(upbeat music) - Funding for off 90 is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, and the citizens of Minnesota.

(loon calling) (upbeat music) - Cruising your way next, Off 90, we talk to college students in Red Wing who build guitars.

We visit a glass artist in Mankato.

We meet a painter in Rochester, and we do some model railroading.

It's all just ahead, Off 90.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) Hi, I'm Barbara Keith, thanks for joining me on this trip, Off 90.

In the age of mass produced everything some items are still made by hand, out of wood.

In Red Wing students learn how to make and repair guitars, and other string instruments.

One important step is learning how to read the wood.

Let's find out more.

- So then I'm just gonna take my chisel and just remove the end taper.

(chisel scraping) My name is Tim Reede, I am one of the instructors at the Guitar Program here at Minnesota State College Southeast in Red Wing, Minnesota.

I'm part of the Musical Instrument Repair and Building Division of this school.

I work for the guitar part of this, we also have violin and band instrument repair.

Most of the jobs out there are repair oriented, so we're trying to orient our students to be skilled doing repair work, but part of that is to have an intimate understanding of the anatomy of a guitar.

So that's why we have them build acoustic guitars and electric guitars.

(upbeat acoustic guitar music) - We have students from sort of all walks of life, From 18 years of age, to perhaps retired and just looking for a hobby.

They don't always have a musical background, or have woodworking experience.

- So students come in, most of them have never touched a chisel, or a block plane, or scrapers, or table saws, and sanders.

(sander humming) And so we have the first four weeks getting everybody comfortable with all of these tools.

And that's before we get into the repair work and the setup work.

Today, we're doing bridges and sound posts.

We start with fitting a sound post inside the violin.

That's where we're gonna get the mirror in there, we're gonna look for the end pin hole, get it in there just right, which is a really tricky job.

Then we fit a bridge to it.

(string plinking) - We string it up, and get the action, the string heights just right, and then we do it over and over again.

(laughing) - I'm Rachael, I'm in the second year guitar program at the Red Wing school.

The first year program, it was a lot harder than the second year program has been 'cause I was so new to everything.

Getting comfortable with all the sharp objects involved with it, and learning how to work with wood, how to read it.

(sanding block sanding) One of the surprising things was that it's such a physical job, and it really does take a toll on the muscles.

(sanding block scraping) - You're working with your hands, often times you're just sanding for hours and hours, which isn't very exciting.

(chisel scraping) You're working with a chisel, forcing a chisel through a piece of wood.

- So we try to take it sort of one step at a time.

To learn how to sharpen a knife, or a chisel, and being able to build their first instrument.

And that, as a student, is the most rewarding thing.

(soft acoustic guitar strumming) - So this is my first year guitar.

In the first year you have the option to build an electric guitar, but you have to build an acoustic, I did both.

(soft acoustic guitar strumming) So this is based off of a Martin OM 14-fret to the body, but the whole thing is rosewood.

I tried to use as much rosewood as possible.

(soft acoustic guitar strumming) - My name's William Schroeder, I'm from Madison, Wisconsin, so not too far from here.

This is my first year acoustic build, so this is a OM body guitar, so it's a little bit smaller than a Dreadnought, but not quite like travel size guitar.

I would love to build guitars full time, for the rest of my life.

That would be ideal.

(block sanding) Breaking into the field is definitely a challenge, there's a lot of great people out there that make a lot of great instruments.

- There are more employment opportunities in repair work, that's our main focus when people get out, that's where the jobs are.

It's much more competitive in the guitar building world, but some people do go on to find a career in building guitars, and that's what I did.

So when I'm not teaching I'm building guitars for customers, and here's a couple I built.

This one was, this one's called The Librada, it's an acoustic and electric guitar.

- Well, this is an electric guitar that I designed, sort of based on the classic 50s and 60s instruments that I really love.

- And this one I've called the Black Pearl, because it's got black Mother of Pearl on it.

This one's got a lot of kind of modern features, the cutaway, the arm bevel on it.

- I'm always inspired by vintage instruments, and creating something that has the benefit of being made now, but has the look and feel of something that was made 40 or 50 years ago.

- It's a multi-scale instrument, you can see that the frets are angled, it's got a longer scale length on this string than it does on this string.

- Oh gosh.

(man laughing) I've never played one of these.

(acoustic guitar strumming) Pretty cool.

