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Hhwy1109 Two unique talents and an actual working collection
come together for this week’s show. Jeff Boshart, Eastern Illinois University’s sculpture
professor, starts off the show sharing his unique talent and work. Then we visit with
Brian Poulter, another EIU professor who has travelled the national road by motorcycle
and chronicled it all through photos using nothing more than a smart phone and a few
apps. Our last story takes us to rural Paris, Illinois, to Chester Higginbotham’s farm.
Chester has a collection of tractors that aren’t just for admiring. He still uses
them on his farm! That’s coming up next on heartland Highways
[music]
Hello and thanks for tuning in to Heartland Highways this week, I’m Kate Pleasant and
I’m Lori Casey. This week we’re talking to one of our friends from EIU. He’s our
sculpture professor in the art department. This past summer he was working on some large
art project for campus, so we headed over to see how these pieces go from small scale
models to the real thing. [Sound of truck moving sculpture]
(Narrator) It's moving day at Eastern Illinois University, not for students but for large
scale art. Today this towering steel sculpture is making a short journey from where it was
created to its new home outside the Tarble Arts Center. This piece is the creation of
artist and EIU sculpture professor Jeff Boshart. Tarble Arts Center and Mike Watts have been
very supportive of putting my work up there. Which is nice as a faculty member, instead
of having the sculpture in the Tarble, which tend to be smaller, I have real sculptures
outside and then the models inside so that people can see the differences. We're taught
to focus on what we're told to look at and we miss everything around it. So, by putting
a sculpture in the environment, people say what are you trying to capture, and I say
I'm capturing everything you see through these empty hallow boxes. If you're looking at this
you're not only seeing this, you're seeing the background, you're seeing the environment
it's in. As you walk around it, it is like putting your head inside a picture. You rotate
inside there and you see everything through new eyes by putting everything in the space
that holds nothing. (Narrator) This piece is part of a collection
that Jeff calls, T.H.E.B., or transparent hollow empty boxes. The project that took
place in the summer of 2012 was made possible by a research and creative activity grant
through the President's office at Eastern. It's a series of major awards given to the
researcher of the creative person that is, for the most part, unfettered. You have this
amount of money, make something good happen. What they gave me was enough money that I
was able to go out and buy steel. And rather than buy steel and not know exactly what I
wanted to do; I'd go out to an architectural supply firm and these are for architectural
elements. This is square steel tubing in a model form and so I do all the measurements
and everything to scale and I know exactly where my balance points are, I can tell if
it's going to tip over, and I can see how all the pieces fit together. And it's very
easy to manipulate. So, the idea was that you can't just make one of something. In research
you do lots of little things to prove a hypothesis. In art, you actually have to make it. The
model is somewhat unimpressive, but if you consider that a figure is only that big in
scale. (Narrator) As so the modeling and idea process
begins, which Jeff let me take part in. The small modeling pieces are cut to size and
glued together into individual boxes. The collection of boxes are then put together
into what will eventually be the finished work of art, in this case welded together
pieces of hollow square steel. The idea for the series really comes from
the idea from the fact that I'm a teacher and I told students one year to take an artist
and the artist was David Smith, who basically stacked together stainless steel boxes, polished
stainless steel boxes and I said that is what was done in the fifties. This is a new generation,
this is the early part of the twenty-first century, we need to take that idea and reinvent
it. How do we do it? Students had a really hard time getting a grasp on that and I thought,
huh, his was about the reflective service in the environment around it and kind of a
distorted polished metal reflection; what if I deal with transparency of the same types
of boxes that are tumbling? And the other thing that I tell my students is, sculptors
have a blessing. It's, you have your vertical axis, you have your horizontal axis, and you
have your depth. So, it may look sort of catholic and it's really the sculptors blessing. And
I said, vertical-horizontal, front to back is really boring. Well, all of these are exactly
that. But because of the weights and balance, like in physics, they are happiest when they're
like this. None of these have flat spots. Where is water going to sit on it to rust?
If it rained, water collects here and it shoots out the back side so it becomes kind of an
impromptu fountain. Diagonals are what are called dynamic lines. So, there's lots of
dynamicism here, there's lots of construction here, there's lots of things that happen in
the environment that you have to be there on certain days to see. It's the type of thing
you can see a hundred times. (Narrator) There are two large pieces next
to the Tarble Art Center. Other examples can be found in downtown Effingham, Mattoon Middle
School and at S51 on Neil Street in Champaign. Another project Jeff’s been involved in
has been the EIU campus sculpture project. With the completion of the Doudna Fine Arts
Center, 7th street, which essentially became a dead end, proved to be a perfect place to
display large, yet temporary sculptures. And we want to bring in professional artists,
but we just didn't have the money. And I said, well we're a teaching institution so why don't
we bring in the best of the regions, within a three-hundred mile radius, why don't we
bring in the best of the graduate students who are on the cusp of entering the career
and give them an opportunity in the summertime and it's called the Eastern Illinois University
Summer Residency, Summer Sculpture Residency Program. And, so for four years, we brought
in four students a year who would come in and put sculptures on the street out here.
