- I'm here in the studio of Dale Lamphere, South Dakota's Artist Laureate.

From dignity of earth and sky, to the Arc of Dreams, and even inside the South Dakota State Capitol, Dale has been creating works across the state and the nation for over 50 years.

Tonight, we're proud to showcase the process of Dale and his team creating two new works intended for the west side of the state.

We're going to start with Community Tapestry.

Now, when you think of Community Tapestry, what picture comes to mind?

Well, let's see if you're right.

(calm piano music) - Monument Health does believe that there is a connection between artwork and healing.

So there's a lot of studies out there that we reviewed and a lot of information that we really took in of how should we proceed in putting artwork in our facilities.

And evidence-based design shows us that not just for patients and visitors, but for caregivers as well, that artwork really does make an impact in how they feel about their surroundings.

At the beginning of this construction project, we knew that there was an opportunity for a great piece of artwork in the space where the community tapestry is now located.

As we got close to the end of the project, we brought Dale in and just asked him to take a look at the space and give us some ideas.

- The first time I saw this feature wall, I was a little startled, I have to say.

It's right over a major staircase.

It's 40 feet in the air with a circular aspect of the architecture immediately in front of it.

And certainly gave me pause when I realized the scope of it.

The initial idea of the Community Tapestry came from a suggestion that my wife made that I include other artists.

And I liked the idea.

I proposed that to them as well.

- Dale explained how this piece would incorporate the community, how it would bring in this diverse group of artists and how he would work with all of them to create this final piece woven together.

And we knew immediately that it was the right answer.

- [Dale] We put out a call for artists and had 103 submissions.

Then they were to have it connected to the thought of what healing means to them, everyone, hobbyists, artists, children, housewives, businessmen, all of these people submitted ideas.

So it really was a community involvement at that point.

And from that, the Art Committee comprised of about 10 people here at Monument Health and myself selected 20 of those works to actually be created and then included in the Community Tapestry.

- [Elle] We listened to Dale's input and then we just really looked at the different submissions.

There were stories that went with all of the pieces and those stories were a really big piece of what influenced our decisions as well.

- My name is Todd Grabow and my piece is the "Black Walnut" with the blue glass inlay running through the center of it.

How I see it is there's a river running down the center of it, the blue glass, and during the healing process, it seems like you're trying to get from one side of the river to the other.

- My name is Skye Potter and I did the "Morning Star" technique is in Tarsha.

It's a lot of intricate cuts with wood.

There are a lot of pieces that go together with healing.

A lot of moving parts that have to work together to kind of complete the process.

- [Jay] The kyanite is a balancing stone.

The selenite is the white rock and it brings clarity to your mind.

It helps you see things clear.

So the two of them together balance and clarity, I think are really good in a hospital setting.

- I think the main thing with healing starts with ourselves and helping people, you know, leaving people with a smile, helping wherever you can.

- We are also broken when we go through life, you know, if it's a physical illness or a emotional, spiritual, all kinds of things.

And so when we take the time to repair that and not to just throw that away, we're actually making it more precious through our experience, I think.

And I think then people can see those scars that we can help others too.

- For a long time, I've wanted to do a moth panel.

And so in doing some research on moths, I learned that they represent vulnerability, determination, and transformation.

And so those three words combined, I felt like was the healing process.

And I chose this Akropia moth in particular because it's native to South Dakota.

- [Dale] Okay.

And then this will go on like this, on these panels.

So, it will be silver and gold throughout.

Because of the diversity of the art that goes into it, I wanted to make a very strong visual statement with this staccato pattern of gold and silver, and then there's the projection in and out and overlapping.

And so it becomes a real textured kind of surface for this tapestry, but it's strong enough visually to hold this diverse number of artworks in a kind of context that makes sense.

And part of what I wanted to do was at least begin a journey.

So the start of the piece shows this perfect hand-drawn circle in ceramic, which is what I would imagine that the healthcare professionals that come in every day, the first thing they must do is to center themselves, knowing that they're about to enter into a really difficult time.

And then the next item on the tapestry shows two hands clasped together reminding us of the compassionate nature of the health care industry.

And then the next item is a stitched together piece that shows effective nutrition and health care and other items.

And then it kind of goes off into a more diffuse areas of the healing power of nature.

There are things that are symbolic specifically to individual people, but they describe it in a way that I think everyone can understand it.

- At first when they told me about it, I'm like, "Okay, you know, I was thinking it was something small."

And then it's like, "Oh my God, it'd be like a really big thing, you know, an honor for me."

And you know, like my family myself included were excited.

You know, just for me to have a little piece of my work here in the community, it's really cool.

(chuckles) - I've never worked to fruition on a community piece before.

