- On this edition of "ARTEFFECTS," spreading kindness in Reno one painted rock at a time.

(gentle music) - We often say that the rock finds its person, and I believe that when you are having a rough day, the rock appears.

- [Beth] Crafting the perfect sound.

- [Hayes] Don Macrostie is one of those guys that was always on the search for the secret formula to the best sounding mandolin.

And, in my opinion, he found it.

- [Beth] A photographer who creates haunting images.

- It's a slow process, and I love it, 'cause it keeps me outta trouble.

(chuckles) (gentle music continues) (camera shutter clicks) - [Beth] Plus: art and history in the palm of your hand - We have coins in our pocket, but do we really know the background and the history of how they're made and some of the details of what goes to make up a coin?

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

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Funding for "ARTEFFECTS" is made possible by Sandy Raffealli with Bill Pierce Motors, Meg and Dillard Myers, 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."

Everyone needs a little unexpected kindness now and then.

To meet this need, there's Reno Painted Rocks.

It's a Facebook group with more than 5,000 members.

Inspired by the Kindness Rocks Project, they encourage people from all walks of life and expertise to paint rocks with beautiful imagery and messages.

Once finished, these rocks are placed safely throughout our community for strangers, perhaps you, to discover.

(cheerful music) - Imagine if you are walking down the street or in a park and you all of a sudden come across this brightly colored little rock on the ground.

And you bend down to pick it up, and you see that it's got an encouraging little quote on it.

And maybe you were having a bad day, and that made you pause and smile, and it made your day a little bit better.

That's what this is all about, just random acts of kindness.

- I started Reno Painted Rocks on Facebook after seeing a similar group based up in Whidbey Island, Washington.

And I thought it was just a really cool idea to spread kindness one stone at a time.

- [Jessica] Reno Painted Rocks is a community group that spreads kindness by putting painted rocks with encouraging messages or cute little pictures or cartoons out in the community just to brighten the day of a stranger that might find it.

- Typically what I do is choose the stone that I'd want to paint on.

I look for a shape or something that would inspire me.

(gentle music) It's washed, and then I'll decide a design an inspirational quote or a scene.

- [Jessica] You can use dotting tools and dot.

You can use paint pens that you can also write messages with - [Debi] Acrylic paints, water colors, pencil, pen and ink.

- Once your rock is dry, you wanna seal it so that it can survive outside if you put it outside and it rains.

(spray can rattling) So we usually use UV or waterproof spray sealers.

Some of us use an art resin, takes a little bit longer to dry, but it's very shiny and nice and hard, so it protects the design.

- [Debi] I like to hide in karma boxes or little libraries.

- I hide them all over.

I hide them in my neighborhood.

If I go for a walk, I like to put them at the base of our mailbox.

I walk here to Rancho San Rafael on my lunch hour and just walk the trails.

And there's a tree knot over on one of the walking paths that I really like to leave rocks in, because it's right at eye level and it's a nice knot that will hold lots of different sizes of rocks.

(gentle guitar music) On the backs of the rocks, it kind of depends on the real estate you have, you know, the size of the rock.

If it's small, you're not gonna have a lot of space.

But I like to write, "Keep or rehide, you decide!"

so that people know that they can keep it.

they can rehide it, they can leave it there, 'cause sometimes people think they can't take it, because it's this little piece of art.

And then I'll put, "Post a picture and join the fun on Facebook," and then put RenoPaintedRocks and the hashtag if it'll fit.

So it kind of gives people a clue.

If they don't understand from what's written on the rock, they can go to the group and kind of see what it's all about.

Reno Painted Rocks sometimes will show up on like Instagram, but for the most part, it's on Facebook because of the group feature where we can have that community group and interact and comment and post lots of pictures.

- [Debi] We try to keep our members painting within our guidelines.

We prefer that you source your rocks ethically by purchasing them.

- [Jessica] You can get like a bag of river rock or go to the local landscaping company, and a lot of times they'll sell them to you in a five gallon bucket.

- [Debi] We do prefer that people don't glue things to rocks, because it could harm wildlife.

- [Jessica] When you're hiding the rocks, we wanna make sure that they're not in any kind of national park or protected lands, not in grass so it won't damage a lawnmower.

- [Debi] And the biggest guideline we have is to be kind.

- The kindness, I didn't feel that when I first started painting the rocks at all.

You know, it's just painting rocks.

