)asian pacific america. ) i )m hello, and welcome to "asian pacific america." i'm robert handa, your host for your show here on nbc bay area and cozi-tv. we talk to artshes who passions maintain and expand the world of the artistic community. we start with a groundbreaking artist, the opening artist for the beijing olympics and known for wrapping the art museum with canvas for its grand opening then crazy for kaunjy with creator eve kushner who will help us with japanese text that have characters of sound and meaning. >> next, author and illustrator who was in the bay area recently to meet fans of his novel and is

also the illustrator of the 15th anniversary edition of a u.s. paperback edition of harry potter and we wrap up with a return visit by harry, the author of the anti-bullying book and has a new book, stanley, no stripes. and we'll meet his illustrator. >> one reason we like to focus artists on our show is it's so often an oefr looked and underappreciated aspect of our community. it's gratifying to feature someone whose artistry always seeks to break new ground. with me is pop zhou. he opened the asian art museum in grand style and did the same for the beijing olympics with a work entitled olympic dragon and he was opointed art commissioner for san francisco in 2005. a good way to start there. give me an cride. you do so many different things. as artist, a way to describe you, or do you have a specialty,

do you think? >> i have many styles. i graduated from the center academy of fine art in beijing. i got a training for eight years training in the academy, in high school. we entered into fine arts. >> walt was your first type of art project? what was the thing that attracted you to art in the first place? >> first, before my focus was realistic style. detail, paintings. classic or traditional. i love rembrandt, but i tell people i don't want to be another rembrandt. >> why would you want to do that? >> you never can pass him. >> how did you evolve into doing the broader works you ended up doing? >> a charity in tibet, i spent a four month journey, didn't even

tell my parent where i was going for my summer vacation. stayed in a desert for a four-month journey. it was a hard time. the desert for a few days. you don't see people, no water, no food. what quite an experience. a life and death experience. i always wanted to do a big thing. when i heard the beijing olympics apply in 2001, bidding for beijing olympics, i say it's good for china if there is the international olympics so it changes. that's why i wanted to use my art. >> you did that eight-mile-long artwork. did you propose -- how did you propose that? what do you tell the people making the decision what you want to do and why it represents the show? >> this is a very long, long time for the idea and draw a sketch. then we go to the beijing olympic committee.

present it to them, say this is what we want to do. so nobody believed it. it's hard to do on a mountain. you have 1,000 people, 8,000 people there. same time. just like a military. so it's hard. but you always go through difficultiys to make a great thing. >> how did you get so involved in the american art world? >> i came here to san francisco in 1988. so i had a different show, different museums, galleries. so when the asian art museum opening in 2003, the chairman offered asian art museum. they said we love something. so they wanted me to do something. >> so you wrapped it in canvas.

>> yeah. the mayor said, oh. actually, it's a museum gift to the city. i said, oh, that's great. let's wrap it. >> and you're also the first featured artist there. >> yeah. >> what are you working on now? >> just more professional artwork. painting. >> nice to wait for some inspiration. >> yeah. >> congratulations on everything you have done so far. looking forward to your next works. well, coming up, eve kushner shows us why she's crazy for conji and we will be too. i think i already am. stay tuned and find out why. i grew up watching my mother and

some of my relatives writing kanji..and it was fascinating and a little scary and some of my revatives writing kanji and it was a fascinating

and little scary because it seemed so much more complex than the alphabet i was learning, but it seemed to open up a world of expression that seemed so limitless. i'm a big fan and enjoying of the website, joy of kanji, and with me is the creator of all that, eve kushner. thank you for being here. >> thanks for having me. >> i know it's complicated, but give us in essence what kanji is. >> the japanese used four writing systems. and each one serves a different function. so they interweave mostly three of them, the fourth one doesn't count so much. they interweave three of them into every sentence and in fact most words will have a combination of two of the writing systems. >> i felt like it opened up expression. you know what i mean? even though it is a little scary how multidimensional it is. do you feel that way? >> it's a fascinating comment. i'm not sure what you're thinking, but maybe you mean that the visual aspect of it evokes certain emotions.

>> absolutely. not so literal. is that right? >> it is right. the japanese have nuances attached to each kanji so if you yeed one, it makes them feel that's really associated with evil or superstition. don't use that. we don't have that kind of reaction to the letter a or q. it's hard to relate to at some level but it's fascinating to watch it, the strength of it, the associations. >> it's easy for me because i grew up watching people do kanji. it might be intimidating for people. but for you and probably will help explain for people why they should get interested in it, what got you so fascinated with kanji? >> i think the very first thing was that i was frustrated by it because it was presented to me in my third japanese class as something to learn by rote without questioning, and i didn't understand anything about why we had to learn it in the first place because before that, we had been using two phonetic systems and they seemed to do the job just fine. why are we shifting over to this more symbolic system that was

