It's time for Positively Kansas.

Coming up, we'll investigate why the town of Derby has been named one of America's best suburbs.

It's a real feather in the cap of this thriving Sedgwick County community.

Also, you may see just a junky old car, but this man sees a potential work of art.

See how he transforms, trashed car parts into things of beauty and see why coloring with crayons isn't just for kids.

This Wichita woman demonstrates the fun that people of all ages can have with a simple pack of Crayolas.

Plus, in our Kansas Wild Edge report, experience the joy and wonder of a new life as it begins to discover the world.

Im Sierra Scott, a half hour of information and inspiration is coming your way right now on Positively Kansas.

With crime on the rise in big cities, people are moving to the suburbs for a safer, quieter life.

If you move to a town like Bel Air, Haysville, Valley Center or Derby, you can still be close enough to enjoy all that a large city has to offer.

At the same time, you're living in a quieter, safer place.

Away from the rat race.

Anthony Powell shows us why one Wichita suburb was recently recognized for its idyllic way of life.

In addition to Derby three other Kansas City's made the Moving Feedback Top 175 suburb survey list, including Andover, Overland Park and Leawood.

But you'd be hard pressed to find any city in the Sunflower State or really in America, for that matter, that has been more recognized than Derby.

Derby back in 2007 was recognized by Family Circle magazine as one of the top places to raise families in the United States.

Few years later, U.S. News and World Report said Derby was one of the top places to retire in the United States.

And there's a lot more awards to go with those.

Moving Feedback, an online platform that covers moving services, surveyed 3000 people to come up with its top suburb choices.

Derby checked all the survey boxes.

Affordability.

Quality of life.

Good schools.

Low crime.

Amenities.

Im stationed at McConnell, its about a ten minute commute to work with no traffic.

There's plenty of shopping.

I never have to leave Derby in regards for entertainment, for grocery shopping, for regular clothes shopping.

Lowe's is right down the road.

Cost of living here is very affordable.

I live in a beautiful home.

Mundy admits he had no idea how much he'd love Derby.

I wouldnt have moved to Kansas if the Air Force didnt make me move to Kansas.

And now you have to take me out kicking and screaming.

I love this place.

Being home to McConnell Air Force Base, Derby attracts lots of out-of-staters, but they quickly feel right at home.

People find once they get here that they can come in here.

And Derby does have that small town feel, small town flavor.

Derby citizens are not cliquey.

So it's not like You're not from here were not going to talk to you.

Also, helping new families feel good about their move is Derby's highly ranked schools.

Derby residents have passed sales taxes to improve the educational system.

Taxes have also helped beautify the city with several picturesque parks.

And folks here can enjoy the city's beauty while feeling very safe.

Meanwhile, Derby's explosive growth in recent years means folks have numerous choices for shopping, eating out and other entertainment.

But it's not just Derby residents who appreciate what's here.

Derby-- pulls from way outside of Derby, we're pulling down clear to the Oklahoma border because people that live in Sumner County, Cowley County, Southern Butler County, even south of Wichita come here to do their shopping.

But above all else, folks who live here say what makes Derby most special-- It's the people.

It's the multi-generational families that live here.

Combine that with newcomers who say they plan on making it their permanent home.

I love it.

Derbys a great town.

And it's no wonder Derby is constantly being recognized as one of the best places to live in America.

In Derby for Positively Kansas.

I'm Anthony Powell.

Calabasas, California, topped the list of most envied cities.

It's located 30 miles from downtown Los Angeles and is about the same size as Derby.

Turning auto wrecks into art is what drives Greg Johnson.

This Wichitan spent a career pulling dents out of banged up cars while sculpting metal art on the side.

Now, as Chris Frank shows us, Johnson is sculpting art full time from metal pieces that were destined for the scrap heap.

There is a curious looking building east of downtown Wichita.

Southbound I-135 canal route drivers have long noticed the sports car appearing to have left the freeway and crashing into Greg Johnson's auto body complex on Kansas Street.

That marketing tool went well with Greg Johnson's artistic creativity.

I have lots of artwork to sell.

For the past 44 years.

Johnson's shops were filled with vehicles needing body repairs.

Johnson and his employees have put hundreds, perhaps thousands of wrecks back together for customers.

And while getting wrecks back out on the road, Johnson has also been turning the discarded car metal into sculptures.

His artwork graces professional offices and homes.

One of his sculptures is at the Texas Motor Speedway.

Now, Johnson has had enough of collision repair.

He's turning what was his part time sculpting side hustle into his full time passion.

Instead of making things look like they used to, which is repairing a collision, which we're good at.

That's like 44 years of that business.

Now, I'm never really sure where I'm going to wind up when I start things.

A shop visit a few months earlier found Johnson getting a workout, sanding down rough spots on a classic Buick Riviera.

