Hi, good afternoon everybody and welcome. My name is Dave Girtz. I'm the media technology specialist from Lindberg Elementary. And this afternoon we're having a broadcast live from Lindberg Elementary School where artist Charles Capsner to my right is in the middle of doing the fresco the uh fresco that's going to be painted in the next
few years here at Lindberg Elementary School. The subject of this fresco is the history of Morrison County. And we have a class right now, Mr. Wagner's 8th grade fifth hour art class who's watching us. They're behind me right here. They're going to be asking some questions as we go on today, we hope. But I'm going to be talking with Charles
Capner. We have Jeff Siolowski who's a subject here. And uh Diane, if you pan to camera number four. Look at Jeff sitting there. Jeff's of Alaska of course is world famous at Little Falls. He does everything from fly fishing to selling sporting goods and rides motorcycles
too. But uh Jeff is the subject of Charles's next drawing on the fresco. And I'm going to show you some other drawings that Chuck has been doing for the Fresco. But first of all, for those of you that don't know, this is Charles Capsner. He's over to my right. Hello. And he is the fresco artist. And Charles, can you explain a little bit
first of all about fresco in general for the audience? In general, what it is, it's a type of wall painting where you paint into fresh plaster each day with a water-based pigment. So, ahead of time, we have to have all of our studies, drawings put together, large scale cartoons which are traced and transferred onto the wall.
And as I mentioned, there's a fresh piece of plaster laid each day, which we then paint into. What we start that day, we have to finish that day. And if we don't finish, we have to cut out what is not finished. And we bevel away the excess plaster each day so we can control, you know, the drying times, etc.
Now, the fresco, we're going to show you the fresco in just a few seconds, but right now, Charles, I'd like you to explain what you're doing with Jeff here as part of this fresco. First, give us a little history of the fresco that we're doing right now up in the in the performing arts center and why Jeff is here today. Okay. Well, first off, to backtrack for
a second, we have completed the first third of this fresco, which is called beginnings. and it really talks about what brought us here to central Minnesota, in particular, Little Falls, the river. So, we have the Mississippi River depicted. We also have the dam which generates the electricity uh for
this area and surrounding communities. And then a cast of characters that were sort of the early settlers of this area, Native American culture, fur trading, the lumberjack, agriculture, engineering, nursing, education. And so there's sort of the the stoic characters
that that elements that brought us here. In the center will be a staircase which there'll be another group of people roughly 12 to 15 different individuals representing some of the different nationalities that settled in this area along with some of the enterprises that go on today that keep this a very
thriving and healthy community. Uh what Mr. Zilowski Jeff is doing right now. He is modeling as one of our Polish representatives and also is demonstrating how to tie fly lures or fly casting lures. And so sporting
fishing is something that is very popular here in uh central Minnesota. So what I have here is actually drawing number two which uh we started today which is a portrait. Can you see it? Do I need to There it is. It's beautiful right there. So this is what we're working on today. Yesterday we did a a sketch which
actually uh was the full pose itself. Can you flash? I'll show you that. You bet. If you uh flash over. Is that what they're looking at now? I'm looking at right now. Okay. The one down below. We're going to get that one of Jeff. It's a beauty. Just like a trophy bass. It's a trophy
and he's on the wall. So that's how we start. I have to first come up with an idea for the pose. And so that was yesterday. just a quick compositional sketch of the pose itself. Now, today we're working on the details for the portrait. So, if you want to actually pan back a little bit and get
all those drawings, there we go. We can show you. Okay, here we go. What we see are the four drawings, four drawings that have been worked on for the center section. Right now, to the left is a portrait of Mr. Bill Angelos. You can see him there. That's Mr. Angelos. He will not be joining us today
until unless a miracle comes with FedEx. Okay. And as you move to the right now, you can see there was the quick compositional drawing that I had done of him. From that, we then got a bit more of a detailed drawing. So from that, I can blow up to the large scale. If you move again now to the right, you will
see the staircase itself. That is the center section of the fresco. I'd like to add that that was uh done last year by my associate Roger Nelson, who's very uh qualified to do architectural renderings, etc. And this is the staircase and steps from Our Lady of
Lords. And it's in my uh estimation also it's a very beautiful uh piece of architecture in Little Falls that will be the centerpiece. And it's also a tribute to the school of Athens, a fresco done by Raphael back in the 1500s. Now, as you're talking, we can just tell with the fresco that we're doing here at
Lindberg, this is not just a piece of artwork. It is definitely a piece of history, too. Correct. And I just like to go into that in a minute about how this is going to tie into our curriculum at Lindberg Elementary School. But for you being a native Little Falls person, how does this tie into what you understand about Little Falls?
