S1: It's time for Midday Edition on Kpbs. Today , we are talking about San Diego's arts and culture scene. I'm Jade Hindman. Here's to conversations that keep you informed , inspired and make you think. A local author and illustrator join us to share their recent novel on how Buddhism helps a young teen connect with himself and disconnect from technology.
S2: I don't claim to be an expert in Buddhism by any by any stretch , but I grew up with these stories , with these concepts , and this is kind of part of the fabric of my own existence.
S1: Plus , hear about the life of Gonzo journalist Hunter s Thompson and a new musical and a preview of the art you can check out this weekend.
UU: That's ahead on Midday Edition.
S1: Buddhist stories and video game imagery blend in a new middle grade graphic novel , Enlighten Me coming out next month. When Ben stands up against his middle school bullies , he expects to be treated like the hero of his favorite video game. Instead , he's the one who gets in trouble. Now he's forced to spend the weekend in a silent meditation retreat away from his Game Boy. But what he doesn't expect is to be taken on a spiritual journey that helps him learn about Buddha himself and the people around him. Min Lee is the author of Enlighten Me. He's also written other middle grade books like The Blur , Green Lantern Legacy and the Eisner nominated Lift. He also works as an adjunct professor at Hamline University. Men , welcome.
S2: Thank you so much for having me. That was a lovely introduction.
S1: So glad you're here. And we're also joined by Chan Chao and Eisner nominated cartoonists. They have worked on several graphic novels , including the adaptations for the Baby-sitters Club. Chan , welcome.
S3: Thanks for having me.
S1: So glad you're here. Min , let's start with you. This book and the protagonist Bean reflects a lot of your own experiences growing up.
S2: So I wrote this thinly veiled , um , graphic novel with a character named Bin instead of Min. Hopefully people won't be able to figure that out. But yeah , so I this is very much based on my own experience. My grandparents , when they came here from Vietnam , they actually started a Buddhist temple in Connecticut. And I remember going there and I was very intrigued by the chanting and a lot of the ritual , but it didn't really resonate with me because I couldn't quite wrap my mind around what was going on. But there was a library upstairs at the temple , and I'd go up there and I read stories about the Buddha's life , and I read these jataka tales , which are the stories of the Buddhist past lives. And it was by reading those stories that I kind of found my own entry point into some of the concepts of Buddhism. And for me as a kid , I was such a shy kid that stories were always kind of my my refuge. So the fact that I was able to find my way into the religion , but also into kind of connect with my family , connecting with the community , that was very much my own experience. So I wanted to write a book that was both rooted in kind of the particulars of my experience , but hopefully something that also resonates with readers of all backgrounds.
S1: And like you mentioned , the book really incorporates the Gita Tales , which tells the stories of Buddha's past lives.
S2: So I did a lot of research to find ones that I thought would fit in with the storyline. But like I said , I grew up with these stories , but I never saw them portrayed in a way that was so visually stunning and dynamic. So seeing writing it in a way that Chan could take and then bring their artwork and just really breathe life into these stories. I think kids are going to see these stories in a way that they've never seen before , and that makes me really excited.
S1: The illustrations also feel cinematic and soothing with lots of nature and animals and landscapes. It balances out with the more action packed video game inspired sequences. So Chan , was that something you kept in mind while illustrating ? Yeah.
S3: Did I have a lot of interest in nature ? So it was kind of a great , a great subject matter to push and pull between because nature tends to just be very organic in space. While video games , at least the ones that I referenced , were a lot more mechanical and kind of mathematical. And so there was just already this natural look to both nature and kind of a man made tale that I think they just naturally went well together. And I really pushed it as far as I could to make them both distinct , but also somehow fit together in men.
S1:
S2: And for me , kind of like playing around with that balance between the video games and nature , the boys reality and the boys imagination. And then also trying to inject a modern sensibility to these stories is also part of that balance. And I think because a lot of these stories are filtered through Ben's experience and. His imagination and they're kind of infused with his voice as well. So kind of taking the traditional stories , bringing them into the present day and then filtering them through gene sequences , video game sequences. His imagination were all ways of trying to balance a lot of different , sometimes competing or at odds elements of the story. And I think Chen did a really amazing job of fusing them all together in a way that just to me reads very seamlessly and in a dynamic and engaging way.
