- [Announcer] Funding for this program is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Coming up next "Off 90", a creamery in Hope Minnesota, known for its butter, welder and artist, Karl Unnasch, a backpack program that sends food home with kids, and a Twin Cities fashion photographer who focuses on the past.

It's all just ahead "Off 90".

(upbeat music) (gentle upbeat music) (gentle upbeat music continues) (gentle upbeat music) (upbeat country music) (upbeat country music continues) - My name is Victor Mrotz.

I'm the owner of the Hope Creamery in Hope, Minnesota.

This creamery is one of approximately 24 or 25 at one point in time in Steele County.

Back in the 1950s, 1940s.

Every little town had a creamery.

every town had a butter maker, every town had a co-op, and a co-op board, farmer-owned co-op.

And everybody had a little bit different spin on the butter.

And what's happened through consolidation is we got down, we're the last creamery in Steele County.

At one time, Steele County promoted itself as being the butter making capital of the world.

We're the last people doing it.

(upbeat country music continues) The building is about approximately 100 years old.

1920 it was built.

I was doing some construction work and an opportunity to buy the creamery came up when I read in the Minneapolis paper that the creamery, the co-op creamery had been featured at one point in time and they were doing a follow-up story where the co-op creamery board was anticipating selling out.

I just bought the creamery not really knowing what I was buying other than it was kind of a cool old building with a product that had at least a local following of some level.

Well, we're upstairs with the Hope Creamery and this is the dance hall.

It's approximately 40 feet by 60 feet.

It has a stage on one end, side doors or side stage pieces, Along the one wall there is a ticket booth, coke room, as well as a small kitchen area.

(gentle country music) At one point in time, all the little co-ops when they built even out in the country, they would put this on top of their buildings.

It was used for co-op meetings as well as a social place, 'cause if you can imagine back 100 years ago, probably a lot of wood stoves and outdoor toilets and that kind of stuff, this was relatively a modern place here.

We had steam heat, hot and cold water, indoor shower, that kind of stuff.

So, it was used by everybody in the community for whatever it was, weddings, anniversary parties, forage clubs, Boy Scouts, that kind of thing.

I like old things, old motorcycles, old cars, all that stuff.

And this is kind of a huge conglomeration of a bunch of old things, old traditions, old equipment, old building full of 100 years of stuff that people couldn't throw away.

This is our bulk truck.

We send it over to Plainview, the Plainview Co-op, and we pick up our cream.

We typically will pick up about 15,000 pounds of cream, which is enough for us to make three batches.

Our butter is made using old technology.

(burner hissing) They talk about how it tastes like it tasted when they were younger.

A lot of people do.

This is our pasteurizing vat.

It's essentially a double cooker.

We use low temperature, long-time pasteurization as opposed to short time, high temperature pasteurization.

(machine whirring) (metal clanging) And we use batch churning, which are two things not used in any of the large-scale butter operation.

(machine whirring) And what that does is, because we use that low temperature, long-time pasteurization, our butter has less of a burnt flavor from what I've been told by chefs who are much more sophisticated at this than I am.

And our process has been called being more gentle with the cream.

We only make it into one pound block.

And that's because the equipment, when I bought the creamery, essentially came with it, and they always done it that way.

So, we continue to do it.

(gentle upbeat music) Our biggest customer, a single user, would probably be in the city.

We have a couple of bakeries up there and a couple of restaurants that will buy 10, 12 cases a week from us.

And we have people that drive from Hibbing to buy butter here.

When people go south in the fall, they come buy four or five cases.

So, when they're down in Arizona, they don't run out.

And when we coming back, back home north of us, they'll stop and buy butter too.

So, they're crazy dedicated.

99% of the people, that's the first thing out of their mouth, "Oh, I love your butter.

We use it all the time."

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - I like to have fun, and I try to bring that out when I'm making these pieces and make sure that, you know, when people look at them, they can get a little giggle, a little chuckle, or even be a little bit, maybe even a little scared.

♪ It's bad you know ♪ (upbeat music continues) - [Karl] My name's Karl Unnasch, and I'm an artist.

