(woman) Prairie Mosaic is funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008, the North Dakota Council on the Arts, and by the members of Prairie Public.

(woman) Welcome to... a patchwork of stories about the arts, culture, and history in our region.

Hi, I'm Barb Gravel.

Welcome to Prairie Mosaic.

And I'm Troy Davis.

On this edition we'll meet people from around our region who are filled with creativity and innovation.

For example, Frederick McKinley Jones, one of Minnesota's most accomplished inventors.

And a Native American artist who stays connectected to her culture.

Yes Troy, I'm always inspired by the resourceful folks in our region.

Blair Treuer never considered herself a storyteller until she started working with fabrics.

She uses textiles to tell stories of family, spirituality, and change, all inspired by her husband and nine children.

Blair weaves fabric and thread together to express what others might create on a canvas.

[soft gurgling of the waterfall] [soft, steady beat of a sewing machine]] (Blair Treuer) For some reason it just came naturally to me.

to be a storyteller, even though I never would've described myself like that.

[soft, steady beat of the sewing machine]] I am creating pieces that don't look like anything anybody's ever seen.

They were like reading tea leaves for me in how they captured the essence of my child and what that meant, and I quickly realized that I was a storyteller.

My name is Blair Treuer.

And I call myself a textile artist.

I make portraits out of fabric.

I've been engaged in this process of making artwork professionally for about 5 years now.

And I really want to be clear and not call myself a quilter.

I feel like that is a different skillset.

Being a master quilter means that you've mastered a lot of specific quilting techniques, and I have not.

I instead approach my work more like a painting.

They don't look anything like your typical quilt.

All of my children and my husband are Native American.

And we have a ceremony that is the pinnacle experience of my children's spiritual life.

For that ceremony I'm required to make blankets as part of their offering.

So it is the only contribution that I can make to this incredibly important spiritual journey that my children are on.

So after all of that production of a ceremony was over, I decided to see what I was really made of with this work.

It didn't take me too long to realize I actually love exploring art through fabric.

So to practice this craft, I did a portrait of each of my 9 children and my husband and myself.

And that was my very first solo show.

I usually have a vision in my head of what the piece should be.

And the first thing that I do is, I create the face.

All of my pieces are portraits.

So the face is the most critical area for me.

I prefer to just feel it out in real time with my fabric as I go.

The way that I work, I cut small pieces, then I attach it with just a little bit of glue from a glue stick.

So I can change my mind very easily.

So I can be really playful that way with my work in a way that I couldn't be if I were painting or drawing.

They're all a labor of love.

They take days to sew after I've created the image.

Up until recently the longest I'd worked on the same piece was about 4 months.

Right now I've been working on the same piece for about a year.

So I've taken a lot of time to just explore new techniques, to try new things, to hate it and rip it up and start over.

One of the greatest stories about working with fabric is I'm not creating anything that has to be functional.

So I can pair fabrics together that do not belong.

They have velvet, they have upholstery, they have my kids old Halloween costumes cut up in there.

Fabric brings out so much in me I've been working that I don't think I'd be able to connect to as readily with paint.

A lot of my work ended up being a reflection on what life has been like for me as a white woman in a Native American family.

What that has done is, it has really made me analyze my worldview.

Being confronted with a belief system that is not what I was raised in has forced me to ask myself questions about life and about how I see the world.

My second body of work was essentially about my daughter getting her period.

One friend was like, are you sure your daughter is going to be okay with you doing a show about her period?

Isn't she going to find that horribly embarrassing?

And I asked her "Why would I be embarrassed?"

Embarrassment was not an emotion that she had ever attached to that experience.

The reason I wanted to express that story through art is because she had an incredibly beautiful experience.

There was a beautiful ceremony for her.

She was completely empowered.

All of the men in the room were crying.

it was so beautiful.

I want people to understand the story.

I would love for my work to be interesting enough that they will see what that piece is actually about.

Helping people think differently about our interconnectedness, about our relationship to each other-- that greater narrative is really important to me.

My hope would be that people who see my work have the opportunity to lean into that narrative.

Frederick McKinley Jones is one of Minnesota's most prolific inventors, but also one of its least known.

As a self-taught engineer, he's the brilliant mind behind over 60 patents including the modern refrigerated truck.

Jones' legacy lives on even today through his inventions and achievements.

