- In this special edition of "Arteffects," a mother-daughter duo creates stained glass artwork.

- [Vanessa] It runs so strong in our family.

There's families of doctors, there's families of lawyers, and there's families of artists.

- [Beth] One of Reno's oldest art galleries.

- And we felt like we were pioneers because there weren't many places for the local artists.

Sometimes you just start and you don't have a vision.

- [Beth] The deeper meaning behind interactive public art.

- [Nicole] Over the years, I have come to realize that my passion truly lies in interactive public art.

- [Beth] How a Reno artist makes art out of soap.

- [Kathryn] That's why I think soapers in general, we don't compete with each other.

We just compliment each other because there's so much variety out there and everybody adds their own personality to it.

- And learn about these artists events happening during this year's Artown.

It's all ahead on this Artown Artist's edition of "Arteffects."

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Funding for "Arteffects" is made possible by Sandy Raffealli with Bill Pearce Motors, Meg and Dillard Myers, the Nevada Arts Council.

Heidemarie Rochlin, in memory of Sue McDowell, and by the annual contributions of PBS Reno Members.

- Hello, I'm Beth Macmillan and welcome to "Arteffects."

The month of July means Artown in Reno.

And in this episode, we are celebrating by re-watching artifact segments that feature artists who have events or workshops happening during this July.

For our first segment, meet the Aramandas.

Vanessa Aramanda has been an artist her whole life.

When she started her business, A Glass Fantasy, almost 40 years ago, she could never have known that her daughter, Amy, would join her decades later.

Let's go into their studio in Sparks and see this mother-daughter duo at work.

(soft music) - A Glass Fantasy is a mother-daughter stain glass studio.

We like to focus on pretty much anything really, I think.

We do repairs and customs and hangings to candle holders to big installed windows.

- I started the business in 1987 officially.

I was doing glass in like 78.

So I've been doing it a long, long time.

I come from a family of artists.

My dad was a photographer.

One of my aunts had her masters from UCLA in art.

Growing up, it was normal to be doing art.

And so actually, I grew up thinking everybody could do this, everybody could do everything I can do, but I found over the years, that's not the case.

It is a special thing.

And I do believe it's genetic that because it runs so strong in our family.

And I think, like there's families of doctors, there's families of lawyers, and there's families of artists.

It's amazing what comes out of these fingers.

And it's nice to be able to make a living on our own, doing things I like.

I like what I do.

I like being able to be around to raise our kids.

I did art projects in the schools.

- She was always out here when we were little.

We had a bunch of her pieces hanging in the house.

The studio has been in this garage which is the house that I grew up in for the last 35 years.

So I've always been around glass.

It's just always been a part of my life.

And I never thought that I would do it.

- I didn't really think about whether the kids would want to do it or not because I'm firm believer in them doing what they want to do, but they're so artistic.

All three of my girls are so artistic that I'm not surprised that Amy came in the business.

- I started around 2 1/2 or three years ago.

I went part-time at my day job to focus on my button-making business, and then decided I had all this free time.

And my mom needed help revamping the business for the 21st century and getting online.

In exchange for doing social media and website stuff, she started teaching me.

- [Vanessa] Obviously, she thinks the same way I do because she learned so fast and it just made sense to her.

(playful music) - It's a big process.

Each piece kind of starts differently.

Sometimes I get an idea and find reference photos and draw them.

I like to do my designing in Illustrator.

- Make up a design, make a pattern.

The pieces have to be cuttable.

So it can't be any inside right angles because the break is gonna wanna keep going straight.

So you have to be conscious of making cuttable pieces.

Picking the glass is really important and it is time consuming.

- I feel very fortunate that I joined my mom who has 40 years worth of glass.

So I just look slowly through all the pieces, trying not to cut myself, pull them out, hold them up to the light, hold them up next to each other until I find what looks right.

Then you take a glass cutter and you score the glass.

Then you pull it apart and down and it breaks.

- [Vanessa] So then you start cutting and grinding, foiling.

- [Amy] And then solder.

And then I usually edge my pieces in lead came, and then solder it again and then clean it and add chain.

And then photograph.