impossible. why did various characters have multiple readings, multiple pronunciations that had nothing to do with each other. i was full of questions and that wasn't really appropriate almost. we were just supposed to do what we were told to do. >> lmz a breakthrough. >> a friend of mine gave me a book, kanji pick tographics, and it showed how you could break each down into minite parts. usually two could be three, four, five, six. those carry meaning, other parts carry sounds. they're all contributing something. at first, if you don't know anything about it, it looks like a tangle of strokes. it's daunting. >> yes, but also fascinating because as you sort of figure it out, its arer like, oh, i see. in fact, on your website, there's so many aspects to it, the joy of kanji. you break down all of the kanji symbolsering right? >> i do. well, each essay, i'm writing one essay about each of the joyo

kanji. it's the set of characters you need in order to be literate to graduate from high school or read a newspaper in japan. i'm writing sort of a personal profile of each one because they each have strong personalities. >> that's an ambitious project. i notice it's getting a lot of international attention. you get people from all different countries plugging in to look at kanji. >> i'm fortunate that way and also because in their countries, for the most part, there isn't much written, for instance, i have an argentinian friend who is even more obsessed with kanji than i am possibly, and there's nothing for him to read in spanish so he's willing to read in english about japanese. we have people from hungary, iceland, russia. >> to get people so they don't get intimidated by t what is

attracting them to it and what do you want people to think about as they first approach kanji and look at the website. >> what attracts a lot of people is they know you can't survive in japan without it. the first thing when you step into tokyo station, which you would think is such a brajer train station, they would have signs in ienglish, but they really don't. there's an enormous map on the wall that is all place names, they're particularly hard, all in kanji. you could stand there and get lost, even if you're good at it. people think you need to speak the language to get by, but it's not true. the more literate you are, the more power it gives you. like in any language, but particularly in that one because you're so shut out. >> how would you start there? >> how do you break into it? it breaks up into smaller components, and they have meanings. you start with the simplest kanji, some of, which are mostly

pictorial. a gate really looks like a gate, a tree looks like a tree. a mountain looks more or less like a mountain, a deformed mountain maybe. these become parts of other characters. it creates a system. it's all very well organized and brilliant. there's so much wit and brilliance embedded it in for 5,000 years. that's the most amazing thing to me, drilling down and having it crack open. that's in there and that's in there. it's all waiting for us to find. >> that's why i think your website is so great. thank you very much. thanks for being here. >> that's it in. >> that's it. >> that was so fast. >> stay right there. coming up, author and harry potter illustrator coming up next. with author kazu kibuishi...he

was meeting with fans in foster well. we took "asian pacific america" on the road to catch up with kazuo kabayashi. he was talking about his novel

and his illustrations on harry potter. >> fans hear from kazuo, writer and artist of the best selling illustrated series amulet, and he's also the artist of the 15th anniversary u.s. edition harry potter. we met up with him to learn how he got into his career and his experiences thus far. >> high grandma had a japanese restaurant in california. and my mom used to work there. and so after school or in between when i wasn't in school, i was often just sitting in the restaurant, trying to figure out what to do. i was probably reading manga or garfield or mad magazine. what i could find cartoons, it was like a magazine about cars they had with cartoons, drawn cars that they had at the grocery store. and so i think naturally, i just

thought, well, i'll make my own. >> he says his upbringing in a single-parent household played a significant role in his ongoing series, amulet. >> when my mom came to the states, she the divorced in japan, and came to the states as a single mom with two kids. and so a lot of the experiences that we felt growing up became the emotional basis for the book series. i make them for different moods. different times in your life. so you should probably have a different favor based on where you are. i think good art just reflects a certain period in your life. it can't reflect the whole thing. >> he explains how his primary interest in writing shifted his career goals from architecture to creating experiences through story telling. >> i was actually more interested ipwriting. i had always drawn because i just did it. and it's something that people seemed to like when they saw my drawings, they thought, oh, you're an artist.

you do that. i always saw myself more as a storyteller. i wanted to be for a long time, i wanted to be a ride designer, like walt disney, something like that, to just create experiences and stuff. for even a short time, i was considering being an architect, worked at a firm as a graphic designer and thought about getting a degree and making buildings or something. i'm more into the designing an experience. and i realized that with the cartoons fused with writing, i could do that. i could make that happen in the form of a book. >> when asked about his work on the new harry potter covers, he said it was a long but fun project for him. >> as an author, it was really nice to visit somebody else's stories. you know, like a world that is so beloved and so well respected. to just -- a world that's so different than my own, actually, that i came in there like a photographer.

visiting hogwarts and i got to go around and take little photos and explore and feel like i could explore a world that's been built that was really, really fun. >> with another major project now behind him, he remains full speed ahead, and we look forward to seeing what he does next. >> fascinating person. ow thanks to vicky nguyen. stay with us, coming up, the latest in the series of antibullying books by harry e. pacheco along with his illustrator, phil villanueva. of )anti-bullying ) books

welcome back. we met him when he wrote gladys glasses, the first in a series of anti-bullying books inspired by his daughter being bullied for wearing glasses. nuhe returns with a new book, stanley no stripes. and with harry is his illustrator, phil villanueva. welcome both of you to the show. >> thank you. so, stanley, no stripes. what are we talking about there? >> stanley no stripes is a book i made.

