It's time for Positively Kansas coming up.

The mural craze is taking small town Kansas by storm.

And visit the city that claims to be the mural capital of the state.

Also, one man's trash is another man's artwork.

We'll meet the artist who's giving new life to old license plates, and we'll drop in on a brood of baby buzzards in a fascinating, up close look at nature and our Kansas Wild Edge report.

Im Sierra Scott.

A half hour of information and inspiration, is cued up and ready to roll on this edition of Positively Kansas.

A northeast Kansas community is painting the town, so to speak, to get attention.

Clay center, 30 miles north of Abilene, is embracing public art in the form of murals, and in the process is making a name for itself.

As Chris Frank shows us, clay Center's mural movement is bringing bright new colors to town.

Many Kansas communities are looking for ways to attract new visitors to their towns.

Here on Positively Kansas, we've shown how cities like Salina and Cheyney are embracing attention getting murals, hoping to give tourists a reason to stop and look.

Clay Center in northeast Kansas is taking that idea to a whole new level, freshening up its image with the help of the artists brush old paint faded walls are the new canvases for artists to give new life to old local stories through murals.

But I think it helps bring more life to the old buildings here.

Like, because like, a lot of them were unpainted and stuff on the walls of them.

So it helps get repainted.

Driving into Clay center on highway K 15 from the south, one can hardly miss.

This mural on the Sutter Feeds mill, formerly known as Key Feeds.

Build a lot of detail and it's so tall.

More on this mural coming up.

This is just one of the 30 murals in Clay center and neighboring towns.

This is what the town calls a mural movement.

All the town's murals started from a simple idea that took on a life of its own.

The idea for the mural movement started back in 2019.

Our, Rotary Club, here in Clay center, does a project each year where the president of the club gets to choose the particular project that I was the president back in 2019, 2020.

That lovely time frame, back when Covid was around and our main project was to install one mural.

This Sunflower State of Mind mural was that first mural idea.

The artists featuring the state flower, the wild sunflower and state bird, the western meadowlark.

It's easily seen on a building across from the courthouse square.

And though this was the first mural idea, it wasn't the first to be painted here.

This actually became the 25th mural by the time it was completed.

that one mural kind of snowballed, if you will, into over 30 today.

Clay center started first with a simple greetings mural.

Our first mural was kind of a postcard style mural.

greetings from, from Clay center.

The bright red color base stands out over the otherwise drab colored wall.

The art is shown in this time lapse video portray in the lettering of both the rural Kansas setting in Clay County and the animals in the town's zoo.

But this one, I mean, it's they're beautiful a day enhance clay center.

Just the enthusiasm we received from that and the donations just poured in.

We kind of realized we might be onto something, and we just kind of kept designing more and more and more.

And, just, I would say just the overwhelming generosity and enthusiasm from our Clay center community, really, the credit goes out to them.

The greetings mural was being painted, while at the same time another artist was collecting old Kansas license plates for a mural representing the K15 highway going through town.

Artist William Counter of Chapman used 200 license plates to bring this mural to life.

Like all the other artists, counter has signature murals in other Kansas communities.

What we think is unique about Clay center is, I mean, we're we're like a lot of small towns across Kansas, but what we think is unique with our mural situation is, you know, to have 25, 30 murals and and really a town our size is really unique and most of them are walkable in our downtown district.

Clay center is a town of 4300, in the 2020 census.

It's the county seat of Clay County, population just over 8000.

The downtown is centered around its courthouse square, and though there isn't a large population to draw from.

Hubcap says local residents and former residents are very supportive of these projects with donations to hire artists.

But in the beginning, Hubbard says artists wouldn't even return their calls when the project first started, it was really difficult to get an artist willing to come to Clay center.

We knew that we wanted to hire a professional artist to get the one mural done, and we reached out to maybe a dozen artists across the state and got told know several times.

He says many artists ghosted them at first, avoiding all contact.

So, he says, committee members reached out to artists who had painted murals in about 36 miles to the south of Clay center.

