- In this edition of "Arteffects," poetry that speaks to the human condition.

(gentle music) - [Dustin] You can find poetry really all around you.

Poetry, I think, is in all of the little moments that you experience in life.

(gentle music) - [Beth] A mural that celebrates diversity.

(upbeat music) - [Bradia] We wanted to do a public art project that was demonstrative of our values and what we're doing here.

- [Beth] And the craft and care behind beards.

- [Vincent] Creating shapes on somebody's face to enhance the way that they look is definitely an art form.

(upbeat music) - It's all ahead on this edition of "Arteffects."

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Funding for "Arteffects" is made possible by Sandy Raffealli with Bill Pearce Motors, (upbeat music) Meg and Dillard Myers, (upbeat music) Meidemarie Rochlin, (upbeat music) In memory of Sue McDowell and by the annual contributions of PBS Reno members.

(upbeat music) - Hello, I'm Beth Macmillan and welcome to "Arteffects."

In our featured segment, meet Reno Poet Laureate, Dustin Howard.

Dustin believes that anyone can write poetry and that doing so can help one better understand themselves and their experiences throughout life.

Let's listen to Dustin's thoughtful words and amazingly visual poetry.

- [Dustin] Relic.

The last of her kind, she's patches on a rock, half submerged in a saliferous sea, far reaching tides roll freely, unbroken by owe and bow, blown by ocean breeze.

Adults at Siren who wants sang temptation to sailors, she cantillate a closed mouth tune for a theater of forsaken ships.

She wonders why they don't come anymore.

No white sails like clouds on the horizon.

No wooden ships faring the swarthy sea.

In the narrative of every mariner, she is a relic of antiquity.

Singing on a rock until a fog falls and she fades from memory.

(upbeat music) My name is Dustin Howard and I am the current City of Reno Poet Laureate.

Poet Laureate is an honorary representative for poetry and the arts in a community.

Usually appointed by a governing body, in my case, the City of Reno.

My role as poet laureate is to be an ambassador for poetry and the arts in our community.

(upbeat music) I got into poetry when I was in high school.

My freshman and sophomore English teachers, both did units on poetry and it was something I took to immediately.

Poetry was something that I used to kind of explore myself and kind of the world around me, especially in my first collection of poems.

That was the running theme.

It was deliberately an exploration of memories, starting with the earliest memory that I had, going way back to when I was like three or four years old.

And then it charts, the progression of my growth kind of into adulthood and sort of that journey hitting specific beats and kind of important memories.

That was a very sort of cathartic experience, getting to kind of relive and work back through some of those emotional traumas.

And some of those moments of really pure joy.

Poetry is one of the few mediums that allows an artist like that to connect on a very deep, personal sort of reflective level.

(gentle music) Summer, 1997.

Seven years old and not a care in the passenger seat of mom's red sedan, a Ford I think or maybe a Chevy.

In the backseat, my siblings, three and five.

"Where are we going?"

"Nowhere."

On the radio, the sounds of Summer.

"Mabo Number Five" seems to play on repeat.

It's catchy and we sing along.

Around town running errands, we visit the grocery store at the gas station and the bank.

We stop for lunch, then run some more.

"Where are we going?"

"Somewhere."

On the radio, the Sounds of summer.

I don't know what a scrub is, but I know TLC don't want one.

I sit in the car with my siblings, a coloring book of the "Phantom Menace" in my lap and charge our fruit snacks.

I think I want to be a Jedi.

"Where are we going?"

"Anywhere."

On the radio the sounds of summer, the Latin flare of Carlos Santana is smooth, hotter than that summer sun.

It's time to go back to our father.

She drops us off and says goodbye.

It's dusk and cool and I miss the car, going nowhere, somewhere, anywhere.

On the radio, the Sounds of summer, the auto tuned techno pop of share, trying to believe in life after love.

Grown up now and too many cares to list, I wonder about her that summer, all alone in her red sedan, driving to one of three jobs to make ends meet, to fight for us, as the struggle for custody continued.

