Coming up next on Gallery America, it's the food show where we make the case that, yes, food can be art to.

First, we meet a broken arrow artist whose creations have no sell by date.

“Im probably the only person that makes fake food that you'll meet.

” Then we meet an Oklahoma City chef who's using family recipes to expand the Oklahoma palate.

“I feel like we need that diversity for our food scene to really explode.

” And finally, find out the art of the beer can from a local Oklahoma brewery.

“I take a lot of inspiration from, I think, cartoons that I grew up with in the nineties.

” That are much more coming up right now.

Hello, Oklahoma.

I'm Robert Reid and welcome to a special edition of Gallery America, where we look at the art of food and drink in Oklahoma and beyond.

We're starting here at the iconic Super Cao Nguyen, which is my favorite grocery store in Oklahoma.

For decades, countless chefs have come here for ingredients and food brought from all over the world.

And we'll meet one in a little bit.

But the first artist from eating from Broken Arrow uses some rather unusual ingredients.

Caulking, hot glue Styrofoam.

Let's just say her creations may or may not want to eat.

Unless you're Miss Piggy.

It's an unusual business, and it kind of catches people's interest attention because it is.

It's just a very weird business.

My husband says I'm a crazy scientist because you have to kind of think outside the box.

You can't just assume that things are going to work.

So this is the finished product room.

that, our sundaes, those that are glasses, the coke 24 dream job in the world.

Yes.

According to Business Insider that the guy that taught Chris Pratt to scuba dive, he's number 22.

It started 28 years ago.

I saw a fake pie in a store.

And they wanted way more than I wanted to spend.

And I thought I could figure this out.

So I actually found a book on how to make fake food out of salt dough.

And within three weeks, I had made up a bunch of stuff and set up at a garage sale and sold $400 worth.

It's like I had no idea people with buy fake food.

But then it was like, Oh my gosh, people will buy fake food.

I started this when our kids were very little.

They were five, six and three.

I wanted to be home, but I needed that creative outlet.

And so looking back, all of those things have been able been possible because of fake food.

And I remember our son was probably four and I had bought some real cookies and he walked in the kitchen was like “are they real ” like all oh, this poor kids going to have to have therapy.

He's just been around to much fake food.

no deviled eggs complete without paprika.

I started just working in the kitchen, just making stuff.

When that started taking over the house, we turned, converted our garage so that I could actually work out of the garage.

But then even that just.

It was just not enough space.

So right now, we've got 12,000 square feet.

So I've got eight girls that are amazing that work for me.

You know, they have to be able to multitask a lot.

We've jumped from one thing to the other.

Problem solving.

Well, something we're needing.

This color's not right.

What can we use?

And we have probably, I would guess, 300 items in our inventory.

The best seller this year was our spilled cup of coffee.

We we probably will do, I'm guessing probably 5000 spills of just the coffee this year.

It's funny, when we get a new driver or something like that come in and they walk in and it's always that double take of, okay, what is this?

It's just fake food.

And then in Japan.

All of the restaurants have fake food.

But that's at a different level that that's a higher caliber fake food.

And I'll see what I keep seeing so that we don't do the really crazy fancy cakes that kind of stuff.

Because you wouldn't put that out at your house.

You know, I want it to look like I made the cake, but I know that, you know, that's a Styrofoam cake.

And it's not doesn't doesn't tempt me.

But when we do when we did the Hershey stuff and, you know, we see the the Hershey shakes and we walk in, it's like, I think I need to go get some ice cream.

*indistinct chatter * This is just a small white cake.

This is probably one of our best selling cakes.

We sell a ton of these.

We have stuff that has shown up in Hollywood, Glee.

We made a bunch of ice creams for them to use in their diner scene.

I didn't realize Disney had even bought it.

And I went the theater.

It's like those are my donuts.

“Cant you see Im busy?

” It's like your children.

You just know it's when.

When one that youve made, everyone calls me the food, lady.

You know, the dough lady.

You know, over the years, which is good.

I'm okay with that.

This is probably going to a gift store somewhere here in the U.S. You know, they'll say, you know, they want to, you know, the secret.

They would like to do this to find something you're passionate about.

Because by the time you make your 600 donuts, you're done.

And I think that's that's kind of been my key is I actually enjoy making 60 because they're in this kind of puddling and giving us a nice little melting spill.

Have you ever heard that quote?

“Ask not what you can do for your country, Ask what's for lunch ” Oresen Wellsl said that.

