Next on Gallery America, we're in Chandler, Oklahoma, to tell the story of what is it?

We're telling a story with puppets!

puppets!

and backdrops from Hollywood films, collage, art and Alexander Graham Bell Orders of pizza all that and much more coming right now.

Hello, Oklahoma.

Welcome to Gallery America.

A show that brings you great art from Oklahoma and around the nation.

I'm Robert Reid.

And today we are in Chandler, Oklahoma, because there is a museum here right on Route 66 that has some historic marionettes with a fascinating story.

Also.

There's a woman, a lifelong puppeteer from Eufaula, who comes here and still brings in her life.

We're going to meet her right now.

Have a look.

Are you ready for us to begin?

Yeah.

All right.

I like to do things that bring people joy and the.

The puppets often do that.

Hey, any of yall doing any pilfering on the stage in the front lines?

No.

All right, that's good.

You know, a live performance is completely different from seeing something on a screen.

it's a great way to talk to people and whether they're adults or children.

Yeah.

So you all stand up.

But children will respond to a puppet.

And just start telling it.

It's their whole life story.

Well, there were one couple of other.

Feel good.

Yeah, well, come on.

Come on.

lets see them go.

There you go.

All right.

Some of these children had never seen a live performance of any kind.

So I think it's really important.

one and the other, one and the other.

Yeah.

Very cool.

All together.

heads, shoulders, arms legs This is the Flying Hart Playhouse.

When you walk into the playhouse, you see about 50 years of stuff.

I have made no idea how many puppets I have.

You know, hundreds.

This is Mr.

Cool.

He's been around for about 40 years.

I do.

Pompidou.

Pompidou.

Pompidou.

Yeah.

I live on Beautiful Lake Eufaula.

I have a lovely view of the lake.

My favorite room in the house is my back porch and the birds and just being able to relax back there.

Sometimes I'll just get an idea of something and I'll start sketching a picture.

And sometimes what I wind up with looks a lot like the picture, and sometimes not so much.

I was real excited with aliens and Butterfly.

there's the fire, dude.

I enjoyed the puppets from the time I was a child and I made a marionette theater in my backyard out of scrap wood I found in construction sites and did marionette plays.

Being a puppeteer means to me that I get to do pretty much anything!

when I make a puppet.

I start with a sketch.

Then generally.

Well, I'll get on the computer and start figuring out what I want to print.

So I get that figured out.

Then I get the fabric and start cutting it out.

Okay, that's right.

But then I start trying to figure out with the personality, like with these old puppets.

They have personalities, well formed.

with the brand new one.

I'm just still barely working on it.

“I was so afraid... ” My style.

I mean, to me, it's just kind of wild and crazy.

Whatever comes out of my mind.

Chandler has been a wonderful 30 year experience.

The Museum of Pioneer history in Chandler is right on old Route 66, and it is a very authentic feeling, old time museum for people that like old Route 66 things.

The marionettes there are absolutely beautiful.

This is Mrs. Sally Farrell, and it's thanks to her that this happened.

“.. Who was the woman who got you started on this whole project of Miss fay... ” In this room is designated an old school with a you know, I am old enough to remember having a desk that had an ink well theyre pretty handy.

a traveling marionette theater has become an extremely popular project.

Government had given my request to public schools and institutions have brought entertain and instruction to more than 2 million children through the reenactment of historical episodes.

Good morning, class.

My name is Ms. Fay Armstrong.

Well, joann probably remembers more about her history than I do.

So was a spinster here- had to be.

Had to be.

You weren't allowed to get married if you were a teacher back then.

When I am done with our story today, I am going to ask you some questions.

I do remember her and children loved her very much.

She when she died, we we found Puppet in our home and there began our puppet theater and pretty special thing that we have here that she left with us.

And then to find Joanne, who is marvelous.

Well, you told me you had this project idea and you needed someone to advise you on how to operate.

marrionettes, and put on show .

I was just a volunteer here, but that was an interest of mine.

And I said, okay, I will advise you, but I will not get involved with this project because I have too much going on.

