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- [Narrator] Anything that comes from the soul is art.

(Soft music)

- I would like art to be back in our schools.

(Soft music)

(Speaks in foreign language)

(Soft music)

- There's only 50,000 people in the entire county.

(Soft music)

(Upbeat music)

I actually didn't decide to take a class.

My husband left me basically,

and I was devastated

and my sister decided in her infinite wisdom

that I should take a pottery class.

And that would make things better.

- [Martha] The experience of working with Clay and glaze

and doing it in a community of women

helped me in ways that I never anticipated, never.

And it exposed to me a whole different side of myself,

as well as giving me a sense of belonging.

(Soft music)

I think we have a very elevated view of what

some things should be.

And in the artistic realm,

I think paintings in galleries and things that are far

beyond us rather than within us,

are what we, what we think of.

And so we don't even aspire to artist.

It just is like astronaut, you know,

its way far away and most of us won't get there

when in fact it's already inside us.

And it's a matter of having it nurtured out of us.

(Soft music)

- [Woman] Hello, let me tell you something.

- What some people don't understand sometimes

is a great coping mechanism to let your feelings out,

to express more things.

Because many times we think,

we have to be rich or very beautiful

where we see a painting or a scene

and it has to depict and show exactly what's there.

But then when we have abstract art where we can actually

put our own colors and feelings into it,

it expresses more.

And sometimes we don't understand that's art.

(Soft music)

I was fortunate that my mother allowed us

when we're cooking to make our designs.

She showed us how to take the ketchup

and the mustard and make a design.

And we would have paints.

She allowed us to put our hands in it and touch it

or go out to the beach and just draw something

or build a castle and decorate it with nature.

It was around.

I didn't think it was that important.

And as I grew up and saw other people's art,

I said, "I can do that."

Maybe what I see in my mind, doesn't get on the paper,

but it's what I feel and sometimes people see it too.

(Soft music)

Sometimes our schools are taking away the art classes.

We still need this.

We don't only need math,

reading science, these things are important,

but science can also be found.

Math can be found in art, very much.

(Soft music)

- [Nora] Glenstone is a postwar and contemporary art museum

that really focuses on an art collection that

really challenges your opinion on what art is.

Sort of setting the boundary of

sort of surprising you with what you might see

and then how you might experience it.

We're hoping to offer something different here at glenstone.

A lot of museums that you go into,

there are crowds and there are people

and they have their cell phones out

and they're taking photos.

And we wanted to really scale that back

and create an experience where when you come here,

you might feel like you're here alone

and you can spend as much time with the art as you want,

or as little time as you want.

We are so lucky here that we get to say to artists,

"what do you want to do?"

"Dream big."

And we're able to give them the resources, the time

and in particular the space.

We have about 300 acres that we're working with.

Most museums don't have that luxury.

(Soft music)

I grew up in this area.

I grew up in Alexandria, Virginia, just outside Washington.

So my folks were the type of parents

that were always looking for free stuff to do.

We didn't have a lot of money.

So they would dump us at the Smithsonian,

like at least twice a month.

So I grew up going to those museums and,

and really taking advantage of the programming

that they offered.

And I knew I wanted to work in museums

at a really young age, but I didn't know exactly

what I wanted to do.

(Soft music)

(Upbeat music)

(Banjo music)

♪ Running from the cold up in new england ♪

♪ I was born to be a Fiddler in an old time string band ♪

- I was a survivor of a cult called faith assembly with the

particular minister named Hobart Freeman.

And during that time from like age 11 to age 14,

I suffered medical neglect and didn't get medical treatment

for what I was suffering with, which was asthma.

And I think I have my, my inhaler here

so this is proof.

One of my brothers passed away.

Our grandmother ended up taking us in.

And during that period,

I started finding my voice.

I started finding how I felt about things,

how I was experiencing life and the disappointments

that I was going through songwriting gave me a voice.

And I was able to start telling my story and experiencing

or expressing what I was feeling through music.

You know, when you grow up the way I grew up,

people didn't talk about how we felt.

We didn't talk about our feelings.

We didn't talk about our emotions,

we didn't talk about our disappointments

or fears or hopes or even our dreams.

We were really a very quiet family.

And so there was not a lot of expression

or a lot of affection

even though I knew my parents loved me,

I knew my brothers and sisters loved me.

We weren't doing so well showing it.

(Guitar music)

So part of finding that voice means, you know,

I finally started speaking up for myself,

started standing up for myself.

(Guitar music)

I'm really glad that music gave me that ability

and helped me find that.

When I started turning 13, 14, 15,

the music really gave me the ability to escape.

To me the art is just, it's the individual way

that they find the way to express themselves.

(Guitar music)

♪ Hit the road fat boy ♪

♪ hit the road fat boy ♪

♪ and don't you ever come back ♪

(Soft music)

- [Bill] I've always been a songwriter since

probably six years old I started writing songs.

I grew up in a musical household

and everybody was always playing something.

And I kinda, I didn't take music lessons.

So I taught myself not knowing other songs.

I just made up my own songs.

So the first songs I played were like stuff I just made up.

