- In this edition of arteffects, using art to solve a crime.

(mysterious music) - It is very gratifying to me when I can help out a victim, get a little bit of closure.

(mysterious music) - A fashion illustrator's point of view.

- It's just a different expression of the figure, a different expression of the wardrobe, the way the wardrobe moves.

- Floral installations pop up in New York city.

- It's really about taking that, which is so beautiful and ephemeral, and kind of merging it with the texture and the grit of our urban city life.

- Thank you!

- And Reno's first poet Laureate receives a new honor.

- I use the furniture of the world.

So whatever I see around me, I try to, to craft into my work in some way.

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

(jazzy music) - Funding for arteffects is made possible by Sandy Raffealli the June S. Wisham Estate, Carol Franc Buck, Merrill and Lebo Newman, Heidemarie Rochlin, Meg and Dillard Myers, the annual contributions of PBS Reno members.

And by.

- Hello, I'm Beth McMillan and welcome to arteffects.

The men and women of the Reno police department are committed to keeping our community safe.

And sometimes an artist is needed to catch a suspect.

In our featured segment, we meet, Reno Police Officer Colleen Connolly, who found a way to merge her love of art with her desire to solve crimes.

(emotional music) - [Colleen] Sketching has always just been a hobby for me, and it was nice when I found that there's a thing called composite sketching, and I was able to marry the two, my professional career in law enforcement, but then also a personal hobby.

(emotional music) My name is Colleen Connolly and I'm a police officer for the city of Reno.

I have been a police officer for almost 16 years.

(emotional music) A composite sketch artist is someone that compiles different facial features that a victim or a witness points out to us.

We compile shapes of the face, different hair, different eyes, different facial features.

And we kind of worked through it one feature at a time and sketch it all out on one piece of paper to closely reflect what a witness or a victim saw in a suspect.

A crime is committed and I usually will get a phone call from a detective, whether I'm on duty or off duty, they ask if I'm available.

When I sit down and work with a victim or a witness, for me, it can be very intense.

Sometimes sitting down and interviewing that witness is the first normal contact that they've had with someone in a uniform.

That's a way from having to recreate and describe the crime.

(emotional music) I show up with my sketching paper, my pad, a sketch board.

I have probably 40 pencils that are different shades and different hardness of charcoal or graphite.

I have highlighting pencils, white pencils, where you can go back and kind of highlight certain areas.

(emotional music) I have two books.

We flip through thousands of pages to find facial features, the structure, the eyes, and sometimes we'll go back and forth.

And they'll say page 63, it kind of looked like that with eyes.

But if you could change the edge of the eyes and put just a couple more crows feet or wrinkles or more eyelashes.

(mysterious music) The benefit to having a composite sketch artist recreate or sketch is you can manipulate and change the reflection.

People have had different scars on their face that you just can't pick out of a book or show comparison.

So being able to have a little bit of art background, you can re-sketch, change and work with your victim to get it right.

(mysterious music) You can see it in their face.

They start to get a little bit of hope or closure.

Being able to regurgitate the information and see it come out on paper, you can see a change in them.

And that to me is really great and therapeutic.

It's the good part of law enforcement.

It's very gratifying to be able to make efforts to putting the bad people in jail.

(intense music) Through the process, it takes about two to three hours depending upon the crime and the detail.

(intense music) When I see the completed product and I get a very strong reaction from a victim, confident as an artist that I put something out there that's going to very closely portray.

And then it's great when you see a booking photo of someone that's arrested for the crime.

So that's really nice when we get a lot of secret witness tips or people calling in because someone strongly resembles a sketch that was put out on the news.

(intense music) I love doing composite sketches here in the valley.

It is very gratifying to me when I can help out a victim, really get a little bit of closure and if I can recreate it on paper, it gives them just a little bit more hope that we will find the person.

I enjoy sketching and I enjoy painting and I enjoy photography.

So it's nice for me to be able to utilize that for, for a really good cause.

(intense music) - Now it's time for this week's art quiz, which forensic artist holds a Guinness world record for "The World's Most Successful Forensic Artist" whose sketches have helped law enforcement identify more than 750 criminals.

Is the answer A, Frank Bender B, Karen T. Taylor, C, Betty Pat Gatliff or D, Lois Gibson?

Stay tuned for the answer.

