- In this edition of Arteffects using art to understand forest fires.

- One of the things that artists bring to the voice of the scientist is an emotional perception.

- [Host] The woodwork of Washed Up Key West.

- Rather than watching these gorgeous pieces of wood go to waste, we now get to let them live on, and it's a really exciting part of the job.

- [Host] An artists' exploration of light.

- It's really the light is what inspires me.

That's my main focus is light, energy, motion.

- [Host] And wildlife art activist, Ali Armstrong.

- Scarce is an art series that I do that is my way of raising awareness for animals at risk and sharing their story.

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

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Funding for Arteffects is made possible by Sandy Raffealli with Bill Pearce Motors, Meg and Dillard Myers, the Nevada Arts Council, Heidemarie Rochlin, in memory of Sue McDowell and by the annual contributions of PBS Reno members.

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

In our featured segment, we head up to the Sierra to visit the town of Truckee, where a group of artists teamed up with nonprofit organizations from California and Nevada to collaborate on a multifaceted art exhibit and public engagement project.

It's called Forest Fire and its goal is to bring awareness and conversation to the growing threat of catastrophic forest fires that are impacting our communities.

- Forest Fire in its essence is a conversation starter for a very complicated and troubling topic for the community and we've broken it up into three very distinct public engagement platforms.

One is a very comprehensive interpretive exhibit, which tells the story of the forest ecology and its involvement with humans.

We wanted to engage the community further by being involved with the local school district.

So with Sierra Watershed Education partnerships, we created a collaborative relationship with them who have created curriculum for the Truckee Tahoe Unified School district to teach forest ecology.

- Forest fire as a project demanded the sense of multiple partners coming together with different things to offer.

Nevada County Arts Council played a key facilitating role along with the Sagehen Creek Field Station and Llewellyn Studios, in bringing together multiple partners, including California Arts Council, California Humanities, Nevada Museum of Art in Reno, the University of Nevada Reno.

The list goes on, the support has been amazing.

The exhibition is located at the Truckee Donner Recreation and Park District's new community recreation center.

It's one of the most public spaces in Truckee.

- We worked with 17 artists.

Four of the artists we have loaned work from and the other 13 artists we commissioned directly to create pieces for the exhibit because the topics are so unique there was no previously existing artwork for them.

- If you think about the whole forest management challenge, it's really complicated and we all learn differently.

So we need to have different ways to tell a story.

- We said, hey, you know, there's a problem in the forest.

We're having catastrophic fire, but there is a solution.

- By the different media, the variety of media that were used here in this exhibit, it allows people to find what they might resonate to and hopefully allow them to find something that they can connect with.

- [Michael] There is 2D art and 3D art.

We have paintings.

We have sculpture.

We have textile work.

- We wanted to bring the forest inside so when people walked into the exhibit, they knew immediately that they're in an exhibit about a forest.

Since this is a public space where it's not a place where people are going to see art, it's a place where people are coming to do other things.

They're going to pass through this so we wanted people to understand the issues, whether they spent 30 seconds, 30 minutes, three hours, three days in the exhibit.

We wanted it to be a visceral experience.

So when people walk into the exhibit, the first thing they see is the forest overhead.

So they immediately get a feel for, whoa, this is a forest.

And the forest is itself is a timeline of the forest ecology, of the chapters of the story.

You walk into the old growth forest, and then you get to what happened to the old growth forest and then you get to the forest that we have now, and then you get to the hopeful future forest.

So as people walk through this corridor, they get the entire story in one artwork, hopefully that makes them stop and go, What the heck is going on here, and leads to a more engaged experience.

- Although this is a California based project, in many ways it's not.

Here we are on the edges of California and Nevada.

Certainly the Washoe people, the earliest peoples here, would have had no concept of state lines and county lines.

We're in the Northern central Sierra and forest fire relates to swaths of forest in all directions.

- This forest was managed for thousands of years by the people who were here before us and the tool that they had, the Washoe had, was fire.

You know, in the fall when they'd leave, they would light the place on fire and we have science to support that.

We have cored tree stumps and we can get a history of pre-European, small intensity fire, short time interval, every couple of years.