S1: You're listening to Kpbs Midday Edition. I'm Jade Hindman , and I'm speaking with author Min Lay and illustrator Chan Chao about the middle grade graphic novel Enlighten Me. So Ben struggles with his identity , specifically his Vietnamese American heritage. And this question is for both of you.
S2: My language skills weren't all that great , and I always kind of felt caught and like in between two worlds and at home , I was too American. At school , I was two Asian. And so I always felt like I was kind of navigating that in-between space. For me , the act of writing stories like this is a way of kind of claiming that in-between space and saying that , you know , there is no pure American experience , there's not a pure Vietnamese experience. Everyone's experience , including mine , is valid. And I think writing a book like this is trying to kind of like claim ownership over over that experience and hopefully sharing that with young readers so that they can know that their experiences are also valid. So a lot of the cultural elements are based on my experience growing up , a lot of the Buddhist pieces , and I don't claim to be an expert in Buddhism by any by any stretch , but I grew up with these stories , with these concepts , and it's just kind of part of the fabric of my own existence. And so I grew up with so many fictional stories where the baseline context was like Greek mythology or Bible stories. And I always felt like I was playing catch up on understanding the full meaning of these stories. So to write one now that has Buddhist concepts and Buddhist stories as kind of the foundation of it is a really rewarding thing to get to work on.
S1:
S3: So I don't have a lot of connections to my own culture and I've always struggled with that. And my family wasn't really practicing Buddhism. They were always kind of we do rituals that folks who practice Buddhism just typically do , and we kind of just always conducted these rituals at home. And sometimes we would go to the temple and that's how I was introduced to Buddhism , more so than through my parents , through just being around other people who were practicing Buddhism at a specific location like the Temple , and feel like a lot of the experiences of being around different types of people , not only Vietnamese Americans , but other other folks of different nationalities and skin color coming together to learn Buddhism was where I drew a lot of my inspiration for scenes in the book that pertain to like multicultural people coming together for learning how to meditate.
S1: And , you know , I mean , both of your experiences really speak to the importance of community. And it's also another theme that's in your book.
S2: And if a kid grows up in a nurturing and supportive community that gives them such a strong foundation to move out into the world as their community grows , right ? If the community isn't as supportive or questions their own identity , then that creates a sense of instability , which also you carry with you moving forward. Ben is at a very kind of critical of juncture , and I remember being his age and having a strong instinct to retreat into myself and kind of like veer away from family , veer away from community , but eventually found my way back. And I think for for young people , especially knowing that they can rely on the people around them , whether that's family or their friends or the broader community is really important because there's such a strong sense and possibility of leaning into isolation , and that has a slippery slope. I would just love young readers reading this or any books to go come away with the idea and understanding and knowledge that they're not alone. Right ? That there are people out there that they can rely on , that they can draw strength from. And that's going to to mean everything as they move forward. Yeah.
S1: Yeah. And speaking of that isolation , you know , Ben is pretty attached to his video games , which I bet is a common experience for many young people.
S2: And I'm not a kid by any anymore , but am also on my phone all the time and I have to actually constantly work on setting aside and just allowing myself to be in the moment. Right ? And that's such a valuable skill for for all of us. And in the book , he has to set aside his game Boy. I was very much that same kid who wanted to play video games all the time , but I also didn't want to demonize the video game aspect of it because there was a lot of value there. So in the story , it's actually he's using a lot of the storytelling and ideas and concepts from his video games to help him process his own emotions. So it's kind of balancing the value that you get from video games , knowing that you can set it aside and then seeing the value of sitting there quietly with yourself and allowing your mind to to wander and then allowing yourself to to not be constantly distracted by all the things that are around you. Right ? That's something that I think all of us struggle with. So again , hopefully that's something that readers of all ages can can see in the book about that desire to to recenter yourself , to take a breath , to take a moment and just kind of be be fully present. Yeah.
S1: Yeah. Something we could all learn. You know , man , you're you're also on the board for the nonprofit. We need diverse books , which advocates for more nuanced and diverse stories from young people and for young people , actually.
