♪ AZPM INTRO THEME ♪ Coming up next on State of the Arts, physical comedy on stage, an artist defies expectations and colorful public murals, this week on State of the Arts.

I'm Mary Paul, and welcome to this week's show.

We begin by meeting a local Tucson performer.

The son and grandson of writers and painters, Wolfe Bowart was always encouraged to pursue his passion.

His innate talent for physical expression showed itself early.

Bowart learned the circus arts from age nine and began performing as a teen.

Throughout the years he's brought physical theater to people of all ages in Tucson.

♪ WHIMSICAL CIRCUS MUSIC ♪ (Wolfe) Seeing a child discover their foot and then put it in their mouth is classic physical comedy.

Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Jacques Tati are physical comedians because they're using their bodies to tell the joke.

(unintelligible) [ LAUGHING ] Here you go, no I'm just kidding My name is Wolfe Bowart, and I'm a visual, physical comedian.

As we grow up, sometimes we lose that sense of wonder, and we're trying to fit in, but I continue to study that childlike discovery of the world.

♪ WHIMSICAL CIRCUS MUSIC ♪ ♪ BANGING OF DRUMS ♪ Why did I continue to do that?

Of telling story gives that audience a sense of awe and wonder, and it makes us giddy, or we giggle, transport us back to being a kid again.

♪ BANGING OF DRUMS ♪ Hello, my name's Wolfe Bowart, and I'm here with Inglibird Humberdink.

Is that your name?

Anora.

Hello, I'm Wolf Beaurent, and I'm here with Anora.

Anora, did you see The Wobo Show?

Yeah.

And that's all the time we have, thanks.

My family had artists in the family.

As a kid, I was a natural clown and learned circus skills at a young age.

I was doing magic shows.

I'd been doing them making films, painting, sculpture, puppet shows, all these things I was doing as a kid.

I never really thought of it as a career.

I took a few years off between high school and college, and I street performed.

So I did that for a while, and then I realized, oh, I can go to university and study theater.

I went into Cornish College of the Arts, it was called the time, and studied theater, the classics, so we did Brecht and Beckett and Shakespeare.

And then there was a point when I realized that I'm a physical comedian, which implies humor, and I had just sold a police drama.

I'm doing cops on TV, but it wasn't like that's what I want to do.

When I grow up, I don't want to continue to do this.

When do you grow up?

Wait, am I there yet?

♪ UPBEAT CIRCUS MUSIC ♪ ♪ Relaxing Stringed Instrumental ♪ My wife and I decided that we would go to Europe and start touring these productions.

(Kerryn) Wolfe and I are married I was actually working in the film industry in L.A., and Wolfe was working in theater.

After we got married, we decided to combine our separate talents and our skill and create a theater company.

I've for many years worked very closely with Wolfe on helping to produce his work, enabling it to connect with audiences around the world.

Our theater company was a theater company with a difference because the kind of work that Wolfe does is quite hard to pigeonhole.

His work hearkens back to these wonderful traditions of the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Jacques Tati in France, Buster Keaton, and his work draws on those traditions, but also sort of presents a fresh perspective.

♪ UPBEAT CIRCUS MUSIC ♪ ♪ UPBEAT GUITAR RIFF ♪ The process for creating a production can begin with a simple idea.

I have Moleskine notebooks and hundreds of them, and they're all full of quirky ideas over the years, and I go back and read them, but when I get an idea for a show, it might take a year or two of development, and eventually I script it out almost like a children's book.

Then I write out what the visuals are.

Maybe there's a light note or a sound note, and then there's drawings that go with it often.

Because it's usually used internally, I might show some how the magic is done, the behind the scenes.

So this is all before we even go onto the theater.

Naturally, these scripts become linear, and eventually it finds its own logic or narrative.

Always with a production, there's a lot of skill involved.

The actor doesn't know how to juggle plates, for example.

They're going to be learning to juggle plates.

♪ UPBEAT GUITAR RIFF ♪ Once you're running the show, there's a lot of repetition to get it into your bones, because it's like learning lines, and your lines are in your body and in the rhythm of the music, sound, and rhythm of the piece.

♪ LIVELY SWING MUSIC ♪ (Kerryn) It's a joy now to be able to bring a small part of the larger work that Wolfe has done around the world here to Tucson.