And so you said, okay, but, but and then and Joanne and so finally, 29 years later, after doing hundreds of marionette shows, how about Oklahoma history?

After 29 years?

I said, okay, now I'm done.

you drove your car.

I drove that all over this state Could you believe she went to Balko?

do you know where that is?

far northwest Oklahoma.

I don't know how she did it that she did.

I just turned 70.

If I don't do it now, as my daughter said, why are you doing it?

Because if I don't do it now, when am I going to do it?

So it was very satisfying because every time I did it, I would get a little better at it.

You know, I could see progress.

Okay, So I think I'll stand up here and put the head on because as long as I'm still by the car and this still this is sort of the dragon queen part dragon, part human.

And so I've got wings and a big tail and a great big head with my hair out of my mouth.

I am just propelled to do this.

I still find great pleasure in doing this, so I'm going to keep doing it, as my dad says is 99 and going strong.

Do as much as you can as long as you can.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

Joanne still regularly does puppet performances around the state.

You can find more information about her by visiting her website.

Joanne McMillan.

dot tripod dot com Next, we look at another way to suspend reality and performance through painted backdrops from old Hollywood films.

The Hills are alive with the sounds of music.

Yep.

Painted backdrop.

As you'll see right now.

Hollywood started as a green industry.

And, you know, you think of it when it first was conceived as the other side of the continent, there was no national highways.

There was just a little bit of a railroad.

You had to get things there by boat or train.

And so they learned very early on to be very thrifty and to manage their resources really well.

And in the case of the studios, they were all managed like businesses.

So everything was reused in everything possible they could was recycled, even hammered out nails.

I mean, and so the same thing was true with the larger physical assets where there were set pieces like doorways, windows, walls, staircases, or in the case of the scenic arts, they would paint these backdrops for films and then inventory them and put them in storage and catalog them beautiful black and white stills.

They would shoot of them.

And when another movie needed Rome in the background or a nice hallway or a ballroom, they would pull those out first.

And in the art department figure out whether it would work with the set.

They were laying out.

And it wasn't until the decline of the studios I always call the decline like the burning of Rome when Kerkorian sold MGM and and literally sold all the assets that they could and what they didn't sell, they threw into the landfills of Los Angeles or the dumpsters.

So we lost a great deal of legacy and inherited as an artist, seeing these cinematic backdrops for the first time, it was astounding and it was jaw dropping for me.

Having been a scenic artist for 25 years and a practicing studio artist, I was astounded and marveled at the eye and training and ability of the painters who were executing these pieces because I could tell that they were bringing knowledge of painting from direct observation and imbuing these backdrops with that naturalism, sense of color palette, sense of atmosphere and depth for film.

And when you look at these paintings under a lens, they are astonishingly real when they're, quote, real but astonishingly real feeling.

These paintings were designed to be seen relatively closely, but be perceived as infinite.

And it was magical.

The opportunity to bring together the art of the Hollywood backdrop was just too good to pass up.

We were able to bring these backdrops to Boca return to have its premiere here in our city and at our museum.

And of course, this Mount Rushmore from north by northwest.

It was just the climax of this film that lasted, what, 2 minutes?

And yet Cary Grant and even Marie Saint are climbing Mount Rushmore.

I mean, who knew?

But it fools the I, I think there'll be a whole generation that has never seen Sound of Music or Ben-Hur or North by Northwest Singing in the Rain.

This one is really kind of the Whitman sampler of Missionaries of Scenic Painting, and it was important that we got some signature painting titles as well, like Ben-Hur or singing in the Rain or The Sound of Music or North By Northwest, and they all fit in the museum.

Go figure that, including Mount Rushmore.

And, you know, you try to get a 90 foot painting into a conventional museum space that we had to fold it back a little bit.

But we got the full height.

And it's the first thing you see when you come into the museum is in the grand hall is there.

The guys, these scenic artists had to be both technicians and fine artists.

They had to release their ego to paint in collaboration with one another, and they had to have the courage to face up to a 100 foot wide piece of fabric 30 feet tall and begin, as one of the artists shared with me, begin waging battle.

