Jonathan Thunder, Jeney Christensen, Miles Taylor

(ambient music) - [Narrator] On this episode of "Postcards".

- I honestly never know what to say in these interviews about my work.

I guess I just take it day to day, like every day is a new opportunity for a new idea.

- I deserved better.

I was done working for the man.

And I wanted to be the woman.

So here I am.

- We were able to kind of slowly build out things that we enjoyed from the city out here, but without kind of like coming in and being like, okay, we're only listening to techno for eight hours straight.

(slow upbeat techno 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, Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen on behalf of Shalom Hill Farms, a retreat and conference center in a prairie setting near Wyndham, 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 Councils 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 967kram.com.

(gentle music) (coffee grinding) - Funny thing about these artists interviews is at some point you know, I had to let go of the idea that I was gonna tell this really coherent story about myself from beginning to end.

And the more that I've watched other artists interviews I realize that none of 'em are really like a linear storyline.

It's all bits and pieces that you pick up about the artist which is probably, the best way to do it.

I listen to a lot of artist podcasts too and there's a lot of times when I'm just like this (bleep) drank too much coffee before his interview.

This guy should have drank some coffee or something.

I don't know if you get hit somewhere right in the middle, it'll be alright.

Cheers.

- [Interviewer] -Cheers.

(upbeat music) - These are the perfect size cause they actually fit in my Jeep and they're pretty easy to transport, ship.

Where should I look?

Just right at you?

- [Interviewer] Yeah, look at me.

- Yeah.

Okay.

My name is Jonathan Thunder and I work as a visual artist.

What kind of art do I do?

- [Interviewer] Yeah.

- Well I generally work as a painter.

(upbeat music) I also do illustration.

This is a CD cover I'm making for hip hop artist outta Minneapolis and I've made short films.

And one of the things that I like about working at this size is that it really brings your content to life.

Like when things are that scale, you know you feel like it's more, like it could be a thing.

I might have to put a nail there.

This is my homemade easel system.

- [Interviewer] Can you describe a couple of the paintings you've done that you really like?

- Yeah, I could pull something up and put it over there.

How about, I'll just pull up the last one I made.

I don't know how to say any of my work is my favorite cause you know, I'm such a hard critic on myself.

One of the last paintings that I made was called The Hibernation of Reason produces Monsters.

The theme is that were all in the same boat in the Ojibwe Clan system, the bear is said to be kind of like the keeper of the medicine.

And it's interesting to see how a portion of our population has suddenly created a huge distrust about our community that uses science to create medicine.

I try to talk about my inspiration so that people understand where I'm coming from, but in the end a lot of intuitive decisions are made and the painting sort of starts painting itself.

Great.

You know, my art has taken me into the heart of Minnesota's Ojibwe community, which growing up I really didn't think I was ever gonna be a part of.

I grew up in Brooklyn Center which is a suburb in the northwest area of Minneapolis.

I'm more of like a urban Indian they call it.

Growing up in the eighties and nineties, being around so many different kinds of people, I definitely have an ability to draw, I guess from a variety of culture.

Films, magazines like Mad Magazine, comic books, MTV.

- [Armstrong] That is one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

- I like to comment on Disney characters sometimes just cause you know, I grew up with that stuff.

Old Nintendo characters, I put Bugs Bunny in some of my paintings and have him sort of be in compromised positions and stabbed.

When I look back at some of the Saturday morning cartoons that I grew up with as a child, I had no idea how problematic they were.

- [Bugs Bunny] Gee, that's a good idea Geronimo.

- Politically incorrect stuff like Bugs Bunny shooting Indians and singing one little, two little, three little Indians and then crossing one out halfway and saying oops, that was a half breed.

You know, I was a little Indian boy sitting up Saturday mornings eating my cereal, watching it because I love Bugs Bunny, but I never knew that was a bad thing cause I was a little boy, you know?

And this is the culture that I'm being fed every day.

So it's fun to use those characters the way that I want to tell a story since they have always taken the liberty with cultures to tell their stories however they want.

