- In this edition of ARTEFFECTS, an artistic approach to natural healing.

(gentle music) - My art or my creation is making something and allowing the way that I see it and taste it and being able to put that into a form that is consumable or seen.

(gentle music) - [Rebecca] Creating custom surfboards.

- You might make something that you think is gonna be like not a good board and ends up working really good.

So that's probably the perfect board, one that works really well.

- [Rebecca] An artist uses his voice.

(lively music) (Alejandro speaking Spanish) (lively music) - [Rebecca] And exploring collective memory through art.

- It takes you back in an instant, and that's what the work's about, just trying to bring you to that place that you probably haven't thought about for a very, very long time.

- That's all coming up on this edition of ARTEFFECTS.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Funding for ARTEFFECTS is made possible by Sandy Raffealli with Bill Pearce Motors, Heidimarie Rochlin, in memory of Sue McDowell, the Carol Franc Buck Foundation, and by the annual contributions of PBS Reno members.

- Hello, I'm Rebecca Cronon, your guest host for ARTEFFECTS.

In our featured segment, we meet Sarah LaShelle of Reno.

LaShelle is a natural healer and herbalist who uses plant medicine and herbal adaptogens.

She pulls from indigenous knowledge of botany to create skin products, tonics, and beverages to facilitate harmony within the body.

(lively music) - I think of art as a translation, as our own inner language that exists solely within one of us.

I think that's why, for me, art is so profoundly intoxicating.

(lively music) My name is Sarah LaShelle.

I am a holistic esthetician and herbalist and a healer.

We all are humaning, we all have the effects of stress, we all have life, we all have things that affect us, and an adaptogen just kind of holds you in a really gentle way.

It's something that helps your body adapt to the effects of stress.

(lively music) I think of herbalism and what I do as a translation of a story that has existed far before me.

The relationship to Earth and the relationship to plants and the ability to self-heal, it's just innately within us.

(gentle music) My intention was to make herbs and adaptogens taste good, like Mary Poppins kind of.

And then I've just continued to try and make drinks that have a really energetic feel without it being alcohol, and that's what my bar was kind of built around.

(gentle music) So I have a very large jar that I put all of the ingredients, all the herbs, the dried plants and flowers.

It's this beautiful layer of herbs, it's just so beautiful.

And then I take an oil blend that I also custom-make and then I pour it over to saturate the herbs.

It's usually full moon, and then I usually will bottle it up with the full moon as well.

I think I'm inspired mainly by the story of the herb, and then I try to build a story around the herb and then also make it tasty for all the tongues to enjoy, 'cause I really want people to be able to receive medicine in a way that is delightful and enjoyable, people can feel it and can taste it and can experience it in a more enveloped way.

I do hold deep reverence for so many different cultures and people and places where plant medicine was absolutely a way of survival.

And that's kind of been a really big new joy for me in making really beautiful, tasty drinks and finding the glasses.

And it's really also the joy of being able to witness the experience.

(gentle music) Plants and herbs and all of these different modalities or remedies, it's really important to have them work together within their energy and the synergy of the plant.

Some things can activate other things in stronger ways.

I think that it needs to be like this unification of a dance of some sort where they all kind of work together to activate exactly the way they need to, and they all kind of can create this chord or this melody that has a stronger sound.

(gentle music) My art is transforming something that already exists, is an old story, and allowing the way that I see it and taste it and see the medicine that it offers, being able to put that into a form that is consumable or felt or seen.

(gentle music) I get to listen to what the plants have carried for generations, and they're my medium, they're like my paintbrush.

And the things that I create with my elixirs and my tinctures and my salves, all the things are my canvas.

I obsess over texture and smell and creating something that can be consumed in a beautiful vessel to then make you feel all of those things.

It's not just a flavor, it's my entire process that I think people consume and that's why they feel really good, and it gives me so much joy to see it.

- To learn more, visit blushandbone.com.