(Soft music)

Well a lot of times I like to write

when I first wake up in the morning

before you like fully awake, yeah you just kinda,

sometimes I wake up with an idea in my head.

(Soft music)

Anything that comes from the soul is, is art.

Music and art it's all comes from your soul.

It's like any creative thing that you're creating

out of nothing is a blank canvas

or there's no song in the room.

And all of a sudden, there's a song on the room,

in the room or on the canvas.

It's all the same really.

You're just creating something from nothing,

from a place in your heart.

And that's just the coolest thing in the world like that.

But if someone really wants to do it,

you can't talk them out of it.

That's the thing it's like,

and you have to want it that bad.

If you want to do something in music,

you have to, can't be talked out of it.

You know, sometimes I guess maybe that's foolish.

You know, there's a lot of people doing it

that have no business doing it full time, whatever.

But then it's very hard even for pro writers these days to

get to people to record their songs

and the music businesses isn't what it used to be.

But I would just say,

go follow your heart and do you know,

you have to, you know,

you have to want to do it just for doing it anyway.

It's not about making money with it really.

You got to really want to write songs

and I would do it whether or not.

(Guitar music)

♪ Hoping you can see ♪

♪ the man I'm tryna be ♪

♪ someone ♪

(Soft music)

- Most music is made by vibrations.

So in other words, on a piano, if you're playing piano

inside, there's the hammers that are hitting the strings,

the strings vibrate.

If you were analyzing a trumpet

and you started out on a trumpet,

sound starts out here with the vibration here.

Which goes into here.

Which goes into here, which makes the sound.

So you go from here.

(Trumpet music)

And what do I do for a living

is I make my living in the music business,

which means that I produce festivals

and work in the studios,

playing trumpet, which is my main instrument

and go out on the road with different artists,

such as Kenny Chesney or delbert mcclinton,

or lynyrd skynyrd and go out and play shows

throughout the country doing that.

You know what I try to do to do with kids

when I'm working with kids is turn them on to music

and turn them onto the arts.

You know, I try to teach them,

since I'm teaching them trumpet.

I try to teach them about any kind of trumpet

that they want to know, whether it be rock and roll,

whether it be jazz, whether it be classical.

You know we get down to the basics so that they know

what to do and how to make sound out of it

and get it down and to be able to play in their,

in their school band,

but also develop an overall love for music.

Because a lot of these kids aren't going to be

professional musicians, you know, 99 out of a hundred

aren't going to be professional musicians,

just like the kid playing basketball down the street

is not going to be in the NBA,

but he's still getting a lot out of it.

And that's one of the things we're trying to also teach kids

is not to just become great musicians and great artists,

but to become fans of music.

(Soft music)

(Upbeat music)

♪ I've been painting this pictures ♪

♪ since I was teething ♪

♪ I'd be worth a million dollars ♪

♪ soon as I stop breathing ♪

♪ know my ♪

- [ Dr. Mcdonnell] As a mid sized regional museum.

We're really eager to bring the world of art

and have our community very knowledgeable

about the world of art in Wichita, Kansas.

We are a museum devoted to American art.

We have over 10,000 wonderful works in our collection.

(Soft music)

The first artwork that came into the collection

of the Wichita art museum is John steuart curry's,

Kansas corn field.

It was purchased in new York from a gallery there.

John steuart curry is a Kansas artist.

This is a iconic Kansas image.

I grew up in a large family that traveled all the time.

I lived in Europe for three times

before I graduated from high school.

My father was an English professor

and all of that had a profound impact on me.

So I was having really mind transforming art

experiences from early days,

and it was when I was in college and living in Vienna

that I determined that I loved being in art museum so much,

I was going to craft a life in art museums.

(Upbeat music)

The representative who was helping us

acquire the collection was in New York.

And Edward hopper was at the top of his game at that point.

We are so very blessed to have four Edward hopper's

in our collection.

(Upbeat music)

(Soft music)

- [Alisha] This painting is my favorite in the whole show,

because there's a lot of textures

and movement that's happening.

There's a lot of colors that are unexpected.

I'm an emotional person.

And so I'm looking for something that makes me linger

and look a little bit longer than I normally would.

And to me, that makes a successful piece.

So when I'm going to new shows at museums or galleries,

then I'm looking for something that just makes me go, "oh!"

And I usually it's some kind of connection.

There's something personal.

So with this piece,

I'm an outdoors type of person.

I grew up in north central, Kansas,

and I just love being outside.

So this gives me that feeling of being by myself.

- I think art is such a personal thing

and that you can find beauty in so many ways.

And so I think it's what makes a community unique,

what makes it vibrant and it's plays a huge part in my life.

So I'm thrilled to be able to live in Wichita

where we have an abundance of

art offerings for everybody.

Our keeper of the plains,

which is iconic for Wichita, it's our own statue of Liberty

- [trumane] To the Indians, the east

is where knowledge this day start.

So the east is very spiritual.

So everything relative to the Indian cultures, all of them.

Teepees, mainly the teepees,

then they erect teepees always to the east.

That's where the day starts, the sun rises.

And so everything starts from the east

and this one here, we face him to the west, the day's gone.