When you approach a canvas that large, you have to you have to prepare yourself to engage because that is not going down lightly and to bend something that large to your will.

It takes courage and also a deep knowledge of how to execute it from start to finish and that was passed on generationally from one artist to the next to the next to the next.

There was nowhere to really learn how to do any of this craft unless you were working in the industry.

The secret to scenic painting for for the cinema.

I mean, because you're painting for the camera lens, you're not painting for an audience, you're not painting for your eye.

And truly a good backing is when you never notice in the films, which is why they never notice what these guys did, because they were painting for the lens.

The most important thing in cinematography is lighting.

Anyone can expose film, but it's how it's exposed is important.

So to create an environment out and for those the studios, they wanted to control everything.

So the only reason why these backdrops currently exist is because they were working assets.

They were not saved because they were precious to history.

Most of Hollywood's history in terms of backdrop painting is gone.

It was very ephemeral, destroyed almost as quickly as it was made.

Unless the studio had the forethought and the ability to manage a collection.

Fortunately, J.C. Backings Corporation, who had a lineage and a connection to JC backings and then 20th century Fox, understood the value of these paintings as rental assets and made a business out of it.

And that's why these paintings exist still.

And so it was a whole science.

And these were in scientists, these were intuitive artists for the most part, that brought their techniques.

A lot of them started playing air painting, which is where they were, would go out obviously in the field and study light at different times of day.

And it's reflection and reaction to surfaces.

Mike Denning, wonderful scenic artist who worked at Warner Brothers for 30 years and was incredibly helpful throughout all of this research.

He said, Karen, everything you need to know about painting is in these paintings.

Everything you need to know about mastering scenic artistry is here.

No, not anchovies, pepperoni and thin crust.

hi.

Didn't see you there.

Just a second, Alex.

Next, we're going to Columbus, Ohio, to meet another artist who works with collage art using repurposed materials, and she hopes inspires kids to do the same.

It's a great story.

Outlook.

Periwinkle and the absolutely dizzy, dazzling day.

It has been a long time coming.

I started it before my first book, Fun for Anyone, and it actually took me about five years from writing to doing all the closures to put it together is about a little girl who finally, after much anticipation, gets to go in the woods by herself.

So like on an adventure without supervision and just what that means as exploring and experiencing it all to herself without anyone overshadowing that.

I grew up in the country and there wasn't a lot going on, but I kind of found the woods behind our house to be very magical.

So that is the inspiration where we got to run and have all this nature.

And it was actually very calming.

So I guess I want other kids to be able to realize that if they're feeling overwhelmed or need to get exercise or anything like that, like being out in a park or woods is just like a perfect place to be.

To experience just an overwhelming sense of calm.

I don't know how to describe it.

It's just it's just rather lovely.

So there's a lot of obstacles that Periwinkle has to overcome when they're going along on this adventure with her having this experience, then I think it gives them the opportunity to think, what would I do?

And what is she going to do next?

And how is she going to solve this problem without giving up?

It's not so overwhelming, but it's enough of a challenge where it's meant to give kids a thought process to try to get them thinking about what they would do.

A lot of times people feel like, I have to if I'm going to support this, I need to go buy all these supplies.

What I like to do, even with my own kids and we've done over the years, is to use to upcycle like curtains, like pop curtains, milk jugs, strawberry containers, and see what they can do with it.

We've you know, over the years, my daughter and I made Fairy houses out of things and, you know, just decorating those.

And that's been a lot of fun.

Or like little storage containers for stickers or washi tape or anything like that.

And it just is meant to get their creative juices flowing and see what they can use without spending a lot of money.

Basically, I have something inside of me that I just have to keep creating things and it's evolved over the years where like when I first started in my twenties, I would make little birdhouses and I would paint those or I would just make all these little crafts.

And then I started my wedding invitation business, and I did that for like 13 years, and that was a huge process.

So then after I did that, I started doing freelance graphic design, and I did that for several years.

And then I worked on the books and then I just I do a lot of collaging now, so it's just always evolving.

But I just have to always constantly keep making things.

I was so challenged by trying to come up with like, I would have dreams, like, okay, you want to do this?