- What multi-scale?

- Yeah.

(acoustic guitar strumming) - My interest in guitar started as a guitar player.

(acoustic guitar strumming) Kind of fell in love with the acoustic guitar, that led me to come here and and go through the program.

That was in 2004, so when I got out of school I started building instruments.

(file sawing) I've built a little over a hundred guitars myself.

(file sawing) - Tim's an amazing guitar builder, and I hope to be able to be on that level one day, but I know I've got a lot of work ahead of me to get there.

- When it's done well, it can be very rewarding.

It can be very challenging, but with great challenge comes great rewards.

(acoustic guitar strumming) - There's a lot of satisfaction in creating something tangible, that somebody can put their hands on and they can play it, and they can enjoy it.

(acoustic guitar strumming) Because in this day and age of sort of planned obsolescence, the making of a musical instrument to me has a really important place.

(acoustic guitar strumming) - Good, cut it.

All right, very pretty.

(upbeat music) - At River Hills Mall in Mankato you might notice a warm glow coming from inside one of the shops.

It's where glass artist Larry Hodgson creates his designs.

He loves fantasy imagery, and he likes to make glass dragons.

Let's take a look.

(soft medieval music) - My name is Larry Hodgson, and we are at the River Hills Mall in Mankato, Minnesota.

at Renaissance Glass.

Renaissance Glass is a blown glass specialty gift shop.

We specialize in all things shiny, and Renaissance themed statuary and gifts.

Dragons, knights, fairies, unicorns, that type of thing.

It seems that there's quite a niche, an interest in that type of product.

And we've been doing Renaissance festivals with our blown glass for upwards of 30 years.

And this is the perfect marriage in this one location and store.

It's worked really well for us as far as a formula that people seem to enjoy and the stuff we have on our shelves.

(soft medieval music) I have a passion for it, it's a lot of fun.

I stumbled into it years ago, always been interested in it, since I was a child watching blown glass being done, and just dumb luck later in life I met a glass artist willing to teach.

I've been doing it ever since.

I'm learning every time I sit at the work bench.

It's such a fun, fun medium.

(soft medieval music) The process for creating something out of glass, in the medium we work with, it's actually called glass lamp work.

It gets the name lamp work, in the old days they used to use an oil lamp, and that was the heat source, and they'd use a bellows to blow air over that flame to make it hot enough to melt the glass.

Today we use Pyrex for our glass, we use propane and oxygen, again combined so that it's hot enough to melt the glass.

We take rods of that Pyrex, we heat it up with the torch, and when it starts to melt you can bend it and shape it, and twist it, into the figures you're trying to create.

Sometimes we'll work with colored glass, more often than not though we work with clear glass and then add colors, stains, or accents to it after the piece is finished.

(soft medieval music) Pyrex is actually a brand name of glass that is borosilica, it's boron and silica.

And it is unique in that it can take pretty extreme temperature changes, for the most part, without cracking or fracturing.

That's why you can put a Pyrex baking dish in your oven and it doesn't crack in the same way as if you were to take a drinking glass, and put it in there would.

So there's a number of different formulas for glass for different applications, and Pyrex is by far the best for what we do.

(soft medieval music) I've always had a fascination with fantasy imagery.

Like any 13 year old boy that never grew up, I always, I liked dragons, and as a glass artist, a dragon is, of all the things I make, and I make pretty much anything that someone's would want, dragons are my favorite because there's no rules or restrictions.

With a dragon being a totally fantasy oriented creature, you can give it three heads if you want, you can give it wings, You can color it up any way you like.

The phone could ring halfway through it and say, "Oh, well this one only gets one head," and you'd get away with it, and have fun with them.

Whereas when you're trying to do a sculpture of an elephant, you can put it in different poses, but you gotta have a trunk and big ears, or it's not an elephant.

So it's nice to be able to do things that are fantasy oriented, and I've always been interested in that, and Sci-Fi.

And I do a number of things by commission, if people want a special character from a video game, or a ship from Star Wars, I'm quick to jump on a Star Wars project.

Sci-Fi is my first love, and I find things like that a lot more challenging, but at the same time that's one of the reasons to want to do it, is that challenge.

I can always make another hummingbird, but I would rather make an Ewok.

(soft medieval music) As far as services, I offer, I do repairs, I do custom orders.

