Jan 12 - March 2

All-Genre Writing Class with Barbara Reyes

Mondays, 7 - 9PM
SomArts Cultural Center, 934 Brannan Street (between 8th and 9th streets), San Francisco

Class size: minimum of 8, maximum of 12.
Cost: $140 non-members, $120 for KSW members.
To register, please send a check for the full amount to: Kearny Street Workshop, 934 Brannan Street, San Francisco, CA 94103. Please include your name, contact information (phone number and email address if possible), and which class you are registering for. For questions, please contact program manager Samantha Chanse at 415.503.0520 or info@kearnystreet.org.

Class Description:
The all-genre writing workshop will be an exploration of the writer's voice, a fleshing out of the writer's thoughts and ideas, an examination of the writer's instincts and aesthetics. We will generate new work through a series of writing exercises and readings. we will discuss asian american literature as it pertains to our own writing, and we will receive and provide feedback to one another's work.

About the instructor:
Born in Manila, Philippines and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area suburb of Fremont, Barbara Jane Reyes received her BA in Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley, where she served as editor-in-chief of the groundbreaking Pilipino American literary publication Maganda. She is a MFA candidate at San Francisco State University, where she has happily found herself in a balancing act upon the bleeding edges separating the Pilipino/a American community and the Ivory Tower academy. Barbaraâs poetry, prose, and essays are published in various literary journals including Tinfish, Interlope, Our Own Voice, Meritage Pressâs Babaylan Speaks, Shampoo Poetry, Can We Have Our Ball Back, Muse Apprentice Guild, Tamafyhr Mountain Poetry Irregular, Art Speak; as well as in the anthologies Babaylan (Aunt Lute, 2000), Turnings: Writings on Womenâs Transformations (Womenâs Studies at ODU, 2000), Eros Pinoy: An Anthology of Contemporary Erotica in Philippine Art and Poetry (Anvil 2001), Invasian: Asian Sisters Represent (Asian Women United of CA, 2003), Times New Roman: Poets Oppose 21st Century Empire (on-line at http://www.nthposition.com), and are forthcoming in Writers From the Philippine Diaspora, the UK-based Graphic Poetry Anthology, and Pinoy Poetics. Gravities of Center is Barbaraâs first book. She is currently at work on her second book manuscript entitled Conjure, a series of poems written after the paintings of two Bay Area Pinoy visual artists. For more information, please visit http://barbarajanereyes.com

Jan 20 - March 9

Creating and Performing Your Own Work with Canyon Sam

Tuesdays, 7 - 9.30PM
Location TBA

Class size: minimum of 8, maximum of 12.
Cost: $165 non-members, $150 for KSW members.
To register, please send a check for the full amount to: Kearny Street Workshop, 934 Brannan Street, San Francisco, CA 94103. Please include your name, contact information (phone number and email address if possible), and which class you are registering for. For questions, please contact program manager Samantha Chanse at 415.503.0520 or info@kearnystreet.org.

Class Description:
A fun, hands-on introduction to creating and performing your own work Ð both ensemble and solo. Through exercises and structured improvisation we will explore ways of generating material from personal/political experience and translating them into movement, sound, narrative, and character. We draw on a wide range of methods and philosophies Ð from the S.F. Mime TroupeÕs Commedia del Arte style to body-based improvisation to traditional theater. Intended to be a playful but challenging dip into the performance genre for all levels, no experience needed.

About the instructor:
Canyon Sam, for many years a poet and writer, began doing performance art in 1991. She has directed for the S. F. Mime TroupeÕs CSU Summer Arts Program, taught in the Mime TroupeÕs Youth Program and at California College of the Arts, studied at the DellÕArte International School of Physical Theater and at A.C.T. and collaborated with theater artists Brian Freeman and Nina Wise. She has performed her critically-acclaimed one woman shows all over the country and Canada. For more information, please visit http://www.canyonsam.com/

Jan 17 - Feb 6

Perspective x3: Visions of Vietnam

A New Photography Exhibit with
Chung Hoang Chuong
Binh Danh
Anisha Narasimhan

Opening Reception January 24, 2003 1 – 4PM
Featuring poets TRUONG TRAN and NGUYEN QUI DUC and vocalist-instrumentalist UNITY NGUYEN.