On the radio, the sounds of summer.

Did they cut through the quiet in the car?

Does she remember them as fondly as me?

(gentle music) You can find poetry really all around you, not just in poetry books.

Poetry is music.

Poetry is in art.

Poetry I think most importantly is in all of the little moments that you experience in life.

It's those small things that bring you joy.

It's the quiet stillness by the lake.

It's the rush of traffic as you're standing on the street corner.

Poetry is everywhere.

Poetry is really just capturing those very human moments where we are reflective and kind of contemplating ourselves and our place.

It's really kind of all around us.

I always think of John Keats poem, "Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art," in which the speaker of the poem has his head rested on the chest of his lover and he just wants to stay kind of in that moment for forever.

(gentle music) Here we have somebody writing 200 years ago, about what is a very like real and human emotion that we as readers still connect with.

The power of poetry really is the ability to bridge that gap between space and time.

And to know that someone somewhere hundreds of years ago, felt exactly the same way I might feel now.

There's an opportunity for readers to connect in some big or small way with the words you've put on the page.

And to know that my work, might be making some small difference in a person's life is immensely rewarding for me.

It's kind of like an open letter to the reader.

It's a letter not for me, but for someone, somewhere, someday to open and find themselves in the words and on the page.

(gentle music) "The Table."

I've longed and acquired some time ago, it is the hearth of the family home.

Silent witness to every high and low to gathered relatives who had far roamed.

Its scarred top, keeping record like a tone of cherished occasions and holidays, which in finite detail recounts the way that we like billowed embers with a light, around the old table to set a blaze conversations that burned long through the night.

(fire crackling) - To learn more about Dustin and his writing, visit dthbooks.com.

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

In what year was Gailmarie Pahmeier, named Reno's first Poet Laureate?

Is the answer A, 2007, B, 2011, C, 2015 or D, 2019?

Stay tuned for the answer.

(upbeat music) At the Moab Valley Multicultural Center in Utah, one will discover the multicultural mural.

For this cultural education and outreach project, 10 local artists and community volunteers, came together to render an artwork that features important figures like Maya Angelou, Harvey Milk and Nelson Mandela.

Take a look.

(gentle music) - Art always contributes to the community.

And I think the mural, it gives credit to people that we're not always thinking about, even though they were all very important people and very important activists.

I think someone may walk by and remember Malala or remember Nelson Mandela.

And so, I think that in combination with art, it one makes community more beautiful and it allows people to remember something they may not necessarily be thinking about, while they're here in Moab.

- First and foremost, we're a we're community resource center, which means that anytime our doors are open, anyone in the community can walk in and, whatever situation they've got going on, whatever problem they may need help with, we'll do our very best to help them meet that need, sometimes through our own services, sometimes through working with community partners and other agencies.

And we also do a lot of community outreach and education and a lot of youth outreach and education.

So, sometimes we're putting out fires, dealing with homelessness and mental health and substance use.

And then sometimes we are making instruments from all over the world with kids, and that can all happen in like a single afternoon.

(kids chanting) - The Multicultural Mural Project was started in 2014 to the best of my recollection, and it was completed.

It took about three years to complete, because the multicultural center isn't an arts organization.

We're a social service organization, but we do see and appreciate and often use the arts as a way to meet our mission of building bridges across language and culture, through family support, community collaboration and education.

So, the idea of of this mural was really a fantastic way to meet our mission, to involve people from our community, artists and all of the people who participated on the the selection committee for which activists would be highlighted.

And then from the very beginning, we saw it as an opportunity to use an education piece as well.

(upbeat music) It really began with the need to cover up an eyesore area on our property.

There was a junkyard on our property and we knew we wanted to cover that.

And so we had decided we would we would build a fence.

And if we were gonna build a fence, we wanted to put our own flavor on that.

And we wanted to do a public art project that was, demonstrative of our values and what we're doing here, and that would contribute to the celebration of diversity here in Moab and all around.

- The peace that I created for the multicultural mural was the piece for Harvey Milk.

