[PRAIRIE FIRE THEME SONG] Welcome to Prairie Fire.

I'm your host, Sarah Edwards.

You know, I love reading and even the smell of old books.

I'm sure some of you can relate.

So when our producer, Taylor Plantan told me about a man in Chicago who makes sculptures out of old books, I was really intrigued.

This is the art of Brian Dettmer Am I destroying a book?

Well, that's that's the question: Am I killing the book, or are the books I work with already dead?

Books are really alive, but essentially, it can't really fully exist until someone else reads it.

And that's one of the weird things about a book, right?

Books themselves have so much potential, to go in, you know, infinite different directions.

In a way, I'm sort of freezing that, that life, you know, in into just one frozen existence in order to expose it and explore it a different way.

Essentially, 20 years ago, I came up with this way of working that I've sort of stuck with since then.

So I seal the edges up of the book, and then I carve into the surface or the top of it, and I'm removing one layer at a time and discovering things as I go.

So when I'm carving through a book, I'm not planning it, I'm just kind of reacting to things as I go.

So that way, it's really a collaboration between me and the existing work, and that's what keeps it exciting for me.

You know, it's like walking through a new city.

You walk around the corner and there's something that you've never seen before.

In a way, I'm kind of reading with a knife as I go through a book, but in a way, that's also drawing, because it's a linear line that, you know, I'm creating.

And then there's, of course, with the text itself, there's a poetry that sort of emerges.

People ask if I make mistakes, and I don't know what...like, I guess I'm making 1000s of little mistakes, but 1000s of little decisions at the same time.

So when I'm working, there's always other options, right?

And that was one of the problems I had with painting.

When I was a painter, you know, you have a blank canvas and there's infinite number of things you can paint.

Like, where would you even start?

But when I'm starting with a book, at least it's a specific, finite object.

There's two different ways to kind of think about the book itself, like, am I exploding the book open in order to show everything I possibly can?

Or am I sort of closing it and distilling it into, like, specific directions or specific meaning in the way?

And so I think the process itself is important, and I'm very honest about it, because it's an investigation, or it's like a metaphor for research, or you know, for the way we, you know, gain information.

So when I'm working with a book, I want to use something that's interesting and vintage, you know, so it might might be 20 years old, it might be 100 years old, but I don't want to necessarily work with something that's an antique, or something that's a one of a kind that can't be replaced.

You know, I'm interested in the physicality of information and the physicality of the book, and the fact that you have that comfort in knowing that it's there and that it exists, and that your library will be fine unless you have a fire.

But digitally, everything's sort of just up in the air, and things are constantly disappearing.

You can access a paperback book from 200 years ago easier than you can a file from 20 years ago.

And it's so it's that planned obsolescence, this idea that everything that's digital, you know, it can be manipulated and moved quicker.

But of course, you know, the capitalistic nature and everything that's being designed right now is intentionally doing that in order to take your attention, but also in order to break eventually.

The book itself is such a stable physical format that when we lose that physicality, we lose that stability, and we lose that connection to sort of a built, vetted temple of truth essentially.

With my work, I want to sort of explore all those tensions.

So my process being completely subtractive is sort of about erasure, and in a way, and I'm participating in that erasure.

I'm kind of fragmenting and breaking it down into these tiny components.

We want that instant gratification.

We don't want to sit and read the whole book.

We want to see everything all at once.

So how is the book itself going to become, you know, flashier, or circumvent that time that you need to dedicate with the book?

I don't think that books are actually dead, but, you know, it can be seen as like an autopsy in a way.

They can tell us something about what we valued at a specific time.

But, we don't necessarily use reference books, encyclopedias, especially, or really any books, the way we did We're left with this material that we know is valuable, full of history and full of meaning.

And, you know, in a way, it's sort of like a natural history museum.

A natural history museum will display a dead animal in a specific pose, and you can really see things that you wouldn't necessarily be able to see at a zoo if that animal is just running around.

And I think years ago, people used to get a lot more upset about my work when the book had, you know, more of a monopoly on all of our information.