(chill jazzy music) Up next, we meet Nicole Jarecz a fashion illustrator based in Detroit, Michigan.

In her skilled drawings, she reveals the vibrancy, beauty and spirit of fashion design.

(chill music) - I think it was really the fashion industry that inspired me to do this.

(chill music) - It's all about the clothes for me.

(chill music) Fashion illustration is it's like a different form of expression than photography.

You have a lot of fashion photography out there, but not a lot of fashion illustration.

So it's just a different expression of the figure, a different expression of the wardrobe, the way the wardrobe moves.

It's different than design.

I'm not like designing the clothes, I'm just taking the photo or taking the person and transforming it into something new.

Before photography, there was only illustrators illustrating these ideas for magazines and then helping designers out as well, illustrating the figure, which was a very important part of like seeing the drafts before the design was made.

And then, yeah, you had the illustrators who were working for Vogue or WWD.

There was a guy named Rene Gruau, and he was one of my favorite illustrators.

And he, you know, kind of dominated that field.

But unfortunately like once photography came, it was like a quick way to seize the moment.

And it kind of took over illustration at the time.

I think an illustration is more special than a photograph.

I know a lot of talented photographers, but it's very like straightforward, this is the image.

With an illustration.

You're taking an idea and recreating it into something new, something more magical.

(chill music) I really want to express a gesture with my fashion illustrations.

It's more mesmerizing.

It captures like color and light and movement.

That's what really, what I want to capture with my illustrations.

So sometimes I'll take a photo and I'll stylize it more.

Everything's always changed up.

It's never exactly the same as a photograph.

I focus more on the clothing when I do the illustration.

I really like couture gowns.

Couture is like a high design, a way of sewing in intricate patterns.

I like that it's telling a story in a way.

And I just like the whole movement of the couture compared to a street style that you might see.

(chill music) For the mediums that I use, I play around with a lot of different things.

I, I use colored pencil, ink, watercolor, gouache, acrylic, anything that I can find.

I really like to mix it up and try different techniques.

The type of clothing definitely makes a big impact on what I use for the medium.

If I see a flowy dress, I might want to use watercolor because watercolor is very graceful and elegant.

So I combine a lot of digital and traditional methods together, especially when I'm working for a client for a magazine.

So I'll start the illustration off traditionally, I'll do like a pencil drawing and I'll do my watercolor and ink.

Then I scan it in and I finish it up in Photoshop.

And I might like do this several times to get the exact essence of what I'm trying to represent.

(chill music) I worked for a lot of different companies in fashion.

I've worked for Roger Vivier, is like a couture shoe company in Paris.

I've worked for L magazine and Glamour magazine, a lot of fashion magazines.

My favorite project that I worked on was for Roger Vivier.

I designed a bunch of greeting cards for him and his company, and that was a lot of fun.

It was like a very luxurious brand to work for.

And I'd really like to work for different brands like that.

(chill music) The daily struggle that I have is to be playful and precise at the same time.

And my personal pieces, those are always the most fun for me.

So I just try to be a little bit more free.

I try to be a little bit more fluid in what I'm doing.

I think people really respond well to my personal pieces, maybe because I am not overthinking them as much.

I think that they really like the gesture that I put into my personal pieces and the color and just the overall feeling is just more creating something that's beautiful for someone to put in their home or, you know, to show to their friends and family.

I just want to share my work with people.

(chill music) Interacting with the community here is really important to me.

I started seeing illustrators doing these sketching events a few years ago, you know, in bigger cities like New York and Paris.

And I thought, I really want to bring that to Detroit.

I want to do the same thing and nobody else is doing it.

So I contacted Neiman Marcus and Saks, and they were both on board and they started having me regularly sketching.

I bring all of my supplies with me, some paper, and then people just start coming up to my booth and they see me sketching.

I usually like take a photo of them or they'll stand in front of me and pose and I'll do my sketch.

And it's kind of like a takeaway gift for them for the evening.

I sketch a little bit of everything.

I sketch people dressed to the nines in gowns, and then I dress people in streetwear.

My favorite is when people are really dressed up, it makes it a lot of fun.

I like when people are dressed, you know, bold and lots of color, it really gives me an opportunity to get out there, talk to people, interact with them and just, you know, see what they respond to.

It helps me to improve upon myself when I see if they react to one sketch compared to another sketch.

Well, when I started doing these events, I realized that I had to be very quick.

