Coming up next on Gallery America, we step into the studio of Mason drum, who uses stop motion animation to create his own worlds.

it's such an iterative process that includes so many different mediums, from crafting to modeling to filmmaking, to photography to set building.

I love all that stuff.

That and much more coming up now.

Hello, Oklahoma.

Welcome to Gallery America.

I'm Jonathan Thompson.

Today we're in downtown OKC in a place called Art Space at Untitled.

We're going to come back and learn more soon.

But first we're going up to Edmond to meet an artist named Mason Drumm.

He followed his passions and turned a hobby for stop motion animation into a full fledged production studio with national impact.

Take a look.

Which just so there's some challenges with being a an animation studio in the Midwest.

If it is for a lot of animators and filmmakers, they want to go and be part of the the industry, quote unquote, the industry is to move to the coast because that's where the industry is at.

And I found myself feelin really discouraged, like, hey, I want to do all these things, but I also don't want to leave Oklahoma because I love Oklahoma.

And my family is here i want my daughter to grow up here.

My name is Mason drumm.

I'm the creative directo at Loud Cloud Animation Studio, and we specialize in telling stories through stop motion animation.

Stop motion is a very old school medium of storytelling.

You say you have an object.

Can you take a photo of the object?

Move the object, take a photo, but move the object again.

Take a photo.

When you play back with a series of photos and the object is animated or is brought to life.

Everything we do is done by hand.

So whenever you are watching a stop motion film, you're seeing real objects and you're seeing like real things come to life.

So I think that's just, you know, from an esthetics point of view, it's just very interesting.

It's such an iterative process that includes so many different mediums, from crafting to modeling to filmmaking to photography to set building.

And I love all that stuff.

So we are in downtown Edmond.

I'm really honored and thankful that I have an actual, like, brick and mortar space to do, the work that we do.

He's a nice boss.

He offers a nice amount of direction, but still allows a lot of room to kind of explore whatever it is you're doing on your own.

But right now, I have a handful of people that started as interns.

One of those people is Ross.

He is somebody that I rely o for as many projects like hand because he's incredibly talented person.

We have Marlys.

She comes in and she's goin to animate on projects as well.

And just depending on, you know, from project to project will hire out for various needs, whether that's concept artist or even other animators.

There's a there's an incredibl animator here in Oklahoma City.

Her name is Nicole Emmons.

We'll try to bring her in if we can.

Chili Pepper is our studio dog.

She is a miniature dachshund.

She's perfect, and she just lays around all day.

Her.

From 2015 to 2019, I was a videographer photographer at the University of Oklahoma and the marketing department.

And every once in a while they would be like, hey, Mason, you know, it's National Donut Day.

Can can we animate some donuts?

And, you know, I grew up with a animating flipbook, like drawing on little yello sticky note pads and bringing, like, little stick figures to life.

So I was like, I'll do that, but with a camera and so.

Well, basically no equipment just like a tripod and a camera.

I remember going, doing like a donut video and bringing to life and people liked it.

It did well on social people you know, as far as engagement go, stop motion performs really well.

From ther I was like, yeah, that was fun.

I got to do photography.

I got to set up the exposure, I got to frame things, new composition.

But I also got to like, work with my hands and animate and have.

There's something very tangible abou stop motion that I'm drawn to.

No.

The first animation that I put on YouTube that was, called information.

It was like a Jurassic Park fan film.

You know, I worked on it for like, seven months in my garage.

Sweat away.

I built all the sets myself.

I had some friends that helped me, like, paint some of the set, helped paint some of the figures that I animated it with.

But it was fun.

And it was through that project, really, that I fell in love with stop motion.

Put that on YouTube an it has like 6 million views now.

It's crazy.

So that encouraged me to do more.

Initially I was asking I'd go to restaurants.

I'd ask local like small businesses.

Hey, can I do, some kind of make some content for your social media?

And so I kind of built up my portfolio and experience until finally my first big project was a commercial gig for the Sci Fi Channel produced entirely in my garage.

Eventually, I got to the poin where I could quit my full time job to pursue, like cloud animation studios.

Or if there's one person that I can point towards to say thank you for any of the successes that we've had.

