Funding for Colores was provided in part by: New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund and the Nellita E. Walker Fund for KNME-TV at the Albuquerque Community Foundation McCune Charitable Foundation New Mexico Arts a Division of the Department of Cultural Affairs and by the National Endowment for the Arts and Viewers Like You Through astronauts and abstract figures Muskogee artist, George “Ofuskie” Alexander invites viewers to see beyond the labels that divide us and recognize our shared humanity.

Tulsa artist and citizen scientist Tyler Thrasher transforms his fascination with nature into a space for wonder and experimentation.

Honored with a 2025 New Mexico Governor's Award for excellence in the Arts.

Painter and cowboy, Alden Timothy Cox captures the people and details of ranch life, inviting viewers to step into the world he knows and loves.

It's all ahead on Colores THE VIEW FROM ABOVE >> Faith: So, you once said that art isn't so much about the creation of the object.

It's the dialog with the object that makes it art.

So, what kind of dialog do you hope your work creates?

>> Alexander: Well, for me, these these paintings, they all have their own sort of dialog.

And I use this main motif as an astronaut.

For me, this astronaut figure represents this idea of humanity When the action looks at the earth, they only see the Earth.

They don't see the borders, they don't see race, they don't see politics or anything that really separates you from another person.

And if we had that perspective down here on earth, then I feel like the world would be a better place.

And I kind of view this astronaut as just a regular person that's going through everyday life, and they're trying to develop that perspective.

I didn't really come from a place that I felt that I was like culturally tied to, to me, in the sense that, like, I grew up inside of a Muskogee Creek church called Montezuma Indian Baptist Church.

And at this point in time, when I first got to IAIA, I was sort of like, not necessarily ashamed or embarrassed from where I came from, but a lot of the conversations was about -- what Christianity did to Native Americans.

And then as I started to paint them through my own experiences through life, I was challenging my perspective on what spirituality was for me.

And so I -- started to see this astronaut figure as like, God looking for me.

And I was sort of like -- somewhere in a different world, and maybe He had misplaced me or something, I don't know.

And -- I started to see this astronaut kind of take in this perspective that I was developing about humanity.

We often forget that -- we have so much more in common than we do that's not in common.

Everything today seems extremely polarized, you have to be this or that, but that's not true.

You can just be who you are.

>> Faith: So, the helmet obscures the face, how does that relate to this idea of like relating to each other?

>> Alexander: Yeah, the idea was to obscure identity.

That way you're allowed to see yourself in these pieces.

And I think that this is important because I don't want to focus on a particular like, social construct.

I want to encompass all social constructs.

And the way that you can do that is sort of by being vague.

And so you're allowed to interpret, okay, what is this represent to me?

>> Faith: That brings me to -- the paintings that you've brought with you.

I especially want to talk about this one.

Can you tell me what's going on in this painting?

>> Alexander: Yes.

So this painting I did for a show in New York.

and -- the initial idea was to focus on fond childhood memories, and I didn't really have a lot of fond childhood memories I lost both of my parents when I was a kid, and I kind of grew up very, very fast.

And I thought about growing up, as a kid.

Me and my cousins would sort of have these little pretend battles while everybody was in church, and we would grab sticks and just beat the heck out of each other.

[laughs] it doesn't sound like a fond childhood memory, but it is.

And in our tribe -- so, I█m Muscogee Creek and our tribe -- egrets kind of represent this idea of peace and good medicine.

So -- I wanted to put these egrets in to represent this, like, Muskogee heritage that's out of this church, and by making them look like angel wings.

I thought that was just like like -- like, whoa, that's pretty tight.

That's pretty cool.

[ethereal music] >> Faith: There's a lot of abstraction in your work.

Like this one, for instance.

What's going on here?

And why does it look like it█s glitching?

>> Alexander: So, the idea is that this person is in a dream and they're starting to wake up.

And so their -- consciousness is going from like a dream world back into reality.

They're sort of being pulled back into their bodies.

And so -- by putting this astronaut helmet there, I guess the dream would be to have a more unified humanity.

[ethereal music] >> Faith: And, you've talked about to -- that abstraction versus figure, kind of like, they both mean something different in your work.

>> Alexander: Yeah!

Yeah.

>> Faith: Can you talk a little bit about that?