- [Vanessa] It's process.

It's a long, arduous physical process.

- [Amy] I really do love working with my mom and feel very fortunate to have joined her in this business endeavor.

- She helped me clean 30 years worth of mess in our studio and get it organized to where we can actually find the glass we want.

So that's really awesome.

And she has brought me kicking and screaming into the 21st century with Instagram and having a website.

And she's made this a real business.

- I feel very lucky to have joined her and one get to spend this time with her but to suck up all the knowledge that she has.

She has 40 years of experience.

She's self-taught, which means that she's still constantly learning too.

So we're learning together.

But then I feel like I have a leg up over a lot of my peers my age who are teaching themselves or learning off the internet.

Just having this relationship with my mom has been really special.

- Learn more about the Aramandas' business at aglassfantasy.com.

Vanessa and Amy will be teaching a crash course about the stained glass process on July 19th at Copper Cat Studio.

Get all the details at coppercatstudio.com.

In 1966, a group of Reno artists decided there were not enough opportunities for artists in the area.

They formed the Artists Co-op Gallery over 50 years ago.

The gallery is extremely successful at exhibiting and selling original Nevada work.

Take a look.

- 50 years ago, a group of established artists got together to find a place for local artists to show.

- There wasn't very much opportunity for them to show their art.

They all painted, but they needed a place to show.

- [Mahree] We found this building, which was an old French laundry.

- [Eileen] They had a lot of work to do.

They have volunteered, they and their friends to paint it up, spruce it up, and open it up as a gallery in May of 66.

- And we felt like we were pioneers because there weren't many places for the local artists.

Sometimes you just start, you don't have a vision.

We succeeded in our goal of having a place for local artists to show.

- We have 20 active members.

The members make wall art mostly.

There's a lot of different varieties but mainly, you'll find landscapes of local scenes.

We do have one member who is a metal sculptor.

Besides the 20 wall artists, we have a large variety of consignment artists that create pottery and do woodworking, jewelry, glass, all kinds of different things.

- We do sell a lot of art out of this gallery.

And it's all local.

Everything is original.

You have to provide three new paintings every quarter.

And at the end of the year, that's 12 new paintings.

Usually, you sell a lot more than that.

So you have to produce more art.

The more you produce, the better you become.

- We do have a lot of folks that are interested in showing here and they need to apply, fill out an application and they give us some examples of their work, and our committee decides when we have an opening if they're a good fit.

I had to wait seven years to become a member here.

Each member has to volunteer to work, work the desk, work on cleanups.

- They each have the opportunity to meet the patrons that buy their art.

- In 1985, I was elected to the gallery.

It was a great choice for me to put my application in and be selected 'cause it really did help launch my career.

Well, I think being a member here is crucial because it not only gives a person confidence in their art to market, but also you have the cooperation and the base within the membership for support.

- The community's been very good to us for 50 years.

So we do a lot of fundraising for the community.

We've had the Veterans Guest House, Rock Art Foundation, the SPCA.

We've done some children's shows.

This is our way of giving back.

We've become a family here.

And I think that's a lot of the reasons that we've survived as long as we have.

- [Mahree] We have so many good local artists.

We need to show our work.

People need to show their work.

- You should have original art.

You shouldn't just live with posters in your house or in your apartment or in your dorm room that you should have art and support artists and the local economy.

- The more galleries you have, the better it is for everyone because then, we become an art community.

It's not a competition.

It's a working together with everyone.

- This was a good door that opened for me, and it's been very rewarding.

Hopefully, they'll be here for another 50 years.

(laughs) - I'm very happy by the way it's turned out beyond what I had ever dreamed.

And so proud of all these nice young people that have kept the flame going.

(laughs) - The Artists Co-op Gallery has a month-long show running right now through July, 2022.

This show named The Mountains are Calling, features the beauty of the mountains and surrounding nature that inspires us.

Multimedia artist, Nicole Ashton creates large scale interactive public art.

These works have personal meaning to Ashton and she hopes to captivate and inspire those who encounter them.

Let's meet the artist and experience some of these stunning pieces.

(soft music) - I'm certainly am an artist who works in all mediums.

