Friday, June 2nd, 2006

The art of kearny street workshop's early members 

a slide show and talk by Nancy Hom

Presented by Manilatown Heritage Foundation
Co-presented with KSW

featuring work by

Jim Dong
Nancy Hom
Leland Wong
Zand Gee
Leon Sun

and others

Left: No More Violence Against Asians, silkscreen print by Nancy Hom, 1996

Join the Manilatown Heritage Foundation and KSW for an evening viewing and celebrating the art of KSW's early members. Visual artist and former KSW executive director Nancy Hom will be giving a powerpoint presentation showcasing the work of Jim Dong, Nancy Hom, Leland Wong, Zand Gee, and Leon Sun. 

KSW is the oldest multidisciplinary Asian American arts organization in the country. It was founded 33 years ago in San Francisco’s Chinatown/Manilatown neighborhood, and was housed in the International Hotel until its eviction from the site in 1977. The Workshop was part of a grassroots art movement that pioneered innovative and influential forms of Asian American art, including Asian American jazz, small press publications, silkscreen posters and large-scale public murals. Several noted visual artists emerged from that time period.

Date: Friday, June 2nd, 2006

Time: 7-9 PM

Location: Manilatown Center, 868 Kearny Street @ Jackson Street, San Francisco

Cost: free; donations gratefully accepted.

Information: 415-777-1130; www.manilatown.org

About the artists
Nancy Hom, former executive director of Kearny Street Workshop, was one of those artists. She has created silkscreened posters for numerous community events and causes throughout the Bay Area and also nationally. She will give a slide presentation of her artwork, along with the some of the work of her early KSW colleagues, such as:

Jim Dong, co-founder and former director of Kearny Street Workshop, has been a muralist, illustrator, and photographer as well as a master silkscreen printmaker. He has exhibited in major museums and galleries in San Francisco. He has resided in Hawaii for many years, and his silkscreen artwork is rarely shown. Some of his murals, including the ones he designed for KSW and the I-Hotel, are no longer in existence. This is a unique chance to see some of the amazing images created by this influential artist. 

Leon Sun is a photographer, printmaker and writer. He was a staff photographer for Unity newspaper during the '80s, covering the Jackson campaign, and California labor and student struggles. Sun was born in China and raised in China and Hong Kong. He came to the U.S. in the mid-60s and studied art, political science and Chinese history. Sun is currently working on a series of autobiographical short stories and writing poetry.

Leland Wong, artist, illustrator, and photographer, is best known for the silkscreen posters he has designed and produced for more than thirty five years, particularly the series of posters he produced annually for the Nihonmachi Street Fair from 1974-2004. He is the owner of A-Town Graphics, a one-man photography and graphic design business. www.atowngraphics.com

Zand Gee has been a printmaker, graphic designer and photographer. She is known for her silkscreen series on the Asian American Jazz Festival, and her movie posters, “Chan is Missing” and “Fall of the I-Hotel”. She currently has her own graphic design business, Zand Gee Design.

Monday, June 5th

Curating Visual Exhibitions:
a workshop and discussion with Kevin B. Chen

join Kearny Street Workshop and the APAture planning committee for a workshop and discussion about curating visual exhibitions with Kevin B. Chen, program director at Intersection for the Arts. Whether you're a visual artist or someone interested in curating visual shows yourself, this presentation will give participants a thorough understanding of what curators look for when reviewing submissions, the pitfalls to look out for, and how to put together a strong visual exhibition. 

Date: Monday, June 5th, 2006

Time: 6.30pm

Location: space180, 180 capp street, 3rd floor (@17th street), SF

Cost: $5-25, sliding scale. RSVP appreciated.