[piano & horns play Dixieland style jazz] (Cindy Adams) A lot of the community in Hallock they thought of Fred McKinley Jones, they called him Casey, if they had a problem, if they needed something fixed, they would go and ask him.

As long as he was in a shop with tools and machines, he was creating.

As early as 5 years old he had an interest in tearing apart items and trying to figure out how they worked.

Frederick McKinley Jones was a self-taught inventor and engineer.

He was born in Covington, Kentucky in 1893.

His father was American Irish, and his mother was African American.

His father worked for the railroad, and he felt that he needed to have a better life for Fred.

He brought him to the church, and that's where he was raised.

He never saw his father again.

When he was 16, he ran away and started working on his own.

He ended up in Effingham, Illinois, and then he met a guy who was talking about a farm up in Hallock, Minnesota.

It was a big farm that belonged to Walter Hill, James J. Hill's son.

He heard about all these machines that he needed to work on up there.

So he thought this would be a perfect opportunity.

And on Christmas day in 1912, he arrived in Hallock, and in the spring he started working on the Hill farm.

Anything like their head engineer for their steam engines or tractors.

He was fascinated with motors and how to fix things.

If there wasn't a tool to fix something.

he'd make the tool to fix the item.

So he was so innovative and creative.

He felt really welcome here.

He mentioned how they never really looked at his color.

People just accepted him for who he was.

But he was always working on items for people.

He built a radio transmission system, he built a portable X-ray machine for the local hospital.

And one of the big ones that really got his start, he put sound to silent movies in the local theater in Hallock.

That caught wind of Joseph Numero who had the cinema company down in Minneapolis.

They were having a lot of problems switching over to sound on their machines, and he heard through the grapevine from other theaters about Fred McKinley Jones in Hallock, Minnesota who had put the sound to this machine.

So he contacted him and asked him to come and work for him.

So that was the beginning of where the inventions started to get patented.

He had like over 60 patents.

And the major invention while he was with Numero was the refrigerated car.

Once the refrigeration thing came into play, it turned it into Thermo-King Industries.

Fred McKinley Jones was the main engineer there.

Jones developed a unit to go inside the trailer of a semi and keep it refrigerated.

From then on we got fresh eggs, chickens, ice cream.

When you think about it, we get our frozen items from all over the United States.

(male narrator) From the time food is prepared for use, or picked on farm and orchard, refrigeration protects it and keeps it fresh and safe.

Food is refrigerated on trains, in trucks, and then in the retail store where you buy it and take it into your home.

(Cindy Adams) The whole world actually benefits from what he invented.

During World War II he was also hired by the Department of Defense to work in the industry to help keep the hospitals cool, to keep the blood and plasma cool.

So he worked on things like that too.

I don't think he really got financially credited for all the work he did.

I think he was maybe taken advantage of because of his color too.

We never learned about it.

There was nothing in our history books about him, and I think it's really important for our youth now to learn about him.

We have a small exhibit here of him.

Hallock has a mural that they put up of him.

He contributed a lot to our society, and I just want to carry it on forward that he is continued to be recognized.

He came from nothing, and he just had a drive that made him move forward.

I think that McKinley Jones opened the path for other black inventors.

I think they were able to see that anyone can do anything if you put your mind to it.

(male narrator) While we've had many spectacular inventions in our time, it's doubtful if any of these have added as much to your comfort and convenience as modern refrigeration.

(Cindy Adams) What is cool to this day is if you're sitting watching the train go by, if you look, pay attention to the cars, you can see some cars that still say Thermo King on the front.

Or meet a semi going down the road, Thermo King is across the top.

These are all from Fred McKinley Jones.

There's a freedom in being your authentic self, and Penny Kagigebi strives to promote that freedom so everyone can find their path.

Penny has always had a love for art that has helped connect her to her Native American culture and Two-Spirit relatives.

The quill boxes and birchbark baskets that she creates have become an outlet for handing down traditions, knowledge, and artmaking.

[piano plays softly] (Penny Kagigebi) It's hard to be here; life is hard.

But one of the gifts we have is beauty.

And artwork is beauty that walks through the day with us.

I was born in Mahnomen, raised on the White Earth Reservation, and I have always lived near, on, or adjacent to the White Earth Reservation.

My mother went to boarding school at White Earth, and my father's family was Scandinavian.

I got really interested in artwork when I was in high school.

When I started looking to reconnect culturally, I started making artwork as ceremony gifts.

