Make Art Wyoming - Our Wyoming

(dynamic music) - Neon is definitely a dying art form. Not many people do it anymore. I mean you used to see, back in the day, they would have a big shop. They just made neon signs and they would have like 20 neon tube benders in there just making signs. I experienced that a little bit when I lived in Seattle, I made Starbucks letters, and it was just one Starbucks sign after the other. And they shipped ‘em all over the world. I just love the craft of it. Yeah, I love pulling those straight tubes out, looking where I’m gonna start at. It’s just such a challenge.

02:19 - I’ve lived here for seven years now, and I’ve seen Casper change in that short amount of time. And I think the art scene in Casper is really up and coming. There are so many talented people that live here. Visual artists, musicians, photographers. It’s incredible, the amount of talent that’s in this community. And I think that it’s well supported here too. I think they’re hungry for it here in Wyoming. I mean, in Wyoming you have your Western artists, and your bronze sculptors, and things like that. And I think that’s something that people are used to here, but I think they’re getting a little more used to maybe some more funky kinda art, that’s not typical of Wyoming. I think in the next 10 years you’re gonna see a big change in Wyoming with the art scene. I think it’s really gonna transform here and become something much bigger.

03:24 - - My name’s PNut, and I’m a professional artist. My mother was an artist. I have an uncle who’s an airbrush artist. And my older brother’s an artist. He was the one that actually got me into tattooing. I was eight years old when I had my first tattoo experience. Walked in home from school and I was seeing my older brother tattooing my pops. I was really drawn back by it and was like, wow, this is amazing. Like it’s not going anywhere, that’s there forever. I wanna say I was probably about nine, 10 years old when I had the second tattoo experience. That’s when I was like, yup, I wanna try that when I’m older. I was at a house party with family. All us kids were playing outside, they were keeping us outside. So I’m like, wandered in to use the restroom.

04:12 - Well I seen all the adults in the living room and a few of ‘em were huddled around this couch. So I go over there, squeeze my way through. And I’m literally squeezing my way through adult thighs, trying to figure out what’s going on. When I got through the crowd, there was a guy that was laid out on the couch, and he was in (beeping) agony, he was in so much pain. The dude was tattooing a huge grim reaper all the way across the front of his chest. The whole thing.

04:41 - That guy was just laid across the couch, just taking all that pain. And I was like, wow. I knew then and there like, oh, I wanna try that, definitely I’m gonna try a tattoo. There’s still people in Wyoming that don’t accept tattooing, tattooers, the way it looks. But there’s a strong tattoo culture in Wyoming. 12, 15 years ago, you wouldn’t see a daughter, her mom, and her grandmother come in and get tattooed. Now you see all three generations come in and get tattooed. Usually it was the daughter dragging the mother in and the mother didn’t want nothing to do with it. But now all three of ‘em are coming in, they’re getting matching tattoos, get stuff that have a lot of meaning to ‘em. And it’s awesome. It’s awesome to see that change. Tattooing’s not the old biker, scummy thing that it was portrayed to be a long time ago. It still has that stigma on it, in some places here. Opening people’s eyes to that is awesome. And watching it grow is just awesome.

05:41 - And I think it’ll continue to grow, definitely. (dynamic music) - The spray can has been something that’s been essentially half of my life. I’ve been doing graffiti and mural work for about 14 years, but some of that 14 years was obviously illegal graffiti. I’ve been doing it on the professional level for about almost five years now, four years. I started out doing the simple graffiti, doing names and stuff like that. Spray painting train cars.

06:24 - Obviously I moved into more of a professional aspect of it, so I can have a business out of it, not catch any criminal charges or anything like that out of it. I’m not looking for any of that stuff. So I would classify it as more of a street art. Casper’s really starting to come around. We’re starting to, even Wyoming alone, Cheyenne and Laramie, they’ve all come up with places where they have legal walls now where street artists can go paint on these walls and there’s no consequences for it. And I’m trying to push that here in Casper, to where people accept it more. And the more I expose myself and what I’m actually doing to the general public, the more they see that graffiti, and street art, and stuff like that, isn’t all about vandalizing something. It is an actual art form.

07:11 - My art’s a little different than your traditional art. I’m not using a brush, I’m using a spray can. There’s some good artists here in Casper. And as long as we can all push together and work together, we can make Wyoming a place where we’re known for art, not just for our natural resources, such as coal or natural gas. Trying to bring something else to Casper other than that. (upbeat music) - This piece, it’s actually a depiction of the Grand Teton mountains over on the western part of the state.