Whitney Kerr, the third of Kansas City, painted this Abilene mural inspired from a vintage postcard, as well as this train mural celebrating the cattle trains when Abilene was the railhead for the Texas cattle drives.

William Counter of Chapman painted the large mural of wild Bill Hickok, Abilene's famed town marshal during Abilene's cattle drive era.

Counter painted the Kansas stamp mural in Clay center.

We thought if they were willing to do a mural in Abilene, maybe they'd consider doing it in Play Center.

And they did.

And once those artists painted murals in Clay center, it seemed to open the doors to get other artists interested in doing artwork here.

Since then, we've had artists from seven different states, and we've actually had artists from across the country that have wanted to come to Clay center, including one from Virginia that wants to paint a mural in all 50 states.

So we've even had somebody from overseas that has wanted to come to Clay center.

So it's kind of become a destination not only for tourists, but for artists as well.

It's as if the floodgates open.

Now, there are several themes represented in the Clay center murals, but there's really something for about everyone.

Clay center is near enough to Junction City and Fort Riley, giving the town a military influence.

Fort Riley is not very far from here, and we have, the raising of the flag on you would be, atop mount Suribachi, which is a really neat one for, you know, which brings out a lot of the patriotism, this murals message that freedom is a free such patriotism and support of veterans fits in with any Kansas community.

We are an agriculture town, like much of rural Kansas, and we wanted our murals to represent that that agricultural heritage points back to the Feed Mill mural.

This is titled Bucolic America, with the artists depicting the more pleasant aspects of the countryside and rural life.

Five artists, three from Kansas City, one from Denver and one from Los Angeles painted this.

If you see it in person, you wouldn't believe that a person or persons could paint that.

The painting of the bucolic America mural captured a fair amount of attention in this northeast Kansas region.

Area newspapers and Topeka Television did stories on the artist's progress.

Artists use what's called the squiggle grid doodle grid technique to upscale their mural artwork, from a smaller design format to the much larger walls.

The technique enables artists to paint such large murals with the subject's right hand sized.

Time lapse video shows artist Christian Stanley of Florida turning this clay center wall into the Sunflower State of Mind mural.

The mural is more than 2000ft in size.

The Carnegie Library opened in 1912.

In 2021, artist painted the title mural Windows to Literacy.

It turned a plain wall on a building next to the library into a bookshelf of some of the most well-known, acclaimed historic books.

It's sort of becomes a billboard for the library's location.

For.

The Avery Auto Parts store has murals on two outdoor walls.

These murals help viewers relive the town's past.

This building used to house the local Coca-Cola bottling plant.

Back in the days when cola bottling was franchised to smaller towns.

This photo shows the bottling works in 1912.

That building no longer stands, but the mural preserves its image on the building where the bottling plant had expanded operations.

Where auto parts are now sold.

The mural, showing a couple in a mid-sixties Mustang, is titled Along the Highway to Anywhere.

Tracy LeBeau, retired Clay Center High School art teacher, is the artist.

This is one of the newer murals completed in late 2023.

Around the corner is a mural titled classics, depicting a 1950s era Full-Service Gasoline Station.

Younger generations of the self-service times haven't likely experienced the unattended washing the windshield while filling up the tank and checking under the hood and tire pressure.

So indeed, murals can have historic stories to tell.

Besides adding artistic beauty to the sides of buildings, $0.31 a gallon for regular was standard fare.

Back then, if not 2 or $0.03 a gallon higher than other places and times.

Yeah, it's just a just a great thing.

And it's really it's been great for the community, that's for sure.

Are people talking about them all the time?

What are they saying?

Well, they just enjoy, just seeing all of them and, just driving around town and just one looking at all of them.

And what has it meant for business?

I believe it's it has helped.

I think it gets people, you know, down this way.

We're kind of off the beaten path a little bit, but I think it's cool.

It's just it's something that's drawn a lot of people to Clay center just to come.

Just look at Maurice.

What he did here at the Auto Parts is probably two of my most favorite ones, because I'm an old car guy.

I like a lot of them.

Ginger Walker, owner of Ginger's Uptown, a large clay center boutique, says the murals are good for business.