For me that feels like reappropriating imagery to do what I wanted to do.

This one's probably done.

Sign it, put it on Etsy.

Don't remember feeling the Ojibwe a lot.

It wasn't until student life when I went to school that I actually started to really dig deep into books about Ojibwe stories, culture, language.

When I find a really good story, like I like to harness that spirit and put it into some of my work.

This is a scene where the character gives birth to himself and then passes away.

So these are the floating heads that are all animated.

Yeah how it turns out is pretty sweet cause you can add all of these effects at the same time.

After I got outta school, a lot of my friends went out to California to be Hollywood visual effects artists.

And I'm glad I didn't go.

I just started working with poets, theaters, documentary filmmakers, local Ojibwe language teachers and I would get hired to design these animation sequences for their film.

I've designed animation for important movements like the Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women which seeks to tell the stories of women who are no longer with their families due to violence.

That kind of content for me is important because I've been affected by that in my own life.

I've had multiple people in my life that were murdered and their murders were never investigated fully.

You know, it was just kind of botched investigation which is something that you find a lot of the times with these stories is that evidence was mishandled there was no real effort given to it or the case just went cold.

It's frustrating to see that and I guess there's nothing that I can do about what happened with them but what I can do is try to use my art to help tell the stories of some people.

(airplane roars) The Manifest'o installation at the Minneapolis airport is a compilation of three stories that I've adapted from Ojibwe storytelling.

And I think one of the great things about the location of that exhibit is that people who are coming from all over the planet can be exposed to a little glimpse of Ojibwe language and Ojibwe storytelling.

And I think that helps with visibility of a culture of a community, you know, that lives here.

There are seven Ojibwe nations in Northern Minnesota and a lot of people don't know that.

So people coming from around the world, can be introduced to that here.

I've been a lot of places in the world.

I would live in Minnesota for the rest of my life, if that's the way it turns out, I feel like Lake Superior you could say that it has a spiritual energy to it.

It inspires me, it keeps me humble or right sized.

And I think it comes from maybe always being next to something that's wild.

Something that you can't tame it.

Something that could take you if it wanted to and that feels alive, like that makes me feel like every day I'm just grateful to be alive and make the most of it.

A lot of times I'm just telling a story with my work and sometimes that story is inspired by what's happening in the world.

Sometimes it's inspired by what's happening in my life.

Becoming a parent has changed everything about me.

And I remember prior to being a parent hearing people say stuff like, it's gonna change everything.

And I was just like, no, I'm always gonna be who I am.

I am who I am.

But yeah, it's changed everything for the better.

I feel like the messages just have more life now, because I feel like I have more life.

It's definitely kind of helped me to focus not only on my practice, but like who I want to be, who I wanna become, the kind of messages that I put out, in my work.

It was just sitting around wondering what he would look like when he showed up and who he would be.

Little space baby.

I honestly never know what to say in these interviews about my work.

I guess I just take it day to day, like every day is a new opportunity for a new idea.

So to ask me what I'm working on next or to ask me what I have planned for next year is a question that I don't know.

This life that I live, I guess as an artist, as a full-time artist is a mystery to me.

And I think that's why I work with dreams and I'm being sincere when I say this.

Reality is often more surreal than dreams.

Any dream.

It's just all so surreal.

(music) I'm really lucky, I work as an artist full-time and somehow I managed, I can afford the espresso beans that I really, really like.

(slurps coffee) Totally worth the price.

(light music) (upbeat music) I've always loved baking.

It's always been something that I enjoy doing.

I love making people happy and bringing joy to people and what is more joyful than a cupcake.

There was a point when I was on maternity leave with my first, and I was having some serious panic attacks about going back to work at the soul sucking insurance job that I was currently at.

I did not want to go back.

It was seriously causing me like physical pain.

And so I was speaking with my partner about how much I didn't wanna go back.

He's like, well, let's just do Peney Cakes.

Let's do it.

Let's take the leap.

And I was like, all right, let's do it.

Let's take the leap.

And I can't believe it sustained itself.

You know, obviously a lot of entrepreneurs and a lot of startups fail within the first two years.

