They have to walk through the forest.

So the first experience is, uh, the sights sounds and smells of nature.

Next on Gallery America, we go outdoors.

We'll see how one Tulsa artist is using a forest to make art for healing.

The experience of forest bathing, which just activates renewal and healing.

I've put large-scale pieces for anywhere from a year to two years in about 25 communities in the state of Florida alone, and a Florida artist is finding the outdoors is adding its own touch to his sculptures.

It turned into a giant chia pet.

Vines had grown all through it.

I'm always open to, you know, how the art evolves And we meet a Cincinnati artist who made the hall of fame by adding pin stripes to cars.

I try to be receptive and I try to pay attention to things.

I also try to do things for instance, that have not been done.

I try to give people more than they expect simply because I've been doing it this long.

And if not now, then when?

Hello, Oklahoma, I'm Robert Reid.

Welcome to Gallery America.

The show that gets you behind the scenes and into the creative minds of great artists in Oklahoma and around the nation.

It's great being outdoors, isn't it?

And a forest like this kind of makes you wonder if a walk in the woods can be art too.

Well, the first artist we're meeting today think so.

Sarah Ahmad is a Pakistan-American artist who came to Oklahoma a few years ago as part of the Tulsa Artist Fellowship program.

This initiative has brought dozens of painters, poets, videographers, writers, to live and work in Tulsa.

Once here, Sarah found herself almost immediately immersed in her new neighborhood of Greenwood and was invited to partake in the Greenwood Art Project that works to educate the public about the Tulsa Race Massacre in 1921, and recultivate that community through the power of art.

Now, Sarah is an installation artist, meaning that she often does big three-dimensional installation pieces with a gallery space in mind, but for this piece, as you'll see, she felt it had to be outdoors.

Have a look.

They have to walk through the forest.

So the first experiences, uh, the sights, sounds and smells of nature, the experience of forest bathing, which just activates renewal and healing.

I'm a visual artist based in Tulsa.

I grew up in Lahore, Pakistan.

I moved here, um, in 1995, I lived in Tennessee for almost 20 years.

I moved here in January 2019 for the fellowship.

And this is my third year.

Everyone was saying, you are going to the backwaters of the art world and Oklahoma instead of like California or New York, but it turned out to be, uh, this pocket of this very progressive community in, in the heart of Tulsa.

And what's happening in Tulsa is almost like an arts Renaissance.

When I came, when I joined the fellowship, uh, that is when I learned that, uh, we are living and working on the side of the massacre.

I wanted to learn more about the history, just to learn about the perspectives of the community.

I wasn't thinking about, uh, doing an art project.

One of the stated goals of Greenwood Art Project is to activate spaces through art, to create a healing experience for the community.

And that really resonated with me because my that is the central theme of my work.

To approach this project.

And, uh, just had doubts about questions about this, not my story.

And, uh, I shouldn't take up space telling it or being a part of it.

And, uh, after working in it for so many months, it's now part of like, my life has woven into it.

I was working on the project in Pakistan, making the flowers, and then here, when my, uh, dad passed away in Lahore.

And the city at that time was covered with marigold flowers in full bloom while I was making these - hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands, of flowers here.

And so it's become a personal memorial for me.

So I'm using about 50,000 flowers.

They were all made in Pakistan.

Many of them were handcrafted by women in villages through Kaarvan Craft Foundation that facilitates, uh, you know, this work.

The women in the villages who handcrafted the flowers wanted to contribute to it and connected with it just as much as their own story.

They were so invested in it and wanting to see what comes out of it and, uh, connected with it.

There was a lot of questions, about people's feedback that, you know, no one goes out to Oxley or that's so far away!

But people do come out to Oxley.

But I think it's the idea is to bring people out, to experience it in a meditative way.

And to create a space, a sacred space, for healing and collective healing.

They everyone tents, you know to live in.

That's what they were supposed to live in.

We stayed in those camps, I imagine, five or six months.