>> Alexander: So, with -- I did a series when I first started painting, called The Identity Series The idea was that the abstract was to represent these parts of ourselves that we don't know yet.

And then the figurative was going to represent the parts that we do know about ourselves and as ever, changing -- and like we'll never fully comprehend who we are as people.

I think that's a beautiful thing, because it gives you the pursuit of life, and you sort of -- go through this journey of trying to figure out who you are as a person.

>> Faith: Yeah, you explore that concept a lot, right?

Like, understanding yourself and others.

Why is that important to you?

>> Alexander: The more we know about ourselves, the more that we contribute back into the communities, and then the more communities teach us more about ourselves.

And it's this cyclical motion that happens.

>> Faith: And you also include a lot of bison in your work.

What's up with the bison?

>> Alexander: I've never met a person who doesn't like a bison.

[Faith laughs] >> Alexander: I wanted to paint something that was small and had a lot of freedom to it.

And so I was like, why not just paint a bison?

It's called, Part of the Herd And you would walk into somebody's house, maybe at a dinner party or just like a regular cookout you█re like, “Oh, look at that, Part of the Herd!

I'm part of the herd too.” >> Faith: Yeah, are you trying to build community?

Do you think, sometimes with your work?

>> Alexander: Absolutely.

Absolutely.

I just want people to look at each other in maybe a different lens.

We often say, “oh, I'm Native American or I'm Democratic or Republican.” and those sort of take in our identities, but we're sort of more than that.

We can do anything.

We can develop new perspectives of how we want to view each other.

Especially with the way that technology is today, how do we use these newer technologies to develop a better way of seeing one another?

How do we sort of take in -- technology without disregarding it in today's time?

In my digital era series, that's sort of what the conversation was about.

The main thing that I hope that people will recognize themselves whenever they look at this work is that they understand that we are just human.

It's as simple as that.

We sort of just -- take on this journey together, not to take things so seriously, maybe just enjoy each other's company.

That's about it, yeah.

[ethereal music] CHEMICAL CURIOUSITY >> Thrasher: At some point, people started calling me a wizard, and I think they mean it.

Once you own that, once you're able to back it up -- Whatever, I'm a wizard.

People stop questioning it.

You can just do whatever you want.

People are like, “well, that's on brand.” I█m Tyler Thrasher.

Describing myself is always a bit of a challenge.

I've kind of summed it up.

Equal parts artists, equal parts citizen scientists.

I think everything else I do kind of falls under that umbrella.

You'll notice that I have an affinity for weird creatures, things that I think traditionally are found to be repulsive or disgusting that I think are incredibly fascinating.

The process of crystallizing some things kind of similar to growing rock candy.

You take a compound molecule and you dissolve it, so you separate it into its ions.

You make a solution.

So you have this like hot water, this sort of soup.

You are just kind of making the environment for this, you know, darn near perfect pattern to form.

I take things like dead insects or skeletons and I just submerge them.

And then as the water evaporates or the vessel cools, these ions come back together and they form that molecule.

From there, it forms a network.

That's what a crystal is.

It's a pattern they'll form on anything.

It doesn't matter.

I just happen to have a thing in between all of that and that system and then they just grow from there.

Nothing dies for my work.

I take insects or specimens that died of natural causes, and I crystallize them.

I don't know where to say where I got started, but I guess I can condense it down really quick.

Okay, so let me see if I can do this.

So, I went to college in Missouri, started caving to fill up my free time, fell in love with caves, fell in love with nature.

I was going to school for computer animation.

And I realized, like, right before us about to graduate, I don't want to do this.

So I just filled my weekends with, like, extracurricular creative projects.

Growing crystals was one of those.

Found a dead bug in the backyard, grew crystals on the dead bug, shared it online.

It went viral.

And then I made a bunch of crystallized dead bugs, traveled around the country with those bugs, and then that helped fund all the other things I do.

This is Moonbeam Conservatory.

In our shop, we have a little over 13,000 glowing flowers, so we work with different florists and farmers to get our flor that is dried and preserved.

And then we make it glow in the dark.

Almost any color combo you can think of, we have.

When we started making Moonbeam Flora, I had no intentions of making like, the world first glowing flower shop or anything like that.

I just made this glowing flower and I was like, this is cool, I want to share it.

People kept buying them.

This space became available, and I don't think we knew what this was going to be.

