- [Mark] In this edition of "Artistic Horizons."

- My art, which I would call contemporary Western art, kind of falls between the cracks sometimes because there's definitely Western galleries and Western shows that my work would not fit in.

- People are just fascinated and amazed that someone can actually do this from scratch and with only a second grade education.

- I'm using different symbols and things that I used to draw on my planner growing up, but now I'm putting them on a canvas.

- It's all ahead on this edition of "Artistic Horizons."

(upbeat music) Hello, I'm Mark Cernero and this is "Artistic Horizons."

Megan Wimberley is a contemporary Western artist and the founder of Cowgirl Artists of America, an organization that celebrates and supports women artists and makers.

We take a trip to Oklahoma to find out more.

(fast-paced violin music) - Many women really don't like the term cowgirl.

Instead, they'll say cowboy girl or cowboy gal.

(fast-paced violin music) I've even heard people say, "Don't call a woman who's a good, like, hand with a horse or with cattle or whatever, don't call her a cowgirl, call her a cowboy."

(fast-paced violin music) And I think that tells a story about the West that is not accurate.

It's not the story of the West that I grew up in.

People wanna be a cowboy.

Why don't they want to be a cowgirl?

(fast-paced violin music) I chose my cousin to portray in this art because I think she is an incredible horsewoman.

She's definitely knows a lot more than I do.

She's done it for a long, long time.

(upbeat music) My art, which I would say I would call contemporary Western art, kind of falls between the cracks sometimes because there's definitely Western galleries and Western shows that my work would not fit in.

They would say it's too modern or too contemporary.

On the other hand, there's shows that, you know, like, the things that aren't Western, I would be way too Western for.

A lot of times when people go really colorful, they really begin to be more abstract or expressionistic and lose some of the realism to it.

And for me, the realism is also important.

You know, I literally was riding horses before I could walk, and I know that that seems like a tall tale, but it's not.

And there's pictures of me as soon as I could hang onto a saddle horn, I was up there and my mom said I would cry as soon as they took me off.

I just always wanted to be around the horses.

Right now we're in Tulsa.

It's a lot different living in a city.

You know, that's not really my preferred place to live, but there's beauty no matter where you are.

(upbeat music) Then of course there's the Cowboy Museum, Columbus City, and I really try to get down to the Cowboy Museum as much as I can.

It's always informative, always beautiful.

Looking through the old saddles and all of that, it's so inspiring to look back at the craftsmanship and the patterns and the styles that were used.

(tone rings) Hi Priscilla, how are you?

- Good, Megan, how are you doing today?

- Doing well.

So are you ready to get started?

So Cowgirl Artists of America is an organization that's working to increase opportunities and representation for female western artists and makers.

The idea for CGA happened in 2018 when I went to a really beautiful Western art show.

And as I looked around, I began to notice that there were not very many women.

And I just thought, I wanna do something about this.

And so I just started with Instagram and I started reaching out to female Western artists and I would send them a message.

"Hey, your work's beautiful, can I share it?"

I started doing monthly Zoom meetings, and then people were like, "How do I join?

How do I join?"

Don't only get stuck in art-based hashtags.

And so in May of 2021, I was like, okay, we're doing it.

(upbeat music) They are fine artists.

So they're painting, sculpting, they're photographers or traditional artists.

So maybe they're saddle makers or they are boot makers, silversmiths.

When I think about it, it's kind of like mind boggling how much the organization has done in such a short time.

(upbeat music) I'm really happy with it.

Yesterday I called it, what did I call it?

Vintage pop is that's what it feels like to me right now, a vintage pop piece, which I don't know if that's a thing or not, but if it isn't, it should be.

(upbeat music) Women are really good with horses.

(upbeat music) And a lot of times, you see these cowgirls out there too with a baby on their hip.

All of that is so important and it's because of women like my Grandma Betty and my Aunt Shelly, that women are able to grow up and to do the things that they want to do because we've been supported to go out there and be cowgirls.

So thanks, grandma.

- You're very welcome.

You're one of my special kids, too.

(upbeat music) - [Megan] It is time to celebrate the cowgirl.

(upbeat music) - And now for the artist quote of the week.

(upbeat music) Ernest "Mooney" Warther was an esteemed wood carver.

Over the course of 82 years, he hand-sculpted many works, including more than 60 scaled and working representations of steam history.

We visit the Ernest Warther Museum and Gardens in Dover, Ohio for the story.

- He knew no strangers and he had a big booming voice.

He talked to anybody about anything and you could hear him a mile away.

- [Ernest] One time, Abraham Lincoln said that you tend to go to work, start right where you are, for there is no better place.

- He was kind of a showman.

We're a small town.

He kind of had to advocate for his own art.

And so I think that personality helped sell his art to others and kind of get that popularity.

- His hair was bigger than the rest of him.

He was only about 5'8".

He was rather small, lot of hair.

- He always said, you could tell what direction the wind was blowing based on which way his hair was going that day.

So his story really begins in 1885 when he was born here in Dover to parents who just came from Switzerland in 1883.

Now, unfortunately, when he was just three years old, his father passes away in an accident and that leaves his mom with five kids.

