- In this edition of "arteffects", celebrating local volunteers with a vibrant mural.

- Our team helped fill out the words that are used to describe our appreciation for volunteers.

It was just a very organic but natural process.

and it's just incredible.

- [Host] How a Saba concert series in Carson city came to be.

- I live right up the street, you know what?

And when you walk down here and you see two or 3000 people out listening to music enjoying the day enjoying the night, that's what makes life better for people.

- [Host] Sending a message with paint, gun powder and fire.

- All of my work has burning of some kind in it and I think it does reflect both sides of creation - [Host] And a bird's eye view from an author and illustrator.

- The eye is the most important single thing in a painting, we interpret the facial expression in sort of human terms.

- It's all ahead on this edition of "arteffects".

(Upbeat music) - [Announcer] Funding for "arteffects" is made possible by Sandy Raffealli, the June S. Wisham Estate, Carol Franc Buck, Merrill and Lebo Newman, Heidemarie Rochlin, Meg and Dillard Myers, by the annual contributions of PBS Reno Members, and by... - Hello and welcome to "arteffects".

I'm Beth Macmillan.

The food bank of Northern Nevada feeds thousands of hungry families each month.

Volunteers are the heart of this nonprofit organization, spending their time packaging and delivering food to those in need.

In honor of national volunteer month, which takes place in April each year, the food bank wanted to celebrate its volunteers.

So food bank leaders tap local muralist Bryce Chisholm for a collaborative project.

(cheerful music) - I'm Nicole Lamboley and I'm the President and CEO of the Food Bank of Northern Nevada.

We are a charitable food distribution organization serving 90,000 square miles throughout Northern Nevada and the Eastern slope of the Sierra.

Today we're standing in the warehouse out here on Italy Drive in McCarran or Sparks Nevada.

This is our warehouse where we receive inventory and distribute food to our 147 partner agencies throughout our service area.

(cheerful music) Where we are actually standing is our volunteer area.

And volunteers are the life blood of our organization.

They provide over 30,000 hours annually.

- They have their hands in everything that we do and they help bring so much inspiration and passion even to the staff who are here doing the job alongside them.

We literally could not do this work without them.

- Our team of marketing and communications professionals brought this idea forward about how do we really reflect our appreciation to our volunteers.

And so they went through a process and contacted several artists throughout the community who have done work in the Northern Nevada area.

They submitted proposals and then we went through a process of evaluating who really could capture a message that we wanted to share with our volunteers.

(cheerful music) - I'm Bryce Chisholm.

I paint under the name, ABC Art Attack.

I'm an artist and muralist around the Reno area.

My style is somewhat graffiti inspired, very colorful and bright.

And it's got that high contrast pop.

One of the things I like about what I do with my colors, I call it color therapy.

I free my mind and it's just coloring, you know, as a kid would.

And I feel like that's how people should go about art is that free minded creation.

Don't overthink it, just let it go.

The food bank reached out to me and they had an idea of they want to do something that would incorporate volunteers and bring it all together.

- We're so thrilled to have the opportunity, to create a mural that really captures the heart of the food bank and the service that our volunteers provide to us.

(upbeat music) - The mural is a little girl biting into an apple and everything behind her.

The words and everything are different positive words for food health.

I fight hunger, nourishing hope, themes that the food bank has incorporated into their model.

- All of the employees are getting the opportunity to choose a word from a list that we put together as a staff.

And I chose to paint the word together.

When the community comes together the smallest acts makes such an enormous difference for so many people in our community.

And so to me, togetherness really sums up what this work is for me.

- It's really special to have the employees come about and like be able to put their artistic touches into the mural.

It creates that sense of ownership where they can come back and be like, look it, I painted this right here, and I was part of that.

I was there that day when we did all that.

So it's a great feeling for them as well.

- Having the opportunity was a little nerve wracking to be able to get up there and say particularly as a lefty, can I actually paint words with penmanship that's legible, but it was really fun.

And I felt inspired by being able to participate.

And I think that's what is so great about Bryce as an artist is that he has the trust in people to also contribute to his masterpiece that he is doing for us.

I painted indispensable because our volunteers are truly indispensable.

- I think the mural is gorgeous.

It's really just a beautiful piece of art that signifies what goes on here.

It's a place that's just alive and it says what needs to be said about the operation of this whole facility.