On this stage here at the Scoundrel and Scamp, in somewhat of an experimental form, he's pulling pieces from his larger works that he's been touring globally and incorporating them into a smaller experimental production.

I'll hold you up once you get there.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know.

(Bryan) So one of the reasons that we work with Wolfe is because he's unlike any other theater artist we've ever encountered.

He takes this mixture of magic and circus arts and physical theater and visual theater and poetry and all these pieces, and he brings it together into a piece that just delights.

Physical theater is universal.

Physical theater gives us a way to be able to reach audiences we otherwise could not reach.

Now that I'm here in Tucson, it's an opportunity to do The Wobo Show and to have a new production each month that challenges me as an artist and hopefully brings the audience back over and over again.

The other beauty of this is that he's sharing his experience with the next generation in the form of Xochitl Martinez.

Yeah, just do that (unintelligible) [ LAUGHTER ] I initially met Wolfe when I was working on a production called The Sonoran Desert Carol, and he came in to help with props, and specifically he made this puppet set for me so I could do like a one-person puppet show at the very beginning of the show.

That's how I initially met him, and then later that year I auditioned for a show called One Twig at a Time, which is when we first started working together on the same show, officially.

After One Twig had ended, the theater reached out to me and proposed an idea of a physical theater fellowship.

They wanted to allow me to work more with Wolfe and collaborate more, and this is what ended up being The Wobo Show.

♪ UPBEAT ORCHESTRAL SONG ♪ I get to learn a lot from him, and we get to work with guest artists, and so it's just a really great opportunity to develop my skills.

♪ UPBEAT ORCHESTRAL SONG ♪ When you're sitting in the audience and all enjoying a show together, and everyone's laughing together, there's something really cathartic, there's something really joyous about having that experience with other people.

♪ UPBEAT ORCHESTRAL SONG ♪ The joy is when you have that audience, and then there's that connection, and you're live, and you're in the moment, and you can feel them, they can feel you, and there's an exchange of energy and electricity, and it's real.

And then when it's over, there's a bow, and they all leave, and that will never happen again.

♪ UPBEAT ORCHESTRAL SONG ♪ [ APPLAUSE ] In our next story, we meet an artist whose journey defies expectations.

After an accident cost him both arms, he turned to painting to find joy and purpose, connecting with nature, his Native American roots, and countless others inspired by his strength.

Through his story of resilience and creativity, we explore how art can heal, empower, and inspire.

♪ BANJO RIFF ♪ (Chuck) A couple weeks ago, I had a couple guys in a truck screaming out, "Get a real job, get away from here, we don't want you here," kind of thing.

I just smiled and waved at them.

I've had people ask me, "How can I be so easygoing and let things roll off my shoulder?"

That came from me losing my arms.

♪ Calling all my people ♪ ♪ Calling all good friends ♪ I never thought that painting a picture on a canvas would bring people together so much.

It makes me feel good that people like something I created.

Here we go now.

Some more people showing up.

How are you?

(Observer) You sell them all the Yes, I do ocean scenes, mountains, big waterfalls, stuff like that in the woods.

Getting out there made me look at something inside myself that I lost.

I hadn't felt that feeling in so long.

It was awesome.

You all have a good day.

Let's see here.

Let's make some more happy little trees.

My mom is the one that got me painting again.

She went and bought a Bob Ross Master Kit.

I used to love watching Bob Ross.

I was amazed that he could do a painting in a half an hour, make them look so good and realistic.

And I finally got to meet him one day.

In a little seminar, I found out he was there, and I was like, "I just got to go see this guy.

I got to go meet him."

Went over to the place he was at.

And we sat down and was doing a painting together.

The things he showed me made my art pop more.

He was very laid back, very docile man.

I'm kind of like that myself.

Hello.

(Observer) How are you?

I want a water one Okay, I'll do one that's got the wave crashing in on the beach.

I charge like 25 bucks for it.

That's it?!

Incredible!

I keep the price some everybody can afford.

I love the fact that just the average Joe taking my art home and hanging it on his wall.

Never had any art shows, never had art class or anything like that.

Just God-given talent.

And I'm glad I got it, because we would be starving to death otherwise.

♪ DRAMATIC COUNTRY SONG ) You like it?

(Customer) Yeah, it's good.

This is going right on my wall.

I got your photo.

All right, thank you.

