(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 Andy Garske.

Today we're excited to feature two amazing artists in our region.

One has perfected the art of decoy making, and the other developed his love for pottery in a high school art class.

And one of my favorite stories is on the show today Andy.

it centers around a shared love for flying out of Bemidji, Minnesota.

Yes, Barb, the Moberg Fly-in is a weekend that brings together pilots, spectators, and individuals interested in learning more about aviation.

In addition to camping and entertainment, the community can experience the sights, sounds, and stories of flight.

[acoustic guitar plays in bright rhythm] You know, flying is definitely a passion thing.

Since I can remember being a little kid, just staring at airplanes, loved airplanes.

I got my first airplane ride from a friend of my dad's, and remember it like it was yesterday.

There's a lot of people that go into aviation for the career, then you'll find those people that just love the pure joy of flying.

[loud whirring of the airplane engine] (Carter Lindquist) We're currently in Bemidji, Minnesota at out Moberg's Air Base for our Moberg Fly-in.

Our fly-in here is a gathering that gets our EAA Chapter together and allows people around the state, Minnesota, North Dakota, whoever wants to come and fly with us.

(Brian Shaw) This will be the 15th year of the Moberg Fly-in.

Typically a fly-in is just like a car show.

It's just a way to get common interest airplane guys together.

Whether they can fly to it or drive to it, it's a good time to converse and hang out with fellow pilots and see different airplanes.

We've had everything from $4 million Kodiaks come in to experimental one-man Volkswagen powered ultralights.

(Carter Lindquist) The underwing campaign is what it means-- under the wing.

They'll use their wing as their rain cover essentially, and if it rains the wing will wash the water from their tent and stuff.

A lot of the older people that started aviation many years ago have stories that you can't believe are true.

Their knowledge and experience that they've done in 40 years of flying.

It's been a great experience of learning of what they used to do back in the day with no GPS.

Now the younger generation is teaching some of the older generation of the new electronics that they have they are testing.

It makes flying a lot easier.

Our event here, the years that have been good weather and landed on good times we've had up to 47 airplanes about half of them being seaplanes, half of them on wheels.

And that's the joy of this location at Moberg Airbase is we have a nice 2,000 foot draft runway, and then we have a mile of lake.

(Carter Lindquist) It's not too often that there's a grass strip and a water landing at the same place, so it opens up to both wheel aircraft and float aircraft for one single fly-in.

It makes it pretty unique, especially in Minnesota.

There's only maybe 2 other airports that have a little bit of water nearby.

(Brian Shaw) Floatplanes in general, locally about floatplanes is as you would imagine, it's fun to go flying, but you can't just pull out and visit people unless they have a runway, so with a floatplane, you got the lake.

There's a lot of people that have lakes, there's restaurants on lakes up here in Northern Minnesota, so it becomes a lot more social.

You can go places, visit people, stop.

The reason I love floatplanes, 2 reasons, my family likes to go to Canada, and we have a camp up there.

it's remote, so it takes 5, 6 hours to get there on land where we can be there in less than 2 hours on the plane.

And just that freedom of not having to sit in line at the border.

You do a quick land on the water and check in, it's usually 5, 10 minutes.

And the nice thing about a floatplane is, you're always landing into the wind, so you don't have to fight those crosswinds you would on a hard surface runway.

(Carter Lindquist) Going up in the air and flying, it's so hard to explain in words.

It opens up new visions of life.

When you fly little GA airplanes, you're flying between 1,000 to 3,000 feet above the ground versus 35,000 feet.

You can see a lot more, you can still see the ground, you can see the terrain, you can see the people driving in their cars, people outside walking.

Pretty cool things that, yeah you can fly in a big airliner, but it's never going to be the same as hopping in a little airplane.

The advice that I'd have for people getting into aviation-- no matter how old you are, how young you are, you can start at any time.

People have started when they hit retirement, and they've gotten their license, and start another job.

Or just the passion of just flying around.

It's never too late to experience it.

(Brian Shaw) We're trying hard to keep it alive and grow it each year.

We've been doing it for 15 years and hopefully to continue it for another 15.

It's always going to be the week or two after Oshkosh.

We like to put a little timespan in there for people to get home and settle in and look for another adventure.

Butch Pavlacky first discovered his love of creating with clay in high school.

And after working on the railroad for many years, he got the opportunity to return to his pottery wheel.

Now he creates functional pieces like mugs and vases for everyday use out of his studio in Vergas, Minnesota.