The summertime is huge for murals, and that because people bring their friends girlfriend day, family day and they walk around and do all the fun stuff.

And yeah, people love them.

They go get the maps, or you can do the QR code on the building and pull it up on your phone.

And so look around.

But we get a lot of people in the store that are a lot of people that are looking at the murals, and we get a lot of people that are in the store that maybe don't even know about them and see them and ask about them.

So I think it's exciting when you're this size of our town that you can invite people to come visit.

And I think it's unique, to have so many places across the county that encourages people to, see not just the downtown but other parts, of our nice little community.

And yet, with 30 murals completed, the town wants more.

We are not done yet.

we do have one more big one in the works.

There's a big, CVA, steel grain bin, right here near downtown.

And we've got a design for it.

And we just got a little fundraising yet to do for that one, but we anticipate that one to get wrapped up here in the spring of 2024.

Hubcap says with more than 30 murals in Clay County, there is something to interest every visitor.

And still, there's no shortage of buildings with blank walls just waiting to become the next canvases for mural artists in Clay center for Positively Kansas.

This is Chris Frank reporting.

The Kansas Arts Commission has helped fund over 41 murals in 26 communities.

You'll find an interactive map that lists them all at Kansas Commerce Dot.

GOP.

When it comes to our car license plates, most of us simply discard the old ones when the new plates are issued.

But a new man is finding clever ways to put old license plates to use in artsy ways.

Chris Frank has our story.

On many days, you can find Mark Yoder working in his garage workshop behind his Newton home.

This is a dedicated manufacturing site for his cottage business.

When Yoder doesn't need to park a car inside.

And what's that business, you ask?

Well, you might say it's for the birds.

And this is, I call it a duplex.

Yoder makes birdhouses, among other things.

I kind of got the idea of birdhouses years ago.

my dad makes some, and he still does.

But there's a twist.

Yoder couples his love for collecting vehicle license plates with his birdhouse and artsy crafts making.

What?

We can start here with the license plate signs.

I. I bought a share that I, I share the the plate and, and the letters and the numbers and stuff.

Yoder's product name brand is officially licensed products.

You actually have a friend that surrenders?

I do.

I have several, actually, and my Yoder glues the letters and numerals from cut up license plates into whatever phrase a customer may request.

Team names are often in demand.

Chiefs, Jayhawks, Wildcats, Shockers, and so on.

I call it fence boards.

Old Cedar gives.

I have a rustic look like the garden one here.

Most plates are old Kansas license tags, but you can see on his walls he has vehicle plates representing about every American state and a few foreign countries.

The older, rarer plates stay on these walls or in a cabinet filled with license plates.

These are not going to be cut out enough.

They will not be a rooftop.

Now, Yoder grew up in Ohio before moving to Kansas to go to Hesston College.

That's why he has so many Ohio plates.

Some of these were passed down from his grandfather.

This one here is 100 years old already.

These won't ever be cut up.

In fact, I will never sell them.

So they'll go to my kids someday.

That makes Yoder one of the many license plate collectors in the country.

Here's some history knowledge on vehicle plates you may not have known.

France was first to mandate license plates on all vehicles nationwide in 1893.

New York was the first American state to require cars to be registered in 1901, according to bumper.com, which also says by 1918, all 48 contiguous states in the U.S. were requiring vehicle license plates.

I think they're probably made in prisons.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union ACLU.

Prison inmates in about 37 states make all their states license plates.

Kansas Department of Corrections tells us Kansas inmates made license plates from 1957 to 1975.

That's when production was moved to Center Industries in south Wichita.

Now, it wasn't until the 1950s standards came in for the size and materials for the plates.

Car owners used to change out plates every year, explaining why there are so many old plates available.

1975 was the last year for an annual Kansas license plate.

Five years, sometimes ten years, they leave a tag on a car.

Then in 1976, Kansas went to multi-year plates and issued annual adhesive stickers to the owners.

It's been that way ever since.

I don't like to cut up old tags like from the 60s and 50s.

I unless they're already damaged really bad, but I try to.

I can sell those to people that have cars that want to issue them on their car.