I only have a certain amount of time to sketch somebody.

And I realized that I don't need to spend, you know, hours and hours and hours on one single illustration.

People really like it when it's simple and fluid.

And I try to bring that into my work at home to remember to keep it simple, keep it playful and don't overthink it too much.

(chill music) The community loves it.

They're excited about it.

I've had a ton of support from people here in Detroit.

So it's been really great.

I think that the illustration just brings a different outlook on fashion.

I think people sometimes respond more to the fashion illustration than if they were to see it in person or even on their computer screen with photography.

It just brings more of a special feeling.

I don't think fashion illustration ever gets boring.

I think it's something that evolves over time.

I think my style could change again, like it has in the past.

It just depends on, you know, the trends, what's going on and what I think people are responding to at that time.

(chill music) - Discover more at Nicole-jarecz.com.

And now let's review this week's art quiz.

Which forensic artist holds a Guinness world record for "The World's Most Successful Forensic Artist" whose sketches have helped law enforcement identify more than 750 criminals?

Is the answer, A, Frank Bender, B, Karen T. Taylor, C, Betty Pat Gatliff, or D, Lois Gibson.

(chill jazzy music) And the answer is D, Lois Gibson.

(chill jazzy music) New York florist, Lewis Miller, colors the city streets with thrilling pop-up floral arrangements.

Started in 2016.

These flower flashes, exude joy, beauty, and spontaneity.

We joined Miller and his team as they install one of these striking creations.

(emotional music) - Flowers were always part of my DNA.

I come from a family of gardeners, but I went from landscape and horticulture to the flower world.

And there I am.

The flower flash was something that was kind of bopping around my brain for a while, but didn't have a name.

It was sort of more this vague idea of how to take flowers and fuse them in a urban city environment.

So it finally got to the point a couple of years ago, where I was very satisfied with business, things going super well and kind of needing to feel creatively energized again, but also feeling the need in my own way to give back.

I'm clearly surrounded by flowers on a daily basis as are my clients.

And we tend to get immune to how beautiful they are and what an expression of joy they are to people.

And it's really about taking that, which is so beautiful and ephemeral, and kind of merging it with the texture and the grit of our urban city life and creating something that's very spontaneous, very fleeting and sort of abstract.

(emotional music) We spend a great deal of time, you know, really finding locations that feel New York first.

(emotional music) So that combined with the season and what's looking good.

And also the flower flashes are accumulation of old flowers in the flower market, stuff that's left over from the studio and stuff that's left over from events.

So we have to work with that as well.

These flashes happen very quickly.

We plan it to a certain extent.

Then we just do it and see what happens.

There's a little, an anxious energy.

You know, it's usually dark.

A lot of times it's cold.

(inspirational music) Flowers are for New Yorkers.

They are for the people.

And I want people to take them and interact with them.

Obviously take a picture, but take a blossom.

Take some home.

(inspirational music) New York is New York.

All these people piled on top of each other.

To me, you know, the two biggest luxuries in the city are nature and space.

So the more that we can have these kind of soft moments and just beauty and joy for no other reason.

- Thank you guys!

- Even if it's for an hour or 10 minutes.

Its job is done.

(inspirational music) - Find out more at lewismillerdesign.com.

The art of the spoken word has proven to be very powerful, especially for Gailmarie Pahmeier of Reno.

Pahmeier recently earned the title of "Nevada Poet Laureate", a role she will hold until August, 2023.

We met Pahmeier back in 2016, when she was serving as Reno's poet Laureate.

And when she was inducted into the Nevada writer's hall of fame.

(inspirational music) (people clap) - The Nevada writer's hall of fame was established in 1988 to recognize the great writers who wrote in and about Nevada and those who are continuing to contribute to Nevada's literary landscape.

Induction into the Nevada writer's hall of fame, acknowledges a lifetime achievement in writing.

- My name is Gailmarie Pahmeier.

I'm lecturer in creative writing at the University of Nevada.

And I'm serving currently as Reno's first poet Laureate.

I've lived now in Nevada the majority of my life, I identify as a westerner.

I identify as a Nevadan.

I moved to Reno in 1984.

We had come from Tulsa, Oklahoma.

I had a very, very dear girlfriend, best friends throughout grade school.

My girlfriend's name was Lori and Lori and I wrote what we called novels.

