- In this edition of "Arteffects," students from McQueen High School celebrate the arts through indoor percussion and winter guard.

- Color guard is basically about taking a piece of music and bringing it to life through visual expression.

- One of my big goals isn't just to teach kids music, but to help them to become the best people that they can be.

(upbeat percussive music) - [Beth] Spreading kindness in northern Nevada one painted rock at a time.

- We often say that the rock finds its person, and I believe that when you're having a rough day, the rock appears.

- [Beth] And using art to shine a light on conservation issues.

- I love to try to be close to the things that are mysterious to us.

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

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Funding for "Arteffects" is made possible by Sandy Raffealli with Bill Pearce Motors, Heidemarie Rochlin, Meg and Dillard Myers, in memory of Sue McDowell, the Carol Franc Buck Foundation, Chris and Parky May, and by the annual contributions of PBS Reno members.

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

Each school year, right before the holidays, a number of local high schools start preparing for indoor percussion and winter guard programs.

High school musicians make up indoor percussion and fuse music with theatrics.

While students in winter guard, also referred to as color guard, use carefully crafted choreography while using flags, mock rifles, and other props to create a stunning indoor show.

We caught up with students and instructors at McQueen High School in Reno to show you the collective spirit of these young artists across northern Nevada.

(drum thumping) - When I think of indoor percussion, I really think of the cooperation and the exciting moments you have.

- It's joyful.

(drum thumping) - It's engaging.

It takes a lot of dedication.

- It pushes your limits and it's loud.

(drum thumping) - Indoor percussion takes the percussion section from the marching band and creates a show that's just for them.

So there's the battery part of the percussion section and then also the front ensemble with all the mallets and synthesizers, and we've got a bass guitar and drum set.

- In the drum line, typically, you have a snare line, which is just one drum and it's really, really high pitch.

It's got a snare on the bottom.

You have a quad line, which is five or six different drums.

You have a bass drum line, which is the vertical drums.

They're playing side to side.

And we also have a tom line, which is essentially like a snare line except for they don't have quite as difficult music, as much responsibility so that they can focus more on the visual aspect of it.

There's also no drum major or no conductor, which means that all of the communication is done non-verbally player to player, and there's no singular person controlling all the time, which is really, really cool, and makes it a really collective activity for all the students.

- I play snare drum.

(drumsticks tapping) I personally love how vibrant it is.

- The snare drum can be like so technical.

You can be very expressive with it since it's just one drum and you have like your full body movement like left, right, forward, and backwards.

- There's a very strange difficulty when it comes to the tenor drums.

It is six drums, and you have to always play each one almost all the time.

The only thing that's difficult is trying to get the sound out, and there's a lot of technical things that come with it, but I like challenging myself in making the best of what I can.

- I play bass three.

I like it because of how much it stands out and I can have a lot of fun with it.

The bass drums aren't just one drum playing the entire part split between two to five people, in our case, five people for this indoor season.

- We do our auditions right after the fall season.

So as soon as marching band season gets over, we start auditioning for indoor percussion.

And we kind of treat our auditions like clinics.

So the kids come, they learn.

There's a bunch of wind players who had never played percussion before.

They learn at those clinics, and then we place them where we want them.

We start with learning the music.

(lively chiming music) After we learn the music, then we can start to incorporate the drill.

'Cause if you don't have the music down, you can't do the movements with it.

- Sometimes we have to do things individually like bass drums have to learn our parts individually, like all their splits and then bring 'em together.

(upbeat percussive music) We have to learn our choreo individually and then bring it all together.

- From there, we add the props, and then the front ensemble joins us later in the season so we can piece the whole show together from there.

- Our show for this winter is called "Unchained."

It's based off of the idea of the students being puppets and the chains being like their strings pulling them.

- We break free in the first act, and then the more and the more the show goes on, we realize that we were never truly free or unchained.

And at the end of the show, we realize that we are still chained.

- There's like a underlying theme of trying to break free of like the things that hold you back.

- We are given more creative expression with how we can manipulate the chains, how we can manipulate the music itself as like a groove or as like some sort of way for people to feel it.

- Our coaches told us to be extra with it.

In their words, if you feel silly doing it, then you're doing it right.

(upbeat electronic music) - I was the overall program coordinator for the Unchained show where I took the staff ideas for what they wanted to do and then I mapped that out and storyboarded it.

You get to be super creative, and I try to do things that are new.

- I do think the kids really responded well to it.

And I think that once they got to start hearing some of the music and some of the things that Aaron Hines wrote for us, I think it really did a lot to get the kids excited about the season.

(bright music) When we're creating these shows, whether it's for percussion or color guard, it's a collaborative process between me and the coaches.

