- In this addition of "ARTEFFECTS," brightly-colored portraits.

- [Traci] Since a lot of my work is so humanistic, it's important to me to try to communicate certain things through color.

- [Beth] Painting a city.

(upbeat jazz music) - My job is to take the culture and show what it is.

I'm not mimicking.

I'm giving birth to culture.

- [Beth] An origami holiday tree.

- The success is the popularity of the tree, and people say, ooh, ah.

Just a little kids pointing up, wow, wow.

It's just great.

(upbeat festive music) - [Beth] And the multi-faceted harmonies of Reno's Silver Dollar Chorus.

(men harmonize) - Barbershop, I think part of the reason people love it, and the reason that they're surprised by it is how good the range of sound in the harmony sounds without musical accompaniment.

♪ Receive her King - It's all ahead on this edition of "ARTEFFECTS."

(upbeat jazz music) - [Announcer] Funding for artifacts is made possible by Sandy Raffealli with Bill Pearce Motors, (upbeat music) Meg and Dillard Myers, the Nevada Arts Council, Heidemarie Rochlin, and by the annual contributions of PBS Reno members.

(upbeat music) - Hello, I'm Beth Macmillan and welcome to "ARTEFFECTS."

For our featured segment, meet artists Traci Turner in Reno.

A teacher wants told Turner that she is allowed to use any color she wants, and she took that as a challenge.

Turner found her unique style, combining bright colors and beautiful portraits filled with culture and deep emotion.

(chill music) - My artwork is humanistic.

It's colorful.

I almost exclusively work in oil.

I do frequently bring in metallic elements to my work like gold leaf and origami paper to add an extra color or texture element.

I like the expressive qualities of color.

Since a lot of my work is so humanistic, it's important to me to try to communicate certain things through color.

I think it was the portraiture aspect that attracted me to it, 'cause it seemed like infinite possibilities, 'cause everyone looks different, different lineages, different colors to pull from, different expressions, that really hit home for me.

(calm music) The focus on internet memes was kind of an accident, to be honest, I was at a point where I had been struggling with art making for a few years and I was uninspired, and I wanted to pivot my work towards doing more portraits.

I think that's more of my wheelhouse.

And I saw memes as a way to practice doing portraits and expressions without being bogged down by too much meaning.

Plus I just thought the memes were funny.

I just thought it'd be funny to do.

And then when I thought about it further, I thought it was a worthy topic, because memes have become this way of connecting people, relating to each other.

As ridiculous as they are, they have casually become this new form of communication, and that is fascinating to me, especially when we think about how many of the more popular means feature black faces.

It's important for us to document memes in general, and then also to look into which pictures we decide to use.

It makes a point in the conversation of how black Americans participate in and continue to define things in our culture, and memes are a huge part of that.

(calm music) (gentle music) I'm inspired by the human figure and the human experience.

I will try to, in words, articulate what the idea is coming from, why I want to paint something like that, or make a series.

For my personal work.

I won't really paint something if I can't explain why I'm doing it to somebody.

That's really important to me.

I don't like the whole, I did it 'cause I felt like it.

Well, why do you feel like it?

That's really important for me to be able to explain to somebody.

It's never just a painting of a skull or a heart.

I know my work is very straightforward, and the narrative could be a little bit more hidden, but there is always a certain reason why I'm reexamining a certain subject to the point of exhaustion.

It's just there's just something about it that's really interesting.

And normally it boils down to connectivity or expressing a deeply personal emotion.

I really enjoy connecting with people.

I love posting things online and talking with people about my work.

It does feel awkward sometimes to share, but I do feel relief when I can finish something and put it out there and share it with people and they can take it in and speak with me about it.

It just feels really life affirming.

(gentle music) - Find more of Turner's artwork at traciturner.com.

Born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, artist Terrance Osborne loves to paint his city.

His compelling canvases are full of expression and vivacity.

We meet the artist in his hometown and hear more about his craft.

(upbeat jazz music) - I'm one in five, and we used to play under our house.

These shotgun houses, they're raised, so we used to play archeologists, digging up bottles and things like that.