- Volunteers are members of our community and together as a community, we can lift up people needing nourishment through food bank services, through the arts and celebrating the contribution of artists.

So volunteers are just part of the American culture and of who we are as a community.

And so we are proud to be able to provide the opportunity for people to serve their fellow neighbors.

- To learn more about Bryce Chisholm, visit abcartattack.com.

Since 2016, the Brewery Arts Center in Carson City has turned up the heat with its Levitt AMP concert series.

Through a competitive social media voting process, The Brewery ArtS Center has repeatedly won grants to bring free music to its outdoor stage on Saturday nights in the summertime.

See how the power of free music has made an impact on Carson City and the Brewery Arts Center.

(cheerful music) (cheerful music) - The Brewery Arts Center is a multicultural and multifaceted facility in Carson City.

It's one of the oldest buildings in Nevada.

It was a brewery.

It became a publishing house.

And then about 1975, it was up for sale and a group of motivated artists just came together and said, "Hey, we need to buy this building and we need to build a place for the arts of Carson City".

And that's exactly what they did.

And the Brewery Arts Center was born.

I grew up doing shows at the Brewery Arts Center.

Dancing in Oklahoma or whatever show was on, that's what I was dancing in.

I felt like there was nothing really for the whole family to do together and there was nothing for teenagers to do too.

There was, that was always the complaint going to Carson High School.

There's nothing to do on the weekends.

There's nothing to do on the weekends, but now there is.

(Upbeat music) - This is the third year at the Levitt AMP Carson City music series.

The Mortimer & Mimi Levitt Foundation is a national foundation dedicated to building community through music.

15 communities are granted a $25,000 matching grant each year to present their very own Levitt AMP music series.

And the series consists of 10 concerts.

All of which are free.

All are family friendly, high quality and all take place outdoors to revitalize public spaces and bring people together.

- I live right up the street, you know what?

And when you walked down here or you drive down here and you see two or 3000 people out listening to music enjoying the day, enjoying the night, that's what makes life better for people.

(upbeat music) - I enjoyed the music.

It's always extremely well done.

It's very diverse and all very listenable.

I do enjoy it.

- I think honestly, music no matter what you're listening to, it could be jazz.

It can be soul.

It could be blues.

I think it really just brings everybody kind of together.

It's really big melting pot.

I think that's really neat.

- A lot of our bands are nationally touring bands but then they have a local opener.

♪ I can do no wrong ♪ But when I'm down ♪ Down on the ground ♪ The whole world would spin around ♪ - So you give local artists an opportunity to perform on a stage for thousands of people.

♪ Pick me up.

♪ Make me frown - It's always fun to curate the lineup because you want to bring different genres and have a little bit of something for everybody we know not everybody's going to like everything we bring in and that's good.

That's acceptable.

I learned a great term at the Levitt conference this year and it was, you want to bring the people what they want but they've also got to eat their musical vegetables.

So I love that term because it, it kind of it's always in my head when I'm saying, okay, is this something new?

Are they going to learn something or be exposed to something new by this band?

(upbeat music) - SambaDa is a Brazilian band and they speak Portuguese and English with their songs and their music.

And SambaDa had the entire crowd on their feet.

It was really one of the most amazing concerts I've ever been to ... ever.

The lead singer was fantastic.

And then just supported by all these fantastic musicians and dancers.

They brought the whole Brazilian carnival flare to Carson City.

It really was just truly special.

(musician singing) - I'm Aileen Quinn and I'm known for the 1982 film Annie with Carol Burnett and Albert Finney and directed by John Houston.

Also did the Broadway show as well as 25 years or 30 in musical theater.

And now I'm the lead singer and songwriter of Aileen Quinn and the Leapin' Lizards, rockabilly swing and blues band.

♪ Love down in my heart ♪ I can't explain it What's great about the actual touring is that you really do get to spread the arts and the craft to the entire United States.

And that's really important because that's the kind of things that inspire people and inspire towns and it keeps the towns thriving and it gives other people goals and maybe things that they want to do.

I think it's really important.

Yes to travel.

You have to, you have to become a road warrior - Since year one, the Brewery Arts Center has done a really great job in creating the sense of community and the sense of place at each concert.

You know, there's a bounce house for the kids.

There's a community mural wall where people can participate week after week.

There's a harmony sculpture park that was installed last year.

So all of this really creates a great sense of community and an overall just really welcoming environment.

