- On this addition of "ARTEFFECTS," dozens of young dancers from across the region hone their craft in downtown Reno.

- [Erika] Dancers will typically come to a festival and be completely wide-eyed.

- [Lily] It's not about being the best dancer.

It's about getting something out of the class.

- [Beth] A visit with a bonafide jazz legend.

- [Chick] Composing music and performing it to me are one piece.

I mean, it's two separate actions.

The audience thinks they don't see you composing 'cause I'm playing.

But actually I'm composing when I'm playing.

- [Beth] An artist who weaves together technology and hands-on techniques.

- [Janice] I can do all of the things that other people can do with other mediums, with color and with form and with texture.

But it happens with that intersection of thread.

- [Beth] And a peek into the world of "Pickles."

- [Brian] I think that's what a comic strip is.

It's taking tiny, tiny moments out of people's lives and finding the humor in them.

- It's all ahead on this edition of "ARTEFFECTS."

(upbeat jazz music) - [Narrator] Funding for "ARTEFFECTS" is made possible by Sandy Raffealli with Bill Pearce Motors, (upbeat music) Meg and Dillard Meyers, 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 "ARTEFFECTS."

Regional Dance America is an organization dedicated to teaching and preparing young dancers who dream of dancing professionally.

This year, RDA chose Reno for the location of its inaugural Pacific Festival, bringing together more than 100 young dancers to the biggest little city.

(upbeat piano music) - [Rosine] Ballet reaches your heart and your soul.

And it's not something that you can put words to.

There are no words.

It's just from one to another and everybody interprets it their own way.

- There's the saying, "Where words fail, dance can express."

It's so beautiful, just what the human body can do.

- [Erica] Dancing connects you with emotions that are in your body and gives you a way to express your emotions, to relate to others on a very human level.

My name is Erika Davis.

I'm the CEO of Regional Dance America.

(soft marimba music) Regional Dance America is a national organization of pre-professional companies, dance ensembles, troops, guilds, and studios throughout the country.

The majority of our dancers are between the ages of about 11 years old and 18 years old.

- [Joy] When Regional Dance America says pre-professional, that's a dancer that is on a training track to a professional career.

They're submitting themselves to a certain level of training.

So that's a daily ballet class or a modern class or a jazz class.

These dancers hope to earn a spot in a prestigious university program or a professional company.

- [Erika] RDA has five regional organizations, the Northeast, mid-states, Southeast, Southwest, and our newest Pacific region.

We selected Reno, Nevada as the location of our first inaugural Pacific Festival to bring the opportunities that RDA offers the rest of the country to this part as well.

The 2022 RDA Pacific Festival is happening at the Silver Legacy Resort here in Reno.

An RDA festival is multiple days.

Dancers are programmed into three master classes a day with nationally acclaimed teachers and choreographers.

The dancers partake in classes of all different styles of dance, be that ballet, modern, jazz, contemporary, hip hop, commercial dance.

We have it all.

- [Man] One and two.

- [Lily] The one teacher for hip hop, he was so inspiring because he was just telling us to look at our own artistry and just being ourselves.

(upbeat hip hop music) - [Paige] I loved the hip hop class.

That made my day.

This festival means that I can take a step up in my career that I wanna take.

- [Alex] It was really honestly amazing, just being able to share that in an amazing environment with all the amazing dancers and being able to feed off of what they're doing and get inspired by them as well.

It was really cool.

- [Erika] Dancers also have the opportunity to experience workshops and seminars that are in dance related topics.

So we have seminars happening in say foot and ankle injury prevention, nutrition for dancers, overall wellbeing, how to construct a resume.

- [Joy] We always say to our dancers, you are learning so much more in the studio than just dance steps.

You're really learning life skills.

- [Rosine] Not everybody's gonna be a ballet dancer, but what that work ethic that ballet creates and also the discipline, the determination you have to have in order to improve, all of that serves young people so well in adult lives.

And that's why I promote the art of ballet so much.

- [Joy] We seek out highly esteemed professionals in the field of dance.

The adjudicator is...

It's like RDA's secret sauce.

- [Erika] Rosine Bena, as well as her daughter Amanda Bena-Weber, both of Sierra Nevada Ballet, are adjudicators for Regional Dance America.

They work with our member companies on an annual basis to help those companies elevate their training.

