Hello, Oklahoma!

Welcome to Gallery America.

Today we're explorin where art and science collide.

We're at the Museum of Osteology, and we're going to come back to learn more.

First, we're headed to Tulsa to meet Tyler Thrasher.

Tyler uses scientific principles to create unforgettable works of art.

Let's take a look.

at some point people started calling me a wizard, and I think they mean it.

once you own that, once you'r able to be like yeah, whatever.

I'm a wizard.

People, stop questioning it.

You can just do whatever you want.

People like, oh, that's on brand.

I'm Tyler Thrasher describing mysel as always a bit of a challenge.

I've kind of summed it u equal parts artist, equal parts citizen scientist.

I think everything else I do kind of falls under that umbrella.

you'll notice that I hav an affinity for weird creatures.

things that I thin traditionally are found to be, repulsiv or disgusting that I think are incredibly fascinating.

the process of crystallizing something is kind of similar to growing rock candy.

You take a compound, molecule and you dissolve it, so you separate it into its ions and you make a solution.

So you have this, like hot water, this sort of soup.

you are just kind of making the environment for this you know, darn near perfect pattern to form, I take things like dead insects or skeletons.

And I just submerge them.

And then as the water evaporates or the vessel cools, these ions come back together and they form that molecule.

From there, it forms this network.

That's what a crystal is.

Its a Pattern.

They'll form on anything that doesn't matter.

I just happen to have a thing in between all of that and that system.

And then they just grow from there.

nothing dies for my work.

I take insects or specimens that died of natural causes And I crystallize them.

I don't know where to say where I got started, but I guess I can condense it down really quick.

Okay.

So let me see if I can do this.

So.

Went to college in Missouri.

Starte caving to fill up my free time.

Fell in love with caves.

Fell in love with nature.

I was going to school for computer animation, and I realized, like, right before I was about to graduate.

I don't want to do this.

I just filled my weekends with like, extracurricular creative projects growing crystals was one of those.

Found a dead bug in the backyard.

Grew crystals on the dead bugs.

Shared online.

It went viral.

And then I made a bunch of crystallized dead bugs Traveled around the country with those bugs.

And then that helped fund all the other things I do.

this is Moonbeam Conservatory, in our shop, we have a little over 13,000 glowing flowers So we work with different florists and farmers to get our flora that is dried and preserved.

And then we make it glow in the dark, almost any colo combo you can think of, we have, When we started making Moonbeam Flora, I had no intentions of making, like, the world's first glowing flower shop or anything like that.

I just made this glowing flower, and I was like, this is cool.

I want to share it People kept buying them.

this space became available.

And I don't think we knew what this was going to be.

It was just we're kind of like, hey, we're going to try to make this work.

I like to tell people that the Moonbeam Conservatory has three phases.

we get a lot of people in here that just like they just think it's like a flower shop.

Come on in.

You guys been in before?

No.

Are you familiar with the stuff in here?

No.

Okay, so you're just in time for some pretty cool stuff.

There's the daylight phas where you can see all the colors and the natural textures of the dried flowers.

And then the second phas is what I call the black light phase.

Wow.

That's amazing.

We have these UV floodlights, black light floodlights installed so we can charge up all the flowers, And then I usually let the flowers soak up that energy for a couple of minutes.

a lot of the flowers are fluorescent, which means that they are actively glowing and visually vibrating under the black light.

So I will flip off all the black lights and show the third phase of the store.

In 3..2..1.

Nah-uh.

These glow in the dark.

so how much for everything?

(laughter) Ill take all of them oh whats also cool is all these little glowing balls on the ceiling Those are flower heads.

So it's these... I grew up very isolated, I also grew up very bullied.

I didn't really didn't have anywhere to fit in, buy our flowers then now the people that come to the shop, it's like I made a space for people that I think kind of exist on the fringe a little bit, I have three assistants.

I have two that make the flowers.

working here, you never really know wha your day is going to look like.

it's kind of nice to have a little bit of that chaos.

there's so many colors.

we can virtually make anything so we've made some pigments that I don't think exist anywhere else Chunky.

I couldn't have dreamed this job.

But it is definitely a dream job.

We have to, like, create contraptions to get the ideal finish on the flower.

Like our spinning bucket.

we made this like, sort of cardboard like arena sort of Thunderdome prison thing.