In the late '90s I saw a quill box for the first time.

It was like I'd been struck by lightening.

I knew that that was my path, was to make quill boxes.

What quill boxes are, they're this elegant combination of birchbark and porcupine quills and sweetgrass, and they serve as a storage container for dried foods or dried medicines.

In 2014 I went to work with Mel Losh in Bena on the Leech Lake Reservation and learned how to make quill boxes from him.

I have to find a piece of bark that's big enough for what I'm trying to accomplish.

So if I want a really big basket, that can be limited by the size of the tree.

The tree I really like peeling bark from is a birch tree that would be standing kind of out by itself in a sunny area.

It affects how the bark grows and how pliable it is I have to soak the bark to make it pliable again, cut out the bark, bring it together in a form, and then tie it off and let it dry for several days.

I go into a meditation and see what images come to me, what designs come to me.

I'm able to sketch that out onto the birchbark and apply the quills, apply the beads.

Then I have to consider the collar on the top.

I like that collar to match the bark that I'm using for the basket itself.

The process of putting a porcupine quill into the bark is a woodland style of doing quillwork.

I'll soak them in water and make them pliable like a rubber band.

And once they're pliable, we're able to take an awl and put holes in the birchbark and place the quill through the holes in that birchbark.

As the quill dries, they grab onto each other, and it holds that quill in place.

I find that I'm more interested in doing things that are a little bit out of the ordinary.

A lot of my baskets have machine sewn ribbonwork on them now, or I'm adding beadwork to introduce color That's moving them into more of a contemporary expression of basketry.

Sometimes people don't recognize what I'm doing because it's unusual to see that color brought into that medium in that way.

Right now I have baskets that are being shown in the exhibit Queering Indigeneity at the Minnesota Museum of American Art in St.

Paul.

The exhibit itself is a community collaboration of queer and 2-Spirit native artists from the upper Midwest.

The term 2-Spirit is kind of a modern term, but the concept is ancient.

It's a queer, but absolutely has to be a Native American person.

And a result of assimilation and boarding schools, a lot of people feel like they don't have a place or right to be present in their communities A lot of my work in the last few years has really focused on 2-Spirit cultural reclamation.

So that is both the drawing in the knowledge and the understanding of the value and the celebration of 2-Spirit people and also providing safe spaces and places for people to come and feel like they can just be themselves.

There's a freedom in being able to just come forward as your authentic self.

We've particularly designed this moment and this time and that place for that opportunity for people.

Having my baskets there is super exciting because I did particularly create some of those pieces to advocate for 2-Spirit relatives everywhere, and I'm really glad that I got an opportunity to both curate there and have my baskets in the exhibit.

One of the pieces that's at the exhibit is a basket that's called Anishinaabeg Descend.

That one was a particular effort on my part to retell the story of how Anishinaabe people descended from the stars.

Here to Turtle Island.

There's a blue and red double helix as we descended from the stars here to earth.

That red and blue double helix is red for women, blue for men, but through the center were the 2-Spirit people providing balance so that we could arrive here safely.

Working with birchbark and working with porcupine quills I've really deepened my understanding of my culture.

But more so in the fact that what I'm doing to help others that come behind me-- that is a primary focus for any Anishinaabe person is what do we leave for those who are coming behind us?

Being able to teach, being able to leave a legacy of some sort really fulfills that need within myself.

One of the things I've learned about making quill boxes and working in community is that each of us has a unique path.

When I talk about feeling like I was struck by lightening the first time I saw that quill box-- I think each of us has that within ourselves.

We should look for the thing that lights us up, and we should go for that because I think that's how we know what it was that we came here to do.

That's our path, that's where we're meant to go.

That's what'll bring us joy, and that's where the freedom and being our authentic self comes in.

Patty Kakac from Evansville, Minnesota has spent nearly 40 years performing as a solo artist and with groups in the Upper Midwest.

She performs original songs on instruments including guitar, autoharp, and harmonica.

Enjoy a segment of her performance from Prairie Musicians.