So now his face is the west.

The days completed started.

He finished his journey to the west.

So, anybody who is cognizant of that

starts the days every day,

say a prayer to the great creator.

And that's a gesture that he's in right there has a prayer,

prayer gesture prayed to the great creator.

I'm a three quarter kiowa and a quarter apache.

And my whole life has been here in Wichita.

My parents came here when I was about three years old,

never left, been here, which has been my home.

Wichita treated the Indians quite well.

There's 70 different tribes represented by

70 different flag right here,

but there's one thing in common,

they get greater anyway you look at it.

Anyway you peel that beliefs down in the middle.

There's a great creator.

He's still there, he'll always be there.

When you bid farewell to somebody,

in the non-Indian world, you just tell them goodbye.

While in the Indian world,

there's no such thing as a goodbye.

You say (speaks in foreign language)

It means I'm going now and I'll see you again.

(Upbeat music)

- [Liz] Most of the people that live here,

work outside of town.

A lot of people work in hutchison, Wichita, mcpherson.

A lot of them even drive to mcpherson or salina

are usually are daytime.

A lot of the traffic is just local farmers.

They have to come into town for fuel

or to eat at the restaurant or get their mail.

(Soft music)

And I try to,

I try to offer kids classes that it's inexpensive enough,

that all I'm doing is I'm not making anything.

I'm covering the canvas and the paints

and they come in and they,

they do have that opportunity to create something.

(Soft music)

I would like art to be back in our schools.

And like I said, it's been almost a decade

since we've had that.

I know the grade school teachers,

they try to incorporate something every month,

pretty much into their curriculum, but we don't have arts.

And I know that it's not in our budget.

(Soft music)

(Upbeat music)

- I teach art at mcpherson middle school

and I teach sixth, seventh, and eighth graders.

When we get them as sixth graders,

especially at the beginning of the year,

they're still just kids, you know,

and about halfway through the year,

then they turn into middle schoolers.

Their attitude towards art becomes better

because they see success

and they want to keep going with that.

And they just find a place where they're comfortable

and they can make choices of their own.

I think the most important thing about learning art is that

you learn to make decisions, you learn to be yourself.

And I think that's a really important thing to do

in school aged kids, because all day,

you're trying to be like your peers.

You are trying to get the right answer on tests.

You are trying to do things right.

And I think when you come here,

there's room for exploring what you want and what's right

for you instead of what's right for everyone else.

I think that success in art is hard to measure.

And it's hard to sell that as success budgets get tight.

It's just one of those things that isn't extra.

(Soft music)

♪ One two three four ♪

♪ reverb off drive ♪

(Guitar music)

- There weren't very many opportunities for students

to take part in music or the arts

afterschool here in mcpherson.

And so we felt like that was the best place for us to

to use our building, to use our skills, to use our,

our interests, to be able to create

an afterschool program for students that age.

But we wanted to create a space where they can be

in a safe environment to continue to grow

in a particular skill that they want to,

to work is the arts is you're kind of sharing

a part of yourself.

When you put yourself out there, it's a risk that you're,

you're kind of exposing yourself.

I know that for anybody who does performance art,

you're kind of putting yourself out there

in a vulnerable situation.

(Guitar music)

- I'm Sean yates, I'm 14.

I'm a freshman in high school

and I like music and arts and stuff so...

I feel like I'm lost in music.

I love it.

I mean, it's, it's just great.

It's a great escape for me from just normal life and stuff.

Staying up so late, sometimes one in the morning

doing homework and stuff, I feel like

I can get overworked and depressed

and feel like I can't do it,

but I pick up a guitar and I immediately forget

all my worries and stuff.

(Band playing rock and roll)

- If they have a passion to pursue that

anyone can call themselves an artist.

(Upbeat music)

- Well, technically I'm a professor,

but it's a lot more fun than it sounds.

I teach sheet metal and I teach

the history of automotive design.

Well, they learn all the different processes

that a person needs to restore an antique automobile.

So that would involve all the different mechanical

processes as well as things like paint and soft trim

and sheet metal shaping and woodworking.

It's very comprehensive program.

I think of it as a compulsion for us

who do this kind of work.

And that could be because you,

you want to to fix something or heal something.

We're looking at these objects

as these really important artifacts.

And it's very satisfying to be able to basically heal this

object but it there's also creativity involved if you,

if you're the one sowing the seat or shaping the metal,

it's definitely like traditional art in that sense

where there's a lot of craftsmanship involved.

(Guitar music)

The art comes from the drive of the people doing the work.

It's like a tribute to the craftsmanship

of the people who made it the first time

with the cars that were handmade cars.

You're basically walking in their footsteps,

recreating like with the roles,

the exact same processes, using the same tools

that they did to make this thing beautiful.

(Soft music)

- This room houses the school district art collection.

It's was at one time, the second largest art collection

for school district in the United States.

It started in 1911 and it was collected by students.

They would save their pennies and nickels and dimes

and would buy art for the, for the school district.

And there was a gentleman here in town,

name of Carl smalley who actually worked

for his father's seed company.

And even though he was supposed to be working,

selling seeds for his father,

he really was a patron of the arts.

