She grew up beneath a starry dome so dance cold it she would never make it on her own, fighting fear and doubt almost every day, she broke through the smoking clouds and found her way.

You could say she's like a prairie Fire.

You could say (music) (music) (music) (music) welcome to a new season of prairie fire.

I'm your host Sarah Edwards.

we begin this episode on the subject of paper.

Now, I know paper might seem ordinary, but it's actually an art form.

And did you know that there's a place in central Illinois where you can make your own paper using a technique that's 1000s of years old.

Prairie fire's Tanisha Spain takes us on a tour of fresh press, paper, music, my name's Eric Benson.

I'm an associate professor of graphic design here at the School of Art and Design University of Illinois.

And fresh press is a studio I started 12 years ago, and here we make paper by hand out of agricultural waste from the local area.

We don't use trees, that's the big thing.

And instead, we kind of went back in time, right in terms of how people made paper back in the day.

So we're using agriculture.

So we work with the student farm here, and we're getting things like corn, rye, hemp, prairie grass, and we follow a very similar process to commercial paper making, right?

And it's on the back wall here, you can see the whole way it's done.

It's just as we do it by hand.

You we get the stuff from the field, the harvest, you might want to call it, and we have to chip it down.

Once we chip it, we can cook it, and that makes it, you know, more malleable, and we can put it in our beater here, and then we go through the pulling and pressing and drying process.

Okay, so now we're at the third step, which is beating pulp, the fibers.

And we're here with Meredith and E both studio managers, here.

So tell us a little bit about this step and what we're going to be doing and why it's important in the process.

Okay, so we've already chipped and cooked this miscanthus, which is a prairie grass, and we're going to use a Hollander beater, which macerates the pulp.

Well, it macerates the fiber and turns it into a pulp.

By using this it's like a water wheel of blades.

It'll spin around and move the Miscanthus through the machine for about, I think, two hours.

Gets us a really nice paper.

So what it's doing is opening up the fibers they've already been cooked for three hours, so that opens up the cellulose fibers and allows the papers to adhere to each other, and this is going to beat them to a pulp.

Literally, yes, literally, that's what's happening here.

Now it's my turn.

I put on my boots, gloves and apron, and gave it a shot.

Okay, so we just finished the.

Beading.

And now this we're gonna actually pull sheets of paper from this.

Yes, so you're gonna take a mold and deckle.

You might have heard like fancy paper has a deckled edge.

This is the tool that gives you that deckled edge.

So you'll hold these in your hand and dunk them into the VAT at a 45 degree angle, and then pull it straight up, and you do the little shimmy, kind of like your Yes, but first you want to hog the VAT, so you spread your fingers wide and bring them down to the bottom and shake everything up so that the fibers are evenly suspended.

Now let's see if I can get this one so we're gonna scoop toward me.

Yeah, all right, and just dunk it in and pull it right up and give it a little shake as the water drains.

That was good.

Nice.

Yeah, all right, after twisting their arms just a little, Taylor and DJ agreed to step in front of the camera to try their hand at paper, making nice.

I don't know, Tanisha, nice, that looks really good.

Once you pull your sheet of paper, you can really get creative and make it your own, adding flowers dyed pulp and even a pattern to give it some edge.

Are people surprised with all that you can do?

I think so.

I think so.

Yeah, there's always gasps of joy that happen in workshops, because I think that we're missing a lot of this analog being in touch with making and slowing down.

So, yeah, this is a moment that can bring us back in touch with that.

I also think that it's a very accessible art making technique, because you could do it at home with a dumpy blender from Goodwill, or you could do it here with this Hollander beater.

But also you can approach it and never have done it before and succeed in doing something in just one workshop.

Or you can add a lot more chemistry and do something very specific, and now we press you So Eric, you join us again for the final step.

So after you press all the water out, you bring them back here and then tell us what happens.

So we will take the wet sheets and we will layer them on these blotters and stack them up, and we'll end up putting them into the dry box where there's some fans and that that air and these cotton blotters will soak the water out, and then you can have finished and yes, the finished sheet.

Now, how long does that take once it's in the drying box?

How long does it have to stay in there?

I would say a good average would be like 12 hours.

How did you What made you want to get into this?

What brought in the farm waste, the agricultural waste?

How did these two ideas come together for you?

Well, I think it was just living in Illinois, right?

I moved here from Austin, Texas, and how do I adjust to living in the Midwest and so driving down the highway, I 57 up to Chicago, right?

You see corn and soybeans and curry grass, right?

So I just started to embrace the land and that that led me here.

I Okay, so this is your studio, right?

E and I'm looking here at all the paper here.

This looks familiar.

Looks like kind of what we just did.

It is the pulp painting.

And you were talking earlier about how you incorporate a lot of this paper, a lot of these elements, into your own art.

So tell us a little bit more about that.

Yeah, so this is the pulp painting technique that we were doing earlier, just with a larger grid.

And then I bring it into these sculptural collages, and I also incorporate so this is handmade paper and a little bit of pigmented paper from printmaking.

And these scraps that I find, these are like pieces of graffiti I've peeled off of a building.

Other found objects like rocks.

