- I grew up in Daytona Beach, Florida.

- [Narrator] The sands of Daytona, the world's most famous beach.

- Which is also where Bob Ross is from.

I'm a big Bob Ross girl.

(gentle music) But I lived in Daytona Beach my whole life.

I never thought I was ever gonna leave Florida, and then my parents got divorced and my mom took me and my sister out to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, which was like so far away from everything that I've known in Florida.

But after Jackson Hole, I learned to love mountains and stuff like that so I moved to Bozeman, Montana, for college where I went to Montana State University, and I loved Bozeman so, so much.

I met my boyfriend there and then my boyfriend got a job out here in Minnesota so that's why we're in Minnesota.

(upbeat music) I own my own business.

It's called Red Fox Design Studio.

I turn my drawings and illustrations into stickers, postcards, greeting cards, primarily little replications of my artwork for people to be able to consume at like a cheaper level than one would buy like a full painting so it's like more accessible for the average person to pick up like an a postcard and say like, "I really like this piece of art and I wanna take it home."

Got prairie dog.

Again, love the prairie dog.

I think this is the cutest thing that I've ever made.

I have a frog, which a lot of people love people.

People, I think, but giraffe.

And skiing raccoon.

I have a bison in there somewhere, but bison has gone missing.

So art doesn't make a whole lot of money so I bartend at Talking Waters, but part of bartending for me is I like to be social, I like to talk to people.

With art, a lot of it is creating in my own space like by myself so I need to get out of the house and just talk to new people and experience new people's perspectives.

(jazzy piano music) My degree is in art, which is why I work in a bar.

You can cut that out.

But I have a degree.

It's a Bachelor's of Fine Arts in drawing and painting.

(jazzy piano music continues) I've got a singing bass that I'm working on.

He's gonna get watercolored, but I think he's cute.

I love the stupid singing fish.

I got a pig.

Love pigs.

I have a whole page of like jellyfish and squid.

The squid I'm actually making for Squid Fest.

That's golden, that's like genius.

And that is all for that sketchbook.

(upbeat jazzy music) I like to get outside of Montevideo as much as I can and get inspiration from everywhere that I possibly can.

A lot of my work is based upon national parks and things.

I'm a big national parks girl.

I have to travel and I have to see the world and I need to experience things to have content for my art, if that makes any sense, but I like to share my art too.

I like to experience cultures and meet new people and see everybody's walk of life.

(upbeat music) I also do a lot of acrylic paintings, like neon invasive species, just large scale, bright, colorful in your face.

(upbeat music continues) The invasive species, so I think about them a lot and I'm from Florida, so there's a lot of very wild invasive species there, such as Burmese python, iguanas and things like that, so I think about them and growing up, I always thought they were such marvelous animals, like this giant 13' snake is the coolest thing that I've ever seen, but you're encouraged to kill it 'cause it's invasive and it is ruining the environment, but it's not the animal's fault necessarily, it's the human's fault that they release the Burmese python into the wild and let it grow and thrive and now the animal is getting punished for human error essentially, so I really connect with those animals, I guess.

So I made my invasive species study neon, so it's like in your face, this animal is in your face.

(upbeat music) The yellow one right here, this is gonna be a pheasant.

And pheasants aren't necessarily invasive, but they're not from Minnesota.

They were introduced here and people don't really consider them invasive, but I also, I disagree with things being brought into environments that they're not necessarily part of.

I started gravitating towards a lot of conservation-esque work, just silly conservation-esque.

(upbeat funky music) This heat press set up, I make t-shirts and things, water bottles, stickers, basically just any sort of thing that I've got going on.

I do hats.

I'm all over the place.

I take commission paintings, but I throw it all under the same umbrella of Red Fox Design Studio.

A glass press and what you do is I get these transfers and it's the same transfer you would use on a shirt, so I think I have a couple of them.

It'd be like one of these and you just, you tape it on with like heat-safe tape and then you can, I'm not gonna turn the bottle 'cause it's gonna drip, but... (upbeat funky music continues) Yeah, my studio assistant, I got her back in Bozeman.

There was this really cool reptile store and I was looking at the geckos and then an employee was like, "Oh, do you wanna hold one?"

I was like, "Yeah, I'll just hold one just to like see it."

And it was that one, the one that I have a 40 gallon tank for, so I've had my gecko for about two years now.

Turn around.

You're a star.

So this is my studio assistant.

Her name is The Raptor.

She approves all of the paintings and all of the graphics that come out of this design space.

(ethereal music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) When I grew up in Daytona Beach, my parents, they almost set me up for being an artist, although none of them were artists themselves.

They had Van Gogh posters and stuff all around my room so I was constantly exposed to fine art and painting and I grew up, like elementary school, I was always the art kid and I would just paint and draw it.

(upbeat music continues) So my goal is to really just make as much art as I possibly can, be as happy as I can doing it.

(upbeat music continues) (dramatic music) (upbeat music) - [Announcer] "Postcards" is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

Additional support provided by Margaret A Cargill Philanthropies.

Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen, on behalf of Shalom Hill Farms, a retreat and conference center in a prairie setting near Wyndham, Minnesota.

On the web at ShalomHillFarm.org.

Alexandria, Minnesota, a year-round destination with hundreds of lakes, trails, and attractions for memorable vacations and events.

More information at ExploreAlex.com.

A better future starts now.

West Central Initiative empowers communities with resources, funding, and support for a thriving region.

More at WCIF.org.

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