♪ DRAMATIC COUNTRY SONG ♪ ♪ CALMING AMBIENT SONG ♪ Yeah, I love the peacefulness of this.

Found it a year ago, and I walked out here and there's nobody here.

I've heard all kinds of treasures that's been found out here.

So I'm always looking, trying to find that pirate's coin, a piece of eight.

♪ CALMING AMBIENT SONG ♪ When my accident happened, we were riding dirt bikes.

My bike started sputtering.

So we walked through the woods, come up on this old abandoned house, wall was caved in, and I was like, "Well, that's a piece of aluminum.

I can tie it real tight and twisted."

I was kneeled down in mud and grass, and I touched that wire.

Man, it lit me up.

The doctors to this day tell me, "There's no way you should live."

I used to sketch all the time.

That was my big thing.

I would draw stuff like the Hulkman, Spider-Man, Superman.

That's what caught people's eye all the time about me.

Then all of a sudden, I quit doing the sketching.

♪ CALMING AMBIENT SONG ♪ I was in a special burn clinic.

I remember looking at everybody in just pure fright, because you know death is standing right there beside you.

My vision was getting blurrier and blurrier, and he just went tunnel vision.

Boom.

From then on, I don't remember very much until I woke up in Charlottesville.

Months later.

♪ CALMING AMBIENT SONG ♪ Losing my arms, of course, I was depressed at first.

I had to learn how to accept the fact that here I am with two hooks now.

The thing is, is when you're given no other opportunity in life but to do it a certain way, you figure it out.

I hear so many people complaining about the smallest little stupid stuff, and they gets so stressed out.

Live life every minute you can get and be happy about it.

♪ CALMING AMBIENT SONG ♪ I bought a conversion van, and I would lay a map out, and would flip a coin, and wherever it landed, that's where I would go.

♪ UPBEAT COUNTRY SONG ♪ I would see a lot of traffic in places, and I would pull off and do a painting.

I always had people come up to me.

People are amazed that I don't have the arms, and I'm doing artwork.

Because people come up here and stand just to watch me paint and not say a word to me.

Maybe I ought to start charging admissions for the show.

I've met hundreds of people out here now.

I've had a lot of artists tell me that they haven't painted in years, and I've inspired them to go home and start painting again.

That makes me feel really good.

You know, I'm a country boy.

Never thought I would inspire anybody.

I still can't explain it, man.

It's just something in my roots that made me like that.

♪ UPBEAT COUNTRY SONG ♪ - Thank you, Father, for letting us do this today.

Thank you.

- Going through life, if you worry about bad stuff, it brings bad energy.

- Lord, thank you for the earth.

East, thank you for the air.

In all our relations, everything is sacred.

Amen.

- My grandmother was Monacan Indian.

I was raised up in a lot of those traditions.

Living off the land is the best way to be.

After a while, I start painting that wolf and stuff on here, I just do a silhouette of a big moon, silhouette of a rock with a wolf up on it, maybe a couple of the trees just off to the side in front of the moon.

Smudging is a cleansing thing.

So you pull the smoke around you, you say your prayers.

And the smoke pushes the negativity away.

You did it before hunting.

You did it before ceremonies.

It was a way of praying.

♪ MELANCHOLY AMBIENT SONG ♪ The wolf is a very strong, Native American belief.

I guess that's where I got my willpower from, wanting to live.

I don't know, it's a drive inside of me.

It's a fire to want me to overcome and create.

I express all that through my artwork.

♪ MELANCHOLY AMBIENT SONG ♪ ♪ GIVE ME A CANVAS - ISAAC GILL ♪ Sometimes, in a little bit of another color, I get on the edge of the brush, and I'll brush it in and it looks good.

I'm like, "Hey, this is new."

That's why I say the canvas, it already knows what it wants.

♪ Give me a canvas to paint on ♪ I grew up in nature.

We hunted, we fished, we trapped, and we lived like that.

Man, look at this.

Beautiful, it's peaceful.

You go out here and sit and breathe the good air, take in the silence.

I feel like I'm part of the ground, the wind, and everything.

So when I'm painting a tree, I'm projecting that back out.

The more I paint them, the more beauty I find in them.

I connect to it.

That old feeling of that inspiration in art, that passion that I used to have, is back.

I'm not going to take an opportunity in life like this and throw it away.

Some of it is like I've got something to prove in life too, maybe.