More information: Contact sam@kearnystreet.org

about Kevin B. Chen

Kevin B. Chen (b. 1972) has been the Program Director at Intersection for the Arts since 1998, San Francisco's oldest alternative non-profit multidisciplinary arts organization. Prior to this position, he was the Programs Manager at Kala Art Institute, the largest independent printmaking workshop and gallery in North America. He received his bachelor?s degree from Columbia University in 1994, graduating phi beta kappa and magna cum laude, and studied Mandarin Chinese at Beijing Teachers University. While living in New York City, he also worked with the social services component of the Harlem Restoration Project for three years. He has served on selection panels for Creative Capital Foundation, San Francisco Arts Commission Public Art Program, City of San Jose Cultural Affairs Office, Arts Council Silicon Valley, WORKS/San Jose, and the Headlands Center for the Arts. He serves on the Community Advisory Board of the San Francisco Art Institute and the Program Committee for the Headlands Center for the Arts. He has also served as an Award Judge for the San Francisco Art Institute, and an exhibition acceptance juror for ArtSpan (producers of San Francisco Open Studios) and Artsource Consulting, San Francisco Camerawork, and the Rose Resnick LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired. He has served as a panelist for GenArtSF, Southern Exposure, and the Asian Art Museum. He is also an active visual artist who currently lives in the 45th Street Emeryville Artists' Co-Operative, one of the country?s oldest artist communities. He has exhibited his own work locally at Southern Exposure, New Langton Arts, Ampersand Gallery, Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, Pond Gallery, ProArts, Oakland Asian Cultural
Center, Somarts, Kala Art Institute, Holden Street Gallery, Annual Emeryville Art Exhibition, and nationally at Angel's Gate Cultural Center (San Pedro, CA), the California Museum of Art (Santa Rosa, CA), The Kitchen (New York, NY),and Carleton College (Northfield, MN).

The Craft of Storytelling with Master Storyteller, Charlie Chin
copresented with Chinese Historical Society of America

June 5 - June 26, 2006; Mondays, 7 - 9 PM
CHSA, 965 Clay Street, SF

Cost: $60 non-members, $40 for KSW & CHSA members.

Class Description:
This class will be offered as a training program consisting of four sessions, each session being two hours. Participants in the program will be interviewed as possible trainees and professional storytellers will be auditioned to confirm their work is suitable for the program. The goal of the program is to provide a pool of Storytellers and Re-enactors for CHSA events and programs both at the site and at other venues. Detailed workshop session breakdown below.

About the Instructor:
Charlie Chin: A Musical and Theater Celebration of the Chinese American Experience William David Chin, better known by his nickname, "Charlie," has been performing, composing, writing, and teaching for over 30 years. The emerging Asian American Movement caught his interest in 1970 and he teamed up with musicians and political activists, Chris Iijima and Nobuko Miyamoto to form a trio that would tour the U.S. and record "A Grain of Sand," the first Asian American musical album. They have recently reunited to perform Reunion Concerts in California and Massachusetts.

In 1989, the Smithsonian Institute presented him with the "Community Folklore Scholar Certificate" in recognition of his work in Asian American Studies. He is a frequent consultant on Asian American communities for the Smithsonian Office of Folk Life and Folkways and is a member of the American Folklore Society.

Photo courtesy of Charlie Chin.

To register for the workshop, contact:
Leonard Shek, Program Coordinator
Chinese Historical Society of America
965 Clay St.
San Francisco, CA 94108
Phone: (415) 391-1188 x 107   Fax:  (415) 391-1150
lshek@chsa.org or visit the website: www.chsa.org

Workshop session breakdown
Session 1
   1. What is Storytelling?  Re-enactment?  Chautauqua?
   2. What is a story?  Forms, Plot Contrsutions, Framing Devices.
   3. The Storyteller.  Development as an Artist, The Stage Persona
   4. Stagecraft.  The Voice with or Without a Soundsystem, Use of Space. Mental and Physical Preperation
   5. Audience.  How to read an lead

Session 2
   1. Performance.  The Manipulation of Interest.
   2. Special Skills.  Movement, Music, Mimicry, Mime.
   3. Common Problems.  Poor Projection, Too  Much Material, No Structure, Performing without a Sub-text, Characters are Two, dimensional.

Session 3
   1. Humor Pathos, Poetry, and Proverbs
   2. Research, Collecting, Editing, Filing, and Preparing for Presentation.

Session 4
   1. Costume
   2. Props.  Prepared and Found.
   3. Professional Courtesy.
   4. The Business.  Negotiations.  Keeping records.  Promotional
      Materials, Bios, Reviews, Contact Information.  Confirmation
      Letters, Contracts.  CD's, Video/Audio tapes, Books. Workshops.

Sunday, June 11th, 2006

Danger & Beauty
Ishle Park, Taiyo Na, and Denizen Kane

Join KSW for a rare and dynamic evening of spoken word, hip-hop, and acoustic soul, featuring performances and collaborations by the brightest stars of the Asian American performance poetry and music scenes, including Ishle Park, Taiyo Na and Denizen Kane.

