pacific american community since 1972. making ksw the oldest arts organization in the country. nurturing that creative spirit is the artistic director, a multitalented artist as well as visionary. welcome. >> thank you very much. >> give us a little in tirms of people who have heard of it. >> it is the oldest multidisciplinary asian pacific arts organization in this country. we are entering our 45th year this year. we started out over in the ihotel. and you know, what happened there when they were evicted from the hotel we were too as well. we moved around all over the city in those 45 years. it's been most in the south market district in san francisco. >> it was a very thriving artistic area. give me an idea of multidisciplinary arts. it's hard enough to focus on one and your group was sort of dedicated to try to make sure that a lot of the arts were covered. >> yeah. >> how difficult is it that. >> it's a balancing act, but i mean, we try to make sure we give equal time to where we can get it but there are other arts organizations that can do some of the different arts like studios and theater, but we, you know, our focus has been around visual arts, literary and music. we center around six different disciplines, music, literature, visual arts, comics and illustration, performing arts and also film and that's kind of like, you know -- and we're always open to different types of arts. we do a fashion show every year called celebrate your body and that's also, you know -- >> always branching out. >> uh-huh. >> i like the word workshop too. because in the arts, workshop, for artists being able to work it out, start with the idea and the premise and then work it out and you know, get it to a form where you can kind of present it. that's a very crucial stage and one that is very lacking especially for asian american artis artists. >> and from the very beginning artists knew that the way we can support each other is to create a space where we can create art together and also help develop our skills. and you know, what we try to do through our programming is support the artist at every step and every stage of their artistic career, so we -- you know, we have our programs, we have workshops, we have a fiction workshop coming up, just a basic fiction workshop. we just did a story telling workshop with a comedian -- local comedian. she's awesome. >> how do people get involved? how do aspiring artists get involved with your group? you can hit us up on our website, get on to our mailing list from there. you could also visit our social media pages and kind of drop us a line. >> i mean, that's very important. i think that is very crucial that you create a community of artists because it's very difficult to thrive on your own without some support even if it's emotional support. >> yeah, and i think, you know, people have this idea that arts, you know is some kind of like lonesome process. it doesn't have to be. we believe it in being a communal process. >> and you relate to that because you're an artist yourself. >> you have a show coming up? >> yes, i do. over? z space in san francisco. my show is called control and it's a mixture of poetry, story telling and other different types of multimedia and in, you know, being able to put those type of things together, i mean, it doesn't happen alone. >> you get to do it from both kind of an administrative and creative end. congratulations. >> thank you. >> to see jason at the commemoration festival, the show will run on select evenings at z space in san francisco and you can get more details on the schedule on nbc bay area.com. go check it out. >> stay with us. our next guest was born and raised in hawaii, currently lives in oakland and was a founding artist of the group vision tactics. now you get to see some of his work here. welcome to the show. >> thank you very much. >> people probably feel like they know, but generally speaking essentially what is a visual artist? >> so i think a visual artist is someone who takes a piece of culture and either isolates it or elevates it somehow in order to transform it or evoke a emotional response from people or get them to think specifically about something to make it sort of strange in some ways so that people reconsider what's going on in our society. >> that's exactly what i thought it was. i tell you what, let's take a look at some of your work here and tell us a little bit about what you're doing. >> so i work in paper sculpture and i usually focus on a specific neighborhood or community as a way of looking at textures and histories of neighborhoods. so this project was at the college art museum where i -- and i worked with a number of businesses in the 25th neighborhood of oakland and sort of created specific sculptural exchanges that i had with those businesses so in the mid ground there you can see a big open sign and that was actually with telegraph cleaners and the proprietor there weighing the clothing and i made some paper clothing and i asked him to alter it with thread so you can really see what he does. >> give me an idea, are you always there to kind of talk ain't or are they kind of more subject to interpretation as people look at it? >> i think that's one of the nice things about visual arts. in some ways the art is meant to stand in for you and so i think the nice thing about that is for people who, you know, may not respond to direct conversation or a way to transcend lank wgua. >> if people get something out of it that maybe you weren't even intending that's a good thing. right? >> yeah, and so it's a flexible medium. >> how about for you? what's your background and training in terms of getting ready to do this and being able to do it now? >> i went through sort of the formal education process, got a studio arts understood grad and msa and i also have the background in community arts so did murals and prop posters for community organizations as well. so i'm trying to blend both of those kinds of perspectives. >> when you were going through your basic education and your awareness there, were you already feeling constricted a little bit by what you were seeing? did you have that feeling of wanting to break outs or break new ground? did you have that feeling when you were doing that or did that come later? >> it's a place of wanting to imagine sort of like the proactive -- that's the nice thing about being an artist. there may be things in society that you're struggling against but art gives you a way to create a new reality or suggest something different and so it's always been sort of this proactive positive outlet for me. >> i meant more in terms of being restricted by the traditional sort of things that you were learning and break beyond that, and you've been able to do that. i notice though that you have had show cases in a lot of different places. tokyo, is tokyo different than opening an exhibit in atlanta? do you keep that in mind or is your exhibits pretty universal as far as you're concerned? >> i think that's always a challenge trying to figure out what the different concepts are and i think that varies from project to project. some of the thing social security specific to a particular neighborhood but some of the other work that i do hopefully can transcend some of those things and open up bridges with other cultural sort of contexts. >> well, looking at your work i think you're doing that. thank you. >> thank you. well, next up, poet michelle lynn, so stay with us. (burke) at farmers, we've seen almost everything, so we know how to cover almost