(drumroll) - [Mark] In this edition of "Artistic Horizons," an artist who intertwines the past with the present.

- [Gavin] I tend to get a lot of different information from different places, and then I mix 'em together, sort of remix 'em.

- [Mark] One-of-a-kind yarn graffiti.

- [Kern] I need to make something and give it out so that someone can find it, and maybe their day's a little bit better.

And if their day is better, then maybe that spreads.

- [Mark] A stop motion animation studio.

- It's such an iterative process that includes so many different mediums, from crafting, to modeling, to filmmaking, to photography, to set building, and I love all that stuff.

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

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

In his work, artist Gavin Benjamin brings together the old and the new by finding inspiration in the old masters and combining analog photography, collage, varnish, and paint to reflect on culture, politics, fashion, and design.

We head to Ohio to learn more.

- Political, provocative, pop culture.

A lot of my inspiration comes from looking at other artists' work, knowing art history, history of music, design, fashion, television, film.

I tend to get a lot of different information from different places, and then I mix 'em together, sort of remix 'em.

There's a certain narrative.

It doesn't exactly totally bash you in the head, but there are layers and layers and texture.

It's kind of like listening to a Cole Porter song, and there's like innuendos and layers and textures.

I started out as a photographer, but when I went off to college, one of my teachers, Abby Robinson, I took a collage class with her, and it always just stuck in my head.

Once I figured out that, oh, I can use collage, and I can do these big elegant pieces of flowers, and, you know, I could just make them magnificent and glorious and dripping with lacquer, and, you know, glitter and whatever else, I realized that that was the way to go.

That was the business aspect of it.

And then I realized that the political stuff that I really wanted to create wasn't going to sell.

You know, it would be great on a museum wall, but it's not gonna make me a living, you know, unless I'm like, you know, Mickalene Thomas or Kehinde Wiley, you know, it's not gonna make the average artist a living.

So I've been working a lot in collage, which has been working for me very well and been selling, and I am now to the position and the point where I want to use photography and sort of create my own collage within the photography, because then I could still work within the big canvases and I could highlight what I really want to highlight, and, you know, sort of have those Cole Porter moments.

I knew what I wanted to do when I went to Cuba.

I was on a mission.

I took a Hasselblad in, a German camera, film camera, 100 rolls of 120 film, and I just shot everything.

What inspired me?

Everything, the people, the building, their lack of, their resourcefulness with nothing.

Coming from a third world country and seeing that again, and understanding when you're older, when you're 50, it's a whole different ballgame.

It's a whole different... You know, you're like, "Whoa."

You know, was I ready for that?

Yes and no.

And so, with Bienal, what I wanted to do was I wanted to take images from their museum and rework them the way how I reworked "Heads of State," which is like that.

(jazzy music) I wanted to say...

I guess my story with that is, "What if it was the other side?"

you know?

So instead of they're these beautiful, lovely, redheaded women, they're these beautiful Black women with cornrows, and, again, bringing pop culture and talking about pop culture and politics again in a different way.

The images for "Cuba: Past Imperfect," I really wanted to talk about wealth again, power, Who has it?

Who doesn't have it?

Who wants it?

Who doesn't get it?

How do you hold it?

Money, class, just all the things that we're, as a society, we're constantly dealing with.

You're gonna see the crystals, you're gonna see the layers.

There's a lot of cut, paste, and glue.

There's a lot of stones, Swarovski crystals around a neckpiece, in his hair and pearls.

And I tried to think of resources that were taken from the colonies.

So the crystals represent diamonds.

The gold specks represent gold as such.

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

(jazzy music) Up next, we take a trip to the Museum of Graffiti in Florida to meet Kern Myrtle, yarn graffiti artist and painter.

Using crocheted acrylic yarn and spray paint, they leave their distinct mark on the streets of Miami.

Take a look.

(upbeat music) - [Kern] When you find, like you find something cool on the street or anywhere, you have this feeling.

It's like, "Oh, what's this?"

you know?

"Oh, I can take this?

This is for me?"

That's something that you don't find very often in life.

I am Kern Myrtle, and I am an artist.

Well, I do a lot of weird things.

(chuckles) (upbeat music) I use yarn as a form of street art, which is known around the world as yarn bombing, where you put your yarn in a public space for people to find or see.

