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ANNOUNCER: The following program is a production of
Pioneer Public Television.
[music]
NARATOR: In this episode of Postcards.
BRIAN: So my name is Brian David Downs,
and I make a lot of art.
KEN: The name Amundson has been associated with making and
restoring for three generations.
SAMUEL: So for my first project I was inspired by some of
the folk traditions that I heard in rural Canada and
it was all filmed in southwestern Minnesota.
MICHELLE: We have about 95 different presenters here and about
285 people coming here to listen to them.
[Postcards theme music]
[Postcards theme music]
ANNOUNCER: This program on Pioneer Public Television
is funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund,
with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota
on November fourth, 2008.
Additional support provided by Mark and
Margaret-Yackel Juleen, in honor of Shalom Hill Farm,
a non-profit, rural education retreat center
in a beautiful prairie setting near Windom in
southwestern Minnesota, shalomhillfarm.org.
The Arrowwood Resort and Conference Center.
Your ideal choice for Minnesota resorts offering
luxury town homes, 18 holes of golf,
Darling Reflections Spa, Big Splash Waterpark,
and much more.
Alexandria, Minnesota, a relaxing vacation or great
location for an event.
Explorealex.com.
Easy to get to, hard to leave.
NARRATOR: We spend a day with music inspired artist
Brian David Downs, who creates striking band
posters and fine art.
So my name is Brian David Downs and I make a lot of
art when I'm out here in Spicer.
But I just think it's a bit quieter out here.
About a million ideas a second in my brain
so having just the quietness of the boonies
just allows me to sit in my head a bit,
sift through ideas, and really kind of organize.
[music]
Small town America,
small town Minnesota, basically if you take one
step to the left you'll have a lake and take one
step to the right you got a lake,
one step back you got a lake,
and probably one step forward too.
[music]
Yeah I started out doing the posters
basically a necessity of needing it for a band I
was playing in, needing posters to spread the
word, and after just a few of those,
other bands seemed to dig my style of poster making
and I pretty immediately started getting poster
jobs and being able to hustle it that way.
The posters then both work for the band,
promoting the shows and getting people out to them
as well as getting people to check out the more fine
arts side of my work by wondering who's making
these posters and what they're up to.
[music]
The posters are very immediate.
They're kind of very loud, obnoxious,
in your face, and they're basically to be using to
basically get your attention and hold your
attention until you have gotten all the information
off the poster is kind of the function of it.
So I do try to stay with the function of the
poster, not just make an art piece that looks nice
on the wall.
That's nice if that happens but the big
concern is that it's immediate and that it gets
the information across to people so they know that
the event is happening.
The posters start out as like just a quick pencil
sketch, mostly free handing.
I'll trace little its and bits and pieces off of
like a Google image search but mostly it's just free
handing it and even if it is a trace,
I basically obliterate the image with kind of a,
not so much grotesque what I'm trying to do for but
just that loud, obnoxious kind of look to it.
I basically just try to stick around stuff
I dig though. I don't really take jobs
from anyone I don't first off dig
to some extent.
I have to be entertained by the band for me to
really feel like it's necessary for me to do
something with the band.
[music]
There's a lot of Brian's art I like a lot.
Every time I look at his stuff I do form an opinion
one way or another.
It's nothing I have no feelings about.
One of the purposes of art is to arouse feelings in
people and they don't always have to be positive
feelings, they could be negative feelings.
But the purpose is to arouse some sort of
feelings and if it doesn't do that it's,
it's failed as an art.
And it works really nice with the posters cause
getting kids to come out to art shows where you
have a bit slower reads on the art is pretty
impossible to do, so having something as far as
a poster goes as much as it's an ad for the band,
it really helps me get my name and
art out there as well.
I pretty much have been trying to kid of stay in
flux series where the series of more or less
self-referential to themselves and take on
meaning but with like the posters with being
immediate the, the more so fine arts as some people
call it, it's a bit slower read,
it slows down the image.
It gets you to really take a bit more time and think
either what's with the images or if there's some
kind of thematics to it.
Where the posters are very fast,
abrasive, but once you kind of done looking at it
and getting the information,
that's about all there is to it.