And here I am still going strong and continuing to grow.

It's been incredible.

So yeah, it just took a tiny little smooshy face and a panic attack for me to realize that I deserved better.

I was done working for the man and I wanted to be the woman.

So here I am.

(upbeat music) When people ask me what I do and they ask what is Peney Cakes?

I tell them that I am primarily a mobile bakery.

So I'm not like your typical brick and mortar where you walk in and there's a bunch of bakery cases and you pick stuff out.

I do work and operate out of a brick and mortar, but all of my sales primarily are done out of a food truck, a dessert food truck trailer.

So that is primarily what Peney Cakes is.

(upbeat music) It's funny that I call myself a cupcakery and I am known for my cupcakes, but people love my brownies.

They're very fudgy, rich, delicious brownie.

I'm somebody who, if you're going to eat a brownie I want it to be a brownie.

If you want a cake like brownie then just eat chocolate cake.

That's kind of how I feel about it.

So the brownies are a big hit.

People love, I have a snack attack cupcake.

I actually came up with that when I was working with the brewery on a pairing event.

It's kind of my nonsense.

One, it's got chocolate chips and marshmallows and peanut butter cups and pretzels and potato chips and caramel and all kinds of stuff inside of it.

So that's a really big, big popular one.

My tiramisu cupcake is a really, really popular one.

People also love, oh my gosh, there's so many.

I do like a strawberry lemonade during the summer that people absolutely adore.

I don't know if I've ever had a cupcake that hasn't sold well, but those are the ones that come to my mind that are like the most popular.

(upbeat music) I don't know if I have a typical day at Peney Cakes but I have like a typical week.

But I always try to start the week off with baking than towards the end of the week is when I decorate.

And that's even more, I like to call that my nothing box like the decorating part of it.

Cause I literally can just like zone out completely and just decorate and not think about anything.

It's the more creative part of it and it's the part that I love the best is the decorating side and how can I make this cupcake look as delicious as it tastes.

I know that most people think of artists working in like charcoal and acrylics, right?

Or sculpture.

And I like to say that I work in flour and butter so I can't necessarily draw a stick figure well, and according to my four-year-old, I can't draw anything well, but I can make a cupcake look awesome.

I can make a cupcake look real pretty.

(classical music) It's such a unique experience to be like either at a farmer's market or at an event and see a dessert truck.

It's not something that you see very often.

And I know that it's not very common nationwide even I know they exist out there.

I've looked for them, I've tried to see if there are others out there, but it's so cool to have one in such a small community like this and it's just been really heartwarming and really humbling actually just to see how much Fergus Falls has just really taken me in.

One thing, I've done a lot of talks with youth in like the high school entrepreneur classes here and they ask me a lot of times like, what is one of the biggest challenges you've faced?

And something that I feel like I've run into a lot and being a female and being young or at least perceived as young is I felt like I was being told that my dream wasn't feasible or my dream didn't matter or why don't you do it this way instead.

So I always tell people like, I would tell those young children and especially the girls, like don't let anybody tell you that your dream doesn't matter because they have no idea what they're talking about.

When I was first starting up with Peney Cakes and trying to get support and get guidance and learn about how I should go about doing this, I was told, well I don't understand why you wanna trailer.

Like why don't you just do like big contracts and do like catering?

It's like, well cause I don't wanna cater, like I do cater, I will do custom orders but my dream is a trailer, like I want a cupcake food truck.

I think that's fun.

That's what I want to do and why wouldn't I wanna do what I think is fun?

And so I was told that, I was told well why don't you do donuts or why don't you do this?

Or maybe you should do that.

Like, just constantly being told primarily by men what I should be doing with my business.

And I'm so glad and proud that I stuck to my guns and I was like, no this is what I wanna do and this is what I'm going to do.

And I did it and the cupcake food truck was actually like a five year plan and I got it done in two.

I did what I needed to do and I did it because I believed in myself.

(scary music) - [Narrator] There nothing wrong with your television set.

Do not attempt to adjust the depiction.