It adds an interesting element to, because my voice is only one of many, but I think it's really a beautiful thing.

It's been a lot of fun to work on this, knowing that it will be combined with other images from people who've had very diverse backgrounds and experiences.

- It's really interesting to see all different mediums within the same sphere of artwork.

And it's also very cool to see the fact that everybody that is represented is local.

Everybody is from the Black Hills.

The project really does speak to its name and speaks to a theme.

- The theme of all the pieces was about our thoughts on healing.

And one of the elements I think is support, and connectedness, and nature.

What I really loved about the whole process was thinking of Aspen trees is a community in and of themselves.

They come from one root creating this giant community and I really believe that's humanity.

I really find that a great correlation to what humanity is.

- When we came into Monument Health to install the community tapestry, we had a very clear plan.

I had a layout that specified down to the quarter inch of where every bracket should go.

But if I were to put this installation in one word, I would say "terrifying".

we were 40 feet above the floor of a staircase on scaffolding that was probably 50 foot tall at its highest point.

Any kind of difficulty would have been catastrophic.

It went just like clockwork.

I mean, everything that we'd planned worked out, we had no mishaps and well I have to, at the end, feel very grateful for that.

- I've known Dale and started working with Dale on 2000 and I've stayed with him because he's a great guy and he's good to work with, and he's reasonable, and yeah, I think it's a great idea.

I'm really, really pleased that other artists got to get involved in this.

And it is kind of a tough, you know, area, tough community as an artist to get jobs like this, so it was really cool.

I think that Dale kind of passed the buck along.

- Monument Health is very excited to showcase these community artists in this space.

We really feel like the lobby was an area that we wanted our patients, our families, our visitors, our community to come to and feel welcome.

So having this as kind of our featured piece in the lobby is really helping us accomplish that goal.

My reaction to seeing the final sculpture installed was, "Wow, it's amazing.

It's more than I ever thought it would be."

- I just think it's great that Monument is supporting the art community.

I just thank monument for giving artists this opportunity and obviously Dale Lamphere for organizing it and doing such a great job bringing all the artists together.

- You know, with the pandemic, a lot of the artists are into being shut in and not getting out.

And so it all gave us a little bit of fire in our bellies to work on something in a community sort of way.

And even though we weren't getting together collectively to do it, it ended up being a piece that was collective.

- Oh, it's beautiful.

So many local artists, just talking with them in the hallway after the project was unveiled, everyone's perspective on things, it's great to be part of such a great project.

- I think it is incredible.

It gives me goosebumps to be part of something that's gonna be hanging somewhere that people can see.

And it's exciting to say, "Look, I did this and I contributed to this."

And so I'm very excited, I am.

- I'm really happy to be a part of the project, happy to work with artists like Dale Lamphere.

And I think the overall result is really beautiful.

I look forward to coming in here and looking at it in the future and maybe showing my kids or my grandkids someday.

- I think the Community Tapestry will be a legacy piece.

I imagine a generation from now, some young man coming in or young woman coming in and pointing at one of the art pieces there and saying, "You know, my grandmother did that."

And that, that touches me, you know, that's something that I feel real strongly about that if we can do anything to inspire the next generation and show them the importance that we place upon creation, and upon healing, and upon excellence, you know, that's something good that we've done for the future.

- While Dale and his team were finishing Community Tapestry, there were also beginning work on an impressive sculpture for the community of Spearfish and Black Hills State University.

Now since the mascot at Black Hills State is the yellow jacket, it's only appropriate that this piece is called, The Hive.

- The entire piece started as just pipe, and flat sheet, and plate.

And so what you see now has been rolled, and pulled into position, and welded, and polished.

And you know, every bit of it has been gone over by hand, in many cases several times.

So it's a long, very process-oriented journey that we take.

And they're like a major expedition in a way.

I mean, you get all of your materials together and marshal all your resources and lay out your path and determine a sequence of events that you might expect, and then begin the journey.

With good fortune and hard work, well it sometimes results in something quite beautiful.

(majestic music) And once we had kind of talked about the home of the yellow jackets, well, I acquired a few hives and studied their structure, looked at the kind of texture, that papery, linear texture on the material, they make The Hive out of, and then the overlapping planes, an entrance point on the lower end of the hive, all of those things were included in the final sculpture.

And it's just a process of distillation for me.

I look at nature and derive design principles from that.

So that's exactly the method that we approach this with.

It takes me, I would say, a third of the time on every project just to develop the concept, develop those studies, and then the final marquette or model for the monument, because I use this final marquette in a very direct way.

I mean, I literally placed that generally out in front 50 yards away from what I'm going to create.

And then I'm able to sight in these larger elements and have them match up precisely with the model.

It's a real interesting process for me.

