- On this edition of ARTEFFECTS, paper silhouettes with a three-dimensional message.

- Art's supposed to be meaningful.

If you're cutting silhouettes, it's supposed to be something to tell story.

- [Beth] Molding clay with culture and respect.

- Working with the clay, you learn to be a part of the clay.

- [Beth] Plein air painting techniques from artist Joe Lombardo.

- It's like a puzzle or a problem to solve.

Like how do you convey all of this clutter simply or abstractly on a flat canvas with gooey paint?

- [Beth] And linoleum-cut prints inspired by the Sierra Nevada.

- It can be really time-consuming.

It's a really process-oriented art form, but it's a lot of fun, so it's a labor of love.

- It's all ahead on this edition of ARTEFFECTS.

(upbeat jazzy 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 meet Turburam Sandagdorj of Reno.

Using black paper, sharp scissors, and a lot of patience and technique, this artist creates highly-detailed silhouettes.

Through his process, which he has perfected over 30 years, he celebrates his Mongolian heritage, his love for nature, and an appreciation for a simple lifestyle.

(classical acoustic guitar music) - My name, Turburam Sandagdorj.

I am a Mongolian American professional silhouette artist.

I create silhouettes called Tsagasun Baru.

Tsagasun Baru is the paper silhouette art in Mongolian.

My father influenced me as the artist.

In the college, I learned ceramics.

Ceramics is two-dimensional.

The ceramics and the papercuts is not different.

It's the same thing, it's the same feelings, just you using different tools and materials.

You need to grab the paper and scissors and start to cut.

It's very important in the silhouette, the tools, the scissors.

I try with using that aggressive tool into the fragile materials.

I using hot press paper.

It's very thin.

It's almost like silk and you just cut straight in the curve.

I always think about connection.

Without connection, all your lines collapse down.

I try to start to end just one image, one meaning, one feeling.

Sometimes you see this whole concept in your mind.

A lot of my art express the life of the nomads.

The nomadic lifestyle is very minimal.

The nomads love the nature.

That's my message.

I love the nature.

You see the open space and the sky like the blue, like the ocean.

In the night you see just the Milky Way, thousand stars, and you just connect.

Its talks with you.

I always simplify everything.

It's kind of minimal.

I just choose the minimal life for me, it works for me, and also expressing into my art.

I illustrated more than 40 books, mythology, the folk tales, poetry and history.

I love the history.

It's made me think about where I came from.

- To learn more, visit sturu.art.

As the grandson of famous potter Margaret Tofoya, artist Nathan Youngblood learned how to not just work with clay, but respect it.

Throughout his career, he has won more than 140 awards, all while honoring his family's legacy.

We head to New Mexico to find out more.

(acoustic guitar music) - I made my first piece when I was 14 years old, and so that was 50 years ago.

(acoustic guitar music continues) It takes a lifetime to learn to do this stuff.

(metal banging) You literally live your craft.

Poof.

Everything that we have comes from the mother earth.

(fire popping) Making pottery isn't, I wouldn't call it religious experience, but I'd say it's part of the spiritual experience of life.

Working with the clay, you learn to be a part of the clay.

I live with my grandparents and one morning my grandmother said, "You're gonna learn how to make pottery."

My great-grandmother was Sarafina Tefoya.

My grandmother's Margaret Tafoya, my grandfather Alcario Tefoya.

My mother, Mela Youngblood.

I think Grandma's fame and notoriety is because she does something different.

She was able to make huge pieces.

You're talking about a lady who was about 4'10" and we used to joke that Grandma would build her pots from the inside because she was small enough to fit in 'em and she would make, you know, 25, 30" tall pieces and 24 to 27" across.

So when she'd stand next to it, you could really see the size of the work that she did.

I think about my grandmother saying, "Embrace the clay.

Don't be scared of the clay.

If it doesn't come out, it doesn't come out, but you won't know unless you try."

And from that I learned the only time we truly fail is when we quit.

And so I, you know, constantly when I'm working, I hear my mom telling me things.

I hear my grandmother tell things.

(fire popping) What they taught me gave me life, so when I'm working with the clay, I'm trying to honor them.

I'm trying to, I'm trying to be worthy of what they taught me.

(fire popping) I was taught to respect it, live it, give it 100% or leave it alone.

It still has a ways to go.

It's helping this to get the oxygen out and it's helping to begin to turn it black.

(fire popping) I would make pots and then I would burnish them and she'd look at it and she'd say, "That's not very good.

Take it off and do it again."

Sometimes I'd burnish a piece 10 to 12 times before she'd say, "Okay, that's good enough to fire."

I'd go outside and fire it and it would blow up because I didn't make it right.

I've had a lot of pieces that I thought, "Well, this is gonna make a nice beautiful jar," you know, big shouldered shape and a nice neck on it, but it would crack in the neck and I cut it down and it would crack again and crack again, and finally the crack would quit and it would be a bowl.

It's because clay wanted to be a bowl.

