- On this edition of "ARTEFFECTS," glass bead mosaics (gentle piano music) that catch the eye.

- Glass is such an incredible element to work with.

It's vibrant and it's happy and it's alive.

It has a life to it.

- [Beth] Designing historical shoes with a modern approach.

- When you get a design just right, it is amazing, (playful music) because it's beautiful, and it's exactly the right thing at that moment.

- [Beth] Local business windows splashed with art.

- I've noticed (upbeat music) that when I'm painting windows, if I have the opportunity to kind of do what I want and have fun with it, then usually the customers that are coming to the business will have fun with it too and put a smile on their face for the rest of the time they're here.

- [Beth] And the golden sound of Greg Gilmore & the Fever Dreams.

♪ Suzie, will you dance with me ♪ - An independent band is truly independent.

It's built by the people who who made it.

- [Beth] It's all ahead on this edition of "ARTEFFECTS."

(soft jazz piano music) - [Announcer] Funding for "ARTEFFECTS" is made possible by Sandy Raffealli with Bill Pearce Motors, Meg and Dillard Myers, 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."

In our featured segment, we head to Minden, Nevada to discover glass bead mosaics by Sabrina Frey.

This artist has used hundreds of thousands of tiny glass beads of all colors and shapes to create striking and beautiful mosaics that catch the eye.

(gentle piano music) - I love buying beads.

Beads are an addiction.

They're beautiful and they're tactile.

And glass is such an incredible element to work with.

It's vibrant and it's happy and it's alive.

It has a life to it.

My name is Sabrina Frey and I'm a bead mosaic artist.

So I use beads like a painter uses paint, and I create mosaics out of glass beads.

And so from far away, they do get mistaken for paintings.

But when you get close up, it's hundreds of thousands of glass beads that make up this image that looks like a painting.

I work out of my home.

Half of my home is my studio in my basement.

We live in the Carson Valley, South Lake Tahoe area.

So it's very inspiring.

I get to look at the mountains and the sky and nature all day, which is a big emphasis on my work.

There are so many types of beads out there, translucent beads and transparent beads and silver lined.

The beads that I work with are primarily glass.

Sometimes I work with natural stones as well as accent beads, and they're very versatile.

I had some beads left over from a attempted jewelry-making stint.

This was about 10 years ago.

I wanted to do stained glass, and I didn't have the money or the space to do it.

And so I looked at these beads and things that I had and I thought, "Oh, well these are glass, and I have wire that could potentially look like the black lines around stained glass."

And so I picked up some beads and wire and did my first piece and learned a lot of things not to do, but it was a good concept.

And so I started playing with it and experimenting more and more.

And then it just grew.

I tend to use repurposed materials for my work.

I will take, say, a repurposed serving tray and I have to sand it.

I have to prime it, otherwise nothing's gonna stick to it, because it was made for durability and for things not to stick to it.

So I have to do that, and then I'll bring it in and outline whatever I'm gonna do on it.

So if I'm creating an animal, I create a very strict outline of what it's gonna look like and then I can start the bead process.

I use very, very pointy non-magnetic tweezers, because a lot of the beads have metals in them, silvers and things.

And if you use regular tweezers, they do magnetize and you won't be able to get your beads off of them.

(laughs) I wear them out.

About every six months, I have to get a new set of tweezers, because I've used them all day long.

I think of every bead as a piece of DNA.

We all have a different story in our lives that make up the complete image of what people see from afar, but it's all these little pieces of our lives and our DNA that really make up who we are.

And it's sometimes hard for people to realize what makes up your story and how the pieces come together, but they see you as a whole.

And that's how each one of these beads is.

They're all very different, but they're coming together to make one complete image.

I get that question a lot.

How many beads are in this piece?

And I did count, there are 156 size 11 seed beads per square inch.

I'll do a piece, say, that's 12 by 16 and it'll have something like 90,000 beads.

Last year when we moved, I had to weigh the beads for the movers.

I had 2000 pounds of beads, not attached to boards, just beads.

So, yeah, I have a lot of beads.

(chuckles) I started mixing my own glue mixture that allows me to do what needs to be done, create blends and mixes for each piece and take as long as I need it to take and then do the glue after.

And that way it sets and it works with me and not against me.

(gentle music) There's a final touch up phase that I do with the beads.

I seal them with an acrylic glaze so that the glue is protected from the elements.

I create them to be durable.

But people's reactions are that it's delicate, and we are programmed as children, don't touch the art.

