(upbeat music) -[Narrator] Coming up on "Nebraska Stories," a farm where the crop is creativity, (upbeat music) the whimsical world of Fred's Flying Circus, (upbeat music) and a visit with schoolhouse artist Cindy Chinn.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (soft tranquil music) (chimes tinkling) GRACE: It's kind of unlike most places that I've been.

MONEL: I was just very shocked at every aspect of the landscape.

MATT: It's great to come here and not know what to expect and to be sort of like dropped into a place with very little connection to the outside world.

(door creaking) NARRATOR: 80 miles West of Lincoln off an unremarkable dirt road, near the small town of Marquette, is a farmstead like no other.

(upbeat music) ED DADEY: You guys catch it as we get there.

(wheel creaking) ED: Now just keep on going.

NARRATOR: It's called Art Farm.

It's a non-profit artist residency program Ed Dadey started 26 years ago as an experiment.

ED: We'll set this end right here on the bucket.

Tried to be a farmer but hell, I was so pathetic.

I thought well, I gotta do something else.

NARRATOR: And that's when Dadey switched from cultivating corn to cultivating culture.

ED: Over the years total, probably around 800 artists now, I think from about 23 countries.

ARTIST: I feel like Art Farm's gonna be marketed as like a crossfit for artists.

(laughing) NARRATOR: From May through November, up to 80 artists come here each year, as many as 20 at a time.

The accommodations are rustic.

The studio spaces are equally spare.

Some buildings evoke abandonment, others a simple charm.

But the evidence of creative energy is everywhere.

(upbeat music) In exchange for a residency, artists contribute at least 12 hours of labor each week to projects on the farm.

(upbeat music) GRACE WONG: My name is Grace.

I'm originally from Hong Kong but I was raised in Los Angeles.

(tapping) I was trained as an architect.

I just quit architecture and decided to do architecture in my own terms.

When you build something here, like you're also working with a bunch of different people which kind of continuously change and transform like what that idea is.

MALE ARTIST: Could you turn this into like a three-inch square?

FEMALE ARTIST: Yeah.

(water spraying) NARRATOR: Every day brings something new.

(shoveling dirt) On this day, it's all hands on deck to unload the donated remnants of an elevator mechanism for some unknown future project.

There are piles of materials just waiting for the right artistic vision.

ED: Some things could be around here 25 years not used and all of a sudden, where'd they all go?

(xylophonic music) NARRATOR: Beyond the work exchange, there are few rules.

Imperfection is okay.

Failure is an option.

And at least at Art Farm, time is not money.

(loud insects buzzing) NICOLE BASTA: There's like freedom to fail here.

Everything you're making doesn't have to be something that's gonna be lucrative for your career.

ED: It doesn't matter if you fail, just do it.

Time is different out here.

I mean actually the sky, the moon, the sun, it's what you keep your time by.

Yeah let's pull the other one, just lay that end down.

Pull the other one off and we can take the two-by-fours.

NARRATOR: Dadey trained as a sculptor and ceramicist but his focus now is on mentoring other artists.

ED: See, that's good.

MATT CLEGG: He just kind of dedicated his life to building and maintaining this strange pocket in existence.

ED: You could brush and sand in all these now.

MATT: He's an incredibly inspiring human being mostly because he literally knows how to do anything.

NICOLE: He treats us all completely equally whether you're a poet who's never hammered a nail or, you know, you're a sculptor whose built like massive structures.

MATT: I drove from New York City and I just had this vision of a door that sat in the middle of the field.

And it's just like so odd and interesting and hilarious to see what people will do when people given a plot of land and literally no expectations or directions.

(chime ringing) (sanding) MATT: I come to a place like this where the emphasis has been taken away from efficiency and productivity and is put towards inspiration and creativity.

I felt a little bit of a spiritual change in me.

I just keep coming back because it's someplace where I feel incredibly inspired.

ED: Where they're coming from an area that's very competitive to determine who gets in a gallery, you see that the first week they're here, that competitiveness has come with them.

And then they start to pick up on the Art Farm where everybody sees this initially as God, this is a chaotic mess, but then they start to understand there is order, organization here.

EVAN MURPHY: We're building a basket-covered platform for Art Farm, for people to be able to work during the day in a pleasing environment, write poems, make a painting.

MORGAN STREET: The whole building is sort of based off of shaker basket styles.

I've been experimenting with like traditional craft styles and how like the structure of those and the manipulation of material can affect experimental architecture.

MATT: Our point is gonna go forward, yep.

You guys walk backwards, yep.

MORGAN: Art Farm is such a wonderful place.

It's a very like giving environment.

We do a lot of things communally.

We have a lot of meals together.

And we work together to actually build the physical property here and I think that bleeds over into everyone's practices and people support each other in a really beautiful way.

NICOLE: I think it's going over there.

MAN: By the welding area.

NICOLE: So maybe we should just build a ramp.

NARRATOR: Admittedly, Art Farm isn't for everyone.

The longest residency has been four years, the shortest, 45 minutes.

