- On this episode of "Making," we roam the Ozarks with an art instructor whose mobile studio has its students tied up in knots.

Meet a man who finds new life in old objects.

And get twisted with an artist who's taking paper to new heights.

That's all next here on "Making."

This program was made possible by contributions to your PBS station for viewers like you, thank you.

(metal taps) (upbeat music) Hello and welcome to "Making," the show dedicated to makers and the artistry of their craft.

I'm your host, Matt Burchett.

Thank you so much for joining us.

This week, we begin here at the studio of Ashleigh Hawkins, the home base for her traveling art studio.

Roaming Hills Studio brings the workshop and the unique experience to you.

(gentle music) - Roaming Hills is a traveling art studio.

So I bring the workshops to you.

What I do is all of the research, the gathering of materials, the setup, the cleanup.

What I do is I'll take my artistic processes and the skills that I've gained, and break them down into something accessible.

My main goal is to demystify the process so that others can explore and elaborate on the skills that they gain from my workshops.

I provide the experience and the making while the host is there to enjoy that time and create with their friends, community members, new people, at any different venue, all across the 417 area.

Right now we offer workshops monthly at Finley Farms.

So I'm there at the workshop every month.

We host a variety of workshops there.

You can register online.

Workshops are guided by the season, so I will craft the workshops around what the land has to offer.

For example, in the summer, we have an abundance of native flowers.

So we are taking the flowers and making eco prints with the pounding, the leaf pounding, or the steam pressing, all of that.

And the late summer, we'll do cyanotype prints with the flora from around the area where we'll make sun prints.

It's actually kind of a shadow print.

When the weather pushes us indoors, we will do hand stitching, sashiko, embroidery, all sorts of different methods and techniques to repair or mend clothes that maybe are getting a little worn so that you can extend the life of those clothes.

Also, plein air painting is something that I love to do in the late fall and the spring.

You can get out, and that's just direct observation from what you're seeing.

You translate that in the two dimension without a reference.

It's a beautiful way to capture a moment without having to refer back to a past moment.

Right now in the spring, we're doing macrame plant hangers.

Everyone's getting their plants out, they're starting seeds, whatever it is that they're doing with their plants.

So we will make macrame plant hangers.

And the beauty of macrame is that it's easily accessible.

It's attainable to everyone.

You don't need any special materials.

There's no equipment, there's no, not a high cost is involved.

All you need really is cord and scissors.

So when you're creating macrame, you're using knots that you use on a daily basis.

The overhand knot, the cow hitch knots, all of these are knots that people are familiar with.

They just didn't know they had a name.

It's just a really cool process that is easily attainable to most all people.

It's this one on top.

A lot of my students will come into class and even to the workshops thinking, "I could never do this.

This is amazing.

It's incredible."

And once the process and the techniques are broken down, they realize that art truly is something that anyone with patience and effort can do.

Just like really anything in life, if you try long enough and hard enough, you're probably going to make it work.

And it's the same with art.

Out to dry to rest.

So.

The most rewarding part for me is watching the energy transform, not only within them, but in the room in general.

There's this creative meditation that you enter.

And when you get there, the Buddhist call it no mind.

And no mind is kind of like when you're in that flow and all the outside distractions, all of the negative thoughts, all of the positive thoughts, just all of the thoughts kind of go away, and you're just in that meditative state.

So watching my students on a daily basis enter that, you know, their tongues will start sticking out or they'll just kind of have wide eyes.

Watching that happen for adults is incredible because we don't have that space very often.

It's not something that we are taught to find, and it's something that's hard to find as a space where you can just, for lack of a better word, zone out and have your own thoughts without any other outside thoughts.

And I find that for me, that's why I feel like I pursue art so much is so that I can get into that meditative state of just creating.

The Ozarks inspire me.

The hills, the woods, the plants, all of it inspires me.

I live in a town with a river that runs through it, which is something that's incredible that not everybody has.

And I try to take time to always be outside.

When I was a child, my grandmother and I used to walk through the woods all the time, these long walks.

And it was, in fact, in those walks where my grandmother taught me how to see.

She taught me how to look at the world and how to encounter it in a way where I'm part of it.

And to be present in your surroundings can be so inspiring.

A lot of times we are just so distracted by our own thoughts, and by what we're supposed to be doing, and where we're supposed to be, and what should we be thinking that we forget to look.

(lighthearted music) I've always been a maker.

I don't remember a moment in my life where I wasn't, as my grandpa would say, piddling.