With the more fine arts has a bit more depth and
you can basically spend years with it hopefully
and keep gaining new insight on it.
Working out in the country gives me a lot more free
space in my head room not to be distracted compared
to being in a larger city.
It's just basically me and the outdoors.
I'm a pretty big hermit when I'm
out in the boonies.
It's my dog and me and then seeing kind of fam
but as far as the art making,
it's a pretty isolated process and being.
Spicer's nicer.
It's quiet there's, you don't have your big chain
stores, there's, you know your gas stations and bait
shops, nice little ma pa diners.
Just the townie folk they're pretty-
-I'm a little bit weird looking so I understand I
get a few different looks here and there.
Overall though the people are really friendly,
just your good ol' small town folk.
It's always been kind of the back and forth between
country life and city life and fortunately or
unfortunately I've become pretty emoted to that,
of needing kind of both to exist and stay sane.
[music]
[music]
[music]
NARRATOR: At the intersection of three
bustling highways, Ken Amundson of Amundson
Violins builds, repairs, and appraises violins from
around the world.
[road noise]
[violin playing]
I work with violins for a living.
I create violins and I also restore violins that
have been damaged for performers all over the
United States and parts of Canada and last week I
sent one back to Norway.
[violin continues]
The term for what I do is called luthier.
Well Amundson Violin has existed as a retail
storefront for about 35 years.
The name Amundson has been associated with making and
restoring for three generations.
My business as Amundson Violin has been in Benson
here for nine months.
Previous to that it was
eight and a half years in St. Paul.
Then Amundson Violin was 21 years in Alexandria,
Minnesota, and then was eight years in
*** Rapids, Minnesota.
[music]
I came back to Benson because I lived
here until 1959.
I was 14 years old when my parents moved out of here
for economic reasons and I thought the only place on
earth that anybody would want to live would be
Benson, and if you didn't live there you probably
wanted to live there, you know?
As a little boy I felt sorry for my sister when
she got married and had to move to Montevideo,
Minnesota you know.
And always, always wanted to come back to Benson.
[music]
This corner was the corner to be on when
you were a kid.
Highway 12, U.S. Highway 12
comes out of Minneapolis and continues
through town and goes out towards Danvers.
Minnesota Highway 29 comes from the Alexandria area
and crosses at this corner and goes
down toward Montevideo.
Highway 9 from the New London area and St. Cloud
area comes through town and heads
out towards Clontarf.
This was the main corner that you
hung around as a kid.
The, the restaurant that was in this building was
called the Viking Café, and everybody remembers
the Viking Café.
[music]
Several months ago, a man by the name of
Daniel Allen Butler gave me a call.
Something is for sale now at Aldridge & Sons in
London, England, is a violin that they're
looking for six figures for that supposedly was
found several days after the Titanic went down,
and Daniel Allen Butler wanted my opinion.
So I did an experiment with this violin.
This was a very decent, not a rare valued violin,
probably worth four, five hundred dollars is all,
and I put it inside this case in good condition,
the case and everything was good condition,
and I put the case and the violin in 40 degree salt
water right out by my door and let it soak overnight,
and when I took it out of the barrel,
the case had come apart all in pieces,
and the violin had totally come apart,
all those, all the parts that you see laying here
were off of it and this is kind of a nutshell version
of, of my opinion on the violin but anyway I feel
like I proved that they did not have a violin that
was soaking in saltwater for 10 or 14 days or
whatever they're claiming.
[music]
The professional, classical violinists or
classical players that I have done business with,
you wouldn't recognize their name,
you know.
And it's too bad because they actually work harder
than the country and bluegrass people.
But country and bluegrass people that I've done
business with is Ricky Skaggs,
he's a very popular country player and a
bluegrass player.
Vince Gill, Marty Stewart, couple years ago I carved,
I hand carved a gold mounted bow for
Allison Krause, she's Allison Krause and Union Station,
and she's very, very popular.
And then just about every act in Branson,
Missouri I've done a lot of business with.
A family that I've done a lot of business with there
is the Dutton family and they started out mom and
dad and seven kids and they were just kind of
experimenting playing their music and they grew,
and grew, and grew until they bought one of the
biggest theaters in Branson and they've been
there over 20 years now.