ED: You don't know if it's like romantic idealization of what rural America is and when you get here, to have the mosquitoes biting you all the time, the wind drives you crazy, you gotta walk in mud sometimes.

Yeah, some just cannot take it.

MONEL REINA: Well I've only lived in cities my whole life.

I was a little shocked by the rustic nature of it at first.

I mean I still haven't gotten used to like bugs eating my flesh all day but I really enjoy just like being able to work outside like this.

I've grown to like it a lot.

NARRATOR: In 26 years, only three Nebraska artists have applied to the program.

Perhaps Art Farm is simply less exotic to homegrown artists.

But the competition for spots here increases each year.

Word of mouth has turned this little known experiment into a sought after residency for artists from all over the world.

NICOLE: This is my third season, I guess you'd call it.

It's changed me in ways that I couldn't, I don't think I could articulate.

The gift of time is something that is probably the best tool that any artist or writer or creator of any kind could ask for.

(soft whimsical music) - [Keith] It seemed like the more cars went up, more people would stop, and take pictures.

People from all over.

We've even had some people in foreign countries stopped by and wanted to take pictures of them, and have us talk to them about it.

We just had a guy from, I think it was Russia, not too long ago, or Yugoslavia.

Yeah, Yugoslavia.

- [Narrator] What people are traveling to see, is a collection of whimsical sculptures perched above the Grand Island Body Shop.

- [Karen] They are actual cars, the characters are made out of the rebar, chicken wire, and concrete.

But the actual cars, they don't have motors in them, but they're very heavy.

- [Narrator] These high flying characters, owe their existence to the perpetual creativity of Fred Schritt, who was also the body shop owner.

- [Karen] He went to work at Green's Body Shop.

He was 14 years old and he loved it after that.

Then he went to work for Schupin's.

He worked six days a week, and then in the evenings, he'd go out and paint airplanes to make extra money.

- [Narrator] Fred was the kind of person, who just didn't like sitting still.

And so, the same year he opened his body shop on the east side of town, he began building and racing custom motorcycles.

(upbeat rock music) After a long successful career in racing, Fred finally hung up his helmet at the age of 70, but he still needed something to do with his spare time.

And that's when a little input from his grandson came in handy.

- [Karen] He had an old wrecker out there, so then my oldest grandson, Jordan, had suggested it looked like Mater from the show "Cars".

- [Mater] Ha, you're funny.

I like you already, my name's Mater.

(clang) - [Lightning] Mater?

- Yeah, like, tuh-mater.

But without the tuh.

- [Keith] He got the idea of making a wrecker out of it, and then chopped it and did his hot-rod thing that he liked doing to it, and making a crazy face on it.

And ended up making the wrecker, and then he decided to put it on a pole.

And so, he ended up talking to this sign company next door, and they, he hired him to put in a pole and lift the car up and welded it to the pole.

And the rest is history (chuckles).

- [Fred] But after I built the first car, Peppermint Kid, well, everybody liked it so well, it made me happy and they was happy.

So, I built another one.

And everything I build, people like it.

So, it's actually just like stuff going on, building a house or building.

- [Karen] Top of the building, he built Snoopy and you know, the Red Baron, and his house.

And then the German, that was, like an old '65 Volkswagen.

And he chopped the end off, and he made a tail for it.

And then he made a German, shooting at Snoopy.

And the bullets were made from old spark plugs.

Anything he could find, he would use on his vehicles.

- [Keith] One car is from the Coney Island.

There's a restaurant in Grand Island, called the Coney Island.

And George is the owner, and that's George driving the Coney car.

(light big band music) - [George] My dad and him go way back.

He's been a long-time customer.

He's like one day, he goes, "Hey, I wanna build you a Coney car."

"Okay, what do you mean, Coney car?"

"I'll put you on a pole, with the rest of the characters."

I said "Okay, do what you wanna do."

He didn't want me to look at it, 'til it was about done.

"Don't look at it," so I said, "Fine."

He goes, "That's you, everybody says, that's you George up there, that's you."

(George laughs) Yeah, he got me.

You know he was a giving guy.

He was big on the Humane Society, helping the dogs and all that.

And a lot of good stories about him.

- [Narrator] Over the years, Fred had many four-legged friends but a favorite, was his yellow lab named Buddy.

And it was Buddy who inspired Fred to create the only car that isn't at the body shop.

- [Karen] He took it out there, and donated it to the Humane Society.

And they said that year, that they had record breaking sales of people adopting animals, because people would go by and they'd see it.

It was way up in the air, the car.

Little kids would want to go in and see the dogs.

(light piano music) - [Keith] Then after most of the cars were up, one of his friends and him, decided they were going to make a sign out front that said Fred's Flying Circus.

I'm not sure exactly how they came up with the flying circus.

- [Narrator] Between 2009 and 2015, Fred built nearly a dozen cars, but a chronic heart condition caused him to dial back his work.

- [Keith] After Fred's health, when it wasn't so good.

He started making these characters, just the characters to put on the beam between the poles.

On one beam, there is the Guitar Man, Smurfette, Tweety Bird.

And then he decided he was going to do a Minion.

'Cause he seen the movie about the Minions in one of the cartoons.