- We describe color guard as the sport of the arts.

It's a visual performance including dance, flag, and rifle, and saber, and then we throw in drill, and choreography, and all of it together.

- Set, find that angle.

- You learn the dance technique, the different kind of body positions that you're gonna utilize, and just making sure that you're doing it correctly so that you don't hurt anything once you start incorporating different equipment with it.

- I'm normally on flag, and I really, really enjoy being on flag, is probably my favorite equipment.

Such a big piece of equipment, it's like a six-foot long pole, and so you have to learn how to maneuver it in a way that looks not like you're struggling to get it over yourself or you're struggling to toss it, and also making sure that you're like maintaining your space around other people and yourself.

- I do flag, saber, and rifle.

It's definitely really scary to get used to because you're tossing a sword in the air.

Guard definitely comes with injuries, but once you get over that, it's really fun, and to move up and tosses, and to learn different things once you get more advanced.

- Practice is very focused on technique.

The biggest thing in color guard is building a foundation of where, oh, you're just automatically know to keep your feet pointed.

You automatically know to stay in your boundaries for this part with your flag.

You have to have the mindset to be like, "Hey, I'm completely fine with picking up this super heavy piece of equipment and throwing it around."

- It's definitely exhausting, but it's also very stimulating.

You're always focusing and doing something using your brain.

It's not always something that you can go autopilot on.

- Every single aspect of our performance is building into creating a story.

- The show this year is called "Primary," and we are honoring the art of Piet Mondrian, who is a Dutch artist.

- [Student] He was an abstract artist that would do landscapes in the form of squares and primary colors, usually with the black outline.

- He is an artist that has very geometric artwork.

And we are basically a part of the artwork and we're coming to life, and the flags and everything are supposed to show how happy we are to have our color.

- It's one of my favorite shows that we've ever, ever done.

It's just such a cool opportunity for me as an art teacher to tie in what I teach into this extracurricular activity.

Instead of painting or drawing something on paper, they're expressing themselves through their bodies and through the teamwork.

It's creatively fulfilling.

I get to help write a whole show and have it come together.

We have to design the show from the very beginning and say, "This group of people are over here, this group of people are over here," and how you're getting there, how long you spend there, all that kind of stuff.

- That's the big part of it.

Being comfortable with the choreo and the equipment, and then adding your own expression to it, and add that little bit of artistry of your individual performance.

I get to do a bit of rifle in the show.

It's a lot of repetition, but it is really rewarding when we perform the tosses either together or in a ripple.

And the audience gets to see that cleanliness during the performance.

- There's this one specific spot in the show where the rifles do a ripple catch where it's catch, catch, catch, and we have worked a lot to try and get that clean, like repping it over and over again.

And when they finally get it, it's just like, see, I told you you could do it.

I knew you could do it.

(lively music) - Championships is our final performance for the year, where a vast majority of the indoor drum lines and winter guard programs from all over northern Nevada come together and compete to see which groups are the best for the season.

We've got different divisions that they compete in, and so you're ranked within your division based on the size of your program and then also the difficulty of what you're performing.

- You're gonna see the best that those kids can do for that season 'cause it's the last time.

- That's the thing I love the most about indoor percussion and indoor guard as well.

There's such a wonderful culture, right?

Every school is cheering on every school.

It's not like a football game where it's a rivalry or they're obviously rooting for their own team.

Every school wants to see every school succeed.

It's still a competition.

We still wanna win.

But every school cheers for each other.

They're super excited for each other.

It's just such a good culture.

- Competitions are some of my favorite parts 'cause you get to, you know, you get to dress up and just actually perform our show for an actual audience and be like, "Man, that feels so worth it in the end."

I think that's the best feeling.

- It is a very artistic form of both music and just performing arts itself.

- At the end of the day, we're all percussionists who are trying to just share our passion and put on a good show that people will hopefully enjoy.

- So I am a professional show designer, and I have the honor of being able to be an adjudicator for these events on the weekends.

Adjudicators for NNIA, the Northern Nevada Indoor Association, are looking at four different captions.

One is the music, one is the visual, another is how effective the music is, and then another is how effective the visual is.

The level of what the kids are doing, it's evolved so much from when was doing this.

It's like the layers of an onion, like there's so many layers to each show, like what they're doing simultaneously while drumming, moving, their bodies doing choreography to like represent things visually.

And then trying to have a performance quality on that, like this is how this is supposed to feel, and then trying to get other humans to be invested and to consume that with you, and be a part of that, and understand it and be on the same page, it's a lot to ask this age range to do.

(lively music continues) - [Announcer] McQueen High School Indoor Percussion.

(audience cheering and clapping) McQueen High School Winter Guard.

