(Gentle music) (Guitar plays blues music) [Kyle] I really enjoy starting from nothing and coming up with a final piece that somebody likes to wear out the door.

(Grinder buzzing) [Sally] Sometimes those ideas just come flowing.

Sometimes new ideas are brewing and then that's just the thrill of making art.

(Blues guitar plays) [Katharen] Sometimes it takes me a long time to be satisfied with something or to think it's not just good, but it's doing something.

(Drill bit boring through wood) [Karen] People always wonder how long it takes to do something and I really never know.

I always just say a day.

(Blow torch blowing) [Levent] It's harder to try to copy something I made before.

It's always a little different.

The first time is the charm.

(Blues guitar plays) [Kelsey] And it makes you feel powerful to be able to bring something into existence that wasn't there before.

(Saw buzzing) [Jesse] Art is everywhere, yes, everywhere you look.

(Blues guitar continues) (Musician sings unintelligibly) (Slide guitar plays to resolution) (Insects chirp) (Guitar plays folksy blues song) (Guitar and insects continue) (Footsteps fall on porch floor) (Guitar continues) (Door clicks closed) (Guitar and insects continue) I'm Kyle Rosfeld.

I'm a custom bootmaker.

(Guitar music plays) (Hammer pounds leather) (Guitar continues) I became a custom bootmaker when I showed up at a branding and found a fellow who was trying to get rid of his bootmaking equipment.

And since he was trying to get back into ranching and I was trying to get out of ranching, I went ahead and purchased his machinery and it came with a book.

And after I finished reading the book and made myself a pair of boots, I thought I knew what I was doing but then found a fellow who needed a pair of boots that was a little bit more challenging.

And when they fit him well and they fit like I thought they should, he said, 'I love 'em.'

And I said, 'I'm a bootmaker.'

And that's how it began.

So I've been a bootmaker since the turn of the century.

The turn of the century was of course 2000.

But the methods that I use to build boots were from a hundred years prior to that.

So if somebody had walked in here from 1900 to 1910, who knew what they were doing to build boots, they wouldn't be completely shocked.

They would have a pretty good idea what I was doing.

The best part about a handmade pair of boots is that they are fit to the foot.

They are made in such a way that once you put them on, you feel like you've been wearing them for six months and they're truly broken in.

It makes a difference for people who are never fit off of a shelf.

So with each pair of boots being specific to the foot, once a customer comes in, I measure their feet by taking an imprint and then a tracing around the outside.

And from there, I get girth measurements around the foot and up the calf.

And I try to match as closely as possible an old last that will fit from the ball of the foot to the heel in the proper heel height.

Once I'm close, then I add leather to fill in the spaces that I need to build it up.

So these are the parts of a boot that I draw every time.

Basically for pull-on boots, I just draw a top pattern.

For the rest of the boot, there's pretty much a static or a leather pattern that I use on everything.

So these pieces all lay onto my pattern that I'd made for my top.

And then I trim anything that was oversized.

For the vamps or the front of the boot, I cut it out in a regular flat shape and then I do what is called a crimp.

So I pull it onto this crimping board so that it takes the front shape of the boot here.

And once that's cut... it is stitched to the front of the boot.

Like so.

These static patterns allow me to not have to draw every pattern for every boot on a pair of pull-ons.

(Guitar twangs) What I'm doing here is called a saddle stitch.

So by doing it in this way, if a stitch gets cut, it doesn't come unraveled.

So it will have basically two threads going back and forth and then cinched.

(Hammer taps boot heel) Square pegs and round holes.

(Hammer taps boot heel) (Guitar continues) [Kyle] This way when I'm done, I have two rows of pegs going all the way around the shank of the boot and they will cross over each other like that and lock it, basically lock the bottom layer to the top layer.

So what I'm doing here would be considered a six row stitch pattern.

(Pedal sewing machine stitches through leather) So with three different colors, there's two rows a piece.

(Sewing machine clicks) The fun part is when you start from scratch, you can design or do whatever you want.

If I wanted to do a five row with two rows on each side, and one really bright color in the middle or anything like that, it is completely doable.

(Sewing and guitar continue) My bootmaking has probably changed quite a bit because every time somebody asks me about something, I'm not absolutely sure about, say the boots that are made for military or the boots that are made for a peewee, 40s actor, or something like that, I go back and I study.