- [Rosine] When I was part of RDA as a young person, I remember thinking how I felt so proud of my community, of my company.

And I think it helps our community to say, "Wow, I'm proud of Reno.

I'm proud of where I'm from."

So that's an important thing for our community.

(upbeat orchestral music) - [Erika] The dancers also have a performance opportunity with evening performances at the festival that are non-competitive.

- We finish the event off with a gala reception.

The dancers are awarded scholarships and recruitment opportunities to colleges throughout the country, and also summer intensives and programs.

When young dancers, young people, when you're mentoring them and they're in the pursuit of excellence, it's a very noble pursuit.

They really are pushing themselves to be better, to be bigger, to go beyond, to be extraordinary human beings.

And to be a small part of that is very inspiring.

- [Erika] The students are what make everything that we do worth it.

So worthwhile because we see their faces.

We see these opportunities that are provided.

We see the thousands and thousands of dollars of scholarships that are offered to these individuals.

And to create a pathway for their dreams to come true, that's why I do what I do.

That's why RDA does what we do.

That's what this organization stands for.

(audience applauds) - To learn more about Regional Dance America, visit regionaldanceamerica.org.

Musician Chick Corea was a keyboardist, composer, band leader, and a tremendous figure in contemporary jazz.

His career spanned more than 50 years and 25 Grammys.

Before he passed away in 2021, Corea shared insight into his creative process, his career and his life in Tampa bay, Florida.

(bouncy piano music) - [Chick] I grew up in a musical environment.

My dad was a musician and he had a band.

When I was growing up, we had a three-room apartment in Chelsea, Massachusetts, right outside of Boston.

And we were up above a grocery store.

There was a pharmacy on the corner and a barroom across the street.

My mother was working in a candy factory in Schrafft's in Boston.

And my dad was gigging at night with his band.

So he would bring his, his musicians back from the gig often.

And my mother would cook up some pasta and some, some potato and eggs for everybody.

And I was always interested in hanging out with them because they were all real relaxed.

And my dad would take me to, to the gig sometime and I'd see them play and I'd play with them.

And so I grew up in an environment of musicians creating, and I always just felt a part of it from the very beginning.

Began to play piano.

Never thought of doing anything else.

I like to play drums.

I'd play a little bit of trumpet.

I'd fool around with the guitar a little bit.

You wanna learn the tools of your trade.

I've even picked up a violin and scratched it a couple of times.

It's music, all of it is music.

And I got interested in every aspect of it.

I moved from Boston to New York in 1959.

In New York at that time was, was all of my musical heroes, Miles Davis's band, Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers.

Horace Silver's quintet was there.

Sonny Rollins was in town.

Ornette Coleman was playing, Tito's Puente's band, Eddie Palmieri.

That was a rich time.

So I scooted down to New York to live.

Being a composer and arranger, it's all part of being a musician.

Composing music and performing it to me are one piece.

I mean, it's two separate actions.

The audience thinks they don't see you composing 'cause I'm playing.

But actually I'm composing when I'm playing, since improvisation is like that.

In composing you piece the ideas together so they get fixed into, into a piece that you can repeat.

And then that becomes a song.

As a band leader or as an organizer of a group, I like to try to choose musicians and put them together to see what happens.

It's like an experiment.

Well, I'll see.

Put this guy together with that guy and see what happens.

I've been living here at the Clearwater Tampa area for 20 years.

I came here to relax and get off the beaten path because my life has been basically touring.

I perform, I'm on the road 10 months a year.

So when I come home, I'm not looking to travel too much.

I'm looking to hang out.

And course, the attraction down here is it's a beautiful area.

The weather is great.

It just works for me.

'Cause when I'm on the road, it's a particular grid every day, a schedule every day.

When I get home, I'm able to practice, write new music, relax, say hello to my wife.

Recently, one of the things that I was invited to do locally was great, was this new society.

The great band leader Chuck Owen from Tampa, he and some friends put together an association for jazz arrangers and composers.

And I thought that was a cool thing.

They invited me to go to their first opening, which was last year.

It's the first time I've ever heard of a society being put together for especially jazz arrangers and composers.

There is a legacy of writers, music writers that are jazz writers.

This goes back to Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk But us, the jazz writers are not paid for hire writers, if you know what I mean, like movie score writers.

