Hi.

I'm Charity Nebbe, and this is Greetings from Iowa.

A number of studies have explored the benefits of art in helping to cultivate a person's well-being.

We know art can help someone see another viewpoint.

It can communicate an idea.

It can help a person make sense of the world.

On this episode of Greetings from Iowa, we'll share some incredible stories of the power of art.

We'll meet an art therapist who uses the arts to help empower individuals.

We'll head to the town of Creston to see how local artists took part in a community mural project to transform the downtown And we'll meet a group of kids in Waterloo who use art to grow personally and socially.

Join me as we explore some of the incredible stories of our state.

It's all next on Greetings from Iowa.

Funding for Greetings from Iowa is provided by: With our Iowa roots and Midwestern values Farmers Mutual Hail is committed to offering innovative farm insurance for America's farmers, just as we have for six generations Farmers Mutual Hail America's crop insurance company.

The Pella Roll Screen Foundation is a proud supporter of Iowa PBS.

Pella Windows and Doors Drives to better our communities and build a better tomorrow [music] Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was an Indian yoga guru known for developing and popularizing transcendental meditation.

In the late sixties, he worked with The Beatles and The Beach Boys and gained international recognition as he traveled the world teaching in an unexpected twist in the early 1970s.

He founded Maharishi International University in, of all places, a small community in southeast Iowa.

Hello, my name is Bill Chappell.

Greetings from Fairfield, Iowa.

There's always been an interesting cultural underpinnings in Fairfield.

And it's always had a certain character.

And the Roman stuff was collected by S.M.H.

Buyers.

When the transcendental meditation people bought Parsons College, People came from all over the country and all over the world to attend classes here.

We're standing in front of the Vedic observatory on the Maharishi International University campus.

Each one of these instruments measure some different part of time of astronomy, a planet movement, that type of thing.

So it drew cultural types from the big city.

The magic was that there was this marriage between Midwestern small town, straightforward, practical thinking and the all these contemporary ideas from the from the coast.

We are the first of 1,689 Carnegie Library buildings that are Andrew Carnegie funded.

He had connections at the Smithsonian.

And the furniture in that alcove are all items that belong to the Parsons family.

I'm like a lot of people like kids in high school.

You can't wait to leave and you're never going to come back.

But circumstances brought me back.

And if you want a better picture of Annie Woods, you can go online and find her.

Since I've taken over the job of director of the Carnegie Museum, I'm discovering things about this town that just knocked my socks off.

The Maasdam Barns is this venue here in Fairfield, Iowa.

It was owned back in the early 1900s by Jacob Maasdam.

When they come to Fairfield, they're going to see a lot of rich history of what things was like in the early 1900s and that really laid claim to Fairfield.

Then the story was that William Loudon went to a livestock exposition.

Henry Ford was there seeing these apparatuses, and then him and Henry Ford got together because he wanted to put these in the car plants.

This would have been early 1900.

I live in Fairfield because I'm at home here.

I know the surroundings, but I also enjoy this, the city atmosphere that, like a lot of our students have brought.

So you get a taste of what else is out there in the world that typically that you don't see if you're living in Fairfield all the time.

I like Fairfield because of the variety.

And so you can walk about in Fairfield and hear foreign languages being spoken and eat out authentic ethnic restaurants.

And so you really get that kind of world experience in a small town in Iowa.

Wow.

Yeah.

Lifelong from 2020 to 2021.

I grew up in Alabama.

Before this 13 years in Asheville, North Carolina.

My wife, she grew up here.

Melting pot.

It's a very unique, culturally diverse town in the middle of nowhere.

I wouldn't want to be anywhere else but Fairfield because this this small, manageable human level lifestyle they can have in a small town is is has combined with one of the more unique cultural combinations going here in Fairfield.

♪♪ Diane Tonkyn: Historically there has been a stigma related to mental health when really it is something basic to all of us.