But when you do give either as a gift or you hide, it's really amazing.

It's really heartwarming that people appreciate a rock that you've painted and taken time for them.

I love it.

- I'm painting rocks with my grandma.

I hope that when people find my rocks that they feel excited and they keep them and that's like a gift.

(cheerful music) - It's very humbling to see that there are so many amazing humans that want to share the same message.

- I started doing it because I liked the idea of the random act of kindness.

In the process, I've learned that this is kind of like my go-to self-care now.

Like if I've had a rough day at work or a rough week at work, I make time that night or over the weekend to paint, and it's kind of like a reset button.

So I think there's something about the act of putting kindness out there without the expectation of anything in return, and it's useful for me.

- We often say that the rock finds its person, and I believe that when you are having a rough day, the rock appears.

You're looking for that little bit of hope, and there it is - To follow Reno Painted Rocks and learn more about their paint parties and community events, check them out at World renowned luthier Don Macrostie has dedicated his life to creating mandolins with the perfect sound.

He owns and operates Red Diamond Mandolins in Athens, Ohio, where he puts his heart and soul into each one of his handmade instruments.

(gentle strummed music) (fan whirring) (gas hissing) - I moved to this farm a little over 40 years ago.

I've been out here about 41, 42 years.

Moving here, there was a machinery shed that I thought, "That'll make a nice shop."

I think I got kind of interested in the guitar in high school.

It was during the folk revival of the 50s and 60s, and I was interested in that music and trying to learn that.

My name is Don Macrostie.

I own and operate Red Diamond Mandolins here in Athens, Ohio.

I graduated college in '66, and that was around the start of the Vietnam War.

So I wound up in the Navy.

I was in Vietnam.

I was on an aircraft carrier.

I got out of the service in '70, and I decided to use my GI bill, go back to college.

And I came to Ohio University.

I enjoyed not only going to college, but I loved the area.

I saw a lot of the county and a lot of the Southeast Ohio, and I've been here ever since.

My sister-in-law had a mandolin, so I was looking at that and I don't have a lot of space.

It'd be a lot easier to build a smaller instrument.

So that's how I picked a mandolin.

I was thinking about a name that I could put on the peghead, and I was reading a book about a fellow who in the 1800s was traveling Europe, hunting Stradivarius violins.

And one of the names of the Stradivarius violins was the Red Diamond.

And I said, "Ah, that's a name, I'll use that."

I've been building for close to 50 years.

I've seen how instruments come through to the audience, and there's an instrument that seems to, for bluegrass music, really project out a sound, and that's the Gibsons of the early '20s.

They were signed by Lloyd Loar.

- Don Macrostie is one of those guys that was always on the search for the secret formula to the best sounding mandolin, and, in my opinion, he found it.

What sets Don's mandolins apart from the rest, in my opinion, is the the constant pursuit of the Golden Era sound.

And when I say that, I mean the mandolins of the early 1920s that were manufactured by Gibson.

He's come up with this really interesting process of measuring the flexibility of the top and back of some of those legendary mandolins and then using those measurements to kind of guide his own building process.

(gas hissing) (water sizzling) - When I build mandolins, I start out with the sides.

I make the blocks.

I bend the sides and glue them up into a rib assembly.

That's the first step.

And I even put the linings in that allow the tops and the backs to be attached to the side.

Then I'll carve tops next.

The tops will be carved and glued on.

And at that point, I'll voice it to some extent.

That means make it of a flexibility that will produce a good sound.

It's the combination of the arch shape, the flexibility, the species of wood and many other things that produce a sound.

Once that's done and the neck is fitted in, I'll glue the back on, which makes the rib assembly, the body assembly very rigid.

And then you can put the neck back in it and set your angle and finish up the neck.

It'll get a fingerboard.

It'll get a peghead for mounting tuners and decoration of the peghead.

It's traditional for a good mandolin to have a darker finish.

It's a sunburst they call it.

So it's a shaded finish from a bright sun in the center, golden, to a darker edge.

Once the instrument (elegant string music) is completely done, you put strings on it.

I was building mandolins in mid '70s, and it turned out that there was a company here in Athens that did instruments.

It was called Stewart McDonald.

And then I got into product design with them.

I was able to do things there because of my prior building experience.

And the things that I was doing there, I was able to bring home and better do my building.

For bluegrass and a lot of other styles of music, the F5 mandolin is what's desirable.

It's beautiful.