(audience cheering and clapping) - Participating in music, it teaches students the skills that they need to be able to get good at something, and that's a transferrable skill.

Whether they want to go into really any career, they've gone through the process once of learning what it takes to really start to master something.

And so then they know that it takes hard work, it takes practice, it takes dedication to get good at whatever they choose to do after they're finished in high school.

(audience cheering and clapping) - To learn more about Northern Nevada Indoor Association, visit envisionarts.org/nnia.

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

Willard Wigan is best known for creating what type of art?

Is the answer A, fiberglass sculptures placed in remote areas?

B, a metal dragon that spews fire on command?

C, micro-sculptures that fit in the eye of a needle?

or D, sculptures made from discarded tires?

And the answer is C, micro-sculptures that fit in the eye of a needle.

Everyone needs a little unexpected kindness now and then.

To meet this need, there's Reno Painted Rocks, a Facebook group with more than 6,000 members.

Reno Painted Rocks encourages people from all walks of life to paint rocks with beautiful imagery and messages.

Once finished, these rocks are placed safely throughout our community for strangers, perhaps you, to discover.

(upbeat music) - Imagine if you are walking down the street or in a park, and you, all of a sudden, come across this brightly colored little rock on the ground, and you bend down to pick it up, and you see that it's got an encouraging little quote on it.

And maybe you were having a bad day, and that made you pause and smile and it made your day a little bit better.

That's what this is all about.

Just random acts of kindness.

- I started Reno Painted Rocks on Facebook after seeing a similar group based up in Whidbey Island, Washington, and I thought it was just a really cool idea to spread kindness one stone at a time.

- Reno Painted Rocks is a community group that spreads kindness by putting painted rocks with encouraging messages or cute little pictures or cartoons out in the community just to brighten the day of a stranger that might find it.

- Typically what I do is choose the stone that I'd wanna paint on.

I look for a shape or something that would inspire me.

(gentle music) (water swooshing) It's washed, and then I'll decide a design, an inspirational quote or a scene.

- [Jessica] You can use dotting tools and dot.

You can use paint pens that you can also write messages with.

- [Debi] Acrylic paints, watercolors, pencil, pen, and ink.

- Once your rock is dry, you wanna seal it so that it can survive outside if you put it outside and it rains.

So we usually use UV or waterproof spray sealers.

Some of us use an art resin.

Takes a little bit longer to dry, but it's very shiny and nice and hard, so it protects the design.

- [Debi] I like to hide in Karma Boxes or little libraries.

- I hide them all over.

I hide them in my neighborhood if I go for a walk.

I like to put them at the base of our mailbox.

I walk here to Rancho San Rafael on my lunch hour and just walk the trails.

And there's a tree knot over on one of the walking paths that I really like to leave rocks in because it's right at eye level, and it's a nice knot that will hold lots of different sizes of rocks.

(gentle music) On the backs of the rocks, it kind of depends on the real estate you have.

If the, you know, the size of the rock, if it's small, you're not gonna have a lot of space.

But I like to write, "Keep or rehide, you decide," so that people know that they can keep it, they can rehide it, they can leave it there.

'Cause sometimes people think they can't take it because it's this little piece of art.

And then I'll put, Post a picture and join the fun on Facebook, and then put Reno Painted Rocks into the hashtag if it'll fit."

So it kind of gives people a clue.

If they don't understand from what's written on the rock, they can go to the group and kind of see what it's all about.

Reno Painted Rocks sometimes will show up on like Instagram.

But for the most part, it's on Facebook because of the group feature where we can have that community group, and interact, and comment, and post lots of pictures.

- [Debi] We try to keep our members' painting within our guidelines.

We prefer that you source your rocks ethically by purchasing them.

- [Jessica] You can get like a bag of river rock or go to the local landscaping company, and a lot of times they'll sell 'em to you in a five-gallon bucket.

- [Debi] We do prefer that people don't glue things to rocks because it could harm wildlife.

- [Jessica] When you're hiding the rocks, we wanna make sure that they're not in any kind of national park or protected lands, not in grass, so it won't damage a lawnmower.

- [Debi] And the biggest guideline we have is to be kind.

- The kindness, I didn't feel that when I first started painting the rocks at all.

You know, I was just painting rocks.

But when you do give either as a gift or you hide, it's really amazing.

It's really heartwarming that people appreciate a rock that you've painted and taken time for them.

They love it.

- I'm painting rocks with my grandma.

I hope that when people find my rocks that they feel excited and they keep them, and that's like a gift.

(lighthearted music) - It's very humbling to see that there are so many amazing humans that want to share the same message.

- I started doing it because I liked the idea of the random act of kindness.

