- [Narrator] Funding for this program is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

(birds chirping) (bright music) - [Host] Coming up next, "Off 90," an architectural gem that's the Winona Public Library, a man from Mantorville who makes rustic metal art, 105 year old auctioneer in Rushford, and a 1909 visit to Austin by famed orator William Jennings Bryan.

It's all just ahead, "Off 90."

(mellow rock music) (mellow rock music continues) (uplifting music) (mellow relaxing music) (mellow relaxing music continues) - 127 years ago, William Harris Laird cemented his status as the greatest, one of the greatest philanthropists in the history of Winona when the cornerstone of Winona Public Library was set.

125 years ago, the building opened in January of 1899.

The opulence and decor choices, the lighting choices, everything was pretty grand for the era, which sets us apart from Carnegie Libraries.

They are typically a smaller square footage and lined with brick.

The book collection is usually housed wall to wall with seating in the middle, reading room style, whereas you can see here in our stacks we have three floors of original wood and copper with glass floors below and above us.

When the building opened, we did not have electricity, so the glass floors helped the light shine through so the librarians could see the books.

The Bell Art Room was named after Frederick Bell, the first president of the library board, and originally the space was used as gallery space.

Also in the art room we have a Carrara marble statue of Hebe, who is the cup bearer of Mount Olympus in Greek mythology.

"The Light of Learning" mural by Kenyon Cox was commissioned as Memorial to Charlotte Prentiss Hayes, one of our first librarians, by her husband William Hayes.

The mural and dome are unique to our building, being the oldest library in the state still operating in its original space.

So the stacks are unique.

The dome makes us a nice, unique feature.

The grand marble staircase in the original entrance and the limestone that the building is made of as opposed to brick.

No expense was spared when Mr. Laird chose the finishes for this building.

William Harris Laird and his family members were lumber barons in this area, turn of the century, floating logs down the river from Stillwater.

He was one of, at the turn of the century, I believe there were five millionaires in the city of Winona.

Three out of five millionaires were all in the lumber industry with the Laird Norton Lumber Company.

William Harris Laird felt strongly about creating within a two block radius of his family home, opportunities he wanted for his children and the children in the community.

In the 1980s, there was a failed referendum that had hoped to build a new library that would've been on the banks of the river.

And that failed and kept this building alive, and then the ADA Accessibility Act went into play and provided an elevator, and the circulation desk was moved to its current location on the street level entrance of the building as opposed to on the second story up the grand staircase.

So the building became accessible, and that kind of helped it stay in its current location and ensure its legacy, how we view it today.

- I've been a library card holder since they brought us here in elementary school.

I really got reconnected when I became a mom and I had little kids at home and they weren't in school yet and we wanted to meet other kids and I wanted to meet other moms.

We needed a place to go and to play, and this was a really good place to come have crafts and come have story time.

And in the summer there's free lunches outside.

Now that they're older, I can go online and I can reserve the books they're looking for and I can come pick them up.

We've come here for community events.

We've come here to watch films.

We've come here and eaten with other people.

It's really a wonderful part of our community, and it keeps us connected to each other.

- I've been coming to the library for 30 years.

I like to read the newspapers, the magazines, and then I check to see what books have come in.

I think it's one of the most beautiful buildings in Winona.

It's always a joy to talk to the personnel here.

They're just wonderful people.

It's almost like family.

- We are thrilled to be celebrating our 125th anniversary.

So we celebrated by kicking off the viewing of the documentary based on the book "Laird's Legacy," which tells our history so lovely.

We had a proclamation citywide where the mayor proclaimed it to be Winona Public Library Week.

We intend to do a fun picnic this summer to get outside and share the lawn space with families and young children.

We're excited to host an author series this spring and summer, sponsored by our friends of the library with the addition of some legacy grant funding.

We have Cathy Wurzer of NPR Fame.

We have J.D.

Fratzke, who grew up in Winona and is a regional restaurateur.

We have J. Ryan Stradal and Lou Raguse.

It's an exciting series.

I think it will be a very popular offering, all four authors for our community to take part in.

(uplifting music) (uplifting music continues) (uplifting music continues) (mellow rock music) (tool buzzing) (upbeat rock music) - Hello, my name's Darryl Clements.

I am the owner operator of DC Customs LLC in Mantorville, Minnesota.

(upbeat rock music continues) I was working part-time at a shop.

It was a hot rod shop.

I was working building cars with them, and they had a machine down there.

And I had seen ads for machines like that before.

I thought it'd be cool to get one, so I did.

(upbeat rock music continues) (sparks crackling) Took me year to get put together, learned how to use it.

I'm all self-taught.

I just kind of was making little things here and there.

My wife asked me to make a heart tree, and I asked her what was it she wanted to do with it, and she's just like, well, just let me do it.