S2: But we've seen some real significant changes in the past , I'd say 5 to 10 years in that if you think about the books that were available when I was a child , there were a smattering of books by Asian Americans. They're very there are few and far between. And now when you go to the bookstore or the library , the richness of options available on the shelf is staggering. And it makes me so happy to know that for this generation of readers , they have access to so many different stories and they have more avenues to find themselves in the pages of a book. And I think we need diverse books. Is part of this larger movement to really make sure that that is possible. And I think you're seeing the fruits of that labor bear out on the on the shelves.
S1: I've been speaking with author Min Lee and illustrator Chan Chao about the middle grade graphic novel Enlighten Me. The book comes out September 19th. Thank you both for joining us.
S3: Thank you so much.
S2: Yeah , Thank you so much for having us and letting us talk about this book with you.
S1: Coming up , a new musical at the La Jolla Playhouse explores the life of gonzo journalist Hunter s Thompson.
S4: Huntress Thompson just didn't fit into that in his life. His life was really messy. He was a very contradictory person. He was a very complex person. And I thought , Oh , it feels so in his spirit to make a musical about him that honors that.
S1: You're listening to Kpbs Midday Edition. Welcome back to Midday Edition. I'm Jade Hindman. Tonight , La Jolla Playhouse hosts the world premiere of the Untitled Unauthorized Hunter s Thompson musical. It looks at the life and work of the infamous gonzo journalist. Kpbs arts reporter Beth Accomando speaks with the play's composer and lyricist Joe Icons.
S5:
S4: When I was in high school.
S6: We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.
S4: And so I sort of came to Hunter through that movie. I was a really big film fan in high school , and so I was excited to see the new Terry Gilliam movie. Seeing that movie sent me on this journey of reading Fear and Loathing and exploring his body of work. And for the first few years of my awareness of him , it was a very sort of like surface awareness. I knew the kind of big hits and I knew the cartoon version of Who Hunter was , which is what a lot of people know about him.
S5:
S4: There was real poetry to his language. There was real music in his language , but the content of it was so far out and it had such a sex , drugs and rock and roll kind of vibe. And when I first encountered him , I wasn't used to that kind of vibe , that kind of aggression and sort of psychedelic imagery in writing that felt really beautiful and really poetic and really romantic. Know those two things. I had never quite seen them fuse in that way , and that was the thing that really kind of hooked me in up top.
S5: And then what inspired you to do a musical about him ? Oh my. Goodness.
S4: Goodness. I first got the idea to write this musical many years ago. It was around the time that Hunter died , and when he died , there were all of these sort of first hand accounts that came out about his life from people who knew him. And what I found so incredible was that some of them felt like they were really in sort of contradiction to the the cartoon idea of Hunter , that I knew some of them really painted this picture of this man who cared deeply about what he wrote about this man who was a real moralist and who truly believed that his writing could change the world , that his writing could make a place for people who felt like they were outcasts or outsiders or freaks. And so that was sort of like half of the first hand accounts. The other half , it felt like they were so in line with this cartoon version of him and went beyond it. It's like when you sort of see this kind of like , you know , the sort of smoking pill popping out of his gourd. Honduras Thompson cartoon. You assume it's an exaggeration , but so many of these firsthand accounts was like , oh , my God , you know , the cartoon version of him doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of the insanity of how this man actually lived. And those two things , this sort of like crazy renegade and this really serious , passionate writer , those two different hunters working together really inspired me to delve into who this man was and why he was and to write a musical about him.
S5: So when you heard these stories that kind of not maybe contradicted , but kind of presented different sides to 100 s Thompson's personality , how did you want to tackle that contradiction within the play ? You know.
S4: From the get go , I was really passionate about telling Hunter Thompson's story in a way that did not try to sugarcoat anything in his life , in a way that felt like it was giving an accurate representation of who this guy was. You know , I feel like when we see bio musicals or biopics , they tend to really put the center of the story up on a pedestal. And Hunter s Thompson just didn't fit into that in his life. You know , his life was really messy. He was a very contradictory person. He was a very complex person. And I thought , oh , it feels so in his spirit to make a musical about him that honors , that honors his complexity and allows him to do things that are ugly and problematic and then leaves it to the audience to decide , was this guy worth it ? Was the the things that he contributed or supposedly contributed to the world of literature and to society in general ? Were they worth how challenging he was as a man and challenging as a kind word , you know ? And so we just kind of wanted to put this wild , complex , contradictory character in the center of the story and and not smooth out the edges.