But what I've kind of been bothered lately, just by the last few years, people haven't been bothered at all by the fact that I'm cutting up books.

And so I think that's one of the things about a book itself, is, once you create a piece of art, or create a, you know, a piece of literature or whatever, you can't really control how other people react to that.

So obviously, an author can't control whether someone's going to read their book or carve into it, but in the same way, you know, I know that, like creating artwork, I can't control how other people are going to value or interpret that.

I've been working with books for over 20 years now, and just sort of this slow, meditative process of carving usually kind of leads me to the next idea.

So I feel like the potential within books, and the potential with the material and the meanings that you know books have in our lives, and the metaphors that it can that books give us, you know, for the way we relate to information today, digitally, I feel like it's sort of endless.

There's always going to be something missing.

I think that's what keeps it interesting for me to keep pushing myself and keep exploring.

We get a lot of suggestions on this show to do stories about fabric artists and specifically quilters.

Turns out Macomb, Illinois is home to one of the nation's best quilters.

So we took a little Prairie Fire field trip to the Western Illinois Museum to meet Millie Sorrells and see an exhibit of her beautiful work.

Her quilts hang in museums all over the country, and I think you'll agree she's a real inspiration.

I was born when the Depression started, and we didn't have anything, you know, and I didn't really think about being poor, but we were, you know, everybody was poor.

This is to get it lined up so that your center is...and I've already calibrated my machine so that it, you know, it'll find the center in this.

I didn't get a good start in school because the first teacher I had was not a...he was a man teacher, and we didn't have school half the time.

Okay.

Got that there.

I didn't get to take sewing or anything when I was in high school, because we didn't have anything like that.

So then I started going with my husband.

There we go.

I think I graduated in June, and I got married in August.

I started taking sewing classes, and I became a seamstress.

I made all my own clothes, and then I started making clothing for people.

At 81, I got into quilting.

It just kind of I worked into, I loved to create something that was my own.

This was about one of the first that I ever did.

I used my own color sense and fabrics, and I I used all my own threads.

I entered some quilts into the state fair.

I entered a quilt, you know, it was my first applique quilt, and I ended up getting grand champion that year, the lady that had been winning it all the time, I beat her.

So, I thought, "Gosh, this is kind of nice," you know?

And then I'd get a little money for it.

And then I started teaching in my home.

What I learned, I taught.

I would take my ideas from all kinds of things, and you know, it just evolved all all through the years that I guess it was a strive to to do something better all the time and to learn new techniques.

This one year, we had a quilt that a man had entered in the show that was made in 1856 by his great his grandmother, one of his grandmothers.

And when I think of a woman in 1856 doing all of those things by hand, and no more lights and stuff she had, and it was a beautiful quilt, I got to reproduce that.

So, it took me three years to make that quilt, and then I entered it in quite a few different shows.

My "Phantasy" that's in the National Quilt Museum and "Golden Glow," I sent them to enough shows that I won about $17,000 with each one of them.

So you want to take that side.

What should we do here?

This was actually a Dover Design, and I enlarged it and put it on my design wall.

I've done a fourth of the quilt.

There was a design that I made my own pattern, and all of this is fabrics from my stash, except the one in the center.

I bought two yards of that fabric, not knowing what I was going to do with it, and so then I took all the colors that it was in my stache and picked about and put this together.

I think what's important about what Millie shows us is that someone who is very unassuming or may fit in a box of a family wife, a farmer's wife who makes quilts, kind of blows that impression out of out of the water.

So these are pieces of art, and you always intended them...I remember you telling me this: You always intended them to be works of art that were to hang on the wall.

And so it's just another sort of facet of the tradition of quilting that exists across our country, and that history is very deep, from social movements to visual information to fine art.

Here's the Wi Fi.

Sometimes I send it from my computer over here to the Wi Fi.

I had never touched a computer.

I didn't know a thing about one, but I wanted to learn.

I wanted to see if I wanted one, and so I took five classes at Spoon River College.

Here is all the different designs in here.

And then I decided I wanted a computer.

And then all the machines now are computerized.

I want to keep learning.