And so he talked his father into letting him

have a small corner of the seed of the seed store.

And Carl put some prints and some books and some

little pieces of pottery and so forth

and started selling art from his father's seed store.

Eventually this grew into his own store.

And at one time it was said that mcpherson

had more art per capita than New York or Los Angeles.

- [Betty] Yesterday, I noticed that

when we were out on the prairie,

it had rained and you can smell the grasses

(soft music)

Maxwell wildlife refuge is a home for

a very large bison herd.

And those two are our main attraction of the refuge.

Sits on 2,800 acres of native prairie.

There's art in just about everything.

Seed pots on, on our plants out here,

the closeups, you can't maybe tell that it's

a seed pot off of a piece of grass.

But it's beautiful when there's a lot of dew and moisture.

I have seen webs that have been made

in the grass that is so artistic.

Yeah, I mean, really it is a big painting.

(Soft music)

(Upbeat music)

- Welcome to tick tock pueblo.

What we do at tick tock is we are an anticafe,

which is a pay per minute social space.

And what we do is we check people in.

And from that point they pay 8 cents per person per minute,

and everything else is free.

So the coffee is really incidental.

We say, you'll pay for a minute coffee shop

because anticafe is not a word.

We have art in here because this is

intrinsically a creative space.

Whether that creativity is writing, whether it's,

you know, building your own business,

whether it's actually doing physical art

we're a creative space.

(Upbeat music)

I think that fear is a really big kind of,

de-motivator both in terms of making art,

like it was talking about with myself

and that fear of I'm not going to be any good at this,

but also fear of kind of looking at your own motivations,

looking internally because art makes us look internally

and not wanting to confront anything about yourself.

In any sort of world that wants you to conform.

That wants you to be the same as every single other person

do the same as every single other person,

anything artistic at all is an act of rebellion.

- I love this piece.

(Laughs)

It says, I am a follower of rude people.

Many people have no clue what outsider art is.

They've never been exposed to it before.

Many people, when they consider art, they consider,

as I said, our beautiful western collection,

western landscapes, you know, much more mainstream art.

This is a completely new experience for many people.

People can walk in here and say,

"oh, you know, my four year old could do this."

But that's not the point.

Yes your four year old can do this.

Everybody can do this.

It's everybody can explore their creative side,

create something that, yeah, it is.

It's not for anyone else.

It's just for the artist creating it.

(Soft music)

An outsider artist is someone who is not

formally educated in art.

And it's more of a passionate something they need to do.

It's something that they, they are compelled to create.

It's something within themselves.

I think all art has its place.

It does I mean, it's all expression, it's all creating

(soft music)

- Everybody that walks by anywhere in the world,

everything around you is art, you know,

everything from architecture to advertisements,

to the design of cars, to, you know, anything.

Everything in our society revolves around design.

I am a silkscreen poster artist,

I'm a pretty focal person.

So, you know, for instance, when I was

playing in the band, that was my focus.

I really didn't do anything else outside of that

until I kinda got into the artwork side.

And nowadays kind of similarly, I only focus on artwork.

I really don't do anything else outside of this,

just because I like to put my whole heart

into what I'm doing.

And so anybody who find something they love to do creatively

and pursues it wholeheartedly, you know,

and it could be anything, whatever you choose,

as long as you do it with everything you have.

I think there's a lot of people who have the ability

to create wonderful things,

but they're not willing to take the chance

to pursue that to the end you know.

I think a lot of the...

I think a lot of society is gonna try

and keep you from doing that.

You know, again, back with financial reasons

and family reasons and lots of different stuff.

So yeah, I think it's very against creatives,

but at the same time I think it's important for creatives to

dig their own hole and make their own place

and not to be deterred by any exterior circumstance.

I think art is the most integral part of life.

- [Radeaux] This is my gallery, the John deaux art gallery.

I represent about 25 local artists.

(Soft music)

I try to tell artists,

it's not so much talent that's important

but perseverance, you know.

The more stubborn you are about it,

the more successful you may be.

You know, sometimes it's a struggle too for all artists,

but, but it's quite rewarding too.

You know, I can't imagine not having art on my walls

or in my life, you know.

I think people that don't have it

are really missing out on something,

but they don't know they're missing out.

(Soft music)

- [Man] From 1980 till really about five years ago.

So several decades, this quarter of a million

square feet meat packing plant was abandoned.

Art has been used prolifically throughout

generations here in pueblo,

especially when you look at tagging graffiti art, mural art,

you look at large self-expression works.

The pueblo levee is in the guinness world record book

as the longest continuous mural in the world.

So we have this tradition of self expression

in a lot of different formats.

So watertower place is iconic in a lot of different ways.

One, it's imposing because it is 250,000 square feet

adjacent to 25 to the interstate here with 2 million bricks

in a very gorgeous kind of mid century modern design.

And the water towers are iconic because you can see them

from the north, from the south,

from the east and from the west.

But it's iconic in the sense that we have this

actual physical, you know meat packing plant

that represents one of the great industries that brought,

you know, fortune to this community.