just for kids that are going through change and to be comfortable with their own skin. i want kids to know that going through puberty, it's okay. sometimes people are late bloomers and i wanted to write a book on that. >> gladys glasses was about wearing glasses. stripes, what does that symbolize? >> he's the only tiger with no stripes at his age. and all the other tigers have stripes. so he gets peer pressured to painting his own stripes on himself. >> very good. >> so what happens is he gets humiliated by painting stripes on his head because, i mean, on his fur, because it drips off. and people find out that he did that just to fit in. >> are you getting a lot of response since gladys glasses came out? gratified by what you're getting? >> very much so. i do a lot of work with schools. i do assemblies more than 600

kids. for school. >> does it feel like you're making an impact? >> i feel like that's my goal, to want to have, spread the awareness for change at the schools. and i think they're making a good effort to do that. >> an effective way of storytelling is always to have good illustrations, yes? >> yes. >> let's segue to phil villanueva. give me an idea, working on stanley no stripes, what did you want to convey to convey his message as well? >> i felt like me using my own memories and experiences from going through puberty, going through life, just the adversity of life at such a young age, it's easy to dig into my brain and get the memories out. what i visualized at that time. kind of went hand and hand with what he was writing. >> you have to draw an appealing character, right, that kids can relate to? >> yeah. more something like my

childhood, i watched cartoons all the time. filled with cartoons to what i knew what i liked at that time. >> you had work you wanted to show to me. let's take a look at that. >> this is a canvas that's going to be available at the upicaling stockton con in august. i'm going to be there, i think that's my third year. that's your art tistic world. >> trying to get into the comic book world. one step at a time. you have to take all the opportunities that present themselves to you and not turn anything down. >> harry, what's next for you? are you going to take this further, obviously? i know this is a passion for you. what's next? >> so we have a five-book series. we have my third book coming out and then my fourth and fifth. >> want to talk about it at all? >> well, it's wheelchair willy. that's coming up next. and that's dealing with kids getting picked last because of disabilities. then i have cyrus the

cyberbully, which everybody goes through. i think, worldwide. because you can remain anonymous. it goes -- i mean, it goes hand in hand. >> i don't want to get too personal, but gladys glasses about your daughter. how has all of this been for your daughter? has it helped her? >> yes, it helped her tremendously. i think she's more confident. i they think that as a father, that was the number one thing i wanted her to do. she wears even brighter glasses now. >> all you concerned just in terms of the atmosphere we have going now in the world and the country? what do you think about, you were talking about growing up that way and feeling that. do you feel that youngsters are really feeling that now? >> i would like to say so, but as more and more time goes on, the more technology happens, that's usually where they see the main source of their inflew ngss. if feel like if we could do the book, it's a good way to get to

kids. >> we're sort of emphasizing artists and artistry. are you kind of encouraged, are you seeing other people who sort of are inspired to put their life and their inspirations into words and books from your example? >> yeah, definitely. i just did a school in stockton, one of the teachers, one of the principals offered to illustrate a book if the kids were to write their own books. it was about anti-bullying. if they would illustrate it themselves, they would -- the prince pal would put money up for that. that's at davis school in stockton, california. >> all right. and what do you tell people who want to kind of tell a story like that or they have an inspiration to tell a story. how do you help them come up with the story? you can't just give the message. it has to be intertwined in a way so people will listen and get it that way. how do you help people get it that way? >> it's pulled from inspiration, from an individual that inspires

you. especially if you know an individual that is going through something and it's kind of, they conquer it, kind of like a triumphant story. i believe that everyone that, you know, in this world goes through something that ends up kind of conquering that. and i believe that's a story in itself. >> yeah. how can people get stanley no stripes? >> stanley no stripes is in amazon.com right now. and then my release of stanley no stripes to bookstores will be in two months. >> great. good book. well illustratored by phil villanueva. thank you both for being here. >> thank you. >> you can see more about all of our artists on nbcbayarea.com and catch us on facebook and twitter. we want to thank all of our guests today and catch us next week and every week here on "asian pacific america." thanks for watching.

this is more work than i this is real work. >> this is going to be the biggest tax cut in our history. >> north korea is the most dangerous spot on the planet right now. >> we breached public trust. >> the cleveland browns select myles garrett. good morning and welcome to "sunday today" on this last day of april. i'm willie geist. another big day with president trump holding a big rally in pennsylvania to punctuate his first 100 days in office. tornadoes in texas killing at least five people, injuring dozens more and devastating flooding in the midwest. today 40 million people are under threat of severe he