- In this edition of ARTEFFECTS, sAwing metal and setting stones to adorn one's body.

(upbeat ambient music) - I like to call my jewelry Talisman jewelry because I feel like the people that wear it are empowered and connected to the piece.

- [Presenter] An artist's trajectory.

- And as an artist, I just want to continue to grow and make things that are relevant to me and the time and the people and the community that's around me.

- [Presenter] Exploring identity through illustration.

- [Zara] I use things which are in my day to day life or how I live my life.

- [Presenter] And a look at the art of jewelry making.

- Every house, I mean everybody is an artist.

It's important to see people doing art.

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

(upbeat ambient music) - [Narrator] Funding for ARTEFFECTS is made possible by Sandy Raffealli with Bill Pierce Motors.

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 McMillan and welcome to ARTEFFECTS.

For our featured segment, meet Nicole King of Reno.

Nicole creates a variety of statement jewelry pieces with metal and stone.

She believes that every piece of jewelry she creates is meant for a special person to adorn their body with.

(tranquil ambient music) - I find that my clients are a lot like me.

They feel empowered by a piece of jewelry.

They feel like they are stepping into their armor for the day.

They're stepping into their true selves.

It becomes a part of them and their story.

I like to pick a gemstone that I've fallen in love with and create a home for it.

I sometimes will sketch something out, but for the most part, I just really like to get my hands on the metal and do different shapes until I find a combination that just works with the stone.

So once I find the stone, I'll create the actual setting whether that be the bezel or if I know I'm gonna prong set it, that'll happen later.

I'll shape it and then I'll go over to my soldering bench and I'll solder the seam shut with a little piece of solder, put it in the pickle pot, clean it up, and then solder that to its back plate, which is a sheet of silver.

Once I have that, I can start playing with silver wires around it, designing, sometimes I'm hammering pieces to incorporate, sometimes on melting pieces to incorporate a lot of cutting and filing and sanding and shaping until I have a finished piece.

One of my favorite parts about making jewelry is the finishing of the piece.

(upbeat ambient music) I've finished the whole creation and I've batina'd it and I'm sitting down to set the stone.

And even now to this day actually putting the stone in the piece of jewelry is like Christmas day every single day, because it like comes alive in front of my eyes when I put that stone in.

So it's an incredibly satisfying feeling.

I just sit back and look at it and I don't know what else I should be doing with my life, except for that because it's such a satisfying feeling.

I really feel like I'm meant to be doing jewelry.

I like to call my jewelry Talisman jewelry because I feel like the people that wear it are empowered and connected to the piece.

So there's a lot of artistry and story telling that goes behind the piece.

Some of it's very visible and some of it's not so tangible.

It's more of something that you feel.

So this piece right here, it's called "My Mind is My Temple."

And it's a figure of a woman's face with a kind of a Taj Mahal looking temple where her mind is.

And the day after I turned 39, I had this idea come to me that I wanted to enter my 40s being a little bit stronger in my mental game.

I feel like most of my life I've been aligned with the idea of my body is my temple.

And I still think that's very important.

What we put in our body is what we get out of our body.

I was overlooking the power of our mind.

I just wanted to reevaluate that, and instead of my body is my temple, my mind is my temple is what struck me.

And immediately I had this vision of a woman's face with the temple of in her mind.

And I knew I needed to make a piece like that so that I could have something tangible to remind me of that to keep my mind on track when it starts to wander and to listen to the voices that are playing, listen to what output I'm putting in.

And so this is a very meaningful piece, especially this year of my life as I'm finishing out my 30s.

I like to envision the person that is gonna be wearing it.

Sometimes I like to think about their lifestyle, what they've experienced in life leading up to that point, what this piece might mean to them, their style.

And I just create a person in my, almost like a character in my head, and I don't necessarily have a face to that character but I have this idea of a person.

And it's always really fascinating to see who falls in love with that finished piece because it's like a discovery for me.

Once that connection is made between the client and the piece I made, it's like I was channeling them all along and now I get to meet them.

It's a really cool experience.

You know, I always say like on my business card, on my liaison between gemstones and their homes because that's how I feel, I'm just a person that connects the people to these stones and creates the homes for them.

It's fun.

(chuckles) - Learn more at adornmentbynicole.com.

Artist and freelance photographer Amber N. Ford's art can be seen both on a national and local scale.

Well known for her portraiture, she connects and collaborates with her sitter to create a meaningful image.

We travel to Ohio to hear more about her photography and her work in other mediums.

(tranquil ambient music) - I love photography because it can be both a documentation of what's already around us or you can get very creative and fantastical and create scenes.

I tried other art mediums like painting and drawing and ceramics and things like that.

And photography is what I loved the most and I was the best in, and it was what made the most sense for me when it came to figuring out something that would be a career but also still fun.

I get commission to take photographs for other people, but also I take photographs for myself as well.

And getting hired as a freelancer for places like the New York Times, the Washington Post, most recent Vox Media.