And it really requires my attention to detail.

We do take measurements and all of that, but it's a very low-tech process.

I have one fellow here and he's been with me for more than a decade.

Andy Roltgen is his name and without him, it would be impossible to do these things because he's a top-notch welder.

- Well, we first started with the center pipe and then built structure around that.

And we stood that up and then we had to bend some pipes that were kind of the form of the piece, I've had to weld those on, kind of worked from the inside out, I guess, built a skeletal structure.

And then added to that later and I built kind of a ladder system going up on the inside of there, so we could climb up and down and to help strengthen the center, the belly of the pieces as we bent them around.

- They're always a challenge, I mean, when we we're working with scaffolding, there's a lot of climbing involved for one.

So, each one of these pieces that we lifted was around 500 pounds.

So cumbersome, some of them 20-foot long, and two-foot wide, you know, it was a challenge to build.

We lifted up these hand-cut quarter inch plates individually and placed them at the right angles and welded everything together over a period of about eight months altogether.

It was fun to do, I mean, it was a real enjoyable work to create because it moved right along and we're able to see steady progress all the way through.

And that's the best that one can hope for really.

The sculpture, The Hive is 20 foot tall and 14 foot wide, weighs three-and-a-half tons, so pretty difficult to handle.

We had to bring a 40-ton crane up behind the studio.

So we lift the piece straight up and then grabbed the bottom of it and lay it horizontally.

And then we back a specially prepared trailer underneath when we moved these sculptures, there's always a lot of work that goes into just creating a transport mechanism because we were dealing with a finished product that has some fairly delicate surfaces, and we don't want to scratch them, or dent them, or any of that.

And the installation went as well as any of them ever do.

I mean, there are always little complications and little things that have to be dealt with, but it's just a process and you keep at it.

(calm classical music) Well, I attended Black Hills State for a couple of years.

I certainly enjoyed working with the university again and the personnel there.

We had a fundraising event with 75 people, I suppose, here at the studio when the project was underway.

Well, this project was particularly good time for several reasons.

One, was that it was close to home.

I was able to go over and see the site frequently, watch it be developed.

The other thing that I really enjoyed was that this was a bold and direct piece, very abstract, yet it has a figurative element to it that everyone can recognize, but it is a beautiful object in space, you know, and that's the primary requirement of sculpture.

And the scale is always fun.

I mean, I like large scale.

And then to that fact that I went to school there for several years, gives me some satisfaction that I'm contributing in a sense back to the university.

- I think that Black Hills State is a somewhat hidden treasure.

It is a wonderful institution.

It does great, great work.

The students that come here get such a quality education.

And one of the things I'm most proud about is the fact that about 70% of our graduates stay in the Black Hills to live and work.

So we make tremendous contributions back to the region in terms of workforce and in terms of community membership and leadership.

When I first saw the model, I really loved it.

It was beautiful.

It's The Hive.

So obviously it depicts our beloved mascot, the Yellow Jackets, you know, the first time I saw it, it is striking.

It just grabs you as you come up Jackson Boulevard, it can't help, but grab your eye.

I mean, your eye immediately goes to it as you're driving down the street.

- I was asked at one point, how many people worked on this project?

And I said, "I think about five or six, but if I count the structural engineer, and the city engineers, and the fundraising efforts, and the various things that go on it, it gets into the dozens, I'm sure."

So, you know, it gets to be quite an extensive collection of people, but projects of the large scale always are that way.

(school band playing) - It has been over five years since the beginning of our Jackson Boulevard project.

And as Jackson Boulevard is a corridor to Black Hills State, we heard repeatedly, "Find a way to integrate BH into the design."

This is definitely a statement that this is Yellow Jacket territory.

And so for that, well done.

Thank you.

(crowd applauding) - [Dr. Nichols] You know, probably our major partner has been the City of Spearfish and may have been a wonderful partner in this project.

They really have been involved with it from the very beginning.

- So, I think that they have had vision about their community.

I mean, they constantly are developing it and improving and enhancing it.

And I get to cap it all with a piece of art, so I feel very, very fortunate.

- Such a beautiful piece.

It's iconic of our university.

And when students drive by The Hive, I hope they feel absolute pride.

Pride in the university, pride that they're part of this university.

I hope community members also are very proud of, proud that Black Hills State is in Spearfish.

And that we're part of this incredible community that we call the Northern Black Hills.

- Dale's work continues to impress viewers all across South Dakota.

In fact, there's a strong possibility that there's even some near you.

We hope you've enjoyed these highlights from this year at Lamphere Studios, the effort that Dale and his team put into making these works can be immense, but it certainly is rewarding.

And if you're like me, we can't wait to see what they come up with next.

(calm piano music) (calm piano music continues)