jewelry diamond wholesale

(woman) "prairie mosaic" is funded by-- the minnesota artsand cultural heritage fund, with money from the voteof the people of minnesota on nov. 4th, 2008; the north dakota councilon the arts; and by the membersof prairie public. [bass, drums, and acousticguitar play in bright rhythm] hi, i'm bob dambach,and welcome to "prairie mosaic," a patchwork of storiesabout the people and places

that contributeto the arts, culture, and history in our region. on this edition, we'll heara traditional story from a world-renowneddakota-hidatsa story teller, visit a working mill, and hearthe thought-provoking music of a local performer. artist cathy sutton's workstrongly reflects the nature that surrounds her homeand studio on winnipeg beach. [string quartetplays classical music]

(cathy)i do one-of-a-kind jewelry. i havea very short attention span; i don't want to domore than one. earrings are tough;i make one then i'vegot to make another one! alright, i'm going to lightthis dangerous torch. it's just reallya plumber's torch, but i find it works really well,and it's good and hot. so now, i'm going to gently heat up this copper.

i like to use precious metals, so i use silverand copper and gold, and my designs are generallyorganic in nature, so i have rounded edgesfor the most part; there aresome squares and so on. i like to make sure that theyare very unique looking, and really high quality in theconstruction. so i'm pretty carefulwith how they're made, but the look is always uniqueand always different,

and just a lot of fun. it's exciting, eh? it startedabout 3, 3-1/2 years ago, i took a lampworkglassmaking class. and i really enjoyed it;it was a lot of fun. and i like the idea of the beads being small; they didn't take up a lot ofspace, and they were useful, you couldmake things out of them.

unlike some of the other artthat i've done in the past, where they're big things. the beads are nice and small and i enjoyed making them, then, once i hada bunch of these beads, i started thinking, well i'vegot to do something with them. so i started making beadedbracelets and necklaces and earrings using silver andusing brass and using copper, and that led to gettinga little more involved,

starting solderingmy rings together so they were more secureand not going to come apart. and then i startedworking with sheet metal, so sheet sterling, sheet copper,and after that, it just transposed into gold andthe sky is kind of the limit. i would say natureis a big influence. i find alot of the pieces ioare earthy colors, because i usecopper and silver and gold. so they're very earthy colors.

my designs tend to benatural shapes. i used my lampwork glassthat i make that tends to bereally organic as well. i like to useamber colors, and i like to use gemstones such as agates and jaspersand labradorite. it's a beautiful stone; it makesme think of the northern lights, it's just gorgeous stone and you turn it and it gives

beautiful lines and shimmers. they're all from the earth,so my designs kind of fit with those kind of stones. there's other thingsthat influence too. i once made a piece of jewelrybased on a chair, the lines of a chair,the back of a chair. i loved the way the lines moved,so i built a piece of jewelry that, in my mind,represented those lines. so you never knowwhere your inspirationis going to come from,

it's just all around youall the time. and i'm piling uplittle bits of sterling silver. often i'll be justlying in bed, being lazy, not wanting to get upin the morning, and i'll think ofa million different things about what i could makefor jewelry, different designs. then i will draw them out,pretty quickly, i'll just put them down on paper,basically what i want to do. you can see it'sstarting to get really hot.

i'm torturing that copper! then i'll refine them, and i maydraw one sketch 15 times, refining the different linesand so on. once i've done that,then i come out here, and i startto make the piece of jewelry. there it goes, silver is meltingand becoming a puddle. i let myself play with it, so it kind of takes a lifeof its own on at that point. oh, burned through,and that's okay too,

'cause i'll dothe other one the same way. the next step for this is, it's got to gointo what we call pickle. i'm pretty particular with it,so it's got to really feel good. i like the feel of my jewelry, 'cause that'sa big part of jewelry, it's got to feel really good. alright, so i'm just going tohammer this a little bit to give it a convex surface.

i found i would come out hereand start working, and before i knew it,it was getting dark. so it was 6, 7 hoursthat i hadn't moved, just sitting at my benchmaking jewelry and just loving every momentof it; it's just so addictive. my studio is at winnipeg beach. it was formerly a bunkhouse and my dad had built itwhen i was 12. it's got a lot of storiesif these walls could talk.