And I really enjoy that because our assignment is different, I get to meet new people, go to new places.

Shooting for a publications can be difficult 'cause you never know what you're gonna walk into.

But that also can be the exciting thing.

I never know what really what the subject looks like a lot of the times.

Sometimes I like, I'll try to like look them up and yeah, maybe I can find 'em on LinkedIn to just get an idea, but a lot of times it's like, yeah, I'm walking in, it's just like, hey, let's do the thing.

(chuckles) Also, I've been able over the last couple years work with some of the larger organizations in Cleveland institutions.

I just never imagined as a student that now six years after undergrad that I would be working with some of the people and some of the institutions that I'm working with now which is really exciting and really interesting.

I'm interested as I continue to develop within my artistic practice to be more considered as a contemporary artist or conceptual artist than just a photographer, 'cause I want to be able to choose whatever medium makes the most sense for the concept, an idea that I have versus trying to make photography always fit.

Like yes, I can do a lot with photography but sometimes other mediums do make more sense and I wanna give myself the time and the space for that experimentation to figure out what works the best.

Like right now for my residency at moCa Cleveland, my end goal is to have an insulation that has both objects and audio versus having a photography exhibition.

Mocha has provided a studio space for me to create work but also a classroom space for me to do whatever I please.

So what I've decided is to create this kind of prompt within the classroom so that people can read a little bit of my thinking and what I'm interested in and wanna talk about.

And there are prompted questions for people to participate in if they choose to.

I think that grief unites us because it's something that whether we wanna go through or not, we all go through, right?

We all experience it in some type of degree and in that thought, we can also potentially help each other within that process as well.

And I want to encourage people to not just celebrate people when they're gone, but also think about how can we celebrate ourselves and each other while we're still here.

It just really makes me happy that the entire wall is almost filled.

That just solidifies the fact that people did need this and I was happy to use this space and opportunity to facilitate that for other people.

(tranquil ambient music) Work can come in many different shapes or forms and as an artist I just want to continue to grow and make things that are relevant to me and the time and the people and the community that's around me.

- Find out more at ambernford.com.

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

Which of the following gemstones is the softest that is so light it can float in saltwater?

Is the answer, A, sapphire, B, opal, C, garnet, or D, amber?

Stay tuned for the answer.

Zara Marwan is an illustrator based in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Working with watercolor and ink, she tells stories, connects with her ancestors, embraces her cultural roots and explores her identity.

(upbeat ambient music) - I use things which are in my day to day life or how I live my life about people I love and what they do or things I dream about and memories.

In a lot of ways I feel like I am from two deserts.

There are similarities between the cultures and the way people are generous at heart.

I have some drawings I can show you.

I made this after visiting an island off of Kuwait and seeing the ancient Greek and Dilmun ruins and thought I'd feel closer to ancestors in that way.

When I learned that lucha libre were making masks in Mexico instead of wrestling.

My dad in the upside down palm trees were revolving around an old golf song about wondering if people still remember you, and other things like stories about other people who I'm not related to, like Federico Garcia Lorca and making art in times of fascism or wrestling my own thoughts like the old Persian miniatures.

Or my grandmother who at the time seemed very modern to have smoked cigarettes.

Another story is again revolving around my dad who I miss very much and wanting to be a photographer, looking closely at the negatives.

I'm just usually talking about what I know and what I've lived and it becomes sort of an identity issue I suppose.

I still have very deep connections to Kuwait.

My mom lives there now.

I have very fond memories of my childhood there and I go back every summer.

One thing we would often do is eat watermelon after lunch.

Family afternoons last into the night.

It's loud, the food's good and people take naps while you're sitting with them and nobody leaves.

(chuckles) Sometimes it's hard to explore the stigma of identity.

You acknowledge who you are and you like being who you are but some people don't agree or they find reasons to tell you why you're not the story which you're presenting.

Being stateless means you're born without any recognition from a sovereign nation.

In my personal case, my mom is a citizen and my father wasn't.

So I was born stateless like him.

Although they were both from the same communities of southwestern Iranians who migrated into the Arab Gulf.

I use a lot of imagery or things I see around Albuquerque or stories of friends and their families to show that I'm also home here, that I'm embraced here, that I've become a person who feels like they're from here.

A fellow artist at the Hardwood Art Center came to my studio one day and asked if I wanted some pears.

So my friend Eric Romero, we went downstairs, he climbed the tree and started chucking pears down.

And I suppose that's what it feels like to feel welcomed.

(chuckles) (upbeat ambient music) When I immigrated here as a child, I was lucky to be in a public school where educators told me I should be proud of my language and my culture.

I've made so many good friends here who are so different than me culturally yet tell me things like you're one of us.

An acquaintance I met, a musician named Noah Martinez who played the guitar and I read an article about him and he had mentioned that he likes to walk from Albuquerque to Chimayo to feel closer to his ancestors.

And I obviously resonated with that in a lot of ways.

