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

At The Generator in Reno, artists battle it out to win over a crowd with their artwork.

It's a battle not only in creativity, but theatrics and fun.

The question is, can they do it in only 20 minutes?

- [Crowd] Four, three, two, one.

- Let's paint.

My name is Alysia Dynamik, and I'm the executive director at The Generator.

So Art Battle is a speed painting competition.

12 artists compete in three different rounds.

The Art Battle organization puts on regional competitions and so the people that win at these local competitions can be invited to go on to compete at a higher level.

I reached out to the Art Battle organization about becoming a host of the event and it just went from there.

- My name is Bernardo.

I focus on chromadepth 3D Art.

I'm an abstract artist.

- My name's Bridget Grace.

And I am a multifaceted artist, painting and drawing, but I'm also a florist and designer.

- [Bernardo] Art Battle is, like, it's a fun little show.

- Artists come together and compete for two rounds of 20 minutes, so the winner of the first round competes against the winner of the second round in a final round, and then they select a winner from that set of competitors.

- [Bernardo] You have 20 minutes not to do your best, but to do something that makes people entertained.

- My first battle was actually all the way back in 2015.

This was my third time in the competition and I won this last time.

So it's been a really wonderful opportunity.

- I did two runs last year.

I saw a couple of years ago some people doing this and it's like, huh, that's interesting.

And then since I'm a member of The Generator, they said, like, "Hey, we're doing this.

Would you like to do it?

Apply."

I was like, "Uh, okay, let's do it."

- [Alysia] I select 11 artists beforehand.

I try to do a good mix of folks that are part of our community.

We have a lot of repeat painters, which is certainly encouraged.

I try to also invite new people every time.

It's about participation and opportunity for people to get to do things in the art world.

To start, we have to have six easels in the space.

We usually kinda try to set the space up a little bit more of a party atmosphere, turn our lights off in the space.

We put up colored lights, things like that.

We get all the materials together.

We provide paint, we provide canvases.

Then our artists start to arrive and then we start.

- I had a little bit of a technique each time I came and I wanted to do something that was, like, interesting and different.

And for this last competition, I decided to do a life drawing.

It was an approach that I don't think a lot of other artists had taken 'cause I had decided to ask someone in the audience at random to be the model.

- Since I use chromadepth 3D glasses, I like the reaction of people when they see through the lenses.

The perception of reality in this short moment is changed.

I'm offering them or I'm giving them for the first time something that they never saw it before with abstract art.

So for me it's like, yes, I cannot even win, but I touch your heart or some way, you know, like, some art feeling inside of you.

- I'm gonna spend the first five minutes on the composition in the sketch and the second five to seven minutes on background layers and not worrying about the details.

And then the last few minutes really focused on details.

- In the first Art Battle that I did, I did, like, a couple of practice runs, but then I realized that when you're over there, there's other factors going on.

You feel the pressure, you know, like, you're seeing people and they say like, oh, this is cool, or this is not, there's the music.

So I don't believe that it's something to practice about.

It's just something like, dude, just go and do it.

Then when you blink your eyes, like, all right, I have 10 minutes, you blink again, like, all right, I have five.

So it's like you have to keep focus on the time itself.

- The last few moments of the Art Battle are really crucial because I think that's where you really have the opportunity to do something unexpected and wow the crowd with something.

It's really important to take a step back and look at the work from further away.

Oftentime, especially under a time crunch, you get very focused on, like, a small amount of the piece, and, you know, it's the pressure.

Like, your heart's racing.

You're like, is this good enough?

You're starting to look at the other folks' pieces, and kinda scale them up against each other.

And it's really just a moment of, like, vulnerability.

- With 20 minutes, you don't have time to think, so you can't be over there like, Steve, you know, you're not in the Olympics.

(chuckles) - Amazingly, they really tend to bust those things out in that 20 minutes.

It's a fast amount of time for these artists, but they really do a great job.

So at the end of the 20 minutes, the audience all votes.

The Art Battle organization has a text-based platform where they can both vote and bid because all of the paintings are for sale.

And then they give us the top two.

Then we do the second round, same thing.

And then in the final round we have the four artists paint, voting, bidding.

And then they tell us the winner.

Tonight's winner is Bridget Grace.

- Yay.

(crowd cheering and applauding) - [Alysia] Amazing job, Bridget.

- For me, I was able to meet people and find other people that were interested in the same things I was, and that was really inspiring to my creative journey.

- I don't think that it's something that you should have any rivalry, or it's like, I'm not gonna talk to you.

This is an art battle.

It's like, dude, we're doing art here, you know, like, the art world should be fun.

- I think it is really important for people to know that there are access to the arts in our town and community, and that it's okay to take a chance and get to know people.

And even if you're not competing in the Art Battle, going to the Artown events, going to The Generator, donating to people who are promoting these types of events, artwork in our youth and schools.

I hope that we can just continue to spread that artistic nature throughout Reno, and, you know, I'd love to see it grow and continue.

- [Narrator] 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.

(soft upbeat jazz music) (music continues) (music continues)