Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
(woman) "Prairie Mosaic" is funded by--
the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund,
with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota
on Nov. 4th, 2008;
the North Dakota Humanities Council,
a nonprofit independent state partner
of the National Endowment for the Humanities;
the North Dakota Council on the Arts,
and by the members of Prairie Public.
[bass, drums, and acoustic guitar play in bright rhythm]
?
Hi, I'm Bob Dambach. And I'm Barb Gravel
Welcome to "Prairie Mosaic,"
a patchwork of stories about the people and the places
that contribute to the arts, culture,
and history in our region.
On this edition, we'll begin the search for a new conductor
for the Fargo-Moorhead Symphony Orchestra,
visit a museum dedicated to the history
of Minnesota's milling industry,
and enjoy the music of a bluegrass band
from Thief River Falls.
Shelli Fenske compares the art of jewelry making to sculpting.
She forms metal and precious stones
into one-of-a-kind pieces.
Her jewelry reflects her love of nature,
and her passion for creativity.
[acoustic guitar & piano play in bright rhythm]
?
Found objects and the assembly of things
are just such a strong
part of me as an artist and what I create.
A lot of my work is very primitive.
I love neutral, natural tones,
like a piece of amber,
it's like when you pick it up, it's just such a warm color,
and it's got such a glow to it.
When you're working with the elements of art
and thinking about the color,
the texture, the line, the shape,
I'm really influenced by
thinking about the whole piece,
and so I'm always very conscious of the positive
and the negative space.
So I'll try to create works
where the light can pass through the amber.
The stone really drives the design.
When I see the stone, I will trace the stone on paper
and go from there and start working with a design, you know,
that I think will accent the stone
so that the stone is still the focus.
I'm always interested in fossils.
I think the first time I heard that amber was actually tree sap
and that it can be hundreds and hundreds
and hundreds of years old-- the fact that amber
is just this precious thing from the past,
that actually is like this looking glass to the past.
You can see the things that are trapped in it.
It's just another part of the beauty
in the natural part that I appreciate.
I think the fact that I grew up in a small town,
I was the little tomboy.
I was always out there in the pasture, you know,
helping them fix the electric fence and get the wiring tight.
I loved the working with the metal;
I just got so attached to it,
so as a kid I didn't even know that I was, you know,
working towards that in my life, but I really see that
as being a strong influence.
Jewelry making is really sculpting
in a much smaller scale.
You have to make sure that you're thinking about
how you're going to hang that piece at the end,
so you have to do some more extensions on it
than you visually would think the finished piece
would look like; so you make a pattern.
I'll take a piece of just a base metal then, the copper,
attach my tracing paper to that and using a saw,
and just a little handsaw, cutting that out.
[soft scraping]
I'm a putzer, I like to do a little bit of everything
rather than just kind of sticking to one thing
and continually doing that over and over again.
A lot of that comes from being a teacher,
'cause when you bring it up in this section, it actually
goes from darker, 'cause it's darker than this area...
It's my 27th year at Glyndon teaching.
I teach, this year 6 different classes and keep really busy
working with lots of different mediums,
lots of different processes.
Pounce with the eraser a little bit,
lighten those parts up that you need to, and keep it clean.
All my students inspire me all the time,
and at the high school level, it's always fun to see
when they are inspired, excited, have new ideas.
If you need an eraser, you need to come on up and grab one;
we pulled out a couple more.
[soft scraping]
This is such a crucial part.
You can hear it getting all of that rough edge off.
It's all to the touch.
Once you get a look that's very smooth,
you know that you're finished.
I'm planning whether I'm going to have
a polished-looking piece, or an antique-looking piece.
We need to make the copper pliable
so that we can add the texture to it.
I always wanted to learn how to do metalsmithing,
so I spent a summer, took my vacation money
and went to Bemidji and took a metalsmithing class.
That's where it all started.
[hissing]
Once it's gotten a dull, red glow, then you're ready
to just quench it in water.
The pieces that I'm working with right now
and the amber that I'm working with
is fairly symmetrical and very thick.
It's like a big, thick amber beet.
I love the warm qualities you get
with copper and brass with those pieces.
At this point, we're going to heat our wire
that we're using for the rivet.