Well, actually for myself too, I'm learning a lot about my own community and background. Obviously, we had to do some research to to know what was going to be put on the wall. Now, I must say that I'm here first off to create a work of art as an educational tool. So, in
doing so, I cannot depict every scene or every event that occurred in Little Falls or central Minnesota. So we have to take certain elements that are then portrayed and the symbolic mention or presence of them for instance will tie into all of the stories. So if you tap into our website you will for instance
when it comes to the individual characters like the river for instance there'll be a whole essay on the river history of the river. There's also one on the city itself. So we'll be having a full photographic documentation and text on the city and all the different cast of characters that are in this fresco.
I tell you what I see Mrs. Ratslop over there in the corner trying to hide. I'm going to bring Mrs. Ratzoff up. I do want to say that u Mr. Wagner from the middle school has been very gracious and donating class time to have you kids come and see this too. But Mrs. Ratzoff, come on over here for a second so we can explain what's going on with
the curricular ties for the fresco. And come on this side. Ties. Well, yes, it's nice to see some of my former students here. They were here, the kids who went to Lindberg were here when the first fresco was painted. So, it's really nice to see you back and it's so great to have the middle school teachers
bringing everybody back to see this. It's just wonderful. Now, can you tell us about the uh curricular ties to the fresco that we have here in the district, not just at Lindberg Elementary? Right. Well, we have we've written a package um for the graduation standards,
um preparatory standards so that we can introduce kids to the art of fresco. And um by doing that, we're just trying to teach them the steps in the technique, what what's the difference between a fresco and a and a regular wall painted
mural. Um they get to see what it's like to actually have to paint on a piece of plaster. Um it's a lot different than painting on a drywall. Um and and they just kind of find out the the different parts of a fresco. Uh we talk about the
wall as the support and then we learn about the cartoon um which Mr. Capsner is working on right now, the sketches and all the preparatory planning and drawing from models and portraits getting ready for the actual painting. And we call that part the color when the
um actual color is put onto the wall. So we kind of do it in three stages of that so that hopefully kids will understand what fresco is and someday um if they get to travel and they go places where there are fresco they'll understand the
art and appreciate it a lot more. One thing too that we did with the fresco here uh this is a depiction of Morrison County history. The second graders did a program with Mrs. Dawson the music teacher right with the fresco as the basis for the program. And can you explain that a little bit? Sure. We've been using the subjects in
the fresco as topics in in social studies and in history learning about our county. So for instance, the second graders this year wrote songs about the railroad. They wrote songs about the lumberjacks. They wrote songs about the farmer and they wrote songs about uh
paddling your birch canoe down the river and they were all inspired by the figures in the fresco. So this way, music is also um one of the arts that that kids can use to express what they've learned about the beginning of our county.
And there you can see the figures on the fresco that Charles did last year. He finished most of the figures and the next part that he's doing right now are the additional people that show the ethnicity of our community. Nancy, a couple other things. You've got something in your hands. Well, I did I
would I just thought this would be an opportunity to explain to you and and I think all the kids at the middle school will be getting these, too. And people in the community um need to understand that the fresco at Lmberg School have all been paid for by private donations
and uh through grants that we didn't spend one penny of tax money to pay for these fresco. And we're getting to the point where we need to raise funds again now to to do the middle part of the fresco. And we I think this is a really
cool idea. I think this is going to be a lot of fun. It's a fun way for people in the community to get involved and take some ownership on these beautiful pieces of art. And what we're going to do is u make available one square foot of the fresco for a
sponsorship. And that means you can sponsor one square foot for $25. And you can see all the square feet I on the grid. I'll get that. It's in camera. There are some squares on the camera. See that? Right there. They're all 12 in squares. And I think
there are like 700 I remember. There's a lot of square feet in this. I'm not sure exactly where it says if you multiply 18 by 41. Exactly. 728 square feet. Oh, good. Thank you. There they are right there. Now, what we're going to do is um if anybody is
interested and would like to be part of this, they can sponsor one square foot for $25 and their name will be on a plaque. When we're completely when the fresco is all finished, we'll have a grided plaque and their name will go in
that square. Now, the plaque of course is going to be maybe one inch square. I'm not sure what size like that, but their name will go in that. And if a family would like to sponsor a block for each one of their children or if you have a special person you'd like to sponsor a block for, you can do that and