Because I am just sort of one guy though, there's certain times of the year where custom orders just aren't practical, as we're involved in Renaissance festivals through the summer, I get pretty tied up with having to do dragons and unicorns.

As we get into the holiday season, at Christmas, we get booked pretty early for custom orders, and I don't want anyone left without things being available, or not having time to complete a custom project.

So I typically, right around the first week of December we stopped taking custom orders just so that we can provide that piece for someone in a timely manner.

We spread ourselves pretty thin in the summertime, as we do the Renaissance Festival and keep our mall store open, but I've got a great group of people that help me out that make it possible.

And the Renaissance fair just sort of happens, it's nothing but fun.

It's exhausting, but it's over before we know it, and we're back in the shop, here in Mankato, working again.

So, but we do keep both venues going through the summer.

(soft medieval music) Something about the blown glass, it's fascinating to watch.

And I would encourage anyone who may have the opportunity to try it.

Or if you've been curious, or if you're not curious, plenty of YouTube videos out there.

See the how-tos, when I learned people were very secretive about their tools, materials, techniques, and now there's such a wealth of information being shared online.

People talk about blown glasses as being a lost art, and in all actuality there are more people blowing glass right now today, than any time ever in history.

it's a wonderful time to get involved with this, and it doesn't take a lot of money.

You can get set-up your garage, working safely, for a few hundred dollars.

The rest is just practice, practice, practice, and learn the rules so you know which ones to break.

It's a fun art form, definitely give it a try if you have the opportunity.

I had a gentleman come into the Renaissance Festival one time, who explained to me how he's in blowing glass now, and living in the Twin Cities, and he was inspired years ago by a glass artist that used to come to their mall through the holidays.

And he would watch him blow glass, and ask him questions.

And when I asked him "Where were you from?"

And he says, "Albert Lea," and it tickled me because I was the glass artist that he had talked to as a kid, he used to come in all the time with his mom, and that was 25 years ago.

And it just, it filled my heart with joy to know that what I like to do, and enjoy doing, is inspiring a generation of people that maybe I'll never meet, but when you do meet them and they can give thanks, in a sense, it makes you feel good.

(soft medieval music) (upbeat music) - Brianna Stenzel believes there's an artist inside each of us.

She dabbled in art as a child, and her family encouraged her creativity.

Painting allows her feelings to show through.

(reflective music) - We are all born creative, I believe.

(reflective music) Pablo Picasso said that, that everyone is born an artist.

(reflective music) Some of us nurture it, and some of us don't.

(reflective music) Hi, I'm Brianna Stenzel, and I am a local artist.

(reflective music) My local business name is CeCe's Collective, CeCe is short for my middle name, Cecilia.

(reflective music) I am definitely a multi-medium artist.

I like to work with acrylic paint, I like to work with oil paint, and watercolor paint, and I even dabble in resin.

(reflective music) I was raised in a creative family, and I've been creative since I was three or four, eating at restaurants, drawing on all the place mats.

My grandma kind of nourished my love of painting by taking me to like a summer art camp for kiddos.

We learned a lot at a very young age.

(reflective music) What I like about painting is the freedom that I can express how I'm feeling.

(reflective music) I do that based on the colors I use, I do that based on experiences I've lived and had to go through.

(reflective music) It's been a sort of therapy for me.

(reflective music) I was working on a painting of a bird flying in the sky.

(reflective music) And at the same time my grandma had passed away.

(reflective music) So what started as a bright yellow painting quickly turned into a dark painting with blue, and black, and just accents of gold to encompass the grief I was feeling.

(reflective music) I am heavily inspired by art, and nature, and music.

I have a lot of birds in my paintings, and a lot of plants.

(reflective music) I see birds as this just pure freedom, being able to fly anywhere they want to.

(reflective music) Also, like they're musical in a way, they sing, and that's one of my favorite things about spring is hearing them sing.

And we've been hearing more and more of that lately, so that's been making me so happy.

(reflective music) I also have some work where I've included music lyrics, cause I grew up in a musical family.

(reflective music) But definitely just a lot of funny, phunny things in my greeting cards as well, it's something I'm known for locally.

(reflective music) My favorite moment when painting, is when I can lose myself.

I struggle with a lot of daily pain, I have some chronic illnesses, and just being able to get lost in my art world and just zone out everything, every pain receptor, and just get lost in my painting is really wonderful.