I say work like this.

I've been doing it for years and years and years, but not anymore.

You get to feeling it in your shoulder, you get feeling it in your elbow.

You can be in all kinds of denials about getting older, but it happens.

We all know the hands of time don't stop for us.

So, Johnson decided it was time to retire from his body shop business and devote his remaining time to the art work he's fallen in love with.

He draws some inspiration from the scrap metal itself.

Then he turns his head heavenward, where he says he also draws inspiration.

You just pay attention.

And this is a good example right here.

I had no idea what this piece was going to be.

And then it dawned on him, this has to be an orchid sculpted in part from a wrecked Opel G.T.

car.

How it will be finished is yet to be determined.

Now there is one sculpture in particular here that demands attention.

He's built from vintage stainless steel moldings, like back in the seventies, the early eighties.

I scrapped out a couple of salvage yards twice in the 28 months I was building him to get enough material.

This is Johnson's depiction of an archangel.

He named it Gerald.

I would say he's my unapologetic Christian sculpture.

He started working on his archangel in 1994.

And I worked on him for two years.

It is common perception that as we age, time seems to move more quickly.

At 73, Johnson is more aware of his earthly mortality.

It's why he wants to use his remaining years to work on his art.

The marketing and the selling of his art is part of Johnson's next phase.

I have lots of artwork to sell, lots of stuff that's done already that's in crates.

I'm just not home, Im out to shows anymore.

Out of state.

Because, out of town, because that's just a lot of work.

So he will market his art from Wichita.

This is called EF2.

This is one of my patients.

This just out of of trash, just out of scrap fenders that are taken off in the process of doing.

And I have hundreds of fenders left stockpiled.

The EF2 tornado was on display in Old Town where it could be seen twisting in the wind.

It's been through like three hailstorms outside.

Didn't faze it at all.

Johnson gets inspiration from a lot of sources.

A trip to Monument Valley, Utah, inspired this project called Monument.

I like to make things that please people, but they're going to have to please me first.

And he acknowledges not everyone is going to like every piece of art he makes.

The metal lines on the sculptures can go in many different directions quite differently than the lines on a collision repair.

With collision repair.

You know where you're going.

You're making it look like it used to.

With sculpture work, I've said this for a year, with sculpture work, its the dynamic and you're not really sure where are you going to wind up until you get there.

And that's the fun of it.

He says there's no time schedule with finishing each project.

There's no one hanging over his head saying, I don't want it this way.

I want it this way.

And the colors he now gets to work with, he says, are much richer and more varied than those colors for collision repair.

But you get to use colors.

You don't-- I'm so done with white and silvers.

And I mean, theyre some beautiful car colors, but mainly they're kind of boring compared to what you can do with, you know, the colors of nature.

So much more vivid and vibrant and the way they go together when, you know, when you can just have fun with them.

There seems to be no shortage of raw material here for Johnson to draw from.

These bumpers are actually raw material for artwork also.

These bumpers will be repurposed into art.

Johnson doesn't have to purchase any canvases like other artists do.

His canvases are collision body parts.

Motorists involved in wrecks keep creating more bended metal for Johnson to work with.

Johnson has all these storage units full of body parts ready for the artist's creativity to mold into new sculptures.

He just needs the time.

This is a bin of raw material.

Raw material waiting to be molded by the artist.

As you can see, Johnson holds on to a lot of things.

Don't throw away anything.

What might look like junk to someone else might be his next piece of artwork.

He used to take these sculptures to art shows across the country, but he won't do that any longer.

He says transporting them costs too much money.

In today's world, he can show them on the Internet using social media outlets to attract customers.

I've got this day to get as much as I can done on my-- just create new pieces.

Because when I croak, this will be my legacy, you know?

And I want it to be a good legacy.

Johnson says he's been blessed with a talent, and he says he intends to use it for as long as he can.

In Wichita, this is Chris Frank for Positively Kansas.

Johnson says his love of sculpting makes him wish he'd taken an art class before his mid-thirties.

Now to the great outdoors and the kinder and gentler side of Kansas wildlife.

In this week's Kansas Wild Edge report, Mike Blair shows us the first day of life for a white tailed deer filled with both challenge and wonder.

June is fawn time in Kansas.

Adult does, pregnant for seven months, now shoo away their grown daughters to concentrate on new babies.

Older does often have two or three fawns.

But first time mothers typically have just one.

At birth, the fawn weighs about five pounds.

Most are born now, but a few are dropped in May.

In a world of lush new growth, It might seem the mother deer would carefully choose a birthing place to shield the fawn from danger.

But that's not necessarily so.

In fact, she may simply drop the fawn wherever she is at full term and sometimes this is in surprising places, even close to human dwellings.

