Leading support for Oregon Art Beat is provided by Jordan Schnitzer and the Harold & Arlene Schnitzer Care Foundation Endowed Fund for Excellence... MAN: There's people that paint or draw, but neon is a very unique type of medium.

[ man speaking in Spanish ] WOMAN: I saw this building and the roof was falling down.

I thought, "Hmm, that might be a good place to have a studio."

But it told me to do something much more.

[ ♪♪♪ ] [ birds chirping ] Okay.

Hi.

Welcome, everybody.

It's our first concert of the season.

Yay!

[ chuckles ] MAN: Here's a river song for you.

[ guitar playing folk tune ] [ people chattering softly ] ♪ Forty days in the canyon ♪ ♪ Forty nights Waiting on daylight ♪♪ ♪ Far away and long abandoned ♪♪ ♪ Forty days by the riverside ♪♪ [ music fades out ] WOMAN: Spray has a very unique, can-do, "let's support each other" vibe.

They will fix just about anything, even if you have a broken heart.

[ folk tune continues softly ] The building itself has been beloved for many years as a general store.

There is kind of an unspoken rule here that we leave all of our differences outside.

It's really quite wonderful to see people coming together through art and music.

[ crowd cheering, applauding ] MAN: I've been coming out into the area for my whole life, and it's something really special, so I stuck around.

[ birds hooting in distance ] MAN: I'm just really glad this place is here.

It enriches my life in Spray, and I think that's true for a lot of people here.

WOMAN: I remember my mother said, "Swim in the John Day River and you swallow some of the water, you grow roots."

[ birds chirping ] I remember a time when, if your light switch quit, you could come to the General Store and get what you needed: candy, pop, ice cream, ingredients for your supper, that kind of thing.

JONI: I saw this building and the roof was falling down.

The bathroom was disassembled.

I'm like, "But maybe that's a big open space."

I thought, "Hmm, that might be a good place to have a studio."

But it told me to do something much more.

[ bell rings ] This is what I've been working on.

If I don't want these to be real prominent, I just go like that... VALERIE: When my mom was older, her friends all got together once a week and crocheted and knitted and drank tea.

And I said, "We should do that."

Joni said, "Well, you can do it at the General Store."

We get together, we visit.

[ women chattering ] If anybody needs help, there's always somebody to say, "Well, I can go help with that."

It's not something we may have thought we needed, but it has evolved into an important space.

JONI: For about nine months before I opened the doors, I started to attend city council meetings because I wanted to make sure I wasn't doing something that would... would upset the town.

VALERIE: I don't want to see Spray change, I want to leave it the way it is.

But what Joni is doing, it's great.

[ chuckles ] [ bird chirping, cow mooing ] JONI: There's some kind of artistic talent here that if I created some kind of space where they come together and get grants to bring some pretty notable artists here to teach, we might just really have something here.

And so, um, that's what we did.

Hey, hey, hey.

Hey, hey, hey.

I came out here to do an interview and see what the General Store was all about.

And they were doing these art classes, like community events, and I was just sort of intrigued, and I thought, "There's something really interesting going on out in Spray."

I got to know Joni a little bit, and got to know some of the people here in the community.

And about a year and a half after the story came out, I was ready to retire and I landed here, and I couldn't be happier about it.

JONI: For the first art show here, I wanted it to be centered around home.

I lost my home when I was young.

And so, for me, I've always been searching, searching, searching for home.

It's a place where I can welcome people who I love into and let them feel embraced by it like I feel embraced by it.

[ playing jaunty tune ] BENNET: I think what this place does is it makes connections for people.

You know, you might come here for a concert or for a crop pop-up farmer's market kind of thing or, you know, maybe a class.

You start meeting other people with similar interests, and it just really helps cement those personal ties, and it really nurtures a sense of community in this place.

[ birds chirping ] JONI: I did have a lot of people say, "What in the heck are you doing?

You're going to be out there for two years, three years, and you're going to be back in Portland."

And I did think about that: "Will I want to go back?"

It's been around 13 years, and I can say that it felt like I was advancing more than retreating from the city.

I get a lot of my very serene and quiet time up at my house, which is three miles away, but I love seeing people coming together from different walks of life.

[ playing folk tune ] EVAN: Yeah, we all go through, like, turmoils and troubles, and I started fighting wildfires out here and kind of got sucked into the community in Spray and in Wheeler County in general.

[ folk tune continues ] ♪ Down the line Down the line ♪ ♪ Oh, down the line ♪♪ ♪ Rolling like a cannonball Up through the pines... ♪♪ EVAN: I've been on the road for most of my life, so home is, like, a pretty abstract concept to me.

Until I moved to Spray and I found somewhere I felt like I could settle down, put some roots in.

So I think that's what it's about, is finding that place that you can feel comfortable in and be yourself in.

♪ Only place that's meant for me Is down the line ♪ ♪ Yow, pow, pow, pow ♪♪ [ song ends ] WOMAN: You guys have a really special thing here.

[ crowd applauding, cheering ] VOCALIST: Cheers, Spray.

Thanks for all the good energy, you guys.

We appreciate you.

Thanks so much.

[ crowd cheers, applauds ] MAN: [ band members exclaim, laugh ] WOMAN: You guys.

[ vocalist chuckles ] [ ♪♪♪ ] YOSMEL [ in Spanish ]: [ sings ] [ clears throat ] [ folk music playing over speakers ] I'm going to stay here forever.

You have to go back your world.

It's waiting for you.

[ music stops playing ] YOSMEL: Okay.

[ murmurs ] Oh, okay.

[ actor speaks in Spanish ] Where?

"A man can be himself..." A man can be himself only so long as he's alone.