I developed a love for antiques and rustic things and all things New Orleans.

My mom collected a lot of antiques.

That was something that she did.

A lot of rustic stuff she liked.

What I try to do is paint about those things.

Playing under the house gave me an idea of how the structure of a house was formed, 'cause I could see underneath.

So when I started painting them as an adult, I just painted from memory.

It was easy to understand that.

There's the artist who sees the culture and who mimics the culture.

I'm gonna paint a guy playing a trumpet, or I'm gonna paint some crawfish or something like that, and that's fine, because that introduces people to the culture and gives them something to take back.

But then there's another artist that I'm partial to.

This artist is born of the culture.

And when he produces something, he produces it from a place where he's not trying to mimic.

He's creating the culture.

And that's what I do.

My job is to take the culture and show what it is.

I'm not mimicking.

I'm giving birth to culture.

And so when people see my work, they recognize that.

People who are not artists, they experience the same thing that I experience when they look at the city, locals.

The difference is that I have the motor skills to interpret my perceptions.

Even though someone might think of what Mardi Gras is, I can paint the expression of it.

There's this piece called "Throw Me Somethin' Mistah" where this lady has her arms stretched out, and she has beads.

And you can, you can see the enthusiasm in her face.

She is Mardi Gras personified.

Now that's how everybody feels, but I can paint about it.

Most of my pieces originally were about the houses and the neighborhoods and things like that, but I'm gradually started to move into painting people more and then putting houses on their heads or umbrellas on their heads or alligators, anything that represents the culture here.

I've been painting a lot of women in sort of a regal look centered around something having to do with Mardi Gras or New Orleans.

And oftentimes I use my wife and my daughter as models.

I'll take a picture of him with a right angle and paint them in.

Sometimes it's my wife's eyes and my daughter's face or vice versa just to create these women.

Typically, it's something centered around Mardi Gras.

And I enjoy that.

I put my family in my work.

I've always done that.

I don't know what else I would paint.

For me, that's real life.

"Lady Mardi Gras" is my absolute favorite.

I use this image on all of my cards and advertising.

You could easily find her at a mall or something.

She would be the lady that stands out.

When I painted this piece, I needed something to intertwine her hair through the house to lock the house on her head.

So I added these birds.

Then I added the cat, because I tend to add something that doesn't belong, 'cause birds and cats don't really get along to give it contrast.

Also, the black cat is mysterious as well, so it gives her that mystery about her.

The Bayou St. John bridge is actually called the Magnolia Bridge.

And one day this lady called me and said, "My husband and I are retired, "and one of our favorite things to do "is to sit on the porch, sip wine, "and watch people get married on the bridge."

It's mostly a pedestrian bridge.

So she says that her husband mentioned one time, he said, "Honey, when I die, I would love for a band "to second line across that bridge to celebrate my life."

So she said his birthday is coming.

She said, "I want to give him the gift before he dies.

"Could you paint a scene of a band "celebrating my husband's life on the bridge?"

So I did.

And also I put them in the boat on the scene.

And also my wife is in the center of that bridge.

So I thought that was a sweet sentiment for her husband.

(calm bluegrass music) The house is in the scene.

It's the house that's closest to the bridge with the picket fence around it.

"Uptown Bound" is one of my favorite ones, because it has all of my family's names in it.

So, on the left, if you look at the buildings, you'll see Stephanie, my wife.

The second one is Seth.

He's my 20 year old.

He's a culinary artist of the family.

Then LT is my oldest.

LT stands for Little Terrance.

He's not so little.

He's 26.

He's a graphic artist.

And then there's a sign that says, Sydni, my daughter, she's 17, and she's a vocal artist.

And 524 on the streetcar is my wedding anniversary date.

So it's the only one that has my entire family in it, and the streetcar is nice.

(calm bluegrass music) This pandemic was happening.

And you saw all of these women.

80% of the people who are in the medical industry on the front lines are women.

So a friend of mine suggested that I paint the Rosie the Riveter.

I thought it was a fantastic idea.

His wife is a nurse.

So I painted her.