Well, this chef from Oklahoma City is kind of trying to do both.

Hes won national praise for trying to revive a type of cuisine that he considered somewhat lost.

And one writer even likened his prep style to the drip technique that Jackson Pollock used and abstract expressionism.

Well, we're an our show.

We had to check it out.

Meet Chef Jeff.

As a kid, I was kind of embarrassed of the smell.

Eventually, I got comfortable with it, and I introduced my friends to it and, like, just taste it first.

Every single time they loved the food.

I just wanted people to be more aware of what food and where it came from.

The majority of people I talked to probably nights and people don't know what Laos is or where it is.

But the country right in between, you know, Thailand and Vietnam, north of Cambodia, south of China.

My parents are both immigrants from Laos.

They came here in the late seventies, early eighties.

They both met their Oklahoma City at an Northwest Classen high school.

I grew up in a kitchen my entire life.

Graduated from O.U.

In 2010 and spent two and a half years in advertising and decided that it wasn't for me.

food was calling me back.

So I quit my job came back and opened up a food truck Lao food, very similar to Thai food and Vietnamese food.

I guess Southeast Asian flavors are, yknow, sweet, salty, sour Lao food is on the.

More on the savory, spicy, bitter, bitter side.

The rice salad is one of our most popular dishes here.

Something I learned from my aunt adapted the recipe and made it my own.

How we make that dish is we take Jasmine Rice.

We season it with coconut milk, red curry paste, fish sauce, a little bit, oyster sauce.

And then we compact it into, like, a hockey puck, you know, really dense, deep fry it for about 8 minutes, let it cool down and take about 3 pucks, crumble into a bowl.

The fun part, very tedious.

Next is, the cured pork, the Nam.

Herb Medley, it's got cilantro, green onions and mint of our seasonings.

Got lime juice all over salt and fish sauce, chilies, peanuts for texture and added it will mix it.

I think it's important to have all those components.

In my opinion, if it makes you happy, make your belly happy.

To get all these different flavors and textures in your mouth is like, Wow, what are all what's going on right now?

So we are in the Plaza district very buzzy neighborhood and the restaurants retail, a lot of street art.

I do have a mural outside has done by Julie Roberts.

her artist name is Juuri and she's Japanese artist offered to do something to honor my grandmother my grandmother passed away two months before I opened up this restaurant, so I wasn't able.

Sorry, Im gonna have to start over.

i gave her a portrait of my grandmother, like resemble her as much as you can.

I want her in the traditional Lao outfit.

And I think one of the best murals, you know, in the city right now, it has a lot of meaning.

yeah.

Whenever we get new diners and here you know what I want to see what I want.

I like to stay in the restaurant when I you know, people are here, the very small restaurant, just to see that first reaction like, is this gonna make them smile look like really big?Or are they gonna hate it?

you know, so far the majority of the time people you know, they're very excited about these new flavors.

What we got an accolade for it was one of the 50 best new restaurants in America and in the New York Times a very similar but they're list is the top 50 the best restaurants in general in the nation?

Well, that was a huge honor.

And kinda out of blue.

You know, I don't know what I'm doing right.

I think it's I'm just keeping my head down, working hard, believing in what I'm doing and giving it everything I can.

Now, I've got, you know, I believe in my food.

I'm confident in it as long as I can just keep doing that.

I think the city wall, you know, accept it.

And trust me.

Food and art have been amigos for a thousands of years.

You find painted depictions of things we eat in Egyptian temples, Pompeii walls, those Dutch still life paintings from the 1600s when plates of food became real mainstream in art.

These days, it's more about Instagram.

We love taking pictures of plates of food and things we eat, but do we really know how to do it artfully?

That's why we thought we would share this story from a Tampa photographer who's been photographing food for decades, and he's sharing all the pro tips and how to do it well, maybe you can help me out, mate.

The incomparable Chip Weiner.

My name is Chip Weiner.

I am a photographer here in Tampa, have been a photojournalist and a food photographer or photographer in general public for 30 years.

So way back in the days of film is when I started some tips as far as taking some better photos.

First thing is put a little extra effort into it.

Pay attention to what you're seeing through the camera.

Desserts tend to photograph the best because restaurants put a lot of time and effort into making them just look awesome.

If you're going to shoot in a restaurant.

Don't be afraid to ask.

For a table next to a window if you don't have a large light source.