They were about nine pages long, and we set up a stand in the front yard, like a lemonade stand, but we sold our books for 15 or 25 cents a pop.

We really thought of ourselves as, as professional in some way.

And I'm delighted that all the neighbors that bought those books returned them to my mother and 35 years after the, that experience, my mother boxed them up and send them to me.

It reminds me that it was always there.

It was always there.

It was a great school teacher, who first said, you've really got a gift for this.

And I didn't take that all that seriously, but I loved writing.

I use the furniture of the world.

So whatever I see around me, I try to, to craft into my work in some way.

I overhear something, a snippet of conversation, or I see something that strikes me as a particularly interesting image.

And then I just start drafting from that particular, what we call a trigger.

It can take many different turns as it evolves.

I'm constantly tweaking.

It can take me a year to craft 14 lines that I'm happy with.

(inspirational music) Writers inspired me.

Cultural figures inspired me.

Marilyn Monroe was often misunderstood.

Pigeonholed, struggled under intense scrutiny and worked through a lot of pain.

(inspirational music) The John Houston film, "The Misfits" is a quintessential Nevada film.

It was her last film.

It was Clark Gable's last film.

"You know, you want Maryland's dress, not the one your mother wanted, not the rhinestone second skin she sang his song in "Happy birthday, Mr. President", not that dress.

You want the simpler, but also sleekly tight little thing she wore here in this Nevada town, the dress she wore while drinking shots at this bar in Dayton.

Cocktail cherries, halter back.

You want this dress because she wore it here.

But also because everyone who watched her learned of her unknown special talent, how she could wield a paddleball 100 times and to never miss a strike".

I have been blessed with one of the most wonderful gigs in the world.

And that's working with students.

Everybody has the right to tell his or her story and to be heard.

A creative writing class in a university may be the last time someone's individual life matters.

Because going into the world of work, going into graduate school and pursuing scholarly studies, when do issues of vulnerability, instability, heartbreak become important enough to write and talk about.

I've had a lot of students pass through and some of them are, wow, Willy Vlautin, whom I adore, who was a student of mine 20 some years ago, who has gone on to do internationally acclaimed work.

- Gailmarie was just so cool.

She was just like she made, it was the first time I ever felt that I wasn't a freak for writing stories, that I was actually really lucky.

So I walked into her class and I finally found, you know, where I was supposed to be.

And she kind of pointed me in the direction saying like, look, it's okay to write about Reno or it's okay to read about working class stores or depressed people or banged up people.

You can wr- you can write those stories and it's okay.

And, and I didn't know that until I met her.

- Working with Willy was probably one of the many highlights of my academic career.

One day I'm sitting, I think I was grading papers, the phone rang, and it was the chair of the Nevada writer's hall of fame selection committee.

And he said, I have some really wonderful news for you.

He said, I was one of this year's inductees into the Nevada writer's hall of fame.

And I was stunned.

And then within five minutes Willy called.

- When I found out I was inducted to the hall of fame and they told me it was with Gailmarie, I always say, it's like walking down the street and you find money, once in a while, you get lucky.

And I got lucky when they called me.

- [Gailmarie] We're really really delighted to be going in together.

- It's more than an honor to be inducted with my great pal Gailmarie, and to be on the same list with her and Robert Laxo (indistinct).

I appreciate it more than you ever know, to be, have my name next to their names.

- Nothing of real meaning happens without the joy and challenge of the classroom.

So to my students, all of you, you have inspired and motivated me and I deeply thank you.

(audience clap) I think this is the highest honor in the state of Nevada that a writer can achieve.

I certainly hope it's not a lifetime achievement award.

I hope I have a lot more work in me and I hope I have many more adventures and road trips out into the state of Nevada to talk about the literary arts.

But this is a cap in many ways that I am so proud to dawn.

I can't imagine what other life I could have had.

- To learn more, visit nvartscouncil.org.

And that wraps it up for this edition of arteffects for more arts and culture, and to watch past episodes visit pbsreno.org/arteffects.

Until next week, I'm Beth Macmillan.

Thanks for watching.

- Funding for arteffects is made possible by Sandy Raffealli, The June S. Wisham Estate, Carol Franc Buck, Merrill and Lebo Newman, Heidemarie Rochlin, Meg and Dillard Myers, the annual contributions of PBS Reno members.

And by (chill jazzy music)