And the sculptures would be up for two years. So, every two years, and we had overlapping.
So, every year there were four new sculptures on campus.
(Narrator) Jeff's work is not limited to steel hollow boxes. He also works in stone, wood
and recycled materials. His work can be seen all around the country in art galleries and
museums, parks, private homes, churches, schools and universities.
The best way to practice skills is to do something functional. And to do something you haven't
done before which is why I went into art. The idea of never doing anything twice the
same way, whoa. Make believe every day. And that, so I do furniture fluring skills and
to practice new techniques and most of the time I will accept a commission if it involves
as part of the payment to purchase a new piece of equipment.
And people are much more willing to do that than to pay you money. And it's like okay,
I'll do this, but I want a dovetail jib. Really? How much is that going to cost me? Well, not
very much. That's sort of like my profit margin, if you will, is a new tool because what do
I do for a full-time living, I work for the state of Illinois, Eastern Illinois University
as sculpture professor. I try to give back to what I do and I tell the students: time,
talent and treasury. I don't have treasury. I have time and I have talent.
(Narrator) As Jeff said, his full time living is that of sculpture professor at Eastern,
a position he's held since 1988. Here in what he calls his "kingdom" otherwise known as
the sculpture studio, Jeff teaches students the fundamentals of shop safety, equipment
use and construction techniques. It's hard to say make a sculpture and you're
sitting there, not only do I not know what sculpture is, I don't know how to make it.
So, I spend a lot of my time introducing students to new technologies and new processes and
that's were about 80 percent of the time is. The other 20 percent is dealing with the advanced
students, who are really more self-directed and my job is to provide them with opportunities
outside of the classroom. It's a lot of fun. The rewards come in what my students do. And
that's the teachers reward is you see as alumni, where they've gone and what they've done.
It's been a wonderful career. It still is. If you’d like to purchase a copy of any
Heartland Highways program contact us at 1-877-727-9348 during regular business hours. You can also
visit our online store at www.weiu.net or mail in your order with payment to the address
on your screen. DVD’s are available for $25 each. Visa, MasterCard, discover or American
Express are accepted. Today’s smart phone technology lets us do
just about anything, even document our lives using the phone’s camera. So when photographer
and professor of journalism Brian Poulter wanted to travel and document The National
Road, he left his traditional camera gear at home and set out on an adventure with his
motorcycle and his I phone. Take a look.
[Motorcycle driving]
It's beautiful scenery, and the nice thing about a motorcycle is you smell every smell;
you're exposed to every weather element, but the stuff you don't anticipate are people.
I guess when you're on a motorcycle by yourself, people aren't very threatened by you at all
because you're kind of at the will of the elements and that and the people are exceptionally
nice and so you just almost know you're going to meet new people every day. Just without
even really trying. I mean, if you're stupid enough to be on the sidecar in the middle
of nowhere, people come up to you and go what's wrong with you? And then that starts a conversation
so that's the best part. (Narrator) When he was 10 years old Brian
Poulter's Dad gave him his first camera and from there, his interest in photography started.
He pursued photojournalism as a major in college and eventually landed a job at Eastern Illinois
University as a professor in the department of Journalism. As a way to keep current and
fresh in terms of photography and teaching, Brian has set out on a number of travelogue-style
photographic adventures, all from behind the wheel of a motorcycle.
About five years ago, Jim Staniford, who is an EIU alum actually, and a very talented
writer, somehow I talked him into let's go parallel to the Mississippi River on motorcycles
and let's see what we can find. So, we did that and the Decatur (word) Review published
the photographs and writing and then I took a summer off. And then the next summer, not
on this motorcycle but a regular motorcycle, I decided to go to the Arctic Circle. From
here, drove up there, through Canada Article Circle, and then the Alaska, back down and
out. That was about ten thousand miles. And then, last summer I said well that was well
what's a little bit easier than that. So, I decided to do the Oregon Trail. So, I got
old maps and traced the old routes and tried to be as close as I could, staying on back
roads and that. (Narrator) Looking to explore the middle part
of the country in the summer of 2012, Brian decided to drive and document the national
road, which starts in Cumberland Maryland and ends in Vandalia, Illinois. For this trip
Brian decided to simplify the camera gear and shoot the entire adventure on a smart
phone. Photography is changing. When I first started
teaching at Eastern, we taught with film, then we taught with paper, then we went to
digital, and so as a photo instructor, I'm guilty of malpractice if I don't stay current
with where the technology's going. And as I played with the cellphone cameras, they
really, under the right conditions, not all conditions, they can make some really nice
photographs. And another nice thing is people aren't threatened by them. You hold up your
cellphone camera people are used to cellphone cameras. If you hold up a camera with a huge
lens they don't like that. (Narrator) And while Brian has shot photos
with far more expensive and sophisticated cameras, using the iPhone was a creative challenge
that he embraced. People knew I was doing this. They expected
some photography. So, I can't just say I'm taking the day off. I had to figure out how
to work with this tool and so that's what I had to do. And so, knowing to that I had
to photograph it made me stay a whole lot more alert. I think that it made the trip
better because I had to always be looking and that's when I was noticing things. And
so, even when it's raining. So, okay it's raining, it's dark, I'm staying outside where
there's light, where the pictures going to come from today.