♪ Give me some parchment to write on ♪ Hopefully I'm not one of those artists where I'm starving the whole time and then when I'm dead, my stuff's worth a million dollars.

At least my kids will be all right.

♪ Give me some parchment to write on ♪ ♪ And I'll tell a tale ♪ ♪ About a Man who knew what I meant ♪ ♪ When I said ♪ ♪ You gotta love justice ♪ ♪ And seek mercy ♪ ♪ You gotta walk humbly ♪ ♪ with your maker ♪ In 2017, Emma Daisy decided to make a career change and transition from arts administration to art making, becoming an artist full-time.

She tells us in this next story about her vision as a working muralist.

I would describe my style as an artist as bold, colorful, maximal, and joyful.

[ SPRAY CAN SHAKING ] One of my goals in art, in creating and making art, is to make joyful work.

My art reflects myself in that I try to be a pretty positive person without diminishing the challenges in life and the realities of life and relationships, but I think there's really power and joy in being vulnerable.

I want to celebrate and magnify the strengths that we have.

♪ WHIMSICAL AMBIENT SONG ♪ My studio work is often very loose and gestural, or it has been.

I started in ink wash painting and watercolor and a medium that was very much about movement and capturing the essence of images, of movement.

When I started doing murals, that style evolved into something that was more hard-lined, something that seemed more conducive to the spaces and the architecture of those spaces and the application of paint that was possible on physical walls.

♪ MELANCHOLY AMBIENT SONG ♪ In 2017, I was introduced to Black Cat Alley.

It was sort of like the inception of Black Cat Alley on the east side.

I applied for an open call for Black Cat Alley a couple years later and won that space, and that was the first mural that I ever painted.

The West Town in Bloom, that was, I think, the second or third mural that I ever painted.

It was 4,000 square feet, a huge, massive wall.

It's probably the biggest wall that I've ever painted, and it was corrugated metal.

It's on West Wisconsin Avenue heading into the city.

♪ MELANCHOLY AMBIENT SONG ♪ That mural is going to be on the side of, two facades of their outdoor cooler.

Right now it's kind of an eyesore, and Liz Joy really wanted to bring it to life, add to the space.

The design is my signature style of flowers, but I focused on cherry blossoms and cherries.

Their imagery is this big, happy cherry, and so I wanted to include that in some way, but in my own style, so I focused on cherry blossoms, and it's fun.

♪ MELANCHOLY AMBIENT SONG ♪ Yeah.

I'm very, like as soon as I make something, I want it out of, like I want to get rid of it.

Because I'm not making it, like you're making it for me, but I'm making the processes for me.

The art itself is, the art itself is not.

I think for me, art is as much about the process as it is about the product, and for me as an artist, it's really about creating.

It's therapeutic, it's something I just feel like I need to do.

I'm super proud of the fact that I have work, you know, living in the world that people get to see, but at the same time, I typically do a project and then I don't often think about it, and it sounds weird, but it's like, I feel like once I've done something, especially public work, it no longer is mine.

It becomes part of the community, part of the environment that it lives in.

This is the Bayshore mural inside the rotunda.

It's two floors, and it had this really interesting kind of situation wh from different vantage points.

So, in turning some of these pieces into three-dimensional objects or installations on the wall, it just added this level of visual interest from all these different vantage points.

Sometimes people say, "Well, where do you have murals around the city?"

And I can't think of where to even tell them.

And it's not that I don't think about it or that I'm not excited or proud of them.

It's just, for me, it's like the process is continually moving forward, and I'm thinking about what I'm working towards next.

I'm also okay with murals getting painted over.

So, that's another question I think people have asked.

Things change.

I'm not attached to things changing.

And it doesn't belong to me anymore, either.

I know in the world a lot of people know me as a painter or a muralist.

I like being able to explore in a lot of different mediums and explore in a lot of different ways.

And I don't ever want to feel like I'm confined by those types of labels.

I think I define myself as just a creator.

It's broad and sweeping, and I don't necessarily consider myself just one of those above things.

♪ UPBEAT ELECTRONIC SONG ♪ Thanks for joining us on this week's show.

I hope you found some artistic inspiration of your own in these stories.

We'll be back next week with more.

Until then, I'm Mary Paul.

Goodbye.

