- [Narrator] Funding for the work of Art Artown is made possible in part by The Abraham and Sonia Rochlin Foundation in memory of Abraham and Sonia Rochlin, the Atlantis Casino Resort Spa, located in Reno, Nevada.

The Atlantis Resort offers accommodations, dining, entertainment, and meeting space.

More information at atlantiscasino.com, and by these funders.

- I'm very nervous, I'm very excited.

Great anticipation.

There's a lot of stuff that's gotta come together, and I thought we had all the details and you never know, you know, when you're gonna get a curve ball.

It's exciting and overwhelming all at the same time.

And every year, of course, it always goes sideways and something doesn't work.

Or the artists get in a little bit late and there's something going on with soundcheck.

So it's until the show goes on, just the waiting.

- Hello, this is all the way upstage, and this is right.

- Once you've got day one under your belt, then most of the stuff can sort of fall out from there.

It's getting day one under your belt and making sure the artists are in town tonight to make sure that we got all that stuff.

I mean, there's a lot of moving pieces here.

(upbeat music) - Artown is an incredible celebration of the arts.

It's multidisciplinary.

It takes place over 31 days with over 500 events, 77% of which are free to the community.

We partner with over 100 different people to make this happen.

And we are in over 100 different locations.

I really believe that Artown has changed the face of our community.

- What happens on stage is important, but what happens off stage is even more important and critical to the future of our city, because that was our goal in establishing Artown, was to change the face of our city.

- It's very interesting what's happened in Reno since 1996 when Artown started.

In 1996, it was illegal to be in the river.

The police would pull you out and give you a ticket.

There were closed casinos, there were parking lots on the river.

All that has changed, casinos have been converted into condominium projects.

The person who basically built some of them has said they wouldn't have come here without Artown.

That that's a drawing force for them to spend their $250 million.

I think the museum has had some effect from Artown.

So many, many of the things that have happened in the past 16, 18 years have happened because of what started to change, I believe in 1996.

- [Beth] You know, as much as Artown has become a fixture in Reno during the summer, the work actually is year round and begins in New York City in January.

When I arrive in New York, I am like an excited child.

I cannot wait to get to the city.

I can't wait to walk the streets and see what's going on.

The vibe of the city, the energy of the city, it really does recharge your batteries.

(upbeat music) APAP is the biggest conference of presenting arts in the world.

- APAP stands for the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, and we are the nation's largest service, advocacy, and trade organization for the performing arts in this country, and one of the largest in the world.

There's approximately 1500 members from 34 countries.

This is the largest conference of this type in the country and in the world.

It is a conference that has three major activities.

One of them is in professional development, so we have almost 100 sessions focused on career development, issues facing the field for all of the colleagues that are here.

Secondly, we have showcases, these are performances for our colleagues who will book these performances and take them back to their communities.

And there's almost 1,000 of them occurring here during our five day conference.

And then finally we have our trade show aspect, and I think that's really unique.

Basically we have the trade show format.

So as you walk through our exhibit hall of almost 400 booths, you are just looking at all of these acts that agents and managers are representing, in effect selling for your audiences.

- The exhibit hall is where the serious business gets done.

It's different people from around the globe talking about their artists, and it's a very busy, it's a marketplace.

- This is where professionals, such as Beth, come and they will see artists through showcases.

They'll hear about artists through their colleagues and conversations in all of our sessions.

And then they'll also go into the exhibit hall and look at works that are presented there, and hopefully end up with contracts for these artists.

So basically here we have the trade of the arts world that goes on performing arts world.

So it's critically important to get the engine of this performing arts industry alive, and we're a key part of that.

- And thanks so much for being here today.

I do wanna tell you before I start that I love festivals, and I'm sure that's why everybody's here.

Artown is really this giant marketing umbrella that is able to put all this together and make an experience.

And the experience that you can have at Artown, it ranges dramatically.

So it's really wonderful to be asked to serve on a panel in New York at APAP.

This year it was a festival panel.

Three different festivals or outdoor series were being discussed.

It's early in the morning, it's the first day of the conference.

And for us, it was incredible.

The room was packed.

Nobody left throughout the presentation.

The full presentation, I believe was an hour and a half.

And it was a wonderful opportunity for us to get input back from the people in the audience, what their questions were, what they wanted to know about our festivals.

It's very interesting, the give and take that you get from the people in the audience, and the information that you learn about other people's festivals, and what people find interesting about your festival.

Artown and Reno are taken very seriously at arts presenters in New York.

We have a very definite position and spot in that conference, and I'm very proud that everybody who goes there knows that Reno is important on a cultural level.

And the offerings, artistic offerings coming out of Reno, and coming into Reno are important and on a very national and international level.

- I do know from my time at the NEA how important it is for arts organizations to stay active and involved, not only on the national level, but also on their local level, to make sure that arts organizations have a place at the table when decisions are being made about their community, about where their tax dollars go.

We are an active part of communities and that's one thing that I've always loved about Beth, is that she and her organization are intricately tied to the community.

And that's what makes it a success.

But people know that Beth has a place at the table.

- It's amazing the way the arts are embraced in New York City, and the different types of arts.

The way you're able to experiment with the arts, wherever you go and see work, and you see the venues where this work is performed, that it's not always Carnegie Hall and it's tiny little venues, it's sold out no matter what it is.

It's sold out, it's packed to the gills, whether it's a Monday night or a Saturday night.

And I want everybody in this community to have that experience.

And I know I can't take everybody to New York, so I have to bring that back here.

- In my country, in Spain, when I was growing up, we couldn't use the flag.

I could never wear the Spanish flag.

Franco was a dictator that used the flag in a very, in a very strict way.

It was a sign of nationalism.

So this series is called Faith the Glory, and it's about the American flag and about the use of the American flag.

And there is something that I couldn't understand how Americans use the flag in many different ways.

That sometimes is almost disrespectful, putting the flag everywhere.

In mugs, in pants, in underwear.

But yet Americans don't lose their respect for the flag.

I've been trying to ask the viewer, "Is this normal, and is this appropriate?"

Is something that I still don't understand.

And I love to paint things that I don't understand in order to get some depth and maybe to get some answers, but also to question the viewers, "Are you seeing the same that I'm seeing here?"

Right.

I have my studio at UNR, at the Joe Travis building.

I was granted with the studio while I'm a MFA graduate.

I am in my last year.

Sierra Art Foundations helps UNR specific with the MFA.

The way that I met them is because we also have to do some volunteer work for community.