♪♪ Diane Tonkyn: Art therapy is a mental health profession and it combines psychological theory and art and art-making.

♪♪ Diane Tonkyn: There has been a lot of work in the area of neuroscience and the brain and trauma.

They found that when someone goes through a traumatic experience that that part of the brain that has language and narrative and sequential words kind of shuts down and it has to do with being in survival mode.

So when you ask someone to talk about that experience it is often very difficult and there isn't the words there because it was the experience, the multi-sensory experience.

So the art you can have them express it visually and start to talk about what is on the paper and that is putting a narrative then and they are better able to access that and then to access to the emotions that go with it.

Diane Tonkyn: I have worked with teenagers a lot.

They're not excited about talking to a therapist usually.

And so doing the art is another way to connect with them and lower their anxiety and their defenses and help them communicate in a way that may be a little more relaxed.

(nature sounds) Diane Tonkyn: I met Megan as a teenager who had a lot of difficult feelings.

And we did art therapy together I think for three years.

I feel she learned a lot of really good coping skills for the stressors that she was experiencing and art became one of the major things that helped her with her coping to the point where now as an adult she is an artist.

She is a painter primarily.

♪♪ Megan Bishop: Traditional therapy didn't really click with me.

I didn't like talking about a lot of things, but I always loved to draw.

I started learning different techniques from Diane.

I started using my sketchbook like a diary.

It made me realize I love to draw, I was good at drawing, I had a passion for it and that it was my voice.

♪♪ Megan Bishop: My art career now is I do a lot of commissions and murals.

I teach at Oaknoll.

I teach my residents how to draw and paint.

We have a little session, living proof kind of working with cancer survivors and their families doing art and I've been lucky, I don't know, it's a lot of commission, word-of-mouth and Facebook, Instagram, Etsy.

♪♪ Megan Bishop: Art kind of takes you, it takes all the noise away when you draw or paint or create, it just kind of puts you a different head space and you can kind of zero in on one thing rather than trying to worry about a bunch of them all at once.

♪♪ Megan Bishop: The beautiful thing about art is that you make something that wasn't there before and that it is timeless, it doesn't have any boundaries and it is freedom.

You don't have to create a masterpiece to be an artist or put that pressure on yourself.

We already put a lot of pressures on ourselves without having to do that.

♪♪ Megan Bishop: The fearless words of Bob Ross, "there's no mistakes, just happy accidents".

♪♪ The town of Creston launched a downtown facade mural project in 2020 that involved local students, residents and artists from across the country.

In the process, they designed and created more than 20 murals that transformed the town.

Bailey Fry-Schnormeier: I had a student come to me, Tatelyn Schultz, and she wanted to apply for a scholarship.

And so she had this idea to work with students who had community service hours and pair them with artists to create a mural.

Originally I thought with Tatelyn we would have maybe one or two murals and from there we were blessed with a summer full of painting walls.

♪♪ ♪♪ Tatelyn Schultz: We just initially wanted to do those two murals and then a month later it's like oh, we have $40,000 in funds to pretty much paint the whole community and bring in artists.

May Ling Chuong: She contacted me and told me that they were doing this big project in Creston and I should come back and be a part of it to bring in local artists from diverse backgrounds.

Andre Davis: Once I heard the opportunity to be able to do this art I had to jump on it.

It was really exciting.

Gabe Carroll: I don't think I really grasped the concept of how much it was going to be from the start.

I thought, oh yeah we'll have a couple of cool things here and there.

But it turned out to be a huge project and really kind of changed the face of a lot of our uptown.

Blake Schnormeier: An overwhelming response was that everybody did want to be a part of it and they wanted to really give that space for artists to create their artwork.

And so not many of the building owners even asked for the content of what the murals would be on their buildings, they just had that full trust.

And so I think that that's really unique with having, being a part of the community and having that support.

Jocelyn Blazek: I was super excited.