The thing about it is is that it's fun to meet
those famous people but the amount of times that
that happens, you would never,
ever make a living off of it.
I appreciate much more the mom and dad that bring a
10 or a 14 year old daughter or son in here
and they're doing their best to pick out a,
a respectable violin for their child to learn on
and so I try to suit up a nice instrument that is
very sturdy and very durable
for the young student.
I try to take care of them that way because I do
appreciate the average person that
walks through my door.
And then there's a lot of elderly people that are
sitting there retired and wondering what their
family violin is worth and
what they should do with it.
And so part of my advertising and what I
promote is free appraisals for anybody that carries a
violin through the door, I'll appraise it and tell
them what they can do with it and what the likely
activity they might have if they put it on the
market as opposed to restoring it and then
putting it on the market.
I try to be helpful and
I think it ends up being helpful.
[music]
There's an awful lot of Benson that was
here when I was 14 in 1959 that I still love very,
very much and it's the closeness of the
community, and everybody
knows you and respects you.
And my graduating class, which would have been 63',
I think I've heard something like 60 or 70%
of the 125 students in my class are
still here in Benson.
And they've popped their heads in
and out of the door.
[nat sound] I told them about my coffee crew!
And so, I have come home.
I'm not kidding I say that with a real good feeling
in my heart, I have come home.
[music]
[music]
NARRATOR: Enjoying the show? Visit pioneer.org
for more information on Postcards and other
Pioneer productions.
NARRATOR: Montevideo based filmmaker
Samuel Hathaway gives us a look at his first film,
Once Upon a Whitsun all filmed in
southwest Minnesota.
He also gives us some behind the scenes insights
on the process of developing a film.
So for my first project, I was inspired by some of
the folk traditions that I heard in rural Canada,
and as I was writing some of the story I realized
that also it had a lot of the themes that I saw
growing up in rural Minnesota.
It was small town people.
It was rural people doing larger than life things to
save their community and save their town,
and even some of the landscapes I saw in my
head I realized were from southwestern Minnesota.
And so as I was developing the project,
I realized that Montevideo,
southwestern Minnesota was really the place where I
needed to be to make the project.
The film itself takes place in World War II in
rural Canada.
There's an old French Canadian man and an old
English Canadian man who hate each other's guts and
at the beginning of the film their wives die in a
train crash and the train it turns out was also
carrying German POW's, and so it starts rumors that
perhaps it was a Nazi sympathizer that caused
the crash to allow German POW's to escape and so it
starts a Nazi witch hunt in the town.
But the themes in the film were about you know
finding understanding you know even though someone
is your enemy.
Finding a common ground and common heroes,
you know people in small towns that do
larger than life things.
And so I made a promo trailer.
[music]
[music]
[music]
If you need anything let me know.
[silence]
BARTENDER: It's on me boys.
[radio tuning]
MAN ON RADIO: ...guitar playing the perennial favorite,
the anti Fenian song, and I'll tell you subjects
that now things have gone from Irish religious
fanatics to German ones because this Nazi
fanaticism is nothing if not cultish,
one might almost say religious.
Of course with the pain and hurt of recent wars
fresh in our minds, we should question ourselves
and our motives before we start making wild
assumptions about our enemy.
But I think religious fanaticism is
hardly a stretch here.
Come, let us reason together, think of the Swastika that
perverted cross of faith. Herr Hitler,
their God-like figure, their ritual saluter,
heir of superiority, of righteousness.
And what should we do subjects?
Idly stand by?
No! I say we shall fight!
And I tell you subjects what England has done
before, Canada can do with the king's help.
For the only thing that will stop the Nazi's now,
indeed the only thing that has ever stopped fanatics
is a good, hard dose of reality.
Even now Nazi troops goosed up across Europe,
arms and legs flailing, striking out at
communists, Jews.
And now, a Nazi sympathizer could be in
our beloved Canada, and what shall we do subjects?
How do we find this worm in our king's apple?
Open your eyes.
Has a Jew been mocked?
Has a communist been spoken ill of?
These are precious clues.
Because the Nazi you see cannot help himself,
hate is in his blood.
If one of those poor blokes crossed a Nazi's
path, he'd be struck down on the spot and then by
his brutish shall we know him.