But over the years, I have come to realize that my passion truly lies in interactive public art.

It can reach the masses.

It is there and lives on will outlive me and will still be making an impact.

Interactive public art is something as small as a little painting on a wall, something that grabs your attention, draws you into it or something as large as a monument, something that you can go, touch, feel, get inside of, be a part of it, move things around, and anything that makes you feel like you are a piece of the art.

Public art doesn't work without people.

Curiosity kind of opens up to their own dreams, gets the mind going, and hopefully, sparks something creative in all the people that go to see it.

All of my sculptures, they always start with a dream and it's more like they're a machine instead of art.

If I don't take the time to sketch it out, write things down when I wake up, I'll have the same dream the next night.

That gets repetition so I finally just gave in.

I was like, "All right, I'm gonna follow this.

I'm gonna do this every morning."

And that's how "Transcendent Souls" came about.

That was my first solo piece that I worked on that was that large of a scale.

It was a crash course in structural engineering.

How to figure out taking a model this is big to something that's 28 feet tall, in thinking about all of the structural engineering needs and wind load.

"Transcendent Souls" really is about the progression of our own souls going through the steps and acknowledging our faults, our strengths, and doing everything in a manner of grace.

As long as you believe in what you're doing and just keep going, do it step by step.

That's process that's worked for me.

(playful music) "As You Wish" with the project after "Transcendent Souls," and it is all about going in with the intention, knowing what your heart's desire is, what your wish is.

In that, I was kind of pulling for myself all my doubts, the fear of not having funds to buy the materials and how it's gonna work.

But when you're in that process and you've gone that far, you'll do anything you can to make it happen.

"Dream Caster" is an opportunity to look into all of the what ifs.

So it's really important when you're doing a large scale piece to do a maquette so you can get a better idea of what your build process is going to be.

I've become the person that thinks about things like shipping and building.

So how do you make it fit into a box?

Where are you gonna separate it?

How's it gonna get loaded?

That part of the process is really a good place to start.

The pieces all going to be all reclaimed with the exception of structural steel.

Inside the framework of those hexagons of the dome will be individual dream casters.

They're meant to all be different.

The top of the dome will have another crystal.

And this time, we're gonna go dig it out or sell.

Anybody can do this.

It's all about just having the drive and the will to do it.

And I hope that that's what everybody who experiences it walks away with.

Public art for me, it's meant to inspire.

It's meant to excite.

It can even be meant to get you angry, meant to push you to make a change.

Hopefully, it just gets their wheels turning and they go off and they do amazing things.

- Follow Ashton and her ongoing work on Instagram, @AshtonCreativeTahoe.

Ashton's most recent piece of public art is a living sculpture named Seraphim.

Keely Cobb, the founder and choreographer for the dance group, Around the Stage, has created an evening-length dance inspired by this sculpture.

Find all the details at keelycobb.com.

Have you ever thought about soap as a form of art?

If not, Kathryn Howard of Wild Sierra Soap might change your mind.

She creates unique handmade soaps that are so beautiful, you almost don't want to use them.

(soft music) - The beauty is, is that you've got the world is wide open.

There is so many possibilities, and that's why I think soapers in general, we don't compete with each other.

We just compliment each other because there's so much variety out there and everybody adds their own personality to it.

So it's just a ton of fun.

I'm Kathryn Howard.

I'm a high school teacher.

I'm certified in math, science, and I'm formally taught home ec for 15 years.

So I use those skills to blend them together because you need to have a background in all of that to put together a nice bar of soap for someone.

Today, we're gonna be making a vegan soap but I also do goat milk bars.

So some of the bars have goat milk.

Goat milk helps a lot of emollient properties and a lot of vitamins that adds to your skin.

Wild Sierra Soap starts with our snow.

All of our water is supplied through a local well and that well is supplied from mountain feed off of Mount Rose.

So we're to start out with getting your ingredients together and your materials.

And with anything, this is just like any science experiment, safety is a key.

So you need goggles.

I wear an apron that's plastic and gloves.

Get all your materials going because once you start soaping, soap is not forgiving.