And we put a potter's wheel in the middle with a five gallon bucket screwed to it, we can spin all the flowers and kind of choose the spin rate.

all the extra paint flings onto the cardboard it's definitely a collaborative effort.

We all contributed in a way.

And so it's really fun to look and go, oh, you know, one person did this, one person did that, What if you were in a field of that and you weren't moving, but you heard it rustling really fast at it's.

when you just take of running in a random direction?

if youre tall enough, Maybe you can... We are so silly and goof there's such an atmosphere of, like, friendshi it's so fun to get to brainstorm all our crazy ideas, these actually look great.

Oh, good job, guys.

I've written a couple of books, and the last book I wrote, coauthored with my friend Terry Mudge, and it's called The Universe in 100 colors.

And we spent a couple of years researching very specific, very niche colors you know, like Baltic amber.

Cosmic latte, which is the average color of the, observable universe, just all kinds of really fascinating colors.

100 of them.

we did rough drafts on every chapter.

And, our editor said they were terrible you know, we weren't writers at the time.

here?

My name is Terry Mudge.

I am the founder and scientifi director at Stem Cell Science.

it was sort of a store I always wanted to walk into myself.

our job is to tell the story of everything from a scientific angle.

This is a particle accelerator from the University of Wisconsin.

It was originally called Aladdin.

And it would create a very intense magnetic field in the middle, which would guide, electrons at extremely high speeds.

So this is a film from NASA it's from the 60s, and it's actually from the clean room when they were building a satellite And so we have the original copy of that film Tulsa really is a place where a lot of unpredictable things can happen.

it's just the right size and has just the right spirit there's this just really integrated web of people who are just making stuff happen.

I first met Tyler in about 2012 ish.

And we've been kind of friends ever since.

So we spen 2 or 3 years writing the book, we originally starte with this massive list of colors and eventually we had to whittle that down we went throug maybe 5 or 6 rounds of editing polished them up really nice turned it into a book we have very different writing styles, but I think they complement each other nicely throughout the book.

Well that's.

Yeah, that's probably I think it's really rewarding in that I feel like I'm part of the process of encouraging more people to get interested in scienc and how things work around them.

we do a lot of events at Moonbeam Conservatory.

I didn't kno this concept of a third space.

people call up that.

People come in and treat it like that.

You know, first space is your home.

the Second space is your work.

And third space is somewhere that's detached from both of those.

somewhere that contributes to your life, somewhere that, fill you up, that isn't home or work.

tulsa has a really tight knit communit there really is no competition.

We all support each other and help one another.

Tyler's got his art studio and said hey lets do concerts here Each one is pretty much been sold out.

How you feelin?

All right, you ready?

you know this is a community event, music and art pulling people together just happy to be part of it.

it's kind of daunting when you want something or you have an idea.

There's this fear.

What if people hate it?

What if it does not match my expectations?

what I've learned over and over again is I hop it doesn't meet my expectations.

more often than not.

I like what it became more than I originally thought it would be.

Because you don't know.

You don't know anything you learn along the way, to me, that's the fun part, is like A to B, everything in between the good stuff (cheering) I get so many people that come through here that are like, I'm glad someone that looks like me is doing this, and they're doing it well, And for me that gave me a sense of purpose.

needed more science representation.

we needed more Bipoc artists representation in Oklahoma These are the things that fascinate me.

And people come i and they share that sentiment, and I don't take that for granted.

moonbeam Conservatory has three phases.

The second phase is the black light phase.

Oh my goodness.

Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa.

it feels like I've been trusted with this narrative this experience, this resource.

And it just, I don't know, it' just kind of kind of humbling.

It's, And it just feels really good.

This is something lik I've never experienced before.

It's almost like you're transported into a different dimension.

It was a long journey.

And probably cut a couple of years off of my wife.

Just the stress Out of space at once.

But I am very proud of what we've made.

And the whole journey t getting here entirely worth it.

And it's crazy.

I think we just got started.

You can keep up with Tyler following him on Instagram @ Tylerthrasherart And next time you're in Tulsa.

Stop by Moonbeam Conservatory and see for yourself.

Now we're headed to Reno to meet another artis who gives things a second life.

But instead of flora and fauna, is this stuff we throw away?

Meet Kyle Karrach.