But now because of its design,

it's iconic in the sense that it allows us to be really

thoughtful in the way that we create very meaningful spaces

for artists, for creatives, for makers

to actually do what it is that they do best.

(Soft music)

(Upbeat music)

- I passed on when you came

and took pure things around this town here.

So it must have been real exciting for you though.

- Oh my goodness it was.

Again, if my mother ever knew

some of the things I got into.

I am Mrs. Eleanor mallaby.

I came to Glenwood Springs in may of 1885,

a new bride from Columbus, Ohio.

(Upbeat music)

- I'm Jasper ward.

I was born in 1850 in Franklin county in the north.

My brothers and I, my mother and my sisters came west

after civil war when our forum was burned.

- This specific character,

Mrs. Eleanor mallaby is fourth generation.

Her great friend daughter happened to have

her handwritten, Eleanor his hand written memories.

Got to meet her great granddaughter

and she could hand me down the oral history

of her family to know who this woman was.

People don't have the whole story.

We are trying to give the background

every day feelings that these people had.

We have today.

We shared the mistakes that were made.

Perhaps we can help make it better for the next generation.

- Jasper represents that part of the west,

that the story is really not been fully told yet.

(Upbeat music)

My job is to keep history alive.

And Glenwood Springs has a very rich history.

So it's not a difficult job at all.

And part of that is portraying as a portrayalist,

a character that I could identify with

that's part of the history of this area.

(Upbeat music)

We're right at the verge here in

Glenwood Springs of losing our soul.

What made this a community is the history

that tied it together.

When you're tied to an electronic device

that you become not depicted may not be the word,

but if you become dependent upon.

If she can get them away from that back to just free time

for the imagination to run wild,

the arts then bring that a lot.

And we lose that, you lose the soul of who you are

as a culture, as a town, as a country.

(Upbeat music)

- [Joyce] Some people will say like with fine art,

what do I do with this?

Or, you know, it doesn't have a purpose.

And I always say,

I really don't need my art to be functional,

but I love my functional items to be art.

So I like everything.

And I feel like everything is,

oh, you're just blessed.

If you're an artist, you know, in every and everything is,

everything comes from creativity, problem solving,

enrichment enjoyment, you know.

I think everybody is an artist.

I really do think you are, you know, yes.

I don't think it has to be one thing.

And sometimes I'll meet artists who are really talented,

but they don't have like the business aspect of it.

And I try to explain if you're not just really passionate

about it and it's everything and you have to do it,

don't do it as a business, just do it for joy.

(Soft music)

- [Troy] We specialize in making these

barrel aged sour beers.

And so that is really my favorite.

One of the only forms of art expression

that I do is the blending aspect.

So the best part of my job is when

we're able to start tasting barrels

and seeing what flavors we get

and what happens when you add those two

three or four barrels together.

So that the idea of the blending process

is that one plus one equals three.

We're trying to create a blend that's greater

than the sum of its parts.

(Soft music)

And you could compare the blending process,

of what we do to make these beers with painting.

So we try to create as many different flavors as we can

kind of the same way that a painter

might want to have a lot of different colors to use

with what they're trying to do.

So that's kind of how we describe it is we want to have

tons of different flavors and the barrels

so that we're not limited by what we can achieve

with that blending process.

Similar to, I would assume how a painter

wants to have as many different colors as they can get,

to make what they're trying to do.

What is an artist for me?

Somebody that works with their hands.

Somebody that creates something that the average

from ingredients that the average person

wouldn't be able to make something to that level of skill.

It's easy to not, if you don't understand something

you have a negative view of it,

but the more you begin to understand a product or process,

the more you'll be able to see that there is

definitely a lot of art that goes into what we do here.

(Soft music)

(Upbeat music)

(Soft music)

- In northeastern Nevada where we live,

there's only 50,000 people in the entire county.

The towns serve far spread apart,

many people think 50 miles outside of the great basin

is an overnight trip.

What you do with a six year old kindergartner

to go one way into school bus to

go to school five days a week.

And we, we think nothing up.

It's just the way we live.

And we don't regard this as unusual

because you're never a good tourist in your own backyard.

And you don't realize that this is unique.

It's just the way we are in the way we live.

And we're fine with it.

The heritage of cowboy culture is one that

embraces the old traditional ways.

Our cowboys still go out on the range on horseback

and they camp out in cowboy teepee tents,

just like their predecessors did 100 170 years ago.

It really hasn't changed, but yet the ranchers nowadays

have different ways of tracking their livestock.

They keep computer records, they have cell phones,

although cell services, a little sketchy

in places around here.

But cowboys love to embrace those,

those traditions that have gone on for 150 years.

(Soft music)

(Soft music)

- I am a first generation basque American.

So the basque people in the time of the war

back in Spain and France actually were very repressed.

And that repression led to a lot of families having to

immigrate to other countries for survival really?

And so Nevada became a hub of many of the Basques

because they came here as sheep herders.

And so that immigration started in the thirties

and really became even more prominent

in the sixties, the early sixties.

The things that we are trying to

preserve most are dance, the tree carvings.

So if you go to any of the mountain areas

in northeastern Nevada, you'll see these tree carvings

and a tree carvings can be anything from

how they felt about politics at the time,

to like their love for their homeland.