At shows, I had to figure out a way to give people permission to touch.

And I put Go Ahead, Touch Me signs up all over the place, and it draws people in, because people are naturally tactile creatures.

We like touch.

And so giving permission to do that gives so much joy.

Adults, kids, everybody, they come up to the booth, and it's just this sensory experience.

They get to feel the trees.

they get to pet the birds, and they love it.

I love doing shows, because I get to see that joy and see that curiosity and the wonder.

That sparkling bead piece that's on the wall, when the sun hits it every day is going to make them smile, 'cause it can't not, 'cause it's happy.

And so I make happy art to make people happy.

- To learn more, visit sabrinafreyart.com.

Dressing up in beautiful clothing inspired by the 18th century is a passion for Lauren Stowell of Reno.

Nearly 15 years ago, she found herself searching for historically accurate shoes to compliment the dresses she spent months creating.

When she couldn't find what she needed, this artisan took matters into her own hands, and American Duchess was born.

(elegant violin music) - American Duchess is a small company that makes new old shoes.

We take a really old design, something you see in a painting or in a museum, and we make it work for modern wear and comfort expectations.

Everything from the 18th century, 19th century, and 1920s, '30s, and '40s as well.

American Duchess started as my personal blog on historic costuming.

I liked to make things, I would make those things for myself and wear them to an event, a picnic, or a dance.

It's just what I did for fun.

And I thought, I'll blog about my experiences so that other people who have no idea how to make a wig or how to do this dress can learn from my mistakes.

And it's always been about sharing my mistakes and learning that way.

You don't wanna put all this time and effort and sometimes a lot of money into your beautiful dress and then have no shoes to wear with it, because it crushes the illusion.

- When you're creating these gowns, they are art pieces.

And if you don't have the right shoes, it just kills it.

And when you take those photos of yourself or someone's taking photos of you and you look at those later, you wanna be able to say, "I look like I walked out of a portrait."

- You're not gonna achieve that with tennis shoes under your dress.

(laughs) Believe me, I've seen it.

(gentle piano music) Historic shoes are not like shoes today.

They have strange closures.

They have specific toe shapes or lack of toe boxes.

You know, they're very, very different.

So nobody was really making that kind of thing.

And I thought, "Well, okay, maybe I'll have a go and make some shoes."

Not by hand, I couldn't make enough of them to make a living doing that.

So I found a manufacturer and we developed a prototype.

I put it on the internet and did a preorder, did a crowdfunding campaign, and it funded overnight.

Like overnight, we had enough money to do the production run.

And it was like, "Oh my God."

I woke up in the morning like, "Oh, oh, this is the thing.

Okay, I'm gonna do this.

This is what I'm gonna do."

Our first design was Georgiana, named after the Duchess of Devonshire.

It was made out of dyeable satin.

It was our first go.

People were excited about it.

I was excited about it, and it worked.

We just kept producing like the next one, the next one, the next one.

(playful violin music) A typical 18th century shoe, the most characteristic hallmark that you might see on those are latchets with buckles.

So this is the way that 18th century shoes closed.

You have these two straps.

You put one strap through here, you stick the prongs through the other one.

You can make them as tight as you want.

You can keep tightening them, and it makes your shoes look very pretty.

Historical accuracy is a very, very, very important.

- So the basic process starts with looking at original shoes, whether through photographs.

- [Lauren] It's brainstorming.

So we just kind of all get together and go, "What sounds cool?

What have we not made before?

What are the trends in the community?"

A lot of it is research, looking at old magazine ads, catalogs, original shoes in our collections.

- I've gone to a number of different museums and studied things hands on so that way I have an understanding of how they're constructed and what goes into the internals of them and things of that nature.

All of that research gets done gradually as we find inspirations.

Say we need a boot for this time period, and we go and find lots of different examples and pick what ones really speak to us, what we think would translate well to a modern design.

And from there we do a lot of sketches, a lot of ideations, and then actually come up with the formal line drawing and we put little tiny details of the sole should be this many millimeters, this eyelet should be this many millimeters wide, all the little tiny details in there.

So that way the first sample that we get back is as close as we can get to right.

- There is nobody who knows about historic shoes and how to make them better than Nicole Rudolph.

- When I was at Colonial Williamsburg, I ended up learning how to do women's shoe making in the proper 18th-century style.

All by hand, no machines, all hand-stitched and assembled.

- We're based here in Reno, and this is where we do all of the design.