I think that you walk into the tent because that is the centerpiece.

And it's in this huge clearing.

Inside the tent, it's really dark.

And, uh, you are surrounded, immersed in these images of burnt and fallen homes above you like eye-level and below.

And the tent is this pyramid shape.

So it feels like a burial chamber.

You'll see, on this massive scale, um, the destruction of the Greenwood community that is woven together with hundreds of pictures.

But from the darkness of the tent, you move out, uh, into this, uh, beautiful setting of the forest that is, uh, you know, full of light.

My hope is that, uh, it will be a contemplative meditative experience that will activate, um, you know, the feeling of wellbeing.

I think as an immigrant, you belong in many places, but you don't fully belong in any one place.

And my deepest sense of belonging is in nature, nature-immersion experiences.

It's a space where everyone belongs.

Sarah's American Dream is meant to promote racial healing, but shortly after its completion, it was damaged when several arrangements were torn apart, others stolen.

This ugly act of vandalism cannot take away the message of Sarah's art.

In fact, it only shows how important work like hers still is.

You can see more of Sarah's art by visiting her website, Sarahahmad.com, or follow her on Instagram at Sarah_Ahmad_Art.

One of the things I enjoyed about spending time with Sarah on this was seeing her just walk in the woods.

I mean, she looks at every fallen limb and leaf or sunlight shimmering on the water, like a brushstroke from an impressionist painting.

Kind of makes you want to get outside and see the nature of Oklahoma, like an artist.

And the fact that she got Pakistan villagers to create the marigolds for this installation, half away across the globe, back in Tulsa.

Amazing.

Next, we'll stay outdoors.

This artist in Key West, Florida creates unique outdoor sculptures that are now part of a public-arts exchange program that goes nationwide.

Meet Craig Gray.

My name is Craig Gray and I'm a sculptor here in Stock Island, Florida.

For about 15 years.

I carved gravestones.

I did granite countertops and then I also carved other artists sculptures.

And so that's how I kind of backed into the arts.

Then I got inspiration and, uh, decided to pursue my own work.

I had a residency at the studios of Key West, a great organization, six years ago, and then six months later, my family and I moved to Florida.

North.

I was primarily a stone carver and I did a little bit of metal work.

And then I came down here and the only stone available was coral rock, which doesn't lend itself very well to carving.

That's a very soft stone, not durable over the long term.

So I started searching for another medium and in South Florida, the exteriors of buildings are stucco.

So this piece is set of orange slices.

I haven't finished painting the yellow yet.

And usually I define it some, um, it's a hollow it's made of masonary backer board metal lath and stucco.

And then I carved the stucco to give the, the slices definition.

This is one of the pieces that's up in Jacksonville, Florida.

The highway into creating public art, which I specifically moved to Florida, is there is close to a hundred public art programs, all shapes and sizes, all different types of communities.

And the great thing about Florida and a few other states is they lease art.

This is a set of candy hearts.

This one here I'm I'm refurbing.

It was out on display in Hyattsville, Maryland for about two years, winter environment.

And then when I brought it down here, brought it back home.

I brought it back in December and the frost heaves, which we don't have in Florida, beat it really bad.

So I'm recovering it again with a second layer of metal lath, which you can see here and then stucco.

I've put large-scale pieces for anywhere from a year to two years in about 25 communities in the state of Florida alone.

And that kind of started me on that path.

And then you get the piece back.

So then again, you can lease it out again.

And from Florida, that kind of acted as a springboard.

So then I went to Chicago, I went to Jackson, Wyoming, all these places.

Right now I have 22 large-scale pieces of art around the United States.

It's a great program where a lot of communities are a bit uncomfortable.

You know, they, they want to feel out the waters basically and say, is this going to be something that people are gonna like?

And a lot of the public art calls that I do, they're looking for a temporary installation of sometimes a year to two years, and then I can come back and do touch up work if somebody tagged it or something like that.