I have a great passion for fishing.

It's nice.

I'm away.

It's just me out nature, which I love.

My name is Kyle Kirsch.

I'm an artist, art educator, and I'm the gallery curator up at Trek Madness Community College.

I grew up here in Reno doing Boy Scouts.

In the Scouts, we spent a lot of time out in nature camping, hiking, and the biggest thing I took away from the idea of being a boy Scout was leave no trace.

I always bring a garbage bag with me.

I pick up garbage whenever I'm out.

I look at them as not just refuge, things that have little to no value, and they're just garbage because they do have value.

There's a to that goes into these materials.

The resources that went in just to even make that one object, just that aluminum ca like how much Earth was stripped mine just to produce that aluminum.

And now it's just sitting out and on the side of a street or along the Chucky River.

It also makes me feel better about giving these materials a new lease on life.

When most people have asked me to describe my artwork as I just juggling, sa it's garbage, but then I say no.

Actually, my work is about materials of ubiquity within our contemporary life.

They're the objects of planned obsolescence.

So it's the single use consumable materials that I incorporate in my artwork.

So a lot of aluminum primarily.

And then plastic, rubber, glass and paper.

My wife jokes I'm kind of a garbage water, but it's not to that extent.

It's all nice, neat and organized.

It start with the idea writing out notes sometimes in my sketchboo why I'm using these materials, how I can manipulate thos materials in these blueprints.

And then it comes down to acquiring the materials and valves.

I have a large stockpile that I've collected over the years, but it doesn' mean I always have every color.

So sometimes I have to look for a particular color.

It can take a long time for m to build up a particular color palett that I want to use for a piece.

I also use a lot of people in the community for I really large scale work.

If I need thousands of cans I'm not producing that myself.

So every two weeks I'll do a run around town for people I know that collect their cans for me.

I do have a good network.

You've been a good producer.

Yeah.

Thank you very much.

The next time you need some more.

Oh, you'll be hearing from me.

Once I have acquired enough of those materials to start actually making them usable and applying them to my work.

It comes time to a deconstruction process of materials, which I kind of liken to filling out like the skins of a cat.

I want to make it a workable surface, so it's a little easier for me to work with.

I try to use as much as the can as possible now.

Whatever is scrapped and leftover, I can shred down for eithe melting for some other objects I have in mind to do in the future, or even saving just the barcodes.

When you see my studio, I've got jars and jars and jars of just all these little pieces that didn't quite get used in one particular piece, but they're being saved for a future piece.

I have a little hammer, which this hammer is like, probably out of everything in my home.

Like Favorite object, because it was my great grandfather's little, tack camera.

It's like a little cobbler.

Hammer.

Other than usin the little tacks, it's a lot of, superglue.

My fingers are usually pretty robbed.

That's how much glue gets on them.

I'll build a frame myself.

And then once the frame stand, then that one wall piece is done.

I call them sculptures because they are three dimensional.

A lot of people mistake them as painting until they really get close up and realize what the material is.

I really like to use and create birds.

They're a good, I think, social criticism that we can use in art because they'r the ultimate symbol of freedom.

Like, I think humanity has always dreamed of being able to fly since the dawn of time.

I think we've always envy birds for that, and that's why I like using them in my work.

Unfortunately, I'm trading them as dead or decomposing, mainly because of wha we are doing to our environment and the decline in the North American bird population.

A lot of my larger scale works have to deal with data visualization of what we consume daily.

I had a huge wall of 12,000 condensed aluminum cans into cubes, and that really only equated to 3.4 seconds of U.S.

consumption.

So within 30s were like 106,000 aluminum cans.

Within three months, we've consumed so much we could rebuil the entire commercial air fleet.

We all contribute to this problem, I do.

Everyone dies.

We can't help it to be human is consume.

So it's just thinkin about the impacts you're doing.

And that's what I really enjoy from the audience are like, oh, wow, I didn't know about this, or I'm going to look into this.

I'm like, well, good.

Well then that means for me, my art was exercise.

now we're back at the Osteology Museum.

Back in 2010, our team met with their former education director, Joey Williams, who showed us the art of bones.

My name is Joey Williams.

My job is to, act as the director of education here at Skulls Unlimited.

Anybody who's not familiar with the company, we are a biological supply company.