So then I thought of doing mine at Sierra Arts, and that's how I became familiar with them, because I was working there for a whole semester with them.

It really helped me to understand the art that is behind the scenes, that is how to put a whole show together, and all the paperwork behind it and all the logistics that the artist, usually we don't think about.

- Sierra Arts Foundation contributes to the Reno community in a lot of different ways.

And not just the artistic community, but the community as a whole.

We're right in downtown at 17 South Virginia Street.

We're in the historic Riverside building, which was renovated not terribly long ago.

We have our gallery and our offices here at the bottom floor.

One of the things that we do, obviously, is the gallery that I think may be the most public thing that our foundation does.

But we have a lot of other programs that really reach deeper into the community in different ways.

And a lot of those things people don't really see.

It's not like we're on the street every day saying, "Hey, look at us, look what we do for our community."

But the impact, I think is really great.

The Grants to Artists Program is something we are very proud of.

We gave out a total of $13,000 to 12 professional artists and then two student artists.

And these grants are specifically for artists just to be artists.

It's not tied to any particular project.

They don't have to give us a proposal to say, "This is what we're gonna do with the money."

This really is getting to the heart of, I think, what Sierra Arts Foundation is about, which is getting artists to work, getting them paid for what they do, to create art, and make our community more cultural and more vibrant and more energetic.

So setting up an exhibit like our Grants to Artists exhibition is an interesting process.

We announced the awards in late spring.

The exhibition went up at the beginning of July, (upbeat music) so we didn't have a whole lot of time.

And when you're talking about trying to gather 14 artists and their artwork, it really took a very concentrated amount of planning and communication.

(upbeat music continues) Once we figured out, "Okay, you're gonna have these three pieces, you're gonna have this one piece."

How are we going to format the literary artists' work so that it does fit a gallery setting?

How are we going to display the performance artwork so that it does fit the gallery setting?

Getting the supporting materials, the artist bios, their artist statements about each piece.

Once we got all of those details straightened out, it just became a time issue.

Let's get it all delivered.

Once the show previous goes out.

You know, it becomes sort of a, you know, a quick changeover at that point.

- I work at Sierra Nevada College where I'm a English program chair.

I chair the BFA and the BA in English, and I also direct the writer series.

Additionally, I'm a writer.

I think my writing helps me as a teacher because I'm often teaching something that I do.

It's not just an abstraction or a theory that I'm talking about when I'm talking about writing.

I don't do a huge number of readings during the year, but certainly if I'm invited to read, I usually say yes.

Only something strange against it.

When you look at the edges, the sky presses down.

Earth erodes the stakes, different as teeth grinding, some incisor, some molar, some fang.

- The Grants to Artist reception that we had for this exhibition was really very well attended.

We were really happy about the support we got for that.

We did intersperse, sort of the standard reception feeling as far as everybody milling around and having some food and wine.

We interspersed that with some performances and some readings from some of our performance and literary artists.

We have visual artists, we have photographers, we have sculptors, (upbeat violin music) we have painters, we have a cloth artist.

We also have a few musicians.

(upbeat violin music) And I think that people really enjoyed seeing those things and hearing those things.

And it's one thing to watch something on a video, it's one thing to open up a book or read something on a piece of paper, but it's entirely another thing to hear it from the the artist mouth.

(audience clapping) (birds chirping) - My name is Chad Sweet.

I'm representing both Sierra Arts Foundation as well as Good Luck Macbeth Theatre Company.

At Sierra Arts, we're presenting four different events.

We have Jazz nights on Wednesday.

- The artist meetings for Artown are very important because Artown is a collaboration.

It is hundreds of local presenting organizations.

So each month we would get together and meet about things that needed to be done for the festival at that point.

Getting the different presenting groups together to meet each other, talk about what events they were planning.

You can sort it by date so you can see exactly what else is on your date.

Answer any questions they might have about being part of Artown or about their production.

And basically just keeping the different artists informed about the overall festival.

- After the New York conference until the first day of Artown is about six months and things get really, really crazy.

Thank you very much for having me here today.

There were so many meetings to be had.

We have several press conferences, there were board meetings to discuss all the big picture stuff and staff meetings to really look at the nuts and bolts and details.

We have a presentation to the city council.

Good afternoon, my name is Beth Macmillan, Executive Director of Artown.

And I love to see the reaction of our city council, people who have really kept arts and culture a priority and continue to support this festival.

We'll have the third, the 18th annual Artown Festival begin on July the first.

And nobody's more excited than me.

And I know that the city is just waiting for this to happen.

- [Participant] I'm not playing it off of the video.

- Okay.

- I'm playing it off of my hard drive.

- Okay.

- So we're not connected to the net like that for that.

So we don't have to risk that happening.

- Every year we have a press conference, and there's a timeline where on May the first, the website goes live, - Got some amazing worlds music.

We bring them all over the world, Monday night music.

All the events on the calendar are unveiled.

Incredible events for children.

And at that point we unveil the poster.

- Wow!

(audience clapping) - So the unveiling of all the events happens, and it's usually right around the 1st of May.

So we can talk about the poster and it sort of sets off the season for July.

The unveiling of the Artown poster has become a real tradition for Artown.

And every year we have a call for artists.

And this year we selected Annie Hall.

- In Reno Open Studios, which I don't know if you know about it.

I remember an early experience of mine that when I look at it now, sort of late in life where I am, I think I was in kindergarten in Mrs. Kaufman's class at Benjamin Franklin Elementary School in Liberty, Missouri.

And we had an art project and we were coloring balls on a piece of paper.

And she stopped at my desk and said, "Ann, you're not coloring that correctly.

You have to stay within the lines."

And I've thought about that so many times through the years.

I don't think I've ever wanted to stay within the lines.

- We finished the bulk of it in one day, which was about 12 hours.

And then I like to take a couple days away from it and then come back 'cause you see all your mistakes, you know?

- Yeah.

- You can see where you have like messed up or where it's, dang, whatever.

The day you guys filmed me, we were doing a potentialist is mural, which, if a painting is potentialist then it's done in the moment and often looks like whatever you want it to look like.

Joe C. was there, he was a very good friend of mine, a street artist, and he threw these crazy ninjas over the top of it, like flipping each other.

And it turned out to be really cool.

A potentialist one who would be able to create anything out of their environment, out of junk that they find.

A potentialist is one who his or her art doesn't know any boundaries.

Like if you were to pick up a brush and it turned into a play, and that's okay.

Just had to, I had to make up a new word.

If we were to say we're Renaissance men and women that would, people would think we were wearing robes and things, you know?