(reflective music) One of my favorite show and tell moments was when I was accepted in the SEMVA Gallery, because it is judged.

(reflective music) So either you're in or you're out, and that was really validating for me when I was voted in, I felt very seen, like "I am an artist, I can do this."

(reflective music) (upbeat music) - The first model railway is said to have been built in 1859, for the young nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Train hobbyists chug along as childhood dreams turn into adult pastimes.

We visit a model railroad show in Albert Lea.

- We are putting on our 26th Annual Model Railroad Show at the Northridge Mall here in Albert Lea, Minnesota.

There's a mixture of people here, some people come, they just wanna look at the trains running on the layouts, others are here to buy things, others are here to do a combination of both.

So it's kind of a social get together, actually.

But we have about 35 vendors here.

I'm estimating we'll see over the weekend 7, 800 people, possibly 1,000, depending on.

- I think that most of the people that are here at a train show, it really is the tie back to their childhood, and how the railroad from back in the day was a significant part of everyday life and a significant part of, again, moving people or freight across the country.

So these are a couple of examples of brochures that the railroads would've created back in the 30s or 40s.

(crowd murmuring) - There's so many things, it just depends on what your interest is, but the model railroad layouts, for example, the craftsmanship that's put in to a lot of the scenes on these layouts.

If you really take the time to look at a layout, just the innovation to do all that, it's pretty neat to really, when you appreciate what they do.

(train gliding) - My name is Clark Propst, I'm what they call a prototype modeler.

It's basically taking a freight car, for example, and detailing it, and lettering it like a photo of a real freight car.

Or taking a section of a city with a railroad in it and actually trying to duplicate that in a small scale.

It's probably the same story everybody has in my age group is that you received a Lionel train set for Christmas when you were a little kid, and you got to watch your dad play with it.

And as you got older HO come into being in the middle 50s, about Athearn started putting out train sets.

So every year for Christmas I'd get an HO train set, and then it just grew from there.

And then probably in the late 90s I got hooked on building things, basically freight cars.

(train gliding) - Well, back in the mid 1950s my parents introduced my brother and me to a whole bunch of hobbies, and model railroading stuck big time for me, to where it's my passion in life.

It has such a variety of facets, between building bench work to put a train layout on, up to building equipment, painting equipment, researching, doing scenery work, electricity, just a whole bunch of different skills come into the hobby.

- I think most model railroaders are never done, most model layouts are never done, and most model railroaders are never finished accumulating their empire, so no, I continue to collect.

- I just like building things, and I've got two lifetimes worth of kits yet to build.

And I've picked up a few more here today, just because I couldn't resist buying them, but I just like to keep busy building stuff.

- Now, if you go back 15 years, the airline's published timetables.

It literally is just showing-- - [Man] The Schedule of each train, from each town.

- Yep, and the interesting about the railroad ones is that unlike an airline that basically goes from hub to spoke, the railroad went to all these towns in between.

- Most of my friends think I'm absolutely crazy, and unfortunately I seem to have this reputation in the neighborhood that people will meet me, "Oh, you're the guy with train layout in the attic."

It's like, "Yes, I am, who are you?"

Normally when they hit the top of the stairs in the attic their jaw drops to the floor because they're just shocked at what they see.

They're expecting a little loop of track around the Christmas tree type of layout, and mine fills the entire attic, with the mountains, and the towns, and the whole paraphernalia regarding the scenery aspect of things.

- If you're starting out, don't be intimidated by the sticker prices.

You come to shows like this one and you can find good bargains.

I just found two cars that are hard to find anymore, and you can get a really good selection of equipment here, to find out if you really like it or not.

- Back in about 1960 my parents gave me some tools to use for the hobby and I thought "This is kind of a nothing gift," but 60 years later I'm still using those same tools.

It turned out to be a very valuable investment on their part.

- I've got a lot of good friends here and we go to a lot of shows, we do about 20 shows a year, around the Midwest.

So it's just kind of like a groupy thing, sorta.

(laughing) - It's just been a lifelong hobby, and I'm so thankful I've had it going through the ups and downs of life.

The hobby has been a constant to help me keep my spirits up.

(trains gliding) - We've reached the end of this episode.

Thanks for riding along, see you next time, Off 90.

(upbeat music) - Funding for Off 90 is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, and the citizens of Minnesota.

(bird calling) (upbeat music)