We are controlling the transmission.

- Oh boy, what is glitch art?

Glitch art is intentionally corrupting technology to make art strapping a magnet to an old TV, tricking a computer into thinking an image is a sound.

It's a lot like tech-based art that's about destruction and kind of chaos but giving a little order to it sometimes.

(techno music) - [Interviewer] But where are we?

What is this place?

- Oh, whoa.

Yeah, this is my grandmother's house.

She passed away about two decades ago.

I grew up here and at my mom's house across the street in Wood Lake, Minnesota.

But then I also spent every summer in Malibu, California with my dad, going from a town of 300 to Los Angeles being 3 million was kind of a large culture shock for me in a lot of ways.

I made art an actual intention for my life in about 2015 when I got accepted for a glitch art exhibit in Krakow, Poland.

It was awesome.

It was so cool meeting a lot of people.

Most of our community is only online.

We have a community about like 80,000 people.

It's like a Facebook group and we just kind of like talk about different techniques and stuff.

So a lot of these people have known from around the world but none of us had ever met each other in person for like years.

And then finally they met a lot of those people.

For me, glitch art it's kind of a way to deal with mental sort of things.

Life can feel sort of chaotic or anxious or something.

You're getting a moment of chaos but you're giving it some sort of definition.

Working in glitch art a lot got me into a lot of general forms of digital art.

I think my brain is just so kind of all over, but then when I'm just sitting in Photoshop and kind of zoomed up to the Pixel, it's sort of meditative practice just to be able to kind of like okay, all I gotta do is just cut out this dude's leg and I can just do that for an hour.

And it's like there's a little moment of like peace sort of, which is nice.

Beyond individual artistic works that I do I do a lot of live performance too.

A lot of DJing and live video work.

Dragon Burlesque for me, were kind of doing those shows, were my bread and butter for live events a lot of times.

I DJ at gay bars most weekends for like half a decade.

Burlesque shows too, I would actually play with video effects as if they were, like an instrument or something.

People could actually kind of see, the feedback moving like in tune with break dancers or something like that.

So a lot of the things that I do are dependent on large groups of people.

If I was 20 years old trying to beat a DJ out here it'd be very difficult.

But so much of surf society and connectedness through internet has changed.

And so seeing a lot of people, especially in their thirties and forties starting to kind of look for a slower pace of life, but they still enjoy a lot of city life and we're able to kind of slowly build out some of the things that we enjoyed from the city out here.

But without coming in and being like, okay we're only listening to techno for eight hours straight.

(soft music) Rural life is a very complicated thing.

I love it.

It can also be painful and isolating at times.

I'm really passionate about the beauty of the prairie because oftentimes people will come out here and they're saying, I'm going to the woods because so often they're used to going to Duluth or Northern Minnesota, which are all beautiful places.

But the beauty of the prairie is really a slow burn.

- The perfect climbing tree.

- The beauty of marrying someone else who is an outrageously talented artist and professional is we both understand when we need space but then we're also very aware of when we need someone else to be with.

And cause sometimes you get lost and you need your partner there to help you through and be like, Hey, you're doing okay.

I see it.

So that's why I love Jesse Henon.

Ed, come here.

Come on Ed, don't dilly, get up here.

Okay.

There.

I guess one of the things I love living on the farm most partly because I do so many different things.

A lot of times it feels like a canvas to work with.

You know, we can build a bar in this old building we can make a stage here, I can mow in this pattern and it looks kind of cool.

I also really love the pace of life, some of the stress of being like, I wake up I gotta go right now and do this and do that and do this, there's still work but it's a little more relaxing at times.

Instead of waking up next to a freeway which I was for a while.

(soft 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, Mark and Margaret Yaegil-Julien on behalf of Shalom Hill Farms a retreat and conference center in a prairie setting near Wyndham, 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@explorealex.com The Lake Region Arts Council's Arts calendar, a arts and cultural heritage funded digital calendar showcasing upcoming art events and opportunities for artists in West Central Minnesota.

On the web at lc4calendar.org.

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

Online at 967kram.com.