S5:
S4: I think it's up for debate. Hunter s Thompson really created this idea of telling the truth in a completely subjective way. And at the time that he created it , it felt really groundbreaking and it felt like something that was really in the hands of liberal thinkers. It felt like it was something that was in the hands of people who were challenging the establishment and questioning authority. Now , this idea of truth being subjective and facts being subjective is something that is very , very different and means something totally different. And so I think the show even asked that question is the truth being subjective ? Is that idea is that something that liberated people or is that something that did the opposite to people ? And I hope that folks are open to the nuances of all of that. I'm also hoping that people at the very least , are able to see beyond this cartoon version of Hunter s Thompson that most people know. He's such a parodied figure , and he was such an entertaining man. You know , he was really charismatic. And his talk show appearances , his David Letterman appearances are like amazing trainwreck TV. It's actually it's like it's to the level of performance art. But he was a really amazing writer and he cared deeply. There's a great quote about him that says he was a moralist posing as an immoral list. And I think that that really is is what it was with him. You know , it's like at the center of all of these mad ramblings , I think was someone who cared deeply about people who feel othered , people who feel like misfits , people who don't have any place to belong. And he was trying to make a space for them.
S7: And when I finally triumph over him , this country will finally belong to us.
S8: The weirdo outcasts freaks Strange Power.
S5:
S4: So the musical has been in development for a preposterously long amount of time. I was commissioned to write the show in 2008 by the La Jolla Playhouse. It was the first show that Chris Ashley , the artistic director , ever commissioned , and so I was doing a concert with this , this band that I have called Joy and Family. We were doing a gig in New York City , and I invited Chris just because I was a fan of his and he dug it. And so we had a meeting and six months later , La Jolla Playhouse called me and said , We want to commission you to write the Hunter as Thompson musical. I started then thinking about it , and I didn't actually get cooking on it until about 2012. Our first draft was done in 2015 , and then I did a major rewrite overhaul of the show during the pandemic and the spring of 2020 , and we would make changes on it. And it was never it felt like it was never fully clicking. And one of the things that was really hard about it was I always felt like the show needed to speak to the current time because it's so political and because it involves so many social issues. It felt like it needed to be in conversation with the time period that it was existing in , and the times kept changing so rapidly. And so at a certain point I kind of realized it's actually impossible to keep up with what is going on in the world. And so I need to look at this in a way that gets to the heart of the issues as opposed to talking about the issues themselves. And so the kind of overhaul that I did during the pandemic really had that in mind. And it was like , how do I write about Richard Nixon and how do I write about the hippie movement in the 60s and the Hells Angels and Kent State and Martin Luther King and John F Kennedy ? How do I write about them in a way that makes us think about Black Lives Matter and Donald Trump and all of the things that have happened to us in the last few years without actually naming those things , How do I get to the kernel , the center of what those things are really about in a way that hopefully will resonate for the next five , ten , 15 , 20 , 100 years ? And once I did that , that's when the show clicked. It was like , Oh yeah , this is what the show is , this is what it always wanted to be , and now we're doing it. And so it just takes 15 years sometimes.
S5:
S4: I have every reason to believe Hunter Thompson was not a man who enjoyed a show tune , I do not think. That Hunter s Thompson would have been a subscriber to the La Jolla Playhouse or would have been eager to buy a ticket to Back to the Future of the musical or anything that is currently on Broadway or has ever been on Broadway. But I do think he would appreciate how this musical exists in the landscape of musical theater and the landscape of pop culture , because at the very least , this show marches to the beat of its own drummer. This show has a lot of heart. This show desperately wants to feel like it's making a place for people who don't often get a place made for them in the world and in musical theater specifically. And I think that Hunter s Thompson would appreciate that. And I think he liked the puppets. Puppets are. Great.
S5: Great. It seems like he would probably publicly bristle at the idea , but appreciate that he was the center of it for sure.