You know, I was making a mess somewhere.

I was always into something.

If there was something to cut or to make, I was going to find it.

My grandmother and I spent a lot of time together when I was a child, and she was always humoring, always facilitating any artistic endeavor that I wanted to do.

She would make it happen.

So having a makerspace is non-negotiable for me.

I have a beautiful studio now, but it doesn't matter where I'm at, because wherever I am, I'm going to be making something.

(upbeat jazz music) (slow rock music) - The desire to paint actually probably started when I was in high school and I had an art teacher, Mr. Gray.

And he painted weird things, like he would have a monkey smoking a banana so it was surrealism, but Mr. Gray was a big influence.

He painted and I liked the idea.

So I took his art class.

I bet I took his class every year I was in high school.

And he just allowed me to set up an easel and paint.

I'm currently in the painting realm.

I'm trying to be a little more open with my brushwork.

You know, define open.

It's, instead of zeroing in on your brush and ch-ch-ching, which I don't do much of that, but rather seeing the bigger picture, and then you start to weave the brushwork into it.

And I really like that.

And what I love about it, and this may sound kind of, you know, hippie-ish, but I love the smell of the fumes and things.

Not to the point where I'm gonna be spider-legged when I walk out here, but rather it's just so, you know, hands-on.

People who do things on a tablet and do all that, and no offense, I've seen great artwork come off of those things, but I love the feel, I love the smell.

You know, and that's where I go with my paintings.

My subjects are references, but I love still life.

And I plug things in.

And this piece that I've got started now is gonna be a very simple form that will eventually evolve into whatever I want to sprinkle into it.

You know, and that's where I'm at with my oils.

To paint something with the idea that I know what it's gonna look like when it's finished, I have no idea.

And so when I roll into a painting, I have a basic idea for what my focal point's gonna be, whether it's a person or a teapot or whatever it is.

And then after I get that kinda roughed in, it's like, oh, my gosh, there's a huge dead space here.

And I feel like I have to fill it.

I can't let it just be open, and I don't know what it's gonna be until it's over.

And I feel like I've ruined a lot of paintings with that process.

But at the same time, it's more fun in the process of doing that.

And I'll have a lot of clunkers, but once in a while there'll be a really stellar piece that is just purity, old, whatever.

(chuckles) And as I put together these seemingly unrelated parts that all have to do with the flow, the visual flow of the painting, the movement, the unity with the end, as that happens, I'm finding that the things I incorporate are probably, you know, if you wanna interpret what the artist was thinking, you know, but I don't think you can make any interpretations off that, except it's just things I like.

Sculpture is kind of a later thing.

I never really liked three-dimensional art.

But when I finally started appreciating just like in my paintings texture, and form, and all that, that's when sculpture kind of soaked in.

It's like, I really enjoy the process of aging in wood, and in metal, and, you know, with the rust, and all that stuff.

And then just tinkering and putting things together, and doing like the sheet metal sculpture with the wire armature.

And that just was really fascinating.

The crow piece, that was one of my early sculptures, and it starts with a wire armature.

And again, it's the form.

And I just love crows.

There's something magical about a crow.

And so as I'm, you know, liking crows, I'm like, "I'm gonna make a crow."

And so I do this wire armature and just form this thing.

And then originally that was gonna be where it stopped, just kind of an armature.

And I have rusted sheet metal from a barn that totally collapsed, and I harvested all the lumber I could off of it.

And I started seeing in the sheet metal, this amazing patina whether it was rust, whether it was spotted with rust, whatever.

And that, I started saving.

I've got stacks of it from that barn.

And you don't even have to cut it, you just wiggle it, and a csh, a piece comes off.

And so in the crow sculpture, it was perfect.

And it really enhanced the piece, just because it was rusty.

But it was a great enhancement just from, again, found objects and so forth.

I love integrating that.

Twist on its own because I had the features here.

I think if I was gonna suggest anybody who wanted to be an artist, just be an artist.

Don't try to be an artist.

You know, just be.

And you're, you know, living it out and actually doing this thing is so much more gratifying than talking about it and playing the part of an artist.

I think just be.

(upbeat jazz music) (gentle music) - All right, so we're back here with Ashleigh.

And Ashleigh, I have an issue that I was hoping to talk with you about.

So I have plants in my house and I brought one of my plants here.

But another thing I have in my house is cats.

- Hmm.

- I was hoping that we could come up with a clever solution to get this maybe up off the table and away from the prying felines.