Not only is it a good way for me to feed my soul to build boots, but it's a good way to show everybody who asks that it's not a fast-paced world that everything needs to be immediate.

Things can take time.

I'm not tied to the clock of making time.

I'm making boots.

I'm not making time.

(Guitar music) (Hammer taps) (Guitar continues) (Guitar continues) (Gentle rock music) [Karen] It's difficult to heat something up again and fix it.

It won't come out right or it'll break.

So you kind of need to get it right the first time.

(Loud machinery whirs) So I'm just trying to guess that's about 5 inches, maybe 4.

I'm Karen Chaka and I am a neon glass bender.

(Rock music and machinery continue) I went to a neon school in 1987 in Wisconsin.

I didn't have any idea about neon science at all.

I didn't know what was involved.

I literally didn't know it was glass.

I didn't know any of that.

I like a good challenge and I'm trying to master this like I'm bending glass and I'm, you know, just trying to do it perfect.

So, I mean, I've grown to be intrigued by heating up glass and bending it in a flame to whatever shape that you want within reason.

The rest of it, the equipment and the stuff, the science part, that's part of the job.

This, the bending the glass and stuff is really the best part of it, the most fun, the most challenging.

The tubes come manufactured 4 foot tube with different phosphorous powders inside the tube.

So when that phosphor lights, it will light whatever color it's supposed to be, green, blue, purple.

And then the other part of the color comes from you've got your choice of two gases, argon which is blue and neon which is orange.

So if you mix an orange gas with a blue phosphor, the tube lights rose.

And if you put argon which is a blue gas in a blue phosphor, it lights blue.

So you get two colors with every tube.

And also just the clear tube.

You get the true color of neon which is almost what you see in every open sign, that orange open sign.

That's the color of neon when it gets excited by electricity.

And the argon is just a sort of a watery blue in a clear tube.

(Funky rock music plays) (Machines whir) It's done in reverse so that these things, so I'm going to make these letters.

And then each letter is gonna connect to the next letter and all these connections you don't wanna see 'em, like, you don't wanna see that.

You just wanna see the E. All these letters are connected but they're painted out.

'Cause you don't wanna see this and you don't wanna see that so if you bend it in reverse, those are on a different plane.

And when it's lit, then you see the letters and not this.

You see what I'm saying?

These connections here.

That's why it gets bent in reverse.

(Funky rock music plays, machines whir) So this hose, when you heat a tube up, you're getting it up over 1,000 degrees.

And it's gonna start to sink in.

The glass will start to sink in on itself.

You have to kind of keep a little constant airflow in there to keep the tube, the same diameter all the way around.

If it's not the same diameter, especially on like those 90 degree bends I was making before, it'll crack.

It would just be like a flat on the inside so it has to have some air going in there.

(Funky pop music plays) (Machines whir) So I'm gonna try and make this curve right here all in one.

(Music and whirring continue) (Music and whirring continue) I really only have like seven or eight seconds before you can't move it anymore.

Maybe 10 seconds.

(Music and whirring continue) And this is my gauge on how much gas I'm gonna put in it.

So it's a 12 millimeter tube so I wanna put 11 millimeters of argon gas in there so I'm just gonna backfill it.

(Knob squeaking) So you can see the gas is going in the tube.

(Knob squeaking) [Karen] And now, I'm just gonna make sure everything's fine.

(Switch flipping) [Karen] It is.

So, we're gonna take this off.

We're gonna seal the tube up.

It's still under a vacuum so it's gonna seal easily.

(Music and whirring continue) You'll see it suck shut here.

(Music and whirring continue) (Music and whirring continue) Now I'm gonna seal that.

(Music and whirring continue) (Music and whirring continue) And light it.

It's gonna take a minute for the gas to get excited.

So you can see where the mercury is.

The mercury helps the gas excite - argon, not neon.

So now as this tube warms up and the mercury starts to sort of give off fumes, the whole thing will light evenly and then (Bright pop music) First of all, the challenge for me, I mean, the thing that keeps me kind of interested in this is that it's always like this sign is challenging.

Like I wanna make every single bend perfectly.

I want this to be perfect when you look at it.

People in the sign business or people that know me that have known what I do for the last 35 years, if they look at a neon, they can say that O is... it's got a corner.

Or the O isn't perfect or whatever, you know.