A lot of cities are, are bringing in pieces.

They'll display them for a limited amount of time.

They may move them around within the city, and then they come off display.

They're trying to keep it fresh.

This one just came off display from Rosemary Beach out on the panhandle of Florida.

It's kind of a fun piece because, you know, you can, you can reach through it.

A lot of this rebar, this steel ,was salvaged off of Route 1 at the last installation.

When I came and picked it up, there were probably a dozen locks on it.

I'm only guessing that people had made some promises and decided instead of locking to a bridge, they locked to my sculpture, which was kind of fun, you know?

And then I had another town and it was in a kind of a green space.

It turned into a giant chia pet.

Vines had grown all through it.

I'm always open to, you know, how the art evolves.

The great advantage of working in South Florida, here on Stock Island, is the fact that I can work outside.

The cement dries within a couple of days.

I could have never done this if I was working up north, I mean, it would take a week and I'd have to have it inside a heated building.

If you're driving by, which is the fun thing about this large-scale artwork, you'll notice immediately the shape and you'll be like, oh, I know what that is.

But then as you come up closer, you'll see that there's still kind of a texture to it.

Um, it's, it's a little bit on the abstract edge.

I get selfies daily of somebody standing up in Kalamazoo, Michigan shivering in the cold next to a set of popsicles.

I mean, I had one outside Baltimore in Hyattsville, Maryland, a set of giant candy hearts.

And I have tons of pictures of these kids hugging candy hearts.

I mean, that's a little bit of a political piece.

I made that after the election and it says, I love you and embrace, but it's subtle.

I usually don't do political pieces.

I just do friendly art.

You get a pretty good decent group of tourists coming down here, specifically for the arts.

They're already interested in the arts.

They're interested in culture and they're open to that.

It's cultural tourism, which is really nice.

I have people just randomly stop by who see our little sign out beside the road.

I love it.

Finally, we go to Cincinnati to meet a local artist who has a distinct nickname he earns from his artwork, which is to turn cars into the ultimate road trip machines through his award-winning penstriping.

When I was a preteen, there was a point where I quit buying comic books and started buying car magazines.

I was fascinated by the designs and eventually I found a magazine that showed Dean Jeffries doing some pinstriping on an old car.

And he had a striping brush in his hand.

I got on my bike, pedaled down to the Sherwin Williams store.

Back wall had striping brushes.

So I bought the smallest brush that would fit my hand and it helped me learn how to do skinny lines.

Hi, I'm Jim 'Dauber' Farr.

I'm a pinstriper, guilder, commercial artist, graphic artist.

Happy to be here.

There was a, an occasion, uh, when I was at the art museum viewing the, uh, show 'Women of Egypt.'

And at the end of the show, there were two caskets encased in plexiglass.

And there was pinstriping on these caskets.

I knelt down to look at them.

And I couldn't resist drawing my hand across the plastic, imagining what that would, would have felt like with a brush in my hand.

And when I drew the brush back like that, there was a thunder boomer overhead, and the lights went out and I had my hand there.

I looked up at my friends who were standing there and it took my hand away.

And some, for some reason, the lights came back on and it just sort of seemed to be somewhat karmic.

If you take my drift.

Dauber came into my life when I was working in my, uh, partners shop, Bill Rell, over in Covington.

We worked together for almost 10 years and there was a guy from the west side of town who came in and was watching me letter.

And the lighting was very inadequate and I kept wiping paint off on my shirt cause I couldn't get it the way I wanted on the car.

And this, uh, gentleman was standing there looking at me doing that.

And he says, this guy daubs more than he paints.

We ought to call him 'Dauber.'

Within a week, the concrete had dried and I had no choice in the matter.

I actually am pinstriping in gold leaf.

And not too many people do that.

You mix a sizing, a glue, which is commonly known as a sizing and you mix glue and usually some color with that.

So you have an image of what you're actually putting down and you let it dry a certain amount of time, depending on the weather and the thunder and lightning, and also the, uh, the humidity and whatnot.

