- The colorful era of atomic weapons testing in the American Southwest was a combination of high science and wild West illustrated perfectly by a vintage diner and soda fountain that came and went on the desert in less than a decade.

Now, through history, archeology, construction, and artistic interpretation, it's been resurrected in a one of a kind art exhibit at the University of Wyoming on display for only a few months.

It's called, where the Heck is Yucca Fountain.

I'm Steve Peck of Wyoming, PBS.

This is Wyoming Chronicle for a little more than a decade.

In the 1940s and 1950s, the American Southwest saw hundreds of nuclear weapons tests amid an atmosphere that was a combination of state of the art science and the Wild West.

In Nevada, a region near Yucca Mountain was the site of more nuclear bomb tests than anywhere else.

And when atomic test workers and the few residents of the area needed lunch or a cold drink, often they headed to a diner in the desert called, not Yucca Mountain, but Yucca Fountain.

The weather beaten soda fountain and lunch counter was destroyed by fire in the 1950s.

And its memory almost was left to the ashes as well.

But a man who lived nearby Burt Tuttle salvaged what he could from the ruins.

And decades later, two western artists discovered the collection and used it as the basis for a distinctive one and only art exhibit.

They named it, where the heck is Yucca Fountain?

And now for just the second time in six years, the exhibit is on display this time at the University of Wyoming.

The exhibit is dark, atmospheric, immersive, a little bit eerie and a little bit humorous too.

And configuring it to the particular available space at the UW Museum took months, Stoney Smith took the lead role in the physical construction of the unusual show.

The word for his job at the museum might be one you haven't heard before.

You have a unique job title, at least I had never heard it before today.

And the word is preparator, is that right?

- That is correct, yes.

A preparator in a, in an art museum is kind of a, a person that works behind the scenes to prepare the artwork, whether it be works on paper or stretching, canvases for exhibition hanging artwork on the walls.

It's kind of the trades person of the, of the museum.

And I like to kind of explain it as a, a carpenter or a trades person with an art degree.

Yeah, - I think that's great.

We, so we can imagine walking into an empty gallery.

You come back three days later and the exhibit is there and the preparator has done his work, - Correct?

Yeah.

- In the exhibit that we're in now, there's a lot more to it.

And I'm, I'm saying nothing derogatory about putting paintings on a wall.

I've been to many art exhibits and I've loved them, and that's all they are.

This is so much more than that.

- This work is, is pretty unique.

You will, it's more of an immersive experience, an installation of materials that kind of create an environment.

And that's what we've done here with Yucca Fountain.

- And that's a good thing to point out because viewers might know, notice we're in a low light situation because that's what this part of the, this is what the Yucca Fountain experience includes.

We're walking in as if we were approaching this shack, this shed behind us at night.

And we step in here and that's the feeling that we get.

It's like being in another world.

Michelle Sunset is a curator at the museum.

She says that other worldly feel of the Yucca Fountain Show is absolutely and precisely by design.

- So when you walk in our gallery, you're walking on a desert scape, you're kind of transformed to this nighttime scene and there's a shanty or a shed that you see.

And we welcome people to walk in and experience it.

- Nicole Crawford is the museum's director and chief curator and hardly a newbie to exhibited art.

The director has been at the UW Gallery for more than 15 years, but even she is astonished by the Yucca Fountain installation this, - It was extraordinary to watch this being built.

Every day I walk in there and I'm amazed that this is our gallery space.

There's a door in there that I wanna open every day, and you can see the light coming from, from the underneath the door.

And I cannot believe that that's the gallery wall that we've transformed this space into something that is non-reality in there.

- Right?

There's no question walking from what is a somewhat unusual space to be in anyway, the gallery, the larger gallery that we're now, and you go in that room and it's, you've, you're on a different planet almost.

- Exactly.

- It's only been exhibited once before, but that was in a different city, a different venue, and in a very, very different kind of way.