I've always it's always been a challenge meeting, I guess, to be able to do this and to do that.

I don't have anybody quilt any of these quilts.

I want to quilt all myself.

I want to be able to say I've always quilted all my quilts.

Quilting is something that you need, you know...you want to enjoy.

And so, you know, if you want to learn to quilt, I would the best thing I think would do to be to go take a beginner quilting class and see if it works.

Don't think you have to keep up with the next person.

Do whatever you feel comfortable in.

My husband and I both had very active lives.

You know, we snowmobiled.

We...my husband flew.

My husband flew me different places...when I, when I won a prize over Bloomington, Indiana, he flew me over there one day to see my quilt.

He flew me up to Holland, Michigan one time to teach a class and do a trunk show.

We incorporated what he loved to do and what I love to do.

Quilting is therapy.

And I know after my husband died, I knew what I had to do.

I knew before he died that, you know, I had to go ahead and take care of myself, because then my son was in the nursing home, and I had to go ahead and help him the rest of his life, which is a very difficult time.

But, I could go home, get my sewing machine out and sew.

And you go in, and you forget about all your problems.

I'm 95, and I exercise every day.

I get up on the floor every morning.

I exercise on the floor.

Then I get up.

I can get up in the middle floor every day.

A lot of people can't at my age.

I keep my mind busy.

I don't dwell on not being able to do this or do that, and you know that's what life's all about.

Now, we'd like to introduce you to two friends who met when they were students at the University of Illinois who recognized the art of self expression through hip hop.

They called themselves Mother Nature, and we had the opportunity to sit down with them and talk about their careers and catch a little performance recently in Champaign.

[music] What's up?

I'm Klevah Knox, one half of Mother Nature.

MC, designer, jeweler.

I'm Truth...MC, songwriter, one of Mother Nature.

[music] We were in a RSO on U of I campus, and we were pretty much one of the few women MCs there, and we just kind of cultivated a bond with each other, you know.

It was really the universe, I think that constantly brought us together.

So it's like, you know, of course, if she had would have show opportunities, or I would have show opportunities, we would share the stage.

But there were other people that would, like, bring us together with that opportunity.

We created the project, our first project, called Mother Nature.

It really was a reflection of our time.

I think that music was definitely, you know, more political.

And, like very much so like, we fighting the power, and we were just rooted in, like, man, it's a lot of our younger homies out here that were kind of being stifled, or, or, or, and also dealing with a lot of police brutality at the time.

And we like man, how can we assist in what's going on?

And then the name Mother Nature came from us, just like, man, what is this like?

What word, like?

The most powerful thing that you can think of that is also, you know, has all these different elements to it... Soft and sweet, but hard and rough and like all of this, just like Mother Nature!

Champaign is definitely where Mother Nature was cultivated, like that seed was planted.

I would say the first moment that caught me was the process of creating that, that first project.

Sometimes we would...she would just pull up to my to my house at the time, when we in my room, and we coming up with ideas, and we just and it's like water.

It's just flowing.

It always made...it was, it was just organic.

It was one of those type of feelings.

So when we started to see it now we in front of people, it's like, oh, now y'all see it.

We were already just sharing so much space with each other, doing our activism work, speaking for the community, speaking for the youth of Champaign-Urbana and this is like right at the on of Black Lives Matter starting and we pretty much got invited to the first Black Lives convening in Ohio and we had no idea what we were We just, like, had an opportunit and we went for it.

And it really, really opened our eyes to like how necessary it is to have conversation about hip hop with your peers or with young people, how necessary it is to like reflect on what Hip Hop teaches and how it shapes our identity and how it shapes the world arou and you know, how it has helped us survive.

[music] So this one is called "Sequoia T "Nature's World," and it's about ["Sequoia Treez" - Mother Nature ["Sequoia Treez" - Mother Nature Mother Nature, y'all.

Peace and Yeah!

And finally, as growing season returns to Illinois, we have an encore presentation of our story about Sola Gratia Farm in Urbana.

It's a community supported agricultural organizat with a mission to make healthy food available to everyone.