anything. even a "truck-cicle." [second man] how you doing? [ice cracking] [second man] ah,ah, ah. oh no! [first man] saves us some drilling. [burke] and we covered it, february fourteenth, twenty-fifteen. talk to farmers. we know a thing or two because we've seen a thing or two. ♪ we are farmers. bum-pa-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum ♪ and welcome back. our next artist is a poet and like jason is a fellow of an organization to cultivation of asian american literature. michelle lynn, she's released a poetry collection a house made of water which will have a release celebration later which we will talk about. welcome to the show. >> thank you for having me. >> the book "a house made of water" and you'll have a performance for us later on. tell us how you got started as a poet and as well as your connection with workshop. >> i guess i started writing since really, really young and this book itself, i guess it's gone through many perm mutations. i've been working on it since about seven years. i was drawn to poetry since i was a kid. i was a nonnative english speaker and as i was learning english i always was fluent in taiwanese. so it offered a way for me to play with languages and play with the english language in a way that i felt i was making a tongue for myself. it pushed the limits of it so a lot of this book does this where it's playing with the language in a way that i can then explore other things too. >> when you were doing so much work and putting so much into it, how do you decide what gets put in the book? >> it's very difficult. i was fortunate to be able to study poetry at the university of california river side and i worked with poets and then i went to university of pittsburgh to do my msa in poetry and i worked with poets there as well so they really did guide me a lot through this book. a lot of it was i had a lot of material accumlated over the years and i had to decide what are the stories that i want to express. >> that personal connection has to be made so what you choose, it's a lot about you. >> yeah. >> now, you were nice enough to pick a poem to read for us. what are we going to hear and why did you pick this poem? >> so i actually picked a poem that's a little more new and i'm not sure why i picked this one. i felt like it has -- i actually wrote this near the conclusion of working on this book so i felt like it is kind of the next step after this book because for me as a poet as someone who's constantly working on my art it doesn't end with a book. i guess like the project is never finished so i was thinking a lot about the scenes going on in the book and what more i wanted to say about it so in terms of family immigration history and kind of playing with those stories and i read a lot about gender as well, so speaking about that. >> okay. >> okay. the year of the horse is dead. and so is the year of breaking and brokenness. this beach and you upon my back wielding your heaviest sword. i rare back before women before eunstabl eunstabled. pinned apart for discovery. the sight you see breaches there is a dark opening endlessly on itself. like so, i have my soul to stand on stone and then i furl the dread by taillight. melted me to the point of weapon. drew the dagger down my own throat and then i spit the jewel back to you to where yes, they will point to your own throat, yes, there was the bride unbridled in the mouth. but first i felt the claim of english and then i bit down. >> very nice. >> thank you. >> it's very lyrical. that's one thing in a way that you touched on which is poetry can be something that can touch an entire community because in a way, it -- the rhythm of it and the lyrical kind of feeling of a poem can be kind of translated and used by a lot of different communiti communities. >> definitely. >> how about for you? the performance part of it? you wrote it, you have all those thoughts in there but now in reading it out loud have you discovered anything about yourself in being able to present it so it reflects what you want it to reflect? >> i think poetry is a communal act. i hang out with a lot of poets and other artists and we're talking about what kind of work we want to do and so for me my poems are always a way of speaking to other poets as well and wanting to join the conversation and asking the questions and furthering the conversations with them. and so when i'm writing the poems it's actually oral act for me too so i read it a lot aloud. several times i record myself reading it and i listen to it and that's the way i edit and revise the music. i always think about the performance as well. >> you did a great job. >> thank you. >> the workshop presents michelle lin. a house made of water as well as works from other artists. that rb march 17th at 8:00 p.m. and coming up, a musical performance from a very unique duo. astro logic is up next. stay with us. hhhhhhhhhh! the price you see is the price you pay, unlike cable. at air wick we know the power of that first whiff of your favorite scent. ♪ air wick freshmatic releases timed bursts of the fragrances you love. so that first whiff feeling never fades. air wick freshmatic. ♪ ♪ [one is the loneliest number that you'll ever do] ♪ nobody likes a dog with bad breath. that's why there's oravet dental hygiene chews. oravet's dual action approach cleans teeth and gets to the underlying cause of bad breath by blocking bacteria to help prevent plaque and tartar. for a cleaner mouth everyone can love. ask your vet about oravet chews. serious oral care made simple no more. we don't want anymore! keep calm. the price you see is the price you pay, unlike cable. at&t internet. speeds up to 45megs for $30 a month. >> astro logic is a duo with emphasis in soul, reggae and r and b. with me is astro logic who hail from san jose. welcome to the show. >> hi. >> give us a quick history of your group and how far you've been able to progress. >> well, we literally met just like in a garage. and through a mutual friend and he had been wanting us to connect for a long time saying that we were just so like each other and then we met and it was just magic ever since. we've never separated since then. >> progressed enough to put an album together. >> we put it out a while ago but we just released the music video for the first time and it was our first music video ever and it's like a huge step for us. so we're really happy to have that out there. >> give me an idea here, what are we going to hear? >> we are hearing "hear and now," an original tune. >> thank you very much for being here. all right. astro logic. please enjoy. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [ applause ] >> all right. >> thank you very much. stay with us for one more song? >> sure. >> if you want to hear more information about the workshop and its events go to nbc bay area.com. we are also on twitter and facebook and we are going to go out with more from astrologik. thanks for watching and see you next week. ♪ he stands by, but you're mischaracterizing what this ruling makes us look week. >> johnny b. goode. good morning. welcome to sunday today. we are waking up to another busy sunday morning including the passing of music icon chuck berry. much more on his life in just a moment. plus another security scare at the white house. the man detained last night after he drove up to a security check point in a suspicious vehicle just hours after someone else jumped a barrier outside the white house fence. president trump in

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