So even if you saw the one which was in Greeley, Colorado years ago, you really haven't seen it.

Who are the two artists - There?

Andrew Bab Pablo and Helen Poppin Chalk.

And they're both kind of located in the Boston area in Greeley, Colorado.

The artists worked to recreate Yucca Fountain.

And so they had events where students could come and sit in the diner booth and buy a 50 cent hot dog or popcorn.

And so they took a look at what the fountain was in its heyday and the artist and I have been talking for probably five years now about how we might create similar Yucca fountain installation, but with a completely different experience.

And so through many conversations, we decided on exploring Bert Tuttle.

- Who's Bert Tuttle.

That's a real person.

Bert Tuttle.

- Yes.

He's a real person who was a big fan of the Yucca Fountain back in the 1950s.

And when it mysteriously burned down in 1958, he was inspired to raid and kind of salvage pieces from the, the wreckage.

And he managed to get the original soda fountain and the original neon sign and kind of saved them at his place.

And so what we're exploring here is that step back from the Soda Fountain to take a look at Bert and his connection to the soda fountain.

Helen came across a sign for the Yucca Fountain while on a road trip in Nevada.

And she loved the design of it.

So she was asking around and the attendant at the store she founded in said, oh, if you're interested, you need to talk to Bert Tuttle.

He was still around.

He was still around then.

Unfortunately she couldn't go find him at that time.

But she had his address and took Andrew, her kind of artistic partner back a couple years later on this journey to meet Bert and just kind of explore what was Yucca Fountain.

She was intrigued and they landed on his doorstep and found out that he had unfortunately passed away, but a couple acquired his whole estate and they still had all of his collections, including the camper that we have on display out front.

It's the, the mobile research lab, if you will.

And it was filled with news clippings and drawings.

And the artists were able to kind of piece together this story about Bert's love of Yucca Fountain.

- Helen and Andy were the artists behind this Yucca Fountain exhibition.

We worked with them as, like you say, a true collaborative work a year, year and a half ahead of, ahead of the exhibition opening.

We were talking via Zoom and on the phone and different things, email about materials that they needed to find different textures, different spaces, you know, paint colors, different things like that.

The lighting, you know, maybe objects that they wanted to include in the space.

And so we'd have to build the, the, the room to make space or to accommodate those items.

- So the objects that they're talking about in this case, that's what they are providing.

Here's what we have to have and - Exactly.

Yeah.

- But it's been installed one other place before, but not quite a different way from the way this was installed.

Inclu up to and including, as you were telling me earlier, the shed itself that didn't they, that didn't come on a truck.

You rounded up the materials for that, right?

- We did, yeah.

And a lot of the materials they had, we had repurposed from their other exhibition that they had done.

And so a lot of the framing material flooring, they had a whole storage unit full of, full of building materials that we could pull from.

And so we tried to utilize as many of those things as we could - As artists.

They weren't saying this has to be done exactly to this specification because that's how we do it.

That's not the way that they approached this.

Is it - True?

We had a lot of freedom with the space.

And so Anthony and I actually did design the footprint of this building and the roof pitches that you see and you know, the, the angle of this wall and how it meets this other, the other wall.

All those things were, we had complete freedom to design and build.

And then when they came on scene to the museum, we were able to install the pieces, the larger furniture pieces that we needed to have in the space.

- But when they got here and saw this for the first time, they liked what you'd done.

- Yeah, they were very impressed and they were excited to get going on, skinning it out with the, with the patinad wood and the metal.

And so then we, it was a true collaboration on site then.

- Well, let's talk about that patinad wood and the metal.

You said you found a lot of this material yourself and had a particularly personal connection to quite a bit of it.

What's that?

- Yeah, that's true.

My great-grandparents actually my great-great-grandparents homesteaded here in the Laramie Valley in the early part of the century.

And so a lot of these materials came from that homestead that we still have.

So, - And it was okay with everybody, including you as a family member to, let's put this to a different use here for at least a little while.