We had been looking for a project that involved mentorship and specifically that focused on our juveniles aged middle school and high school.

Alexandria Whitfield: I'm not involved in very many activities with the school.

I don't do sports or any groups so it feels nice to have something that I could join in.

(nature sounds) Alexandria Whitfield: There was an artist that kind of used me as a reference for one of the murals.

And so my family came out, my sister and my mom came out and helped us sketch it on the wall and paint it and finish it and everything.

Bree Daggett: The whole time we were all painting it was quiet.

Like, we didn't have any music playing or anything.

We were all just painting.

It was like Zen in my opinion.

And I remember just thinking this is really cool to create a space and an opportunity for people to just show up and just do work.

There's no expectation about conversations or behaviors or attitudes.

We're just here to do this together.

Ash Hays: Brendan and I were here almost every day.

We worked on them all from helping with last minute mock-up changes to tracing them at night, starting the priming and painting and then we also got to do our own mural so that was super cool to have that individualized experience from everything that we learned before.

Brendan Millslagle: Mine is a portrait of my face and then I have headphones that are connected to a heart that has the pride flag on it.

And then over my mouth it says, listen to your heart, because I feel like a lot of the time we're always caught up in what other people are trying to put onto us and we're not really focusing on what we believe in for ourselves and then we just get lost.

Ash Hays: It's all about growing where you're planted because in Creston especially you hear a lot of dissing the town and it's just really about trying to get people to grow where they're at and help build each other.

May Ling Chuong: I have two names.

May Ling is actually my American name.

My authentic Chinese name, I guess you could say is -- which means lotus.

So lotus actually is kind of how I see myself.

I symbolize myself in that way.

Bree Daggett: I just wanted to do something that was kind of encouraging and uplifting, especially considering we were going into the summer, the pandemic was still happening and it was just all these things were unprecedented.

And so I just wanted to do something that was a little more encouraging.

Bailey Fry-Schnormeier: We started off with several local artists that were just wonderful for the students to work with and to get to see their designs and learn more about them.

And then from there we had other opportunities.

We were able to bring in professional artists who are muralists and had experience working with youth.

And so we were able to work with a lot of really amazing, talented people.

David Marroquin: I believe in rural revitalization, how important it is for smaller towns.

And so what we've been doing here trying to -- the public space that has been forgotten for so many years, we believe that that changes the lives of the people that live in the community.

So art is a way of doing it quick, fast and showing people the value of those forgotten places.

♪♪ Andre Davis: When I walk around I'm able to see how much time and dedication people have put into the murals and I've been able to see while working on them all of the smiles and joy people have put into them.

And when people walk past them they always make good comments about it or they always want to stand there and take pictures.

Maigen Carrall: I think it was a very good project.

I think it gave them something to be proud of, something to give back to the community.

I had a lot of students who were excited to show parents and friends what part they took in it.

♪♪ Ashton Cheers: It has inspired me to create more.

Brian Zachary: And what a great project.

I mean, money is spent here in Creston, the kids are from the area and it goes onto Creston walls.

Sarah Scull: This particular project was very exciting because of how quickly it came together and how many murals they were able to complete in such a short amount of time and the number of community members and students and the demographic of people that took part or contributed their time and energy to the project was really amazing.

Tatelyn Schultz: I was a part of that, I was there when that was just a blank wall, you know.

It's all really great.

Bailey Fry-Schnormeier: It's just really unreal.

It was really hard to believe, it was hard to wrap our head around and we just kept going out day after day and just painting.

Yeah, we never imagined it to turn out to be what it was.

This is what I tell the students actually -- I tell them that Youth Art Team isn't something you go to, it's you.

♪♪ Heidi Fuchtman: How did this start?

There were some people getting to know kids in the neighborhood, so they were spending time in the summer with them and they noticed how creative they were with chalk on the sidewalks and things like that.

So they pulled together some people to try to figure out how they could stay connected with them in the fall when they all went back to school and thought it would be cool to do something with art.