(Narrator) With the assistance of the local Verizon dealer, Brian was given an additional
I phone as a backup along with some camera accessories. With cameras in hand, Brian took
off on a 10 day adventure. Not only where the cameras a new addition, so was his ride.
This is a 2010 Ural motorcycle. It is made in Russia. It is from stolen plans, a copy,
either stolen plans or stolen motorcycles. Right before World War II the Russians took
a German BMW motorcycle and they copied it and reverse engineered it. And, while they've
updated the barring and carborators and that sort of stuff, it's essentially very similar
to that old bike. And I, I'll be guilty of saying; I just think it's cool.
(Narrator) The other cool part of this bike, the sidecar.
Actually, it's very handy because when I take my other motorcycle you'd have to put these
big bags on the back and panniers and that sort of stuff and it's a pain. This, you just
open up a flap and you can be extremely sloppy as a traveler, just throw stuff in there.
And it's, plus, not many motorcycles have a trunk and have a spare tire along so if
you get a flat, it has a whole lot of advantages to it.
(Narrator) Now you may be wondering why your camera phone pictures don't turn out like
this. We'll there's an app for that, or three or four.
My camera, if you've ever seen an ipad or maybe a droid, I have a whole page of just
apps. And I've bought a whole bunch and I've tried a bunch, but I really got onto about
three. You know, you need to find that camera app that you're, really works well for you
to make the photographs with and rarely it's the one that's on the camera because people
just thinking about this beautiful thing it's so cheap. It's not like the old days where
you have to buy film and it's not like the software is three-hundred dollars. It's five
or seven dollars or a lot of times it's a dollar ninety-nine. If you blow three dollars
and make a mistake you don't feel nearly as bad. Coming from the journalism background,
we're pretty; we have pretty strict guidelines about what we'll do. If you're fooling the
audience, if you're changing it to something other than what it really looked like, that's
a no-no. And I, I come from that school and all the stuff I was doing, I wasn't calling
purely journalism, but I still, that's sort of where I come from. Even though a have a
degree in art, I'm really a photo-journalist-documentary stuff photographer. SO, when I'm adjusting
it, like if there's a little too much shadow on the face, I'll lighten the face so you
can see the tone a little bit. Same thing we would actually do, we were doing in photography
for over a hundred and fifty years. Dodging and burning. Or obviously, you can convert
it in the black and white. The real world isn't black and white, but it, I was pretty
sure true most of the time. I think this one picture I have with horsing I just made it
a lot, made it seem a lot darker on that day maybe than it was. But, I don't think I fooled
the audience. I think all the detail's there; I think that's the way it really works.
(Narrator) The result of the national road project wasn't a book deal or money; instead
it was the adventure itself and the people he encountered along the way. It was also
an opportunity to take those experiences and use them in the classroom
So, I've been teaching photography at Eastern for twenty years. If I did it the same way
and I hadn't evolved in that, I would be boring myself when I teach. And so, if you find something
new about this thing that you love, you can transmit it and you can hopefully give the
passion to other people. And and, you know, Eastern expects me to stay current in my area
or they won't be real happy with me. I mean, that's just an expectation of all faculty.
But it's an expectation I have of myself, so the (word) for me is rekindling the excitement,
new tool, new approach, new way to tell stories, and I end up teaching myself stuff. And sometimes
when I go in the classroom, I'll look how a student approached something and I'll go,
how did you do that? And they will tell me and I never thought of that and that's the
magic for me. It's just exploring it and learning. You'll never master photography. It's just
impossible. It's just too much things to do with it.
Is there a place we should see or a person we should meet, well tell us about it. Heartland
Highways covers within a 200 mile radius of our home base in Charleston Illinois. You
can e-mail us at heartlandhighways@weiu.net, call us at 1-877-727-9348 or send us a letter
to 600 Lincoln Avenue Charleston, IL 61920. We’re looking forward to hearing from you.