- Interestingly enough, a lot of this came from a junkyard that we have at our ranch, and it's probably eight or 10 acres worth of, you know, junk from the last a hundred years - I think.

I bet Every property owner has, has a, maybe not on the scale that you just said, but has a junk box, a junk pile, a junk drawer, and you think, why in the world am I saving this?

Bingo.

- There you go.

- You're glad you - Did.

It just justified it.

- We walk in here and we're on a gravel surface.

And even to that detail, you said there were some specifications or some characteristics of it that you or they wanted.

Right.

- This is about three tons worth of gravel.

Wow.

Spread out.

It's not, doesn't look like that much.

But, and so that was, you know, we had to think about how do you put gravel in a, in a gallery space, you know, we protect the floor obviously, 'cause we have hardwood floor underneath the, the gravel.

So we have that.

And then we have our three yards of gravel that we brought carefully up on a cart through our freight elevator and trying not to disrupt anything along the way or spill any gravel and then placed it carefully in the space.

But it, it has a really great quality of the sound and the, the different texture that you can activate the floor as part of the installation - As well activate the floor.

Yeah, I like hearing that term.

And we certainly did a little bit of behind the scenes behind the camera tidbit.

Kyle Dub, the videographer normally would walk among the three cameras to make sure that everything's still working through the interview.

And we stopped for a moment because if he were to do that, we would, that's all we'd be hearing for a while.

Anthony Elli was the museum's other preparator helping in finalizing the hundreds of physical details that complete the Yucca Fountain show.

He has a particular appreciation for a couple of tweaks that are probably best described as special effects.

- I I do really like the effects that Helen and Andy put in and you'll, you'll be in here and the lights will dim and you'll feel rumbling.

Like there was an atomic blast.

One of the little things that I presented to them, I was like, oh, well there's some archival atomic blast footage.

We should, maybe we could show it on this tv - Because this is what the, the, the foundation of the whole idea is this kind of structure and the, the soda fountain in the little, little diner, we're in this atomic testing zone of the American southwest.

- Yeah.

- And so we, we kind of chuckle look at this, but in what we see in the video back there, pretty serious business going on.

- Very.

- And you thought of that it sort of adds to it.

- Yeah.

- Even in, in, in what clearly is a very carefully, I hope I'm using the right word, conceived, conceptualized exhibit, but a lot of freedom as well in your part of it.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Suggesting something to the artist, which I don't think you do.

If you were hanging a painting, you know, did you ever consider putting a little more blue here?

- No.

Usually.

Usually you don't want to do that.

I've been at the University of Wyoming Art Museum for about 10 years now and we've, we've had a variety of different installations and artwork that's come through here, but this is definitely the most unique that I've helped install for sure.

- So it's a construction project.

- Yeah.

- In a way that a lot of maybe most other installations certainly aren't.

Yeah.

So we're standing now in the shed that we saw in the earlier shot in the background.

Now we're in it.

And I think it almost goes without saying this shed wasn't here before.

- No, - You built it.

- Yeah.

- What was in this room, this gal, this space, typically, if this weren't here, - We have a variety of different things in the space.

This is specifically our contemporary gallery.

So usually we're only showing artists that are currently making art.

- So paintings, - Paintings, - Sculptures, fabric arts, that kind of thing.

- Yeah.

You be - Highly hanging from the ceiling, things on the wall.

Things that you can walk among look at.

- Yeah.

Not a, sometimes films and other things like that.

- Things on screen, but not a shed.

- No, - Definitely not.

But it's here now.

And that's one reason I suppose that the installation is here for months.

- Yeah, - Because you put a lot into it.

- Yes.

- What makes that art compared to for someone who might think, well I can see why that painting is art.

How come that is?

- Well it was a, it's a creative process.

It didn't it, it's not just a building that we built in there.

It was a collaborative process.

It's an idea that that came from these artists.

It was created over time.