you can have your name on the plaque. And then the other thing that that I understand they're going to do is um when the fresco is all completed, the names of the people that are donating are going to be put on a list. And let's say if you are the 50th person on the
list, you get to actually pick the square foot that you would like to sponsor. You'll get the 50th choice. So, it's going to be kind of first come first serve as far as what maybe you would like to sponsor that uh part of
this the cloud or part of Mr. Jacobson's nose or Mr. Wagner I'm sure is going to sponsor his mug over there. That's how many hundreds of dollars is that? That's got to be worth a lot. That's big time. He's selling it off. He's kind of making
selling it off. Right. Right. So, these are going to be in the Morrison County Record. And they're also going to be sent home from our schools and we're going to be passing them out at some of our music concerts and kids can bring them home. And anybody's interested, we'd love to
see us reach the goal where all 728 are sponsored. Then this local that we receive from people. Even though it's it's $25, it means a lot because it means that our community is backing this artwork. And then when we ask
corporations and foundations for money, they see that that that they have the community support and then we can raise large amounts of money. Now, Charles, while you're here, too, while NY's here, uh, this fresco is unique as far as you know, in schools in
Minnesota. To the best of my knowledge, possibly during the WPA program, there was a lot of fresco painting going on in this area, um, all throughout the country. So, there may have been at that time something in some obscure little school somewhere or something. I know, for
instance, that the Long Prairie Post Office has a fresco in it that was done in the 30s. And I'm sorry I can't remember the name of the lady who had painted it, but she was quite popular with the Department of Interior did a lot of post offices around the country. And I only found this out because I had
given a talk out there back in um about four or five years ago. And someone asked us, "Do you think the mural in our post office is at fresco?" And I says, "Well, I have no idea." And he said, "Well, we had to have some people especially come up from the cities and look at it and clean it." Went over there and sure enough, there it was. So it is a unique art form for well for
anybody and especially us here. Now, you did one more fresco downstairs for us, correct? Charles Lindberg, right? That was in 1993. 1994. Yes. And uh you kids probably remember that, we hope, because Mr. Fresco did a lot of things with that fresco during its inception through the
whole building process. And now it's a beautifully enclosed fresco that people can view for time eternal. Uh well, Nancy, thank you very much. You bet. You bet. Take this so you don't rip me off here. Have fun. Thank you. See you later. Now, we're going to continue for a
second. I've got to just move this camera for a second and get back on this. Okay. Uh, we're going to talk a little bit about this project that you're doing with Jeff Zaloski. So, do you have any questions that you'd like to ask about, uh, what's going on here today with this drawing? I know Mr. Wagner was looking
at some of the things that Charles was doing, looking at his pencils, asking about that. Any questions that you have that I can relay to our audience of thousands out there today? Thousands. Now, don't make me stand here without questions. Yes. Go ahead. How long is it going to take you to
finish this? How long is it going to take him to finish this? Uh, well, uh, the center section I'd like to see completed by the, uh, middle of October, somewhere in that area. So, all summer long, I will spend uh, doing drawings like this of Mr. Zilowski and and other people that are coming in from
the community. I guess I'd like to also mention one of the most unique uh things about the fresco here is all of the people that are depicted are from the community. So there's involvement that way as far as the different people that are in the first section and those that will be in the center. There's roughly
like I said 12 to 15 here on the far left hand side which is not uh scheduled to be painted until next year will be sort of a celebration of the arts. So there'll be like, you know, painters, musicians, dancers, writers, whatnot. And again, people from the community and a large building that the fresco team
will be painting painting. And on the side of that building will be a whole sort of uh architectural uh festa, so to speak, of all the more famous landscapes of central Minnesota. So, you know, again, as I mentioned, we're trying to bring in as many different um things as
possible into this fresco. And then on the uh website, you can read more about all of the information. And our hopes eventually would be to have a book which would probably as we're looking at it now be the hard copy as as I guess they refer to it of the whole project or of the website so people could come in read
all about Little Falls see all of the great things there are to come here to see visit in central Minnesota you know where to bring those outside dollars in and spend in this community in this community. That's right. We're really pushing for the the tourist end of things also in addition to educationally the impact that this is having on different people.