Date: Sunday, June 11th, 2006

Time: doors open 6pm; program begins promptly at 6.30pm

Location: space180, 180 capp street, 3rd floor (@17th street), SF

Cost: $10

More information: Contact sam@kearnystreet.org

About the artists

Ishle Yi Park is the Poet Laureate of Queens, New York. Her first book, entitled The Temperature of This Water, is the winner of the 2005 PEN America Beyond Margins Award and the 2005 Members' Choice Award of the Asian American Literary Awards. Ishle has performed at over three hundred venues in the United States, Cuba, New Zealand, Singapore, and Korea. The New York Times wrote, "Ms. Park has an angelic face and the soul of a rock star." Ishle currently lives in New York.

Photo courtesy of the artist.

Denizen Kane is a poet and musician that was born in Tree City.  He is one of the founders of I Was Born With Two Tongues (1998-2003), a spoken word quartet that independently released an LP entitled Broken Speak.  In 2000, he co-founded Typical Cats, a Chicago-based hip hop collective, and has since released two albums, a self-titled debut and Civil Service.   In Tree City Legends and the forthcoming Tree City Legends, Vol. 2, Kane makes his mark as a solo artist and displays his skills as a precocious lyricist, a style innovator, and a great storyteller-in-the-making.   He has toured from New York to Tokyo to Los Angeles and has done shows with underground hip hop luminaries such as the Visionaries, Living Legends, and J-Live.   His has also performed on three seasons of  HBO's Russell Simmons' Presents Def Poetry.  

Photo courtesy of the artist.

Taiyo Na, poet/rapper/actor and native New Yorker, is a founder of the feedback poets collective, the legendary (re)collection open mics (2000-2003), Mauritius (Time Machine: the band), and is a host for the 2006 NAMIC Vision Award-winning Cinema AZN show (AZN TV). He's been featured in many recordings, publications and films including the documentary Caught In Between: What To Call Home In Times of War (2004) by Lina Hoshino, feedback's self-titled album (2001), The Whole Heart Mixtape (2005), The Quotable Rebel Anthology edited by Teishan Latner (2005) and the lauded Purity soundtrack by NaRhee Ahn (2006).

A native New Yorker raised by an overworked single mother and the Struggle, Tai is a consummate City boy working on many projects including his next album Moonlight City. Visit Taiyo for more info.

Poetry Writing with Truong Tran

June 12 - August 7, 2006; Mondays, 7 - 9 PM
180 Capp Street (@17th street ), San Francisco

Class size: minimum of 6, maximum of 14.
Cost: $195 non-members, $175 members.

Registration deadline: June 1st, 2006.

Register by check or credit card. To register, contact program director Samantha Chanse at 415.503.0520 or sam@kearnystreet.org for more information. 

Class Description:
The sole purpose of this poetry writing workshop is to help you develop and grow as a working poet. While engaged in this classroom and this class, we will consider the environment as a place for experimentation, a laboratory of sorts. We will explore new ways of entering and re entering into our poetic body of work-through the process of discussion and feedback by both your peers and the facilitators of your workshop groups. Through a combination of readings, workshops and focused writing exercises, you will develop and sharpen your skills as both a writer and reader of poetry. By course's end, you will have with you a substantial body of work, a honed poetic voice and a variety of poetic tools as you continue your development as a working poet.

We will read and discuss selected poems and the occasional process essays each week. In as far as writing, you are required to write nine poems during the course of the semester. (Note: In class and take home exercises are also required weekly writings and will serve as a starting point to help you locate your voice/subject/material. You are responsible for providing me with copies these exercises. Though they will not be graded, I will use them as a platform for large group discussions about possible poetic explorations.)

This event is supported by Poets & Writers, Inc., through a grant it has received from the James Irvine Foundation.

About the Instructor:
Truong Tran received his undergraduate education at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his MFA at San Francisco State University. He is the recipient of poetry fellowships from the Arts Council of Santa Clara, the California Arts Council, the Creative Work Fund and The San Franciso Arts Commission. His poems have been published in numerous literary journals including ZYZZYVA, The American Voice, Crazyhorse, Prairie Schooner, Poetry East, ACM (Another Chicago Magazine) and The North Dakota Quarterly. He is the author of three collections of poetry including Placing The Accents, The Book of Perceptions and dust and concscience which recently received the Poetry Center Book Award. Truong is currently living in San Francisco and teaching poetry at San Francisco State University, Mills College, and elsewhere.