It came from all of us here to create this space - Wouldn't have been created without us.

Without you - Exactly.

Without any - Of us - Here.

- It's art because it's an expression that gets people thinking and talking about the world around them.

So it may not look the same as a more traditional exhibition that we would host here of paintings on the wall or putting sculptures on pedestals.

But it is an opportunity to look at an artist's vision and in this case, more than look at you can touch it, you can interact with it, you can explore it.

- Good point.

Because you don't want people going in there to that tool bench and hammer nails.

But if someone wants to touch something, not okay.

Most of the time in a museum setting, but in there it is.

Okay.

- Yeah.

In there we hope that people will pull a book off the shelf and wonder why the artist chose that book and hope that it tells them a little bit more about the story.

- Can think of a thing or two that you'd want someone to see or make sure they didn't miss when they went in there?

- That's a great question.

I'm most excited about our satellite pop-up installation at Sunshine Coffee.

- Well that's a good point because when it was exhibited before and as it was conceived, it was all gonna be in one spot that didn't happen to work for this museum.

So there's three different places where you can see parts of Yucca Fountain.

- Yeah.

And that's new for us as well at the museum.

We often just kind of show work here in our galleries.

But we had an interested part partner in Megan Johnson at Sunshine Coffee.

She's the owner, - Which is an existing business in Laramie.

- It is, yes.

It's in the Laramie Plain Civic Center.

And she's really interested in engaging with artists.

And so when Andy and Helen approached me with the idea of maybe breaching the museum walls, we explored a few options and this one turned out to be an amazing fit because we were able to set up one of the diner booths from the fountain and we also were able to fit in some display cases of more of Bert's ephemera.

There's some little collections of his, there's kind of an oddball like frog taxidermy playing pool that I would say folks should really go find that - It has to be in an art exhibit for sure.

- Absolutely.

- Some of what you're seeing here, not just as in a different place, in a different room.

Some of the individual artifacts were not there six years ago.

And if it is exhibited somewhere else next year or year after, that could be a little bit different again.

And that's one of the beauties of it, is that it's not a painting that has been unchanged for since the beginning there.

- Yeah.

This is a really site specific work.

And it was fun in the lead up to this show, we would receive random packages from eBay.

The artist would let me know later, oh, I ordered an authentic 1950s television.

And so it was kind of like Christmas.

Every week we would get a new package here and see, you know, 1980s MRE kits that you can see in the space too.

- We - Don't recommend eating those.

- We are here today ostensibly to see the Yucca fountain installation.

But I've learned since I've been here that it's part of a larger, bigger concept installation involving other media, other artists.

And it has a great word to it.

Which is what?

- Esis.

- Esis.

What does that mean?

- ESIS is a term coin coined by Donna Haraway who is a philosopher and it means making width.

So - Making width?

- Yes, making width.

So all the artists here are making with each other in some sort of way.

They're either collaborating together.

So some of the artists are actually working together, like in Yucca Fountain, some are working with other artists past and present across time and space.

And some are working with artists that they have always looked at who have influenced their work.

Some are working with the environment and collaborating in that sort of way too.

- So in collaborating in this exhibit, the artists did, so did some of them not necessarily know each other beforehand?

- Yes, some are working with artists who have long passed away.

It's, it's been a long time coming.

All these artists we have been watching for a long time.

We work with our artists very closely, so we've been watching them and trying to figure out the perfect place to put them together.

And so this idea started to come together very slowly.

And then Michelle, who's our director of curatorial affairs and I, putting these artists together, realized that they were all working in this ESIS idea.

And then that's how this all came together.

- Well, we are now, for example, I think it might be visible in the shot, Thomas Moran, who's one of the famous, introduced the world really to Yellowstone Park through art more a century ago or more, more than a century ago.

Some of his work is here yet, we have a cooler here and we have a guy in a camo outfit and, and there's a video screen, but it all fits together under the larger concept.