Sola Gratia means by grace alone The idea is that we all have something to give and share with and through God's grace, we are serving our community and Sola Gratia Farm is an urban far and we have a lot of partnership Sola Gratia Farm is an urban far and we have a lot of partnership with food access service provide in our community, like the Eastern Illinois Food Bank, Cafe, Daily Bread Soup Kitchen, a number of food pantries.

So we're growing good, healthy, fresh food and making it available for those that have limited means.

Since the beginning of Sola Grat Farm, we've had a CSA.

It's Community Supported Agricul and it works like a subscription So, people sign up to become mem of the farm, and then each week, they are sharing in the risk and the reward of the f and getting the bounty.

So it's really a tremendous way to eat seasonally and just see, you know, what hits your box.

You know, if you think about what vegetables are, kind of the standard...there's like, 12 to 15 that most people eat regularly.

So we're helping people broaden their palate, try new things, and really connect around good food.

When I started, the farm was at about six to eight acres in production, and since then, we've expanded.

Our output has production, and since then, we've expanded.

Our output has certainly increased quite, quite a bit.

It's been, you know, the farm has been around since 2012 so we're in our 14th season right now.

The farm was started, really in partnership with St Matthew Lutheran Church and faith in place, with four acres of land on the campus of St Matts.

We worked those four acres pretty hard.

We're following sustainable, regenerative growing practices, but it's still hard on soil to keep planting and planting and planting.

And so we started looking around at what was available and undertook a very large fundraising campaign to be able to purchase not only 29 acres, but also build a building that could house our staff, a new wash pack facility, so we're meeting the best food safety standards, and then also just created a space that allowed for additional partnerships and growth, not only for production, but also the education outreach.

Our partnership with Jubilee Cafe is a really special one.

I mean, we're very aware that we are the producers, and we're very rarely the distributors, where we're directly serving our neighbors in need, but when we can partner with groups like Jubilee Cafe and the United Church of Christ to turn our hard work here in the fields and growing food into a nourishing meal and really a community building space and event that just means the world to us.

That's full circle.

When we started Jubilee in 2017 one of the things that we realized that we needed in order to make this work sustainable is we're going to have to have community partners.

So we started this partnership with with Sola Gratia, and they...some of that food we end up cooking and using in our meals, and some of it we end up putting out on our free table so that our guests can like they have food that they can cook if they have access to kitchens at home.

I just had experiences in other soup kitchens where, it just, it didn't feel good to eat there.

And we wanted to...we wanted to create a place where we fed more than hungry bodies, more than hungry bellies, where people also had a sense of community and connection, but they were also treated with the most dignity and respect that they could be.

And we serve food that, as much as we possibly can, that we make from scratch.

It's food we want to eat, right?

I think it is a sin to serve people food that you would not want to eat yourself.

And so we serve people gorgeous, delicious food.

We've served over 27,000 meals, and we want to keep going, but we can only keep going because Sola Gratia exists, right?

If they didn't exist, we would have to source those vegetables someplace else, and certainly sourcing locally grown organic vegetables, which, you know, reduce our carbon footprint make it all better for the Earth and better for creation.

That would be really hard to do.

I mean, from day one, why I've been at Sola Gratia is the mission to feed the community.

You know, I remember growing up not eating a whole lot of vegetables, not eating a whole lot of fresh produce.

It was just kind of my preference as a kid to avoid those.

And so, you know, I think what keeps me going is when I see, you know, a kid at market that's, like, super excited about that purple kohlrabi, or the purple pepper, or, like, come up and say, "Man, I really love the okra."

Like to see the next generation really excited about fresh produce options.

Food brings people together.

Food is nourishment.

Food is joy.

And I really want for more people to have that investment in their health and well being.

There's a lot of things working against people eating well right now.

And I just feel like, generationally, we've we've lost a lot, and there's an opportunity to get that back.

So, it's really about people feeling well and serving each other.

And I think the more I witness that, and the more I'm part of it, the more I just want to keep being a part of it, so, I love it.

It is hard, but I'm proud to be doing this work.

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