So, I mean, I like to make every single bend and every single letter look absolutely perfect.

(Bright pop music ends) (Machines whirring) (Slide guitar picking folk music ) (Guitar music continues) [Levent] I started to get interest in jewelry in a very early age actually.

This started when I was visiting the museum my father used to work in.

They had all these old Ottoman jewelry and I was fascinated with it.

(Blow torch blowing) My name is Levent Oz.

I'm a silversmith.

(Gentle flowing guitar music) Later on during the college years, I started to work in an antique store where I was more intimately involved with jewelry, selling it, taking it for repairs, and seeing how it was polished and cleaned and so on.

And then I started my own trade and I started buying and selling jewelry.

(File scrapes) [Levent] I had to move to Vienna, Austria, 1992, and I hired some goldsmiths and silversmiths.

And then they taught me how to make it.

So maybe roughly 30 years ago and from that day on, I have been making jewelry.

In '97 I moved to United States and the first two years I spent in New Orleans.

I came here for Christmas business and I had a place in Oak View Mall.

And after that, I decided to stay here in Omaha but I could not immediately start my business.

I was not courageous enough to quit my day job yet.

And it took me two years to get my courage.

And then I quit my job and opened a full-time store.

Then in 2016, I got offer to come to Main Street Studios which is a wonderful place where five resident artists, we all have our own workshops here.

And I get this workshop where I am now.

(Gentle guitar music) [Levent] I get interested in different, more difficult techniques which is being used in the world.

I worked on some other techniques like Keum-boo on which I worked today.

It is an ancient technique of fusing gold to silver.

When you heat silver to a certain temperature, it becomes absorbent for gold and then you can put gold onto the silver and burnish it into the silver actually, and then create a gold and silver combination.

(Gentle guitar music) [Levent] I'm not very good at drawing and planning.

But I can visualize the pieces in my head.

Usually if I have something in my mind, I want to see it finished.

(Hammer taps) [Levent] And usually I'm very happy with what comes about.

This is how it should be, I think.

You just have to feel it, imagine it, and then just let your hands and eyes do it.

And this is how these pieces come about.

We have to reach about 700 degrees on the surface in order for the gold to connect with silver.

We cannot measure the surface heat, temperature but with experience you can tell from the change in color of the metal if it is hot enough or not.

I really enjoy teaching my craft to others.

I love to see the spark in their eyes when they finish something and then they really love it.

And then they're happy like children.

They just walk around with their ring in their hands.

So this is nice to watch.

And then it makes me happy.

It's fun, it's fun.

I love how they get excited about it and I still didn't lose my own excitement about it.

Every time it's new for me.

Now, I am going to put the sterling silver stamp and maker's mark onto the silver.

(Hammer taps metal) [Levent] This was the maker's mark.

Now comes the silver mark.

(Hammer taps metal) [Levent] 925.

It means 92.5% fine silver in the whole piece of jewelry.

(Rotary file buzzing) [Levent] I think I will be doing this as long as I have energy in my muscles, in my brain.

I enjoy it.

I enjoy it immensely.

It is hard to put into words but I know when you have this idea and then you create something, it's kind of little creation for me.

Because the metal is just a piece of molten shapeless thing and then you take it, you give it a shape, and then you have to give it the primary shape which we are going to use to make your piece out of.

And for good measure, we are going to put some... camellia oil like the old Korean masters used to do.

(Gentle guitar music) (Gentle guitar music) (Paper towel crinkles, rubs silver) This is our bracelet.

(Bubbly synth music) [Levent] And then setting a stone is like, I don't know, it is like almost giving life to something when you put that stone onto that piece of jewelry and you polish it then it truly becomes alive.

So this is what I like.

I think most I like is the last second of making that thing.

Then you feel elevated somehow.

(Gentle music) (Hammer taps metal) (Blow torch blows) (Quiet scraping) (Rotary grinder buzzing) (Blues guitar picking) (Hammer tapping metal) (Blow torch blowing) (Blues guitar continues) (Sander buzzing on wood) (Blues guitar continues) [Jesse] So I made this cigar box guitar for Hector Anchondo.

I want to very much make every guitar different than what I have in the past.

(Tools buzzing) [Jesse] I love the woodworking part of it.

And I also love when that first plug in.

(Band saw cutting) [Jesse] When I plug 'em in and strum the strings and each one has its own character.