So I made it.

This is a lighted Tree of Life, heart shaped, and it's on wood, and then it's got battery-powered LEDs behind it.

You know, this is what really started our whole business.

We made that, next thing you know, people are asking for more stuff.

- Hi, my name is Michelle Clements.

I am co-owner of DC Customs.

This kind of all started as a hobby for us, and just from friends reaching out to us and doing that first craft show where, you know, we started making a little bit of money, and from then it just worked out great for us.

I love what we do and our business is getting bigger and bigger.

(heavy rock music) - Well, I realized that, you know, we could do full-time probably last year.

It got to the point where we were just so busy, there just wasn't enough hours in the day sometimes.

So I said, you know what, I'm just going to retire from the sheriff's office and go ahead and do this full-time and make this my my full-time job.

My next favorite is probably our flags.

These are all made of aluminum.

And it basically, it's like a candy paint job on it.

- My favorite part of the job is doing the woodworking and the lighting on some of our projects that we have and items that we sell at craft shows.

- I just always kind of had a little artist in me.

I painted.

I do all the illustrations, I do it all on my art program that I have.

We started off with this little two by two table.

Friends and people would come to me and say, "Can you make me something like that?"

I guess you could say it just evolved over time, you know.

More people came to us.

We were invited to go to a craft show.

We went to there and it was like, "Oh wow, this is where we're, this is it."

Go to trade shows, craft shows, vendor shows, fairs, pretty much anywhere that will allow us to set up and sell.

- It's not work when you enjoy what you're doing.

I enjoy coming down here and making things and creating things.

(heavy rock music) (upbeat music) (soft chiming music) - I've been in this house for over 50 years.

I moved in here in '67, after I moved off the farm.

I was 105 last September.

Rushford is a nice town with a lot of friendly people and I've gotten along very well.

I got good, kind neighbors.

- Everybody in Rushford would know Bert.

Bert was very well known, not only from his auctioneering services, but his real estate business.

Everybody knows Bert, everybody.

- Does anybody do two, anybody two?

Two, anybody two?

- Yep!

- $2, now three.

Three, three anybody?

Three your own, sir.

I was born on a farm, of course, stayed on a farm.

I grew up on a farm, and we had a church gathering, and Jessie was there, and I thought she looked pretty good and I asked her, and then we got married.

She was a good looking and a pleasant lady and we enjoyed our married life until her life ended, of course.

- 1972 or 3, she was killed in a car accident.

They're just going outta town on highway 30 out here, and young man came over the bridge.

It was raining, come too fast, slid straight across, hit 'em head on.

She was 52 years old at the time.

That very hard, very hard on everybody.

- We had four, four children.

- I'm 77, I'm just a puppy.

I know a lot of people say, "Well, you're lucky to have your dad around that long."

Yeah, I am, and it's great.

I mean, it's gotten to know each other probably a lot better in the last 20 years, you know.

- I was asked to sell the auctions at our church bazaars.

I sold that for several years and then my aunt come to me and said, "Why don't you become an auctioneer because you're so good at it?"

And from that time on, I went and got my license and took up auctioneering.

I can do an auction chant.

Anybody 30, now 5, 5 anybody?

5, now 40.

All right, bid at 35 and I want 40.

Gimme 37 1/2, anybody half?

I liked it because I was in control, you know.

I don't know, there was just something about it that I liked to be in charge and sell.

And it's a responsible profession.

You gotta be good to the crowd, because they're the ones that are gonna help you out.

A lot of these auctioneers, they talk so fast, you can't understand them.

That's not a good auctioneer.

You can speak fairly fast and still be understood.

That's a good auctioneer.

I've sold livestock, I've sold real estate, household items.

I've sold it all.

If a guy got, "Now at 25 and I want 30, 30, anybody 30, 30?"

That's the wrong way.

You don't hold your hand up like this.

You're pushing your bids away.

25 and I want 30, 30, anybody 30, anybody 30?

You see the difference?

The fun part of it is, of course, it's a business, you know?

It's a business, and you're getting paid for doing it.

But then you're home, I have 10?

10, how about 10?

- 7- - Yep!

- 10, do I have 12 1/2?

But I'm home most of the time now.

I like the game shows, and I don't go for the movies.

That's not my line.

- [Interviewer] How have you lived to 105?

Do you have any thoughts on your longevity?

- That's a very good question, and I don't have an answer.

I just lived, I try to live a clean life.

I ate three meals a day.

I've been blessed with a good body.

I try not to abuse my body, and I give thanks for my good health every day and I just keep going.

- [Murt] The doctors had told him he's got the right genes, you know, he's been quite lucky.

Not had any major health problems whatsoever.