[hissing]
I love sculpture, I love teaching sculpture,
and I really think that that's why um, jewelry making
became such an interest to me. Yeah!
Sculpting is just such a big part of my life.
I think I relate to
so many different parts of my life when I sculpt.
And here's the rivet that I made.
I'm going to insert that into here.
And the very last part of this is attaching the amber to it.
?
There it is-- it's a very rustic kind of sculptural piece.
It pleases me and it's my goal to make works that are durable
and will last forever.
When I hear somebody that says this is the one piece I know
I can wear and wear and wear, and it's always going to be
something that I'll treasure, and I'll pass on.
I've had that compliment, and that made my day.
Conductor George Hanson has led
nearly 100 orchestras and operas,
including the New York Philharmonic.
He has shared the stage with such extraordinary performers
as Yo-Yo Ma and Tony Bennett.
Recently, Hanson brought his talents
to the region as a finalist
in the Fargo-Moorhead Symphony Orchestra's conductor search.
(George) As someone who grew up here,
I treasure my experiences here,
I think that the experiences I had
and the people who inspired me
and influenced me are the ingredients
that injected themselves into my development, my dreams.
I went out and accomplished many of those things.
Some of them I honestly didn't think
that I'd ever be able to do them.
I mean, conducting Carnegie Hall,
conduct the New York Philharmonic,
conduct opera in Berlin, in Vienna
and to spend much of my creative life in Europe
at the heart of where we think about where classical music,
as we know it, really formed itself.
[applause & cheers]
When I saw an opportunity to come back here,
I viewed it as a real chance
for me to take everything
that I had learned, and just share it.
[George sings the melody]
Just try the violins right there.
This is after that little fermata, the alegremente.
I was born in Iowa City, moved to Milwaukee,
and then when my father took the band job with Concordia in 1967,
it was with the stipulation
that he be allowed to start an orchestra.
I was at Moorhead High School;
I had been persuading my parents for years
that it was okay that I was only practicing the piano
an hour an day because I was going to become a doctor.
Let's play it right at the beginning.
[establishes the rhythm] ? Yum pa-pa-pum pa-pa-pum pum ?
Here is a 1, 2, 3.
I remember when I came home as a senior and told my parents
that I was going to become a music major at Concordia,
they just kind of slumped down in their chairs
and were rather saddened by that.
I devoted myself for the next several years to the piano
and spent many hours every day, trying to make up for
what should have been a devotion in the teenage years
that I didn't really put forth.
I came home one night after, I don't know,
3, 4 hours of practicing, 10:00 at night,
I put on a recording without really looking at it.
It turned out it was Mahler's First Symphony.
And by the end of the first movement,
I had decided that's what I was going to do.
I would become a conductor.
Here is 1, 2.
I truly have been enriched by my experiences.
Everywhere I went, I learned from orchestras,
and that's, that's the key thing.
It's not conductors going around telling people how to do things.
It's definitely a 2-way street.
And I have to say it's been the same this week here.
I'm learning from the musicians, and I'm really thrilled
with how this orchestra has developed over the years.
I am truly impressed with these musicians.
They are truly dedicated and want to work very hard.
And we have been-- we've worked extremely hard.
They have shown me some extraordinary musicianship,
and this, to me I see as an enormous opportunity.
First, Fargo-Moorhead has this tremendous asset
in terms of this organization.
It's solidly supported; the board works very hard;
they have a wonderful staff,
and these musicians are truly devoted to their craft.
I'm grateful that Fargo-Moorhead has continued to decide
to support an organization like the FM Symphony,
of which you can be very, very proud.
After I knew that I would be coming here,
they asked if I would submit
several programs based on potential soloists.
I drew up a German program,
since that's where most of my second upbringing has been
in Vienna and in Germany, especially in the opera house.
I did a program that featured some American music
and I did a Russian program.
Each one could sort of stand on its own,
but I also wanted to give everyone an idea
of how I might be thinking about an entire season as well.
?
You have to look at the program and say
all right, we need a piece on there
that everybody's going to be comfortable with
and is going to say, I love that piece.
I'm going to go to that concert to hear that piece.
And it might also be the soloist.