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

27 Hours: 2006 Intergenerational Writers Lab Finale Reading & Chapbook Release Party

Featuring readings by 

Rocky Choi, Maureen Evans, Anita Daswani, Jennifer Kong, Frederick Loomis, Vanessa Merina, Florencia Milito, Marisela Treviño Orta, Cleavon Smith, Jr., Carrie Y. Takahata, Gloria Jackson Yamato & Rene Yung

 

This multi-genre reading and anthology release party is presented as the final event of the 2006 Intergenerational Writers Lab, a collaborative program of Intersection for the Arts and Kearny Street Workshop that thoroughly explores and develops the craft of writing across genres, styles, and traditions. Featuring twelve participants reading selections from their new chapbook 27 Hours: An Anthology of the 2006 Intergenerational Writers Lab, this event culminates over three months and 27 hours of workshops with playwright Philip Kan Gotanda, journalist Nguyen Qui Duc, poets Janice Mirikitani, Robert Karimi, and Tsering Wangmo Dhompa, and fiction writer and essayist Mary Anne Mohanraj.

Date: Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Time: 7-9 PM

Location: Space180, 180 Capp St, San Francisco

Cost: $5 - 15, sliding scale.

More about the IWL program
KEARNY STREET WORKSHOP & INTERSECTION FOR THE ARTS are proud to present an intensive, collaborative literary program featuring six accomplished writers spanning generations, genres, and styles leading writings workshops with a dozen emerging Bay Area writers.  Both Kearny Street Workshop (est. 1972) and Intersection for the Arts (est. 1965) are organizational mainstays of the Bay Area cultural community, and both have long, distinguished histories of developing, supporting, and cultivating writers over the decades.  Kearny Street Workshop was one of the first outlets for the publication of Asian American Pacific literature, and Intersection for the Arts hosts the longest independent reading series in the state of California.  In joining forces and collaborating on the 2006 Intergenerational Writers Lab, we want to provide local emerging writers with the opportunity to challenge, develop, and expand their writing by working with emerging & established writers in a variety of genres; to contribute to the development of new literary forms and language that incorporate multiple forms of creative expression; and to provide the community with an opportunity to engage with new work and new explorations of form and language. 

INTERSECTION FOR THE ARTS is San Francisco's oldest alternative art space (est. 1965) and has a long history of presenting new and experimental work in the fields of literature, theater, music and the visual arts, and also in nurturing and supporting the Bay Area's cultural community through service, technical support, and mentorship programs. Intersection provides a place where provocative ideas, diverse art forms, artists, and audiences can intersect one another. Visit Intersection at www.theintersection.org

KEARNY STREET WORKSHOP is the oldest multidisciplinary Asian Pacific American (APA) arts organization in the country. Founded in 1972, KSW's mission is to produce and present art that enriches and empowers APA communities. Our vision is to achieve a more just society by connecting Asian Pacific American(APA) artists with community members to give voice to our cultural, historical, and contemporary issues. For more information please visit www.kearnystreet.org.

about the writers

Rocky Choi was born in Oakland and raised in the East Bay.  He has a degree in English literature with an emphasis in creative writing from UCLA, and a second degree in bioinformatics from UC Santa Cruz.  He taught English in Sichuan Province, China, for two years, and currently works as a technical support specialist for a biotech company.

Anita Daswani is co-editor of the book, "What Every Programmer Needs to Know About Software Security," which will be published by Springer Publisher in August of 2006. She is also senior editor of the literary magazine, "Desilit Magazine." She received her MFA in fiction from Sarah Lawrence College.

Maureen Evans is a Canadian writer of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. Her work explores humanity: from alienation to love, and destruction to creation, she observes the personal as inevitably, globally political. Travel through twenty-four countries, as well as an existential take on anarchism, further inform her work. She holds a BFA with Honours from UBC, where she studied writing and anthropology of cultural resistance.

Jennifer Kong's first works include The Story of Porcupine Secrets and Connie the Miserable Obeyless Black Stallion, both published by her fourth grade class. Since then, Jennifer has moved on to more mature themes, and is currently at work on a collection of short stories exploring desire and sexuality. Jennifer graduated from Stanford University with a B.A. and M.A. in English, and studied creative writing with ZZ Packer, Adam Johnson, Tom Kealey, and Tobias Wolff. Born in New York and raised in the Bay Area, Jennifer currently works in book publishing in San Francisco.