And as the name suggests we supply skulls and skeletons to the educational community.

Basically, this job is, perfect for me.

It seems like a natural progression to me because I started collecting bones and skulls at such a very early age.

I started doing art, with those items.

And it kind of led into a natural, progression towards, ending up here.

Previously, I worked for, Nature Center as a university.

And it allowed me to be creative, but not quite to the same level that that I've been allowed to here.

I've been with the company for seven years, and one of my first task why I was hired was to develop and design, the Museum of Osteology.

The Museum of Osteology is, a nonprofit museum being funded by Skulls Unlimited.

We are going to exhibit, upwards of 1000 species of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, basically all the vertebrate classes.

We're going to have upwards of 300, individual skeletons on displa and several hundred more skulls and go ahead.

But I've always had a fascination with, natural history, nature.

You know, wildlife.

I grew up in a small rural town in Kansas, and, biology was always one of my favorite subjects.

Art was also something that kind of came easy for me at an early age.

So, I kind of combine the tw of those as I was, growing up.

Basically, thought I was going to be an artist.

So my life, went to school for that and decided that, I wanted to go back to school and get a degree in biology.

When I was very young, I started collecting natural elements, mostly skulls and bones, and bega incorporating those into my art.

Most everything that I use in my art is real.

All of the natural elements are real.

You know, real bones, real insects, real, sometimes organs.

Some of my pieces I've encompassed, plastic needed, sheep's hearts.

And.

Yeah all of those elements are real.

The dark subject matter basically is probably a form of therapy that allows me to, express myself and, do it in a sense that is a little darker than than some people's art.

But, once I express that, then I can move on with it.

In my work here in the museum.

I have had quite a few, ideas that have, you know, and, I mean, I get an idea when I'm driving to work or or whatever, but being surrounded by, these elements, it does, lend to, inspiration.

I guess I should say, in addition to, just designing the exhibits.

I've been able to use a lot of my artistic ability in, putting together elements of the exhibits as well.

The comparative exhibit.

Oh, yeah.

So the monkey you're on, and we're going to go ahea and stick with it up here.

Yeah.

So have his, his right side facing out.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So there there are, time when, working here with bones, working here in the museum with skeletons and skulls.

It definitely, lends to to my inspiration.

For working here is a learning experience.

And and it is something that you have to get used to.

The smell is definitely a factor.

When you're dealin with any kind of dead animals.

Decomposition, the cleaning of the of those animals, there are a lot of interesting smells, and, it's it's something that I guess at a young age, I began to tolerate and know it's not pleasant, but it doesn't bother me anymore.

Just simpl because the end result is, is, attractive to me?

You know, nice, clean bones to, to incorporate in art or as a specimen.

That end result, outweighs the, the unpleasantries, of, the smell and all the interesting things that, that I see, in the processing of the specimens.

There are different techniques for cleaning the specimens dependin on the state of decomposition.

One of of my favorites, a lot of people can't stomach it, but, I use a lot of maceration, which is basically rotting a specimen on the water, and using anaerobic bacteria.

That's naturally occurring to, decompose the tissue.

As you can imagine, that creates quite a smell.

And, it's it it's a little hard for people to stomach.

Personally, it doesn't bother me that much.

I've actually grown to, to kind of like it a little bit, but, Yeah, it's it stinks.

The specimens that I use for my art, typically either come from nature or, there are individuals who farm exotic animals.

I obtain quite a few specimens through those channels.

I can usually, find some sort of use in, in just about any specimen, even if it's, undesirable or unwanted by the museum or or by the company here.

To to do.

Where I'm at now is, basically what it's the culmination of, my entire life, basically, you know, I'm using all of my interests, when I come to work, when I go home and I'm abl to express myself through my art or collect skulls or whatever, I do.

It is a culmination of of everything that I've worked for, everything I've experienced.

So, yeah, in, in my, my existence.

And I'm fairly content, mos people would say, you know, if you've got the perfect job you know, you're able to do this and you're able to do that and you're able to put it all together.

And yeah, I'd have to agree with that.

And.

Well, that's all the time we have for Gallery America.

Thank you so much for joining us.

As always, you can see past episodes.

By going to our website.

OETA.tv/galleryamerica And don't forget to follow us on Instagram @oetagallery We'll see you next time.

Till then Stay Arty Oklahoma