The design is incredible.

It's attractive.

A lot of people buy (airbrush hissing) kind of on reputation.

And if I build instruments that really please other people, I get customers.

People are excited about playing music.

They want a good instrument.

They love it, and they share with their friends.

- I think Don is helping to strengthen the arts in Ohio by building the best instruments possible.

And I would consider (airbrush hisses) Don's mandolins to be some of the best in the world.

You see him across the bluegrass scene.

Alan Bibey, a really great bluegrass mandolin player, plays his mandolins regularly.

Josh Pinkham, another amazing kind of world-renowned mandolinist, plays Don's mandolins.

And it makes sense that his mandolins are some of the best in the world, because he is a sensitive person that way.

He can see what you need and what you're looking for in an instrument and wants to make a product that that fills what you need.

It almost feels like a family relationship when you purchase an instrument from Don.

I own two Red Diamonds, and when I look at every nook and cranny and corner, everything is just perfect.

There's not a single thing out of place.

And it's really interesting to kind of look at a mandolin and then hear the sound that comes off of it.

The lows are rich and sustaining.

The highs aren't too shrill.

They're very glassy and bell-like.

So it's really interesting to play a Red Diamond compared to some of these other mandolins.

There's life in every single note all across the fingerboard.

Not only is he building the best instruments that he possibly can, he's bringing attention from around the world to central and southern Ohio through the kind of craft that he's chosen in his life.

And I think that's really important, because it it brings fresh musicians and fresh perspectives to this region.

And then they take a little bit of Ohio back with them whenever they take one of his mandolins.

- And as I started building mandolins, I started learning to play mandolin too.

By playing, you're able to understand musicians that you're building for.

I play with a couple of guys regularly right now.

We've played together for 40 years probably.

Music has allowed me to buy a farm, raise a family, and love what I do.

There was a term back in the '60s that I latched onto, it's called Right Livelihood, and it meant what you're doing in your working life has to be right or contribute to the the planet, the world, the neighbors, and not be destructive.

And I think that building instruments and playing music is Right Livelihood.

I was able through both Stewart McDonald, employment at Stewart McDonald and my building to do well, to have a good life.

- To learn more, (gentle music) visit reddiamondmandolins.com.

Now it's time for this week's art quiz.

In August 2013, researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology painted the smallest replica of the Mona Lisa using an atomic force microscope.

How small was the so-called Mini Lisa?

Is the answer, A, 10 microns, B, 30 microns.

C, 10 millimeters or D, 30 millimeters.

And the answer is B, 30 microns, which is 1/3 the width of a human hair.

Photographer and printer, Carol Munder, uses a painstaking printing process that dates back to the late 1800s called Photogravures.

Let's head to Florida and learn how she achieves her haunting images.

(gentle music) - My name's Carol Munder.

I'm a photographer, and I use the process photogravure.

It's a 19th century process where I take an image that I've photographed and through a process, it's transferred to a copper plate.

The copper plate is etched, and then you print on a gravure press to get the final image.

It's a long process.

It takes many days.

There's different stages of the process that have to be done days ahead of time.

Things have to cure.

I work with raw chemistry, so that's mixed together.

So normally I soak it, you know, like 24 hours ahead of time, because the water, I don't know, slowly goes into the paper, and it's absorbed and I can kind of pull it out and almost put it on the press right away.

It's a slow process, and I love it 'cause it keeps me outta trouble.

(chuckles) (camera shutter clicks) (camera shutter clicks) The softness comes through a camera that I use.

I photograph with a Diana camera, and it was originally manufactured in the '70s as a toy.

You could buy it for $3.95 at the Dime Store.

It was sort of like the images were soft edged, and it was something that spoke to me.

My father was a commercial lithographer, so that whole printing world maybe runs in my blood or something, (chuckles) I'm not sure.

But I had in my library of books, a chapter in a book on photogravure.

And happenstance, I had even highlighted part of the process in there years and years ago.

So if you're gonna do it, you have to be dedicated.

And I taught myself, and I made every mistake in the book and then some.

So for some reason, the first time you sort of ink a plate, it needs a second time around to really start grabbing the ink properly.

I don't know why that is.

Today, you can go online, you can watch videos, you can do workshops.

It was pretty limited back then on what was available.

And I had out of print books that I taught myself, and you're much better off taking workshops if you can, (chuckles) because there's a lot of things they don't talk about.