- Yeah.

So it's interesting.

We've actually brought in a raft from the river trip that influenced some of the paintings that you see in the other room, in the other, one of the other galleries.

We have a video installation that is shot through glacial ice - Lens.

I saw, I wondered - What that was.

Thank you.

Yes.

And then the other room, the, there are prints that are installed in a, in a round way to resemble the volcano that influenced the prints.

- Well, I like you mentioning the, the, the big video screen in there shot through the glacial eyes.

If that were a static image, it could be a, an abstract expressionist, kind of a painting by itself.

The sort of thing that we've seen.

But this way it's, it has that effect, but it's always, it's alive too.

- Right.

It slowly reveals itself to you.

Is that the ice melts?

- What brought you to the world of art?

- Well, I'm from Santa Fe, New Mexico originally, so I grew up - You're in an art spot.

- Yep.

I grew up around art, so you can't get away from it there.

So - Training, education.

- Yeah, I've got a few degrees in art history and museum studies.

I came here from a commercial art gallery in Santa Fe, which is actually really unique for the museum world.

People usually don't go between those two.

- You saw this opportunity.

What appealed to you about it?

- Well, I came here to interview and I saw this museum.

This museum is extraordinary.

It is wonderful.

The collection is amazing.

This building is amazing and the exhibitions that were being done here are incredible.

- Did that surprise you at all?

- It, it was absolutely surprising.

We have an amazing gem here.

- I'm not trying to diss the state of Wyoming or assume that you did, but I bet it's not unusual.

The people who haven't been to Wyoming or haven't been here don't realize what we've got.

Wouldn't have expected to see it.

- Oh, absolutely.

When artists come here and they see the space we have, they're absolutely blown away.

Visitors come here from New York or around, from around the world and people are absolutely blown away.

- People who like art are interested in art, interested in museums, which is a related but somewhat separate thing.

They like what they see here.

- Yeah, - Absolutely.

Good, good.

The building opened when - 1994.

- You're confident saying we did it right?

- Absolutely.

Yeah, - Absolutely.

You say you have an art degree.

Where'd you get that?

- I do at University of Wyoming.

- You did?

Yes.

And the degree is in, - I've got a Bachelor of Fine Arts in ceramics.

- Hmm.

Still get to work in ceramics when you walk in?

- I do, yeah.

I have a small home studio that I, I work in.

I have participated with some different projects here at UW since graduating, helping with the ceramics department and also, you know, just kind of staying in, staying connected with visual arts.

- So here's an art person from Wyoming.

You found a way to stay in Wyoming.

That's a topic that's on a lot of people's minds these days.

It worked for you.

- Sure, - Yeah.

What's your art specialty or what was it academically?

- The majority of what I studied for my undergrad was graphic design and then, but I also probably equal parts.

Sculpture.

- Sculpture.

- So that's why like kind of the, the building part has always been a part of me.

- What's it been like for you as an artistic person in Wyoming?

You found a way to make it work?

- I feel very lucky to be working at the art museum here because it lets me be creative and I can use my degree and then get to build unique things.

- Yeah.

My background is in history originally, but my first art appreciation class changed everything.

- Art has great history.

- It really does.

The job summoned me to Wyoming.

- Where were you before then?

- I had been living in Florida.

- How long have you been with the museum?

- I've been here almost six years now.

Six years.

- Still going.

Okay.

Still liking it.

- I love this job.

It's the best job.

Good.

- I think the writer was Marcel Proust who said part of art is recapturing lost time.

You are transformed into a really interesting part of history that still fascinates people for some reason, doesn't it?

- Yeah, absolutely.

And I've seen visitors of different ages go in and explore and make different connections.

Some folks are interested in the TV screens that are in there because they may have had a similar TV or the old refrigerator looks like something their grandparents had.

There's really something nostalgic for everybody.

- It's been a great day here and thanks for being with us in Wyoming Chronicle.

- Great, thank you.