After a 25-year career in sales and marketing with the companies that became Verizon, Frederick Loomis took voluntarily early retirement in order to obtain a graduate Master of Fine Arts degree in Drawing at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, which he received in May, 2004.  He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature at Boston University and a Diploma in Fine Arts from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. He is married and has three children from a previous marriage and two step children.  For the past 35 years, Mr. Loomis has been engaged in a personal, experiential inquiry into the world’s revealed religions. In 2005, Mr. Loomis took advantage of an unprecedented opportunity to make the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca.

Vanessa Merina writes short fiction and essays. She is publications manager at the Public Policy Institute of California and is editor of the anthology Every Other Wednesday and the chapbooks Stone of the Fish and The Change Giver. She is currently working on a collection of short stories.

Born in Argentina, Florencia Milito spent her early childhood in Venezuela and has lived in the U.S. (mostly in or around New York) since she was nine. She is a poet, essayist, and translator whose work has appeared in such publications as Sniper Logic and ZYZZYVA, among others. In 2003 she was a Semifinalist for the Nation/Discovery Prize and her poem sequence "Sor Juana" was recently nominated for the Best New Poets 2006 anthology. She lives with her husband in San Francisco.

Poet and playwright Marisela Treviño Orta holds an M.F.A. in Writing from the University of San Francisco. Her first play, Braided Sorrow, was read at the 2005 Bay Area Playwrights Festival and this August will be read as part of the Ford Amphitheatre’s Summer Reading Series. In March 2006 Marisela participated in the 8th Annual Women’s Will 24-Hour Playfest. For the festival her 10-Minute play Watch Out For Falling Sky was written, rehearsed and performed in less than one day. Marisela is the Poet Resident of El Teatro Jornalero!, a theatre company composed of Latino immigrants. Marisela is also an Associate Poetry Editor for the online literary journal Switchback. Her poetry has appeared in BorderSenses,Curbside Review,Double Room, Pomona Valley Review, 26: A Journal of Poetry and Poetics and Traverse.

Carrie Y. Takahata graduated from Moanalua High School and obtained a B.S.W. in Social Work and an M.A. inEnglish with an emphasis in Creative Writing from the University of Hawaii at Manoa.  She's co-founder andco-editor of Hybolics, a literary magazine in Hawaii dedicated to publishing new and emerging voices.  Shehas written for the Honolulu Weekly and has seen her poetry published in Asian Pacific American Journal,Bamboo Ridge, Tinfish, Hawaii Review, and Social Process in Hawaii.

The poetry of Cleavon Smith has been featured in the Potomac Review and the radio program, The Sculpted Word.  He has also published stories in The Best Gay Asian Erotica and Nive Lives, Volume 2.  He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and Mills College and currently lives in Oakland and teaches at Vista College in Berkeley. 

A residency at Hedgebrook and publication of her work in New Voices, (Aunt Lute Books) mark the point where Gloria Jackson Yamato began to think of herself as a writer. She received her Masters degree in Creativity and Arts Education at San Francisco State University¹s Interdisciplinary Arts Center in 2001. Currently Program Associate at WritersCorps, she taught in schools and afterschool programs as a WritersCorps teacher. Publications include Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspective, "Something About the Subject Makes It Hard To Name"; Margo Okazawa-Reyes, Gwyn Kirk, eds.; Mayfield Publishing Sinister Wisdom 55: Poetry, "Trust" and "Quilombo". New Voices 1: "Rhythms", "Nommo", "As Black Can Be", "Year of the Nigger", "Maiden Voyage", "Pharang Dahm!" (short stories & poems) anthology; Sauda Burch, ed., Aunt Lute Books, publisher. Making Face, Making Soul: Haciendo Caras, "Something About the Subject Makes it Hard to Name", ed. Gloria Anzaldua, Aunt Lute Foundation, publisher.

Rene Yung is a San Francisco-based artist, writer, and designer. Her cross-disciplinary works explore issues of culture and community, and language and form. She is at work on a series of essays on transcultural living, and a multimedia theater work on the Transcontinental Railroad. A native of Hong Kong, Rene graduated from Stanford University with a B.A. in Art. She is an alumna of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, Hedgebrook Writers' Residency Program, and Headlands Center for the Arts, and the recipient of a Creative Work Fund award. She is neglecting her garden for the IWL workshop, prolonging many snails' karmic sojourn.