♪ It's bad you know ♪ (upbeat music continues) - I do this thing called Guild of One, where I am a guild.

There's no apprentices, there's no other guild masters, there's just me.

And I take things that people bring me, I run them through my art filter, make this little production of a art object, and then I give it back to them.

(upbeat music) I would say that the work I do, if there was one word for it, it could be hobbyism.

I'm an hobbyist artist.

The way I see it is that somebody who is an enthusiast, they're into their hobby.

However they decide to display their collection, however they decide to make their dollhouse, you're really good at what you do, and it makes you complete when you do it.

And you're not interested in necessarily sharing it, that doesn't come to mind.

You're just sitting there going, I really like doing this.

It makes me happy.

Even though a lot of these people don't think about it, they just do it.

And that goes back into the whole guild of one, where I take the stuff after I live with it for a while, I consider it's necessity for me.

I consider what it can do, then I can let it go.

And that letting go, that's the hardest thing for a hobbyist, because you put so much of yourself into it.

How do you honestly let that go and still be happy?

That's the trick.

Once that's gone, there's a fear that builds up that says, I don't have that anymore.

Now what do I do?

And for me, it's just like, okay, make something else.

There's millions of objects in the world.

Be a magnet, be glue.

Let it stick to you for a while and then shuffle it off and then grab something else.

You become a one-person production facility, a guild of one.

(upbeat music) ♪ Don't you let my baby ride man ♪ ♪ Don't you let my baby ride man ♪ ♪ Don't you let my baby ride man ♪ ♪ Don't you let my baby ride ♪ (upbeat music) ♪ Been this streets and I ♪ ♪ Don't mind dying ♪ - In a nutshell, what I do is I grab something and then I contemplate it.

I look at it, I'm aware of its physical nature, I wonder about its historical nature, you know, its own history.

And then I start building on that.

♪ Don't mind I ♪ ♪ Been this streets and I ♪ ♪ Don't mind I ♪ - I let it go into a context.

I let it fall into this little drive down a road, and I try to steer as much as possible to where as I am building on it, as I'm making it, the narrative continues to be constructed.

This symbiotic relationship of what it is in front of me and what I wanna put into it, and how that can blend together and amalgamate and then turn into a final product.

I'm not as interested in the final product as I am aware of how the pieces fit together as I go.

♪ Been this streets and I ♪ ♪ Don't mind I ♪ ♪ Been this streets and I ♪ ♪ Don't mind I ♪ (gentle upbeat music) - A lot of what I do comes from the rural lifestyle.

I grew up rurally.

I continue to live rurally, a farm kid.

(upbeat music) I've always embraced that.

Even the times that I've gone off to live in the city to do my education and whatnot, I've always been called back, because I know this is a great place to contemplate, to have a lot of creative thought time, and to be able to connect with something that's actually quite rare nowadays.

Most of the skills I have started there out of necessity.

Using tools, using construction methods, using, you know, being aware of how things fit together, how they come apart, how they're built, how they last.

I think that just was every day it was built into me by whether it was a lesson from my mother or father or a lesson from just what I was observing.

And that's where I start bringing all of these things.

I first learned tighter together.

And then I look at the hobbyist realm of how it's all this myriad of concepts and materials and methods that are fascinating.

I bring that together and then I start spewing it out.

(upbeat music continues) In order for me to continue to be a self-sufficient artist, a big A artist, I have to really be on top of my game as far as being vigilant as to where I can get my paychecks from.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) I's a job, it's a career.

To do that, I have to be more than just an artist.

I have to pitch myself with confidence in a plum.

(upbeat music continues) I have to be able to express myself clear for my audience to be attracted to what I'm doing.

Otherwise, if I turn it into this huge mystery and I'm not approachable, no one's gonna wanna write a check, no one's gonna wanna swipe a card, no one's gonna wanna hand me cash.

So, I have to be approachable in that regard.

(upbeat music) That said, I'm not interested in becoming a corporate artist.

You know, I'm not gonna use the term a sellout, because that's relative, but I'm not interested in being full on corporate where I stop being infused into my work.

(upbeat music continues) My personality, I think comes off as pretty stoic and confident, sometimes cocky, but that's born out of knowing what I wanna do.