Each one can tell its own story.

(Garage door opening) [Jesse] My name is Jesse Thomas.

I'm the operator of Hummingbird Guitars.

It looks flat but I can tell by touching that it's not.

So I need to go a little bit more to get some of these ripples out.

(Rotary sander buzzing and whining) My love for music made me want to build that first guitar because although I'm good working with my hands, I do have nerve damage on my left hand so I can't play like a normal player would learn how to play.

So I figured I could project some of my talents into the building aspect of it versus the playing.

(Light rock guitar music) So then you just think that, everywhere I go - I could build a guitar outta that.

I could build a guitar outta that.

You know, you see it everywhere cookie tins, cutting boards, cigar boxes, hockey sticks, anything you name it, you know.

They can all become an instrument that makes noise and makes you smile.

So this is my very first cigar box guitar that I ever built.

My dad found it in a house that he lived in and was up in the attic, the cigar box.

(Guitar twangs out of tune) It's a pretty old cigar box.

I built it so you can actually open it and look inside.

(Upbeat guitar picking) Very primitive building.

It's a stick and a box with some strings.

It's got a hinge for the tail piece, bolt for the bridge, and a bolt for the nut.

It's fretless.

Since then, I've also learned quite a bit about cigar box guitars.

At the time I thought I was doing something different, come to find out there was a huge community that welcomed me.

Some of my best friends are in the cigar box guitar world and live miles and miles away from me in different states.

But it is a great place to be in the cigar box guitar world.

(Rock guitar plays) (Belt sander buzzing) The old belt sander gets a lot of action.

-(Guitar tunes in background) -(Saw scrapes wood) Pretty.

(Guitar tunes in background) We can also do side dots.

Some builds get 'em, some builds don't.

But I think it would be cool to put 'em on this.

So the bridge is attached essentially to the neck for maximum strength.

On here I have pearl inlays, a bone nut hand-carved.

It's got a volume, a tone, and a mini humbucker.

It's got brass grommets for sound holes and strap buttons and a jack.

So when I get to that point on this guitar, I will continue the same process after I oil the neck.

That is when I will install frets and dress 'em and then I'd be ready for assembly.

I always like to put Hummingbird Guitar stickers so people know who made it.

I am a blues guy.

I am an every music guy.

If it speaks to me, I like it.

It doesn't matter.

So that's why I came up with the saying, the blues can be any color because every kind of music stems from the blues.

Me being, you know, the kind of heavy metal kind of guy, I love hearing some real tasty riffs coming from a cigar box guitar.

I've had plenty of people play my instruments and they, 'Wow.

You mean, this thing really plays like that?'

You know, 'This thing really sounds like that?'

Every instrument is a learning process, really, because they're so different than the last ones that I've built.

Take that leap of faith and believe in yourself and what you can do.

And if you succeed, then it gives you the confidence to do something else different down the line.

Knowing somebody else is getting enjoyment out of something I created that is rewarding enough.

Money is down here.

Money is at the bottom.

It always has been.

I also get enjoyment just from the building because when I'm out there in the shop that's my safe space.

That's my own little world where I can do whatever I want.

I feel really free when I'm building these instruments.

(Rock guitar music plays) (Band saw cuts) (Drill buzzes) (Rock guitar music continues) (Bluesy guitar song begins) (Blues guitar continues) (Light airy guitar picking begins) [Kelsey] Saponification is a chemical reaction between a base and an acid.

And it gives you a simple soap, glycerin and water.

It is the transferring of the molecules and changing of the molecules from the individual components to actual making a true soap.

I'm Kelsey Trausch and I am a natural soap and skincare maker.

All of our goods focus on being good for the skin and the soul, really making hippie vibes for modern folks.

I am a hippie mama at heart but I live in a modern world.

And so those collide and crash together to make something new and beautiful.

And here's the part for the fashion statement of why we're wearing masks today is we're working with lye which is a caustic material.

So you always want to use proper safety precaution including gloves, long sleeves, and shoes.

So this part you want to slowly just incorporate the lye into your water.

You can use other solutions instead of water.

I've used carrot juice to get a yellow soap.

I've used goat's milk, lots of different opportunities to change your soap recipe.

So this portion, you also want to be careful as you add this, you're gonna have an exothermic reaction where this is gonna heat up tremendously.