♪ CALMING AMBIENT TUNE ♪ ♪ AZPM ENDING THEME ♪ ♪ AZPM INTRO THEME ♪ Coming up next on State of the Arts, physical comedy on stage, an artist defies expectations and colorful public murals, this week on State of the Arts.

I'm Mary Paul, and welcome to this week's show.

We begin by meeting a local Tucson performer.

The son and grandson of writers and painters, Wolfe Bowart was always encouraged to pursue his passion.

His innate talent for physical expression showed itself early.

Bowart learned the circus arts from age nine and began performing as a teen.

Throughout the years he's brought physical theater to people of all ages in Tucson.

♪ WHIMSICAL CIRCUS MUSIC ♪ (Wolfe) Seeing a child discover their foot and then put it in their mouth is classic physical comedy.

Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Jacques Tati are physical comedians because they're using their bodies to tell the joke.

(unintelligible) [ LAUGHING ] Here you go, no I'm just kidding My name is Wolfe Bowart, and I'm a visual, physical comedian.

As we grow up, sometimes we lose that sense of wonder, and we're trying to fit in, but I continue to study that childlike discovery of the world.

♪ WHIMSICAL CIRCUS MUSIC ♪ ♪ BANGING OF DRUMS ♪ Why did I continue to do that?

Of telling story gives that audience a sense of awe and wonder, and it makes us giddy, or we giggle, transport us back to being a kid again.

♪ BANGING OF DRUMS ♪ Hello, my name's Wolfe Bowart, and I'm here with Inglibird Humberdink.

Is that your name?

Anora.

Hello, I'm Wolf Beaurent, and I'm here with Anora.

Anora, did you see The Wobo Show?

Yeah.

And that's all the time we have, thanks.

My family had artists in the family.

As a kid, I was a natural clown and learned circus skills at a young age.

I was doing magic shows.

I'd been doing them making films, painting, sculpture, puppet shows, all these things I was doing as a kid.

I never really thought of it as a career.

I took a few years off between high school and college, and I street performed.

So I did that for a while, and then I realized, oh, I can go to university and study theater.

I went into Cornish College of the Arts, it was called the time, and studied theater, the classics, so we did Brecht and Beckett and Shakespeare.

And then there was a point when I realized that I'm a physical comedian, which implies humor, and I had just sold a police drama.

I'm doing cops on TV, but it wasn't like that's what I want to do.

When I grow up, I don't want to continue to do this.

When do you grow up?

Wait, am I there yet?

♪ UPBEAT CIRCUS MUSIC ♪ ♪ Relaxing Stringed Instrumental ♪ My wife and I decided that we would go to Europe and start touring these productions.

(Kerryn) Wolfe and I are married I was actually working in the film industry in L.A., and Wolfe was working in theater.

After we got married, we decided to combine our separate talents and our skill and create a theater company.

I've for many years worked very closely with Wolfe on helping to produce his work, enabling it to connect with audiences around the world.

Our theater company was a theater company with a difference because the kind of work that Wolfe does is quite hard to pigeonhole.

His work hearkens back to these wonderful traditions of the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Jacques Tati in France, Buster Keaton, and his work draws on those traditions, but also sort of presents a fresh perspective.

♪ UPBEAT CIRCUS MUSIC ♪ ♪ UPBEAT GUITAR RIFF ♪ The process for creating a production can begin with a simple idea.

I have Moleskine notebooks and hundreds of them, and they're all full of quirky ideas over the years, and I go back and read them, but when I get an idea for a show, it might take a year or two of development, and eventually I script it out almost like a children's book.

Then I write out what the visuals are.

Maybe there's a light note or a sound note, and then there's drawings that go with it often.

Because it's usually used internally, I might show some how the magic is done, the behind the scenes.

So this is all before we even go onto the theater.

Naturally, these scripts become linear, and eventually it finds its own logic or narrative.

Always with a production, there's a lot of skill involved.

The actor doesn't know how to juggle plates, for example.

They're going to be learning to juggle plates.

♪ UPBEAT GUITAR RIFF ♪ Once you're running the show, there's a lot of repetition to get it into your bones, because it's like learning lines, and your lines are in your body and in the rhythm of the music, sound, and rhythm of the piece.

♪ LIVELY SWING MUSIC ♪ (Kerryn) It's a joy now to be able to bring a small part of the larger work that Wolfe has done around the world here to Tucson.