♪♪ Heidi: The first project we had them interview people from the community.

So from the very beginning they were engaging with adults and listening to their stories and then creating artwork inspired by those stories.

♪♪ Brooklyn: The freedom one, it's the one over there.

I really liked it because I could really get all my emotions out on that one.

Sam: It's about the emotions of the civil rights and it's not just a picture of what happened, it's throughout art.

♪♪ Heidi: The Our Freedom Story Mural and the 4th Street Bridge murals are by the Cedar River, which is a place that has historically divided this community by race.

♪♪ Aerz: I interviewed my grandmother for Waterloo's history.

We asked her questions about how Waterloo was back in the '60s and the '50s.

She told us about how the lumberyard was caught on fire during the Waterloo riots and she just watched it from her grandmother's porch.

Yeah, that's crazy.

♪♪ Viviana: So, then when I actually heard the stories, felt the emotions, I was able to convey my emotions onto paper with a guess of how they would feel.

Sam: They pieced them all together and then we started painting.

♪♪ Sam: It looks like a whole bunch of doodles put together to make this beautiful art piece to show all the emotions.

♪♪ Janea: So this is the spot that I did and kind of there's like a light inside all of us and it's cracking open.

♪♪ Janea: It just holds a lot of ideas from many different people.

It's like a snapshot of what people thought in the moment, but then it could be interpreted many different ways.

Emma: Whenever I'm in this part of town and I see the mural it's like a surprise every time just how amazing it is and how cool it is that we could accomplish this.

♪♪ ♪♪ Heidi: The 4th Street Bridge is a real iconic Waterloo structure that is real symbolic of connecting both sides of the river, connecting people.

Viviana: When I was younger I did a lot of just circles and stuff because I really enjoyed drawing circles and stuff.

I don't know why.

Funny story, though, they didn't know which way to put it.

They didn't know to flip it over or not.

♪♪ Aerz: Every time I see a piece of art I look at it so closely, I look at the detail, the color, I see if there's any texture.

This is the peacock.

This is my very first project.

Since we were really little we couldn't go up there so we painted the bricks down here.

So the spots of the peacock in the feathers are the silhouettes of the painters.

And so mine is right there.

♪♪ Aerz: That's mine.

♪♪ Aerz: I don't think I would have been able to say to myself, I could paint a peacock on the side of a building.

♪♪ ♪♪ Heidi: I think it's scary to put your work out in the world, no matter what it is, whether it's art or anything else.

But they get to do it at a young age and with a team.

So we're taking these huge risks together and putting things out into the world, but with a supportive community.

♪♪ Aerz: We have brought color to Waterloo.

So yeah, I do feel like we're a part of the community.

Ahmad: We have taken on a lot of planning, we have taken on a lot of projects of our own, kind of taking the younger kids under our wing teaching them not only how to be leaders but learning how to be leaders in the process.

♪♪ Lonny: If you just sit down and actually think about something, like something that changed the world, and you make a piece and if it's big enough or if it gets enough attention, you might actually be able to put an impact or at least a little dent in the world before you leave.

♪♪ Emma: In 50 years I want people to know how the Youth Art Team tried their best and always reflected through their artwork the beauty of the community and how even things that are really ugly can become messages of hope and stuff like that and that art is such a big part of that and kids are such a big part of that.

♪♪ Thanks for joining us as we explore the arts and culture of our state.

I'm Charity Nebbe.

See you next time for another.

Greetings from Iowa.

[music] Funding for Greetings from Iowa is provided by: With our Iowa roots and Midwestern values.

Farmers Mutual Heil is committed to offering innovative farm insurance for America's farmers, just as we have for six generations.

Farmers Mutual Hail America's crop insurance company.

The Pella Roll Screen Foundation is a proud supporter of Iowa PBS, Pella Windows and Doors drives to better our communities and build a better tomorrow