It's always important to add the lye to your water and not the other way around.

If you add water to lye, you're gonna have more of an issue of creating bubbling over and creating a dangerous situation.

I couldn't find the products that I wanted to use for my family, something that was natural that was affordable.

One of the best things about our products is they aren't intimidating.

Every ingredient on the list you can pronounce.

You know what it is.

It's not scary to pick it up and go, 'Ah, I don't know what this natural product is.'

But we kept it where it's an affordable price point.

It's a simple luxury that we can all enjoy whether it's for you or your family members.

I knew I wanted to put an emphasis on things that weren't traditionally done, natural colorants and essential oils and using things that maybe weren't mainstream herbs to make something different.

So all of our Peace on Po soap bars, we use coconut oil as our hardener instead of palm oil.

We try and keep it as eco-friendly and natural as possible for all of our products.

And to have that accessible in places where you normally couldn't get a product like that.

The process of making soap in itself requires patience.

You have to wait for things to come to temperature.

You have to get the right consistency of the soap batter.

Everything is a delicate dance of waiting or pushing or pulling or the whole process.

And then once you wait the initial period, then you still have another four to six weeks before the soap is really ready for use.

It's safe after a couple of days once it's gone through the saponification process.

But it's not gonna be a nice hard bar that does well in your shower or bath.

It would get mushy.

It needs time to cure and reach its full potential.

So the whole process, nothing is fast.

You can't get it tomorrow.

You have to wait and let it do its thing to be ready for you.

I think we're ready to go ahead and mix.

So we have our hot butters and coconut oil in here and we're gonna add it to our liquid oils.

Handcrafting is so important as far as how it makes you feel.

There's something different when you hold a bar of soap that is made by actual hands and not by a machine that you know there's thought and intention and goodwill put into every creation, knowing that it's going to be used and loved by someone else.

The science of skincare making is super important in the process.

It really is the backbone of what helps you create a safe product.

Because in the end, that's the biggest concern is making sure that you are creating something for the user that is gonna be safe, give them effective results.

But with the creativity, you can blend that to make it a beautiful experience for them.

You want them to feel something when they use that product whether it's by scent or by sight.

So it's blending science with the creativity that gives you art.

And even in skincare, many people think, 'Oh, it's just a bar of soap.'

But it's so much more than that.

It's something that can make you feel good after a long day.

It can change your outlook in the morning when you're first getting up.

So there's a lot of reasons why using something that is a simple pleasure can do so much for you in a day than just grabbing something off the grocery store shelf.

Mindfulness is very important when it comes to not only the ingredients, but the processes that we put in place in our company, not only for our customers but also for the environment.

So we put a big emphasis on using items that we know where they're coming from.

We know where their suppliers are, that they're harvested in a sustainable and responsible manner.

And we try and carry that through from ingredient selection all the way to the creation and making process.

And even to shipping, if possible using recycled paper, using items where it may not always look picture perfect when you open that package, as far as the stickers and the beauty but the thoughtfulness of using our resources wisely and really trying to do as much good and put out as much good as we do taking in.

(Gentle guitar music) [Kelsey] I think the biggest family component of everything that we're trying to build here is just showing our children that there's different ways to live and that it's okay to be different.

Because oftentimes we all feel different in one way or the other.

And a lot of times I have felt out of place in a city life.

But here where I am amongst nature and I feel the most comfortable, I hope that reflects to my children that being exactly who you are is enough.

(Upbeat music resolves peacefully) (Blues guitar begins) (Blues guitar continues) (Hectic music begins) (Tools scrape palette) [Katharen] To be honest, I know when something is done because it will strike me.

I'll look at it and I'll think 'That's beautiful.'

Woodcuts have a line quality that you can't capture in any other medium.

They're striking, they're graphic, and they're hard to ignore which is part of why I love them.

I've been using them because I carve very quickly and I paint very slowly.

And so when I'm asked to do projects, it's sometimes a matter of efficiency how can I make a really big, beautiful image without taking the rest of my life to do it.

And so the woodcuts have been a way of doing that.

My name is Katharen Wiese and I'm an artist and a community arts organizer.

The woodcut figures require a little bit of tendonitis, some low cost wood, and a lot of labor.

So the woodcut figures are a lot of work.

I make them life-size and so some people will scan like a small block and then print it very large.