So, you know, this is the 21st century, so we need a new word, right?

Like a pure potentialist mural would be the Keystone Bridge, which is the the second largest mural in town in that it's blue, it's called Water Under the bridge.

You know, like, let it all go Reno, you know?

It's all right, we can start over.

And it wraps around the whole thing.

And it's a cacophony.

You can really see anything you want in it.

And it's become one of the more popular murals in the city.

People get their wedding pictures taken in front of it, and it's pretty cool.

The largest mural in Reno is the Wedekind mural, which I also did, which spans a quarter of a mile of Wedekind.

And I did that one for a friend who died over there.

I thought that that would be a good way to change the neighborhood simply by putting bright colors and things that may resemble a garden or flowers, even though it's just a, again, a cacophony of nothingness and everything at the same time.

This is Reno Artworks and this place was literally full of when we moved in.

It was an old plumbing place.

And so we built up these walls, and, you know, put some paint down, and started to invite artists of any kind to come here.

- So Reno Artworks is a member funded community art space.

So everybody pays $100 a month and that's enough to break even.

- It was created by Pan and Aric.

They decided that they wanted this group to be a business for artists.

They wanted a way for artists to have a place to work that wasn't super expensive, and a place to showcase their art and share art with other people.

I think the youngest person is 20 and the oldest is 67.

So we have people who are working in different careers, but have a passion for art and wanna share it, for no other reason that they create and have a need to share what they create with other people.

And Aric and Pan have given us a place to do that.

And then they go out and do all the footwork.

They advertise for us, they promote for us.

They do all the business stuff.

They sell our stuff for us, and we don't have to worry about that part.

We can just show off our work, share it with other people and keep creating.

And they do the business aspect for us, which I really enjoy because I have another full-time job and I wouldn't be able to do everything that promoting your artwork needs without a group like this.

- So yeah, we have a community art space, and a gallery, and a retail space.

The gallery rotates out on a monthly basis and, you know, we select our artists based on merit and community involvement and quality of the work.

- Without a group like this, I would not have had the very successful show that I had.

I was really fortunate and I had a huge show this winter, because the other artists went out into the community say, "Hey, you need to check out this woman's work."

- We will help each other, so it's artist helped.

So if you have a big idea, we will help you as artists to do your big idea.

- Yeah, we wanted to do something big.

We wanna do something kind of new and different.

Let's do an art show that starts with nothing on the wall.

So we'll just start it out at 10:00 AM.

Nothing, blank walls.

Art reception starting right now, come on down.

'Cause we wanted to show people the process of making work and what goes into making a mural, and having murals made inside.

It was a new thing.

It's a different thing.

It was fun to try that out.

So we had Bryce Chisholm, Joe C. Rock, and Pan, all produced work in front of a public, in front of an audience.

- I did tee shirts that I had completely wrecked doing paintings around this city and other cities.

And so I just kind of shellacked or made them hard or made them into paintings basically.

And then hung them on the wall.

And then proceeded to paint weird heads and things on them to complete the look of this room.

Joe C. painted most of Midtown, which became a very, you know, that area's booming and successful.

- Today I'm just doing a colorful portrait picture of a Native American and I like to add a lot of colors, different details into my artwork.

I think a lot of the Artown stuff, there's maybe not as much a live painting or, you know, it's more gallery type stuff where you just go and you look at the landscape paintings hanging on the wall.

It's kind of nice for something different where you can actually see the artists at work, see their techniques, see how they work.

- When we do our shows, we again like to, you know, a painter or a sculptor will bring in their work and put it in here, and then we also like to include music and then performance as well with every show.

And Kelly Proud is just one of Reno's, one of a handful of just phenomenal musicians in town.

She's got a great voice and can play the piano like nobody's business.

(soothing piano music) ♪ Seems I've done this, this before ♪ ♪ I think you wanna be ♪ ♪ And I don't want you anymore ♪ ♪ Drag my heart is, give you everything ♪ ♪ Never was enough not to feel something ♪ ♪ The table's turning now ♪ ♪ You're burning up a storm for me ♪ ♪ And I remember ♪ - Artown is a really great way to package what we're working on year round.

And bring it to the outside world.

And I thank them for that.

Most of us who participate in that, this is our whole life.

And the fact that they put a little logo on it is like, thanks, cool.

We're on it though, you know, this is like what we do anyway.

Like we live this.

- So we produced 27 events last July through this space.

The potentialist workshop down the street on Dickerson, a couple at Sierra Arts that Pan had some poetry in and spoken views and then the Reno Fash Mob with Tessa over at the Nest.

♪ Set my world ablaze ♪ ♪ But I can make my angels in ash anyway ♪ - I think that idea that an individual with their 10 friends can go in and make an area into something that they want and live their own dream is going to really help save this city.

And maybe that idea will spread to other places as well.

And I'm glad I'm alive right now, and happen to be an artist right now 'cause it seems like a good time to reinvent it all.

♪ Cursed in the morn ♪ (birds chirping) - The little book is a calendar.

It's a booklet that's a calendar of events that take place through the month, throughout July.

Phoenix just pulled up.

It's a big day when that book arrives.

When it gets shipped from the printer.

This is it.

Where are they?

- They just pulled into the back.

- Oh my gosh.

And it comes in many, many, many boxes.

- The little book is just a coveted piece of information.

It's a coveted calendar.

We print 100,000 of them.

Okay, so let me just explain what we're gonna do.

- Over 6,000.

- Yeah, I know.

- Little Books.

- It's gonna be a long day, isn't it?

So what I did is I took 48,000 and went out with a team of three people, and we just took everything out throughout the community and distributed the little books.

- [Beth] It went everywhere.

It went to our major sponsors.

It went to many of the different merchants.

Not any downtown but around town.

- Well, to promote further, I have 210 of our little books and, you know, that has the whole schedule condensing.

It's a lot of work, but it was well received.

Let me tell you.

- Well, opening night's a little bit different than any other night.

Not only in its artistry, but in its setup.

Because most nights you go down and you set up for the night.

Opening night you're setting up for the month.

So you've gotta make sure that all the signage is up in the park, you gotta make sure that the backstage area is set up so that it, not only is for opening night, but it's sort of set up for the month.

At Showtime, it's seven o'clock it just magically is all in place.

(upbeat music) This year we opened with Jelly Bread.

Amazing and very popular band from this area.

- Are you guys ready to have a good time?

(people clapping and cheering) Yes, we're gonna have a good time tonight So everybody say yes!