On this stage here at the Scoundrel and Scamp, in somewhat of an experimental form, he's pulling pieces from his larger works that he's been touring globally and incorporating them into a smaller experimental production.

I'll hold you up once you get there.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know.

(Bryan) So one of the reasons that we work with Wolfe is because he's unlike any other theater artist we've ever encountered.

He takes this mixture of magic and circus arts and physical theater and visual theater and poetry and all these pieces, and he brings it together into a piece that just delights.

Physical theater is universal.

Physical theater gives us a way to be able to reach audiences we otherwise could not reach.

Now that I'm here in Tucson, it's an opportunity to do The Wobo Show and to have a new production each month that challenges me as an artist and hopefully brings the audience back over and over again.

The other beauty of this is that he's sharing his experience with the next generation in the form of Xochitl Martinez.

Yeah, just do that (unintelligible) [ LAUGHTER ] I initially met Wolfe when I was working on a production called The Sonoran Desert Carol, and he came in to help with props, and specifically he made this puppet set for me so I could do like a one-person puppet show at the very beginning of the show.

That's how I initially met him, and then later that year I auditioned for a show called One Twig at a Time, which is when we first started working together on the same show, officially.

After One Twig had ended, the theater reached out to me and proposed an idea of a physical theater fellowship.

They wanted to allow me to work more with Wolfe and collaborate more, and this is what ended up being The Wobo Show.

♪ UPBEAT ORCHESTRAL SONG ♪ I get to learn a lot from him, and we get to work with guest artists, and so it's just a really great opportunity to develop my skills.

♪ UPBEAT ORCHESTRAL SONG ♪ When you're sitting in the audience and all enjoying a show together, and everyone's laughing together, there's something really cathartic, there's something really joyous about having that experience with other people.

♪ UPBEAT ORCHESTRAL SONG ♪ The joy is when you have that audience, and then there's that connection, and you're live, and you're in the moment, and you can feel them, they can feel you, and there's an exchange of energy and electricity, and it's real.

And then when it's over, there's a bow, and they all leave, and that will never happen again.

♪ UPBEAT ORCHESTRAL SONG ♪ [ APPLAUSE ] In our next story, we meet an artist whose journey defies expectations.

After an accident cost him both arms, he turned to painting to find joy and purpose, connecting with nature, his Native American roots, and countless others inspired by his strength.

Through his story of resilience and creativity, we explore how art can heal, empower, and inspire.

♪ BANJO RIFF ♪ (Chuck) A couple weeks ago, I had a couple guys in a truck screaming out, "Get a real job, get away from here, we don't want you here," kind of thing.

I just smiled and waved at them.

I've had people ask me, "How can I be so easygoing and let things roll off my shoulder?"

That came from me losing my arms.

♪ Calling all my people ♪ ♪ Calling all good friends ♪ I never thought that painting a picture on a canvas would bring people together so much.

It makes me feel good that people like something I created.

Here we go now.

Some more people showing up.

How are you?

(Observer) You sell them all the Yes, I do ocean scenes, mountains, big waterfalls, stuff like that in the woods.

Getting out there made me look at something inside myself that I lost.

I hadn't felt that feeling in so long.

It was awesome.

You all have a good day.

Let's see here.

Let's make some more happy little trees.

My mom is the one that got me painting again.

She went and bought a Bob Ross Master Kit.

I used to love watching Bob Ross.

I was amazed that he could do a painting in a half an hour, make them look so good and realistic.

And I finally got to meet him one day.

In a little seminar, I found out he was there, and I was like, "I just got to go see this guy.

I got to go meet him."

Went over to the place he was at.

And we sat down and was doing a painting together.

The things he showed me made my art pop more.

He was very laid back, very docile man.

I'm kind of like that myself.

Hello.

(Observer) How are you?

I want a water one Okay, I'll do one that's got the wave crashing in on the beach.

I charge like 25 bucks for it.

That's it?!

Incredible!

I keep the price some everybody can afford.

I love the fact that just the average Joe taking my art home and hanging it on his wall.

Never had any art shows, never had art class or anything like that.

Just God-given talent.

And I'm glad I got it, because we would be starving to death otherwise.

♪ DRAMATIC COUNTRY SONG ) You like it?

(Customer) Yeah, it's good.

This is going right on my wall.

I got your photo.

All right, thank you.