And so as soon as he could, started working, and that was at age five as a cow herder.

So he's born originally as Ernest Warther, no middle name, but that cow herding job earned him the nickname Mooney, because in Swiss, Mooney means bull of the herd.

And as he collected the cows, everyone kind of joked 'cause he was the little leader of all of these cows taking them out to pasture each day.

And that just ended up sticking with him for the rest of his life.

(cheerful music) Taking the cows to pasture one day, he finds a pocket knife in the dirt, picks it up, starts whittling to pass the time watching those cows, and he never stopped.

- When you come into the lobby, his workshop is attached to the lobby.

So you can see where he started with his carvings and where he accomplished all of it.

We have the big picture windows you can see out to the gardens and where the button house is.

In the first room that you come into is the early years when they got married and was raising the family and his work in the steel mill for the first 24 years and some of his original tools that he used in carving.

(cheerful music) Replicas of the steel mill that he worked in here in Dover was the American Sheet and Tin Plate.

He worked there for 24 years, and then after the mill was torn down and moved out of Dover, then he carved it about 15 years later and it's a scale replica and all the little parts move and operate so you can see how the men worked the steel.

He grew up along the railroad tracks, so it was a good place for him to hang out and the hobos would come into town and that's where he met the first hobo with the pliers.

- So the story of the pliers really begins when Mooney's about 10 years old, and he meets a stranger who cuts him a pair of these pliers out of a single block of wood, hands 'em over, but doesn't tell him how he did it.

And of course, Mooney was enamored with whittling at this time.

And so while he took those cows to pasture, he figured it out and he found out that if he makes 10 cuts in a single block of wood, he could make a working pair of pliers as well.

From there, he masters it.

He'll go on to carve about three quarter of a million of those in his lifetime.

He would hand those out to school children, anybody he would meet.

A lot of people would challenge him and say, you know, "I don't believe that you can do it that fast," 'cause he could guarantee you a set in 20 seconds or less.

And then in 1965, he was on "The Tonight Show: with Johnny Carson and he clocked his fastest record at 9.4 seconds for a single pair, so less than a second per cut.

And of course the single pair wasn't enough for him.

He began experimenting with multiples.

- [Carol] The theater contains the plier tree, and that was his first big item that he carved.

- [Kristen] In 1913, coming home from the mill, he visualizes the block of wood that he needs to shape out and the tree that he'll ultimately create.

And then he places in that block over a 64-day period, 31,000 cuts, and that unveiled a tree of 511 pair of pliers.

(cheerful music) - [Carol] Then he started with trains.

- There was a rail line that passed his home and he was able to go down and look at the engines and started memorizing them.

- [Carol] And then he'd read in the encyclopedias about different things that happened in the stages of history of steam.

So he'd carved something and then he'd read about another one and how the steam developed over the years.

- 1913 is when he began the evolution of the steam engine.

Completely his idea.

- [Carol] And it started with 250 B.C.

and it was around the room up to 1942.

- [Kristen] So he wanted to make sure that when he carved the evolution of the steam engine that he was capturing them in their full essence and that was also included mechanizing them.

And so they're all run off of an electric motor with a leather sewing machine belt.

That's how we continue to run them today.

- They're all pressed fit together, they're not glued.

So they all have a tight fit and they're solid.

- [Kristen] The evolution itself is carved across 40 years.

You can think of it as probably about 35 pieces in there for the most part.

So none of the works in the museum took him longer to do than a year, and he knew that he could carve about 1,000 pieces a month.

I would say his average is about six months time of actual carving time.

Most of them are right around that 6,000 piece mark.

The smaller engines obviously are fewer pieces, but then you get something like the Erie Triplex and that's over 9,000.

- [Carol] He was considered an artistic genius as well as a mechanical genius to be able to operate 'em like that.

(gentle music) Frieda was very fun-loving and very artistic.

- Frieda Warther, originally born Frieda Richard, she was one of 13 children.

She was born in Switzerland, immigrated here with her parents when she was just a young girl.

It was a European and particularly Swiss tradition that the oldest daughter would receive her mother's button box.

So she got the idea that she could make jewelry out of buttons.

And so as she was wearing these, everybody was like, "Oh, she likes buttons."

So then she just started acquiring buttons from everyone.

- [Carol] Lots of buttons.

She had boxes of them everywhere, even under the steps, she had boxes and up in the attic and she had strings of them hanging in the dining room.

- [Kristen] Frieda and Mooney married in 1910, built the family home, and all this while she's just collecting buttons, just word got out, small community.

And eventually after the kids were a little older, she had some free time finally.

She was like, "I'm gonna go through all these buttons."

And then that really sparked the idea for putting them into patterns.

So the button house, she put all of her buttons in there.

- Grandma had started the gardens when the kids were little for vegetables, and then she canned a lot of that and stored it.

Eventually it turned into flowers.

(upbeat music) At the age of 68, he retired because he finished the evolution of the steam engine.

So for four years, he didn't carve.

But he was restless, so my dad and him sat down and they discussed and they came up with the idea of carving the great American events in steam history.