We need to get the process back that these systems evolve with.

- The key message is one that fire need not be our foe.

It can be our friend and that if we work with fire and with the elements and working across sectors, we can create a sustainable forest system, which will survive catastrophic fire.

We're living in an extraordinary time.

I think we'll all agree that science has never been less respected as it is today.

One of the things that artists bring to the voice of the scientist is an emotional perception.

Something that will trigger an emotional response that will enable a deeper understanding that we need in order for science to make headway and improvements and bring solutions.

(melodic music) - For more information, visit forestandfire.org, Washed Up Key West is an art collective dedicated to providing a space for artists to showcase their talent.

It also includes the work of woodworker Cassidy Fritz who pushes the boundaries on his functional art creations.

- Hi, my name's Jamie Mattingly.

I am Cassidy Fritz's fiance.

He started Washed Up Key West.

This is his wood shop.

What Cassidy does is he uses local tropical hardwood trees, Cuban mahogany, if we can find Dade county pine, you know, from, we get it from old houses, Jamaican Dogwood, woman's tongue.

He likes to take those, cut them into slabs and once they're dry and ready to go, he makes dining room tables, coffee tables, serving boards, charcuterie boards, what he likes to call functional art.

Art that people not only get to enjoy visually, but can actually use.

And he likes to push the boundaries on it.

So he's always looking for new and fun ways to use the wood or to mix the wood with resins or other mediums.

It's definitely an eclectic style.

You see a lot of the graffiti outside, a lot of the very bright colors.

We try to bring some of that in, but at the same time, he could be very minimal and islandy in his designs.

And, you know, just finding a really fun way to marry the two of them together.

After hurricane Irma happened down here, a lot of big trees came down.

We actually helped salvage a lot of really old historic trees from around town.

One of them being the Shel Silverstein home, which was destroyed by the giant Banyan tree falling on top of it.

Now, Banyan trees are not normally a kind of tree that we would harvest to turn into furniture because it's not a hard wood, but we did grab some of the trees and made coasters out of them.

And, you know, Key West had sorta dubbed that Banyan tree, the Giving Tree.

It is a piece of Key West history and a piece of literary history and it's been a lot of fun to make.

It surprises some people to realize that we are super big tree lovers.

We do not advocate for taking down any trees, unless they are a danger because of lean or rot damage.

But if that tree has to come down, we want to be the ones to get in there and take that log.

And we let it dry out for about a year, year and a half.

He slices it into slabs.

We've got wood drying everywhere, all over the wood shop, but also all over our house.

At home we probably have six or seven piles of wood just drying out right now.

Rather than watching these gorgeous pieces of wood go to waste, we now get to let them live on.

And it's a really exciting part of the job.

Cassidy and I both have been extremely lucky throughout this entire pandemic.

We've decided that we really want to start using our businesses for good and giving back more than we've been able to in the past.

So we recently linked up with One Tree Planted, which is an organization that will, for every donation, will plant a tree in your honor.

So we've decided that for every single piece that we sell at Washed Up, we're going to have a tree planted.

December was the first month that we actually got to do it and we planted 78 trees.

We wanted to be able to start a collective and just keep giving homes to more and more artists.

So Debbie Fritz, Cassidy's mom, is Key West Island Art.

Debbie has done a lot of these really cool conch homes where she'll ride around Key West and find really funky looking houses and then create miniatures of them.

Kelly Raspa is Concrete Ship Mercantile, and she does a lot of macrame and fiber art.

She makes these really gorgeous, unique earrings, gorgeous macrame and what we would like to say is like more modern macrame.

Nick Soto, from Made by Soto, is a fine gold and silver jeweler.

He's actually one of the only jewelers down here keeping alive the tradition of Cuban hoops, which is, you know, the mixture of gold and white gold and like very intricate designs.

A couple years ago at our old wood shop, Cassidy had a 20 foot fence and he's always wanted to put up art walls to let artists come and do whatever they want, to just have fun.

And if you walk around the shop, you'll see a lot of those walls that we had, that kind of got us started.