His legs are shot more or less, and the doctors told him, "Well, you outlived your legs," so this is why he's gotta use a walker.

But mind wise, he's still very good.

- I have yet to have my first beer.

I just never had the desire, and I figured in seeing all the problems that it caused for some families, that broke up families.

- [Murt] You know, if you go back in his family history, I mean, they were living to be 80 and 90 when 60 was old.

- My dad was 93 and my mother was 90.

- What I learned from my dad as a young man and growing up through, you gotta be organized.

- I don't know what to say.

Everybody lives their own life, you know, and some people are careless with their life, and I guess everybody's gotta live their own way.

(soft meditative music) (upbeat music) - Come on in, come on in.

Hi, I'm Sue Pariseau.

I'm run Sue Pariseau Pottery, and I'm also the coordinator of Bluff Country Studio Art Tour.

So the tour is really the far southeast corner of Minnesota, essentially from Winona south to the Iowa border, near Highway 52 over to the Mississippi River.

We usually expect about 2,500 to 3,000 people to visit during the tour.

This is the 23rd presentation of this event.

It started in 2001.

We missed a year because of Covid, but this is our 23rd presentation.

22 studios or galleries participating in the tour, and that has 32 artists spread at those different locations.

Maybe half of them are in very rural settings.

A lot of the different types of terrain and the landscape of this area.

County roads, minimum maintenance roads, gravel roads in the hills and valleys and tucked away in little nooks and crannies of this area.

Probably half of them are areas that are in town and very easy to get to, maybe in a shared or common space.

- And I really like it because there's all these wonderful paintings.

- Bluff Country Studio Art Tour is a self-guided tour of studios in the area where people can go from one studio to another and see the work that artists do in their studios, what they do, how they make it, and shop for their available work.

(hammer banging) (playful music) - Bernadette Mahfood started it and she was a friend of ours in Winona, and we have been doing it for 23 years and we love it because we don't have to get the tent and the boxes of pottery and the tables and go elsewhere with all our heavy things.

- Potters, leaded glass artists, jewelry makers, fiber artists, handbag makers, painters, whole variety of different people, different mediums.

- So this is a studio you're in.

I will make bowls, teapots, mugs, and things like that.

- My name is Mariella Terbeest Schladwelier and I have been on the Bluff Country Studio Art Tour for 20 years.

This is my 20th year.

I make upholstery fabric handbags.

I started in 1989 along with my older sister.

We have a younger sister too, and we were all taught how to sew when we were about six years old.

And my business name is Helen's Daughter's Handbags.

We have five artists participating this year in the community center here in Lanesboro, and Robbie Brokken, who's from Harmony, and she does upcycled jewelry.

Carol Oldendorf, she grows her own flowers, dries them, and displays in framework.

We have a glass artist, who would be Andy, and Jolene, his wife, Rasmussen.

We have Cheryl Lamon is a quilter.

- The event is a juried event.

In the fall of the previous year, we have a application process, and those are reviewed, and we accept artists that we feel meet and provide diversity to our event.

Visiting an art tour, coming to the studios, is a really different way to interact with art and artists than you typically see at either a gallery or at an art festival.

People get to really interact with the art and the artists differently than in those other environments.

And they get to see, like, how things are made, what what the events that lead up to that thing being created.

And ultimately the creative spaces that we work in, I think is is part of the making of that thing, and people appreciate having that greater context with a piece of art that they get at a studio visit.

So I am a functional potter.

I make really functional things.

I fire with wood.

It's mugs and bowls and baking dishes and things like that, so very functional things.

- Hi, I'm Julia Crozier, and I live in Winona.

This is the Blue Heron studio.

Mostly I do oil paintings now.

I get inspiration from different places that I go.

It's been really fun to have people come in, see my art, see where I work.

It's really helpful because then they can kind of get an idea of the process that we go through to make the art.

- [Sue] How that piece is made, it doesn't just magically appear at the store.

Somebody has to put wood in that kiln for 24 hours and peek in the kiln with a flashlight and they can see the pieces.

- I'm Gary Flynn, and my artwork's over my shoulder here.

It's found wood, so a lot of it is lit up from the inside to show off the inside of the wood.

I also believe people live in this wood.

I bring them out with my carvings.

And I met this creature here 30 years ago.

And then he actually introduced me, or I introduced him to my wife one day.

We've been living together for quite a long time.

- Until now!

- Southeast Minnesota is a place where artists gather, and there is a lot of support, commonality or community with the artists in the area.

- Quite a journey for us.

- We're like a family, you know, when we get together.

So it's always fun to see our family once a year.

(group laughing) Yeah, make us laugh.

- Thank you.

(no audio) (no audio) (upbeat rock music) (upbeat rock music continues) (bright music) - [Narrator] Funding for this program is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.