I don't do that.

I start with a very large piece of wood, 4 foot by 8, and I cut it down.

And then I kind of seam them together because they can't roll through a press bed if they're too big.

I don't think I was ever making particularly small work but I've gradually really embraced and preferred making my work large scale.

A large component of that is I so often see like black people being minimized or being marginalized.

And so like, why not make the figure as large as life?

Why not make the body present with you with the viewer so that it's as if you're being confronted by another person?

And I really like that experience and the like sort of relationship that you have with the figure when it is the same size as you.

And you enter into that work in a more immersive way than you would if you saw like a small kind of truncated body.

I think the question I'm trying to answer through my work is who am I and what impact does that have on other people?

How does that identity function in society?

Yeah.

Oh, do I like that?

(Smooth beats begin) Being a black Nebraskan is a very specific experience because most black Nebraskans are surrounded by white people because 90% of our state is white and like, more than 90% of our city is white.

And so it means that you're oftentimes in isolation or you're oftentimes like a token.

And so processing what it means to form an identity in absence of your peers at times can be really challenging.

Sometimes I don't know what part of my identity I'm processing because I'm an intersectional being and we're all intersectional beings.

And I think that's one of the main things I'm trying to communicate is that blackness is not monolithic.

Blackness looks like me.

Blackness could look like a white-passing person.

Blackness could look like a lot of different things.

But often within a shared identity, there's people of very many different sorts sharing space.

(Smooth music continues) [Katharen] I don't think art in and of itself changes things.

But I think that the artist sitting down and asking something of the viewer requires them to first ask something of themselves.

And so it means there's all these creative people out here that have questions and that are looking for answers.

And I think that self-reflection is the beginning of social movement.

Images are powerful.

And representation is powerful.

And that's what I've been really excited about is that there are so many opportunities to do that.

I think one really important tool for countering like monolithic narratives of blackness is to ask people, 'What is your experience?'

And there's so many similarities.

There's also so many differences.

And all of that is like this big, beautiful umbrella which is the black identity.

And I think leaning into the individual narrative and not the propagandistic image of a black person which can often become stereotype.

But leaning into the person means that we're not like re-objectifying or dehumanizing the black body.

And so that's something that I am really leaning into within my own practice.

(Upbeat dance music) I made two pieces of Dwight Brown in 2020 and 2021.

And the first one is sort of an interrogation of gender.

It's like kind of dripping with like glitziness.

And this is like a man who identifies as straight but his gender expression is like liberated and it's free.

And I was really excited just to see him owning his own space and not limiting that to one version of itself.

And I felt like, how gorgeous is that?

Like, let's celebrate it.

(Joyful music plays) [Katharen] I was so happy because I had worked on this giant, like 7 foot wide painting for a year and I was finally showing it.

I got to show it in my neighborhood.

And there was a mom that came up to me who was Hispanic and her daughter was African American and Hispanic so she was a multiracial girl.

And she was like, I am so excited to like give this piece to my daughter because she's seeing like art by a Nebraska artist of someone that looks like her.

And it's like those little moments where people feel seen and they know that their experience is not a solitary one but it's one shared.

I think that that, that was really powerful.

And just to see the hundreds of people that like crowded into this tiny room to support the like five artists that were showing that day.

It was beautiful.

(Dance music plays) [Katharen] I just got accepted to Yale School of Art on Wednesday.

And I'm really glad I waited and asked for what I wanted because I just got accepted.

I need to dive into what my experience of blackness is and not continue to stereotype myself by saying, I need to tell someone else's story.

But that my story is important enough.

And that Dwight's story and Joelle's story, and my mom's story.

These are stories important enough to tell in rural Nebraska, in Lincoln, in the suburbs, like wherever it is, like there's black people and they're important.

And they matter.

And I think that was a really challenging place for me to get to 'cause I had so much tension around feeling like I wasn't enough or feeling like I was too much.

And so this work, I think, in me celebrating other black people and other multiracial people, I think it's also allowed for me to celebrate myself.

(Upbeat music plays) (Blues guitar plays) (Welder snaps and pops) (Blues guitar continues) (Light airy guitar music plays) (Metal grinds) (Light airy guitar music plays) (Metal grinds) (Light airy guitar music plays) (Metal grinds) (Light airy guitar music plays) (Footsteps crunch on gravel) I'm checkin' some of my sources for junk.

