big River Bossa," hopefully.

There we go.

(drumsticks clacking) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (bright music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music) (birds singing) - Funding for this program is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.