So that was things like the Lincoln Funeral Train.

(upbeat music) And the driving of the Golden Spike.

(upbeat music) The John Bull was the first passenger train in the US.

Then we have a new display that we opened last September, and it shows the evolution of the knife making because he started making the knives for carving and then it developed into kitchen knives during World War II, the commando knives he made.

- [Kristen] He would contribute 1,100 commando knives for World War II.

And so he was nicknamed the smallest defense plant in the United States.

- Most years, we average about 70 countries throughout the world, and we keep a registry that people can sign in.

- There's kind of like, I guess groupies.

There's people who really get into Mooney and the history and everything that he created.

- Our biggest method of advertisement is word of mouth, people telling other people about it.

- He had opportunities, he had offers for quite large sums of money at that point in time, but he turned them all down.

And that's why thankfully I have a job and we're all still here and all the carvings are still here.

But he felt it was very important to have everyone come to the city of Dover to see his carvings.

And that's why we have such a great relationship with the city.

People are just fascinated and amazed that someone can actually do this from scratch and with only a second grade education.

It's not like he was mimicking someone else who had done it already.

He had all this idea in his own mind.

So it's truly amazing.

(cheerful guitar music) (upbeat music) - Now here's a look at this month's fun fact.

(upbeat music) Florida artist Emily Tan creates art across disciplines.

From abstract painting to live performance to DJing, She expresses herself in a variety of ways and explores her identity.

Take a look.

(calm music) - Before I even knew what mental health was growing up, I used art as a therapeutic medium.

(calm music) My name is Emily Tan.

I am an abstract painter, art teacher, paint performer, and I also DJ.

(calm music) Growing up on Long Island, I was a child of a Slovakian woman and a Chinese and Filipino man.

And my mom had two children before I was born.

So they were white and I was the little mixed baby.

And I don't know if that was an identity crisis right away, but I think it's what started the search.

I started painting and drawing and chalk on my entire driveway like on every Sunday and Saturday.

I think now the work I've been doing is more childlike.

I was able to tap into that inner child and I'm using different symbols and things that I used to draw on my planner growing up, but now I'm putting them on a canvas, so it feels like a full circle type of reclaimed power in my art.

The daisy and the mandala symbols are huge in my new work.

I recently did a mural for Cocoon, which is a yoga studio in Tampa.

- So a mandala is something that you can gaze at and it becomes a way to quiet the mind and invokes certain energy.

And this mandala specifically is a mandala for abundance in all of its most positive ways, and peace and spiritual attainment and wealth, all the good things.

And it's essentially a yoga practice in and of itself to gaze at a mandala and meditation.

- Every summer, I teach summer art camp at the Tampa Museum of Art.

- Emily as an art instructor is super enthusiastic and warm and encouraging.

When you walk into that space, you're just hit with all of this creative positive energy.

It's like a whirlwind there.

If you've seen her process, you know she's not the neatest artist.

You will always find like some bit of paint somewhere around her from a project.

So that's the same vibe you get in her classroom, but the students really, really respond to it.

- The other part of my art that I love doing so much now is the paint performances.

- I love that Emily approaches her art like a yoga practice and that she is devoted to it.

And we've been watching her work.

Her working is an art form.

It's beautiful to see.

(upbeat music) - So I go by DJ Emmy.

My boyfriend Skyler, he DJs, and he taught me, you know, the basics.

But it is interesting because music has always inspired my art.

And now I feel like the art is getting to influence DJing.

So it's kind of like a energetic push and pull, back and forth.

- It is really exciting to have started to work with Emily when she was an undergraduate at University of Tampa.

To get to know a young artist at that age and see them grow, it's just been really great to have almost like a front row seat to her growth.

And I'm really, really excited for what happens next with her and what more she could bring to the Tampa Bay art community.

(cheerful music) - So I think the way I bring my identity in, which I just recently started doing, but I like to call myself, like, the whitest Asian because growing up in New York, I really didn't have any cultural background.

So my dad was raised in New York, my mom raised in Harlem, and we were just a very, like, basic, we're not gonna do any of the cultural, maybe Chinese New Year, but besides that, that was it.

So my grandma gave me my cultural background, the little bits of it that I'm so grateful for.

And my grandma speaks Tagalog, she's from the Philippines, she's awesome, I love her, she'd bring me to Chinatown, like, we had the best times, but that was really it.

So I think my art, it's not really the Asian part, it's more of the mixture.

So like blending two worlds and being in this world as someone that I didn't really have a example of growing up.

I never really saw a mixed person growing up.

So I think that is my identity going through and that is what I try to convey in my art.

(upbeat music) What would I say to little Emily?

I would say, "Don't worry.

You're gonna be okay.

There will be people that you can look up to and there are people that exist now.

You just have to find them."

So I think I found them.

I think I am her now.

(laughs) (cheerful music) - And now, here's a look at a few notable dates in art history.

(upbeat music) And that wraps it up for this edition of "Artistic Horizons."

For more arts and culture, visit wpbstv.org.

Until next time, I'm Mark Cernero, thanks for watching.

(upbeat music)