The humidity is a real important factor for it, and they sort of didn't mention that in the books.

(gentle music continues) I used to photograph in museums a lot.

I was photographing Etruscan sculptures a lot, really close up through glass, so you would get refractions.

You know you go through a lot of different phases.

But now I'm photographing just with these wooden sculptures that we've been finding in flea markets that are anonymously carved almost like outsider art, anatomically incorrect sculptures that are just so soulful.

And I started photographing them, 'cause I just loved them.

And it evolved over the years.

But now I'm montage an image because, with my camera, it's limitations are, it's a plastic lens.

I'm limited by the size of something.

So I will photograph something that's six inches big and have to put it in into a different environment.

And you have to adjust those to sort of play some sort of game of making it, I mean, it's an unusual world that I'm creating.

(gentle music continues) - To learn more, (upbeat music) visit carolmunder.com.

Carson City is filled with history, and the Nevada State Museum is home to thousands of artifacts.

One of the museum's highlights is the historic Coin Press No.

1.

Since 1870, this impressive green machine has produced millions of coins and medallions, fusing history with art that fits in the palm of your hand.

(gentle music) - The Nevada State Museum is located in Carson City.

The main building was originally the Carson City Branch Mint.

This is the beautiful sandstone building you see facing Carson Street.

And so what you see today is a complex that has grown up to hold the many stories that are part of Nevada's history.

One of the most amazing artifacts in the state museum is Coin Press No.

1.

- Coin Press No.

1, boy, it is such a special part of this museum, a continuation of the great history of the U.S. Mint.

- [Myron] Coin Press No.

1 was the first coin press in the Carson City Mint.

Coin Press No.

1 was also the only coin press for the first five years of the mint's operation.

Eventually there were three presses here.

- When this coin press was brand new, it could do from 80 to 100 silver dollars a minute.

In smaller denominational coins, it could do even more.

- Today, we don't have the equipment that automated the activity, so we mint each one by hand.

We operate it where we make maybe one per minute.

(gentle music) The first step in minting the planchet is to put it into the collar.

So a planchet is another word for a coin blank.

It's simply a piece of metal that's ready to be put into the coin press, ready to be minted.

(coin clinks) So I put it on the table of the coin press, and I slide it into the opening and it drops into the collar, and then I step back and push the two run buttons.

Now they make you use two hands, so the buttons are quite separated.

And that's purposeful so your hands are separated so you don't end up leaving a finger in under the coin press and losing part of it.

So you have to use two hands to start the press.

It's a six-ton machine.

We operate Coin Press No.

1 at about 110 tons of pressure to make the half dollar sized medallions.

So coins or medallions are made from dies.

The dies are what make the impression on the coins.

We have a bottom die, which has the reverse image, a top die that has the obverse image, and then there's a collar which inside has reeding, and those are those edges that you see on the edges of your quarters and half dollars and dollars, and so that's inside the collar.

So when that wedge comes down and pushes those dies together, all of that happens in one action.

So that complete coin is made in a second.

We've had the pleasure of working with Tom Rogers, a former sculptor and engraver for the United States Mint.

He's done several of the dies for us.

We work with people who actually used to work for the Mint, so we're getting absolutely the most professional experience we can to make the dies for Coin Press No.

1.

- When they're designing these, these are original works of really art.

That's what coin collectors are excited about is the designs and the quality of those, and that's where the sculpting comes in.

And it works hand in hand.

(bright music) - It really is history in action.

Here you are standing in the original Mint building, and you're working with the actual Coin Press, and it's still operating, the very first one that was here at the museum.

And we're minting silver blanks, silver planchets, just like they did back in the 1870s and '80s.

- There's many people out there, many collectors, they just focus on the Carson City medallions that have been done on historic Coin Press No.

1.

- Museums are all about connections, connecting people with stories that they not only understand but they feel a real link to the time.

And so Coin Press No.

1 is a perfect example of how that works.

- To learn more (upbeat music) about Coin Press No.

1 and the Nevada State Museum, visit carsonnvmuseum.org.

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

If you want to watch new "ARTEFFECTS" segments early, make sure you subscribe to the PBS Reno YouTube channel.

And don't forget to keep visiting PBSreno.org to watch complete episodes of "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, Heidemarie Rochlin, in memory of Sue McDowell, and by the annual contributions of PBS Reno Members.

(soft rhythmic music) (soft rhythmic music continues)