And once it's ready, it's ready.

And if you don't pay attention to the clock, you can find yourself having wasted some time and possibly material.

And, um, it's entertaining sometimes, but also challenging.

You've got to pay attention to detail.

Simple as that.

Gold leaf has a tradition and a history that goes back centuries, literally centuries.

Uh, the Egyptians were doing it and possibly further back than that, it was came into vogue again during the Renaissance, actually prior to the Renaissance and so forth, subsequently in churches and things of that nature began being used.

On picture frames and, uh, uh, things like that.

I know of maybe five or six other stripers, nationally, that do pinstriping and gold leaf on the streets.

There may be more, but I'm unaware of it.

Where do I get inspiration from?

Everywhere.

I'm blessed with powers of observation and I try to be receptive and I try to pay attention to things.

I also try to do things for instance, that have not been done.

I try to give people more than they expect simply because I've been doing it this long.

And if not now then when?

there was a very humbling experience in 2006, for me and for Bill, he was contacted and was told that the National Hot-Rodding Association was going to nominate him for induction in the Drag Racing Hall of Fame.

He said, I won't do it unless you also incorporate Dauber in that.

And it was a humbling thing, standing up a bunch in front of a bunch of people in a crowd situation, thanking them.

It didn't make a lot of sense to me until I realized there were no other artists in the Drag Racing Hall of Fame at that point.

It was a situation and still is.

I've done a quite wide variety of work for folks, including the museum center, the fire museum, multiple radio stations, the Cincinnati Zoo, clients involving race cars, hot rods, motorcycles, all over town.

Everything you see around in behind me and everything that I do is original and it's hand done.

I do not use a computer for my art.

I do not do anything in vinyl.

Everything I do is done the original way, the right way.

I like the smell of paint.

I like to feel of brushes in my hands.

I want to do it right or not at all.

Pinstriping is sort of a Zen thing for me.

You gotta be in a good frame of mind.

I do yoga.

I do meditation twice a day and it gives me a good frame of mind.

It keeps me calm.

You can't do pinstriping without having brush control.

You don't have brush control unless you've got some control up here.

And in here it's logical.

I tend to look at a naked panel and I can imagine, you know, things growing out like a blooming flower and God-willing it'll bloom, wherever the brush is pulled up.

My grandmother was the first one to encourage me to do art.

Art is not as easy as it might seem.

There are a lot of people that you just put a coin in a slot and out pops art.

It doesn't work that way.

You've got to think, you've gotta be versatile.

You've gotta be diverse.

You've gotta be quality.

If you've gotta be all of those things and you better know how to market yourself to a certain extent, I am grateful to have work and I'm grateful to be doing art art for me, uh, is, uh, a long-term deal.

I am very grateful to be able to work with young artists, young stripers, and so forth because there was no one around to teach me anything.

I am completely self-taught.

I'm frequently asked.

Don't you think that's a dying art?

Uh, no.

I think thanks to the internet and the web, there are probably more people pinstriping worldwide than any other time in history.

Well, that's it for Gallery America this time.

Be sure to see past episodes of Gallery America by visiting our website at oeta.tv/galleryamerica.

And for dozens of additional features of Oklahoma artists go to Gallery America Online on Instagram at @oetagallery.

There you'll find features on other Tulsa artists, fellows like Sarah, including Rachel Hayes, who does tapestry.

artist Joel Daniel Phillips who turns WPA-era photos into realistic drawings with his pencil, and Olivia Stephens, a graphic novelists from the Pacific Northwest.

Thank you so much for watching.

I'm Robert Reid.

And until next time, stay arty Oklahoma.

Be sure to watch 'Tulsa Race Massacre: 100 Years Later' special.

It features conversations with historians and survivors from the tragic 1921 event, as well as features on artists who are part of the ongoing Greenwood Art Project.

You can stream it online by visiting oeta.tv/tulsaracemassacre.