And uh we have done uh well last week we did two live remotes, interactive remotes I might add, up to just north of Winnipeg and of course today we're doing uh live uh TV in town. And this fall when we begin work, actual work itself, we will be doing live remotes around the
country to some different connections that we're establishing right now in some colleges and other schools. So we can almost have a daily classroom situation that will be going out to other places. We're talking this is at least a three-year project. We know for sure. And this phase that you see, if you could switch the camera over there,
Diana, that phase was completed last spring. And Charles, since you were talking about the local connection, do you want to go through who some of these people are? I mean, I don't know if we have a copyright on these faces, but I see Mr. Wagner there. Look at him over in the corner. And here he is. Here he is in the live flesh.
In the flesh. Well, we have Who are these people? Just so the community can uh maybe get to know some of these people. Well, to start on the left here, we have uh Nancy Sakala, who is the uh Indian maiden, so to speak. She also is an artist and uh travels around the country selling her wares.
And then uh Dr. Carrie Jacobson, the agricult representing agriculture, the farmer. Kim West is the educator behind the the train engineer who is my friend Michael Cretchie who's been very interested in trains all of his life. And we have um Pette Pap who is uh representing the uh the nursing the
school of nursing and just all of what that uh has brought to our community. Then Mr. Wagner, John Wagner is the fur trading and then Mike Gammon is the lumberjack. And Mike is a friend of yours from uh from high school days, right? He's from Swanville. Correct. And uh bottom corner, I'm just going to
pan down to this. And there is of course Charles Capser. Well, and since you mentioned that, that also is a piece of history in regards personal history, not because of of me, but because of who painted it. And uh I actually started working with fresco back in 1974 in Florence, Italy, where I did study art
from 1973 to 1981. And um at that time, I met an an artist from North Carolina, Mr. Ben Long, who I did study and apprentice with in fresco technique. And he came here last spring for about five days after I had done the full-scale drawing. And I said, "Well, Ben, we painted fresco in Italy. We painted them
in North Carolina. Uh, you've been to Minnesota, but you've not painted anything up here." So, we got Mr. Long to come up and paint that particular piece in the fresco. So, that really meant a lot to me that it my whole education kind of has gone full circle where my teacher in fresco technique
came to Little Falls and did paint on the wall. So, my PhD dissertation being looked at here, so to speak. You better pass. Exactly. It's great. Now, Charles, back to Jeff over here who's been so patient to sit with us this whole time. Yes. Uh, how does Jeff tie in as far as the
Morrison County history goes in? Well, again, we're talking about the different uh nationalities that settled here and obviously the rings of Alaski does ring Polish for all of uh those in the listening audience. And again, there'll be quite a cast there as far as the French, German, etc. And uh that's
where Jeff comes into play. Jeff and I um actually had some well we went to high school together so we're classmates graduating in 1970 and we were laughing yesterday about some of the things we used to do in the art room and that we were involved in film CLA we did our own
black and white filming uh developing of things back in 1970 and so here we are you know working together in in this building you know again educating and that's what's great about he being here today and yesterday is that he's demonstrating something else to the students so we're trying to in addition to the fresco being itself a teaching
and it to getting the people involved that are here modeling to work with some of the different uh exciting things happening in our community. Well, as uh you're going to tie a fly in a minute over there, but I'd like to have the kids maybe take a look at some of the drawing part. If you have any questions about this, we do have a phone number if you want to call. Uh they have to go pretty soon, too. Anyway, we have
a phone number if you want to call in questions from home. It's 616 3275 if you have any questions. They ask us about the fresco of Charles of Jeff or anything. Um I think what we're going to do, uh this class has to go in a second, right? You'd like to make sure they see a fly tie, right? Um, won't be able to do that. We're
gonna do that online anyway. Okay. Well, we're going to do that live just to demonstrate that. Yeah, definitely. So, we're going to continue with some of the drawing and uh if you go over the shot of Chuck with the face. There is the drawing that we're looking at right now of Jeff and uh can you explain? I noticed a couple times the
kids were watching last time and they looked at you're looking at your pencil and you're looking at Jeff. Why? I want to go like this. Thank you everybody. Have a good day. Oh, when I go like so. All right. Um, what I'm doing is, uh, in drawing,
especially like in portraiture or doing the human figure, there's a cannon of proportion that we deal with. And basically, the human figure is seven and a half heads high. So, if you want to have everything in sync, you have to understand things like that. So what I'm doing when it comes to his portrait, there's certain breakdowns within the
skull itself where basically from the chin to like the middle of the eye is half the distance of the skull from for instance the chin to the bottom of the nose to here to here those breaks down in thirds. Then of course you have to go across horizontally also. So I'm just making sure that everything is in sync and it's always good with different
poses just to check and correct yourself. And since this is more or less one of the final studies I want to make sure there's a lot of accuracy even though this is a very small drawing you know I want to uh you know make sure that I have the details there. When I blow it up to the actual size, I have all the information here. And the one we saw on the wall, too, was
just the sketch that just showed the pose overall. Correct. And those will have to be blown up to actual size. Now, I haven't uh decided what the actual size of all these figures are. They will not be as large as the ones on that side, obviously, because of the uh staircase itself. So, the figures will diminish as
they move back up the staircase, which will add a a different sense of depth versus what we have right here. And then when we get under the other side, they'll be even smaller yet as they're in the plaza painting, dancing, doing whatever. So, it'll be very exciting in that regard. We've gone from these very large figures and moving off into the distance here.