- I don't think it gets better any better than this.

So we are gonna go and return to the dark side.

Have fun everybody!

See you this month!

- We return to the Dark Side was absolutely lovely.

It was a group of musicians that came together in celebration of Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon."

It was the 40th anniversary of that album.

And these musicians are all incredible musicians in their own right.

And every opening night we look for something that is different, something that is worthy of kicking off this incredible month of July called Artown.

The Reno Municipal Band are an incredible band.

And they came forward and did a patriotic performance on the 4th of July.

(upbeat orchestra music) (fireworks exploding) (upbeat orchestra music continues) (fireworks exploding) (audience clapping and cheering) And everybody left with the true feeling of what 4th of July is.

- Ladies and gentlemen, the Reno Municipal Band.

(audience clapping and cheering) - I have to say that I'm proud of every single theater company that exists in this community.

I would have to say that the way theater companies have pushed the envelope in this community have been tremendous.

From building a new venue for Reno little theater to creating new works at both Bruka Theater and Shakespeare, Nevada Shakespeare Company.

What Nevada Shakespeare Company did was dig deep into something that's a real situation in Nevada, where you've got prostitution and the unheard voices of prostitution and Nevada Shakespeare went out and spoke to these different individuals and created a work around it.

A very important work that really had its groundbreaking performance at Artown.

- With "Voices in the Life" we knew prostitution was a subject that people would be interested in.

What prostitution is doing now in its various forms really intrigued us.

As a father I was personally drawn to work on the project because I'm a father of daughters.

So we started then going a little further with it, well, what would it look like?

So then you start to take the form of how it would come to be.

And Norman had these great documents to go back to the sixties of records of women who were interviewed.

- And then we went back and did some historical research and we did some girls back from the early, you know, Virginia City mining days right up to contemporary runaway girls today.

And so we tried to present everyone's point of view, and a couple of my Hollywood buddies wrote some wonderful monologues.

They took the tapes that we had and they dramatized them in a professional way.

Norman had a lot of playwrights with amazing credits.

You know, John Pielmeier, Richard Friedenberg, we're so lucky to work with these guys, Dave Hunsaker.

And we had a lot of Nevada playwrights, Maggy Anthony, to work with here.

And we set them to task and found what they were interested in.

So we started getting all this information.

Then suddenly you've got a lot of data, right?

You've got a lot of information.

Then you gotta think, "All right, how are we gonna structure this?"

So Norman and I talked a lot about that and structuring it in a series of monologues.

Would it be scenes and monologues?

And we thought, "Well, maybe each author tackles one voice, one voice per actress."

Those steps that took about two years.

And we had a lot of writers and we had a lot of rewrites.

We had material that we had, we couldn't find room for.

We had material that just didn't fit.

And then we had about three hours of material that we had to edit down to 90 minutes.

And that took a lot.

That was very tricky.

And we did that with the design team and the production team.

And once the actresses were cast, we got their feedback as well.

- Instead of doing the ♪ Baby, baby, baby, ♪ ♪ Ooh baby, baby, baby ♪ Cut that down to like, ♪ Baby, you know, I've got a tinker ♪ - Yeah, thank you.

Yeah.

- I mean these are just the little cuts here.

- No, I know.

- Get into the bigger stuff.

- You know, once you get more eyeballs on the project, you get more points of view, right?

And we noticed, "Oh, we've already covered that.

We don't need that."

So then each monologue had to have its own very clear viewpoint that was independent of the others and yet connected, you know?

In theater we call that table work where you, it's your first chance as, you know, for me as a director to sit down with the actors and break it down beat by beat, you know?

And beats are just moments, you know, what's this moment about?

What's that moment about?

Let's get really clear here.

But really look for those beat transitions when things change 'cause it just seems to me like you're getting closer and closer.

And it's almost like I want to play with some spacing for you two, when you're starting the scene, you're further away respectfully.

And by the end it's almost like you're like, "Honey, you're gonna take yourself and you're gonna clean yourself, and you're gonna take very good care of yourself, okay?

I'm your big sister."

You know?

So that we've closed that gap from really being formal to really being nurturing.

With this piece we had a compressed time schedule.

We had about six weeks from the times we were cast to do the table work, learn the lines, do the staging, get into tech and be ready to go.

- Would you be my friend?

- Of course.

- [Actress 1] Do you have any other family?

- [Actress 2] No, there's just mama and my uncle.

My brothers died of war.

- I want you to stay as clean as you can.

Fix your hair and try to take some pride in yourself.

That's the only way you can get ahead.

- So we had two weeks of run throughs and then we had to move to the Nevada Museum of Art, and we only had one tech threw in there.

So Wednesday night we're here, right?

We run the show just like we pretend there's an audience there.

(audience clapping and cheering) Right, Thursday we moved to Nevada Museum of Art.

We've got four hours in there because you know, they're very busy and it's very expensive to get in there.

So we wanna make the most of our time in there.

We had to get all the lights and the sound, and everything worked out and all the scene work and next night, boom, we're open.

(people talking indistinctly) - Honey, I was Frank's girl in Vegas back in the sixties.

He was crazy about me.

Used to have his valet, George's name was.

Black guy, did everything.

He'd call me up and say, "Frank's in town, Janie, go get yourself ready.

He wants you to meet him at the Sand as soon as you can get there."

- We got the whole spectrum of people.

We had the madams, we had the working girls, we had the abused girls.

- So at first it was all actress related.

And then we thought, but what we need to hear from the men too.

The men are obviously a huge part of this.

So then we tapped into kind of the every man.

And there were ended up two of them that he and I wrote together where we'd hear from them.

Plus we had a preacher character.

- I am an ordained preacher of the Lord, and I hope with several non-negotiable truths.

The Bible is inspired by God and is infallible.

Salvation is received through repentance and faith.

There will be a final judgment, an eternal damnation for the wicked.

Prostitution saves marriages.

We need this industry.

(audience laughing) It not only helps marriages, it helps the damn economy.

- And one was a heartbreaker, an absolute heartbreaker that was called "The Last Wonderful Day Of My Life."

- She was the kind of mother that all children dreamed of.

We did everything together until I was 11 years old.

The last wonderful day of my life.

I came home from school that day.

My mother and I, we were supposed to go horseback riding.

She loved doing things with me.

As I came home, I saw the car in the garage.

I opened the door but couldn't find my mother.

Looked everywhere.

Finally I found her in the bedroom lying in a pool of blood.

- Prostitution is legal and safe in Nevada brothels.

Women have chosen to work there.