But Yoder also sees the value of slicing up the more common non collectible plates.

And then I keep my letters.

He harvests and saves the letters and numbers to make vanity wall hangings.

There's always a dog mom.

Most of his plates come from customers special orders and deep growth.

Those are really good sellers.

Oops.

He'll have to rearrange the lettering on girl.

Unless that's the way it was ordered.

Now you can see the lettering on the wall.

Hangings may have slices from several different states that can make them conversation pieces, with house guests guessing what states are represented.

This one is Arizona and we got Missouri.

Alabama.

They are actually threes upside down which make good ease.

this is the Peach State which is Georgia, Kansas, Kansas.

Sometimes it's a challenge for Yoder to recognize the state's lettering.

I don't remember.

And back to the birdhouses and bird feeders, but this is 130 year old barn wood.

So it's it's coming back to life.

So a vertical plate for a roof gives the bird house a unique look for, after all, license plates are designed for unique assigned identification.

Now, if only birds could read, they would never get confused over which house is theirs.

The last thing to install is the perch, which is a repurposed sparkplug.

That's all ready to go.

It's ready for a new owner to hang up and wait for a new bird family to move in.

He estimates building 200 bird houses and feeders so far.

And that's not all.

This is one of the first things I made out of a license plate was the dustbin.

I never knew there were so many things you could make with old license plates.

Why?

There's no two the same.

You may see his officially licensed products at Harvey County crafts fairs, or at flea markets and antique stores in Newton.

In Newton.

This is Chris Frank for Positively Kansas.

Speaking of birdhouses, photojournalist Mike Blair came across a family of buzzards living in an old barn.

As always, he captured some fascinating video for this week's Kansas Wild Edge Report.

She breaks the tree line at 9 a.m., winging overhead.

Check the barn on her way to breakfast.

She's eating for three.

Two chicks wait below in the empty shed.

Hatch there on a bare floor.

Several weeks ago.

Oddly, she and her mate roost several miles from the nest, leaving their young to spend each night alone but growing quickly.

They depend on her to bring their meals each day.

She briefly stops to perch and survey her temporary home.

But for now, she doesn't visit.

Soon she sails on looking for the said decaying meat.

She's a turkey vulture, a bird that gets little respect, though vital in nature's scheme.

Vultures seek the dead and decomposing.

Searching with wondrous gifts of sight and smell.

Riding on spread wings.

They saw with scarcely a beat.

Masters of aerial travel.

When kill was found they alight to fill their crops with ghastly fare repellent.

To nearly all other living things.

This quickly removes sources of potential disease.

And for the mother vulture and her mate, this means food for them and their young.

Back at the nest, the young are impatient.

Still covered in thick white.

Now they are weeks away from independence.

The enclosed horn offers a measure of protection from predators, and they huddled together to sleep through each night.

Smaller visitors may still land to look for scraps left at feedings.

After sunrise, the young buzzards wait for hours, passing the time by strengthening young wings and.

Dreaming of soaring.

Idly playing their.

Or squabbling.

Mom and dad.

Crops full of food or on the way.

The sounds of rooftop footsteps.

Alert the young birds.

The adults take turns sometimes feeding the young up to four times a day.

But then other times, depending on their luck hunting, skipping a day entirely.

A feeding visit is always noisy and boisterous.

Vultures feed their young by direct regurgitation, transferring food from their own crops directly down the gullets of their young.

Meat tainted and fowl, yet non-threatening to the powerful immune systems of these birds, is transferred directly from stomach to stomach and gagging rituals.

Sometimes the youngsters cough up a hasty meal before eating it again.

Mom may take a momentary break before going back for one last round.

Once she has expelled all of her food.

She's ready to soar again in search of her own daily rations.

Leaving the youngsters to another long wait.

For a sound of footsteps on the roof.

And food that only a buzzard could like.

I'm Mike Blair for Positively Kansas.

Well, that's a wrap for this week.

Positive in Kansas at for dawg is our email address.

If you have a question, comment or story idea.

Thanks for watching.

I'm Ciara Scott.

We'll see you again soon.