I don't have a lot of questions as far as not knowing where I wanna be, but I also understand there's a part of me that has to be flexible enough to allow, just like growing up on the farm.

I have to allow the outside stimuli, the outside variables to change my path.

For a metaphor, I still travel down a gravel road, but I don't know how it's gonna turn, but I'm a little bit familiar with it, so I can drive a little faster.

And I know where the curves are, I know when to slow down.

(upbeat music continues) (upbeat music) (gentle music) - So, I'm Velerie Faulhaber.

I am a program coordinator for the Mower County Backpack Program.

And we are located at Austin Aspires in the Hometown Food Security office.

(gentle music continues) The backpack program started in 2013 and it was a program started to help families who maybe didn't have the means to help their kiddos on the weekends, so maybe mom or dad worked and they weren't there to help prepare a meal.

So, it was started to make easy meals for the kids, so it would go home in their backpacks on Fridays, and it's grown from there.

We still send meals home with the kiddos every Friday so that they don't go hungry on the weekends.

We put things in there from snacks to fruit cups to meal type items.

We serve in Mower County over 800 children each week.

So, that's a pretty significant number.

We hope by sending home 800 bags that these kids, the number goes down, but unfortunately, it continues to rise each year.

So, we're under an umbrella under the United Way.

So, United Way's our umbrella and we're a partner with them.

They help provide fiscally for us.

Community members may donate and then part of that money outta United Way comes helps provide for the Backpack Program to function.

And so, they're a great partner and they help us immensely.

But I think there has always been a need.

I think it was just identified more recently that it was a bigger need, especially after COVID hit, when families were truly in need, not just the kiddos, but you know, families were signing up and saying, "You know, we can't afford anything, we can't work, we can't put that food on the table."

And so, that's kind of when United Way stepped up and said, "Hey, we're gonna help and we're gonna kind of rebrand this as a backpack program and kinda help where help is needed."

Yeah, so we don't have any limitations.

We send out enrollments in the fall to all staff and then during sign up for school or parent teacher conferences, right at the beginning of the year, we ask teachers, staff, counselors to hand out the information that we have on the program.

And if families feel the need, they're able to sign up.

There's no guidelines for it.

We do ask school staff if they can identify a child that is in need that please feel free to sign them up, because we wanna make sure that those kids are getting the food that they need, if they really truly need it.

We love when community members come in and help and volunteer.

Every Monday we pack and we have volunteer, whether it's high school kiddos, families with kids can come in to the Austin Aspires Hometown Food Security Building and they can pack the bags.

They put food items into the bags, tie the bags, we put 'em in totes.

And then we also have delivery drivers that pick up the totes at the end of the packing event and deliver them to the schools so that those teachers and administrators can get them out to the kids.

So, you can go on to get connected on the United Way website and sign up right from there each week.

So, we have a lot of high school volunteers and they're great and they've been repetitive.

They've come throughout the school year and are very responsible, great leaders.

One of them had mentioned that when he was younger, he did get the backpack food bag and said how much he appreciated having that snacks at the end of the day, and on the weekends he had that food.

And so, for him to come back and volunteer and pack these food bags for other children, you know, he remembered how important it was to get that food when he was that age.

And so, I think that's pretty special that these high schoolers are coming back and giving their time and understanding the need.

So, I think that's important.

So, Austin, the bags will be packed each Monday and then we deliver them to the schools.

And then we have administration, teachers, success coaches that help facilitate those bags to be put in backpacks.

So, it's very discreet.

So, we service all preschool through the middle school age in Austin.

The high school has a separate program, so they don't need our assistance.

And then outside of Austin, we service all other Mower County schools.

So, I think there's, I think five or six schools that we also we have a school in Grand Meadow that helps facilitate get those bags to all the other Mower County schools.

So, we deliver to them and then they pack it for us and get it out to all the other schools and those kiddos.

If a kid is hungry and they're going to school, they're thinking about their being hungry, they're not able to focus on what is happening in class, their schoolwork, learning.

And so, when they're hungry, they're not having to worry about having that stomach grumbling.

And then also what we've been learning is that mental health plays a big factor.