If you remember Sid Justice, our gunstock maker from Kansas, Illinois, well this next
story came from the same viewer that introduced us to him. Chester Higginbotham has an extensive
collection he enjoys not only looking at, but actually using to work too! Chester is
a farmer outside of Paris, Illinois, and he collects tractors that he also uses on his
farm. His love for farm equipment started young and grew. He now has nearly 50 tractors
he has restored or is in the process of restoring. See for yourself!
(Narrator) When you farm for as long as Chester Higginbotham has, let’s just say it’s
over 60 years, you start to collect things. That seems to be a theme with the farmers
we meet here on Heartland Highways and for Chester, it was tractors.
I guess I kind of blame my dad for some of my stuff, but for me I can restore old antique
stuff. And from when I was just a young boy, he had a five foot AC combine and that’s
when he quit using the machine and went to a pull type combine. And we did a lot of custom
work, the thing would need repaired about every year and then, so he would uh. I’d
help him repair it, and then uh, I don’t remember what year it was or when it was for
sure, but he wanted it painted, wanted it to be painted. So, I painted that combine
for him, I’ll never forget that. He had other machinery he wanted to paint, you know,
and uh and I think that’s the reason I just like to fix up old stuff. Well, it’s a hobby
and it keeps you out from front of that *** tube (laughing) I call it.
(Narrator) During World War II when Chester was a young boy, it was hard to get new tractors
so he and his farther continued to maintain and restore the ones they already had on their
farm in Martinsville, Illinois. Now Chester has about 50 tractors that run on his farm
near Paris, Illinois, many of them Oliver brand. He restores them and displays some
of them at a museum on his property. He also runs them in tractor pulls, parades, antique
tractor clubs, and even uses some of them actively to farm his land.
Well I got the super, super 99, which is one of my pride and joys. I got two of them; one
of them is a regular pulling tractor. It’s been set up to pull with. The other one’s
pretty much original yet and uh then I had the old 90 I got Oliver. It’s one of my
pride and joys, too. It’s the oldest one in here, 1937, and *it has a big four cylinder
______cell motor in it, gas. Of course these here Super 99’s they got 371 Detroit’s
in there, built by General Motors. There’s an old um 1939 Hart Power sitting over here
that’s been restored. It’s uh, back in its day it was probably one of the you know
most powerful tractors they had. I’ve got a little VAC type tractor in here, which is
my dad had one like that when I was a kid at home. It was a year 1944, and I drove it
a lot when I was a kid. And that’s the reason I got one in here in the museum because I
found one the same year that he had, and uh so I let it stay with my Oliver’s. (Narrator)
The museum got its start when Chester decided to do a little cleaning and organizing at
his house. Not necessarily at his own suggestion though!
Probably because my daughter kept wanting me to clean my office out. She was wanting
me to take stuff off the walls and put in our extra bedroom we had, and I we didn’t
want to do that. So, I started concreting this part here, see the other part is newer,
where they go through that other door, uh uh anyway I uh, this here I just finished
concreting this from that walk in door over to here. And that’s when I decided to take
this stuff out of the house, and then I bought a house, a place down here south of me about
a mile and a half. And uh it had a bunch of old stuff in it, that stuff up there that’s
on that peg board. Or course these license plates and stuff I got up in here they are
just something we’ve collected over the years, and uh I think her sister, my wife’s
sister helped us get some of them. A lot of these old tools you see here, I already had
those they was out in my shop. They weren’t in the house; they were out in my shop. Of
course I got stuff in here from the seed company. I’ve been in the seed business for 54 years.
(Narrator) Chester also has photos chronicling his tractors and adventures by motorcycle,
which he says he’s had a lifelong interest in. And ever present in many of those photos
is his wife, Beverly. So what does she think about all of this?
Well she calls it, we gone on vacation we go to old tractor shows. She calls them old
tractor shows. She don’t say too much, she uh. Once in a while I have to take her somewhere
you know uh different where there ain’t no tractors.
(Narrator) Does she collect tractors? She drove them in parades too, and shows.
She owns three of them in here. I say she owns them. She’s got her name on that John
Deere over there, and uh that little Ford sitting back there that belongs to her. She
bought that last winter. (Narrator) And what do other people think?
Oh they think this is awesome. (Narrator) There’s no doubt Chester’s
collection is special. But is it complete? He says he doesn’t think so quite yet.
I still, still I’ll buy and sell. Once in a while I’ll sell one. I don’t sell a
painted one. I sell one I fix up you know mechanically, and I sell. I’ll still restore
one if you look in my shop in this big shed out here I got one out front tore apart. It’s
a 19 uh 55 super 7-super 88 diesel that I’m working on. I’m doing it for another guy.
Probably my health will tell me when to quit. We really had a good time learning about his
collection. Well, we’re out of time for this week’s show. If you have an idea for
us, make sure to send it our way at heartlandhighways@weiu.net. Thanks for watching and we’ll see
you next time. [music]