What we hope to do for these artists is to give them a canvas to show off their skills so that other businesses around town that are looking for an artist to come do a mural will now see an example of their work.

Our goal is to create the Stock Island Art District.

Stock Island is more than just where the shrimpers and the fishermen take their boats out.

It's an artistic, very creative, beautiful, thriving business community.

- To see more visit washedupkeywest.com.

Now let's take a look at this week's art quiz.

How many artists did the curators of Forest Fire, work with to generate the artwork that makes up the exhibit?

Is the answer, A five, B 17, C 10, or D 42?

Stay tuned for the answer.

Up next, we travel to Islamorada Florida to meet artist Elena Madden.

In her artwork, she examines light and the way it reflects against the water.

As a result of this exploration, her paintings are full of energy and movement.

- As a young girl, I would just stare then, at this water, I called it diamond water.

It just resonated with me and it just one of those things that I felt like I had to get onto a canvas or a panel.

My name is Elena Madden, and I am the owner of Elena Madden Studio Gallery in Islamorada, Florida.

My parents were both artists.

I grew up in an artistic family.

I had an affinity for nature and painting.

I went to the Savannah College of Art and Design.

I married my SCAD sweetheart.

We would come on vacation to the lower Keys and we'd camp for a couple months and I would paint down here and I fell in love with the colors, the water.

This is my third location and I love it because I'm right in the middle of the arts district, which is fantastic.

Oh my goodness, it's really the light is what inspires me.

That's my main focus is light, energy, motion and the light here is unparalleled to any other light I've seen in all the other places I lived which makes the color just amazing.

This may sound crazy, but every piece starts with a red background and build layer from there, transparent layers, and so that creates this glow and underneath, and so that's similar to what I'm imitating life here because you have that light from below and above.

They're still evolving.

I'm constantly learning about it and I love it.

You don't want to overwork it.

I never wanted to paint from photography because I assumed it would make it stiff.

So I don't use photography at all.

I want it to move.

So I have to, so it's really from memory and it's fairly intuitive.

So I started this series about 22 years ago.

I was actually still in South Carolina when I did, and I lived on a body of water and I would just do thumbnails and just paint from memory over and over.

I'd do small pieces and then I'd make them large.

What happened was I found my own rhythm.

So gradually get lighter and lighter and lighter until I'm satisfied with the light.

There's many facets of my reflective series.

So I started with a pure, pure series, which is just a pure reflection of light and everything that was around it.

And then I started with a horizon series that gave people a little bit of a point of where they are and it grounds them a little more.

It's a little more traditional than the other.

Then I did a still series with the glasses and that's also reflective and I really put away any type of photography with that as well, and just kind of go and they become more whimsical that way.

And so painting something that moves and then something that's still is a nice balance to keep it fresh and keep your hand and your mind, bouncing between those two.

The figurative series, it's a positive negative study.

And it's a, as you can see, some reflection coming through the figure.

Basically the concept is, you know, it's a very feminine idea with the moon, the tides, water, how we're all connected.

I want the viewer to feel what they feel.

I had one person say, they came in the gallery, that it looked like bubbles of love and I thought that was fantastic.

Funny, it was a piece that I actually painted for my husband and so I named it Amore because, as I finished it, you know, she said, it looks like bubbles of love.

I said well that's interesting, that is for my husband for Valentine's Day.

So it's one of my favorite pieces.

I love painting on the wood panel.

It is, I prefer Birch.

I love the grain.

It's understated, but it, at the same time, it looks like water ripples.

So it doesn't have any bounce when you're painting like you do with canvas and the finished product, it appears wet just like the subject.

So it works really nicely for me.

Really, my goal, if I can inspire people to see the world in a different way, bring a little joy.

I mean, it's been a dark year for everybody.

If I could distract them with a little beauty and maybe let them see all the beautiful things we have around us, that would be my goal.

My feel like, you know, my job would be done if I brought a little joy.

- To learn more, visit elenamadden.com.

Now let's review this week's art quiz.

How many artists did the curators of Forest Fire work with to generate the artwork that makes up the exhibit?

Is the answer, A five, B 17, C 10, or D 42?