It moves and you've gotta be ready to move with it.

So we're gonna start out with mixing water with lye and let that cool down.

I like to soap at room temperature.

And then in another bucket, I've mixed together all of the oils that we're using.

We're gonna use a stick blender and that's gonna blend together the lye water into the oils.

It's saponified, fancy-schmancy word for lyes blending with oils.

So when they blend together and you'll see it comes together like a vanilla pudding, from that point, you can add some colorants, you can add fragrances, then you're ready to pour it into your molds.

Once it's poured in the molds, then it has to incubate.

Soap is exothermic, produces its own heat.

So sometimes I'll let it just sit in the oven, sometimes I'll wrap it in a blanket.

Good to let it sit for at least 24 to 36 hours.

During that time, soap goes through what we call a gel phase.

Glycerin forms naturally in the bars and it also allows any of your colors to really pop.

I like to go through gel phase 'cause I enjoy that pop of color.

And I want glycerin in my bars.

I think that's really nice.

At that point then the bars are cut.

They're stamped with our little stamp that says handmade with love.

And then they go into a curing cabinet for about four to six weeks where they dry.

So that's pretty much from start to go and then we have to package it up and get it out to the customer.

This is be about three years now that I've been working on soaps.

I was gifted some super nice soap.

And then when it was all gone, I went to look for it and it was $10 a bar.

And I thought, "I bet with my science background, my math background, a little bit of YouTube videos, a little bit of reading, I can start putting this together."

So I started playing around.

My eldest daughter said when I was making the first bars of soap, she looked and she said, "Mom, aren't you making soap?

What is that?"

So the first bars looked anything but that.

The soap seized on me.

It was ugly.

So it took a little bit of messing with formulas, doing more calculations because every oil that you use needs a different amount of lye with it.

So now, all those formulas are printed out.

They're in a binder.

They've got plastic sleeves over them so that they're in one good place and I don't lose them.

Sometimes fragrances will also interact with with the oils and the soap as it's going through and will change.

For instance, I'm using a vanilla fragrance today.

When we started pouring the bears for the soap we're gonna make today, they're white, they're polar bears.

Within three days, they're turn into black bears because the fragrance is reacting with the oils and it turns it.

Same with micas and some of the oxides that are used for coloring, they're all natural, same as you find in your makeup.

But when they're reacting, some of them are change.

I have one that starts out as a beautiful fuchsia, by the time it finishes though, it goes blue.

I had a couple surprises that I did not expect that to happen.

And you just went, "What?"

And you look at it and you're like, "What happened?"

Now lots of times, it's not maybe what you wanted but someone else goes, "Well, I think that color is great."

And you're like, "Okay, but I was shooting for green and I got orange.

What happened here?"

I always tell customers like, "If you really like a swirl in that bar, you better pick it up because I can't reproduce it again."

It's done by hand and no two bars are ever the same even within the same loaf.

So it, that's part of the fun is getting to see what that looks like.

Making the cuts are always the fun piece.

Wide currently.

All right, let's see.

All right.

See a nice gradual green, darker on the bottom, getting super light on top.

Super perfect, love that.

I think I wanted to have something that I could probably use rather than just have around.

I think, over the course of anybody's life, you mess with different things in different art forms.

So this was just a new medium that I'd never tried before, and it was a challenge.

It was a challenge to work the chemistry, to work the math, to work the art and put it all together.

So I enjoy that and I still do.

That's part of it to get it.

It's like create something new each time you go to make something and be able to sell it and share it with other friends.

- Find out more about Howard's soaps at wildsierrasoap.com.

Howard will be instructing a workshop, going over the basic steps of creating your own soaps at home.

The workshop is on July 22nd at Copper Cat Studio.

Details at coppercatstudio.com.

And of course, you can find even more art events happening all month long at artown.org.

And that wraps it up for this Artown Artist's 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 "Arteffects" is made possible by Sandy Raffealli with Bill Pearce Motors, Meg and Dillard Myers, the Nevada Arts Council, Heidemarie Rochlin, in memory of Sue McDowell, and by the annual contributions of PBS Reno Members.

(upbeat music)