♪ DRAMATIC COUNTRY SONG ♪ ♪ CALMING AMBIENT SONG ♪ Yeah, I love the peacefulness of this.

Found it a year ago, and I walked out here and there's nobody here.

I've heard all kinds of treasures that's been found out here.

So I'm always looking, trying to find that pirate's coin, a piece of eight.

♪ CALMING AMBIENT SONG ♪ When my accident happened, we were riding dirt bikes.

My bike started sputtering.

So we walked through the woods, come up on this old abandoned house, wall was caved in, and I was like, "Well, that's a piece of aluminum.

I can tie it real tight and twisted."

I was kneeled down in mud and grass, and I touched that wire.

Man, it lit me up.

The doctors to this day tell me, "There's no way you should live."

I used to sketch all the time.

That was my big thing.

I would draw stuff like the Hulkman, Spider-Man, Superman.

That's what caught people's eye all the time about me.

Then all of a sudden, I quit doing the sketching.

♪ CALMING AMBIENT SONG ♪ I was in a special burn clinic.

I remember looking at everybody in just pure fright, because you know death is standing right there beside you.

My vision was getting blurrier and blurrier, and he just went tunnel vision.

Boom.

From then on, I don't remember very much until I woke up in Charlottesville.

Months later.

♪ CALMING AMBIENT SONG ♪ Losing my arms, of course, I was depressed at first.

I had to learn how to accept the fact that here I am with two hooks now.

The thing is, is when you're given no other opportunity in life but to do it a certain way, you figure it out.

I hear so many people complaining about the smallest little stupid stuff, and they gets so stressed out.

Live life every minute you can get and be happy about it.

♪ CALMING AMBIENT SONG ♪ I bought a conversion van, and I would lay a map out, and would flip a coin, and wherever it landed, that's where I would go.

♪ UPBEAT COUNTRY SONG ♪ I would see a lot of traffic in places, and I would pull off and do a painting.

I always had people come up to me.

People are amazed that I don't have the arms, and I'm doing artwork.

Because people come up here and stand just to watch me paint and not say a word to me.

Maybe I ought to start charging admissions for the show.

I've met hundreds of people out here now.

I've had a lot of artists tell me that they haven't painted in years, and I've inspired them to go home and start painting again.

That makes me feel really good.

You know, I'm a country boy.

Never thought I would inspire anybody.

I still can't explain it, man.

It's just something in my roots that made me like that.

♪ UPBEAT COUNTRY SONG ♪ - Thank you, Father, for letting us do this today.

Thank you.

- Going through life, if you worry about bad stuff, it brings bad energy.

- Lord, thank you for the earth.

East, thank you for the air.

In all our relations, everything is sacred.

Amen.

- My grandmother was Monacan Indian.

I was raised up in a lot of those traditions.

Living off the land is the best way to be.

After a while, I start painting that wolf and stuff on here, I just do a silhouette of a big moon, silhouette of a rock with a wolf up on it, maybe a couple of the trees just off to the side in front of the moon.

Smudging is a cleansing thing.

So you pull the smoke around you, you say your prayers.

And the smoke pushes the negativity away.

You did it before hunting.

You did it before ceremonies.

It was a way of praying.

♪ MELANCHOLY AMBIENT SONG ♪ The wolf is a very strong, Native American belief.

I guess that's where I got my willpower from, wanting to live.

I don't know, it's a drive inside of me.

It's a fire to want me to overcome and create.

I express all that through my artwork.

♪ MELANCHOLY AMBIENT SONG ♪ ♪ GIVE ME A CANVAS - ISAAC GILL ♪ Sometimes, in a little bit of another color, I get on the edge of the brush, and I'll brush it in and it looks good.

I'm like, "Hey, this is new."

That's why I say the canvas, it already knows what it wants.

♪ Give me a canvas to paint on ♪ I grew up in nature.

We hunted, we fished, we trapped, and we lived like that.

Man, look at this.

Beautiful, it's peaceful.

You go out here and sit and breathe the good air, take in the silence.

I feel like I'm part of the ground, the wind, and everything.

So when I'm painting a tree, I'm projecting that back out.

The more I paint them, the more beauty I find in them.

I connect to it.

That old feeling of that inspiration in art, that passion that I used to have, is back.

I'm not going to take an opportunity in life like this and throw it away.

Some of it is like I've got something to prove in life too, maybe.