?
I don't see any reason not to have
at least one work on the program that's unusual.
We have a balance in this program where hopefully,
a potential listener will come, see one piece on the program
where he says, oh, I love that piece.
So he comes with one favorite work
and he'll leave with 2 or maybe even 3.
That's the ideal formula, in my view,
of how to build a single program.
?
The Fargo-Moorhead Symphony is
searching for its next music director.
This season, our Masterworks Concerts
will each be led by one of the 5 finalists.
The decision of who will be the next artistic leader
will involve valuable input from the orchestra musicians,
audience members, symphony supporters, students,
and members of the community, including you.
The countdown begins.
Who will be the Fargo-Moorhead Symphony's next conductor?
?
The Mill City Museum in downtown Minneapolis
is a fascinating place to visit.
The museum tells the story
of the history of milling in Minneapolis-St. Paul,
and the companies that rose to prominence.
Visitors will experience interactive rooms,
historical interpreters, and other treats.
Plan on a full morning to see it all.
(man) It was quite the sight; I sure can't believe it myself.
It was exciting enough that schools would bring
busloads of kids down here to watch us start that mill.
To me it's still amazing.
We're standing in Mill City Museum
in what was once the largest flour mill in the world.
When it was built in 1880, it was the largest flour mill.
From 1880 to 1930, Minneapolis was
the flour milling capital of the world.
And this flour mill continued to function until 1965.
You have the 2 companies, the Washburn A Mill,
Pillsbury Mill across the river,
and here they're both producing flour on a massive scale.
This mill was once the largest flour mill in the world,
then the Pillsbury A Mill was, so this is
what made Minneapolis the milling capital of the world.
(man) Minneapolis, the Mill City!
The flour milling capitol of the world!
(Laura Salveson) The building closed as a flour mill and in 1991,
there was a huge fire that burned through the building,
destroying all the original equipment,
and in 2003, this opened as Mill City Museum
with a brand-new building built inside the ruin walls.
The explosive history of this site is
that the first Washburn A Mill,
which was built 1874, was destroyed
by a huge flour dust explosion in 1878.
I'm going to reproduce an event
that actually occurred here back in 1878;
it was the explosion of the Washburn A Mill.
It's quite likely with the actual explosion
that the ignition source was a machine.
I have a nice jar of flour dust here,
put a nice heaping teaspoon of material in here.
We're going to get this dust mobile,
and in order to do that,
I'm going to use this trusty bicycle pump here
and get that flour dust moving around in that mill.
Let's try it here, 1, 2, 3, go!
[poof!]
We're part of the Minnesota Historical Society, so it was
the Minnesota Historical Society's exhibit team
and department that worked on the exhibits here.
And they explore a number of different things.
One of the big stories
that we tell here is
the story of promotion and advertising.
You have General Mills here, Pillsbury across the river,
they're both making the same product,
how do they build consumer and brand loyalty?
So that's a big story and you'll see our giant Bisquick box,
which kind of anchors that area.
We also tell the story of the wheat fields
and the Red River Valley
that supplied a lot of the wheat that was milled here.
And history player Mary Dodge Woodward
is one of the ways that we tell that story as well.
"April 3rd, when the sun shines,
such a steam arises from the ground
that the prairie looks like an ocean with waves.
One cannot make out objects at a distance,
the country is alive with teams seeding and dragging."
(Laura Salveson) We have a large number of school and youth groups
that come through here every year, about 35 to 40,000,
and they experience all facets of the museum.
We have an interactive water lab, where people can discover
changes that were made to the river
in order to power the mills.
The key to the whole thing
is not to let the water go down the waterfall.
So what they did was build a 3-sided dam, and that
actually raises the water up a little bit more, then
drives it to the side, where you can run it through machines.
(Laura Salveson) We have a baking lab where all sorts of things take place.
Our staff will talk with folks
about test kitchens, wheat and flour.
Hard wheat and soft wheat are turned into the bread flour
and the cake flour, and then we have our all-purpose flour,
which is generally a blend of bread and cake flour.
(Laura Salveson) We also have a show called "The Flour Tower,"
where you ride between 7 floors of the museum,
each one designed to look like a different floor of a working flour mill,
and hear the voices of people who actually worked here.