S4: You know , it sounds like a terrible idea. Anyone who knows under S Thompson , I feel like when they think of the idea of a Hunter s Thompson musical , I imagine their first reaction is like , Oh God , Because , you know , you're immediately going to like chorus girls and big sets and power ballads. But that's that's not what this show is. This show is really inspired by things like musicals , like Hair , the movie , all that jazz , the Muppets , Pee wee's Playhouse. You know , this is its own beast. And I want people to go to it and sort of leave their expectations behind. You know , it's a musical that even though it's about really heavy things and it's about a historical figure and it's about really big and terrifying moments in history , it's meant to entertain. The worst thing this show could ever do is feel like homework. It's feel like , Oh , I'm eating my oatmeal by going to see this piece of theater. It has songs , it has some good tunes and funny jokes , and the whole thing is really alive and wild and I'm hoping that people will be like seduced by that and inspired by that. And then also learn a thing or two and feel a whole lot.
S9: One day Mrs. Waring handed me a book and said , You read this book ? The book was by some guy who's dead.
UU: By red it. And I'm glad I did. It was by a person.
S9: Who I never knew. But the words made sense and the message.
UU: To and it made me fired up and made me care.
S9: And I was in scared. I was.
UU: Not alone. Made me want to make something of my own. Something wired up that I could share.
S9: And that person I would never see just totally affected me. Is that legacy , I assume ? Kaboom.
S1: That was Beth Accomando speaking with Joe Aikens. You also just heard one of the songs from the Untitled Unauthorized Hunter s Thompson musical. The play runs through October 8th at La Jolla Playhouse Poetic Theater. Coming up here about the art you can go see this weekend.
S10: We really want to focus on having people walk away with this feeling of like , wow , San Diego and Tijuana are so cool. There's so much happening here. We absolutely have to support the arts.
S1: You're listening to Kpbs Midday Edition. Welcome back to Midday Edition. I'm Jade Hindman for our weekend preview. We'll take a closer look at a major arts and culture festival that'll bring performances and immersive art to warehouses and industrial spaces in Logan Heights. And we'll also go over a few more arts and culture offerings. Joining me with all the details is Kpbs arts producer and editor Julia Dixon Evans. Welcome , Julia.
S11: Hi , Jade.
S1: All right. So let's talk about this big festival , the Envision urban art takeover.
S11: The exciting thing for me is this is the convergence of all types of art forms. So stance , there's theater , visual art , music and soundscapes. And it's just one evening from 5 to 10 on Saturday night , and they have absolutely packed the event with stuff to do and stuff to see.
S1: All right.
S11: And I'll let her tell us more about some of the individual offerings. But here are a few on my radar. The first is a performance from Disco Riot. It's a new work of choreography by founder Zakiya Mala Salinas. It's a live dance and film installation that's kind of about ritual and about magic. That's at nine and 930 Saturday night. And another is the Steamroller printmaking event. This is from Mesa College Art Gallery. It's something they started in a parking lot during the early days of the pandemic. And they're going to make these three by four foot fabric prints by driving over the canvas and the ink plates with an actual steamroller that you can watch the demonstration at six and 630 , and then the prints will be on display starting at seven. But there are so many artists and performers and companies from both San Diego and Tijuana. That's another thing that was really important to them. Making space for cross-border arts. Wow.
S12: Wow.
S1: It sounds like a lot to take in. So let's take a listen to your interview with Susana Parado , Swap , organizer of Saturday's Envision Urban Art Takeover.
S10: So this is our second urban art takeover. The first one was produced in downtown San Diego at the Idea one building , and it was a huge success. We had over 80 artists transforming the spaces. We had dance performances , fashion show , culinary areas , and that was featured on the National Geographic National Geographic Channel for its programming. So it was really cool to get that started with the grander intention of supporting San Diego's creative industry workforce , like bringing all of creative together to one room at the same time to share resources , collaborate and create something really cool. So when we got the opportunity to bring this back in Logan Heights , it just turned into something so special. And again , what's a part of it that's actually very cool is that it's in partnership with World Design Capital , San Diego , Tijuana. So we were introduced to folks from the secretary of culture of Baja California. They helped to get the open call out. And we have a truly binational festival this year with artists from both sides of the US-Mexico border. And it's bigger purpose , to answer your question , is to support San Diego's creative industry workforce , to bring attention to the beauty and and virtuosity of the region's creative workforce , to put San Diego on the map as a cultural destination and to help empower artists to get to know one another across different industries , share resources and be inspired by one another's work.