It's Brandt Smith at the University of Oklahoma's fabrication lab and he was the one that hired me to be a photographer, a videographer.

So he's always kind of served in this like, mentorship position.

And, Brandt always open the doors to, wow, proud to say, hey, come.

If you want to tell stories, we want you to do it here at the high level purpose of the fabrication lab here at the University of Oklahom is to support entrepreneurship.

We think that if we can increase entrepreneurship here within the region, that only benefits students.

They've got skill set that add value to entrepreneurs.

So the fabrication lab is one of those efforts where if somebody has got an ide for a thing that you can touch, they could come here and make it.

We've got all manner of equipment, 3D printers, laser cutters all the way into would mean fracturing and some metal manufacturing as well.

So when Mason takes on a project, he can turn to the Fab Lab and say, here's the equipment that I'm going to use.

And what I think is really special was he got connected to your students who have a skill set that he does not so that he can employ them in the use of equipment?

So I first met Mason, when he came into the lab on day, probably a year or so ago, and I kind of expressed to him, hey, I've got a skill set of.

I can use laser cutters, I can 3D printers, I can use Adobe Illustrator.

So, hey, if you need any help, let me know.

Couple months went by.

I got a message from Mason.

Hey, I need some help with this new project.

We've got me working for someone like Mason havin opportunities here in Oklahoma.

I thought when I got into college that I was going to have to move out to L.A., or I was going to have to move out to Atlanta to do the kind of stuff that I'm doing now, and I don't.

I live, I don't know, 20 miles from where I grew up.

But I found just through failed relationships, through failed jobs and this that the other is that I need something that pushes me and challenges me.

And whether it's something like a race that does that, like physically for that stop motion medium like you cannot exhaust the needs of any project with stop motion.

And I think I'm really draw to the fact that it enables me to push as hard as I want to on certain things to to grow myself, to meet potential, and to always just keep growing.

I'm doing this because this is the best medium for me to, I guess, whether it's express mysel or just stay busy, I don't know, it just seems like the most fitting thing for me to do.

And I love it.

And, I feel honored and thankful that it's had any level of success.

And I am humbled by any of the artists that we get to work with.

I get to meet so many cool people, and work with so many incredibly talented people.

So I feel like I' a better person because of it.

So yeah.

And I'm jus I feel nothing but thankfulness that I feel like to have arrived to where I am right now to see potential in the future.

But, to try to, like, you know, I get too big for my britches or anything, you know?

You can keep up with Mason and Loud Cloud by following their Instagram at loud cloud underscore animation.

We're back at Artspace at untitled, where you can take all kinds of art classes, including one Mason's helped out with stop motion animation.

About four years ago, we started, offering, a 3D stop motion animatio program and hired, Nicole Emmons to teach it over these, past four years, we have noticed this incredible interest in our high school students to really follow this.

the most perfect, wor force opportunities that I see today was with the film industry moving in why not help create a community in Oklahoma City so they don't have to bring people from outside?

All right.

What do you guys say w keep this miniature train going?

Next, we're going to Colorad to meet artist Scott Hildebrand.

He uses just whatever repurposed vintage stuff he has to create his own miniature worlds.

Take a look.

The way people react to my heart is different and and fun and priceless all at the same time.

When they see that the pieces light up and then it's fun to see their faces light up and I see their imagination light up.

And it's really kind of a fun thing to sit back and watch.

It's really such a humbling experience to hear people tell me about how it moves them and the feelings that it invokes in them.

There's nothing in the worl like it, and it feels wonderful.

My name is Scott Hildebrandt and I' a miniature artist, and I work with repurposing old clocks, cameras, radios, and TVs.

I would say over the last ten years I have probably built close to about maybe 3000 pieces all different shapes and sizes.

Nothing is really off limits.

This is actually airplane salvage.

So this is an old whee cover from an old landing gear.

Old Cessna 182.

The love of miniatures probably started when I was close to 6 or 7.

My grandfather used to put up his old train set from when he was a boy, and I just remember being in awe of how beautiful it was and how it ran, and all the little miniatures that went with it.

And I was just fascinated with it.