All the marketing and advertising happens here as well.

We also pack, ship, and do logistics out of here.

So there's a great big warehouse attached to this little, tiny office.

We do everything except the actual manufacture of our footwear.

95% of the world's shoes are made in Houjie.

It is in South China.

There's are millions of people in Houjie, and it's a city that is built for shoe production.

Factories, components, markets, leather producers, just everything you need.

So that's where we also manufacture our shoes.

The people that we work with there are amazing.

We produce fantastic shoes in China, because I get on a plane and I go over there and I make sure our quality processes are in place and that our materials are good and that our relationship with our manufacturer is good.

- They really are unto themselves a sculptural, interesting piece of artwork, and they should stand on their own before you even put them on your feet.

And then to add that in, to add the whole costume and to add the clothes, the dresses, everything, it just ends up completing the whole thing.

- There are so many people in the world that are into historic costuming or they're movie costumers or stage costumers.

That's a whole market I never even thought about when we started.

I was just making shoes for people like me.

It's about helping other members of the costuming community be their best selves in the 18th century or the 19th century to make their most beautiful dress and impression or character.

We want to create a fun environment to help people have a good time playing dress up.

(triumphant music) - To learn more, visit americanduchess.com.

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

(gentle piano music) For his exhibit "Overboard," conceptual artist Andy Yoder crafted nearly 250 sneakers using what material?

Is the answer A.

Trash, B.

Candy, C. Metal, or D. Papier-mache?

Stay tuned for the answer.

No doubt you've seen windows of businesses around northern Nevada decorated with bright colors, quirky characters, and phrases designed to attract customers.

Local artist, Trey Valentine, is the man behind many of those designs.

We spent some time with Valentine to learn about his process.

- I was always getting into something as a kid, trying to finger paint on the refrigerator.

This is the fun part of my job is I get to just kind of be a kid and make a mess on the back of my truck.

(upbeat music) My name is Trey Valentine, and I'm from Reno Nevada.

I am a window cartoonist.

I paint signs on windows.

I paint windows for any and all occasions, lots of restaurants, tire places, car dealerships.

I've done flower shops, you name it, I've done it.

My best signs usually turn out when they go, "Just do whatever."

(laughs) Those usually turn out really well, because I have no boundaries and I can get real creative.

I take a crayon and just kind of get like an idea of what I want to put on there.

If it was warmer, I would do it with a paintbrush, but it'll take too long to dry, (chuckles) so I'll just do it in crayon, and then I'll come back with my paint and I'll start painting it.

And then with my fingernail, I'll etch out where my reference lines are, and you'll get kind of a weird silhouette looking thing on the window, and then I can go from there.

(upbeat rock music) This is a gymnasium that I'm painting today.

And the client wanted all the characters to be in shape.

So I put a weight in this guy's hand and gave him a little bit of muscle tone.

She said she wanted to really fit Santa, so I'm gonna make him all buff.

I always do the white because the paint, if you just put colors on here, you kind of see right through it, and it wouldn't look really good.

This kind of attaches the color to the window, gives it that nice opaque awesomeness.

So most of my characters get a white outline around them to really make them jump off the window.

So you see how I've kind of like left a little bit of white.

I'll do a black outline inside the white so there'll be a definite edge to him and then like a little aura around him, which will make him really pop off the window.

When I first started doing this, everything was just one color.

Like I didn't do any highlights or shadows, anything.

And within the last couple years, I really started to dig the whole highlights and shadows and different colors.

Very subtle difference, but there's definitely a difference.

I like signs like these 'cause they're just quick, they're fun, they're easy.

You don't have to really measure anything, just kind of go for it.

My favorite part about painting signs on windows is the fact that it's an instant gratification.

I get an idea in my head, it goes on the window pretty quickly, and I get to see it come to fruition or I see it come to life within the afternoon.

I've been doing this my whole life.

I was a musician back in the day, back in the '80s, and I'd go out and play clubs all night.

No one made money back in the '80s being a musician.

So I'd go out, I learned how to paint window signs.

And then after a while, I learned how to do it right.

I did the office thing.

You know, I was in radio for a little while, and that's all indoors.

And right now it's a little tough, because it's 22 degrees outside and I can't feel my fingers all the time, and I get home and I'm pretty worn out just from the weather.

But the other side of that coin is in the summertime, I'm running around in a tank top and shorts working on the tan and having a blast listening to music and painting signs.