So if you don't have that large window, there are other ways.

Listen, I've seen people light food, photography with their phone.

A lot of the photography that I do, at least on social media, is I call it run and gun.

No special consideration from the kitchen, no special consideration from the restaurant.

I want to show in my photography and I want to experience if you go into a restaurant and you sit down and eat this dish, what does it look like?

The cool thing about Chip is that he doesn't let you know he's coming.

Now, that's a good thing, because then you're not running around, you know, pulling out gold lobster tails out of the freezer and making it happen.

You know, he's a customer just like anybody else, but it's very impactful.

What we're looking at is these are some of the photos that I've seen on Yelp.

I looked at an egg sandwich at a restaurant recently.

And what I like to do first is sometimes go online to see what they're serving, which is what I did.

And there I saw some photos and I took that shot in a Styrofoam box.

It's a good looking food, but it gives it no context.

So as I went in there, I'm looking around, how can we set this up so that you get a feel of the place?

Because it's sort of a nostalgic place.

And I went in and reshot the egg sandwich and it looks very different from what I originally saw on Yelp.

Not criticizing Yelp.

They have a lot of good food photos on there, but there are some on there that could certainly be improved.

So what I wanted to do with the egg sandwich is I wanted to show what the context of the place was.

Again, it's a it's a nostalgic restaurant's been around for a long time and they had a lot of nostalgia around.

So I put items on the table.

One of the things that I encourage in food photography is give food a presence instead of shooting it from above, shoot it from the side.

If something is tall, let it be tall in your photograph, then show what's in the background.

So this was a brand new restaurant in town.

Believe it or not, that's grouper.

Brown food, by the way, is really difficult to photograph.

So what I did with that same dish was I put it on a plate, I put something in the background, I lit it a little different.

I added some color and some candlelight and it's same dish just with a very different view.

So that is a meat dish served right here in Factory four when I went for it, which can be a beautiful photograph.

Unfortunately, that one, there's just not a lighting or composition consideration.

So I saw that and I came in and again wanted to add some color, I wanted to add some background, wanted to show this is what it's like to sit in this restaurant and eat this dish.

It's got some candlelight.

It's got a nice drink in the background.

I typically will put some flatware in so that you get some scale.

Everyone knows the size of a fork.

They don't always know, like the size of a scallop, which can be small or large.

And I think the last one that we'll see there really speaks to color.

How do you use color?

And you can go on any retail website online and buy a color wheel for a couple of bucks, learn what complimentary color is, and use that even if you're in a restaurant, if you've got something blue a lot of time, something brown will go with that.

If you've got red a lot of time, something green will go with that.

So here's some tips for people at home, because one of the cool things about cooking at home is you control the whole place.

You're not waiting for someone else to deliver food, go to a second hand store and find some different kinds of dishes.

If you spend $10, you're spending too much.

One tip that I will use strongly is never shoot on a red plate.

Red does not render well and digital photography unless there's an absolute reason to do it.

And you know what you're doing.

White light blue plates tend to work well, darker plates are a little tougher to render.

Put those muffins, stack them up or cut them.

I love cutting food and seeing the inside of it.

Food only stays for maybe a couple of minutes, if not maybe an hour.

But when you get a fantastic photo, that's a memory.

That's something that you can share and project to other people that can last a lifetime.

One of the things that I like putting food on Facebook, for example, is to encourage people if you're out taking photos, make it better.

Take a little extra time to really make that shot delicious and make people want to eat it and try it.

And when you're ready, look online and learn about two things aperture and shutter speed.

Those two things interact on most cameras.

And if you learn how to adjust those, your food photography is going to improve significantly.

So this is a bag of black pepper, this is a bag of rice, a little plain.

They do the job.

But you find sometimes that food packaging can be kind of an art and itself.

Some people do a little more creative things, a little more color like this or whatever this is.

And that's true with breweries nationwide that are increasingly getting local artists design their beer count labels will talk to someone in Oklahoma who's doing it.

But first, let's check in with an Ohio brewery to see what they're doing to put some art in their beer.

The brewrey is located in Sandusky, Ohio.

I'm from Vietnam.

I moved to Sandusky in 2011l and then I started small city taphouse in 2014, and then suddenly one day I think to myself “lets open a brewery back ” in 2015, when I hang out with my buddy, he called me “a cocky little asian guy ” putting letter by letter.