And the answer is B 17.

In our final segment, we meet local art activist, Ali Armstrong, and see how she uses her talents to increase awareness of endangered species.

By painting earth's creatures that are in vital need of our protection, she hopes that these beautiful animals can be around for generations to come.

- My name is Ali Armstrong and I'm a wildlife artist and activist.

Scarce is an art series that I do that is my way of raising awareness for animals at risk and sharing their story.

The way I add color in Scarce is in a very specific way.

So I paint extinct animals in black and white, and I add a little bit of color to endangered animals.

The amount of color that I add is proportional to the remaining species population to represent hope for the animals that we still have, and we want to protect and so it's kind of a visual story.

So when somebody looks at it, they say, well, what is the color?

Why does that represent what it represents and how can we help?

I like to partner with different wildlife organizations and conservancies and we will decide an animal and donate 10% of all sales to conservation programs and fighting the illegal wildlife trade.

For instance, I partnered with Boon Lott Elephant Sanctuary in Thailand and they gave me a photo to paint of Wassana, which is an elephant in the sanctuary.

And I did an Asian elephant portrait of her and the person who buys the original painting actually adopts the elephant for the year.

So we're not only getting the word out, but we're also providing.

For the Sumatran rhino, There are fewer than 90 rhinos left in the wild and my husband and I took a cross country motorcycle trip, and we visited zoos across middle America.

And that's where we met Harapan, Sumatran rhino and he was the last Sumatran rhino in North America until recently where he moved back to the island of Sumatra.

But I painted a picture of him to donate to raise money for Cincinnati Zoo's conservation programs.

And in his painting specifically, I only added a very small amount of color to represent the remaining species.

A fun new element that I like to do is put 24 karat gold leaf on my paintings instead of the color.

I do add it the same way proportional to the remaining species population, but it is 24 karat gold, which I feel like deepens the message.

When I paint, I try to paint an animal portrait that's the animal is living its life.

It's not aggressive, but yet it's doing its thing.

And I want to portray the animal correctly.

I figure out where I want the subject and where I put the negative space and then I'll color block the values that I see.

And then from there, once I have it relatively laid out, it doesn't have to be perfect, I will start going in and adding details.

And I always start with the eyes, no matter what.

I began my career as the portrait artist, doing families and babies, I always felt like the eyes are the most important part, and they give you insight to the personality, what they've lived and so I carry that over to my wildlife portraits.

I'm currently showing at Riverside Studios in downtown Truckee and there are five owners at Riverside.

They all do art in different ways.

So they show everything that they do with their gallery and then they also invite other local artists in to have the chance to show as well.

Another thing that I love to do is be a part of Truckee Thursdays.

It's where local artisans set up shop in downtown Truckee and I do live painting events.

And one of them was at Sotheby's and we had some music there and it was a good time connecting with our local people and had a good time sharing about what was going on in the wildlife world.

A lot of people aren't aware of the illegal wildlife trade and the severity of it.

And a lot of people aren't aware that the rhinos are in such eminent danger.

The Northern white rhino, there are only two left right now.

The last male died in March.

So I love sharing these facts with people and it makes them aware and then they start realizing, and then they start questioning like, gosh, what else is going on?

What other animals aren't, you know, doing so well right now?

And then it also brings about the idea of donation and giving back and I love that aspect and so we get to talk about that as well and that's really fun.

I believe that God created these beautiful creatures and he's given them to us in our care.

And in that, we've been, we've proven to be poor stewards, by losing these animals to extinction.

And I want to change that.

And I think we can change that.

I have three kids.

I have a three year old, a two year old and a nine month old and it's important to me that they have the opportunity to see these animals in real life in the wild and not miss out on that.

So I hope to raise awareness and give a call to action, donate and share their story through art.

(dramatic music) - For more information, visit aliarmstrong.com 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.

- [Announcer] Funding for Arteffects is made possible by, Sandy Raffealli with Bill Pierce Motors, Meg and Dillard Myers, the Nevada Arts Council, Heidemarie Rochlin, in memory of Sue McDowell and by the annual contributions of PBS Reno members.

(upbeat music)