- Yes, absolutely.

So I have a perfect solution for you for your hens and chicks.

This is pretty heavy.

- Yeah.

- So when I'm choosing my cord for my macrame plant hanger, since this is pretty heavy, I wanna go with a thicker cord.

So normally what I would use is this three-millimeter cord in my workshops.

I also have a five-millimeter cord.

These are cotton cords.

But for this one, I think what we should probably go with is this thicker jute cord.

- Okay.

- Now, jute is the traditional macrame material.

The fiber, this is what was used primarily in the '70s and the '80s.

It was a very natural fiber.

What we're gonna do is measure out this jute cord.

I like to take my plant hanger and decide how tall it's gonna be, and then multiply that by four.

So I measure this out by using my wingspan, and we will be using four cords in half.

And so that will be a total of eight cords.

- Okay.

So we've got our strings cut and we've got 'em set up on a frame of sorts here.

- Yes.

- So how do we get started?

What's our next operation, I suppose?

- Right, so the first thing we'll do is grab your macrame cords, and stick your thumb through this looped end.

- Okay, so I'm doubled over in this.

- You're doubled over.

- Okay.

- Yep.

And then we're gonna pull them out all the way.

Very good.

And we're gonna put this through and do a cow hitch or referred to as a lark's head.

So you're just gonna put all those looped cords through, pull them into a triangle shape, very good.

And then pull them all through.

(birds chirping) Very good.

So now we're gonna take our, all of our cords, and we're gonna pull them back to find our longer two cords.

You're gonna separate those out and work them to the outside.

So these are gonna be your working cords.

When you're doing a macrame plant hanger, you're gonna have working cords and you're gonna have filler cords.

Your filler cords are shorter because they're not tying any knots.

- [Matt] Okay, and it doesn't matter where they fall.

- [Ashleigh] It doesn't matter where they fall.

- Okay.

- [Ashleigh] As long as you are working cords are on the outside.

- Okay - Perfect.

So this first knot is a half square knot.

The half square knot is that classic number four shape that everyone did when they made a friendship bracelet.

So you'll just pull it through and then pull them tight.

So what you'll do is you'll take the left cord, it will always go on top, and your right, on top of the fillers.

- Okay.

- Very good.

And then your right cord will always go on top of the left, making that number four.

This left side goes on top.

- Ah-huh.

- There you go.

And then your right side goes, it's the leg.

So this is like your belly and this is your leg.

So the leg goes on top.

Yep.

Perfect.

- Okay.

- And then you're just gonna wrap it under and through.

And you if you switch it around during this process, that'll be fine.

It'll just make a straight sennit.

So this first part we're doing this here is a sennit.

And that's just when all of them are together.

And you can see how this one is spiraling.

And that's because you're tying that same knot over and over.

Now, if you were to do the belly on the right side, then it would be a square knot, not a half square knot.

- Okay.

- So switching back and forth, belly, belly, belly, belly.

- So if I were to keep this one towards me all the time, it would drop straight down.

I would always see that side.

It wouldn't spin like this one does.

- Yeah, exactly.

- I gotcha.

(gentle guitar music) - So now that you have your main sennit complete, we're going to create these individual sennits.

- [Matt] Mm-hmm.

- What we'll do is separate them into groups of two.

What you wanna watch out for when you're doing this is you don't want to create a group of two from a cord from this side and a cord from this side.

So try to separate them into cords that are close to one another.

(gentle guitar music continues) Perfect, look at you.

Very precise.

- Mm-hmm.

- Okay.

Yeah!

- [Matt] It's a thing.

- [Ashleigh] All right, so now we're gonna create our connective sennits, which are these right here.

So we're going to be connecting the individual sennits together to create, as you said, the cradle.

So again, you just want to be mindful of which two you're connecting.

You don't wanna necessarily connect this one with this one, since it's the outside and outside- - [{Matt] And you just end up with a bunch.

- [Ashleigh] Yeah, it would end up kind of crossed, like this one is.

See how that's kind of crossed there?

- Okay.

- [Ashleigh] And so you don't necessarily want that.

(gentle guitar music ) Perfect.

- Okay.

- All right, so now we're just going to slide your pot in.

There we go.

And if you wanna grab those... And there is your little cradle.

So you've got right there, if you grab that, that's where your last finishing knot is gonna be.

And that's just gonna be the overhand knot.

- Okay.

- So I'm gonna take your pot out.

- Okay.