07:52 - Most art, it’s just a canvas on a wall, right? But this, you look at it from this angle, or you go to that side of the piece, or if you’re standing up above, it’s all a different scene that is captured from any angle that you’re at. And you can look at it from this angle 10 times and you’ll continually see something that’s a little bit different. In this entire piece there’s a 1,298 individual blocks that are incorporated into the grand scheme of the mosaic here. Cut ‘em all myself, sanded ‘em, burned ‘em, painted ‘em. Each block, I guess you could say, was handled five different times in the whole process of it.

08:33 - When I first moved out here, I was a little bit closed-minded. I felt that it was very a niche community. Everybody was within itself. But living here, and meeting new people, and different types of people throughout the community. I mean, you’ll see the same people here as you will down in Denver, or any big metro area. And as Casper is growing in our community here, we now have art walks that we didn’t have five years ago.

08:59 - So I think that type of scene is being more readily accepted throughout the community. Plus, it gets people out into the community, enjoy people, meet new people. So that’s something that’s obviously helped artists out. And just anybody out that owns a business. (soft music) - My name is Betsy Bower and I’m from Casper, Wyoming. I grew up welding and blacksmithing for my dad, Tom Bower, who owns Bower Welding. And so, when I was 25, I decided to branch out on my own. Shawn Rivett gave me a commission to do this tree branch piece on the side of his building. And so I was like, okay, game on. And I went and bought a welder the day I left my dad’s shop. And he helped me find this space right here. And so I’ve been here for seven years.

10:08 - I’d been working for my dad and he would let me sometimes just take customers of my own because I wanted to do more creative stuff. He didn’t think that the creative edge would make it really. I mean, I don’t know, he’s like, well, people wouldn’t pay for that. I’m like, well, why don’t we just do it? And ‘cause my mind worked that way, if I was just doing straight pickets and welding them, I would go brain dead. I’m like, I can’t, this is mind numbing. But I really wanted to get into like curvy things, and organic forms, and things like that. And more three dimensional things.

10:37 - And I started getting more commissions just being in my dad’s shop and working for him, but then doing my own commissions on the side. And finally he kinda kicked me out. And he’s like, you need to go get your own space. And I’m like, oh. I didn’t feel ready. But I started getting more and more commissions. And then people did start paying for art. It just kind of unfolded, and I didn’t really expect it to. There’s only a 500,000 people in the state, and there’s more antelope than people.

11:02 - Other people from other places in Wyoming are like, you know, we only drive through Casper. Why stop there, what is there? And lately it’s been like, that has been unfolding within the town, of people getting more creative, or like them coming out of the woodworks. Because everybody does something at their house, or in their garage, because it’s, we got wind, we got cold, we have long winters. So it’s like, you have to get creative. But it doesn’t go public all the time because what venue is there for it? There’s art 321, and there’s The Nic, and there’s like some other places, but it didn’t all happen before. And this synergy started to happen where different people were doing different things, and it finally kinda came together.

11:41 - ‘Cause it’s hard, you’re pushing against the grain, because it’s like people go to Denver for their art fix, or people go to New York City for their art fix, or like somewhere else, and then come back. But what about for the people who don’t have the opportunity to leave all the time? And there needs to be something here. And I think that the people who felt stuck here decided to create something here. I needed to do something creative with that energy. And so I did. And I’m glad that it evolved in a way that became more public, and became something bigger than just me doing it in my garage, or doing in my room and whatever.

12:16 - Because I want to live a life of doing art. And it’s not fair for everybody to be like, oh, well I have to get a corporate job, or a desk job, or this job that I hate in order to make it through my life. But, I’m so fortunate to get to make a living doing what I do best. I would like to see people being more creative with whatever it is their passions are. I mean, what I’d really like to see is a Burning Man chapter start here because that’s what opened my mind up to doing something different and believing in it.

12:45 - I went in 2009, and when I got back and I’m just like, I have to start my own business. Like, that’s what I, I had this epiphany there where I was just like, what would I do if I could do anything? I would make art out of metal. And then I was like, why am I not doing that? I’m just like, ‘cause I never believed it was possible. And then I was like, why isn’t it possible? I’m like, oh, ‘cause I’m just not doing it yet. I decided I had to. And sooner than later would be better. And so I just did. And that’s what Casper needs is just more culture in general, just a little bit of everything.

13:17 - When you allow yourself to be more of who you are you give other people permission to be who they are, and that’s what the world needs more of. ♪ And I’m going to change here ♪ And I’m going to change here ♪ I know we can’t ignore it ♪ No matter how hard we try ♪ And I’m going to change here ♪ And I’m going to change here ♪ I know we can’t ignore it ♪ No matter how hard we try ♪ No matter how hard we try ♪ No matter how hard we try ♪ No matter how hard we try ♪ And I’m going to change here ♪ And I’m going to change here ♪ I know we can’t ignore it ♪ No matter how hard we try ♪ I know we can’t ignore it ♪ No matter how hard we try ♪ No matter how hard we try (camera clicking) .