It's great. And it's nice to tie in all of Little Falls in this too. West side, east side. Well, absolutely. Well, because we all are one community and it's very important. I mean, the river does separate this side to the other, but yet it's it's the connecting point where, you know, so much um industry over the last century and a half has happened on
both sides. That's right. So, we're going to have you uh draw for a little while and we're going to pan back and forth between Jeff and yourself. And Okay, Jeff, while you're doing that sitting there, I'm just going to ask you a couple questions. Is it tough to sit still for a guy like you? Yes.
This is a tough job. Look at him. He's just frozen in stone, so to speak, as we do the lime up on the wall. You're going to be frozen for posterity. And we hope it's going to be a good freeze. Yes. And as you can see, Charles doing the painting. You can uh talk as you go
along if you want because you're adding a lot of detail to this drawing too. Well, basically what I'm doing is I I started it out with charcoal. So, if you look at these lines right here and is that coming pretty clear? Yes. Okay. These lines, I start with a piece of vine charcoal, which is what I have in my hand right here to sort of rough in the areas that I'm going to work
with. And then I switch to these graphite pencils uh to begin with some of the final, you know, the shading and and the uh details. Now, this is not as detailed as, you know, the real finished portrait work I do. But right now, I'm I'm just sort of gathering as much information in as short a period of time
as possible. And then from this, I will go back to the studio and I'll do the like I mentioned earlier, the full-scale drawing called the cartoon. That will be very detailed because it'll be from that that I have to paint uh the fresco from. And that I do in a in a single day. Okay. So, there's a fresh piece of
plaster laid and then I have to go from start to finish that day. And one thing we've noticed too, Diane, if you've gone back to D, I'm just getting some shots of tape on the floor. Now, a custodian's nightmare is tape on the floor, but an artist's treasure is tape on the floor. Why the tape?
Well, that's to make sure that we can get everyone positioned back where they're supposed to be. Because in drawing, painting, etc., especially in the sort of realistic uh manner style that I use, you want to make sure that your model is back in position, that I'm back in position. So, and since we have such a large room with all these
distances, it's important to have all this stuff mapped out properly. So, uh Jeff knows where he has to be, I know where I have to be, and uh we just have hope the janitors, uh I kind of asked him, please leave all the tape where it is, and we'll take care of it later on. But that's we're just put a piece of protective
tape over it, too. more or less. We'll polyurethane it in, you know, then they'll kind of go like, "Now what those guys do up there?" And is it true that Jeff doesn't have to change clothes during this whole process? I mean, he where's the You can tell from there. I'm glad this isn't scratch and sniff,
let me tell you. Excellent. No. Uh, Chuck, we've got Carl Kefir here from Lindberg Elementary. Great. You know, come in here just a second and uh come on on this side. Just looking over his shoulder and watching him do a sketch. Well, Carl is here to just sort of see what he's gonna have to
go through. So, now Carl, we're gonna talk just for a second. This is on live TV on channel 6 land. And Carl, I want to ask you as the principal of Limber, how the fresco has impacted the kids, staff, and everybody at L. Certainly, it's a is a piece that pulls
people together. Uh and uh we've had many conversations, you know, about the piece, but I think the uh first one probably before the piece was even up when we built the building in '95 and we were looking at different ways to uh
involve the community into our schools that schools are built for more than just students, teachers, uh parents. Uh you know, it is a community involvement with that. And uh when we talked about different ways that we could bring the
in Chuck was just I don't know visit England. Well, I actually uh I just had come back right from uh France. We were working on the pro nation's bank project and uh Cal Jackson had suggested that uh Fresco could be done here. So, I just came into town for Christmas and next thing I know
they got blueprints out here. It was kind of a natural to pick up on the Charlesberg theme which the architects just did a marvelous job. Oh, absolutely. They've won a national award also with the building. So, And uh the original fresco then of the Lindberg
fresco uh was just the uh the beginning of a great new world that we're uh that's going to be documented on this fall but it's uh hard to measure right now. I think the uh the total impact certainly it's an impact uh to watch you
uh as you work um to have an artist you know in our presence uh that you are real you know it isn't something that uh that people can't touch with contact. I think the greatest tie to it is Charles is a former Lindberg student
from long ago. Yes. And I think that's a great tie. So what a what a tribute to the community that that you're back and giving back to the community. Thank you. I think it's very important to to you know work with education as much as possible and I I feel very proud and happy to be part of the system here.