- To learn more about Trey Valentine and his window art, you can find him on Instagram and Facebook.

Just search Signs by Trey on both social media platforms.

And now let's review (gentle piano music) this week's art quiz.

For his exhibit "Overboard," conceptual artist Andy Yoder crafted near 250 sneakers using what material?

Is the answer A.

Trash, B.

Candy, C. Metal, or D. Papier-mache?

And the answer is A.

Trash.

In our final segment, we meet the members of Greg Gilmore and the Fever Dreams, an energetic band based right here in Reno.

We sat down with the band when they were known as Silver to learn how they blend guitars, bass, keyboard, drums, and vocals to create their unique sound.

♪ West town, what now my Charlie ♪ ♪ Suzie, will you dance 'til six ♪ - One of the things that I really love about Silver is that we don't try to be anything.

I think Greg kind of goes and does his thing and does a lot of the songwriting, and he'll bring a song to the band and we kind of just play what we would play on it as individuals, not necessarily trying to make it sound like this or that or the other thing.

We kind of add our own taste or flair to it each time.

Every time we bring a song to the band, everybody just kind of plays what they're gonna play.

We don't actually try to go after, oh, this is supposed to sound like a country song.

This is supposed to sound like it's from the early '70s or something like that.

I think that's just something that is channeled through our own individual experiences, and it kind of comes in to be this, whatever you wanna call it, five-headed beast that is Silver.

♪ Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh, my love ♪ - Or well, certain songs may like maybe resemble other styles or sounds.

That's super important that, I think, each one of us has like a different distinct personality so that every time we do work on a song, there's five very distinct styles and personalities coloring that particular tune so it's never gonna sound too much like anything else other than us making whatever it is that we're making.

♪ Where we sat out in a dream ♪ - Rehearsals usually consist of going one of two directions.

They're either running through and getting ready for a specific show or it's getting together and doing a writing session.

- Greg will start either playing something he kind of came up with and then someone else will start playing something.

And it's just one of those situations where Jeff's like, "Well, I was listening to you for what to do," and I'm like, "Well, I was listening to you for what to do."

So like all of a sudden both of us just like kind of went past each other and we're all just kind of creating the cycle together.

And even with songs that Greg has spent some time at home, like crafting and writing, like he'll bring it in and all of a sudden playing it with us will change the song a little bit.

So it's all this constant evolution of the song as we play it together.

- And that's what it takes to really get it dissected and figure out what makes it Silver.

- I think it's kind of neat the the amount of power that you have in a band now to be your own entity, I mean, an independent band is truly independent.

It's built by the people who who made it.

But it is a lot of work.

- The video thing this year has been a big learning curve.

The first one we did included some friends and it had some reach.

And I think the takeaway was, put your friends in your video, (band laughing) have them tag the video, more people see the video, profit.

So we did "The Chase" video and got more friends and more members of the community and a cooler location and filmed it in more iconic spots in Reno.

And the feedback has been good on that video.

I think we've achieved over 30,000 views on that.

I think that it's opened a few doors that have otherwise been closed for us in the community.

♪ It's the chase that brings you back to the start ♪ ♪ It's the chase that brings you back to the start ♪ - Most of the time when I'm writing a song, the the goal is to make somebody feel better about some kind of situation that they're in or something they're feeling.

It's what I've always wanted to do.

- To me, music has always been something where lyrics combined with melody creates something that means something to your own personal experience.

And to me, a lot of the songs, a lot of the lyrics that Greg writes, it hits me and it creates some sort of meaning.

And I'm able to use that in my life to put myself in a better place if I'm feeling down or, heck, in the other way, I want to feel down.

I want to feel like I don't know if I'll ever be good enough.

And like I hear that, and I'm able to relate to it.

- I think that the ability to relate to the content is useful for a lot of people and for me personally.

Whether that escape is like just tuning out, and, for me, when I listen to music, a lot of it is rhythm-oriented listening.

But sometimes you want a close listen and you want to hear the words and you want to be pulled out of your life and into something else and see it from a different perspective.

And I think that's super important.

- To learn more, visit And that wraps it up for this edition of "ARTEFFECTS."

(gentle piano music) If you want to watch new "ARTEFFECTS" segments early, make sure to check out the PBS Reno YouTube channel.

And don't forget to keep visiting pbsreno.org to watch complete episodes of "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, Meg and Dillard Myers, Heidemarie Rochlin, In memory of Sue McDowell, and by the annual contributions of PBS Reno Members.

(gentle music)