When these kiddos don't have the food, you know, when they go sit down at lunch, they might not have that name brand food item that their friend has.

They might just have the plain Jane.

Maybe it's something they receive from their food shelf.

But that plays a factor of why am I not good enough to have that my friend has?

So, all of our food that we pack is all name brand.

It's all things that anybody would be able to have.

It's not just a plain label.

So, we found that in our surveys recently, that these kids are having a hard time with their mental health with not being able to have that food available to them.

Yeah, I think working with United Way and the Backpack Program enables me to be able to make a difference and help these families and kids that don't have food in front of them.

I mean, I know Monday when we pack food bags, they're gonna go out to the schools and they're gonna be putting those backpacks on Friday and the kids are not gonna have to worry about not having food.

And I can go home at night saying, you know, I know 800 kids weren't hungry this weekend, because we provided those food bags for them.

So, that makes me feel good about what I'm doing.

And the team that I have too, I mean, we all strive for that mission of we don't want any kid to go hungry in Mower County.

And so, working with the volunteers that I have, they all strive for that too.

So, that makes me even more excited to come to work every day and do what I do.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Well, I don't, I can't explain really even what my draw is to it.

I mean, I'm just sort of doing this because I'm crazy, I guess.

My name is Timothy G. Piotrowski and I am an artist who uses photography.

The garment she's wearing is from about 1900, and then with her long hair, it's nice and period accurate.

They would've wore stockings, they might have wore a hat.

There's not too much about these pictures, even though they look really simple that hasn't been thought through.

And a big part of the thinking is, is that I'm really looked at a lot of period photographs.

(upbeat playful music) These are Edwardian fashion plates from their French couture.

And they were made to be, I mean, almost like a catalog photograph would be today.

I've become a collector of period prints.

And if I wanna do a Hollywood portrait, you know, a picture that looks like a silent era Hollywood portrait, I literally have them in my collection.

(upbeat playful music continues) All of my pictures are very closely directed.

What she's doing is she's just gonna holding this open, which is actually pretty risque.

And so, that's what we were kind of thinking about was that there was this irony today that this is even a swimsuit wouldn't probably occur to us, because it looks so much like a dress, but it is a Victorian era swimsuit.

- I love working with Tim, because he's very accurate with his photos.

He's very precise, and he makes sure that the images that he produces really do look authentic, and they really are believable.

So, you kind of feel like as a model, you kind of go back in time and you're a blank canvas that then is transformed into this period that you've never lived in.

- Right now, what I'm looking at, if you go in full profile to either direction, you see how the light moves on her face as she moves it from side to side.

So, instead of moving the light, I will have direct the face and see how the light falls on her face as she moves it.

I have a slow speed film and I'm using it under lower light.

So, I end up with exposures anywhere from four to seven or eight seconds.

(upbeat gentle music continues) - You really have to be very, very still and be patient.

You know, just Tim is very precise and I appreciate that about him.

- This is now my oldest lens.

This is a Civil War era lens.

It's a lens from about 18, about 1867 or so, or 1870.

(machine whirring) (bowl squeaking) Here is what I spent the better part of the day yesterday.

I printed this 19 times.

So, I had 19 prints just to arrive at a print where I felt like I was in that range where I was getting that tonal diversity that I wanted.

(upbeat gentle music) I love old photographs, and for me, kind of hitting one out of the park is when I feel like they really do feel like the era's kind of coming through.

It's almost something a little like an apparition.

There's almost something a little spooky.

We worked with some automobiles from 1906 and there were three sitters and they were all wearing all period clothes and they had shovels and lanterns that were all correct period.

And we were out in a place where there was no sign of modernity whatsoever.

There was no power lines, there were wooden fences, dirt road.

And the whole crew, everybody who was there, there was a point where we were all just kind of like, this is amazing, like it was trippy, because it really felt like you were seeing something you shouldn't be able to see.

A pretty bad anti-trend.

And so, there's a lot of things that when they even begin take on any kind of popularity, I lose all excitement or enthusiasm for.

(upbeat gentle music) (upbeat gentle music continues) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - [Announcer] Funding for this program is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.