It's I think most people would wonder though what is this doing in the school? Um as opposed to as opposed to other buildings, right? Even though they were real public, you know, probably a bank, a courthouse,
you know, maybe churches, whatever. I think for us, what's really unique is the fact that we've been able to really use it as an educational tool, which is what uh you look back through the course of history, one of the things Fresco was used for was education because during the Renaissance, a lot of people were not
literate. So in in churches, a lot of like the lives of the saints and things of that would be used and and and also in telling the history of battle scenes and civic buildings. So it was used as a multiaceted educational tool back then which as we had talked a little bit um earlier about the children's involvement
here in that regard learning about their background and even me doing it learning things about my own background which I think is very valuable and uh it it's it just gives a great visual thing for the children I think and certainly you know as well as we do as as an artist to prepare for this
there's a lot of research and everything that has to go in um and I think that really was uh to the forefront when we did the Lenbury. Absolutely. Crystal uh and in uh boy I I couldn't believe it when I had the opportunity to
uh actually visit you know Eastern Africa Kenya in terms of when Charles spent some time there and so it uh it really has a tendency to broaden itself very quickly. Uh right now I think the challenge for for us is
to uh make sure that this just isn't this piece isn't just linear. Correct. Uh that this is a community piece. Absolutely. And that involves everyone. Mhm. You know in school or or out of school. Yeah. And we do get a lot of visitors.
What what I have found interesting is just the friends of mine that come in from around the country. You know, bring them over just different people from around the state. and one of our former foreign exchange students, David Sato, who was here back in the early60s, was here last uh summer for several days and and I brought him up here and of course
I'd known him really well back in those days and he stays in touch and teaches at the University of Sai in Japan and he's been hooking up to our website and we're hoping that we can do an interactive piece with one of those universities this fall in addition to other schools we're contacting around the country. So, you know, we're even
bringing back our old foreign exchange students in that regard. And you just think of the uh the potential within the last as well as you know in terms of formality. That's that's why we're doing this. Exactly. Have at our disposal right now to broaden that base. Absolutely.
Exactly. Well, thank you Carl. Uh we're going to have Jefferson Wowski do a fly tie here in a minute. So thank you. Yeah. Thank you Carl. Thank you Carl. Uh, as Carl was mentioning too, uh, this is going to have worldwide implications. I'd like to
give you a web address. It's www.wanfresco bo n fresco.com. And Mr. Bill Angelo, so unfortunately couldn't be with us today, is uh, doing a beautiful job on the website documenting the fresco, not just for
Little Falls, but for the world. And as Charles did say, people from overseas, Japan, have been contacting us about the fresco, the website, what's going on with it, through the miracle of interactive television, we have had broadcasts to Canada, like Chuck mentioned, and we're going to do broadcast as the fresco gets started
next fall right from here. So, this will be an interactive classroom for hopefully the whole year. So, after that spiel, I think it's time for Mr. Ziloski to show what he is here doing. Yes. Jeff, I'm gonna have you just amble
over to your spot. And uh Jeff is an avid fisherman, avid sports person, politically correct term. Yes, we must do that. And Jeff, what are you doing over here?
Okay. Um, I wish the students were here because they've got a I went to the Mississippi River this morning and just took my aquarium net and made a few swipes and there's some This is right from the river this morning. Oh, good shot. We got a great shot.
