(logo chiming) - [Narrator] On this episode of "Postcards".

- A lot of people said this will never work in a small town.

I want to kinda maybe prove 'em wrong.

I think rural areas are in need of the art culture without having to drive a hundred miles to Minneapolis, St. Paul - I like really did start watercolor out of like it being the cheapest.

And then I like continued because of like, 'cause I loved it.

(gentle music) (gentle upbeat music) (upbeat music) - [Narrator] "Postcards" is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

Additional support provided by, Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies, Margaret and Mark Yackel-Juleen on behalf of Shalom Hill Farms, a retreat and conference center in a Prairie setting near Windom, Minnesota on the web at shalomhillfarm.org.

Alexandria Minnesota, a year round destination with hundreds of lakes, trails and attractions for memorable vacations and events.

More information at explorealex.com.

The Lake Region Arts Council's Arts Calendar, an arts and cultural heritage funded digital calendar showcasing upcoming art events and opportunities for artists in west central Minnesota.

On the web at lrac4calendar.org.

Playing today's new music, plus your favorite hits, 96.7 Kram, online at 96.7kram.com.

(upbeat music) - Actually I have to give credit to my sister, when she heard the concept of movement, the art, the mind and the senses and also the walking grounds, art in movement, so Art In Motion, and so that would work.

(upbeat music) Art In Motion is combining my love of bicycling.

The beautiful Lake Wobegon trail with nature.

We have about 38 acres on a property here with art placed for a platform from young artists or artists that are making their way to have a platform to exhibit their stuff.

Community engagement for art, and also nutritious food with craft beer and ice cream.

(upbeat music) Easily, you could spend a half day here enjoying the property.

(upbeat music) - Make sure you put on there, we look like hell, cause we've been biking for 12 miles.

- [Man] I think you all look pretty good for biking 12 miles.

- 20 - Oh my goodness.

- Half this building is a art exhibition space.

So we always have a new art exhibit going on and we rotate that part of it every two to four weeks.

And plus we have an art studio where it's engagement within community, it might be a free art class, it might be a structured art class.

Currently we have a couple artists and residents that are working out of the studio, that they engage with the community and gives exposure as well.

(upbeat music) We have planted on the grounds a pollinator to Stearns County program where it's habitat for the monarchs and the bumblebees.

So we have about seven acres planted out there.

So our theme for 2021 was the Monarch butterfly and kind of allows us to play off of that in our art concepts.

There's a beautiful glass mosaic of a Monarch butterfly on the wall.

(upbeat music) See the butterfly in there?

It's right there.

All you're gonna do is I'm gonna take off the the lid and you're gonna put your finger there and let the butterfly crawl up on your finger.

And then you're gonna so slowly set it down on one of these flowers.

Think you can do that?

- I'm the art coordinator at Art In Motion, I think that this gallery is unique because it breaks down a lot of barriers that people might have to going to see a white wall gallery show.

We have a garage door that we often have open on really nice days and you can literally just bike right up to the gallery right on in.

We attract people that don't actively seek art shows.

They just come here because there's food and beer, and then they enter an art show.

We exhibit artists that are of any level, pre-high school to professional artists that have exhibited internationally.

In just our short time of existence, we've covered all those bases.

(upbeat music) It's like a party every day, or like a social event every day and I get to connect with so many people.

We've made so many friends just through this job.

People genuinely want to connect with each other when they're here.

Like they'll talk to strangers or they'll talk to us.

And like, we'll be really candid.

Greg is awesome and he just like walks around and talks to people and has long conversations with them at their table every day.

And that's an energy that I think the rest of the staff also bring to it and I think it's really fun.

(upbeat music) - So currently we do have an outdoor art exhibit.

It is made up of 857 pinwheel and little butterflies.

The pin wheels were made as a weeklong art project with the community, the 857 pinwheels and butterflies represent sadly, the number of bicyclists that were killed in 2018.

And we are doing that in support of biker safety and biker awareness.

And we look to do that every year and hopefully the number goes down going forward.

(gentle music) I grew up in Holdingford, went away for 30 years.

My my career was in agriculture.

I was in the grain trading.

So when I retired, I wanted a little slower pace of life.

So I'm coming home.

My parents still live here and you know, I love my hometown.

(indistinct) - Yung.

- Yung.

Those names were around when I was 19.

So that changed too much.

So let's go by the tractors.

(upbeat music) A lot of people said, this will never work in a small town.

I want to kinda maybe prove him wrong.

I think rural areas are in need of the art culture without having to drive a hundred miles to Minneapolis, St. Paul.

And it's kinda nice to have people come here and appreciate it.

So my goal is to create a viable business with art and the trail in a small community.

And that's what I'm out to prove that it can be successful.

(upbeat music) - I've always been kind of a rural person.

I grew up in a rural area.

I went to college in a rural area.

I have a very deep obsession with cows and chickens which comes through my own personal art.