So I'm really interested in including the found objects with the paper that's also made of all of these other.

Materials.

What is your long term hope for this?

You know?

What do you what's the dream here?

I'd love to replace tree fiber paper with the type of paper that we're making.

That's a big goal.

But in the meantime, I feel like I'm a community engaged scholar, where I invite the community to the studio, and I teach them about land stewardship and paper making.

Fresh press hosts workshops and classes often.

So check out their website to learn more or plan a visit.

Thanks to producers, Taylor plantan and DJ Roach for getting in on the paper making action, and this is a little bit of what they created.

It's kind of cool, isn't it?

Speaking of getting in on the action, I decided recently to challenge myself to a 67 mile bike ride.

Am I crazy, maybe, but it was well worth it for the scenery.

Here come along with me for the ride.

It's 8:45am Welcome to pedal the preserves.

Over the next 24 hours, I am going to bike a total of 67 miles from here in St Joe at Meier field to the middle fort campground, and then back here again tomorrow, we're going to camp overnight.

I'm going to document the entire journey.

This is a great way to see the beauty of the forest preserves here in Champaign County.

I am going to do that with a 360 degree camera in the back of my bike and two GoPros here in the front and maybe a drone.

I am excited because I'm about the only person riding on a 1970s Raleigh bike with very little biking experience, and everybody else looks like pros.

What could possibly go wrong?

I ask you, we'll find out.

I'll see you at home run Lake.

That's our first stop.

I don't mind saying I roll up.

It a roll up.

Stretch my back and legs, pedal.

The preserves is an opportunity, really, to showcase so many of our wonderful preserves to the bicycling community.

It's a way to get people that ride bikes to see some of our spaces that perhaps they haven't seen before, and it shows them how to get to our spaces on bicycle.

The ride started on the Kickapoo Rail Trail, which extends 24 miles from East Urbana to Kickapoo State Park in Vermillion County.

It passes through some of the most diverse ecosystems in East Central Illinois, like woodlands, prairie and wetlands.

We had 75 people pre registered, 95 total registered for this weekend.

And it's a combination of anything from choose your distance.

You can ride a mile or 220, about 35 about 65 up to about 85 miles.

So I chose the 67 mile route, which maybe wasn't the best choice for a novice cyclist, I quickly found myself left in the dust on the county roads, but that's okay.

I was enjoying the scenery.

Biking really gives you a chance to notice the beauty of Illinois crops as they near the end of their growing season, and the architecture of farmhouses and homes in the area, but there were miles to go, and I was only approaching my first stop.

Welcome to Homer lake.

We made it.

We all made it.

I made it seven miles.

It felt more like 50.

I'm not going to worry about that part of it.

It's going to be fine.

This is a beautiful forest preserve in Champaign County.

It has a wonderful lake.

As you can see here.

There's an interpretive center where you can see lots of wild animals, raccoons, snakes.

You can get a feel for the kind of wildlife.

Here at Homer lake, there is a beautiful natural playscape for kids, which I bring my kids here all the time to play on that with a waterfall and all sorts of things.

So we I've learned some bike etiquette on the way here, always wave at your fellow bikers, because they're always waving.

Everybody.

All the bikers wave at each other, and also look on the ground for the Route Markers, because they all, they're all They're all painted on the ground.

Anyway, we're on to Royal which is a teeny, tiny town, and it's about 11 miles away, and I'm going right now, goodbye.

I have miles to cover.

No sooner had I left Homer Lake Forest Preserve than I busted something important.

This intersection here is the scene of the great 360 degree camera crash.

I rounded the corner and the 360 degree camera popped right off the back, and now Dan and Taylor are trying to figure out how to fix it.

Mostly.

Dan, how you doing?

Dan, is it gonna work?

Dan, okay, and then off we go into the distance towards Royal.

Royal.

Proved to be quite a trick.

Another 13 miles from Homer Lake, I quickly ran out of water, huffing and puffing through the countryside, so I stopped to hydrate with a peach day one, halfway through, which is when Taylor, the producer, informed me that you pedal about 42 miles of the journey the first day and the remaining 25 or so on day two, that's when I may have done just a little whining.

I don't like that, all right.

I better get started.

Then it is going to be midnight.

Let's fast forward just a little through this part of the trip.

I think I see royal in the distance and get to the finish line of day one, the Middle Fork River Forest Preserve.

It's the only Forest Preserve in Champaign County that offers overnight camping and a beach with sand and swimming.

But the most spectacular attraction can only be seen at night.

Middle Fork River Forest Reserve in particular, is a huge tourist draw, because we are the only International Dark Sky Park in the entire state of Illinois.

So we get people from all over the country, all over the world, I'm sure, as well as the state of Illinois, coming to enjoy the skies where there's not light pollution.

So you can see the stars.

You can see things that you can't see when you're in the city.

Day one is over.

It's been a very long day.

It's been a wonderful trek, and I'm exhausted.

I'm going to bed Good night.

I After a little breakfast with my fellow fast bikers, I hit the road for a much shorter day too.

Okay, all right, so I didn't make it the whole 67 miles, but the chance to get quality exercise and really take in the beauty of the forest preserves and the countryside was the real point anyway, right?