this is a polishing wheelthat i'm using. as time went on,and we inherited the cottage, we decided that it would be a really nice communityto live in, so we rebuilt the cottageinto a house and moved down herefive years ago. and we haven't looked back;it's wonderful! mary louise defender-wilson grew up in a family ofdakotah/hidatsa storytellers

on the standing rockreservation in north dakota. today she'll tell usa story about "the womanwho turned herself into stone." [wooden flute plays] (mary louise)i live in a rural area from a villagecalled porcupine, which is 30 miles westof fort yates, north dakota. i've liveda long time; i was bornin 1930,

and i thinkduring that time i should have learned something, and i should be ableto use that. i guess some of my recollections go back to sittingon top of this hill, which is to southof where our house was. my grandfatherwas born in 1845 and he lived till i was 7, and i can remembersitting up there on that hill

because we herdedour sheep every day. it wasn't like nowwhere you turned them loose and you didn'tpay attention to them. we herded them every day and brought them backto the corral every night, and of course,we had dogs that helped us. and some of the thingsi remember is him talking about something,something in the environment that maybe to me could have beeninsignificant at the time,

but he would tell about itand would sometimes do things and build little structureswith sticks and the earth. because of my grandfather's age, older peoplealways came to visit. i was really intoreally telling stories, but i always thought all mylife, these people are so wise and they havesuch profound thinking. and they would tell, we have two kinds of stories,the ohunkankan ,

which are morelike what in english you would say mystical events, and the others thenwere wicooyake, accounts of the people,which would be like our history. usually the men would tell kindof like the historical things, and the women told the moremysterious kind of things that they used to teach us with. and at the timeyou hear the stories, you don't think aboutthe valuable lessons,

or maybe you don't evenunderstand it or think about it. but after you get older,then you realize that there's a wealth of wisdom,knowledge, you know, like philosophythat you'll have for your life. "the woman who turned herselfto stone," she went through all of heryears, she got to be a teenager. and then her family beganto think that she should have her own family and live in her own lodge.

and they begin to talkto her about that, but, [speaks dakotah] "i'm going to live in adifferent way," she said. but they insisted and theyarranged a marriage for her because she was a very desirableperson, a hard worker, kind, all thethings we value. so shemarried this man and went to livein her own lodge. then she came back and grandmasaid, [speaks dakotah]

"goodness," she said,"isn't he good to you?" [speaks dakotah] "grandmother," she said, "he'sa fine man, treats me very well, "but i told you, i'm not meantto live like everybody else." and she left the lodge. it got to be toward evening,she didn't return, and grandma got concerned. she said, "she's not back, kindof bad, she's not like that, "she should come back."she never came back.

the next morning thengrandma said, "we have to go search for her." so she gathered all theirrelatives and friends and they went off in the fourdirections to search for her. getting toward eveningand there's this little hill and grandma said,[speaks dakotah] "that's my grandchild."she was so happy; "i can tell because she issitting properly." so she ran up the hill and sheembraced her granddaughter.

she could feelthat her hip felt like stone. "grandchild, what's wrong withyou, what's happening to you? "we'll take you backto the village "and maybesomebody can help you. "you feel like you're stone." "grandmother," she said,"i told you, "i am supposed to livein a different way, "and i'm turning myselfto stone, "so i can stay out here forever,

"and all of these creaturesthat i think a lot of, "will all come by me. "the coyote will come byand maybe rub up against me. "and the birds will comeand sit around me." she namedall the creatures and "because i think that theyreally are powerful "and they're so good,so i'm going to become stone. "but before i come stone, i'mgoing to tell you something. "if you ever have troubles,problems,

"bring me something that hasa root and put it beside me. "tell me what it is thatyou're having difficulty with, "and if i can, i will help you." she said thatand she turned to stone, and that's the end of the story. pickwick mills houses thelargest flour mill in minnesota. it's styleand rich history captures the fascination of peoplefrom all over the world. we're on the sixth floorof the pickwick mill,

which is a restoredflour grinding mill. this is the largest onein the state of minnesota that has been restored, and itwas also one of the first commercial businessesin the state of minnesota. they actually got the millrunning in '58 and they had five employeesand their annual payroll was $3,000 a year for the five. they used to grind flour for the union army and

they ground 100 barrels a day, 24 hours a day. it was constructed withlocal timber and local stone. it was put together with nonails; a lot of the big beams are all notched and put togetherwith wooden pegs. and down on the fourth floor and fifth floor, there's an iron tie barthat runs through from one side of the buildingto the other,

and that tie bar has got a turnbuckle in the middleto tighten it up, and that's what held the building togetherwhen they were building it. down onthe third floor there's a scaleand a hopper, and they unloaded their graininto that hopper and it was weighed.once they weighed it, they opened a dooron the bottom of that hopper. everything wentto the bottom floor here,

and there's bucket conveyers that carried everythingall the way up to the top floor and then it goesacross a wooden auger over here and then it startsits journey back down. it depended on which way theywanted to go with it, and it had to make the tripback and forth more than once. when they used grinding stones it actually had to makethe trip about four times. when they used the roller mill,it just had to come up

and go down to whichever millthey wanted, then it got sifted outand then they had their flour. back during the war years,a lot of that equipment out of some of these mills got scrappedout for metal for the war. we were fortunate this onedid not get that death, mainly because they were stillgrinding livestock feed here. the equipment was here. if we didn't have that,we wouldn't have anyplace to start,because you can't get it.