And what I ended up doing was donating about 5,000 of the posters to the hospitals in New Orleans and some hospitals around the country.

And the image went viral.

I really felt like I was contributing to the pandemic.

There's no competition for the Jazz Fest poster.

This one guy called and said, "I'm responsible for selecting the artists "for a jazz festival, "and I'd like you to do the Jazz Fest poster."

So that was in '07.

Jazz Festival is the highest grossing festival in the world.

The Jazz Fest poster is the highest grossing festival poster in the world.

So if you get it, of course, it's a huge honor.

Your work goes all over the world.

If your poster does well, they call you again to do another poster.

So I've done five Jazz Fest posters so far.

That really put me on a map early on.

Most people think that the artist creates it all, but it's not.

It's more of a collaboration between the producer of it and the artist.

The most excitement I got was when my third poster did well.

The third one is one of Jazz Fest's bestseller, The "Trombone Shorty" of 2012.

I like how it came out.

I like the enthusiasm that everyone got from it.

I enjoyed working on it.

(upbeat jazz music) - See more at terranceosbourne.com.

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

In which year was Charles Dickinson's "A Christmas Carol" first published?

Is the answer A, 1843, B, 1897, C, 1903, or D 1937?

And the answer is A, 1843.

Every year, during the holiday season, an origami holiday tree is displayed at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

Inspired by the museum's exhibits, volunteers from Origami USA fold paper into a variety of inventive designs to decorate the tree.

In this segment, we take a look back at the 45th tree that was created.

(upbeat festive music) - The origami holiday tree, it started with Alice Gray, who was an entomologist here, and she was always into arts and crafts.

- And we used to use her office to have meetings and fold and play and listen to her rather large hissing cockroaches.

And Alice used to make a little tree.

- She decorated a three foot tree with origami insects and told somebody about how it would be so great if a museum had her holiday tree with origami on it.

- [Ros] And they gave her this humongous treat to decorate, and we all did.

(upbeat festive music) This is an amazing marriage of science and art.

- So this is the 45th three for the museum.

And it's been a wonderful tradition that we honor and cherish.

We have a whole collection that we've developed.

- And they range from super complex all the way down to super simple.

You can do every scale on an alligator if you want to.

And we have a lot of repeat models that we rearrange in different ways, because we bank them.

It's not practical to do over a thousand models every year.

And we always make it look like a different tree.

- We'll also bring in new models, because each new theme may require special models.

One of the stronger themes that we have is based on the dinosaurs among us special exhibition, which means that these are dinosaurs that later developed into birds, and we're showing the relationship between birds and dinosaurs.

- And we research different flora, fauna, and try to reproduce it in origami.

That's why I have a lot of cute hatchlings and egg nests and other silly things.

And they're really very nice and fun to fold.

- Unlike Christmas ornaments or holiday ornaments, we get much more play and interesting ways of positioning the models when we have floral wire glued to them from two or three different points.

They can be standing.

We can twist them in different directions and angle them.

Kind of looks like they're interacting with one another.

They all hang out together and have a good time.

- [Crowd] Five, four, three, two, one.

- Zero, yay!

(crowd applauds) (upbeat festive music) - The success is the popularity of the tree.

And people say, ooh, ah.

Just little kids pointing, wow, wow.

It's just great.

(upbeat festive music) It's a labor of love.

I enjoy it.

It's magic.

(upbeat festive music) - For more information, go to amnh.org.

In our next segment, we introduce you to Reno's Silver Dollar Chorus.

This group of all male singers have delighted audiences, large and small, across Northern Nevada since the 1970s.

And while many of the original members have moved on, the original bonds of friendship, comradery, and harmony remain intact to this day.

(upbeat jazz music) - The Reno Silver Dollar Chorus has been around since the 70s, and it's a group of men who sing acapella, barbershop, performance music, and we are the local chapter of the National Barbershop Harmony Society.

- Ready, one two.

(snaps) (men sing) - Barbershop music is historically a very distinct type of music that started out literally in barbershops where men would gather typically in quartets to sing the four-part harmony that we're known for.