And they're missing their families back home that they left

to what life was like out, out in the open.

(Soft music)

My mom didn't know English when she went to school,

my dad never went to school in america,

but their goal was that we knew English.

And so it's very typical, you know,

the basque language was almost lost

because of this story right here is

they so wanted their children to be able to

integrate into American culture.

So happy to have the opportunity here

that that basque language was almost lost here.

(Upbeat music)

- I like mechanisms.

I like to see the way things move and the way they work.

And I always have.

Since I was a little kid I wanted to be an inventor.

And I've kind of incorporated that into my art,

with the kinetic art aspect of it,

where my sculptures actually do move and do things.

I'm inspired lot by the mechanics of machinery

and the mechanics of nature

and how we can put those together

to make weird mechanical robot animals and whatnot.

Everyone has their own opinion on what is and is not art.

(Soft music)

(Upbeat music)

- When I first started working at the foundry, I didn't,

I didn't know much about art.

I mean, I just needed the job, right?

I mean, at 19 years old, I needed the job.

I ended up being good at it.

And the longer I worked at a foundry,

then I got exposed to different types are, you know,

anything from, you know, regular wildlife type art,

you know, realistic figures.

The second foundry I worked at did more contemporary work.

And that was my first exposure to contemporary artwork,

which is quite different.

And it took me a little while to understand it,

more talk with artists, ask them questions.

And it was a real learning experience.

When the cup's full he'll just move on to the next one

no excitement guys.

Our work can be a lot of different things.

I mean, it might be somebody painting a mural on a wall.

It might be, you know, like, like some of the old buildings,

they have an old billboard on there.

And we, you know, in baker that it's important.

We keep that stuff, you know, I mean, it's,

it's for people to see.

You know, I know that it comes at an expense

and so you have to weigh,

you know, is the expense of the art worth the return.

And so what's the return?

Is the return people spending money here?

I don't know, I mean, the return might just be

the fact that people are pleased and they like to see it,

you know, so, and maybe they come back again

because they enjoyed the experience.

(Upbeat music)

- Hello, welcome to Churchill school.

- Yeah, come on in.

- We saw a big sort of shift in the community

into believing that arts had a place in a rural economy.

We had seen certain artist that was in the catskills

that had an old elementary school as his home in his studio.

And we thought that would be a really cool thing

for a place like baker.

- So, I mean, we're really not

motivated by making a lot of money,

but we're motivated to make sure that we pay our bills here.

So we're trying to make sure that, you know, that happens,

but we are always super excited to have

artists producing artwork here.

(Soft music)

My background is in the fashion industry.

So I did hair and makeup.

Well, first started out as owning a couple of salons

in Chicago and then moved to New York.

And I did hair and makeup for pretty much every magazine.

- So when living in Chicago,

I used to produce and direct a live music show

that was part of cable access.

(Upbeat music)

We have artists in virtually every space

when you're able to do something, that's a creative outlet.

It helps you deal with whatever issues

you might be having internally.

The arts sometimes give you the opportunity

when you're not feeling good to express yourself

in a way that's constructive versus destructive

and able to provide spaces and be in a place where

creativity is sort of championed and celebrated

like that's an important thing.

(Upbeat music)

- I'd give a hundred dollars, give him 100 on it.

Now 145.

(Guitar music)

- Contemporary art, it does test the limits

for some people's tolerances.

I mean, as whit was saying, the,

the two pieces of metal, you know,

kind of a minimalist piece that, you know,

people wonder why, why that would be considered art.

And I think that,

I think that there are kind of two different levels.

I think that there's a kind of an intellectual level

and there's almost a body response to forms.

It's like a body response to a beautiful sunset.

You don't have to be, you know,

you don't have to know about great painters doing sunsets

or any of that other stuff you,

all you have to do is be in front of it

and feel a certain way.

And that, that is art.

It's not the intellectual art.

It's not the historians art, it's not that.

And those, and then we have stacks and stacks of books

about those things that give reasons why

those two sheets of metal are so profound

in baker city, actually here has turned the corner

into a very artistic town, very art center.

It's, it's amazing to me how much energy

is in town for, for the arts now.

And when I was kid and lived here and went to school here.

It wasn't so, you know, there was a certain style.

You did the mountain to look like the mountain

and you didn't mess with it and if you did,

you'd be doing something wrong.

(Soft music)

- What I love about Clay is it is a very tactile medium.

It's also very forgiving.

It's been a frustrating journey because I've had a lot.

You...

Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't,

but that also has been very good for me

because it's nice not to learn to live

with not always being in control.

So that's probably what I like most about

about art is just the process of creating.

Once I have it conceived in my mind, then it's a,

then it's just a matter of executing it and dealing with

the material and how the material is going to react

to what I wanted to do.

Art is so many things.

It's so many things to so many different people,

but for me as an educator,

I think it's all about

being able to communicate and express yourself

in a unique and individual way

with no right or wrong answers.

You get to art, art majors.

What I think it majors our culture.

It determines it communicates to those around us.

And it does so, and in lots of times,

there are things that we know

that we can communicate with art,

but we can't express it verbally,

but we can express it in music.