Like you feel so extracted that you try to hold onto whatever you can to feel closer to your family or who you are.

I keep creating art because it helps me connect to these larger ideas and feelings.

- Find out more at zaramarwan.com.

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

Which of the following gemstones is the softest that is so light, it can float in saltwater?

Is the answer A, sapphire, B, opal, C, garnet, or D, amber?

And the answer is D, amber.

Jewelry comes in all shapes, sizes, and kinds.

It can be made with anything from wire to beads to a combination of both.

Let's see how two reno jewelry artists create handmade jewelry in two different styles.

(upbeat ambient music) - It's a passion of what I do and I think to create something is to be inspired by something and to design something that means art.

My name is Valentina Winters and I create wire wrap and palmer clay jewelry.

Wire wrap means, it's putting pieces of wire together in a rapid, in a way that it can create very beautiful piece of jewelry.

You have to think how to incorporate the stone into wire, but also to make the design.

I designed the piece, I try to make the base first and also I try to put together the pieces of the wire, wrap it.

Most of the time in the middle of the process I hammer it to get more flavor of the necklace.

After I try to straight the stone by wrapping it.

In the end I try to polish it.

Sometimes some pieces can take you so much time that you cannot stay on a bench and work nonstop at it.

You have to think, you have to have a thought from the beginning to see what to make in that piece.

And it takes long time, it doesn't take five hours to complete a necklace, it takes long process.

A process of why wrap jewelry?

It's so diverse for me because I try to use on each piece different process of wrapping.

Sometimes I use hammering from the beginning, sometimes I use solder from the beginning, from the end, usually, I can wrap it.

Every time, it's unique.

Every time when I make a necklace, the process of my work, it's so diverse.

Oh, hammer, that's such a beautiful work on a piece.

That's my favorite actually in the process of making wire wrap jewelry because once you wrap it, it's elegant.

Once you hammer it, it's such a flavor piece that it gives you that shiny thicker metal that makes my jewelry a success.

I come from Moldova, it's a little country named Moldova from a little town named Kotihana.

(upbeat ambient music) I was very inspired also there from my parents who were all artists.

I got inspired from everybody, from my father who was a builder and my brother, he's an opera singer in Romania.

My sister who's interior designer, from the other brother who also saw me on drawing.

I was taking a piece of art from everybody.

(chuckles) Every house, I mean, everybody is an artist.

They don't explore it because they think it's not that important, but it's important to see people doing art.

Anybody are talented.

Everybody, my neighbors and everybody who loves it, they will go for it.

That's the point.

- My name is Barbara Harmon and I took up beading about 15 years ago as a hobby just to keep me outta trouble.

(upbeat ambient music) I like to make wrap bracelets, that's kind of something I've been doing for a couple years.

But I think my favorite thing to do is earrings 'cause you can wear so many of them.

I only have one wrist so I can only wear so many bracelets.

But I like being able to change earrings and I just really enjoy making earrings.

There's a lot of shopping involved with beading.

I often buy things that I like with no idea what I'm gonna do with them just yet.

And a lot of times it's pretty messy, but I lay things out and get ideas from just kind of grouping things together.

It's definitely a messy process for me anyway.

I have beads in a lot of places, they're loose and so they can get messy and so I try to contain them a little bit, but my working area, I like to have things laid out so that I can see them 'cause I'm really kind of a visual person.

So if I have it all neat and tidy and things put away, I forget they're there.

So I'll often just pull out my drawers with my beads and just kind of stare at 'em for a while and touch 'em and pick 'em up and move them, and that's actually where I get ideas for colors and what I wanna put together.

Making a wrap bracelet is one of the more complicated things that I do myself.

But I use a clipboard and I pick a fun button.

You start it there with leather, two strips of leather or very long piece of leather, longer than you actually need, and then you start weaving.

So each bead has two pieces of string that go through back and and forth, kind of like a figure eight.

(upbeat ambient music) Some of the challenges I face are first of all time I would say 'cause you know, get home from work, make dinner, and then sit at the bead table.

For me, I guess the other thing that would be a challenge is working with one arm, one hand.

Since I've never had two hands, I don't know what it's like to work with two, but in my mind, I can picture how to do things with two hands.

So I have to figure out how to alter it to get it out.

I would say the shortcut with my arm is sometimes using my lips to hold thread.

I can't squeeze the pliers with my left arm, but I can hold it against me, but I'm still willing to try other ways to do it.

Just because I do it this way doesn't mean there's not a better way, and I'm always open to learn.

You really get lost in it.

There'll be nights where I stay up till midnight because I'm working on something, and I didn't realize what time it was.

And you just really get lost.

You don't have a sense of time or space.

You just go and it's very peaceful, right, because you kind of block out the rest of the world.

- And that wraps it up for this edition of ARTEFFECTS.

If you want to watch new ARTEFFECTS 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 McMillan.

Thanks for watching.

- [Narrator] 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 ambient music)