Up next, we head to Florida to meet Brett Telinger of Gum Surfboards.

Telinger has been hand-shaping and glassing surfboards for over 15 years, blending old-school techniques with a deep understanding of Florida's waves to craft boards with purpose and soul.

(birds chirping) - It's being in a moment of meditation where you're not thinking about anything other than the wave that you're on.

So it's like you're not even having to think about anything except for that moment.

It's gliding.

It's the closest thing to walking on water.

It's like flying without an engine.

(upbeat music) When I was in fourth grade, I went to the library and I saw a book on making surfboards and I thought it was really cool.

There was a guy glassing a board, some Hawaiian guy, and I was like, "Wow, this is pretty neat."

He's like spreading this crazy liquid all over this thing.

So that is what got me into wanting to make surfboards.

Through my aunt and my dad, we knew of a guy here locally, his name was Juan Rodriguez, and he's been making boards for like 60 years here.

And so I knew of that guy.

And because you don't just go into making surfboards, you kind of have to have an idea of what to do, and I had no idea.

So I went there to apprentice, be a shop, do-boy, whatever I was told to do, and just started from the ground up.

I felt fortunate to have somebody that knew what they were doing and had done it for so long, that I could be around and be a part of something.

(gentle music) Starting is the hardest part.

Just having the idea of what you wanna do, mostly when I'm shaping, that's my favorite time.

You get into like a zen state, a zone where you're just kinda operating and not really thinking, so where you're just kind of letting the process happen.

So it just starts with the idea of how you wanna surf and where you're surfing.

Here in Florida, the waves are pretty small, so they're not the best.

My boards lean towards surfing in subpar conditions for Florida, so I like to do long boards and fishes and mid-length boards.

And then after that, it's kind of the feeling and what you want to achieve.

- When you have the ability to go to a shaper and explain to them the kind of surfing you wanna do and the kind of boards you've been riding and what you're interested in, and then have them sculpt you, literally sculpt you, this high-performance riding machine that's just for you, I mean, of course it's gonna ride better, like, it's a no-brainer, and there's, you know, you're working with an artisan who's making a one of one for you.

And the thing about these boards is they're sculptures.

They're working sculptures, hydrofoils, designed to do higher and higher-performance surfing.

Now, the kind of surfing that I do is not like ripping with big airs and stuff.

I'm an old guy now, so I ride longer equipment that makes it easier to get in, that makes it easier to ride.

But I still have a 7'2" pintail for hurricane surf, for big glassy days on the East Coast, or for travel to places that there are big, fast-moving waves.

- Gum surfboards, it's kind of a metaphor for a lot of things.

Connection, everybody's kind of connected.

As it relates to surfboards, it's like a connection between the past and going into the future, like stretching, like you're kind of stuck in one area, but you're also taking ideas from the past and bringing them into the future.

(gentle music) As soon as you think, oh, this is the perfect board, then you kind of stop stretching your ideas and continually to push yourself.

So the perfect board is also subjective too.

Like, you might make something that you think is gonna be like not a good board and ends up working really good.

So that's probably the perfect board, one that works really well.

But once you get the perfect board, it's hard to get another perfect board because they're not alike.

Even if it's machine-shaped, there's just so many little nuances like the blank, the material, how it was glass, when it was glass, there's just so many little variables to it to get the perfect board again.

(gentle music) - Discover more at gumsurfboards.com.

Now it's time for this week's art quiz.

In which year did the McKinley Park School, on Riverside Drive in Reno, reopen as McKinley Arts and Culture Center?

Is the answer A, 1975, B, 1987, C, 1999, or D, 2003?

Stay tuned for the answer.

(lively music) Up next, we meet Chilean artist Alejandro Mono Gonzalez.

For over 60 years, this muralist has been creating art in public places by transforming walls into canvases.

We head to Ohio to find out more about his lifelong creative pursuit.