It was just -- we're kind of like, “hey, we're going to try to make this work.” I like to tell people that the Moonbeam Conservatory has three phases.

We get a lot of people in here that just like -- they just think it's like a flower shop.

[Thrasher greeting guests] Come on in.

[greeting guests] Have you guys been in before?

[guest responds] No.

[Thrasher responds] You familiar with stuff in here?

[guest responds] No.

[Thrasher responds] Okay, so you're just in time [Thrasher responds] for some pretty cool stuff.

There's the daylight phase where you can see all the colors and the natural textures of the dried flowers.

And then the second phase is what I call the black light phase.

We have these UV floodlights, these black light floodlights installed so we can charge up all the flowers.

And then I usually let the flowers soak up that energy for a couple of minutes.

A lot of the flowers are fluorescent, which means that they are actively glowing and visually vibrating, under the black light.

So, I will flip off all the black lights and show the third phase of the store in three, two, one.

>> Guest: So, how much for everything?

[laughing] >> Thrasher: Oh yeah.

Well, it's also really cool.

Is all these little glowing balls on the ceiling.

Those are flower heads.

So it's these -- I grew up very isolated.

I also grew up very bullied.

I really didn't have anywhere to fit in.

And now the people that come to the shop, it's like I made a space for people that I think kind of exist on the fringe a little bit.

[sci-fi music] >> Joe: I have three assistants.

I have two that make the flowers.

Working here, you never really know what your day is going to look like.

It's kind of nice to have a little bit of that chaos.

There's so many colors and we can virtually make anything.

So we've made some pigments that I don't think exist anywhere else.

>> Tally: I couldn't have dreamed this job up, but it is definitely a dream job.

We have to create contraptions to get the ideal finish on the flower, like our spinning bucket.

>> Tyler: We made this like sort of cardboard like arena sort of Thunderdome prison thing, and we put a potter's wheel in the middle with a five gallon bucket screwed to it.

We can spin all the flowers and kind of choose the spin rate of all the extra paint flings onto the cardboard.

It's definitely a collaborative effort.

We all contributed in a way, and so it's really fun to look and go, oh, you know, one person did this, one person did that.

What if you were in a field of that and you weren't moving, but you heard it rustling really fast at you?

Would you just take off running in a random direction?

>> Tally: We are so silly and goofy.

It's such an atmosphere of like friendship.

It's so fun to get to brainstorm all our crazy ideas.

>> Tyler: So I've written a couple of books, and the last book I wrote, I coauthored with my friend Terry Mudge, and it's called The Universe in a Hundred Colors.

And we spent a couple of years researching very specific, very niche colors, you know, like Baltic Amber Cosmic latte, which is the average color of the observable universe, just all kinds of really fascinating colors, a hundred of them.

>> Terry: But we did rough drafts on every chapter, and our editor said they were terrible.

You know, we weren't writers at the time.

My name is Terry Mudge.

I am the founder and scientific director at Stem Cell Science Shop.

It was sort of a store I always wanted to walk into myself.

Our job is to tell the story of everything from a scientific angle.

This is a particle accelerator from the University of Wisconsin.

It was originally called Aladdin, and it would create a very intense magnetic field in the middle, which would guide electrons at extremely high speeds.

So this is a film from NASA.

It's from the 60s.

It's actually from the clean room when they were building a satellite.

And so we have the original copy of that film.

Tulsa really is a place where a lot of unpredictable things can happen.

It's just the right size and has just the right spirit.

There's this just really integrated web of people who are just making stuff happen.

I first met Tyler in about 2012 ish, and we've been kind of friends ever since.

So we spent 2 or 3 years writing the book.

We originally started with this massive list of colors, and eventually we had to whittle that down.

We went through maybe 5 or 6 rounds of editing, polished them up really nice, turned it into a book.

We have very different writing styles, but I think they complement each other nicely throughout the book.

I think it's really rewarding, and I feel like I'm part of the process of encouraging more people to get interested in science and how things work around them.

>> Tyler: We do a lot of events at Moonbeam Conservatory.

I didn't know this concept of a third space.

People call it that.

People come in and treat it like that.

You know, first space is your home, second space is your work.

And third, space is somewhere that's detached from both of those, somewhere that contributes to your life, somewhere that fills you up, that isn't home or work.

>> Branjae: Tulsa has a really tight knit community.

There really is no competition.

We all support each other, help one another.

