- I was born in Dallas.
Got to experience the Midwest, the Northeast...
quite a few years in Houston.
- NARRATOR: Billy Hassell lives in the urban world.
- BILLY: Didn't move back to the area until about 15 years ago.
Then I've made Fort Worth home ever since.
- NARRATOR: But Billy has always been drawn to the natural world.
- BILLY: Haddie! [whistles]
It is hard when you live in a city to find places
that are natural.
It is dog heaven for them.
And us too.
- Reconnecting with nature in a small way,
in a very urban environment.
It calms the soul somehow if you can slow down.
We live fast-paced lives and we're kind of conditioned
I think to think we have to live in rush all the time.
- NARRATOR: But follow Billy to work, and his interest in
nature becomes most apparent.
- BILLY: Here we are in my studio.
[light switch clicks]
- [music]
- I am a full time artist.
My work has always been inspired by nature.
I grew up in a time when there were still some open spaces
and creeks and I got to experience a little bit of
nature even though I grew up in a pretty urban environment.
I guess my love of nature was born from those experiences,
and I've been kind of searching for that throughout the
rest of my life.
I have been seeking out opportunities to be out
in nature and find places to inspire my work.
[car passes]
You see these oak groves from a distance and they are
sort of their own little world.
- NARRATOR: In early fall, a new project finds Billy
seeking natural inspiration along the coast.
- This is a cool spot.
This might be a spot to come back to and set up
a chair and watercolor.
- NARRATOR: Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation has
commissioned Billy to create a series of prints celebrating
wildlife habitat conservation statewide.
- BILLY: We decided on five land projects around the state
of Texas, Powderhorn being kind of the jewel in the crown.
- NARRATOR: Billy's first lithograph will feature
Powderhorn Ranch, 17,000 acres of newly-conserved
coastal prairie and marsh on Matagorda Bay.
[bird chirps]
- BILLY: It is very heartening to me to see large areas of land
like this preserved for the future.
- [music]
- If you had to put it all into one picture,
you could not fit it all.
That's the challenge.
Hmmm.
- Prickly pear and a rattlesnake.
The more you look the more you see.
[laugh]
It is cool to watch them move.
I find a lot of inspiration as an artist in a place like this,
and as I learn more and more about it, I am fascinated
by the complexities of it and how practically every plant
and every little creature plays a role in the overall balance
of a place.
- [music, frogs croak]
If I sit down to do a watercolor, I have to sit the
chair down, find a spot, commit myself to at least an hour,
hour and a half of time.
In a pencil sketch I can frequently get at least a
contour of the shadows.
The cactus I got a little more detailed on the shapes.
The line drawings kind of help me put it into a bigger context.
The length of time it takes to do a watercolor,
by the time you are three quarters of the way finished,
the light has changed completely.
That is the advantage of having a photograph to refer to,
just for the light and the color.
[scraping]
- For years I did not even own a camera.
If I take a picture I let the camera be the memory,
and if I draw it I think I have to remember it in my head.
There is something about the process of visualizing something
and processing what you're seeing that burns a more
indelible memory.
- [music]
Just being in a place, just walking through a place
and hearing the wind blow and seeing things, it seeps in.
I try to generate an image that somehow captures the
feeling of the place.
- [music]
- BILLY: Let's see, I want a nice blue-green.
- PETER: Pick a color, any color.
- NARRATOR: One month after his field visit, Billy has an image
for his print.
- So I am here at Peter Webb's shop in Austin,
where we're turning my drawings into a color lithograph.
- NARRATOR: With his printer, Billy builds the image
one color at a time.
- [music]
- PETER: Everything is by hand.
He has to basically take his image, deconstruct it,
and then reconstruct it.
The artist has to draw each and every plate.
He is actually drawing the whole print right here.
The drawing is transferred, by light, onto the plate.
- BILLY: Traditionally lithographs were printed
from limestone.
Aluminum plates have replaced the limestone, but essentially
it is the same process that it's been for 300 years.
I hate to call it a dying art form, but I feel like by doing
the lithographs I am somehow keeping an old process alive.
You said we could take it out later.
- Oh did I say that?
- BILLY: Each color is hand-inked, hand-printed,
and usually there are about 12 to 15 colors, so that is
15 passes through a press to get one image.
[press running]
All my drawings are done in black and white so there's sort
of this magic thing that happens when we assign colors to each
plate and then we combine the colors and we achieve
this end result.
Each color is printed one on top of another and when
all the colors are printed, you have a finished print.
- PETER: It is a one shot deal.
- BILLY: I think it is somehow appropriate to be celebrating
these places as a limited edition work of art.
- Ta da -- We did it!
- They will be editions of 30, and once they are gone,
they are gone.
And in a way it is like the land that is inspiring the prints.
- [music]
- [dog sighs]
- NARRATOR: Back at his studio in Fort Worth, Billy completes
other work to be shown with his lithograph.
- BILLY: So I am working on a group of paintings for a show
that is going to open in Fort Worth in a couple of weeks.
I have got a few oil paintings that are in progress.
- NARRATOR: Billy's time at Powderhorn has inspired
much more than one print.
- It has kind of evolved into almost a whole show of work
based on that.
I make my gallery owners a little nervous sometimes because
I'm down to the wire usually, but I always deliver.
[laugh]
[car passes]
We are at the William Campbell Contemporary Art Gallery
here in Fort Worth.
- MAN: Wonderful show!
- WOMAN: Beautiful!
- BILLY: Tonight is the opening of a show of new paintings
and the unveiling of the Powderhorn Ranch lithograph.
This has generated quite a stir.
- MAN: Pulled in the crowd tonight.
[crowd murmur]
- BILLY: This is kind of the culmination of weeks of work
and sweat and anxiety over getting it all done in time
and my only anxiety now is that there is not any wet paint
that anybody is going to bump into inside there.
- MAN: I like the one in the back that is Powderhorn.
- BILLY: The paintings have sold, and the prints have sold.
And I think there is going to be a lot of interest in the
Powderhorn Ranch lithograph.
And I do think people make the association or think about the
coastal prairie of Texas and also the fragility of nature.
[quail call]
- NARRATOR: While preserving nature in paint and ink has a
beauty all its own, proceeds from Billy's print will also
help Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation keep places like
Powderhorn Ranch wild forever.
- BILLY: When this was proposed to me, I was thrilled.
- NARRATOR: With more lithographs in the series...
- BILLY: It will be about a three year project.
- NARRATOR: ....Billy Hassell has more natural inspiration
to look forward to.
- BILLY: I hope the prints reach people, and make people
aware of Powderhorn, but also just aware of the world
and how precious it is.
[marsh sounds]