Why are you not working on it?

But the story wasn't coming together right away.

Like I felt like I was forcing it.

And so that's why I set it aside to do fun for anyone first, because I had that story and that just rolled right out.

But with this one, the art process, I decided to do it completely differently.

So it wasn't just digital art, it was all these collages which take an incredible amount of time, and it was so worth it.

I love doing author visits, so I'll go into classrooms to do fun for anyone, but then I'll also take this massive collage that is an entire spread and I've taken it in and the kids just like pore over it and it's so fun.

I used to do wedding invitations and so I have like bins of scrap cardstock that I didn't want to part with, you know, like mistakes for printing and stuff like that.

And I'll cut them up and use them for tree trunks and paint over them and all these things.

So it has like little wording throughout and it has little animals throughout.

And so basically they're just going through trying to find like all the hidden things and it makes it more fun.

It just makes it more of an experience.

And now a trip back into the Gallery America Archives to revisit our online feature of a celebrated art teacher and Guymon, Oklahoma.

Can we talk about shapes for a second?

Because Oklahoma is overwhelmingly the best state shape in world history.

And the reason is the Panhandle.

That rectangle of Plains makes Oklahoma look so good on a map.

Yes, it's pretty flat, but it has mesas, too.

And sand dunes and dinosaur tracks.

And it also has art.

Last year, Oklahoma Living magazine named a teacher a Guymon High as the state's best art teacher.

Meet Kristy Patterson.

This is my 21st year teaching art in the same high school I attended.

It's not the same building.

There's a it's a new building.

A teach everything from beginning drawing to advanced placement art classes.

And we have children in our classes who've come from all over the world.

My goal is, as a kid was I was going to join the Peace Corps and travel the world and ended up meeting this guy, this boy.

We married and moved to Guymon, and I didn't have to go anywhere exotic and to meet all these amazing people.

They moved to Guymon.

Christie is the youngest in a third generation Panhandle ranching family, and she found herself drawn to art early on.

I just was driven to draw and paint and cut and dry, and I had very supportive parents that just delighted in every ridiculous scribble or weird poem that I put together.

It just launched me.

And now it's something that if I'm not creating, whether it's sewing or directing a show or are working on a painting or drawing, I get very unbalanced.

And I think that's true of a lot of creative people.

Kristy found her signature style while teaching collage to students using pages from old damage dictionaries to draw on the pictures that I am most recognized for now are old, nostalgic looking drawings on antique dictionary.

And so I was actually kind of tearing up a dictionary for my students and to use and paste in their books and draw on.

And I just happened on a page, said him Hummingbird.

And I had a little tiny illustration of the hummingbird over in the corner.

And so I just thought, Well, I'll just draw my own little hummingbird on this page.

It it just exploded for me.

I'm selling artwork across the globe, and I can't believe I'm sitting in my pajamas.

And the second story of my house shipping things to Japan and Australia all over the world.

It still blows my mind.

Few Oklahomans see the Panhandle.

So I asked Kristy how she would depict it to someone who's never been.

I'm a farmer, rancher, daughter, and I can tell you that a freshly class field and those kind of things just have a have a beauty to me and a sentimentality to me.

I think a lot of people see the skies we have.

We're known for our sunset.

The thing I would do if what you're asking I would do, I would do an older person is work in hand and just have have that view because I think this area was built by a lot of hardworking pioneers and people today.

Even even the people that are moving here from across the globe.

I think they're there working hard people and are hard working people.

Well, it's the end of a long school day.

I'm sorry.

Check out Kristy's Etsy page, Flying shoes or follow her on Instagram at Kristy Patt.

That's all the time we have for Gallery America.

Thank you so much for joining us.

As always, you can see past episodes by downloading the PBS app or going to our archives atOETA dot TV slash Gallery America.

And if you listen to the Gallery America podcast now, you can get them wherever you find podcasts or on our website.

And don't forget to follow Gallery America Online on Facebook or on Instagram at OETAGallery.

For updates of Oklahoma artists.

We'll see you next time.

Until then, stay arty Oklahoma.