And if he does not love solitude, he does not love freedom.

For it is only when he's alone that he's really free.

[ repeats in Spanish ] [ chuckles ] [ laughs ] [ ♪♪♪ ] [ bell dings ] [ ♪♪♪ ] WOMAN: It's really, really hard to find actors in Portland who can sing, who have all the skills, and are also fluent Spanish speakers.

And there was a restaurant in town who had catered one of our opening nights, and we met Yos, who just educated the whole team on the value of puppets.

[ eerie music playing over speakers ] [ rattle rattling, flute whistling ] DAÑEL: Frida Kahlo has been a huge inspiration because of her disability and how she used art to overcome it.

[ high-pitched voice ] They fight to give people a chance at life!

[ giggles, gasps ] DAÑEL: So the play is really, a lot of ways, about liberation of thought, of individuality, and really finding your own path forward through art.

[ yells, speaks in Spanish ] How can we be a great nation when our people are mistreated?

It is a rich land, but it is a rich man's land!

We sit under the shade of a poison tree!

[ ♪♪♪ ] [ speaking in Spanish ] YOSMEL: [ all chattering indistinctly ] [ speaks in Spanish ] And today you're about to see the puppet show "Autoretrato de Fridita."

[ flute playing ] [ children murmuring ] Oh, Fridita!

[ high-pitched voice ] They fight to give people a chance at life!

[ fanfare playing ] Huh?

They have us surrounded.

I did everything I could.

They're dancing!

[ drums beating over speakers ] [ rattles rattling, drums continue beating ] [ flute plays over speakers ] [ gasps, giggles ] [ speaking in Spanish, exclaiming ] YOSMEL: [ giggles, exclaims, speaks in Spanish ] ACTOR: You're all so beautiful!

Mwah!

Mwah!

Thank you!

[ classical music playing softly over headphones ] [ ♪♪♪ ] [ sings in Spanish ] This is Bola de Nieve.

[ ♪♪♪ ] [ ♪♪♪ ] MAN: You're working with colors, you know, colored glasses, you're working with all these different things.

There's people that paint or draw, but neon is a very unique type of medium.

And so, for me, I got really excited about it.

My name is David Benko, and I'm the executive director here at the National Neon Sign Museum in The Dalles, Oregon.

I saw an early piece of neon, and I kind of got fascinated by it.

I turned out to be a pretty good tube bender.

McMenamins was a really good customer of mine.

I made many, many signs for them, and that was what I ended up doing for 38 years.

[ child shouts indistinctly ] WOMAN: One day, David came home and he asked if I was interested in moving to The Dalles.

He was captivated with a building.

We looked at the building, and he had a vision immediately walking around it.

He saw what he could do with it.

"The theater is going to go here.

I'm going to have a gallery here.

I'm going to put this sign here."

So that's how we ended up in The Dalles.

DAVID: We start with a 15-minute film on how neon signs are made.

When that is over, we give a tour.

Can't tell the story of neon without acknowledging that from the 1880s to the 1920s, it was the light bulb that changed the face of downtown.

I was able to first find and then purchase Georges Claude's 1910 patent tube.

So this is the first piece of neon that ever existed in the world.

This is what many believe to be the first piece of neon manufactured in North America.

This is clear glass with pure neon gas inside of it, just pure neon.

How do you get all the different colors?

Right here, this is clear glass with blue.

Right here, this is foggy yellow.

Blue and yellow make green.

[ ♪♪♪ ] And so all of these signs that are in here originally were far more animated than they are.

And so I'm turning everything back into being just nothing but animation, and we're renaming it the Attention Deficit Gallery.

KIRSTEN: One day, a gentleman comes running through the door, and he was like, "I have something super important to tell you.

I just heard this great show on OPB."

And he said, "It's all about how the carousel still needs a home, and Restore Oregon is looking for a home."

[ ♪♪♪ ] The Jantzen Beach Carousel was a big surprise to all of us.

We got a phone call, and they said, "Congratulations, you guys are going to have a new object in your collection.

It is the Jantzen Beach Carousel, crafted by C.W.

Parker in Leavenworth, Kansas."

And we were like, "Wow, that's-- That's amazing."

There are 72 horses that are four abreast on the carousel.

It's the largest in North America.

Each of the horses are in families of four, and they are placed the largest to the smallest on the carousel.

And we have about a third of them currently in production.

[ blows ] My dad was a woodworker since I grew up.

My brother is still a woodworker here in The Dalles.

And once I've heard about this just the other day, I jumped right on it.

It took us about a year to start training a regular team.

And for us to learn too, because there wasn't anybody on the team who'd restored a carousel before.

CAMILLE: These guys are impressive.

The craftsmanship and workmanship on these ponies are phenomenal.

[ ♪♪♪ ] They're works of art as far as I'm concerned.

Kind of a national treasure.

I just feel very honored to be able to work on them and kind of restore them to their... to their beauty.

Knowing that there were so many features of this that connect back to what we're doing at the museum, helping people see that you can take something that is weathered and worn and you can make it beautiful again without losing any of the integrity that it once had.

Every single person that works on these, whether they're a child coming in to paint or a retired person coming in to sand, everybody feels like these horses are now part of their life in a different way, and that's a story, and I like that.

[ ♪♪♪ ] [ both performers shriek ] [ speaks in Spanish ] To learn more about Oregon Art Beat, visit our website... And to see what we're working on now, follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

Leading support for Oregon Art Beat is provided by Jordan Schnitzer and the Harold & Arlene Schnitzer Care Foundation Endowed Fund for Excellence... Additional support provided by... Funding for OPB arts and culture coverage is provided by... and OPB members and viewers like you.