(Alejandro speaking Spanish) (lively music) (Alejandro speaking Spanish) (lively music) (Alejandro speaking Spanish) (lively music) - Learn more on Instagram @monogonzalezchile.

Now let's review this week's art quiz.

In which year did the McKinley Park School, on Riverside Drive in Reno, reopen as McKinley Arts and Culture Center?

Is the answer A, 1975, B, 1987, C, 1999, or D, 2003?

(lively music) And the answer is C, 1999.

(lively music) In addition to being a documentary filmmaker, Dennis Scholl is a visual artist.

As part of his studio art practice, he reflects on history and collective memory by acquiring and assembling archival material.

We head to South Florida to learn more.

- My practice primarily works with memory, but it's not just my memory.

In other words, I'm not making work about when my dad got me a bike when I was 10 years old, I'm making work about collective memories, big events in our history that didn't just impact me, but impacted a lot of people.

My name's Dennis Scholl, and I'm an artist and a filmmaker.

I've been a filmmaker now for about 15 years, but the thing I learned very quickly is that it doesn't take one person to make a film, it takes 15 people to make a great five-minute film.

And so as a director, mostly in my film practice, I find myself having to give away pieces of the film and take them back and give them away and take them back.

And I was really looking for something beyond that where I could just sit in a room and obsess about making things, having a creative practice that I could do 24/7.

And so about 10 years ago, I started to make studio art and it wasn't very good.

And I did it for about five years and I threw it all away at the end of five years.

But then I found this thread that I've been working through and I began to make things that I was happy with, that I felt were good enough to show people and interesting.

And it was a real revelation for me to become an artist, and I've enjoyed it very much.

I'm the oldest emerging artist that you'll ever see at this point in time.

(gentle music) That is a very, very big part of what drives me, is to try to find a conceptual idea that you can also turn into something that's aesthetically pleasing.

I like to make work that works on two levels.

I like to make work that when you're far away from it, you see it and you see, in my case, a lot of symmetry and a lot of repetition.

So then as you get closer, you see that there's more to it and you have to dig into the work.

And that comes from using objects of desire, objects that are well-known, objects of culture, objects of history.

And so sometimes you'll get really close and you'll see a newspaper that's part of the practice and in a work and you'll wanna read the newspaper.

So I want you to look from far away and see the symmetry and the repetition.

Then I want you to come really, really, really close and look and see what's going on.

And hopefully I can trigger some interest in your life about what I'm showing.

The one question I always ask people is, what is your most vivid collective memory?

What is it that you remember like it was yesterday that we all also remembered at the same time?

Now, for me, it was the Kennedy assassination.

I was eight years old.

I was in the Christmas play rehearsing.

My teacher came running down the stairs, she was crying.

I'd never seen a teacher cry before.

And I went home and sat in front of the TV with my mom for like three days in a row.

Those kind of memories are things that really have shaped our nation and also shaped how we feel about each other.

When you have those collective memories, the country tends to come together in various ways.

And so a lot of the practice is about me out there trying to find these historical artifacts and assemble them in a way that will trigger a collective memory for the viewer to draw the viewer in because we shared the same experience that day when that happened.

It's about trying to remind you, the viewer, what happened that day when you were in class and you were 14 years old and they trotted out a television and put the Challenger launch on, and then right before your eyes, it explodes and those astronauts are lost.

Those are things people don't forget, they never forget that stuff.

Using memory in my practice has been almost therapeutic, if I can say that.

I'm not somebody who looks back a lot.

I have always been looking for the next idea, the next opportunity, the next ambitious thing that I wanted to pursue.

And yet when I started making art and I sat down and I began to think about, what is it that I want people to see, it was about memories.

And maybe it's 'cause I'm getting older, I'm not sure.

I'm trying to take these big moments in time, the 1972 Munich Olympics when the terrorists came and took the Israeli athletes hostage and we lost them all.

The space landing when we landed on the moon.