At the Chinatown Communty Arts Program Gallery
At the Chinese Culture Center, 750 Kearny Street, (Third floor of Holiday Inn building)
Between Clay and Washington Streets, SF

Gallery Hours:
Tuesdays and Thursdays 1 pm – 4 pm
Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays 10 am – 4 pm

This exhibit is co-sponsored by the San Francisco Arts Commission Chinatown Community Arts Program

Artist Bios:
Chung Hoang Chuong is currently on the faculty in Asian American Studies at the City College of San Francisco. As one of the early immigrants from Vietnam and seeing from up close the changes within the Vietnamese American community, he was part of the Sixties generation with which he closely identifies. He obtained his MFA in photography at Lone Mountain College and began teaching Vietnamese American Studies in 1981 at the University of California, Berkeley. In the Southeast Asian refugee movements of the 1970s, he worked as a volunteer and a resettlement worker, and produced several training video programs for incoming immigrants. He later introduced a new course examining the resettlement process of Southeast Asian Americans. In the late 80s, he was appointed assistant-professor at San Francisco State University and went on to become the first director of the Vietnamese American Studies Center in 1996 after extensive an effort of reconnecting the diaspora community with the home country. As a visual artist, he joined Asian American photographer Josel Namkung in a 1973 photography show at the Focus gallery in San Francisco and was also part of the Group 16 exhibition organized by the late Oliver Gagliani. "Reconnecting with Vietnam" was the theme of his one person photo show at the gallery of the Rosenberg Library at CCSF in 1999. His most recent publication is the "Book of Perceptions" with co-author Truong Tran highlighting the feelings of reconnection of Vietnamese Americans with their homeland. He is a native of Vietnam and is currently serving as the President of the San Francisco/Ho Chi Minh City Sister City Committee.

Binh Danh was born in Vietnam on October 9, 1977. Having recently received his BFA in Photography from San Jose State University, he has exhibited his work regionally and has lectured on his work nationally. Danh’s work often addresses and reflects his Vietnamese heritage and interest in natural science and history. He utilizes 19 century photographic processes such as daguerreotypes and tintypes in his contemporary image -making. Other projects completed by Danh focus on the Vietnamese-American War and the subsequent emigration of many Vietnamese (Danh & his family included) to the United States. Danh invented an amazing photographic technique, in which he grows an image in plant leaves through a photosynthesis process. The leaves themselves become a Chlorophyll Print. This innovative process was used to create the Chlorophyll Prints for Searching for the Cosmos and Immortality, the Remnants of the Vietnamese-American War. Danh is currently an MFA candidate at Stanford University.

Anisha Narasimhan is a local South Asian queer Immigrant who works in both b&w and color photography. She has been a graduate student at the SF Art Institute since the fall of 2002, though she is currently residing in New York City for the year. Her work stems primarily from a documentary photographic tradition but in her recent pieces she has branched out to explore a more narrative expression and (somewhat) abstract vision. She has had several long term projects covering bay area queer/trans communities of color and the south asian diasporic population. Her Vietnam work was created during a trip to northern Vietnam in the spring of 2003.

Unity (Tuy-Ngoc) Nguyen is a vocalist and multi-instrumentalist who weaves together many cultures. A refugee from Viet Nam in 1975, Unity grew up immersed in her family's songs from the homeland. Her love of world musics led her later to West Africa for two years. Her favorite instruments are the *dan tranh* (Vietnamese zither) and the *kora* (African harp). Unity is also a licensed acupuncturist. She finds that music and Chinese medicine channel the same energies. Visit the website www.UnityHealingHands.com