Tyler's got his art studio and said, hey, let's do concerts here and see if people show up.

Each one has pretty much been sold out.

[crowd cheering] [low bass strumming] [singing] You know, this is a community event.

Music and art calling people together.

I'm just happy to be a part of this community.

[cowd clapping and cheering] >> Tyler: It's kind of daunting when you want something or you have an idea.

There's this fear.

What if people hate it?

Well, if it does not match, my expectation?

What I've learned over and over again is I hope it doesn't mean my expectations.

More often than not, I like what it became more than I originally thought it would be.

Because you don't know.

You don't know anything you learn along the way.

To me, that's the fun part is like A to B, everything in between is the good stuff.

[funky music] [crowd cheering] I get so many people that come through here that are like, I'm glad someone that looks like me is doing this, and they're doing it well.

And for me, that gave me a sense of purpose.

We needed more science representation.

We needed more Bipoc artist representation in Oklahoma.

These are the things that fascinate me.

And people come in and they share that sentiment, and I don't take that for granted.

[indistinct talking] It feels like I've been trusted with this narrative, this experience, this resource.

And it just I don't know, it's just kind of kind of humbling.

It's and it just feels really good.

>> This is something like I've never experienced before.

>> It's almost like you're transported into a different dimension.

>> Tyler: It was a long journey and probably cut a couple of years off of my life.

Just the stress.

But I am very proud of what we've made and the whole journey to getting here entirely worth it.

And it's crazy to think we just got started.

>> A Cowboy█s canvas.

>> Cox: Art has always been a big part of my life and cowboy in the same way, and that's why I paint the subject matter that I do.

They always say paint something you love and it█ll work out.

And that's why I paint cowboys.

My earliest memories are drawn on the floor, on paper bags or whatever I could get my hands on and always drawing.

And my mom has a drawing I did on paper when I was 3 or 4 years old of the chickens and the farmyard.

And so probably when I was about ten, I would imagine, is when I started using oil and we had a county fair and they weren't giving me any of the awards at the fair.

And my fifth grade teacher got mad and asked them why, and they said, well, this boy's tracing and we don't think he can draw that good.

And so my fifth grade teacher got mad at him and told him that I stood right over him and watched him draw, that he don't trace.

He's doing it himself.

And after that, they started giving me grand prizes and it all turned out good.

But I ever remember a teacher not encouraging me, and the students would buy paintings from me, like for $5 or something, and people around town would, they bought them and still have them to this day.

A lot of them.

And they're embarrassing when they come out, but it's special that they still would hold on to them all these years.

A lot of my subject matter are friends that I know, and family, and I take a lot of photographs when I'm out working with cowboys, and that's where I get my inspiration, is when I'm actually working with the Cowboys and riding with them and helping them.

And I take 20, 30 photographs to put together a painting, but I draw it all in by hand.

There's no projecting.

It's my composition, it's my idea, my lighting.

I just use photographs for reference.

And I've always done detailed type work.

I know cowboys appreciate detail as the details mean life and death to a cowboy a lot of times.

That also the detail and the painting has always been kind of escape for me too.

Once I get into it, I can't think about anything else.

It's a real mental escape because I have to concentrate so hard on doing it.

It's a special quiet place for me to go.

I always thought the older I got, the faster I would get, but the older I got, the slower I get, because there's so much more that I won't let slip by.

And a lot of times I'll paint something in and that don't work.

So I'll have to take my paint scraper and scrape it off.

It's a process of putting things in, taking things out, moving things around and getting a pleasing composition that people can feel like they're there and relate to the story, and I hope they feel like they can walk into it and be in the painting and enjoy it.

The art business in our family has been a family affair.

Honestly, I don't think I would be where I am today if it wasn't for Susie and she managing all the the business end of it, and it gives me time to paint.

And for some reason people have always been so gracious to help me and it is been kind of a charmed life.

We had the hard days, but like I said, I never dreamed that we couldn't make it.

And I feel like I'm the same guy when I first started out almost struggling to get a painting done that day.

And it's nice when people say nice things about me, but the family keeps you humble and you're just a regular guy, and that's who I am.

[folk music] >> Funding for Colores was provided in part by New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund and the Nellita E. Walker Fund for KNME-TV at the Albuquerque Community Foundation McCune Charitable Foundation, New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts And viewers like you