The way I tend to do it is leaving little pieces for people to find, and with the intention of spreading joy and having that joy of discovery.

There's a tag on it, and it says, "Hello, this is for you.

Please take it with you, or please give it a home."

And it has my name and my social media on it, and so if people find it and they wanna tell me they found it, that's great.

I moved to Miami a few years ago, and I didn't really know people, and it was new place to me, and I was trying to find my place here.

It just occurred to me that I needed to do something, and that I can't...

I mean, I don't...

The only way I can explain this is I was sort of called to do it.

I felt compelled to do it.

I was like, "I need to make something and give it out so that someone can find it and maybe there are day's a little bit better," and if their day is better, then maybe that spreads.

These little weird, like they kind of look like jellyfish, these strange organic little objects, and I had a few of 'em, and that was what I just decided.

I was like, "I feel I have to do this."

I put it out the first time in May 9, 2019 is my street art birthday, and the person who found posted it on Instagram, and I had like zero followers, but I had started a little account.

It turns out he is a really important graffiti artist and general creative, amazing creative person, and I was like, "Well, if he thought it was art, maybe it is."

And so I was like, "Well, that was fun.

I'm gonna do that again."

And I just started doing it.

I mean, I've probably left, I think by the count it's around 300 or more pieces like that on the street to be found.

So that's just something I haven't stopped.

I still do it.

(upbeat music) (can shaking) It started with yarn, and then over time I began to work, well, I got to know other people who painted here in Wynwood, because Wynwood is really where this all starts for me.

It's a story about yarn, that one-to-one dialogue with one person finding it, but then starting to meet people who taught me about spray paint and taught me about the world of graffiti and street art.

(upbeat music) So in 2020 I did an installation all by myself called "This is For You," with giant letters that said, "This is for you," and all the little things I like to give out.

I probably put out 50 of those throughout that week, and I just did it.

I was like, "I'm gonna stage my own art show on a fence."

You know, I'm not really waiting for somebody to tell me it's okay, or this is art, or whatever.

And the reaction was great.

I mean, people were taking stuff, and then watching it change through the week, 'cause I didn't know if anyone would even notice it.

And then over the week, almost all of it was gone, and I just kept rearranging it and playing with it.

And so that was my first time doing that, and then in '21 I started to meet some more yarn artists on Instagram, which is kind of where our community hangs out, the yarn community that I'm a part of.

And I just sort of kind of casually said, "Hey, anybody wanna join me?

I'm gonna do something called, 'Why not?'

and you can send me anything you want based on the prompt, 'Why not?'

and I'll put it up with my thing."

And I got a lot of responses.

And these are not people who I knew personally.

I've never met most of them in real life, and they were so excited.

They were like, "We're in Wynwood."

I'm like, "Yeah, you're in Wynwood.

You're at Art Week.

You're at Art Basel."

And that was really cool to see that.

And I did a small one last year in '22, but it was smaller 'cause I was doing two murals at the same time, so I didn't have as much time to do that project, but I did put out a few from people, some of the same people.

And we call ourselves the yarn weirdos because we're not really following the yarn rules.

(Kern chuckling) (upbeat music) In 2023, we did, "Yes, Yes, Yes."

So, I said, "Same thing.

The prompt is so simple, It's just respond.

I'm gonna do something about yes or a yes/no choice."

And I got all kinds of things.

I got more than 20 pieces from the UK, from Mexico, from all over the U.S., and some people, again, who I don't know, I've never met in real life, and they just send me their stuff, and we put it up, and then watch people respond to it, take it, and then I rearrange things, and we just keep it going as long as possible.

When I was putting this up the other day, the original stuff I put up, a little girl walked by, and she goes, "What is this?"

And I go, "It's some art made with yarn."

She was on her way to school.

She went, "Ah, I see my grandma do that."

Okay.

You hear that a lot.

(chuckles) Every time I do an installation like that, a bigger installation, I make a sign just like a gallery sign that explains what this piece is, gives it a name, lists the artists, and shows a QR code to my Instagram where I'm always talking about all the other people who are involved, because I think it's important for people to understand that you don't have to be in a place with white walls or a place where a curator said it was okay to show your art.