That's how I come up with the brewery name “cocky little asian Guy ”- CLAG and then now everyone loves it and they all want to come here.

and drink good beer.

And eat good asian food.

I got all my family supporting me, and they backed me up behind it.

So here we are.

Papa Bui and Mama Bui are for Khas parents, Every father day weekend.

I always want to release a beer, represent my dad and mother day weekend.

I always want go visit my mom to release a beer for her because I love my mom and dad.

It was just kind of a homage to his parents and the inspiration they've given him for the whole company.

And he just really wanted to have something that showed them.

And there are two versions of them, one where they're dressed in traditional Vietnamese like royal garb, and then the originals where it's just them.

She's good with that.

So my mom live with my mom.

She's, you know, she look pretty awesome on the can.

So Back to the Wild is a local wildlife rehabilitation center and they did a collaboration with them on this beer the eighties vibe.

You know, you find those tank tops at a thrift shop that's just kind of like a vignette of a bunch of wolves on a mountain and one's big and the other one's small.

It's kind of like Napoleon Dynamite ish.

I think that label is one of the better label.

When she get that done.

I look at it, I was like “Dang!

and that's that's awesome.

” Usually somebody asking for something, I deliver it to them and I have no idea what they do with it because sometimes people that contact me for work, I don't get to meet ever in person.

So doing something like this and then getting to come down like when we are at the anniversary party here and seeing people walk out with big crates and stacks of cans that I did, it's just cool to see people like walk out with it.

Seeing in our beer, can people sit with it for a long time and look at it?

It's so much more engaging because they're not just like, Oh, that's cool, scroll.

They're are sitting there and drinking it, keep looking at it, take another drink and talk to people about it, which is just what's very cool to see, to sit back and watch people engage with it in such a different way.

It turns out Ohio isn't the only state that is infusing a little art into beer cans labels.

Because here in Oklahoma City's eighth Street Market, you find Prairie Artisan Ales, who for ten years has been making some pretty cool looking cans.

We're going to meet the art director, Colin Healy.

Colin Healy, how are you?

Excellent.

How are you, Robert?

I'm great.

I am.

I love the beer cans here.

You did all this right?

I you describe your style.

What is your art style?

I take a lot of inspiration from, I think, cartoons that I grew up with in the nineties, like, hey Arnold and The Simpsons and a lot of inspiration from 1960s, seventies kind of era comics.

Colin has designed over a hundred labels for beer cans and bottles for Prairie Artisan Ales in his ten years as art director.

And when people look at it, do you have like Easter eggs?

Do you have narratives?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

That's part of the fun, is creating sort of an interaction with the consumer.

I take a lot of inspiration from, you know, cereal boxes.

That's how, you know, you'd stare at the back of the cereal box.

Either there was a puzzle or some sort of game.

So I try to incorporate stuff like that in the labels that draw the consumer's eye in and allows them to really explore and have kind of an experience.

Like if you were, you know, listening to a vinyl record, deer flipping over the record.

We have here, I mean, like, for example, this lemon slice is catching my eye.

How does this you've got roller derby and lemons.

How did how did it get there?

How did you do it?

Yeah, well, usually I'm given a name for beer and then I'm left to kind of come up with its visual identity.

And a lot of times we'll have, you know, let's say chocolate or lemon or something in the title.

And so I take that and I try to come up with visual associations and in this case, lemons, obviously, being round it lend itself to being wheels and I grew up skateboarding and being involved in stuff like that.

And so roller derby just seemed like a natural direction for it that, you know, I came up with this just because thinking about kings, I was thinking in medieval times and now they're jousting with candy bars.

“Mustache king ” Yeah, yeah lots of mustaches in my art.

Fun is a big word it prairie ales.

But Colin does see the bigger picture with the esthetic that his art gives their beers.

And craft beer has like this huge, you know, alpha male mentality to it.

Or maybe it used to more than it does now.

But it was always things like, you know, arrogant bastard is like a popular beer and hyper masculine.

I think getting rid of all that and making it more approachable to anyone is is very as it's, you know, it's more accessible to everyone.

Well, thank you so much, Colin.

It's great talking to you and thank you for watching.

That's all the time we have for Gallery America.

Remember, as always, you can see past episodes on our robust archives at OETA dot TV Slash Gallery America and follow us on Gallery America Online, on Facebook, on Instagram, @OETAGallery.

We'll see you next month.

Until then.

Stay arty Oklahoma.

what Colin says.

that was good!