In the process, I've learned that this is kind of like my go-to self-care now.

Like if I've had a rough day at work or a rough week at work, I make time that night or over the weekend to paint, and it's kind of like a reset button.

So I think there's something about the act of putting kindness out there without the expectation of anything in return, and it's useful for me.

(chuckles) - We often say that the rock finds its person, and I believe that when you're having a rough day, the rock appears.

You're looking for that little bit of hope, and there it is.

- To follow Reno Painted Rocks, check them out at facebook.com/groups/renopainted.

Located in the Warehouse Arts District of St. Petersburg, Florida, The Wild Space Gallery aims to raise awareness about conservation issues.

The gallery's latest exhibit explores the relationships between nature and humanity with timeless art, science and nature, and Archbold Biological Station.

(mysterious ambient music) - The best part of my job is being able to see the things that would otherwise be mysterious.

The natural world is cryptic.

It's right under our noses, but we often don't understand what we're seeing.

And I love trying to understand what we're seeing, and I love to try to be close to the things that are mysterious to us.

Archbold Biological Station is an independent science organization.

It's a field station that is based in Highlands County, Florida.

It's designed to host long-term ecological research.

So by long-term, I mean decades long.

Artists, scientists, educators come from all over the world to Archbold to try and understand and get a glimpse of the very unique, highly biodiverse ecosystems that Archbold hosts, and understands and collects data on.

(gentle music) - The Wild Space Gallery is opened by the Florida Wildlife Corridor Foundation.

The foundation is a collaborative mission to save the Florida Wildlife Corridor.

So the corridor is 18 million acres of connected landscape and waterways that support wildlife and us people here in the state of Florida.

- Wild Space Gallery is established to really, I guess, to bolster and get out the message of the Florida Wildlife Corridor.

- From our beginnings, we have incorporated storytelling and also artwork.

Our founder, Carlton Ward Jr. is a National Geographic photographer.

And through his images, he has and continues to raise awareness of the Wildlife Corridor.

And so here at the Wild Space Gallery, we hope to bring that piece of art and storytelling that has been the true vein of our values and our mission from the beginning, and spread it to the people to bring more awareness to the Corridor.

- There's a strong relationship between science and art, and so in some ways, that's the inextricable link between science and art.

That creative mindset is what fuels both scientists and artists.

And often you find those skill sets and those sensitivities in the same person.

And Archbold's very lucky that we attract those types.

(bright music) (lively music) - The title of this exhibit is "Timeless: Art, Science and Nature" at Archbold Biological Station.

And each piece connects to that in some way.

- I'd have to say that my favorite piece is the Ant Lab, which it sort of reproduces the workspace of Dr. Mark Deyrup, who is a entomologist and has been studying ants in Florida since 1982.

And so his area is, I could never decide if it was an artist studio or a scientist laboratory.

- We have microscopes, and you can see the little hairs on the ants.

So it brings in the science down to really small level.

And then you have the woodcut prints that show the landscape, and it pulls you back.

It pulls you in and it pulls you back.

And the farther you stand away from it, the more 3D it looks.

Then we have the people in the field too that do the art, science, and are in nature.

So it combines all three, and it gives a perspective of how many levels that nature can give us, and how much we are connected to nature.

So scientists are artists in themselves and what they produce, and we put that on display here.

(lively music continues) - A lot of different kind of artists and scientists have worked at Archbold over the years.

One, I think, of the most unusual would be Evelyn Gaiser.

And Evelyn is a professor.

She's a limnologist.

Limnologist means one who studies fresh water.

There's a lake at Archbold called Lake Annie.

And so over a year's time, she studied the temperatures in Lake Annie.

And she is also a classically trained musician.

So she looked at those data points, and she said, "Huh, that looks kind of like a musical score."

So basically she created a musical score from using the data points.

It's curiosity, it's passion for figuring out what's going on.

It's a leap of imagination.

So I think that scientists and artists have that very much in common.

Evelyn's work sort of exemplifies what happened there.

- Archbold is embedded in the Corridor.

And the values of that landscape and the values of the people in that landscape are sort of distilled in the art that you see here.

- [Liz] What we do here at the gallery is, is try to connect people through art to nature, no matter where they're from.

- [Joe] But our hope is that you can get that little boost of inspiration and curiosity to take you out to the field to try to experience it.

- To learn more, visit floridawildlifecorridor.org/wil.

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

If you want to watch new "Arteffects" segments early, make sure you subscribe to 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, Heidemarie Rochlin, Meg and Dillard Myers, in memory of Sue McDowell, the Carol Franc Buck Foundation, Chris and Parky May, and by the annual contributions of PBS Reno members.

(upbeat music)