They receive medical care.

And if a John gets outta hand and wants to hurt anybody, the security guards are there within seconds.

Our children have non these protections.

And yes, regardless of their hometown, they are all our children.

- So New Work has been something we've been dealing with for years and I happen to love it.

I happen to think it's one of the most rewarding things to do, is to take a project that starts with an idea, and then bring it fully to the stage for an audience.

Let the audience judge what what they think of it.

So we hope to continue this tradition.

(audience clapping and cheering) - Hey, we got a show.

- Cool.

We got a show.

Oh.

Oh, thank you.

Thank you honey.

Oh, it's starting to hit me now.

It's starting to hit me now, it's starting to hit me, brother.

Good job, thank you so much.

Congratulations everybody!

(people cheering and clapping) Great show!

- My wife told me a very heartwarming story of a young woman who was a prostitute in Reno and saw the play and recognized my wife and came up to her in tears, and said, "Please tell your husband and tell Cameron Crane and the Nevada Shakespeare Company what this meant to me.

Because I was in the life and I'm out of it now.

And to be able to see this and know and go through again the experience of how I got trapped in it, but also to let people know that there is a way out, and there are helping hands to bring us out, help us, guard us, keep us safe, and bring us back into another level of life that was denied us as young women."

(soothing music) - Growing up in Reno, we almost never drove through this part of Virginia Street.

All I really knew was tattoo shops and strip clubs and some CD type businesses in general.

- [Craig] Three years ago we moved down right here to the heart of the city.

- So yeah, when I heard that we were moving down here, I was a little bit concerned about that at first this morning that would be like, - And a lot of people were actually nervous.

Why are we putting a church in that area of town?

We've got a huge strip club literally right across the street.

Our heart was to get to know our neighbors and be a part of really the renovation and kind of the renaissance that's really taking place.

- I definitely believe that we can change and that we want to change the culture for the better.

- [Craig] We actually renovated this building.

It was an abandoned building for a number of years, and we came in gutted it and really to serve the city, but also to be a part of the community and really the emerging community here in Midtown.

- I feel like that if we're really gonna change a culture and the face of a city that really you have to highlight the art.

The art of a city really brands the city.

- Most people aren't really aware of what Midtown has to offer and that's really what the art walk is about in our hearts.

- We know that the Midtown Art Walk isn't just a brand for this one day and this one time.

It's really what has helped brand the entire area across the whole city.

- So what is an art walk?

An art walk is partnering with businesses and then also finding artists and performances, and performers and bands that then we partner with the businesses.

And so on the day of the Art Walk people come out, we give them a map that highlights all the businesses, the artists and the performances that are taking place.

And then they go and really just discover.

So it starts here at Living Stones and it goes about just a half mile down to Junkee.

Is kind of the two bookends of it.

And within that stretch there's 50 businesses all in this area.

There's always new businesses opening up.

And it's really you guys and entrepreneurs that I really believe in Midtown and wanna be a part of the revival.

Being a church and organizing the Midtown Art Walk, I think sometimes people think we have an alternative agenda or maybe are a little skeptical.

And so one of the things that we do is every year before the Art Walk is we organize the Midtown Mixer.

So we bring all the business owners in, we bring all of the artists in.

They get to see who they're matched up with.

And really it's opportunity for us to come together as that community and to really cast some vision, and remind them really of the growth that we're seeing in Midtown.

- We give them tools on how to, you know, use their Facebooks and their Twitters or what to do to make their business more inviting in general.

How to just kind of present themselves and brand themselves as part of Midtown.

- Yeah, get creative with it.

It's all about creating that buzz with social media.

And then if you have blogs or email lists, shoot out an email and just invite your customers to the Art Walk.

- The Creative Coalition has been a huge help with us this last year.

Organizing the Midtown Art Walk with Amber.

We partnered with the Midtown district, with Tim and Jessica at Junkee Clothing.

- Ron from Aces Tattoo Shop help us, helped us run last year, the artist side of the art walk.

They've, you know, they've really been on board with this and so I feel like I love that they're here.

- It's cool over the last few years to really see a number of businesses really move in, take ownership of the community.

We bring thousands of people here that then go and get to find out about the businesses.

(upbeat music) ♪ Yes ♪ (audience clapping) ♪ Now ♪ (upbeat music continues) - [Speaker] They just don't make records like that anymore.

(people clapping and cheering) - [Speaker] And now we resume our scheduled program.

- It's kind of a condensed Artown within four hours in the types of opportunities that people can come and see and experience.

To this, last year we probably had three to 5,000 people come out for a span of four hours and really participate in the Art Walk, which is just a half mile within that stretch.

We highlighted 57 businesses last year and over 60 artists.

- I've seen that change actually happen.

And then actually, my husband and I even bought a house in Midtown about three years ago now.

And so now I love it.

I mean, I'm comfortable walking around in it or just, you know, hanging out.

This is now my neighborhood and really my family, and my community and everything is all in this area.

I love this place.

- Hello everybody.

How you doing?

Wow, it's nice to be back here in Reno Artown.

My second time.

Thank you very much for having me back.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, believe it or not, I am a clown.

- Family series is a very exciting event.

We have two parts of it.

We have a family festival, which takes place from five until seven every Monday.

We invite different mascots from all sponsors to come down and we also have incredible arts offerings of mural painting.

And we have KNPB down there reading stories to children.

We have waste management down there, we have face painting.

And then at seven o'clock a performance starts, and it ranges anything from a musical performance to a dance performance, to different cultures celebrating in performance.

- Hambone's a way of using your hands, your thighs and your chest to get your groove on by playing your own body drum.

(hand slapping rhythmically) (people laughing) And you know, not many people know this, but hambone came out of, came out of horrible time in our country when enslaved Africans were not allowed to play drums like the Jim Bay because they could communicate through the drum.

And so what evolved was this beautiful art form of body percussion, can't play the drum, okay, I'll play my body and still celebrate parts of my culture and parts of my connection.

(rhythmic hands slapping) (audience clapping and cheering) I learned about electronic sensors that they used for drummers back in the early eighties.

When I got wind of this idea, I thought, "Wow, how cool would that be to take the sensors, actually put them on the suit, tap the sensors while doing hambone and play electronic hambone that I call Hamtag."

(upbeat music) ♪ You like that ♪ ♪ You like that ♪ (upbeat music continues) ♪ Don't 'ya ♪ (upbeat music continues) (audience clapping and cheering) - Boys and girls, adults too.

But boys and girls, do me a favor, notice how you're feeling right now in your body.