It didn't wanna be a jar.

I can't teach you how to feel, how to tell the right thickness on the walls, how to feel when an air pocket's in there.

You only learn by doing.

Every step has to be given 100%.

If you don't, the next steps aren't gonna come out.

Here's an air pocket.

See how that little blister rose up?

You just chop at it a little bit and break it up like a bubble.

It's never the ones you see that kill you, it's always the ones you don't see.

I found that the difference between being truly great at what you're doing and being okay at what you're doing is sometimes just an extra five minutes in this process or an extra 15 minutes in this process.

Just take that a little farther.

Get your channels a little bit smoother and cleaner.

Get your edges a little bit straighter.

You have to work the extra time in every process.

The most challenging part is being patient.

I've had pieces where I've had ideas on my own that I wanna make this and I wanna put this design on and I'll make 'em four or five times and it will not work.

Now, I might take the same shape piece and the same size and put a different design on, it comes out.

One of the most important things my grandfather taught me was to listen to the pot and it will tell you what design it wants.

So I draw my designs on with a pencil and then I'll go all the way around and I'll look at it and I can tell whether or not this is the design that the pot wants to have on it or it's not working and then I'll sand it all off and I'll start over with a different design.

Most of the designs I use are of course offshoots of the things I learned from my grandfather.

Why a snake design or why a water serpent design?

And among a lot of people, the water is what connects us.

The streams to the rivers, to the lakes, to bigger rivers, to oceans.

Among our group, we have bear paws.

We either have the paw print or we have a little design that looks a little bit like a Greek key and it's called a Walking Bear Paw.

And my favorite story is, I guess during the 1100s or 1200s, we had a major drought in the Southwest and the story goes that the people, the streams dried up and the people were beginning to die off because there's no water.

So one tribe took the last of their water and they gave it to the strongest brave and they sent him out.

"If you don't find water, we're all gonna die."

So he's looking and he's looking and he's traveling away from the village, and he notices, "I'm not seeing any animals.

If I could find an animal, they would know where the water was."

So he comes upon a bear and he follows the bear and the bear takes him to a hidden stream and he watches the bear drink water and the bear drinks and then he ambles off.

So he goes to the stream and he fills up his canteens that he had, and he goes back to his village and he brings the water and then the people go back to the stream and they collect the water.

And because of that, on our different vessels that we're thinking intend to hold water or liquids, we put a bear paw or a carved walking bear paw around it and that's out of respect for the bear who saved the people.

(shovel scrapes) (acoustic guitar music) When I get a particularly spectacular piece out, I don't really get it out, we got it out, and I'm just amazed.

I can't believe that I'm part of that.

I see this spectacular piece and I don't think I made that because I know I didn't make that.

(acoustic guitar music continues) I think that I'm so lucky to be part of that process.

So I guess the bottom line is short.

I'm happy and I wanna go do it some more.

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

Silhouettes were a highly popular form of portraiture until the debut of photography in which year?

Is the answer A, 1829; B, 1839; C, 1849; or D 1859?

Stay tuned for the answer.

(jazzy music) Up next we meet Joe Lombardo.

No, not Joe Lombardo, the governor of Nevada.

Joe Lombardo of Ohio is a recent art school graduate who had his art selected for display in the Supreme Court of Ohio Collection.

Let's head to Columbus to see what Joe's been up to and discover his creative process.

(jazzy piano music) - Plein air is French for open air, but really it just means to paint on site outdoors, so we go to the scenery that we wanna paint and we set up there.

I was a student at Columbus College of Art and Design, did a whole bunch of landscape paintings and the instructors there said, "Well, if you wanna be a landscape painter, you need to get outside and really do it."

And I never really had thought about that, but I always enjoyed hiking and outdoors, I'm a bird watcher, and so I heard them saying I could combine my two favorite things, painting and being outdoors, and so I tried it and a kind of no turning back from there.

I love painting here at Schiller Park.

We've got a great autumn day.

It's a little chilly, but that's good.

And the beautiful fall colors, but rather than painting the changing leaves, I like the bricks.

So I've got a brick alley, brick buildings.

I love the orange and reds that the brick offers.

I like a scene that's very kind of almost chaotic, a lot of information.

I call it all city clutter.

Just a bunch of city clutter and I like to kind of get lost in that and have to paint my way out of it.

(upbeat polka music) The challenge in that chaos forces me to think more abstractly in the painting because like there's no way I can paint all of that stuff in the two to three hours that I'm making the painting on site and so it's like a puzzle or a problem to solve.

Like how do you convey all of this clutter simply or abstractly on flat canvas with gooey paint.

As far as process, like where I get started, first I just sort of pick a location to journey to for that day so I'll go and say, "All right, today I want something urban."

You kind of get there with a general idea of what you might want and then you go scout around.

Sometimes I'll walk around for 30 minutes searching for my scene.

There are a lot of different things to make a painting about, but it's sort of like I'm searching for what today's painting will be about.

That could be color or lighting, value, lights and darks.