- It has truly transformed our community.

You see neighbors getting to know one another and breaking bread together as they eat before the concert and dancing together.

And what we do I think as patrons of the arts and people who put arts in the forefront of the community is we bring community together.

And that's really vital to the health and well being of any organization because you're less likely to be angry or to be mad at your neighbor if you danced with them that Saturday night in the middle of the street.

And it's really been transformative I think to everything that we do here as a community.

(crowd cheering) - My favorite part is to sit back at every concert and kind of watch the crowd and watch the interaction that's happening.

To have this happen in my hometown and to, to know that so many people are enjoying it.

And so many people want to be here and want to be in Carson City is exactly what I set out to do with the series and what we all as an organization set out to do with our vision And the Brewery Arts Center has grown.

It has evolved.

It had great beginnings with that group of artists who started it 42 years ago.

And I like to think that it's becoming what they wanted to see way back in 1975.

(upbeat music) (crowd cheering) - To learn more about the Brewery Arts Center and the Levitt AMP music series, head to breweryarts.org.

And now let's take a look at this week's art quiz.

This week's quiz is about the mural at the food bank of Northern Nevada which we showed you earlier in this episode.

Which bird is featured in Bryce Chisholm's mural at the food bank of Northern Nevada?

Is the answer A: blackbird, B: eagle, C: hummingbird or D: parrot?

And the answer is C: hummingbird.

Now let's head to Miami, Florida and meet artists, Mira Lehr.

Her work spans four decades of career dedicated to expressing both the beauty and destruction of the environment.

Using abstract imagery and non-traditional mediums such as gunpowder, fire, Japanese paper, dyes, and welded steel.

She invites the viewer into her world.

(calming music) - The beauty is very important to me but I have to take the bloom off the rose.

I'm Mira Lehr, I'm an artist.

All of my work has burning of some kind in it.

And I think it does reflect both sides of creation.

Creation, and destruction.

And that's what nature is all about.

It's always related to the environment.

(calming music) - I always drew when I was a little kid I never really knew I would be a professional artist.

As I grew older I decided I was going to study art history in college.

I was so lucky because at the time I graduated, the abstract expressionists were holding forth in New York and it was a major movement.

So I was right in the middle of this really wonderful scene.

So from then on, I did art and I was not really into the environment as much in the beginning.

I just did nature, a lot of nature studies but eventually I heard of Buckminster Fuller, a man who was very much about the planet.

And I saw an opportunity to work with him.

In 1969 I went to New York and I worked with him on something called the "World Game".

And that was about how to make the world work in the most efficient way and doing more with less.

So from then on, I was hooked.

(calming music) I'm feeling two urgencies, one I'm getting older, that's an urgency.

You know, how many years do I have left?

And the other urgency is how many years does the planet have left?

So we've converged.

Every day I get up raring to go.

- In the Orlando exhibit, it was called "High Watermark" because that's where we're at.

and that's where they felt my career was at.

So that show had very, very large sculptures of mangroves and you could walk through the mangroves and feel you were in encased in the roots, the root system.

There's something about being enclosed in the space that makes the viewer very much more attentive to what's happening.

And so I watched people walking through the mangroves and they were all moved by it.

So that's really the first time I've done that kind of large scale sculpture.

I love doing it.

It's a big, the smaller I get and the older I get the bigger the work becomes, it seems to me.

(enchanted music) And so now I'm back in the studio and I'm turning to something I'm calling planetary visions because I'm doing images of earth masses.

I've also added writing, which some of it is from Bucky Fuller about the planet.

Some of it is just poetry about nature.

I've always felt abstraction as I, as form, even though I like, I like representation, but to me abstraction gets the essence.

The essence of everything.

And you can take it and go on with it.

And it's more spiritual to me.

I think like Cezanne at the end of his life, his paintings became kind of dissolved in light like light entities.

At the end of Rembrandt's life, also, his work became less literal and more also dissolved in light.

So light is very important.

And that to me is the height of it.

If you have a light entity in your work I think it's profound and meaningful.

(enchanting music) - The light on the big sculpture, yeah those are special lights that grow corals in the laboratory.

And the sculpture is a shape of a wave.

And it's mesmerizing.

(enchanting music) You know, if the world pulls apart and people are concerned just with their little everyday existence I don't see a great future.

But I'm hoping there's still time.

The clock is definitely ticking and I'm not a politician and I'm not a scientist.