These two things here are catis flies inside of a They make their own. This particular This particular catisfly makes it out of leaves and sticks. Um, I don't know how that's showing up on the showing up really. Is it? Okay. And so
there's a little fly in there, a larvae that will he lives his his underwater life inside that that cocoon until he's ready to come out and uh he comes to the surface and turns into a catisfly where he lives out the adult life. I also have several little minnows. There's some
mayfly nymphs. Where did they Here's one here. Um, and we all know if you've lived in Little Falls at all, how the mayfly hatch around the bridge is the next few weeks. Well, that's when these little nymphs come to the surface
and uh spread their wing. Oh, that's a nice shot. Great shot. Yep. That's the catisfly. Now, this ties into uh sport fishing, right? The the trout fisherman. Trout are probably the most um finicky of our fish for catching it. They will, the
fisherman call it matching the hatch. And uh so some of the true fly fisher, trout fishermanmen will go to a stream, take a net, see what's what's going on in the stream at that particular time and uh sit right at the bank and tie up
a fly to match the hatch. Now, I don't do much trout fishing. I enjoy sun fishing, bass fishing, etc. So, our our sunfish aren't quite as particular, but uh we're going to tie a little flyer called a gill getter.
But in a much smaller form of uh fresco building, there is a recipe to tying flies, too. You want to plan ahead where your thread is going to end up. You don't want to have your thread on this end when you want your feather at
that end or whatever in fisherman. How long have you been tying flies? Well, I started many, many years ago at a real inexpensive um fly tying vice, by the way. That's what this hook holder
is. Okay. But there just wasn't a lot of information out there then like there is now. I got frustrated in trying uh to learn how to fly cast, which if there was a book out. It wasn't very good at explaining. So, uh I I got frustrated
and quit. Um okay, that's the the chenille that I just tied in. That's kind of like a pipe cleaner without without a backbone. And here, this is a hackle feather. There's chickens
genetically bred just for tying flies. Seriously. And um these are called hackle feathers. So I just select one hackle feather out. And this part is
doesn't work well for fishing. It soaks up water. So we'll get rid of that. Now when you say match the hatch, match the hatch. That's the hatch at uh well, take dragon flies for instance. They they'll live in the laral stage for anywhere from a year to 5
years underwater and they're kind of the wolves of the larvae, if you will. There's I've seen pictures of them actually eating small minnows. But dragon flies will hatch throughout most of the year. So, a dragonfly larvae would be good to
use because they're probably a ready, you know, readily available food for the fish at most of the at least summer season. Um, may flies, we know that they hatch and probably in the next couple weeks, we'll start seeing them and, uh,
they're only going to be hatching for a little while. So in the stage of a a mayfly hatching for example um they come to the surface as a larvae and come out of their case they spread their wings and they fly away. So at that
point they're called emerggers and the trout or whatever fish is feeding on him will see that there's this case or shuck that it's called that he's coming out of. So that's an identifiable type of a fly that you would tie to match look like a new bug coming out of the the
laral case. So then the adult mayfly spends a I don't know they live a day or so mate and then the female will come and lay her eggs in the water. So there's another type of fly that you would tie and then after their mate their mating is done they will die. So now you have a dead mayfly on the
surface of the water just floating. So that would be another food source. So there's right there is three or four different flies that you could tie to just match that one particular insect. Now the biggest question I would have right off the bat is why is a fish going to go for a fly when they can get the real thing
by the real thing? What do we mean? Uh the actual larae or the egg or floater. Well, say in the mayfly case, uh they all hatch around the same time. They're mating. Um there isn't going to be many larve left in the water. Mhm. So um
in the trout's case that trout is is taking advantage of the most popular populated species at that particular instant. Does that make sense? It makes sense. Yes. Okay. And I'm asking you that because we novice fishermanmen don't know.
Okay. Well, lucky experts like you just Well, I don't be careful. Now, Charles, uh, the reason you chose Jeff, besides being a friend, depicting this on the fresco, what a tie in. Absolutely. Sports person, fisherman,
the industry in Little Falls in the early days was a little bit of fishing, at least recreational, if nothing else. And I'm sure that was an important food source for some of the the early settlers. Now, you were talking to the kids before about uh flies and their cost.
You want to go through that just for a second? as how much it costs. Do you sell these to people? Do you use them yourself? Would you sell them? I I have sold some in the past. I enjoy the tying process. It's something I can do in the dead of winter and still have summer on my mind.