I'm trying to take those memories and kind of bring them back to the fore.

The most interesting thing, I think, that happens is when somebody walks up to a piece and looks at it and they say, "Oh, I remember that.

Let me tell you where I was that day and let me tell you exactly what I was thinking."

Boy, that's a win for me, I love when that happens.

And I ask everybody I meet who is interested in the practice, what is your most vivid collective memory?

(soft music) It's about assembling these objects, whether it's newspapers or it's cypress knees, all sorts of different objects.

But there's an underlying architecture to the practice, and that is I work with the dodecagon, which is a 12-sided figure.

Now, I've chosen that because the 12-sided figure represents the hours on a clock, the months in a year, the Zodiac.

And the dodecagon has a long history of being very important in architecture and religion.

And so I use that as the underlying infrastructure, if you will, of the practice.

And then when I get these objects, I acquire them at auction, generally, I just have to go out and search for them and search for them.

But when I get these objects, I build them on this idea of this grid, this 12-sided figure, to give you, I guess, the feeling of time passing, thinking about the months in a year, the hours on a clock, the Zodiac.

So it's really about using that as the underlying infrastructure to show you that time is passing and I'm taking you back in time.

(gentle music) I don't start the day with a paintbrush in my hand or a chisel with a piece of marble, I start my day by looking at 30,000 objects a month on the internet at auctions.

And all I do is I get my iPad and I go, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, and I'm looking for that one object that I can make into a piece of art.

And I would say at the end of the month, I probably found about 10 things that could be a piece of art.

The problem is I didn't find them on the street, I can't pick them up and bring them back to the studio, I have to actually bid on them at the auctions.

And so at the end of the month, I really wind up with about one or two things that I can turn into a piece of art.

Sometimes it's a group of things in one lot where I can acquire them, and voila, it's a piece of art instantly.

As I scroll through and I scroll through and I scroll through, that could be something or maybe that could be something.

Anybody that knows me knows that I've been an art collector for 47 years and I've acquired over 2,000 works of art during that time period.

So it's a natural extension of my collecting practice in the way that I'm making art now.

It would've been disingenuous, I think, for me to become a painter and announce that I was a painter, but this is really taking the skill set that I've developed over so many decades and now turning it into a studio art practice.

I'm basically just transposing my collecting gene, which I can't do without.

I mean, I would stop breathing before I would stop collecting.

And so I've taken my collecting gene and I've been able to turn it into a studio art practice and people are responding, which is really joyful.

I've been able to show in London, in Berlin, New York.

I'm gonna do a show at Piero Atchugarry Gallery in Miami.

So it's been an exciting time.

(gentle music) I knew that I wanted to show elsewhere for a while before I came home with my practice, because this is my hometown, it's important to me.

I revere the artists in my community, and if I'm gonna show work in my hometown, I want it to be something that I can be proud of and that people will wanna come see.

So I've spent the last four years showing work pretty much all over the world, and now I'm finally gonna bring it home.

I'm nervous, I can't lie.

There are so many great artists in our hometown, and we'll see what happens.

I'm excited about the show.

It takes you back in an instant, and that's what the work's about, just trying to bring you to that place that you probably haven't thought about for a very, very long time.

(gentle music) - To learn more, go to schollcreative.com.

And that wraps it up for this edition of ARTEFFECTS.

Remember, if you want to watch new ARTEFFECTS segments early, make sure you subscribe to the PBS Reno YouTube channel.

And don't forget to visit pbsreno.org to watch complete episodes of ARTEFFECTS.

Until next week, I'm Rebecca Cronon.

Thanks for watching.

- [Announcer] Funding for ARTEFFECTS is made possible by Sandy Raffealli with Bill Pearce Motors, Heidimarie Rochlin, in memory of Sue McDowell, the Carol Franc Buck Foundation, and by the annual contributions of PBS Reno members.

(lively music) (lively music continues)