Just an interesting subject is something that I didn't expect to see that day that I think, "Oh, there's my painting."

Then I select a palette.

And so I have a set of colors that I always carry with me, but I'll mix and match 'em and create what's called a limited palette where I use a certain set of those colors so that's influenced by the atmosphere and the color of the scene.

I also will do a thumbnail sketch, which is, you know, a small sketch like the size of your thumbnail and kind of plot it out.

This is the chance to get through any pitfalls.

So if you're gonna put something right in the middle, you wanna learn that in the little studies so that you don't trip over that idea later when you have all your paint on the surface, which much less forgiving and I'd say to kind of step back a little bit in the process.

I'd say we paint from carefree to careful.

I think of it like if you're doodling and you scribble and then you're looking at that scribble and you add an ear and an eye and you got a bunny, that's how I paint.

I start off, I just make a wild scribble of color and paint and then I step back and I see a window here and a horizon there, landscape.

I have fun painting pine tree limbs.

I know that, so I, when when you're excited about something, it always makes it easier.

I don't know why that is.

So keep it in mind.

That goes to when I talk with you guys about painting what you wanna paint, not what you think you can paint.

Just go for it because if you're excited, you're gonna do better.

(acoustic guitar music) I teach a lot and I've taught a lot over the years and I think many people understand this that teaching is the highest level of learning and so when I have to explain things that I'm doing to my students, it confirms to me those concepts and sometimes I have to figure out even what it is.

It's like either something that I'm seeing in work, others work, or my students' work, my own work, and I have to try to uncover or reveal to all of us what that is and that's kind of what teaching brings to my art.

Nah, it's too small.

That's like a delicate splatter.

That bigger splatter.

Okay, now what to do about these?

Let's give 'em the finger, see what they become.

For a while I was making paintings that were very light, known as high-key paintings, and I just, I kind of spent that and so I thought, "All right, what do I do next?"

And so I go and I started making paintings that were low key, very dark, and in these explorations, I call 'em my new eyes or new Joe.

So my students that have worked with me for a long time, we now say, is this new, new, new, new, new, new new, new Joe or old Joe?

And there's all these comparisons of all these different steps in our growth and so I'm always pushing for that next turn in my path and bringing my students along with me.

And I should say, I call 'em students, but really they're artists that paint with me.

Yeah, but, and so you guys know, I steal from all of you.

Or you or I learn from you is the right way to say that.

Plein air is, it's a good way to work.

I think it is maybe the hardest way to paint because you have so many distractions, but those distractions, you could spin that and say, "Those are experiences that are happening to me that wouldn't happen in the studio."

So you gotta get out of the studio and make those memories.

- To see more of Joe's work, check him out on Instagram @JoeLombardoArt.

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

Silhouettes were a highly popular form of portraiture until the debut of photography in which year?

Is the answer A, 1829; B, 1839; C, 1849; or D 1859?

And the answer is B, 1839.

Printmaker Katherine Case of Reno is inspired every day by nature.

She draws from the world around her to create her linoleum-cut prints.

Using an antique Vandercook proof press, she runs a full-service letter press studio, not far from the Truckee River, surrounded by the Sierra Nevada.

(gentle music) - My name's Katherine Case and I make limited-edition linoleum-cut prints and I print them on an antique letter press.

You carve the linoleum with carving tools that are the same tools as you use for a woodcut print.

You carve a separate block for each color of each print, and so for my multicolor prints, I'll carve five or six different blocks and then I print them separately in the letter press.

So I'll say, first, put in the block for the blue sky and print that on 100 sheets of paper, take it out, clean the press, put the block in for the green, and then print that on top of the blue, and then I'll layer each color on top of each other in the letter press.

You have to plan well in advance where every color is gonna be in the print and where all the detail's gonna be on the different colors so it's not intuitive or expressionistic, but it's very project-based, so it takes a really long time.

But then when you're done, you have an entire addition of the prints.

You have to have your vision of how you really want it to be and then work towards that, but then also end product is never exactly like that beginning vision either, so you have to have flexibility along the way of the process.

Since I moved to Reno and I started Meridian Press, I've been going really deep into my subject matter.

I do all birds, animals, and landscapes in the Sierra Nevada and it's been amazing to learn all the different bird species and I try to only do birds that I see in person somewhere in the Sierra Nevada.

I also have a series that I do of lakes and landscapes up in the Sierra Nevada.

In addition to my printmaking, I'm also a poet.

My poetry is more about personal experience than my art is.

My art is very much about nature and the environment and my poetry is more about my experience as a human on earth.

For example, I wrote a series of poems about moving into this house and living in the Great Basin and having kids and stuff like that.

I remember always writing poetry and drawing and making art.

I've always tried to as much as I can, hold onto both things.

- To learn more about Catherine Case, search for Meridian Press on both Etsy and Instagram.

And that wraps it up for this edition of ARTEFFECTS.

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 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.

(gentle music ends) (upbeat jazzy music)