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

On an exclusive and limited tour, eight 20-foot tall statues illuminated downtown Reno during Arttown's 30th anniversary.

These statues are called the Spirit Animals.

They're colorful, intricately hand-painted, and traveled all the way from Mexico City for the Reno community to enjoy.

(upbeat music) - Right now we're on the Pioneer Plaza, where we have all of our spirit animals.

They are Alebrijes made in Mexico, Oaxaca.

They were originally made with wood carvings and it's very traditional in their town to have these kind of things with the vibrant colors and the design.

- My name's Miranda Izquierdo.

This is a Emanuel Zarate.

We are part of the Patibulario Art.

I'm one of the team members and he's one of the artists.

- I think the dog personally, in my opinion, looks awesome at night just because he is more of a black and white color.

So when he has those lights, it's more purples and blues and greens, and they're on his ears and his eyes.

I also think the coyote looks amazing at night too, 'cause he's got his chest that lights up and he's got his ears and the snake on his back lights up.

One of my favorite ones is the armadillo because it has that contrast of the dark whites and grays on his tummy and his arms.

And then he is got beautiful colors on his shell and his little tongue sticking out is just adorable.

The vibrant colors are amazing, and we actually have photos of artists painting these sculptures as they were in the warehouses.

And just seeing them hand paint those with the tiny little paintbrush doing those details, it's amazing.

Just imagining them doing it with the mini ones, their original types, which are in the post office.

Those were just the inspiration to these big ones here, and they're spot on.

They really kept to that with the colors and the contrast, it's beautiful.

(upbeat music) Every time I drive by, there's already a crowd taking pictures of every single one of them.

So it's just really cool seeing how much people are enjoying it because we worked really hard to get these down here.

(upbeat music) Romain is awesome at trying to find a way to make it happen.

He also brought down artisans that will work with the workshops down at the basement.

(upbeat music) - They are all made of recycled paper-mâché.

They sit down and they have those already pre-made for everybody and they're primed in white.

And then they have all of these paint and paintbrushes at the tables, and you just go through a class, they talk you through it.

They tell you the background of Alebrijes, they tell you what the colors mean and how it makes you feel because this is your spirit, it's your spirit animal.

So you really wanna invest your colors and your livelihood into these spirit animals.

- We've gotten a lot of feedback with emotion and happiness, happy tears, just because we are showing a huge part of a cultural side Mexico that makes Mexicans really, really proud.

- [Announcer] Funding for ARTEFFECTS is made possible by: Sandy Raffealli with Bill Pearce Motors; Heidemarie Rochlin; In memory of Sue McDowell; The Carol Franc Buck Foundation; and by the annual contributions of PBS Reno Members.

(gentle music)