And as I got older, I would buil models, and I loved the scale of trying to recreate these scenes in miniature format.

This is an old, hard back case.

There' a little switch on the bottom.

It makes them portabl so you can put them somewhere, but you can open it up and have a nice little display.

My Mr. Christmas is a ter or a name that was given to me probably about ten years ag when I first started doing this.

Very creative what you've done.

Thank you.

I appreciate beautiful work.

I focused on vintage Christmas pieces, and my first piece that I ever made actually was A Little Christmas Village that was under glass.

People took interest in that style of art and so I just sort of absorbed the name Mr. Christmas.

I would describe the personnel of my work as more whimsical.

I think miniatures in general reminds adults of that same imagination that sometimes you repress and put away, and it bring you back to a really good place in your life that you remember when you were younger.

And it's almost like a safe place, and it creates these warm memories that people love.

Where do you source your like, antiques?

I go to a lot of estate sales and flea markets.

Garage sales are a really interesting weekend for me.

Is thrifting a fun weekend like that will turn into fun weeks of finding these pieces and then getting a chance to to build into them.

This poor clock stopped working and the motor burned out.

So I'm going to repurpose the face.

I never put people inside of my artwork.

I feel like the scene itself creates a wonder or mystery, and I want the focus to be on the quaintness of the scene itself, and that you can imagine yourself maybe there.

The thing that really inspires me to continue with my art is the ability to create somethin that connects people together, and that's also a very endearing challenge to me, to be able to create something that I could imagine.

There's nothing more satisfying than to be able to complete something that you've thought about.

It's just such a form of accomplishment, and it's so satisfying that i kind of makes me feel complete.

As as an artist.

Do you title all your pieces?

I try to what would you.

A Clear Sunset.

I can't imagine not doing it.

It's.

It's part of my life.

And it's really part of who I am.

This next artist combines a 19th century photographic process with a 1970s toy camera to create her own worlds.

In her images.

Meet Carol Munder.

My name is Carol Mulder.

I'm a photographer, and I use the process photogravure It's a 19th century process where I take an image that I've photographed, and through a process, it' transfer it to a copper plate.

The copper plate is etched and then you print on a gravure or press to get the final image.

It's a long process.

It takes many days.

There' different stages of the process that have to be done days ahead of time.

Things have to cure.

I work with, raw chemistry, so that's mixed together.

So normally I soak it, you know, like 24 hours ahead of time because the the water, I don't know, slowly goes into the paper and it's absorbed and I can kind of pull it out and almost put it on the press right away.

It's a slow process, and I love it because it keeps me out of trouble.

The softness comes through a camera that I use.

I photograph with a Diana camera, and it was originally manufactured in the 70s as a toy.

You could buy it for $3.95 at the dime store.

It was sort of like the images were soft edged and it was something that spoke to me.

My fathe was a commercial lithographer, so that whole printing world maybe runs in my blood or something.

I'm not sure, but I had in my library of books, a chapter and a boo on photography and happenstance.

I had even highlighted part of the process in there and years and years ago.

So if you're going to do it, you have to be dedicated.

And I taught myself and I made every mistake in the book and then some.

So for some reason, the firs time you sort of ink a plate, it it needs a second time around to really start grabbing the ink properly.

I don't know why that is.

Today.

You can go online, you can watch videos, you can do workshops.

It was pretty limited back then, on what was available.

And I had out of print books that I taught myself.

And you're much better off taking workshops if you can, because there's a lot of things they don't talk about you.

Humidity is a real important factor for it.

And I sort of didn't mention that in the books.

I used to photograph in museums a lot.

I was photographing Etruscan sculptures a lot, really close up through glass.

So you would get refractions.

You know, you go through a lot of different phases.

But now I'm photographing just with these wooden sculptures that we've been finding in flea markets that are anonymously carved, almost like outsider art, anatomically incorrect sculptures that are just so soulful.

And I started photographing them because I just loved them.

And it evolved over the years.

But now I montage an image because with my camera, its limitations are it's a plastic lens.

I'm limited by the size of something.

So I will photograph somethin that's, you know, six inches big and have to put it in into a different environment.