this building was in really badshape and they were going to tear it down,but some of the local families go way back to whenthis building was built, so they had a desire to save it. that's why they formedpickwick mill incorporated and we've worked on it since1980, getting it restored. we've got it to the point now that when we have groupsand bus tours, we do run all the machinery on all sixfloors with the waterwheel.

the waterwheel itself,we built that in '96, that is 4 feet wide,it's 20 feet high. when it's loadedand working heavy, each one of those steps willhold 240 pounds of water. they had draggedthe old wheel out about the turn of the century, and they put a water turbineout there, because that wouldn't freeze up as badin the wintertime as the wheel. but when we started to restore,they took the water turbine out

because peopledon't want to see that, they want to seea wheel going around. so we got the plans from thenational organization of mills on how to build a waterwheel,and we built it right back here, and that's where we getall of the leverage to run all the machineryon all six floors. we just run everythingfor display purposes. we do not grind; if we did,every mouse in the country would probably knowabout it! [laughs]

we get a lot ofschoolkids in here and we do get people in herefrom all over the world. but if you speak slowlyand use your hands, we usually get by pretty good. a little overa month ago, we had an international group herefrom six different countries. that's all they do isgo around and tour mills. the best part was when theysent us a thank-you note, they sent it in sixdifferent languages! [laughs]

it's done with volunteersand donations. we've got 240 members; i try to keepvolunteers lined up because we're open six days a week hereduring the summer. we do have several local people that do volunteerto help us out. the nameson all the steps and risers are people that have donated $100 towards the mill.

it's just a way of saying thanks for doing it. brenda weilerfrom fargo, north dakota chose the open roadover college. this path has lead to 5critically acclaimed albums. this is a song offof my first album; it's called "trickle down." there was thisgirl that i knew she stood when straightabout five foot two

she had big bones but a bodythat could knock 'em dead and she'd reel them in then change her mindand reel 'em back again yeah i knew this girla long time ago and she'd sit you downto talk around all the things shewanted you to know she'd trickle down youall around you so you couldn'tlet her go you couldn't let her go

and i'd fire awayand she'd listen as i'd ramble in her ear and i found strengthin her reason oh i found myselfin her dear and everyone will lookeveryone will judge don't look awaydon't let them see you judge and i'll trickle down youall around you so you canlet them go you canlet them go

and i'd fire away and she'd listen and i won't lookand i won't judge if you don't breakif you don't budge and they'll trickle down youall around you you can let them go let them golet them go let them go let them go let them golet them go yeah

let them go no no no let them go nooh yeah oh no yeah no no no no yeah yeah my name is brenda weiler, and i was born and raisedin fargo, north dakota. i grew up here,i went to school here and really became involved withmusic from a fairly young age.

both of my parentsare very musical. my d has a doctorate in musicand choral performance, and my mom is a singer, so we grew up just surroundedby music. i had 7 siblings, andwe all played instruments, some of us multiple instruments,and we all sang, so really grew up saturatedwith music and the arts. i really didn't startactually playing guitar until i think, my senior yearin high school.

i ended up kind of forminga band with my boyfriend and other friends,and we ended up opening for richie havensat the fargo theatre, and it was just sort ofa weird way that it happened, but that really kind of gave methe bug i guess, of performing. i can't really-- i definitelyremember that moment. it was pretty, kind ofmonumental at that age to be able to play to asold-out crowd at the theater and then be able totalk to richie havens.

that was just sort ofa big deal. i moved to the twin cities,i started recording albums-- it just sort ofsnowballed really. it was kind ofa dream of mine, but i never thought it wouldactually happen in the sense that i couldmake a living off of it and travel and tourand record. [playing a fast syncopated beat] i want to exchangeall of my clothing

and all of my jewelryand all that i own somehow i want to eraseall of my memories and all of the moments and all of the noiseand sound i wanna fake i'm blind i wanna walk lame i wannabe a star all of these thingsi'd be i wanna rearrangeall of the furniture

and all of the silverware and all of the arton the walls and i wanna leave out all of the stories and all of the buildings and all of the treesin the ground i wanna be a star all of these thingsi'll be i wanna walk away

i wanna be as far from all of these things i see i wanna exchangeall of my clothing somehow thank you for joining us for this editionof "prairie mosaic." if you know of an artist, a topic, or an organizationin our region

that you think might make aninteresting segment, please contact us at... for "prairie mosaic,"i'm bob dambach. (woman) "prairie mosaic"is funded by: the minnesota artsand cultural heritage fund, the north dakotacouncil on the arts;