Spent a lot of time in San Francisco Bay Area in the Castro district and learned a lot about Harvey Milk and developed, a sense of I wouldn't say like a connection, but a sense of understanding and kind of a commitment to helping spread the message that Harvey Milk and his followers were also trying to share and spread as well.

And so when I moved to Moab, to this high desert, and had the opportunity to create a mural about a person that I had a connection with from my youth or my young adulthood, it felt really meaningful.

And another way that I could kind of give back to this community, while still honoring my own past and my roots.

- So the piece that I did was Jane Goodall.

I have always really, really been infatuated with Jane Goodall.

It was like the life that I saw myself living at some point, like working with chimpanzees and just like becoming best friends with them.

So and I saw that went on there, I was duly excited, because I think she's a really incredible person.

And I saw it as an opportunity to add an animal and I was like, "No one else is going to be doing that."

I've got to get to Jane Goodall.

So, that was the one I went for.

- It was a time tears and trial.

Standing Bear and 26 others decided to reclaim their land, to stand in return, to go home to Nebraska, to return to the ground beside the swift running water.

The small band of Poncas made it home, after ten weeks of toil, hunger.

- We spent a lot of time in the classroom and sometimes that's our staff, going into the elementary school or into the preschool or the middle school.

And a lot of times that's them coming to us and being in being in our space, whether it's our office or outside and I think it's great for, it's an office technically, but it's colorful and vibrant and welcoming.

And even though sometimes we're dealing with really hard, sad things here, we try and do that in a way that makes it okay.

Those things are going to happen and we have a comfy space where we can confront that.

And I think having, the outdoor diversity classroom was just another place where that can happen.

- I think a lot of public art spaces or historical sites, you could call them diversity classrooms, indoor or outdoor diversity classrooms.

But what what makes ours specifically more one of its kind is the curriculum that matches each of the panels.

We had a teacher who volunteered to write that curriculum and it specifically tied to the Utah Public Schools Core curriculum.

We wanted the mural, there's all these there's a lot of needs that it meet.

And it was important to me to make it complimentary to what our students were learning in the schools, to reinforce that, because that in education we, anything we any time we can reinforce that, it really helps to integrate what we're learning, I believe.

So, the mural goes it meets that need, but it goes outside of that, too, right?

So, can reinforce what kids are learning in the classroom, but we can go above and beyond that and into critical thinking in many ways.

- Painting my piece, the Harvey Milk piece, was really important to me and special for me.

And every time I see it, when I take my daughter from our house to the park, we pass by it.

And I get to point it out and teach her a little bit about Harvey Milk.

But as a whole, the whole project, it just brings this immense sense of pride.

And it also reminds me of the importance of investing time in learning about these leaders from all different cultures and not spending too much time focusing on, a specific group of marginalized voices, but recognizing that our community is made up of like all kinds of incredible people.

- It's amazing to be a part of something that's been here for seven plus years now.

When I did it at the time, I didn't really know that I would necessarily continue to be here in seven years.

I didn't really know that the person next to me and the person on the other side of me, would become like very good friends of mine.

So, it's just really cool to like every time I pass by, I think like, "Wow, that was like a very different time in my life."

But here it is and it's served to now like how many years of elementary school grades that have come here on field trips and like, that's so amazing.

And I think just getting that recognition is really funny, because I don't identify as an artist in my day-to-day life.

I work at a hospital, so every so often someone would be like, "Is that your name on the mural?"

And I'm like, "Oh, yes, it is."

I did do that, in fact.

So, it's kind of this fun.

Like we all wear a lot of hats here and a lot of people don't necessarily actively, like do art for their living, because that would be very difficult.

But most of the artists who contributed to that mural, do other things in the community as well.

And this is kind of just like a passion project.

So, I think the passion really comes through and it's something I still really feel strongly about.

- I feel like the impact that the mural has had in the community it's added beauty to our community.

Any time you add public art, it is adding beauty.

People get to see that beautiful mural, instead of that junkyard.