And I, you know, you have to adjust those to sort of pla some sort of game of making it.

I mean, it's an unusual world that I'm creating.

Next we go to Reno, where a group of artists have created their own world.

One you can step right into.

It's called upside down land, and it's an 11,000 square foot immersive art experience.

It's inspired by bedtime stories.

Take a look.

I was born kind of in the middle of nowhere in Montana, and they thought I was just so strange.

Just very, very overactive imagination.

And then I've had a very lucky go at this career.

I sold my first painting when I was six.

I've never done anything else.

Potentialist workshop is a space where you can come and really create your own dreams.

We have a gallery.

The Savag Mystic Gallery is located here.

Then we have a large spac that is currently an immersive.

Upside down land was created by a house of infinite potential.

And that's what the potentials call ourselves when we make an immersive.

Our partner here a potential is Morgan Savage dared me.

And then, like any moment with any artists, they're like, what are you actually going to do though?

And then the only thing that came to my mind were these stories for my kid, because unlike, I think everyone will enjoy that.

I could see the vision from the very start.

I felt transported to childhood.

Definitely.

I think everyone will instantl get it, even if they don't know any of these stories.

I think they'll walk in and be like, oh, imagination.

So you start off here in this bedroom.

The bedroom is already odd to begin with.

And then you go through the closet.

You wind up in a desert and then you have a choice.

There's a grass root an then a monument or temple root.

And then there's just this cave looking sand castle.

You can go that way.

Each of them lead to these different lands that you can explore.

And if you want to go up things and looks lik you should crawl up things, you definitely should go up ther because it's totally worth it.

We have 41 artists that worked on this, some of our leads.

They're all like heads of things of their own, so they all have their own teams.

So we had really an all star group.

I know that's like what everybody says about their group, but it's really rar that many alphas have that many.

Like, I don't need anybody else from my own planet want to make anything together.

I'm Jesse Sprocket Genesee, and I was the lead artist for Octopus Ocean, which is this section of upside down land.

We started by creatin the fabric ocean that's above.

It's a football field for a fabric.

It took a really long time to hang each piece so that they look like waves.

I also added sand with a smell element because that was really important to me.

So we have these scent packets that add another layer to the experience.

I worked a lot in the desert area.

The sand is like two tons of sand that we put in here.

And the one thing that I'm really proud o is this table that's behind me.

It's like a pretty thick resin pour.

And I really liked having this, like, branch coming out from the top of it was like a vision that I really wanted to make, and I'm glad that it turned out so well.

Here we are at the Cathedral of Many Wonders.

And within these are tableaus that represent each part of the stories.

This is the place for, soul elevation kind of thing, almost medicine.

And we have the octopus of Octopus Ocean right here, which was made by Daisy Mae Dixon.

And then we kind of created the space for that with this paper coral.

And then Kristen Strai made these gorgeous jellyfish.

And my friend Chris helped me kind of construc all of this with my friend Lee.

So there's a large group of people that all work togethe to make the ocean come to life, which was just a really fun way to spend a few months building work with your friends.

You know?

For me, this project was just a massive teamwork project among so many artists that worked so hard.

Those days where this plac was just packed full of people working on things are like some of my favorite days about this project.

It's so beautiful to have made this place with so many different artists, and they each have their own nook and their own like expression and their own skills that they've brought to it.

And then together, they're combined to be this wonderful land.

And what else is better than that, really?

It's a great showcase of the art of Reno.

I really like seeing people come in here and enjoy the place that we made for them.

We had some scenes in here the other day and I could hear them and they were like, oh, are we in the ocean right now?

It even smells like the ocean.

We're in the ocean.

And it was just exactly what I wanted.

And it was so cool to just watch people walk through and have that experience.

The reason that I create any piece of art is one for love.

And then two I really like to remind people how made up everything is, and I think there's a lot of negativity.

And I think the best you can think of i that it's all going to explode.

And that's the like that's the only way it can go.

We need to have bigger imaginations than that.

So I hope that when you walk through this, that you see, wow, I'm, I'm going to go out and make my street how I want my street to be.

You'll find that your neighbors want that to.

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

Thank you so much for joining us.

As always watch past episodes at 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!