The way I can express it is through my art.

And that's what I'm trying to do along with having a wonderful experience making it.

(enchanting music) - To learn more about this artist, visit miralehr.com.

When it comes to ornithology or the scientific study of birds, the 19th century had John James Audubon.

We have David Allen Sibley.

Sibley is a bird watcher and painter renown for his books on birds.

Let's visit him and learn about his process.

- There's probably a little flock of chickadees, titmice.

There might be white-breasted nuthatch.

- To walk in the woods with David Sibley is to slow down, to trace the flecks of sun shining through trees and to let silence be your guide.

So take me a little bit into your process when you get into the woods.

- I would just look for birds and then when I find some birds, try to find one that's cooperative.

It's sitting up in the open and just watch.

And then pull out a sketchpad and do some quick sketches.

- Which he's been doing since the age of five.

The son of an ornithologist and a lifelong birder himself, Sibley has published the go-to guides for birds.

And now in his most recent book he delivers us into what it's like to be a bird.

What changes for you, when you have minutes to be spending with a bird?

- Then I can really just settle in and and look at all kinds of details and start asking questions.

- We find his answers here at Mass Audubon's Museum of American Bird Art where the illustrations for his latest book are now on view.

From the wide-eyed owl to the road runner.

- I'm surprised not to see any dynamite with the Roadrunner.

- Yes well, in the book, one of the essays in the book is about is a road runner really faster than a coyote?

In real life a coyote is quite a bit faster than a Roadrunner.

- So you're not only a famed birder, you're a myth buster too.

- Another myth busted, Blue Jays aren't actually blue.

In the bird world the color blue technically doesn't exist.

- It is a color because it's what we perceive.

It's the blue wavelengths of light are reaching our eyes but the way the bird is the way the feathers are reflecting only blue is due to the structure of the feather and not to pigment.

- The Turkey isn't necessarily thought of as the most beautiful bird ever.

But I think that in this painting, David really captures that and also creates almost an abstract painting at the same time.

- Amy Montague is the director of the Museum of American Bird Art.

The only one of its kind known to exist.

Here you'll find sculpture and works from John James Audubon, avid birder Frank Weston Benson, and avid pop artist Andy Warhol and all situated on 124 acres of a wildlife sanctuary.

- Birds are deeply fascinating to people but they're also really symbolic.

You think birds symbolize hope.

They symbolize freedom.

- And one of David Sibley's great gifts she says, the connections he brings.

- He's really tried to capture the spirit of the birds.

You take away some of the wonder that he has for bird life which is extraordinary.

- And who wouldn't be interested in the fact that birds have two different balance sensors, one in their inner ear like us and one in their hips, in their pelvis.

And that's how they balance on a slender twig that's swaying in the breeze.

- From eating to soaring, to swimming, Sibley gives us a bird's eye view of their lives.

Speaking of which, the eyes have it all, he says.

- The eye is the most important single thing in a painting.

And a lot of it, a lot of what we ascribe to a bird's personality, we interpret a facial expression in sort of human terms.

Hawks look a little bit angry because they have this eyebrow ridge that makes them look like a like a cartoon drawing of an angry person with the dark lines slanted down.

- Sibley's work is based on photographs, sketches he does in the field, and more than 50 years of experience and memories of the natural world.

Favorite bird to paint, least favorite bird, most challenging.

- Hmm.

Favorite bird to paint is this little tiny birds called wood warblers.

They're brightly colored, boldly patterned, very active.

The most difficult, most challenging I would say are for me the herons and egrets.

They're very graceful, elegant looking but when you look closely, they're kind of almost reptilian.

There's some weird angles and joints in that neck that and I'm getting that balance, getting that the curvature just right in a drawing is incredibly difficult.

- Fortunately for Sibley, there's always more time and more space for the work to take flight.

- To learn more about this artist, visit sibleyguides.com.

And that wraps it up for this edition of "arteffects".

For more arts and culture and to watch past episodes visit pbsreno.org/arteffects.

Until next week, I'm Beth Macmillan.

Thanks for watching.

- [Announcer] Funding for "arteffects" is made possible by Sandy Raffaelli, the June S Wisham Estate, Carol Franc Buck, Merrill and Lebo Newman, Heidemarie Rochlin, Meg and Dillard Myers, the annual contributions of PBS Reno Members, And by... (upbeat music)