I go home, I write my music, and then I bring it out on stage, or you hear it on my record.

So this was a beautiful effort.

There's no way to create.

Input is always coming your way.

But if you only accept input and use that, then you're a robot.

If you only use what you think you should do, then you're not associating with anybody.

So there's a balance in there to me of how to create something.

It's a communication.

So one person does one thing, or I have an idea.

I'll put it down, right?

(piano music) I have an idea.

And then you do something with the idea.

Then I might bring that idea to someone else and they'll go... (piano music) They'll put something else to it.

And then it comes back and then it gets developed.

I think we're probably raised to think that how you are and how you communicate is fixed, that it can't be changed.

And in actual fact, I've discovered that just like playing the piano or skating or any skill that you want to develop, that the act of communicating and getting your idea across and then receiving ideas from others and working with them, it's a skill that you can develop.

You can actually work on it.

You can see what it's all about.

Just like you take apart a chordal structure and you investigate it and you see what is it made of.

You can look, you can look at it and work it out.

In that same way, you can work out how to communicate and improve your ability to do it.

To me, that aspect of how you get your idea across successfully is very important.

How I balance myself between my own creations and other people's creations, that's the delicacy of life, I think.

(upbeat jazz music) - To learn more, visit chickcorea.com.

And now it's time for this week's art quiz.

The Reno Jazz Orchestra, which was founded by musicians who have performed with Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Natalie Cole and Elvis was established in which year?

Is the answer A, 1977, B, 1987, C, 1997, or D, 2007?

And the answer is C, 1997.

Janice Lessman-Moss of Kent, Ohio was drawn to textiles decades ago, not to make clothing, but art.

The long time Kent State University professor takes us inside her studio for an up-close look at how she creates intricate abstract weavings.

- [Janice] When I say that I'm a weaver, people generally assume that I am making garments or that I am making fabric for function.

And it takes a while for me to convince them that in fact, it is a medium just like painting that allows you to create abstract images for the wall, for contemplation, for visual enjoyment.

And it usually doesn't resonate so well until they see them.

And then it makes sense because they recognize that I can do all of the things that other people can do with other mediums, with color and with form and with texture.

But it happens with that intersection of thread.

I work digitally.

I do all my designs digitally, and I am interested in the mathematical aspects of working with geometric forms and the count of threads in both directions.

I like that right brain, left brain intersection that weaving allows.

They allude to my interest in walking.

And walking is a very linear movement.

And weaving is a very linear process.

Walking allows you to move forward, but also to linger.

It's a slow movement.

Weaving is a slow process.

I always call it a slow art.

It's a very slow art.

And when I am designing, I'm actually thinking of that same notion of movement, following a path.

So I create a path on a template of circles within squares, and I create these paths and those paths end up being the contours or the outlines of shapes.

And they create, sometimes they're just lines, and sometimes they establish shapes.

And I put other patterns within those shapes.

So everything builds in that same systematic way, in the ordered way, and yet deviates from any kind of real plan.

It's just that it, it is ordered because of the nature of the structure.

Once I've done the design, the weaving process itself is really following through on that plan.

I feed it to the loom, and then the loom reads it, and then I press a button, and the threads are raised according to what I have programmed.

However, it's like an architect.

You have some design.

You know, you can visualize, and you can see from your design, this is what's going to happen.

What actually happens (laughs) is sometimes different.

And the whole experience of coming in contact with this material and having it grow before your very eyes is amazing.

I've been working with metal, introduced into the weaving for years, minimally.

Work that I did in the spring of 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic, I started to put more and more metal into the weaving, which adds an element of shine.

And I felt, in thinking about it, that it was this attempt to create a sense of hope, just have some little bright spots in my weaving.

They appear as you move around the weaving.

You see this, the shine emanating and then it'll tuck back behind.

So it's this sense of almost shadow and light.

And I like that surprise, that mystery.

And I started working with those smaller orbs of, or circles of metal.

And then I introduced...

This one is...

I went crazy with the introduction of the metal, because I just felt like I really wanted some light in there.

And I really love, in this piece, they almost look like little trails of slug trails, that wet trail that is illuminated, depending on what the lighting is like.

And I love that it's so imperfect that it has that sense of organic movement that is more like nature.