Notice that sense of joy, pleasure.

That good juicy stuff from smiling, laughing.

Laughing together, boys and girls, do me a big favor.

Keep that joy next to your heart for the rest of your lives.

Believe it or not, the more you laugh, the more you love, the healthier you are.

My name is Unique Derique, thank you so much.

(audience clapping and cheering) - Yeah, I know.

- But we're gonna start a fresh project today.

- Oh.

- Aren't these cute?

I'm an art facilitator and I can direct people, and I have sort of honed my skills to be an artist without a paintbrush.

Edith.

- That's good.

- Edith.

- Oh.

- See how she added and incorporated all the colors and mixed them together?

- Oh, that's- - Isn't that gorgeous, Jean?

- Yes.

What I do here is I have a group of people who come in to my classes as a social group, and everybody knows everybody by sight, not specifically by name.

And when they see me, they know that we're going to be doing art.

Now I'm going to show you something.

And I've been coming for five years every Thursday.

And we laugh and giggle and sometimes break out in song, and once in a while, an off color joke and you can hear the laughter down the hallway and everybody comes running to see what's going on.

- [Participant] All right, you gotta remember I don't drink, smoke, and play with girls.

- Who are you?

- I'm a lonely old man.

I just lie all I can.

(people laughing) - You can dance if you want.

And the hardest part is losing an artist coming in on another Thursday and finding out I've lost three artists in a week.

It's very hard.

So now you have four lines.

1, 2, 3, 4, okay.

I became interested in Alzheimer's when my dad was diagnosed in 1994, a week after my mother passed away from breast cancer.

And so I went from being my daddy's little girl to being my dad's parent in one week.

And I was a single mother, self-employed, and my whole world just took an enormous detour.

All right, I only have to do two more of them.

And so the day that my dad didn't know who I was, I was picking him up for haircut and ice cream, and which we would do every two weeks just because I loved taking him.

And I reached out my hand and he grabbed my hand.

He was sitting outside on a patio chair and he said, "I don't know who you are, but I know that you love me."

And he got up and followed me.

And of course I cried all the way to the car, but I knew it was the best thing he could have ever said.

- [Participant] We have our moments.

- We're just drunk - Most of the time we're getting ready for Artown, and getting ready for the art gallery installation and events we have during the month of July, special events.

So all of these different foundations is what we use.

Normally we use acrylics and watercolor, stay away from oils.

But the most intriguing and unusual medium we use is women's makeup.

They're cosmetics, they're safe, washable.

Many women's organizations, and clubs, and churches, and individuals have donated thousands and thousands of used cosmetics.

And they use the mediums, the eyeliners, and eyeshadows, and blush, and foundation, and colored pencils, and things you use for makeup to create a lot of their art.

And it's fun, the women are already familiar with the products and the men laugh and giggle.

You know that they're drawing with lipstick.

- I'm in trouble.

- Yeah, you're always in trouble, Odie.

- It benefits the artist just from the social interaction.

It's a, the class is held in a private room.

It's quiet, they see all the same familiar faces around the table.

And every week we get a new person.

We gotta finish today, Artown starts Monday, so we're kind of getting low on time.

So every class they have a feeling of this.

They've been to a party, they've been to an event, and they've accomplished something in the meantime.

All right, well let's give yourselves a hand please.

(people clapping) - Good job.

- Beautiful job.

- It's okay, Osmond, you can clap.

(people laughing) (soothing music) Moments of memory has become a permanent class here at the Arbors and they always come through and accommodate me for whatever I need.

And we have a lot of our special events here.

And the residents here love special events.

It's a party, it's time for everybody to have a good time.

Even the artists, so as a local nonprofit, we needed to get the word out there.

So first thing I thought of was Artown.

The most awesome part is new supporters that we get every year.

We've had some great new people we've met this year who've come through the gallery and were so inspired by what they saw.

And have called me on the phone all times of the day and night.

Emailed me, texted me saying, "oh my God, I had no idea and this stuff is fabulous, and can I order a print?"

And, "How did they do this particular piece of art?"

And that happens every year.

(soothing music continues) It is in hearing what the artists say when they see their work, we'll bring them out and show them the art gallery and they'll look at a piece.

And I remember one day this lady said, "Oh my God, that's beautiful."

And then she looked in the corner and it had her name on it.

All she could say was, "Oh my God, I did that.

I didn't know I did that."

(soothing music continues) The one thing that has evolved out of the program, which we didn't know what happened either, was the legacy of art that it leaves behind for the family.

Families can't always be here, but they can go online to the website, see grandma's art, order a print or some cards and we'll ship it to them.

And they just elated that they could have something so personal of hers, and that art will always be there.

One day one of our artists, Bill, had his hands were covered with green paint.

And I said, "Bill, we have to get your hands washed before you go to lunch."

And he said, "Nope.

I want everybody to see how creative and productive I was today."

And I turned around and just cried because I knew it made a difference that day.

One person, one difference, that's all it takes.

♪ Duck and cover ♪ - [Speaker] It is a bomb.

Duck and cover.

Sundays and all day vacation time.

We must be ready every day, all the time to do the right thing if the atomic bomb explodes.

Duck and cover.

♪ Duck and cover ♪ - Movies in the park has been a great joy.

We have been one of the very few regular movie series in the country that has still shown 16 millimeter films using projectors, using the telltale Q dots in the upper right hand of the screen when it's time to change a reel.

And it was interesting, a 20 something kid came up to me one night when I was running the projectors and he says, "Wow, you are really showing movies."

A movie projector was completely strange to that particular young person because, you know, with today's technology, movie projectors just don't exist.

Well they have in Wingfield Park for many, many years.

- Movies in the park is one of the most popular nights at Artown.

Most people have seen these movies several times, so it's not like they're groundbreaking brand new movies.

They're movies that Tim selects them very carefully so that they're sort of relevant to what's happening in Reno or what's happening today.

And Tim comes down and introduces the movies, and he plays interesting shorts ahead of time.

- Our movie tonight is "The Iron Giant," an animated movie from 1999.

So it takes place in the 1950s.

You just heard the song "Duck and Cover."

Of course the 1950s, the time of great uncertainty, Sputnik.

We started on a 12 by 12 screen and then thanks to Dave Aiazzi, we finally got a 15 by 20 foot screen in Wingfield Park that allowed us to show a much greater picture.

- That was the first thing Artown ever owned was a movie screen.

And we are very proud of our movie screen.

- Now we will be going to DVDs, simply because the prints are no longer available.