We can express it in theater.

We can express it visually.

And that's what art is.

I don't think art will ever go away.

I think we need it as a culture.

I think we need it as individual people.

(Soft music)

So many of those things in school today say there's a right.

There's a right answer and a wrong answer.

And I think we need to,

we need to, particularly we're all communities,

your education is the key.

And we have to have in our public,

we have to have it in our public schools

to help children learn to think that way

and to not learn, to think that way,

but be allowed to be creative.

♪ I've been looking ♪

♪ for majestic ♪

♪ all my wondering days ♪

♪ searching god's creation ♪

♪ for the answers to prayers I've prayed ♪

♪ tryna see the simple beauty ♪

♪ looking for majestic ♪

♪ seems like all my years ♪

(Upbeat music)

- I always say that arts is a way you package a city.

It's the way that you bring personality.

It's the way that you bring passion.

So this council has been incredibly supportive

of making sure that we are really

infusing art in the city of Reno.

And I think that was something that was missed

for a very long time,

whether it's planning infrastructure within streets, right?

Or within buildings.

And so we always like to as a council,

ask those developers, "where do you see arts and culture

fitting into this project?"

And so we start to educate them why arts and culture

are so important, not only for economic development,

but for bringing a community together.

If you can imagine a building that has no personality,

no arts and culture embedded in it, you really,

it doesn't really take on any life of its own.

And it really sort of, I say it doesn't have a soul.

So we want to bring sort of the soul and personality

and passion into those projects.

And we believe that that comes through art.

I think more than ever public art is critical.

Remember it brings communities together.

There's many times I can walk outside to the belief sign

or to the whale, and there'll be people gathered around it,

taking pictures, talking about it.

And I think that is important when it comes to public art.

And it's something that you can give back

to your entire community if you plan it correctly.

And that's another thing that I love about art politically.

We don't see it becoming a Democratic or republican issue.

We see it, you know, something that we can all

come together on and support one another on.

And so I think art also plays

a very big role, politically.

- I had been here for about 10 or 12 years with a business,

and I noticed that there was starting to be an influx

of new young professionals coming over from California

with the higher taxes and their Tesla and switch and Google.

And I could see that there was a rebirth coming

and I decided I wanted to participate.

Art is a, gives people a new way to look at their downtown.

The area that we're in was a very difficult area

with a lot of problems.

And so people kind of looked at western half of

downtown Reno as an area they didn't want to visit.

They didn't wanna have anything to do with it.

It was a doormat so to speak

and art livens the soul,

and it gets people excited and interested and activated.

And all of the above is what

it's helping to bring to downtown Reno.

You know, when we started putting art up on fourth street,

when this art came about, people were looking at it,

they didn't understand what I was doing, you know,

and, but within a couple of days,

selfies are coming out and people

they're making that art part of their life.

They're interacting with that art

and art enlivens the soul, and the folks are enjoying it.

Well, it's going to be a 30 year overnight success story.

You know, it's not going to happen overnight,

but we did this in Cleveland as well.

And so we think it gives people a chance to look at their,

their life and their community a little differently,

a little more uplifting.

(Soft music)

- [Jennifer] Public art is a specific idea or concept.

So I think it depends on what role

it's playing in its community.

If it's meant to be, you know, a social dialogue,

if it's meant to be a popup exhibit to give

excitement or life to a community.

So you have to kind of understand the integrity

behind the piece before.

So I guess it's more about the idea than

it is about the specific piece.

With my own personal public art.

I wanted to share my voice and also share

that I wanted to be a part of the community and share,

you know, that expression or that joy that art can give.

I think it's very inspiring to see a community

and not just the arts community, but to see the community,

you know, the neighborhoods be so acceptance of

a little bit more color or a little bit more dialogue

through the visual aspect.

I do think that murals sometimes it's this,

I dunno, it's like a fine line.

Like, what is it exactly?

Is it a commission billboard or is it a,

a tag where an artist is expressing

maybe a political or social view,

which is where murals kind of started from?

(Soft music)

- I was born in Philippines and I grew up in stockton,

but now I've been here in Reno for about 25 years.

There's no employment where I came from.

I came in when it was around 1990s.

We need more artists and we need to

try to give them more benefits.

Cause I know art is not really a month to month income,

but we need to encourage the young generation

to express through art and you can make money of it.

But I know it might take a while.

(Soft music)

New generation nowadays,

they're so busy with their phones or gadgets and all that,

but I think we need to put our cell phone down

or any gadgets down and just go out in a weekend

and just go to the museum.

I think that's why we lack of his time.

(Soft music)

- [Michelle] When I started, when I was eight,

I had a pie buckskin dress that was handed down,

made by my great grandmother.

So buckskin is the hide of a deer.

And at the time I thought I was the most

boring ass thing, there's no shiny on there.

The beads were like basic colors, red, green, no shine.

And then I would see that some other girls dancing

with their fancy shawls or their jingle dresses.

And I was like, wow, that's what I wanna do.

But in my family handed down my family was not that.

So I was like, okay, well I guess I'm stuck dancing this.