You learn so much every time you make something.

You see something that maybe you didn't think about before.

And it's a very satisfying journey.

I mean, you're going through life and you're able to make these visual statements, pieces that you hope other people enjoy looking at and finding meaning in.

Whether they see what I see in it isn't totally relevant.

The work is directed by personal interest and inspiration, but people may look at it.

They bring other histories to the engagement with the colors and the engagement with the relationship of lines.

And they might say, "Oh, it looks like this.

It looks like that.

It reminds me of this."

And I say, "Okay.

Well, good."

If you're looking at it, and you're taking the time to think about it, I am happy about that.

I'm grateful for that.

- To see more of Janice's weavings, visit janicelessman-moss.com.

Cartoonist Brian Crane of Sparks is the man behind "Pickles," the popular comic strip featuring the everyday and often relatable humor of Earl and Opal Pickles.

As a child, Crane dreamed of drawing a daily comic strip.

It wasn't until his late thirties, when he revisited the idea, picked up a pen and "Pickles" was born.

(bouncy music) - [Brian] "Pickles" is a comic strip about Earl and Opal Pickles.

It also involves their grandson, Nelson, a daughter named Sylvia, and a dog and a cat.

It's about family and looking at the funny side of family relationships.

I grew up in what I think of as the golden age of comic strips, when everyone took a newspaper and everybody read the comic strips.

One of my favorite cartoon characters is Popeye.

I used to watch his cartoons when I was a kid, and I've started collecting a lot of Popeye memorabilia over the years.

This brings back good childhood memories.

I never took any art classes in high school or anything, but I always drew.

That's where it all started, was just scribbling on my school papers.

When I went to college, I majored in art with the idea of going into commercial illustration and things like that 'cause I didn't think I had a chance of becoming a cartoonist.

When I was in my late thirties, I started thinking of my childhood dream of doing a comic strip.

So I decided to think of an idea for a strip and spent a lot of time drawing different characters in a sketchbook until I finally came up with this elderly couple that gave me all kinds of ideas.

And the word pickles reminded me, the term getting into a pickle, which is like the situations they get into.

"Pickles" is syndicated in about close to a thousand papers around the world.

Been doing it for about 28 years now.

In the morning, when I sit down to the drawing board, I go through a file of things I've written down over the past few weeks.

I just look for situations that happen in real life that I can place my characters into.

Once I get the idea, then I draw the panel.

I usually work with four boxes.

I just rough out the first panel with pencil and I'll go over it with a pen.

I still use the old fashioned pen that you dip in a bottle of ink.

I just enjoy the process of holding a pen in my hand, dipping it in the ink and scratching it on the paper.

There's a very tactile sense of that that I enjoy.

In my mind, I've broken down the idea into four sequences, a little story with a beginning, a middle, and then a punchline at the end.

And hopefully that's the payoff where someone will chuckle and see themselves in it or something like that.

(upbeat guitar strumming) I scan them on a scanner and email them to my daughter Emily, who colors them on Photoshop.

From that point, when I've done a week's worth of those, I send them into my editor at the "Washington Post," and she checks them over for any grammatical errors.

Occasionally, a retired school teacher somewhere in America will find a misspelled word or something and will let me know about it.

My wife is always my best editor.

She can tell if something's funny or not.

(chuckles) I really do agonize over each strip, trying to come up with an idea.

Most of the ideas I get I don't use because I don't think they're good enough.

So I'm my own harshest critic, I think.

Very seldom, when I see my strip in the paper, do I think I really nailed it.

I usually just think, oh, I could have done this better.

I could have worded that better or I could have drawn that better.

So I'm always critical of my efforts, but I think that's a good character for an artist, to be critical of their work and not just think anything they do is wonderful.

(bouncy music) I love making people laugh.

The big payoff for me is when I hear people who say that my cartoon makes their morning or it reminds them of someone they love or something like that.

That makes me feel like I'm contributing something to people's happiness.

And it's so much easier now to write my strip because when I began, I was a 39 year old writing about old people.

And now I'm an old person writing about myself.

- To learn more about Brian Crane, visit picklescomic.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.

- [Narrator] Funding for "ARTEFFECTS" is made possible by Sandy Raffealli with Bill Pearce Motors, (upbeat music) 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 jazz music)