The equipment is no longer reliable, and it's just the way that we've got to go.

During the first Movies in the Park, I was showing the movie "Grease" and the film broke.

And so I asked Mark Simon to put on some music from "Grease."

People started getting up and dancing.

Some of the people went on stage and started dancing while I was fixing the film.

It was one of those magical moments during Artown.

We know that everything that we have put together in Artown is working.

- [Speaker] Now tell me right out loud, what are you supposed to do when you see the Place?

- [People] Duck and cover!

(upbeat futuristic music) (flame flares exploding) - Controlled Burn was ignited in 2000 at Burning Man.

(upbeat futuristic music continues) We first organized and generated performances so that we could dance at the foot of the man.

There was nobody spinning fire in Reno.

So our founding members traveled actually to San Francisco to learn moves, bring them back, teach them to everybody else, and then rush back the next week for more great moves.

(upbeat futuristic music continues) (audience clapping and cheering) (fireworks banging) (upbeat futuristic music continues) ♪ Kind of thing ♪ - [Erika] Burning Man is our core, Burning Man is the culture, the celebration that we want to bring to other people through what we're doing.

(upbeat futuristic music continues) ♪ Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay ♪ - Controlled Burn was asked to entertain both at the opening and closing nights of very early Artown festivals.

And we enjoyed doing that, but the city came to us and said that we should actually look into developing our own event.

- I mean that's, we don't land like this, it's on a new count.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.

- It seemed formidable, but we decided that we would try to develop a fire arts festival.

Worked very closely with Reno Fire Department to develop how we could safely present what is a celebration of the culture of Burning Man in downtown Reno.

So we started small, invited a few friends to share the stage with Controlled Burn.

- 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

- Controlled burn has been practicing on Wednesday nights for more than a decade.

We teach class from six to seven and then we practice choreography, develop choreography, test new tools, try partner moves, and then have a community burn following practice when people can just cut loose and practice their flow arts.

(upbeat music) Poi are Kevlar wicks on chains with self tightening grips and are dipped and fueled and ignited and spun around the performer.

We also use staff that's just a dowel with wick on either end.

You can use a staff for spinning, sort of like what you would see in baton twirling.

We also use fans in a lot of our choreography.

Those are very popular, hula hoops.

We have foot performers and a number of other tools.

We say pretty much if you can wick it, we'll try to burn it.

City property, are they gonna be on the plaza?

- Yeah.

- As long as they're on city property.

- Okay.

- There's a very clear process to bring the festival downtown and it's wonderful working with Alexis Hill at City of Reno, Peggy Nelson-Aguilar at Parts and Recreation.

- I don't, my understanding is- - Initially you need to secure a venue, of course, and with that comes the application process.

There are many steps and many entities for which applications have to be submitted.

Because we're doing fire arts, we have to meet with extensively with the fire department.

We submit a plan for what we want to put in place.

We tell them what would be the fail safes that should be put in place, and then they consult with others, come back to us and we walk through what will be the site setup.

- Thanks for your time, Erika.

- Yeah, of course.

Thank you.

- I'm very impressed how organized you are.

- Thank you.

Oh good.

That's great.

- So once those things start to fall into place, you start your meetings.

- What point are they talking about establishing the security safe zone?

- The pre-event party the night before compression, the 26th will be at Strega, it will be volunteer appreciation, something for the artisan.

- You know, who are like- - Visually impaired.

- Visually impaired, exactly.

People who need to have that kind of stuff set in stone.

So let's really.

- There's a lot of work to set up and it's actually pretty rigorous.

Cal Neva is our strongest sponsor.

They have been absolutely fantastic.

And one of those great contributions is the stage, and the seating that as well as the labor to affect the setup.

The flame effects, the largest flame effects are put in place and then lines are run.

After that the whole area is cordoned off.

The propane lines are sacred, the computer lines are sacred.

So we have the effects arrayed around the back of the stage and everything is connected to what we call our gun truck, our black truck with the flame effects, which is also backstage.

Our fantastic wizard of Oz sits up there and runs computer tests and you can hear the firing of the solenoids right down the line.

While the stage is being set up, the aerials rig is put in place.

And then again, barriers.

People start seating themselves almost as soon as they see that it's gonna happen again this year.

So it's an exciting time.

(upbeat music) The idea of compression is to share elements that are typical of Burning Man as well as new and unexplored and sorts of entertainment that are coming about in the Reno area.

We look to schools and youth organizations to see if they can develop a 15 minute routine.

And bring that during the daylight portion of the event.

So we found aerial performers, aerialists.

(people cheering) (upbeat music) Art cars are another strong form of expression at Burning Man and they've always joined in.

We found percussion groups like eNVision who's performed with us since they came about.

So we run daylight performances for a few hours and then as darkness comes in, we switch to fire performance while the groups, many from Nevada, but also from a little farther outside our area, dance with choreography on the stage.

And it's amazing the diversity within fire groups.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) So Controlled Burn is known for a big fire, really big choreography.

And so we sort of save ourselves for the end.

We dance very much to techno, although music is not allowed in the circle at Burning Man.

So this past year we wanted to show exactly what's involved in a Burning Man type of performance.

So we had our drummers provide the music for the last segment, and then we danced.

What is the required 17 minutes of choreography that we took to Burning Man?

- And now, once again, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and fire lovers of all ages presenting poly optic planes of perfect pyrotechnics, an excellent execution of electrifying exactitude in a sizzling demonstration of thrilling elimination, featuring breathtaking torches and blistering glaze.

Those masters of intentional combustion, those darlings of the playa, they're your fire art performers through Reno and they're here for you tonight.

Give it up for Controlled Burn!

(people cheering) (upbeat drum music) (upbeat drum music continues) (people cheering) (upbeat drum music continues) (people cheering) (flame flares swooshing) (upbeat drum music continues) (people clapping and cheering) (upbeat drum music continues) (people clapping and cheering) - Following the dance, we clear the backstage area.

We have a very faithful participant crowd.

They know what's coming.

- [Announcer] Oh, look out, look out, look out.

Here comes Dave King in a silver fire suit that made some big fire.

Mr. King, what did he got in store for us tonight?

(flame flares swooshing) (audience clapping and cheering) Oh man.

Gino.

Gino, back in the back, you got some fire.

What do you got for us, Bubba?

Let it loose.

Let it loose.

(flame flares swooshing) (audience cheering) (flame flares swooshing) (audience clapping and cheering) Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, give it up for Controlled Burn!

- [Erika] Attendance was, I think 8,500.