I mean, I wanna show my art to everybody.

I want anyone who's walking down the street, no matter whether they care about art or think they're going to see art that day, I want them to have a chance to see it.

And if they respond to it, that's great.

And if it doesn't strike their fancy or they even notice it at all, that's also fine.

But I think every person should have a chance to see it, and experience it, and touch it.

I mean, you can touch it, you can take it down, you can just touch it, you can take a photo with it.

You know, I wanna share it that way, completely open to all.

(upbeat music) So knowing people who are expert muralists helped me take an abstract design that I was doing based on my yarn on paper with watercolors, and then bring that onto a wall.

And I'm interested in that design and how this abstraction based on these yarn patterns is a whole 'nother thing.

You know, it's a whole 'nother place to go.

And it isn't anything.

It is not trying to be something.

I am not painting a flower or a house.

So it's living way out in abstraction, but it is grounded in this reality.

It's grounded in this reality, very much so.

And if you look at my wall, different walls I've done, you'll see this, you know, these elements, this kind of, the holes and the strands.

It's part of it.

It's interesting, and I like that it comes from a real physical item that I made.

So it isn't just like a random design or like a pretty piece of lace.

It's something that I made, and now it's huge on a wall.

I love it.

I want to do more.

I wanna do more of everything.

(laughing) (upbeat music) The joy of discovery is really where this is at for me, and this extends to everything I do.

When I do my name in yarn, I am writing my name in yarn.

If you call it graffiti or not, whatever, but I'm putting my name there.

I'm not just putting flowers.

I'm not just wrapping a pole like a lot of people do, which is fine if that's what they wanna do, but I wanna put my name out there, and that's that part of graffiti.

That's why we're here at the Museum of Graffiti, because graffiti is part of what influenced this whole process for me, like appreciation for the history of graffiti, appreciation for people who really know how to use paint, spray paint, in a way that, I mean, you wouldn't believe.

And I just didn't know about all this before, none of this.

Just, Miami changed everything for me.

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

(jazzy music) Mason Drumm loved stop motion animation so much that he turned it into a career and founded a premier studio dedicated to handcrafted content.

We visit Edmond, Oklahoma to find out more.

(ethereal music) - There are some challenges with being an animation studio in the Midwest.

Impetus for a lot of animators and filmmakers, if they want to go and be part of the industry, quote, unquote, "the industry" is to move to the coast, 'cause that's where the industry is at.

And I found myself feeling really discouraged, like, "Hey, I want to do all these things, but I also don't want to leave Oklahoma, 'cause I love Oklahoma, and my family is here.

I want my daughter to grow up here."

My name is Mason Drumm.

I'm the creative director at Loud Cloud Animation Studio, and we specialize in telling stories through stop motion animation.

(uptempo percussive music) Stop motion is a very old school medium of storytelling.

So, you have an object, you take a photo of the object, move the object, take a photo, move the object again, take a photo.

When you play back the series of photos, the object is animated, or it's brought to life.

Everything we do is done by hand.

So, whenever you are watching a stop motion film, you're seeing real objects, and you're seeing like real things come to life.

So I think that's just, from an aesthetics point of view, it's just very interesting.

It's such an iterative process that includes so many different mediums, from crafting, to modeling, to filmmaking, to photography, to set building, and I love all that stuff.

So we are in Downtown Edmond.

I'm really honored and thankful that I have an actual, like brick and mortar space to do the work that we do.

- [Ross] He's a nice boss.

He offers a nice amount of direction, but still allows a lot of room to kind of explore whatever it is you're doing on your own.

- Right now I have a handful of people that started as interns.

One of those people is Ross.

He is somebody that I rely on for as many projects as I can, 'cause he's an incredibly talented person.

And we have Marlyse.

She comes in.

She's gotten to animate on projects as well.

And just depending on, you know, from project to project, we'll hire out for various needs, whether that's concept artists or even other animators.

There's an incredible animator here in Oklahoma City.

Her name's Nicole Emmons.

We'll try to bring her in if we can.

(uptempo percussive music) Chili Pepper is our studio dog.

She is a miniature dachshund, and she's perfect, and she just lays around all day.