[radio fades, static]
[voice returns] Oh courage my lads.
We shall find these Nazis and smoke them out!
We will crush them without mercy and expel them
from our king's land.
Of course, if you hear German being spoken by a
gaunt man in a dreary black coat,
he's probably just a Mennonite.
But all others must be crushed!
We must fight lads, we must fight!
[speaking foreign language]
[speaking foreign language]
You boys need a hand?
Yes, we would be grateful.
[in the distance] Where are you boys from?
Eh, not far.
[music]
[clock ticking]
So that was my promo trailer
and you'll notice that I was able to have a small
acting part myself, so it really allowed me to
fulfill all my loves in all parts of filmmaking.
And it was all filmed in southwestern Minnesota
using artists to make, local artists to create
props for the project, a local letterpress,
A to Z Letterpress in Montevideo made newspaper
props, I had a local wood artisan do some antiqued
woodcrafts for the project,
and so it was just a great collaborative effort.
We're using this to start a new film company,
The Art of Many, it's a new collaborative
production company and you can check us out online.
NARRATOR: The Rural Arts and Culture Summit is
where interested artists and community members meet
to share lessons in art-based
community development.
The Rural Arts & Culture Summit is a two day event
and there is, it's both, there's parts of it that
are opened to the public, so right now we're at a
local flavor event that is open to families and
there's all kinds of interactive arts
activities going on, but then we have people coming
from all over the state and a few from all over
the country that have come to attend workshops and
sessions about great case studies and success
stories and arts based community development.
We have about 95 different presenters here and about
285 people coming to listen to them.
It's about the transformative power of
arts based community development,
so it's how communities can really frame their
stories and their narratives by engaging
artists as leaders and looking at challenges and
opportunities through the lense of the arts.
I think arts play a pivotal role in economic
development and often they're overlooked.
In Lanesboro alone, between the arts
organizations, the Common Wheel Theater and
Lanesboro Art Center, over a million dollars a year
is brought into the community,
just from the budgets of
the two arts organizations.
So the arts can have a tremendous impact in
small communities.
I think that as, if, as you start looking at the
economy of a place be it in an urban setting or in
a rural setting, there are people that are around you
and a lot of the times when you start peeling
back the layers, lots of times artistry comes out.
And having those people within your community and
tapping into those resources that they're
able to offer, then bring things to the forefront.
It's just the beginning cause people are going to
go home with great ideas and new relationships.
[music]
¶ All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go ¶
¶ I'm standing here outside your door ¶
¶ I hate to wake you up to say goodbye ¶
¶ But the dawn is breakin', it's early morn ¶
¶ The taxi's waiting, he's blowin' his horn ¶
¶ Already I'm so lonesome I could cry. ¶
So kiss me and smile for me-
¶ So kiss me and smile for me ¶
¶ Tell me that you'll wait for me ¶
¶ Hold me like you'll never let me go. ¶
¶ I'm leavin' on a jet plane ¶
¶ Don't know when I'll be back again ¶
¶ Oh, babe, I hate to go. ¶
¶ There's so many times I've let you down ¶
¶ So many times I've played around ¶
¶ I tell you now, they don't mean a thing ¶
¶ Every place I go, I think of you ¶
¶ Every song I sing, I sing for you ¶
¶ When I come back, I'll wear your wedding ring. ¶
[music fades]
ANNOUNCER: This program on Pioneer Public
Television is funded by the Minnesota Arts and
Cultural Heritage Fund, with money from the vote
of the people of Minnesota
on November fourth, 2008.
Additional support provided by Mark and
Margaret-Yackel Juleen, in honor of Shalom Hill Farm,
a non-profit, rural education retreat center
in a beautiful prairie setting near Windom in
southwestern Minnesota, shalomhillfarm.org.
The Arrowwood Resort and Conference Center.
Your ideal choice for Minnesota resorts offering
luxury town homes, 18 holes of golf,
Darling Reflections Spa, Big Splash Waterpark,
and much more.
Alexandria, Minnesota, a relaxing vacation or great
location for an event.
Explorealex.com.
Easy to get to, hard to leave.
[Leaving on a Jet Plane continues]
Captioned by Pioneer Public Television 2014