S11: And this is , like you said , it's multidisciplinary. There's all sorts of visual and performing arts.
S10: And so I started in the theater and I'm very connected to the theater community. I'm also a jazz vocalist , so I was very connected to the music community. And then I became a curator and got connected to the museum and gallery world. And I realized that no one was talking to each other. You know , they , we , they , we all share similar resource needs and issues , but no one was sharing resources. There was this sort of culture of competition. And so I started the organization ten years ago with the hope that we could create a community that was a culture of collaboration where instead of everybody fighting for the same piece of pie , you know , we were supporting one another and lifting all boats , if you will. And so all of our events are very purposely cross-industry collaborative , where we bring together creative communities that typically never in. With that greater vision in mind. And it's , you know , ten years in the making. And this , I would say , is like the culmination of ten years of work where it's been truly beautiful , bringing together artists and communities from , you know , from the Logan Heights community and hip hop culture , spoken word , live music , dance , film , theater , visual arts , all to the same room at the same time , and supporting one another through shared resources. It's been really , really beautiful and I'm so excited about how it's coming together.
S11: So I'd like to talk through a few of the offerings for Envision with you. Can we start with this special screening of The Passion of Joan of Arc ? It's it's a silent film that's now set to a live score. What do you know about that ? Yeah.
S10: So the artist's name , the composer's name is George Sarah. And he is an incredibly talented artist. He created a sound scape , a score , if you will , to the 1928 black and white film , The Passion of Joan of Arc. And so what you'll see is the screening of the 1928 film , which takes place in a CrossFit gym , by the way. We're turning that into a cinema and you'll see a nine piece local ensemble from both sides of the border , a small choir and a small strings section orchestra and then electronic. And what's really cool is that it's not traditional orchestral. There's a little bit of avant garde in there , a little bit of electronic music. It's really cool and funky and weird and awesome. And so that will be running at 9:00 all the way through 1020 in our CrossFit cinema. Stay Classy CrossFit Cinemas. How we rebranded it for the night.
S11: I'd like to talk about some more of the art because there is such a wide range in visual art. There is immersive art and textiles and even a live steamroller screen printing demonstration , but there's also dance and puppetry and fashion.
S10: And this is a large scale visual art installation. The Alchemist in his element. It almost looks like a Han Dynasty jade burial suit. So it's this gigantic nine foot structure and it's devoted to the cycle of the living cycle of trash. So it's made of aluminum cans. The place where it's installed is a screen printing shop called the Clubhouse. And so they're printing t shirts in that space. And this gigantic screen printing machine is in there. I mean , it's enormous. It's gigantic. So we decided to lean into where we are , this sort of industrial space , and they are creating this sort of temple , a temple to recycling , to climate , to overconsumption. And so you get to arrive in this space and leave your wishes , your hopes , your prayers for the future. As it relates to these themes that we were talking about , it's going to be very dramatically lit. There's going to be this the big screen printing machine will be up lit in a very darkened room. So it'll almost look like a floating spaceship. And then the soundscape is created and produced by local Tijuana and New York artist named Malu. And so you'll sort of feel like you're walking into this very sacred space , but also there'll be mechanical sounds and almost like you're inside of a futuristic spaceship of sorts. Very , very cool.
S11: There is a lot packed into one evening here , but I'm wondering if there's one thing that you hope people will leave the event thinking about or feeling.
S10: Yeah , I purposely wanted it to be just full of activity. So every half an hour the program shifts. So it's seven , it's 6:00 , seven things are happening at 630 , another seven things are happening. And all those things repeat twice throughout the night. So you have two opportunities to experience the thing you want to do. You can curate your own experience. And the big takeaway for me is I want people to be reminded of how exciting and how and how much San Diego's art scene is thriving. San Diego and Tijuana in particular. I you know , sometimes we get branded as this sort of sleepy beach town that doesn't have a lot of arts and culture. And my organization , Vanguard Culture , is very aware that that's not the case. There's so much happening in San Diego and in Tijuana now that I'm being connected with that community as well. So we really want to focus on having people walk away with this feeling of like , Wow , San Diego and Tijuana are so cool. There's so much happening here. We absolutely have to support the arts. And and what I love about putting together organizations that typically never intersect is that you'll have people that are here , you know , for the dance , for example , and then they'll be exposed to black and white silent film , or they'll be exposed to fashion or they'll be exposed to , you know , a large scale art installation about the history of the Arab Americans in San Diego. And all of a sudden it gives them that opportunity to say , hey , I didn't even know I liked black and white film , babe , let's go do more of that , you know , or or , Hey , I didn't know. I like contemporary dance. We shouldn't. We never look into that. Let's try more of that. And I hope that they walk away feeling more empowered and more inspired to support our arts community regionally.