(uptempo percussive music) From 2015 to 2019, I was a videographer and photographer at the University of Oklahoma in the marketing department, and every once in a while they would be like, "Hey, Mason, you know, it's National Donut Day.

Can we animate some donuts?"

And, you know, I grew up with animating flip books, like drawing on little yellow sticky notepads and bringing like little stick figures to life, so I was like, "I'll do that, but with a camera."

And so we're basically no equipment, just like a tripod and a camera.

I remember going, doing like this donut video, and bringing them to life, and people liked it.

It did well on social.

You know, as far as engagement goes, stop motion performs really well.

And from there I was like, "Man, that was fun."

I got to do photography.

I got to set up the exposure.

I got to frame things and do composition, but I also got to like work with my hands and animate.

There was something like very tangible about stop motion that I'm drawn to.

(wood bangs) (creature growls) The first animation that I put on YouTube, it was called "Indomation."

It was like a "Jurassic Park" fan film.

You know, I worked on it for like seven months in my garage, sweat away.

I built all the sets myself.

I had some friends that helped me like paint some of the set, helped paint some of the figures that I animated it with.

But it was fun, and it was through that project, really, that I fell in love with stop motion.

Put that on YouTube, and it has like 6 million views now.

It's crazy.

So that encouraged me to do more.

Initially I was asking, I'd go to restaurants, I'd ask local, like small businesses, "Hey, can I make some content for your social media?"

And so I kind of built up my portfolio and experience, until finally, I think my first big project was a commercial gig for the SYFY Channel.

Produced it entirely in my garage.

Eventually I got to the point where I could quit my full-time job to pursue Loud Cloud Animation Studios.

If there's one person that I can point towards to say thank you for any of the success that we've had, it's Brandt Smith at the University of Oklahoma's Fabrication Lab, and he was the one that hired me to be a photographer and videographer, so he's always kind of served in this like mentorship position.

And Brandt always opens his doors to Loud Cloud, to say, "Hey, come.

If you wanna tell stories, we want you to do it here."

- The high level purpose of the Fabrication Lab here at the University of Oklahoma is to support entrepreneurship.

We think that if we can increase entrepreneurship here within the region, that only benefits OU students.

They've got skill sets that add value to entrepreneurs.

So the Fabrication Lab is one of those efforts where if somebody's got an idea for a thing that you can touch, they could come here and make it.

We've got all manner of equipment: 3D printers, laser cutters, all the way into wood manufacturing and some metal manufacturing as well.

So when Mason takes on a project, he can turn to the Fab Lab and say, "Here's the equipment that I'm gonna use."

And what I think is really special was he got connected to OU students who have a skillset that he does not so that he can employ them in the use of equipment.

(upbeat music) - I first met Mason when he came into the lab one day, probably a year or so ago.

And I kind of expressed to him, "Hey, I've got a skill set of I can use the laser cutters, I can use the 3D printers, I can use Adobe Illustrator, so, hey, if you need any help, let me know."

A couple months went by.

I get a message from Mason.

"Hey, I need some help with this new project we've got."

I mean, working for someone like Mason, having opportunities here in Oklahoma, I thought when I got into college that I was gonna have to move out to L.A., or I was gonna have to move out to Atlanta to do the kind of stuff that I'm doing now, and I don't.

I live, I don't know, 20 miles from where I grew up.

- What I found just through failed relationships, through failed jobs, and this, that, and the other is that I need something that pushes me and challenges me, and whether it's something like race, that does that, like physically, or the stop motion medium, like, you cannot exhaust the needs of any project with stop motion, and I think I'm really drawn to the fact that it enables me to push as hard as I want to on certain things, to grow myself, to meet potential, and to always just keep growing.

(upbeat music) Yeah, I'm doing this because this is the best medium for me to, I guess, whether it's express myself or just stay busy, I don't know.

It just seems like the most fitting thing for me to do, and I love it, and I feel honored and thankful that it's had any level of success, and I am humbled by any of the artists that we get to work with.

I get to meet so many cool people and work with so many incredibly talented people, so I feel like I'm a better person because of it.

So yeah, and I'm just, I feel nothing but thankfulness, I feel like I have arrived to where I am right now, to see potential in the future, but to try to like, you know, not get too big for my britches or anything.

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

(jazzy 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.

(jazzy music) (inspiring music)