But a visual representation, too, I think, there's the culture, your own personal culture, your family culture, your organizational culture.

But what about the culture of the community that you live in?

Do they put importance on art or equity or diversity?

Things like that.

So, having something, so large and bright and colorful, I think speaks to this is a community that celebrates diversity, wants to inspire people by highlighting activists and having community projects that are collaborative.

I think all of that speaks to the culture, not just of MVMC, but of Moab and what we want it to be, what we're striving to to have it be.

(foreign language) - To learn more go to moabmc.org and now it's time to review the week's art quiz.

In what year was Gailmarie Pahmeier, named Reno's first Poet Laureate?

Is the answer, A, 2007, B, 2011, C, 2015 or D, 2019?

And the answer is C, 2015.

This next segment is all about beards.

Facial hair comes in so many different shapes and sizes from a modest goatee to a bushy beard that can't go unnoticed.

It takes more planning than you might expect to maintain a person's facial hair.

Let's head to Derby Supply Co in downtown Reno and learn what styling a beard is all about.

(upbeat music) - People like to express themselves in many different ways.

Maybe that's like the way they dress, but I think hair and facial hair is extremely important in the way that somebody, can artistically express themselves.

For a lot of guys, I think it's a sense of pride.

Being able to grow a beard and being able to express your masculinity the way you want I think is really a great thing.

I think barbers are really great visual artist.

We create things that people see and creating shapes on somebody's face to enhance the way that they look is definitely an art form.

It makes them feel really good, 'cause it's their persona.

It's how they look.

My name is Vincent Gravallese.

I'm the owner, master barber of Derby Supply Company Barbershop.

(upbeat music) So, we are a barbershop as well as a kind of a social club.

So, we have a full liquor license, we do serve few different cocktails, beers and spirits as well as we are full service barbershop; old school shaves, haircuts, beard trims, et cetera.

Just having a professional, to be able to accurately look at your face shape and determine the shape that's going to work.

The beard, the mustache, goatee.

And I think it's really important to have, a professional consult on what look is best for you.

I mean, everybody has a different face shape and you wanna make them look the best they possibly can.

And so going in and using some of the techniques that we are trained in school, as well as post education, I think is super important.

(upbeat music) So, usually when somebody comes in, I have them sit down, I'll start talking to them.

The consultation is like super important, kind of going through and figuring out, what they're comfortable with, what they're not.

And then as far as the trim goes, I mean the first thing I like to do is lay in a basic outline in shape.

So coming in like through the sides and making sure that the profile's right.

I'm a very visual artist in general and so when I'm working I like to see things come to life.

That's why I start with the outline first, so that the client and I can both see it.

I mean, most barbers generally work away from the mirror.

It's kind of a tradition.

When I'm doing gear trims, I like to work in the mirror, because somebody's looking at the way they look that's gonna mean a whole lot more than just my professional opinion.

So, we work together where it's my professional opinion, skill and art.

And then obviously what they see.

(gentle music) There is nothing that feels better than like having a client look in the mirror and seeing them smile and like you can tell that they really like the service that you provided for them.

I mean, I see 10 to 20 people a day and to make somebody's day, to feel that emotion 10 to 20 times a day.

I mean, it's a special thing.

It's really great.

(upbeat music) I really enjoy being a barber and styling hair.

I mean, I think that being part of an age-old tradition and doing something that my family did, I'm very proud of that.

And I think that it's a great career and it's a great way to be an artist.

I mean, there's multiple ways to be an artist and I think this is a great way to do it.

(gentle music) - Learn more at derbysupplyco.com.

And that wraps it up for this edition of "Arteffects."

If you want to watch new artifact segments early, make sure to check out the PBS Reno YouTube channel and don't forget to keep visiting pbsreno.org/arteffects for complete episodes.

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, (upbeat music) Heidemarie Rochlin, (upbeat music) In memory of Sue McDowell (upbeat music) and by the annual contributions of PBS Reno members.

(upbeat music)