And he thought they were pretty neat.

- [Narrator] But the Minion was to remain unfinished.

As Fred passed away in early January of 2016.

- [Keith] We talked about finishing it.

- [Karen] And that's about probably a good three years.

- [Keith] So, I finally got the nerve up to go back there and start messing with it, and finally decided how to go about it.

And I finally started on it, took me a while to finish it.

I mean, it's such a small character, but he was a master at it.

He could've had that probably done in a weekend, where it took me a few months (chuckles).

(hopeful piano music) - [Karen] We called it Fred the Minion.

And that was the last thing that we put up.

- [Narrator] After seeing Fred's collection of work, it may surprise you to know Fred never considered himself an artist.

- [Keith] Actually one day he was talking about that.

"I'm not a very good artist.

"I can't even draw.

All I can draw is stick people."

Just because he couldn't draw a picture of a person, or their face.

I looked around and I was like, "Fred, you're an artist."

(gentle music) (smooth music) - I moved to Chester in 2006.

I wanted a bigger studio.

(intense music) I worked for the world's largest video screen Fremont Street experience.

I ran the company that produced the light and sound shows for that.

I've painted large murals for hospitals.

I have painted ceiling murals in a dental office.

I've painted the dive tank at the welding school, the underwater dive tank.

That was interesting, actually.

I was the lead animator on the Lion King video game.

(gentle music) I found a school in the Sandhills that had the whole upstairs was skylights and it's like, "Oh my God, this is so great.

"Why am I building a studio in the backyard "of my house in Vegas "when I can have this giant building "for 14,000 square feet with skylights?

"Why am I even putting skylights in my house in Vegas?

"Why aren't we just packing and moving?"

(gentle music) The closest airport was six hours away, and it was just too far.

So I kept looking, and then I came across the school in Chester.

It was perfect for what I was looking for.

I was looking for a lot of space I'm into a lot of different things, and I thought, "Well, if I had a classroom for every medium "that I work in, that would be perfect for me.

"I would never have to put away my tools."

My retirement goal is to have an artist retreat.

So it was just a perfect building.

(gentle music) It was February.

And the weather was perfect.

Absolutely perfect.

And we thought, wow this is great for February.

We're wearing shorts.

It hasn't been that way since.

My first thoughts on Chester were that it was very small.

I've lived in small towns before, but it was very small.

After being here for 15 years, Chester is actually pretty big.

The best thing about having a giant studio is that I live there, I don't ever have to leave.

I just, I get up in the morning.

I go to bed when I want, I don't have to get in the car, go anywhere.

I just walk downstairs, go to sleep, get up, go to whatever studio I decide I'm going to work in that day, and work.

I paint.

I carve wood.

I've carved church pews.

I sculpt ceramics.

I do glass work, fusing stained glass, glass mosaic, candle making, and tie-dye!

(laughs) Stop frame animation!

(upbeat music) (plasma torch hissing) I bought a plasma torch because I've always wanted a plasma torch.

And I thought, "Oh, this will be fun."

I called my friend, who's a welder.

And I said, "Hey, come over and show me how to turn this thing on."

Gave me a quick 20 minute lesson, and left.

And he came back the next day and I cut everything.

(laughs) Everything that I had that was flat and metal.

And I'm like, "I don't have any more shovels.

"I don't have any more metal.

"I need something else to cut."

I get my saws through yard sales, estate sales.

And I have several people who collect saws for me, and they go to all the auctions and they hunt them down.

I call them my saw hunters.

They'll call me and say, "Hey Cindy, I've got 50 saws.

"Can you meet me in York?"

(light music) Really into miniatures.

I love doing miniature art.

And every year I enter a miniature show in Grand Island, and I thought this year I'm going to do something different, because I always do paintings for that.

And I decided to do something different this year.

And I thought, I'm going to do a carved pencil.

And I decided to use a carpenter pencil because it has a wider lead.

And I thought, well, my first time carving.

I should do something that's a little easier than a standard pencil.

Looking at the end of the carpenter pencil, it looked like kind of like a tunnel.

It could be tunnel.

So I decided to do a train, to carve a train coming out of a tunnel on the end of the pencil.

That very first pencil took me about 10 hours.

And I thought, Oh, I'll get a microscope.

And the microscope will make it go faster.

Well, I was wrong.

I was so wrong, because now I can see more detail.

And now I can put rivets on the seams of the of the engine.

And it's so micro, but I can see so much clearer with a microscope that it takes me about 20 hours, now, to do a train when it used to take me 10.

(whimsical music) I've always been creative.

Forever, always.

(gentle music) My long-term goal is to have an artist retreat.

Honestly, I think I'd be comfortable wherever I was.

At least I would hope I would be.

Community is very important.

I ended up finding this place and it was perfect for my needs and what I wanted to do for the future.

It was just a perfect building.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) - [Narrator] Watch more Nebraska stories on our website, Facebook and YouTube.

Nebraska Stories is funded in part by the Margaret and Martha Thomas Foundation, and the Bill Harris and Mary Sue Hormel Harris Fund for the presentation of cultural programming.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)