It involved 250 artists and 125 volunteers.

- [Announcer] Thank you so very much for coming to Compression 2013.

Go home and tell your friends, tell your neighbors, tell your relatives, it's the best show in Reno, Controlled Burn!

- Yeah, don't try this at home.

(laughs) - Back in the late eighties when we, several of us began the Arts Commission, we had this idea that an arts festival would do a couple of things.

It would focus everybody's attention on the arts.

And we all felt we had a vibrant arts community, but everybody was kind of left to their own devices to promote themselves.

And we also knew that there was a problem that nobody liked to come to downtown Reno.

And we thought maybe there would be a way to use the arts to bring people down there.

- Pretty much, we picked out this time in the calendar and looked at where we could put together a festival over about three weeks.

And we started by scanning the horizon of what is Reno doing already.

So there had been the first year of Pops on the River.

So we had one anchor, then we had the Nevada Humanities doing the great base in Chautauqua, there was another.

The Reno Municipal Band was doing concerts at lunch.

So we started to plug in things that existed and then we went to groups who may not have anything going on in the summer, the ballet, for example, and said, "If we were to give you a platform to create something special that was free, that was a celebration of community, that featured students at the Nevada Festival Ballet School, but also guest stars that came in to fill out the repertoire.

Would you be interested?"

And 75 groups ended up bringing events to the first year.

- Howard Rosenberg was a resource guy.

He said, "How much money do you need from the city?"

I think the first budget was something like $45,000.

- And I said, okay, you put it together, I'll get the money.

It took a couple of weeks.

Mark worked on it tirelessly.

I've never seen anyone so single focused in my life.

And we put together a thing.

I went to the city council and asked for the money.

Everybody jumped in to help, the city council voted the money.

And July, first, of the first year, that was when we were gonna start.

- I think what nobody knew was that there was this pent up demand for the arts.

And we found that out the first night.

- I will never forget that first night.

We thought if there were 50 people, we'd be in heaven.

There were over 350 people.

Everything was going swimmingly.

I was looking out over it, I was so happy.

And I saw one man with his wife, and I think three children grab the edges of their blankets.

He grabbed it over his shoulders and they were stalking out.

So I intercepted him and I said, "Is something wrong?"

He said, "Do you see that man over there?"

Well, there was a guy that had a paper bag and I assumed there was something in the paper bag.

I said, "Yeah."

He said, "He offered us wine."

And I looked at him and I looked at the man and I said, "Was it a bad vintage?"

He cracked up.

- So we had something every day and night for three weeks.

I think we went July one to 21 that first year.

And it was a wild success.

30,000 people, 30,000 people came downtown.

And that may not seem like a lot now, but when I remember going downtown then, let's paint the picture for people who were here.

Wingfield Park was there.

There were people living in it day and night.

Nobody saw the river, nobody saw trees downtown.

Nobody saw the beautiful architecture.

So to have 30,000 people come downtown, that was great.

- But yeah, 30,000 people sort of came out of the woodwork, which led us to believe that we did have a good arts community, and we did have this pent up demand to see it.

And just being able to promote it and put it on this stage, and bring people downtown in a great setting by the river would be a good thing.

And then the second year, we expanded it to a month, and the numbers grew and they've grown since.

- Artown is a classic story of economic diversification through arts and culture.

Because before Midtown, before SoDo, before the Sienna, before the Riverside Artists Lofts, before the Riverside Movie theater, before the Kayak Whitewater course, before all of that, there was Artown.

There was a short three week arts festival held in the heart of a city in a park by a flowing river.

That was uptown, downtown Artown.

It preceded all of those things and it certainly preceded the downtown that we know today.

- Charles McNeely, who was the city manager at the time, was quoted in the newspaper.

And this was before there was redevelopment in downtown Reno.

And I remember him saying that the job of redevelopment is to follow up on the success of the arts festival.

And 'cause I think we feel that the Arts festival proved once and for all that given a reason, people would come downtown.

- When the Riverside Movie Theater was built, this 12 screen cinema moved into the heart of downtown.

For whatever reason, Howard, and he knows a lot about movies.

Howard said, "I don't think this is gonna be a success, and if it is, I will climb up to the top of the Riverside Theaters and yell, "I was wrong."

- We're still waiting for him to sing on the roof.

I don't think he's ever done that.

And he needs to do that 'cause absolutely he said, "It will never work."

- It delightfully he was wrong because it's been a success.

- I never thought it would work.

It does work and it works well.

I'm there every weekend.

Hello.

- The arts are so vital to our community, and you show it when you show up to this park.

So thank you, you make my job a whole lot easier the rest of the year, and I get to talk all about you, how you're a wonderful community.

So thank you and you have a wonderful year and I'll see you next year.

- Closing night is so special in so many ways.

We've endured 31 days of hard work and enjoyment, but to get through 31 days straight in the summer has many challenges.

And we always try and make sure that closing night feels like a celebration, uplifting celebration of the last 31 days that everybody has been able to come down and celebrate, or go to galleries, or see concerts in churches, and have the full experience of art walks, or exhibits in people's backyards, children's performances, seniors work, is culminated in closing night where it's this significant celebration.

Not only is it a celebration, it's also a little bit, it's a little bit of a goodbye, and everybody has another 11 months to wait and see what we're gonna do.

- We are seeing, I think, our city becoming a work of art in progress.

And that for me is terrifically exciting, very gratifying, and goes far beyond the bounds of what an arts festival, it is usually intended to do.

- I really believe that Artown has changed the face of our community.

For an entire month every year, this community changes.

Everybody's proud of Artown.

People who have experienced it, people who haven't experienced it are proud to have Artown in their community.

And it changes how July feels.

If you go back 20 years, July in this community was July.

Now July is a very important part of the fabric of this community, and I really believe that everybody loves it.

Everybody enjoys it, everybody participates in it.

And it is an absolute honor and a privilege to be able to help make that happen.

I feel like I'm a servant to the community to provide this festival and it's truly an honor to serve the community in this manner.

- I don't believe I'm doing this.

I do not believe I'm doing, this is ridiculous.

I'm not going out on that thing.

You gotta be out of your, oh, all right, I'm going.

Good Lord.

Now then.

About 15 years ago when this place was built, I was convinced it would not work.

Well, it's been 15 years.

Guess what?

I was wrong!

It's a success, people actually come downtown to the movies.

I am now leaving if I can get off this damn thing.

And I've said I'm sorry, I've said I was wrong.

That's all you're getting, now go away!

(people clapping and cheering) (upbeat music)