[bouncy jazz music] - In this addition of WLIW Arts Beat: a traditional Japanese drumming ensemble.

- We are thrilled and honored to be able to keep this very ancient art form alive in our Northern Nevada community.

[determined drum music] [bouncy jazz music] - [Diane] An open air museum.

- We thought, could we do something that would be beautiful and inspirational for people who are living in the neighborhood, to really just change the narrative of anything to do with negativity.

[bouncy jazz music] - [Diane] Working with fabric.

- [DonCee] Portraits, landscapes, anything, sports pieces.

I do it all.

If I feel it, I'm gonna do it.

[bouncy jazz music] - [Diane] An environmental artist.

- [Mira] All of my work has burning of some kind in it.

And I think it does reflect both sides of creation.

Creation and destruction, and that's what nature is all about.

- [Diane] It's all ahead on this edition of WLIW Arts Beat.

Funding for WLIW Arts Beat was made possible by viewers like you.

Thank you.

Welcome to WLIW Arts Beat, I'm Diane Masciale.

Formed in 1997, Reno Taiko Tsurunokai is a traditional Japanese drumming group.

Based in Reno, Nevada, this talented ensemble plays music and brings Japanese culture to audiences in the area.

Have a listen.

[somber drumming music] - [Rieko] Reno Taiko Tsurunokai is a traditional Japanese drumming ensemble based in Reno, Nevada.

I just love drumming because it's just exciting for me.

It's not something that you hear just from the ears, but you feel it in the body.

- [Cindy] When people actually feel your music, it's quite an amazing experience.

- [Rieko] What's magical about it is to connect people together.

My name is Rieko Shimbo, I live in Reno, but I was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan.

[whimsical flute music] I was interested in drumming since I was really little but I never really played drum until, when I was in college I played in a rock band.

[energetic rock music] When I heard my friend learning traditional Taiko drumming I thought, oh, that would be really fun to learn.

[traditional Japanese music] I learned from a place called Araumaza, which is a professional Japanese traditional music and dancing group in Tokyo, and I was part of that group and then learned and performing there before I moved to Reno.

I met Japanese-American people who were really interested in the Japanese culture, and that's when I met Cindy.

- I asked Rieko if she would be interested in teaching some of us, and she graciously agreed.

We organized the first workshop together, and, I mean, the rest is history.

You know, 25 years later we're still drumming in our community, and every day it's fun.

[Rieko exclaiming in Japanese] [traditional Japanese music] - [Rieko] The Taiko drum has two different parts of it, so not just the rhythm itself, but also the movement is a big part of it.

How we move the arms, how to hold the bachi, how to stand, how to use the whole body.

More like a martial arts in a way, because you have to have the whole body in a very balanced way and also use the strength in an efficient way without hurting the body.

- Part of our choreography includes leg and arm movements.

- [Rieko] Some of the songs we actually move around, rotating and playing around.

The visual makes it more interesting and exciting.

- [Cindy] It's actually quite artistic.

So it's really a full body drumming experience.

[all exclaiming] [traditional Japanese music] - [Rieko] We have different types of drums.

The biggest one is called odaiko and we have a kodaiko, a shimedaiko which is the smaller one.

- [Cindy] The smaller drums are usually doing like a bass beat, the larger drums are doing the actual song, and sometimes the large drum we play both sides of it differently.

- [Rieko] Also we have other instrument accompany drums, a chappa or kane which is made out of metal and make a little more piercing sound or more cheerful, kind of a, you know, accessory for this ensemble.

And then also we have the bamboo flute that we play.

And then the voice is also big part of the ensemble.

Sometimes people ask, what does that mean?

And then like, it doesn't really mean something, some of the things are just kind of a, like sharing sound.

[all exclaiming] [traditional Japanese music] A lot of songs that we play is coming from different parts of Japan in the villages, like farmer's villages or fisherman's village - [Cindy] [speaks in Japanese] is what we call our fisherman's song.

[energetic drumming music] That's also quite athletic, which is in line with the strength you sometimes need as a fisherman, when you're throwing out nets or fishing large fish.

So it's wonderful to know the meaning behind the songs because then when you're drumming it you have a different perspective of how you should be drumming and performing.

- [Rieko] I try to be really focused on the sound.

Immerse myself in the moment, because that's maybe the best thing that I can do to really do my best to connect with people and create something amazing.

Taiko drum is not only for Japan, because now it's spreading all over the world.