[acoustic guitar plays softly] (Butch Pavlacky) It's complicated, but it's simple.

If I can do it, anybody can do it.

I first got interested in pottery in '71 or '72 at Staples High School.

It was something about the wheel.

The clay gets in you.

I couldn't get enough of it once I did it.

I spent all the free time that I could and get in there and do it.

Then I went to Bemidji State To study pottery in school wasn't for me.

So I got married, had kids, worked on the railroad, and after about 25 years I had the opportunity to start again.

We started out by doing a few shows, and it was well-received giving me incentive to do it more and get better at it.

I don't consider myself an artist, I'm a craftsman.

I like to make a good sturdy pot that looks good, yet it will hold up to kitchen use doing functional stuff.

This is going to get used as a medium mixing bowl more than likely unless somebody grows a flower in it or something.

I like to put this thick rim on them.

That way it'll take a little ding in the sink or in the kitchen.

Just makes it a little more sturdy.

I start with the clay.

The more amount of clay you use, the harder it gets.

It's about the centering it, and you've got to have some strength to do it.

Form it, trim it the next day, put on the handles, do whatever you have to do.

Then it goes on a drying rack.

Once it's on the drying rack you don't have to worry about it.

You can leave it there for a year if you want to.

It'll be 2, 3 weeks, and then it's fired.

We're waxing the bottom with paraffin wax to repel the glaze when we dip them.

Otherwise, if that's glaze it will stay attached to the shelf when it turns to glass.

The art part probably comes in with the glazing.

It's basically sand mixed with water.

When you dip a bisque-fired pot into it, the water sucks into the pot, and it leaves like a coating of sand on the outside.

When you fire it at 2230 degrees it turns to glass, so it's waterproof and useable.

The clay I use will only take up to a certain temperature and it starts doing weird stuff-- it'll bloat or pinhole.

There's all kinds of little problems that come out when you push your stuff higher than it's supposed to be.

The glazes are made to fit the clays that use it.

There's a shrinkage on the clay, and the glazes have to shrink with it.

So if you push it too hard, the glaze will come off the pot.

It'll end up on the shelf, and you've got a mess.

I kind of know when I unload the kiln, well, I need a bunch of bowls in this color, I need mugs in that color.

That kind of determines what color I'm going to do on a piece.

Vase is a little bit different.

I play with vases more, that's my favorite thing to make.

You can do more experimentation and stuff with that.

I make a coffee mug, I know what I want it to look like when it gets done.

With a vase, the kiln can maybe do something special for me.

I really love pulling the clay.

After center and opening, to watch the pot grow, I just get a kick out of it every time.

You can concentrate on the piece, and everything else goes away.

You sell a lot more of the smaller stuff than you do the bigger stuff because of the price.

I put a price on a pot that I would pay myself.

I get told that I'm too reasonable, too reasonable, but, the other potters have told me that's way too much of a pot for that price.

Somebody will buy one of my coffee mugs where they won't spend a bunch of money on a coffee mug.

Once they get started collecting pottery, then that's a good thing for me.

With repeating the colors and making all different mugs-- soup mugs, sets of bowls, utensil holders-- it seems like people start collecting, and they come back year after year and buy some more pieces same color pattern.

You have really good customers, and I don't know how long they'll come-- 10, 15 years, but eventually they fill up everything with as many pots as they want to buy from you, and they'll start collecting another color and do it all again.

You get so many in here excited.

It isn't just gaining a customer, you gained a bunch of customers.

They tell their parents, their friends.

It makes you feel good about yourself.

When we first started doing shows, and people would ooo and awe, you know, you hear that.

I think I told my wife that, you know, this is the first time in I don't know how long that I feel good about myself.

I've come a long ways from where I started.

I still got a long ways to go.

But I've done it my way, and I'll keep doing it my way.

Wood carver Joel Huener is maintaining the tradition of handmade duck decoys.

Each decoy begins as a simple piece of wood and is slowly transformed through carving, sanding, and painting.

The process takes patience, precision, and a deep appreciation for waterfowl and the region's outdoor heritage.

[acoustic guitar plays softly] [soft scraping] Here's a smaller draw knife.

pulls off those nice curls of cedar that are so satisfying.

I've always kind of enjoyed whittling.

When I was a kid I used to carve little dioramas of wildlife and stuff like that.

By the time I graduated from college my folks bought a new house that had a stone fireplace, and it had a shelf on it that just looked like it was made for an old style duck decoy.