I used to watch mtv as much as I could.

I would watch Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, Paula Abdul.

I was a big mc hammer fan.

That was my first concert I went to.

So we had no more outfits.

And so I kind of threw myself into watching the,

watching those entertainers all the time.

Then I came back to my culture after having been

classically music trained after doing

classical music so long, it wasn't fulfilling me anymore.

Going into other countries or even on reservations

where they've had a lot of suicide or things like that.

We would use these dances somewhat in a modern way

because it's a healing dance and I'd still wear the dress,

whether it's plain or, or really just decorative.

The purpose behind the dances for healing at that moment.

(Upbeat music)

♪ Been looking for majestic ♪

♪ Rose among the thorns ♪

♪ in the sunrise ♪

♪ in in the canyon ♪

♪ in the thunder before the storm ♪

♪ in the mountain Ridge ♪

♪ where the wind and trees unite ♪

♪ looking for majestic ♪

♪ searching all my life ♪

(Soft music)

- Love was part of the first show that

the foundation arranged for us.

There were 80 weddings that occurred in the letters of love.

(Soft music)

Artists are a unique group of people on the planet.

99% are wonderful, decent, intelligent,

very capable and very

progressive in their thinking.

They've said the most important quality of art

is to please our species

and whatever does that is good art.

If it's dancing, if it's writing it's,

whatever those forms are most successful

and many, many people enjoy them.

And the famous artists and the non-famous artists

are equally skilled in my opinion.

Well, we've been having a sculpture garden for 23 years

and we mostly have local artists.

Some are a little bit further away,

and most of them are local artists that I got to meet

and invite to show in our garden.

(Soft music)

- [Sonia] I believe artwork is something that should be

interacted with when we're children,

we're raised to sort of stand back from art

and look at it in a museum.

And we're not really encouraged to really interact with art.

And it gives them a different idea

of what art means to them.

It's not something that's removed from you,

but it's a part of you.

And I think that that's really the essence of what art is

here in the sculpture grove.

And hopefully in other places around the world,

- food is an art form.

Obviously taste is another sense that you want to

as important and more and more

food is more than taste it's appearance and smell

all of those things go to make food

an obviously an art form for sure.

(Upbeat music)

- [Joshua] I think, you know, the job of most art

is to create almost like a language, whether whatever it is.

And I don't know,

I think like for, at least for me,

I'm trying to say something through my art.

And if you end up kind of pulling that out of me,

it's hopefully that adds to the artwork.

But sometimes like with art, there's, there's like a,

like, I always think of art and its reaction

similar to like a relationship in that,

sometimes people have like this instant

mutual kind of spark or attraction

and they kind of get together and then it builds from there.

So like the more you learn about the piece or the person,

the more you fall in love with it,

- art just always kind of held my interests.

I ended up moving a lot as a child.

Like I was born in Miami, then moved to Canada.

Then we were in Oklahoma then Nicaragua then here.

And so just moving around a lot,

I always had art to just kind of hold my interest

instead of like, it was just something that I always kind of

felt safe with and at home with.

- I think that there's an easy like

mental exercise you could play where you just say,

"how would the world look if you eliminated artist."

It's hard to explain how the, why the world would need art.

But if you think about how look when you move,

when you remove it, I think that's an easier argument

to kind of convince people how important it is.

- Well, I started out in la as a very

traditional black and white photographer

and for decades loved working in a dark room

and I'm only fairly recently made the transition to digital.

So definitely there's a lot of emotion in my work.

I bring my own intention to the work,

but I also know that any viewer,

any visitor is going to bring their own baggage with them,

their own perspective, their own emotions.

So I leave it open to the viewer.

(Soft music)

Some people would say no,

but I know some of my work has been social issue oriented.

And I absolutely believe that it can be art

and it can have political statements,

but I also always want to leave room for people to bring

the viewer, to bring what they want to bring to it.

(Soft music)

- I came from Mexico like about six years ago.

And I started working here in this barbershop,

like about a year ago.

When I started going to college,

I wanted to become like an artist.

Like I'm an animator artist doing more like stories

and drawings at the same time, like making books.

Cause I like to try to try to.

Barber actually like changed my mind totally.

Now my dream is like, as a barber as an artist barber.

(Soft music)

Most of the barbers nowadays, it's just like,

they just want to like cut hair and get money.

But there's, for me, it's more like a passion.

I do it because I like it.

I didn't even expect the money at the beginning.

I was just like, I just wanted it to become like good.

My best version pretty much.

And then I've been like practicing every time,

I've been staying pretty late,

waking up early and then I've been practicing a lot.

Not everybody can be an artiste, its not an inside thing.

This is a passion you got a feeling,

it's not something like, you just want to do art

and then start doing it.

I feel like there need to be a motivator.

They gotta start looking at life in a better way.

(Upbeat music)

You actually can become an artist,

if you really like compromise yourself.

And like, put in time on it.

Cause I, I have seen like people who

used to draw pretty bad

but when they started taking my classes

and then like, it's actually a long way,

but after like five, six years,

they become pretty good artists.

Like, so everyone can become an artist

if they really focused on that.

(Soft music)