S1: That was Susana Parado Swamp of Vanguard Culture. Envision Urban Art Takeover starts at the soap factory in Logan Heights from 5 to 10 p.m. on Saturday. You're listening to Midday Edition. I'm Jade Hindman here with Julia Dixon Evans and we're talking about some of the ways to get your art and culture fix this weekend.
S11: It's called Connect. It opens this weekend and it's like 2 in 1. There's a ton of incredible local artists involved and it's held in two different galleries. Is this collaboration between City College Gallery and Art Produce in North Park ? And this one also has a performance element to it with some dance and sound and vocal music. But one of the visual artworks that's on my radar is Kari Fukuyama's Murmuration inspired piece. It's called Undercurrent. Murmuration is the term for the movements of a group of of starlings. And she has made this this sculpture made of cut up pieces of dichroic film that stick out from the wall and it shimmers and casts all these gorgeous colored shadows. And she actually has a very similar work installed at the San Diego airport right now. But this is like a re-envisioned version of that. That kind of springs from the limitations of that airport version. Hers is right by the security line , so it had to be under glass.
S13: So I wanted to create another version of this to show at a maybe more suited location. When you have a barrier like glass case , you just always have a little bit of distance. And because my work is so subtle , like it's it loses a lot of the subtlety through that. So I'm very excited about this piece.
S11: And there's 29 artists involved in total. They're spread across both city college and art produce. And the opening reception is also kind of like a party hop. It starts Saturday at 3:00 at City College and then from 6 to 8 at Art Produce.
S1: I mean , it really sounds like a beautiful piece of artwork. Well , before we go , let's talk about live music. Give us a couple of shows on your radar for this weekend.
S11: So I have two. First is Sylvan Esso. They're playing at The Sound on Friday. That's the new venue at the Delmar racetrack. And this isn't the first show there by any stretch , but it was the first scheduled major show that I saw across my desk for that venue. So to me , it's like this is the culmination. This is what we've been waiting for when they open that venue and I'm going to play my favorite song of theirs. This is The Glow. It's from 2017. It's kind of an homage to this early 2000 album by the Microphones.
UU: I remember The Glow. After school.
S11: So that shows Sylvan Esso is at 7:00 on Friday at the Sound in Delmar.
S1: Well , that's true. Sounds like a fun one. I was dancing in my chair. Don't tell anyone how I look doing that , though.
S11: And this is a local band made up of three brothers. They're. They're all in high school or just out of high school college and new college graduate and they've put a sort of surf spin on R&B. They have a new song just out last week. It's called San Diego. And it's it's really easy to listen to the song and just feel so glad to live here. Now we're gonna need a jacket. The sun is.
S9: Never far behind. Life is right by weather.
S14: These guys will make.
UU: Forget the past and just unwind. Where in the land went.
S1: Oh , I like that. That sounds like good island music almost , right ? Well , you can find details on these and more events and sign up for Julia's weekly Kpbs arts newsletter at Kpbs. Smart. I've been speaking with Kpbs arts producer and editor Julia Dixon Evans. Julia , thanks.
S11: Thank you , Jade. Have a good weekend. You too.
S15: That's our show for today. Don't forget to watch Evening Edition tonight at five for in-depth reporting on San Diego issues. I want to thank the midday edition team producers Andrew Bracken , Giuliana Joaquim Domingo and Brooke Ruth assistants Ariana Clay and Laura McCaffrey and. Historical directors Adrian Lobos and Rebecca Chacon. The music you're listening to.
UU: Is from San Diego's own surefire soul ensemble.
S15: Thanks for listening and have a great Labor Day weekend.