Being a rabid do-it-yourselfer like I am I thought, I think I could make one, and I did.

And it was a lot of fun, and I just kept going from there and getting more and more over my head into carving detailed birds, then ultimately duck decoys.

My name is Joel Huener, I'm a wildlife biologist by trade.

I'm retired now, I like to carve decoys, mostly duck decoys.

I used to carve more detailed birds, and now I just carve birds that have more detail than is necessary to decoy a bird, but when I'm out duck hunting it makes me happy to see them out floating in front of me.

Since I was really young I was interested in animals and nature.

I especially got interested in waterfowl when I started learning about them because you could have a whole bunch of different species in one place rather than just one species at a time.

I found that fascinating.

That just means you just get more species to carve different kinds of decoys.

That's part of the attraction.

The earliest duck decoys I think were from, I don't know how many thousands of years ago in a cave in Nevada they found recognizable canvasback decoys woven out of bulrush.

And back in the 1800s when people were using punt guns and everything else, it became a way to make market gunning more efficient, and that's when decoy carving really took off.

It was mostly along the East Coast, a little bit along the West Coast, not as much in the middle until later.

And even today you see that the big carving competitions are in Maryland and along the Eastern Seaboard or up in Seattle or California.

To carve a wooden decoy the first thing is, you've got to have a plan.

You've got to have something that you're going to cut out and figure out where everything is.

I've got a whole notebook full of plans with birds that I've carved in the past, some of which I like, some of which I've grown beyond, and I won't repeat that pattern.

If they're going to be working birds, you're got to be cognizant of the grain of the wood because you want the grain running along areas where the wood is thin.

So you want it running along the bill, along the tailfeathers.

I'm carving heads I typically carve them out of basswood.

Basswood is a very even grained wood, it takes detail well.

The bodies I do out of northern white cedar.

I will cut out a block in 2 pieces and lag bolt them together.

A real hazard that beginning carvers have is they're reluctant to take off too much wood.

So they end up with kind of a square profile block.

Of course, that's not natural-- the bird is round.

What I do is sketch in high points that I want to round to and also sketch in a waterline.

This is one of the funner parts in carving a decoy, that is, using a draw knife.

I rough carve them, get those spots in shape and take those 2 pieces apart and hollow them out from the inside, then glue them together.

So I've got a hollow bird, then I give them an oak keel that's weighted internally with lead.

What I want to end up is a decoy that's self-righting which means you can throw it out and it will turn right side up, it won't float on its side or float upside-down.

Once you've got it all glued up, glued together, varnish them, base coats, them finish coats of paint.

I paint in acrylic, there is some drying time but nothing near what there is with oil.

On the other hand you have to use some special techniques to try and blend things with acrylics that you don't have to do with oil.

You can just hit the median value for that color, and that'll be fine for a working decoy, but it's more fun if they actually look more like a real bird, so it's fun to monkey with vermiculation.

Vermiculation is very fine wavy lines on feathers.

On dabbling ducks only the drakes have it, the hens don't have vermiculated feathers.

It's a way to tell birds apart when you've got them in hand.

The way I do it is, I use heavy body acrylic paint, and I actually have a comb.

You paint that stuff on fairly thick, then you pull the comb through while moving it back and forth, and you end up with a wavy line.

Then once you let that dry, you've got peaks and valleys, then you come and dry brush that.

Dry brushing is using a brush.

You load it up with paint, then take most of the paint out with a paper towel, then lightly draw it across the top of it, and you end up with a dark on light pattern of coloration that matches those parallel markings.

These are a couple of the bags of my working birds.

This case, we have the mallard bag then one with redheads and canvasbacks.

I enjoy huntin' over detailed birds.

Even when the duck hunting is really good, you're not shooting the whole time.

You're sittin' there watchin' birds float.

And they look good in the bag.

I've been hunting for years, I've got some that have hunted for over 40 seasons.

I've got a few decoys that I have the ashes of my first and second lab inside, so they get to keep hunting with me.

It's a little bit more work, but it's worth it.

I probably do a dozen in a year, I could do more, but right now that's about what I'm comfortable with.

Ultimately I'm covering most of my birds to go float on out in the marsh and go duck hunting with.

And that gives me satisfaction.

When you've got birds, workin' the block, and they're a species that you've carved, that's pretty gratifying.

Scarlett Woods found a way to weave years of life and travel experiences into her eclectic lyrics.

Her go-to musical genres are Americana, jazz, and rock 'n' roll.