This tiny newborn was dropped in the mowed prairie meadow between busy houses.

The fawn was born at daybreak, and after a quick cleanup, the doe wandered away to leave it for 8 hours.

New fawns have no scent, relying on camouflage spots and natural instinct to lie perfectly still and avoid detection.

The doe leaves her new baby, sometimes traveling hundreds of yards away so that her own scent doesn't attract attention to the helpless fawn.

So it's on its own for much of its first day of life.

This one a buck, as evidenced by the black spots on its forehead, which marked the future antler pedicles, was born in short grass.

It rested easily through the cool morning hours.

But as the day heated up, the fawn got hot and thirsty under direct sunlight.

It panted through open mouth as it lay, finally needing to move, and it took its first awkward steps on its own.

Uncertain on its feet as it headed for nearby shade.

For a short time, it disappeared into the heavy cover, but soon wanting again to test its legs, it moved back into the open grass and it lay there for another hour before returning to the cool thicket.

The mother came back in late afternoon to feed her youngster and move it to better cover.

At first she seemed puzzled that the fawn was not where she left it, but she found it in the nearby shrubs.

It joined her for the first of many reunions, getting a meal on its feet as Mama licked and cleaned her offspring.

It followed as she made a 100 yard trek to a pasture fence that marked the Kansas Wild.

There the pair rested and bonded in cedar shade for a short time, and then the mother led her baby into its new life as a beautiful, wild deer that shares our prairie state.

Im Mike Blair for Positively Kansas.

Next time, Mike shows us how insects, while they can annoy us, help bring beauty to the Kansas outdoors.

With crayons in hand, a local Wichita woman is sharing her gifts and talents through a simple inter-generational activity.

Anna Spencer visits a creative space that offers fun coloring, painting and crafting sessions for children and families.

Step into this creative studio and you'll find a vibrant, colorful space filled with every hue imaginable, from floor to ceiling, on every wall and countertop, shades conveying fun, energy, positivity and light... Just like the woman behind the business.

Meet Sontia Levy-Mason, a Wichita native whose mission reminds us that coloring can change the world.

Like I always say, you give children a crayon.

I mean, you give toddlers a crayon.

It's the first tool that we're given to create something beautiful.

And I think as we get older, we forget how powerful that little crayon is.

It's the first thing we put in our child's hands, like we trust it so much that we give it to our infants, you know?

But we forget as we get older how powerful it really is.

Sontia's artistic journey began in childhood.

An avid writer and artist, she remembers putting crayon to paper and coloring with her mother.

But she says it was more than that.

Moments spent coloring generated both a time of connection and creativity.

Coloring has always kept me grounded, and it's something that my mother taught me and it's the reason why I'm right here, right now.

Sontias career includes writing novels, as well as a children's book titled You Have a Divine Purpose.

The book, inspired by her daughter, shows off her skills as an illustrator.

And while Sontias artistic career has spanned decades.

It was during the pandemic when she decided to get serious and do more with her gifts.

I thought that it was a very elementary thing at first.

A lot of people were kind of like it's, you know, it's just coloring.

You know, when I see a crayon, I see power, I see creativity, I see, like, limitless things.

And I just want to continue to share that with the community and also share that with the children who don't get to experience that every day.

Get Ya Color On moved from an annual on-the-go event to a permanent location in May, allowing Sontia the opportunity to host coloring parties both here and across the community.

Using her artistic skills, she transformed this space, which was once a post office, into a fully functioning art studio for all ages.

Open for drop in and reservations, she can offer mindful coloring in this south Wichita neighborhood and at workshops for local businesses, churches and more.

She says her business model offers a needed service, especially for kids.

Everything is just very cyber, you know.

They don't have those hands on experiences that they deserve, and I'm just trying to provide those opportunities for them.

She uses her background in early childhood development, foster care and ACES to help people from all walks of life connect with their creative self.

Coloring workshops can be created around any niche from birthday parties to intergenerational events to grief therapy or simply a girls night out.

And so far, the city has embraced the concept.

And I'm so appreciative of Wichita, like just embracing coloring in general, because I think it's nuts, like I'm like, everybody understands me finally, you know?

But it's not the moments where, you know, I'm booking parties or the moments when it looks like I'm having the most fun.

It's those small moments, you know, where I meet those people who just need it, who need to just relax and be happy for just a second.

Sontia says she's just a girl from Planeview who's looking to make a difference.

She believes that by starting with something as basic as a box of crayons, anyone can begin the journey toward creating positive change in their community, regardless of background or resources.

In Wichita, I'm Anna Spencer for Positively Kansas.

The Get Ya Color On studio is open Tuesday through Sunday.

Reservations are encouraged and can be made online.

Well, that's a wrap for this week.

Thanks for watching.

I'm Sierra Scott.

We'll see you again soon.