(woman) They were just young kids.
They wanted to work on the same place all the time.
They were boy crazy too.
(Laura Salveson) There is a "Meet the Machines" exhibit,
which is flour milling equipment
from the Pillsbury Mill across the river, from the Albany Mill,
and other places as well.
And you will also see history players,
people portraying people from Mill City's past
and get to enjoy stunning views from our observation deck.
[loud whistle] Oh!
Is it any wonder that it frightens the animals.
Huh, I never thought I would see the day
where work was done by the power of machines
rather than by horses.
I think for some people, this is their starting point,
the go-to for Minneapolis history,
but also regional stories
and stories of how this place changed the way we eat.
(man) So you get the strangest dream.
I said to the wife in the morning,
"Oh, I'm all worn out today" she said "Why?"
"I had trouble at the mill last night."
I think it's something I'll never forget.
Get ready for a boot-stompin', toe-tappin' good time
with the WoodPicks from Thief River Falls, Minnesota.
This group performs a mix of country and bluegrass music
that can turn any venue into a barndance.
[playing country swing]
? I'm the center of attention ?
? In this barroom ?
? 'Cause I've got the biggest heartache of the year ?
? And each night those swingin' doors ?
? Reach out for me and draw me in ?
? 'Cause I know each night ?
? That I'll come back to wine me up again ?
? Wine me up turn me on ?
? And watch me cry for you ?
? Lately drinkin' warm red wine is all I wanna do ?
? And I never know how tight I'll wine me up till I walk in ?
? But I don't care 'cause I'll be back ?
? To wine me up again ?
[fiddle solo]
? Well I'd like to thank the men that raised the grapes ?
? Way out in California ?
? And I'm hoping; this will be their biggest year ?
? 'Cause scarlet water's all that's left ?
? To keep me hangin' on ?
? And that's why I'll try to wine me up ?
? Each day and night next year ?
? Wine me up turn me on ?
? And watch me cry for you ?
? Lately drinkin' warm red wine is all I wanna do ?
? And I never know how tight I'll wine me up ?
? Till I walk in ?
? But I don't care 'cause I'll be back ?
? To wine me up again ?
? Wine me up turn me on ?
? And watch me cry for you ?
? Lately drinkin' warm red wine is all I wanna do ?
? And I never know how tight I'll wine me up ?
? Till I walk in ?
? But I don't care 'cause I'll be back ?
? To wine me up again ?
?
Hi, we are the WoodPicks, and the name is derived
from years back when we started playing together.
Who would come and play with me or who would go do this gig?
And as it came around, Milo came back to town
and the rest is history, so it's not the WoodTicks
or anything like that ladies and gentlemen,
it's the WoodPicks--
all one word, W-o-o-d-p-i-c-k-s.
[playing in folk-rock rhythm]
? You who are on the road ?
? Must have a code that you can live by ?
? And so become yourself ?
? Because the past is just a good-bye ?
? Teach your children well ?
? Their father's hell did slowly go by ?
? And feed them on your dreams ?
? The one they fix the one you know by ?
? Don't you ever ask them why ?
? If they told you you would cry ?
? So just look at them and sigh ?
? And know they love you ?
?
? And you of tender years ?
? Can't know the fears ?
? That your elders grew by ?
? And so please help them with their youth ?
? They seek the truth ?
? Before they can die ?
? Teach your parents well ?
? Their children's hell ?
? Will slowly go by ?
? And feed them on your dreams ?
? The one they fix ?
? The one you know by ?
? Don't you ever ask them why ?
? If they told you you would cry ?
? So just look at them and sigh ?
? And know they love you ?
?
If you know of an artist,
a topic, or an organization in our region
that you think might make an interesting segment,
please contact us at...
I'm Bob Dambach, and I'm Barb Gravel,
thank you for joining us on this edition of "Prairie Mosaic."
?
(woman) "Prairie mosaic" is funded by--
the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund,
with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota
on Nov. 4th, 2008;
the North Dakota Humanities Council,
a nonprofit independent state partner
of the National Endowment for the Humanities;
the North Dakota Council on the Arts,
and by the members of Prairie Public.