I also have an emotional attachment to this land.

It's beautiful.

An you don't have to struggle to find a parking spot and like, it's just, I don't know, I just like it.

(gentle music) (upbeat music) - We find that when people come out here, it's not a 30 minute stay, and then they end up staying two to three hours at a time.

It's a great place for conversation.

We don't have news on, we don't have the ball games on, we do rotate art occasionally up on a big screen but it's just a great environment to be in the moment and have good conversation.

(upbeat music) - This is the thing that's like both beautiful and horrible about being self taught, is like, you don't know the rules so you have to make them up.

But like people always have these like crisp clean borders and they use artist tape which is like expensive as, buy washy tape for like a buck 50 and then you get to create your own borders.

I like really did start watercolor out of like it being the cheapest, and then I like continued because it was like, 'cause I loved it.

And I feel like that's really symbolic for life.

Like you do it out of resource and then you learn to love.

(gentle music) I really started to dive into therapy a few years ago and that allowed me to start processing a lot of things that I had been going through in life since I had been contemplating about myself and my identity.

(gentle music) And then I started to use my artistry as a way to really process and explore that in an intimate and vulnerable way.

And then I started to understand some cultural connections to the materials I was using.

And I was really enjoying the ways that that was making me feel connected to my Chinese culture.

And so I started to explore things like symbolism or color choice, even composition of painting.

So now a lot of what I do with my artistry is I try to tell those stories through symbols and line work the yin and yang of organic line work.

(upbeat music) I wasn't seeing what I thought was beautiful out there, and so I would just create it myself and my own understanding of it.

And that allowed me to develop the line technique to where I am today with my gestural, my contemporary impressionist style, my very confident, fast paced creative style.

(upbeat music) My body positivity series started when I was really going through weight fluctuations.

I have what's called polycystic ovarian syndrome which leads into some insulin resistance and some regulation issues.

It can affect mental health through depression and anxiety and it's a chronic thing, it's going to affect me for the rest of my life.

There's ways that we can mitigate it, there's ways that I can be intentional about healing my body but I needed to understand what it was to accept my body as it is.

(gentle music) I was struggling with the feminine identity and the ideals of feminine beauty in the US.

I created the series to really explore that, to see that there is beauty in every body as it is, whether it's proportionate or not.

(gentle music) I wish that I could go back now and retitle that series body acceptance because I think that it's beyond just body positivity.

(gentle music) My Chinese heritage comes from my mother's side.

That is the Xiáo family.

We were below the poverty line but we always had enough.

We always had food on the table and there was always a way.

We were creative engineers.

And so what we didn't have we made.

But my mother would save all year round and then in the summers we would spend a month or longer in her home town in China.

So that's in Lanzhou in the Gansu province.

(gentle music) It was one of the most impactful things in my life.

We went back together as a family about 10 or 11 times, and then in 2014 I had the privilege of going over there by myself to spend time with my mother's side, to really reconcile this internalized racism that I was really holding in my heart from my upbringing that I think allowed me shared experience and inside understanding of that culture that has allowed me to grow as a person and really understand more deeply my identity as well as my family's identity.

(birds chirping) (gentle music) My mother and father came together through an arranged marriage in 1991.

And so my father was living and working in Fergus Falls, Minnesota.

He had written letters back and forth with my grandparents in China through my uncle who was a coworker of his and through series of events, they decided to make that match.

And my father went to China in '91, and that December, my mom and dad were married.

Just a few days later, I was conceived.

And at that time it was during the era of China's one child policy.

And so my mother had been previously married that husband had run off.

She had a son from that marriage which meant that my conception was illegal.

And so the government would've had to have scheduled an encouraged abortion date.

My dad had no blood children of his own.

When this became known to him, he did everything in his power to come back to the states, write letters to local public officials, did the paperwork.

And then in February actually just 10 days before my abortion date my mother and my brother landed on US soil.

And six months later I was born.

(gentle music) Fast forward to 1996 when my father passed away, my mother who was non English speaking was widowed.

And so she was left to raise two children under the age of nine by herself.

And so when I tell people that I love Fergus Falls, what I mean is I love the community of Fergus Falls that raised me because it was the village that had to come alongside my mom to teach her the customs, to teach us the culture, to allow us to make a living and a life in a rural region as Asian folks.

(gentle music) When you're an artist and you have other words that you have to add to your identity to explain or contextualize you before you get to just be and exist.

And being someone who had this rural Midwestern culture at school and out in the community and then I would come home, it would be an assimilated version of rural culture.

It was very confusing.

Now living and making a life in a rural region, I have to intentionally seek out cultural experiences that are going to essentially help me discover more about my family, my lineage, my heritage that feels really mysterious to me right now.

My mom was a music teacher in China before she came here and my grandma had been a traveling performer for like the Asian armies.

So like they'd know about the arts.

So I've always been around it.