Um, and it's to me it's rewarding to catching a fish on a fly rod is exceptionally fun. It's rewarding to catch one on a fly rod, but to catch one on a fly that I've tied is even more fun. Wow. What I'm using here is some moose
hair. Moose hair. Where's the camera? There we go. Right there. Um, beautiful. Just a little patch. Everything is backwards here. And, um, I had to comb every in and deer and moose hair. I don't know if this will show up either. Yeah, there's a
little bit of fuzz there. I see that. That's an underfur. That's also acts as an insulator for the animal. Oh, yeah. But in fly in the fly tying applications, it just absorbs water and it doesn't really add anything as far as uh action.
So, we comb that out first. Wow. I did not know that. I didn't know that moose had that little. Of course, I've never combed a moose before. Yeah, you want to be pretty pretty careful with those guys. Okay. What this moose hair is eventually
going to emulate is a lot of the larvae. Now, it's kind It would be hard to tell on those catis flies because they're in their little cocoon, but they have a wing case. We got another group here. This must be sixth hour, Mr. Wagner.
Sixth hour. We're going to demonstrate some fly time here with Mr. Justin. Come on up close. Some shots. You guys go right around the side there, tying up a fly called the gill getter. And just to backtrack a second, I don't
know if you've told the other classes, of course, but the bowl you see in front of you is a fish catch of the day. Yep. Dinner. That's the fish dinner. I took a net on the Mississippi River this morning and netted just a few
swipes. And that's the different once again bugs that were in the water. There is the stuff that's in the water right there. That's all from one morning. on the Mississippi. You notice the Mississippi is pretty high right now, isn't it? Yeah, I was a little nervous about being
able to find anything there, but they were there. They were there. And uh there's Mr. Ziloski doing the great fly. Right. Okay. Just for you just came in. We in building a fly, you have a a certain recipe you have to go by start to
finish. So, I've tied in chenille. It's like a limp u pipe pipe cleaner. A a piece of feather tied on the legs. This is moose hair. So now we're almost And the rubber legs here. We're almost ready to
And the rubber legs are just like elastic. A rubber band. Like a rubber band. They're specially made for for fly tying. Spandex. Spandex. Okay. So now that I have all the ingredients on there, now I can start
forming the fly. Wrap the chenille. There we go. If anybody in the audience does have a question, uh we're going to be doing this for about two more minutes. That's about it. We have to cut off about 145. The number here is 616 323275 if you want to ask Jeff a question or else you
can always see him at his place of employment pap. That is correct. And quite often I have classes there in fly tying. If you're interested just give me a call at the store and I'll let you know when our next class is and you can also visit Charles Capsner on the Fresco website at
www.bwonfresco.com. Oh, there's a phone call. Grab that, Diana. This could be an outside call. Hello. And Charles, Mr. Angelos, the man who should be here, the the
other exact Mr. Angelos on the phone. Oh, God. Oh, Dave. Mr. Angelo says he's been watching this and thinks we have a series here. So, you gonna write for us?
Thank you, Bill. Thank you, Bill. Now, I've got my hackle feather tied in. This is called a hackle plier. Thank you. Simple spring. Attach that. Okay. And we just wind. Okay. Bye-bye. That feather into the chenille.
What a caller we had, Chuck. Huh? That was not set up. We just have not set anything up here. Nobody has been paid. Nobody. And no animals were harmed in the making of this fly. Yeah. Actually, what we're going to do, uh, Diane, I think I'm going to say goodbye to our audience out there. And,
uh, we do want to thank you for joining us on channel 6. This is Jeff Silowski again. Artist Charles Capsner. And, uh, I don't have a camera on him right now. Unless you want to go back to the spot there. I guess I better sit down. Fresco drawing that he's doing of Jeff Cilowski right now. This is John
Wagner's art class from the middle school. Eighth grade, six hour. Correct. Eighth grade six. They're so quiet. This is not like really eighth graders especially. Wow. Last couple days of school. Give us a cheer. Yay. Short timing on summer vacation here. That's right. And I'm Dave Girtz, the
media technology specialist here at Lindberg. And we do thank you. We'll be back online on channel 6 throughout the year and throughout next fall as the fresco gets completed more and more. And we do want to thank you for joining us. And this is me from Libert Elementary signing off. And we'll put it back to
Jerry at the studio and we'll see channel 6 come on in just a second. Until that time, Jeff, you can keep talking. Okay.