Never want to overlook the perfect piece.

(Welder sparks and pops) I am Sally Jurgensmier and I am a metal artist.

(Gentle guitar music) I don't say I'm a welder because welding is just the medium I use to make it happen.

For some, it's a paint brush.

For others, it's a pencil.

Typically I start with something that intrigues me.

I have saved that piece of junk or was inspired when I first found it.

Typically, the idea is just in this head of mine and the pieces speak to me.

So once we have the beginning, shape, or item, then it seems like the other pieces just start falling into place.

It'll just happen.

I use a lot of circles in my designs and that kind of came about as I started thinking more about the design itself and about some personal things that I involve in my artwork.

I think of the circle as cyclical, a representation of something cyclical, how we cycle, how we come from nothing, and we go back to nothing.

Or we experience a little cycle of hope or frustration or strife in our lifetime.

And those are just good reminders that, you know, it'll come back around.

It'll recenter.

You'll be okay.

It may not be as you are accustomed to but you find out a new way.

And I think that's positive.

And I think it's good to illustrate that sometimes, you know, we hear it, but we don't always see something that can remind us of that.

(Welder sparks) [Sally] I was a student at Hastings College.

Our second assignment was welding.

When the assignment came around and we had to, you know, fire up the welder and, you know, wear a big old helmet and wear protection.

It was a little intimidating but it just grabbed me.

And I thought, this is cool.

And my sculpture just blossomed.

But I could see that the creative process was happening and it was very tangible to me.

I'm the fourth generation to live on this farm.

And there's lots of history here.

There was also a lot of junk when I started sculpting full-time.

And so it was fun to go through, you know, my ancestors' things that they'd left behind and they were savers.

And so to kind of build a sculpture that was sort of a representation of and maybe the direction that I'd like to go was a good way to feel comfortable in my new setting and to bring some positivity to my ideas to move forward.

(Metal grinding) A lot of people ask where I come up with the ideas that I create into sculptures.

A lot of them come to me through a dream.

I'll wake up in the middle of the night and I'll think, 'Oh, I've gotta write that down.'

It might even be, if it's not a sketch, it might even just be a sentence to remind me, to take me back to that image that I had in that dream so I can revisit that when I do go to the welding shop.

Another place that I get a lot of ideas and things that I want to work out in the welding shop is when I'm driving.

An example would be like right now, the corn is tall and sometimes I don't see the corn itself.

I see the vertical lines in a repeated fashion and that reminds me of a design.

I see a stack of hay bales and I see circles or cylinders lined up that make me think of a design.

And then I try to duplicate that or replicate it in my artwork with found objects from the farm.

It is a very rural theme that a lot can relate to when they look at my art.

(Metal grinding harshly) (Gentle guitar music) We live in a world that's constantly changing and it's not always good to compare to where you've been or even somebody you admire because everybody's facing something different.

And as I think about that, I think, 'Where do I want to be?

And how do I have the power to make that happen?

Where have I been that will influence where I'm going and how can I work that out through my sculpture?

Or maybe give some ideas to others that are experiencing the same thing?'

Once again, with art, you can cater it to whatever you feel.

It's an interpretation.

I like to tell folks there really isn't a wrong answer.

We all battle little conflicts differently but maybe I can give somebody an option that they hadn't thought of before.

And think that, 'Hey, I can do that,' rather than, 'Oh, that's not possible,' or 'I've never done it before,' or 'I don't feel comfortable.

I don't know enough about it.'

Just experiment and, you know, try not to be so fearful of the outcome.

Maybe just enjoy the ride.

-(Welder sparks and pops) -(Gentle guitar music) [Sally] As much as I make art to satisfy myself or to work out emotions, thoughts, dreams, it's very satisfying to see a viewer relate to it.

If I go to a show and I have things displayed for people to see and as they walk by or they investigate closer, they start to smile, I'm very satisfied.

(Metal grinding) (Welder sparking) (Metal grinding) (Blues guitar music plays) When people seem so intrigued with what I do, I think, 'Why is it so special?'

'It's what I'm supposed to do.'

'It's why I was put on this earth.'

And we're all put on this earth to do something.

(Blues guitar playing) (Blues guitar continues) (Blues guitar continues) (Blues guitar continues) (Blues guitar continues) (Blues guitar resolves)