- [Donald] We have a bass, which is the low voice.

We have baritone is a fill part, which sings high and low.

The lead, more often than not, sings the melody of the song.

And then the tenor is the high voice.

- The thing that barbershop troop, of course, wants to achieve is a ring.

We achieve a ring when all the four part harmony is in tune perfectly, the pitch is perfect.

It's like an audible really good sound.

(men sing) - Barbershop, basically what it was started and what it was meant to be was four part harmonizing to popular songs of the day.

- Here we go.

- A lot of the songs are from about the turn of the last century, but barbershop style can be sung in almost any type of music as long as you can put a four-part harmony together.

- We do a lot of different types of music like, for example, Jason Mraz with "I'm Yours."

♪ This is our fate, I'm yours ♪ Doo doo a doo doo doo It's important for us to not forget the 90s, the 2000s, the 2010s, because we want our audience to grow.

Our audience can't grow if we shun those potential audience members.

But again, barbershop started in the late 19th century.

So we can't forget those songs.

♪ Doo wee oobah doo doo dah ♪ Doo doo doo doo doo ♪ Doo doo doo doo ♪ Well I'm yours The rehearsals that we do are critical, because you can't be performing all the time, but you always want to treat your rehearsals as an advance of a performance.

So we really hone our voices and we try to get them to sound really nice together.

♪ I'm yours A lot of times our performances end up being in the place where we've rehearsed, partially because it's a thank you to the host site like here at Five Star.

They've been our gracious hosts for our rehearsals, which we do on Thursday nights.

- [Jeff] We've done a number of concerts at the Sparks United Methodist Church.

It's a medium sized venue.

It's not real big, so it's very intimate in the sound that we can produce and hopefully that the audience can enjoy.

♪ The minor fall, the major lift ♪ ♪ The baffled king composing Hallelujah ♪ - Performing at the Reno Tahoe International Airport has been really exciting for us, because we know that we're making people happy.

They get off planes, they're fatigued, they come down ready to go to baggage claim, and right before they get to baggage claim, they see the skier statue and there are these guys singing in four-part harmony, and they stop and take some time out from a busy day to enjoy themselves.

♪ The rain falls So a tradition in barbershop is to make the Valentine's Day holiday special for people.

And one of the things that they're most charmed by are what we call singing Valentines.

- [Jeff] Four guys go out as a quartet.

- [Donald] We all dress up in tuxedos with red shirts and red hankies.

We'll go to people's houses and people's places of business.

- [Jeff] And we'll sing to someone that you would like to treat on Valentine's Day.

- [Donald] We've seen lots of tears, happy tears.

It's very heartwarming.

It really is.

♪ Heart of my heart, I love you ♪ ♪ Life would be naught without you ♪ ♪ Light of my life, my darling - [Patrick] At the end, they're really happy, and to get that kind of musical attention really makes the heartbeat a couple of extra times.

- Oh, that's wonderful, thank you.

- There's a lot of things to enjoy about barbershop.

I like the music, of course, but one of the best things is getting together with a bunch of guys on an evening and rehearsing, and then doing shows out in the community where you can share your love of music and singing.

- The friendships are invaluable.

I can't get enough barbershop.

I just can't get enough of it.

- I think it's important to keep barbershop music alive, because it gives us a good knowledge of some of the socioeconomics of the United States and the world, because history is always deeply embedded into the music that we perform since it has roots that go back into the late 19th century.

So it's critical that people remember those things and sometimes to get over depression and to get over chaos.

And when they can bring all that historical knowledge into their songs, I think the audience benefits from that.

- One, two, three!

(director claps) - [All] It's great to be a barbershopper, better every time.

- To learn more, visit silverdollarchorus.org.

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

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

Until next week, I'm Beth Macmillan.

Thanks for watching.

- [Announcer] Funding for artifacts is made possible by Sandy Raffealli with Bill Pearce Motors, (upbeat music) Meg and Dillard Myers, the Nevada Arts Council, Heidemarie Rochlin, and by the annual contributions of PBS Reno members.

(upbeat music) (upbeat jazz music)