I always saw as something that like added, I saw the value it added to life, but I just didn't know it was something I could do.

I think this one's done.

(gentle music) My most recent body of work is titled "The Audacity To Be In Rural America" We Owe You No Apologies".

And that is a series of 12 watercolor in Chinese ink paintings or illustrations really on rice paper.

And essentially what I did, was I tried to use the 12 animals, the Chinese Zodiac, all their attribute qualities.

So for instance, when you think of a rat, in the US we have connotations for what that means, but in Chinese cultures that often means fertility or prosperity.

And so I use those animals to story tell, tell stories about my family, the Xiáo family's immigrant experience in Otter Tail County.

(gentle music) I am someone who really cares about the future of rural communities.

Part of that means making this region more inclusive to people who look like me.

And so that's what I've used this series as, as a way to to share the stories that I have experienced, that my family has experienced, that we are ready to share.

That can be used as just an introduction to what another perspective is like.

Living in your same community.

(gentle music) I wanna take it to communities across greater Minnesota just to facilitate some of these conversations and to encourage rural communities to understand that Asian folks are dignified folks.

They have been here.

They deserve to be here, they don't need an explanation.

They don't owe you an apology for existing and living and trying to make a life alongside you that might look a little differently than yours.

(gentle music) In westernized painting, there's usually like one focal point or like two focal points, but in like traditional Chinese painting the focal point is the story, you're following the story.

So you might find like the creek in the front and then a mountain and then the temple and then the heavenlys.

And I thought it was interesting 'cause I was already doing that without realizing it.

The more I learn about the Chinese culture the more I learn about ancestors and ancestor worship and the belief systems they have.

And one of those is that your ancestors really guide you.

And so I kind of find artistry to be like the avenue through which I don't put pressure on it.

Like I go into this state that I call flow where I just like, and being someone neurodivergent, you go and you go and you go and you go, or hyper fixate or whatever.

But it's where I have the idea, I go into it and then I just start creating.

And I can't, I'm learning how to verbalize that process but really it's just doing.

(gentle music) I thought that through this most recent series that I'd be reaching other Asian people in rural spaces and making them feel seen.

I didn't realize that neurodivergent and queer individuals would be coming up to me with tear fielded eyes about how they are terrified of returning to the rural communities because of homophobia.

I didn't know that I was gonna have these ripple effects with my impact.

(gentle music) I am starting to learn the power in my story.

I'm starting to understand that all of the pain that I've experienced throughout my life, is something that I have been blessed with, the environment and the ambition, and the opportunities, and the community of care to allow me to heal.

I'm healing generations of trauma in this life.

And that's through therapy, that's through creative outlet.

That's through listening to what my body, my mind my spirit, my soul needs in this moment and tending to that.

(gentle music) I did not know, until I started to surround myself with other creative people that there were weirdos and misfits out there like me.

I didn't know that there were other neurodivergent people that struggled with the same things.

I didn't know that there were people that lived with mental illness and were healing through traumas in really, really strong and honest ways.

And my artistry has been a connector for me, in that it has connected me to community but it's also connected me to those who need reminders of hope too.

(gentle music) I have come through some very, very difficult times, and lived through some very hard truths and I'm currently navigating that, but I am starting to learn that I don't get to choose who is impacted by my artwork.

(gentle music) ♪ Rest and sleep well ♪ ♪ Far from loneliness ♪ ♪ A spider web's filled ♪ ♪ Up with mad deeper thoughts ♪ ♪ Now would you want to be ♪ (singer vocalizing) ♪ Drag you onto the lake ♪ (singer vocalizing) (upbeat music) ♪ The night is quiet ♪ ♪ Sounds from a ticking clock ♪ ♪ Bad dreams tell all ♪ ♪ Secret that we forgot ♪ (singer vocalizing) ♪ You'll be flying higher now ♪ ♪ Closer to the sun ♪ ♪ Just enough to give up ♪ (upbeat music) ♪ Rest and sleep well ♪ ♪ Far from my holy miss ♪ ♪ His lovers flame down ♪ ♪ Truth in the final kiss ♪ ♪ I never meant to loose ♪ (singer vocalizing) ♪ Saying our goodbyes ♪ (upbeat music) - [Narrator] "Postcards" is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

Additional support provided by, Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies, Margaret and Mark Yackel-Juleen on behalf of Shalom Hill Farms, a retreat and conference center in a prairie setting near Windom, Minnesota, on the web at shalomhillfarm.org.

Alexandria, Minnesota a year round destination with hundreds of lakes, trails and attractions for memorable vacations and events.

More information at explorealex.com.

The Lake Region Arts Council's Arts Calendar, an arts and cultural heritage funded digital calendar showcasing upcoming art events and opportunities for artists in west central, Minnesota.

On the web at lrac4calendar.org.

Playing today's new music, plus your favorite hits, 96.7 Kram.

Online at 96.7kram.com.

(upbeat music)