- And you keep your hands there.

(gentle guitar music continues) (birds chirping) Perfect.

- So we just go.

- Yep.

- [Matt] Put 'em all together at this point.

- Put 'em all together.

And this is your finishing knot.

So you'll just tie them all.

And again, this overhand knot, it's just the most effective and sufficient knot.

And so your cradle just depends on the size of your pot.

So when we put this knot in, we will see if it works for where you want.

And if not, the overhand knot is also something that's very easy to adjust.

(gentle guitar music continues) (gravel crunching) - A hot dang, we made a thing.

- Yeah, you sure did!

And you can trim your fringe, you can open your fringe if you'd like.

You can leave it like that.

You can kind of, I like to comb my, if I'm using jute, I like to comb it out, kind of make it a little bit thicker.

- Awesome.

Thank you so much for showing me all this.

- Yeah .

- This is really, really cool.

- You're so welcome.

- I enjoyed that.

- [Ashleigh] Great job.

(chuckles) (upbeat jazz music) (gentle music) - My current form of art is called abstract quilling.

I got started with quilling not really until right before the pandemic.

I've been working with paper for a little over 10 years.

Quilling is taking a strip of paper and coiling it into different shapes to create decorative patterns.

A lot of quilling, back in the earlier, you know, 1950s through the 1970s, the quilling images were more of birds and flowers and plants.

And I took it to an abstract place with lots of color.

And my background in interior design took me to that place where I use more scale, and balance, and rhythm, and texture.

So my pieces are not representational of anything.

They're abstract.

I don't sketch, everything starts out freeform, but I start playing around with a color palette first to see how different colors work together.

Because I put multiple colors in one quilled piece, I need to see how they work together.

I'm very fortunate there are enough quilling paper suppliers out there now.

There's a couple that I go, that are my go-to because they'll offer 300 plus colors.

Most quilling suppliers will offer about 50 different colors.

I am currently in the process of creating my own materials library.

I want a little more freedom in the size of the paper, the thickness of the paper, the length of the paper strips.

And so I'm working with a printer to build my own materials library because I think that will be important as I move forward to keep my own unique representation of quilling.

One goal I have for every piece I make that is a standard piece that would hang on a wall is that I want it to look one way when you're at a distance.

But I want it to draw the viewer in.

I want them to get as close as possible to the piece.

I have a piece hanging in a client's home and it's been hanging out for a couple of years, and she still calls me and she goes, "I just noticed this one little bit that you put in there that I hadn't seen yet."

And that's what I want.

I want people every time they walk by my art in their home to discover just one little thing that might be a little new to them.

And yet when you step back and view it, you get the whole overall feel.

(gentle guitar music continues) They're very simple tools in quilling.

And you have a tool that helps you coil the paper.

And I have some molding tools.

I use paper punches as molds.

I found a cookie cutter company that does 3D printing of cookie cutters.

You can get 'em in every shape and size you possibly want.

I use those in my molds.

So I love the simplicity that you can take this very simple tool and this very simple material, and yet create something spectacular with it.

(gentle guitar music continues) We were in the pandemic and I was sitting and making art.

I had just left my career to go out on my own.

And a friend of mine said, "When you have work to show, you need to go talk to Scott and Rick at Swanky!

Interior Design Gallery.

I think your work would be a good pairing for their business."

And so once we came out of the stay-at-home order and I had a couple pieces framed, I called and made an appointment with them.

I brought two pieces out, and we just hit it off.

And my work was hanging within two hours.

And I've been with him for three years now.

And so it's a good relationship for where I want to take my own artwork.

(gentle guitar music continues) Paper art allows me to tune things out and allow things to be discovered.

It marries both my analytical side and my creative side.

I'm very organized, I'm very detail-oriented, and yet I'm also creative and free in my creativity.

So what was so great about quilling was that the individual piece production and that detail-oriented, rolling the paper and keeping it clean feeds one part of me.

And the laying out and seeing what comes out of the design of it feeds another part of me.

(gentle guitar music continues) Paper's really my first love and it's where I wanna stay.

- I'd like to thank Ashleigh, everyone at Finley Farms and Ozark, and all of our other makers for sharing their time with us.

That wraps up our episode for this week, but we hope all of our makers have inspired you to unlock your creative spirit.

We thank you all for watching and we hope you'll join us here next time to see what we'll be making.

More information is available on social media or online @kmos.org.

(gentle upbeat music) This program was made possible by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

(gentle upbeat music continues)