♪ Give me some parchment to write on ♪ Hopefully I'm not one of those artists where I'm starving the whole time and then when I'm dead, my stuff's worth a million dollars.

At least my kids will be all right.

♪ Give me some parchment to write on ♪ ♪ And I'll tell a tale ♪ ♪ About a Man who knew what I meant ♪ ♪ When I said ♪ ♪ You gotta love justice ♪ ♪ And seek mercy ♪ ♪ You gotta walk humbly ♪ ♪ with your maker ♪ In 2017, Emma Daisy decided to make a career change and transition from arts administration to art making, becoming an artist full-time.

She tells us in this next story about her vision as a working muralist.

I would describe my style as an artist as bold, colorful, maximal, and joyful.

[ SPRAY CAN SHAKING ] One of my goals in art, in creating and making art, is to make joyful work.

My art reflects myself in that I try to be a pretty positive person without diminishing the challenges in life and the realities of life and relationships, but I think there's really power and joy in being vulnerable.

I want to celebrate and magnify the strengths that we have.

♪ WHIMSICAL AMBIENT SONG ♪ My studio work is often very loose and gestural, or it has been.

I started in ink wash painting and watercolor and a medium that was very much about movement and capturing the essence of images, of movement.

When I started doing murals, that style evolved into something that was more hard-lined, something that seemed more conducive to the spaces and the architecture of those spaces and the application of paint that was possible on physical walls.

♪ MELANCHOLY AMBIENT SONG ♪ In 2017, I was introduced to Black Cat Alley.

It was sort of like the inception of Black Cat Alley on the east side.

I applied for an open call for Black Cat Alley a couple years later and won that space, and that was the first mural that I ever painted.

The West Town in Bloom, that was, I think, the second or third mural that I ever painted.

It was 4,000 square feet, a huge, massive wall.

It's probably the biggest wall that I've ever painted, and it was corrugated metal.

It's on West Wisconsin Avenue heading into the city.

♪ MELANCHOLY AMBIENT SONG ♪ That mural is going to be on the side of, two facades of their outdoor cooler.

Right now it's kind of an eyesore, and Liz Joy really wanted to bring it to life, add to the space.

The design is my signature style of flowers, but I focused on cherry blossoms and cherries.

Their imagery is this big, happy cherry, and so I wanted to include that in some way, but in my own style, so I focused on cherry blossoms, and it's fun.

♪ MELANCHOLY AMBIENT SONG ♪ Yeah.

I'm very, like as soon as I make something, I want it out of, like I want to get rid of it.

Because I'm not making it, like you're making it for me, but I'm making the processes for me.

The art itself is, the art itself is not.

I think for me, art is as much about the process as it is about the product, and for me as an artist, it's really about creating.

It's therapeutic, it's something I just feel like I need to do.

I'm super proud of the fact that I have work, you know, living in the world that people get to see, but at the same time, I typically do a project and then I don't often think about it, and it sounds weird, but it's like, I feel like once I've done something, especially public work, it no longer is mine.

It becomes part of the community, part of the environment that it lives in.

This is the Bayshore mural inside the rotunda.

It's two floors, and it had this really interesting kind of situation wh from different vantage points.

So, in turning some of these pieces into three-dimensional objects or installations on the wall, it just added this level of visual interest from all these different vantage points.

Sometimes people say, "Well, where do you have murals around the city?"

And I can't think of where to even tell them.

And it's not that I don't think about it or that I'm not excited or proud of them.

It's just, for me, it's like the process is continually moving forward, and I'm thinking about what I'm working towards next.

I'm also okay with murals getting painted over.

So, that's another question I think people have asked.

Things change.

I'm not attached to things changing.

And it doesn't belong to me anymore, either.

I know in the world a lot of people know me as a painter or a muralist.

I like being able to explore in a lot of different mediums and explore in a lot of different ways.

And I don't ever want to feel like I'm confined by those types of labels.

I think I define myself as just a creator.

It's broad and sweeping, and I don't necessarily consider myself just one of those above things.

♪ UPBEAT ELECTRONIC SONG ♪ Thanks for joining us on this week's show.

I hope you found some artistic inspiration of your own in these stories.

We'll be back next week with more.

Until then, I'm Mary Paul.

Goodbye.

♪ CALMING AMBIENT TUNE ♪ ♪ AZPM ENDING THEME ♪