♪ ♪ When I was a little girl I used to pick ♪ ♪ A handful of dandelions ♪ ♪ Then I'd stick them under my chin ♪ ♪ And face the sun to see if I liked butter ♪ ♪ And Momma would take out her fresh warm bread ♪ ♪ She'd slice it up called us in and said ♪ ♪ Go easy on the jelly but you can spread ♪ ♪ Lots of nice fresh butter ♪ ♪ Oh ♪ ♪ I'm in heaven when I can eat butter ♪ ♪ Pure real sweet cream butter ♪ ♪ Butter in the morning on my toast and jam ♪ ♪ Butter in the evening on potatoes and yams ♪ ♪ I can eat anything yes I can If it's ♪ ♪ All smothered in butter ♪ [autoharp solo] ♪ Now a good farmer knows when you buy a cow ♪ ♪ You look at her different that you do a sow ♪ ♪ You want good legs and you want a good udder and you ask ♪ ♪ How much butter ♪ ♪ 'Cause a good cow gives milk with lots of cream ♪ ♪ And reality turns into a dream ♪ ♪ When you beat it or churn or shake it till you utter ♪ ♪ Ah!

It's turned to butter ♪ ♪ Well I'm in heaven when I can eat ♪ ♪ Butter ♪ ♪ Pure real sweet cream butter ♪ ♪ Butter in the morning on my toast and jam ♪ ♪ Butter in the evening on potatoes and yams ♪ ♪ I can eat anything yes I can If it's ♪ ♪ All smothered in butter ♪ ♪ ♪ But now everyone you meet is on a health kick ♪ ♪ If you eat butter you'll sure get sick ♪ ♪ You might even die someday in the gutter ♪ ♪ If you if you eat butter ♪ ♪ So keep that butter off that roll ♪ ♪ 'Cause butter's got lots of cholesterol ♪ ♪ When they bring out the bread stand and stutter ♪ ♪ I I can't have butter ♪ ♪ Well how can I ever be in heaven if I can't have ♪ ♪ Butter ♪ ♪ Pure real sweet cream butter ♪ ♪ Butter in the morning on my toast and jam ♪ ♪ Butter in the evening on potatoes and yams ♪ ♪ I can eat anything yes I can If it's ♪ ♪ All smothered in butter ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ So if you stick something in your mouth ♪ ♪ That tastes real good just spit it out ♪ ♪ 'Cause it will kill you there's no doubt ♪ ♪ Don't you ♪ ♪ Don't you eat butter ♪ ♪ And the grocery dairy case is all a-clutter ♪ ♪ With things that claim they taste like butter ♪ ♪ But when you eat it your taste buds will mutter ♪ ♪ NO that ain't butter ♪ ♪ Well how can I ever be in heaven if I can't have ♪ ♪ Butter ♪ ♪ Pure sweet cream butter ♪ ♪ Butter in the morning on my toast and jam ♪ ♪ Butter in the evening on potatoes and yams ♪ ♪ I can eat anything yes I can If it's ♪ ♪ All smothered in butter ♪ ♪ ♪ Well guess someday ♪ ♪ I'll just have to die ♪ ♪ 'Cause I hate eating my popcorn dry ♪ ♪ And when my time comes you'll hear me cry ♪ ♪ I yes I'm afraid I ate butter ♪ ♪ But when I meet Peter at heaven's gate ♪ ♪ He'll say, "Come on in you're not too late ♪ ♪ I'll know you'll like it here above ♪ ♪ 'Cause everything's cooked with butter and love" ♪ ♪ Well now I'm in heaven 'cause I can eat ♪ ♪ Butter ♪ ♪ Pure real sweet cream butter ♪ ♪ Butter in the morning on my toast and jam ♪ ♪ Butter in the evening on potatoes and yams ♪ ♪ I can eat anything yes I can If it's ♪ ♪ All smothered in butter ♪ ♪ I can eat anything yes I can ♪ [spoken in high voice imitating Julia Child] Well, Julia Child here.

I had to sneak in!

You know I was down on earth, I was on Public Television a lot, but now I'm up here in heaven, and I can have lots of butter!

My favorite food is mashed potatoes with lots of butter!

♪ I can eat anything yes I can ♪ ♪ If it's smothered in butter ♪ ♪ If you know of an artist, topic, or an organization in our region that you think might make for an interesting segment, please contact us at... (Troy) You can stream this and other episodes of "Prairie Mosaic" online, and be sure to follow Prairie Public on social media for more updates and content.

I'm Troy Davis.

And I'm Barb Gravel.

Thank you for joining us for another edition of "Prairie Mosaic."

[guitar, bass, and drums play in bright country rhythm] (Barb) Prairie Mosaic is funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008, the North Dakota Council on the Arts and by the members of Prairie Public.