Having these kinds of spaces that are a little bit wild, they're green, they are so important both to help the health of the Earth, but also really to help the health of all of us.

You've probably heard stories and some studies over the last few years about the importance of getting out into nature and how that helps your physical and your mental health, both and we feel responsible to provide that for the community, because they're not going to always get it anywhere else.

Well, I'm back.

It's been tiring, I have to be honest, but it has been such a wonderful experience and such a great way to see the beauty of Champaign County and the forest preserves, and I've made a lot of new friends with swarms of sweat flies, and it's been really, really a wonderful trip.

Thanks for coming with me.

Now that was tons of fun.

You can check with your County Forest Preserve for similar programs throughout the year.

Now we're going to take you to the small town of forrest Illinois, where a guy named Jerry with a passion for collecting hats and pens and all sorts of other stuff has created quite a jaw dropping Museum in an old church, no less.

Welcome to Jerry's hat Museum here in Forrest, Illinois.

Come on in and take a gander.

I started collecting hats, and it's turned into numerous collections of pens and pencils and memorabilia from the area.

I had a man cave in my house, and I just thought I'd start hanging hats on the ceiling to kind of hide the rafters and stuff, you know, wasn't finished, and it kind of got out of control, so I ended up with my basement full, and then I filled the garage up, and they were stacking up, so I found this building and converted it over to a museum.

Right now I have hanging up.

I have 16,844 hats, and I have 33,000 pens and pencils.

So it's grown quite a bit.

When I bought the building once and got it fixed up, I started with the hats on the ceiling in here.

Hung all them by hand with a hand stapler.

When I was done with all the high stuff.

That's when I built the walls and I got all the rest of it with a stepladder.

When I get about 100 hats, I start my compressor and I hang hats for the day.

You know, I am running out of room, so I'm not sure how many I'm gonna get, but I will get 17,000 you.

These are some of the pens that I've collected, Aaron pencils.

This is kind of my favorite pencil here all these boards, each pen is done individually, one at a time.

Takes me about an hour and a half to do a four foot board like this.

I have to do them one at a time, so I've got quite a few hours in here.

People would call me, and ended up, I get a lot of memorabilia from the area.

People have old records and stuff, and they have no place to put them or so they call me up and I display them.

I got, I don't know how many cases down there, dozen or so.

And I display all this memorabilia and stuff from the area, schools, different records from the towns and all I got records that go back to the 1800s it's kind of become a town thing where if they're moving or going to the old folks home, I get their leftovers.

Pictures.

Don't do it justice.

You have to come in and walk in the door and see it, I think.

And a lot of people tell me that, but I just thought it would be a fun place to come to.

And no, I can't.

Nobody else has one like this.

It's just a lot of people.

They come from all over the world.

I just hope they enjoy it.

I mean, I just when they say, oh my goodness, this is just neat.

That makes my day.

I was worthwhile doing it.

I love showing it off.

And it's just like I say, I have no idea why I came up with this idea of doing this, but I just think it looks great, and it's something you don't see, and when people come and enjoy it, I enjoy so when we began the show, we wanted to create a theme song that invoked both the beauty of this part of the world and the tough, innovative and creative spirit of Illinoisans and the Midwest.

We were very fortunate to have the artist Leah Marlene record the theme song for us.

Leah was the third place winner on season 20 of American Idol, and she's also a native of normal Illinois.

She joins us here in our studio for a special performance to sing it for us with her band.

Thank you so much, Leah, for being here.

Thanks for having me.

You have just finished up a major tour, have you not?

Yes.

Tell me about that.

A bunch of a bunch of tours kind of mushed together, but I've been opening up for some lovely acts on the road for the past few months, and it's been great.

And tell us.

Do you have any upcoming releases?

Tell us what we can expect from you soon.

You can expect probably a lot of things on social media, but a hiatus, you know, everywhere, everywhere else, I am kind of going to go back into a creative phase for the rest of the year.

I've been doing a lot of business stuff and a lot of front facing things this whole year, so it's time to really get in the creative gear and make some music for the next project.

Excellent.

All right.

Without further ado, here's Leah Marlene singing prairie fire.

You she grew up beneath the starry Dawn souls and scolded she would never make it on her own, fighting fear and doubt most every day, she broke through the smoking clouds and found her way.

You could say she's like a prairie fire, soaring spirit, riding on flames of desire.

If you feel a burning deep down in your soul tonight, Prairie Fire is the name you'll know.

Oh, look how you light the midnight sky.

Eerie of the danger and promise of the dark, searching for her, waiting for that spark.

For once, the fire was lit.

She was not the same, a young and restless heart.

No one could ever you could say she's like a prayer fire a sore and spear riding on the flames of her desire.

If you feel a burning in your soul tonight, Prairie Fire is the name.

Look how you light the midnight sky.

Prairie Fire to love.

Down to the thirsty with the swirling wind.

Praises.

You could say she's like.

You could say she's like.

You could say she's like if you feel a burning in your soul tonight, Prairie Fire, his name, you'll know the midnight sky.

Wow.

Thank you guys, you.