And she stopped by our studio to give us an in-person performance.

[finger-picking in bright rhythm] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Tall tales dark roads ♪ ♪ The way is never what is seems ♪ ♪ A blind man walks a life ♪ ♪ Choosing steps he'll never see ♪ ♪ Higher tides rolling in ♪ ♪ A tree is worth more dead than alive ♪ ♪ A digital world of lies ♪ ♪ Praising greed as the bottom line ♪ ♪ Oo-oo-oo oo-oo-oo ♪ ♪ I hope you don't mind working out deep philosophical ♪ ♪ Issues now ♪ ♪ Oh this ♪ ♪ Life somehow ♪ ♪ Go chase a dream or climb that ladder ♪ ♪ Yelled out loud ♪ ♪ Either way I want you ♪ ♪ Inside my life somehow ♪ ♪ ♪ Somehow ♪ [imitating a trumpet] ♪ Da da-da-da-da-da da-da-da ♪ ♪ ♪ Da-da-da da-da-da da-da-da-da da-da-da ♪ ♪ Time runs in old shoes ♪ ♪ Laces break and you learn to make-do ♪ ♪ A self-worth journey ♪ ♪ Befriending my enemy ♪ ♪ Lonesome make-believe ♪ ♪ Holding hands not a blue-lit screen ♪ ♪ Breathing every chance ♪ ♪ That reminds you of ♪ ♪ What's real ♪ ♪ Oo-oo-oo oo-oo-oo oo-oo-oo-oo-oo ♪ ♪ I hope you don't mind working out ♪ ♪ Deep philosophical issues now ♪ ♪ Oh this life ♪ ♪ Somehow ♪ ♪ ♪ Go chase a dream or climb that ladder ♪ ♪ Ya yelled out loud ♪ ♪ Either way I want you inside ♪ ♪ My life somehow ♪ ♪ Ooo oh-oh-oh ♪ ♪ ♪ I hope you don't mind working out deep philosophical ♪ ♪ Issues now ♪ ♪ Oh this life ♪ ♪ Somehow ♪ ♪ ♪ Go chase a dream or climb that ladder ♪ ♪ Yelled out loud ♪ ♪ Either way I want you inside my life ♪ ♪ Somehow ♪ ♪ ♪ Somehow ♪ ♪ [guitar intro] [playing rhythmic rock] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Two thousand miles away from home ♪ ♪ Sitting on a Portland porch ♪ ♪ Alone ♪ ♪ ♪ I know you think I'm crazy ♪ ♪ But I wouldn't have it ♪ ♪ Any other way ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ I know this world is full of fear ♪ ♪ But I just need to feel you ♪ ♪ In your bed ♪ ♪ ♪ Can't wait to see your face again ♪ ♪ Two years too long since me made love ♪ ♪ That fed ♪ ♪ Oh oh that fed ♪ ♪ Pull my mouth ♪ ♪ Into yours ♪ ♪ Feel my hands ♪ ♪ Inside yours ♪ ♪ Oh-oh oo-oo oo-oo-oo ♪ ♪ Oh oh-oh-oh-oh ♪ ♪ Ooo oh-oh-oh-oh ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ How 'bout we head out to the coast ♪ ♪ She's been such a long-time ♪ ♪ Good old ♪ ♪ Friend ♪ ♪ ♪ They say this place will be the last ♪ ♪ The human race would have ♪ ♪ Their resting place ♪ ♪ ♪ Oo-oo-oo oo-oo ♪ ♪ Well I'm so glad I have a niece ♪ ♪ Scared to death if I had others ♪ ♪ To feed yeah ♪ ♪ ♪ Oh but this feeling in me right now ♪ ♪ Pulls and pulls me ♪ ♪ Wanting to grow ♪ ♪ You in me now ♪ ♪ Pull my mouth ♪ ♪ Into yours ♪ ♪ Feel my hands ♪ ♪ Inside yours ♪ ♪ Oo-oo oo-oo-oo ♪ ♪ Oo-oo oo-oo-oo ♪ ♪ Oo-oo oo-oo-oo-oo ♪ ♪ Ooo ♪ ♪ ♪ Oo-oo-oo-oo oo-oo ♪ ♪ Oo-oo oo-oo-oo ♪ 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... (Barb) You can stream this and other episodes of Prairie Mosaic online, and follow Prairie Public on social media For more content and updates.

I'm Barb Gravel.

And I'm Andy Garske.

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.