The reason why it goes spreading all over the world is because it has such a strong affect for people to feel it and then being together and then being connected.

Music can connect so much, and that really changed my, like when I came over here, I had a kind of a confidence and feeling that I can really connect with people with drumming.

[energetic drum music] [all exclaiming] - [Diane] Learn more at renotaiko.com.

And now, the artist quote of the week.

[bouncy jazz music] At the Punto Urban Art Museum, art is presented outdoors.

Located in the El Punto neighborhood in Salem, Massachusetts, the public is able to appreciate over 70 large scale murals by international and local artists.

Take a look.

- [Reporter] In the Salem neighborhood known as El Punto, or The Point, these residential buildings double as towering gallery walls, featuring portraits, landscapes, and dreams.

- These beautiful murals are the backdrops to this community.

- [Reporter] Yenny Hernandez is one of the many artists who have contributed to the some 75 murals that populate this small neighborhood.

Her work is featured on this sprawling wall, which turns over annually.

This year's theme: interpretations of the American dream.

For Hernandez, as poet Langston Hughes wrote, it's a dream deferred.

- [Yenny] The word deferred to me had a double meaning.

It held some of the weight of the financial kind of burden that we're kind of experiencing now in this country.

To illustrate that I created a glitch effect to represent the misalignment that exists between the dream and how we arrive to that dream.

- [Reporter] It's a sentiment that makes this, and the myriad other murals nestled in the neighborhood, for and of the community.

Formally known as the Punto Urban Art Museum, they are emblazoned on buildings owned by The North Shore Community Development Coalition, a nonprofit serving this low-income community with affordable housing, health services, and now, art.

Mickey Northcutt and David Valecillos are the museum's co-founders.

- What art does, is that it kind of like de-structures the complexity of the topic of bringing two communities together.

So we think of art as the vehicle to talk about complex issues like segregation, racism, and actually portray different points of view.

- [Reporter] For years, the densely populated, working-class neighborhood has seemed a world away from tourist-heavy downtown Salem, even though The Point is just a few blocks away.

Northcutt blames an enduring stigma.

- [Mickey] For some it's racism, for some it's xenophobia.

I think a lot of it is the criminalization of poverty in this country that people feel that somehow poverty is a choice or a crime.

- [Reporter] Enter art as the change agent.

What began as one crosswalk punctuated with portraits, has become a cherished maze of murals.

- We thought, could we do something that would be beautiful and inspirational for people who are living in the neighborhood to really just change the narrative of anything to do with negativity.

- [Reporter] The people behind these murals are a combination of Salem residents and artists from diverse backgrounds who take time to learn about the community before making their mark on it.

- We started like with a crosswalk, and then we did one mural and we see how people will interact with the artist, with the art, and little by little we start asking the community if they liked it or not, and then this is where we are here today.

- [Reporter] One of the most recent muralists is Salem artist Anna Dugan, who collaborated with Yenny Hernandez on a vibrant mural that stretches around this city block.

- [Anna] We knew it was gonna be colorful, but something that was, you know, celebratory of the Latinx population that lives in The Point, something that pays homage to the businesses below the mural in the front.

- [Yenny] The Si Se Puede is a manifestation of optimism and perseverance, which I think is part of the DNA of the Latin experience.

- [Reporter] Perseverance is a motivating factor for keeping The Point on point.

All across the United States, mural meccas have become hip tourist destinations.

Miami's Wynwood district was among the first.

But once a warren of warehouses, it's now been fully gentrified.

That won't happen in The Point, says Mickey Northcutt.

- Here, nearly all of the walls that have been done are on properties that are permanently deed-restricted as affordable, none of them are on residential buildings that are designed to drive the price of those buildings up, which so often is the case in other communities.

They're really engineering gentrification.

- [Reporter] Although The Point has become a tourist destination, now even with a must see designation in go-to travel guide Lonely Planet.

But that's allowing North Shore CDC to bake the arts into future projects, including, and quite unconventionally, indoor gallery space.

It's a boon for artists too.

Anna Dugan decided last year to become a full-time muralist.

- Everyone talks about Salem and talks about like the witches and like, you know, all that stuff, but they don't realize what kind of beautiful art lives here.

- [Reporter] And, hopefully, inspires here.

Yenny Hernandez also grew up in low-income housing, but without the art infusion.

She can only imagine the difference that would've made.

- Had I seen work like this it probably would've had me thinking more, questioning more, maybe putting myself out there more.

But because there really wasn't any art programs, I didn't know what to do with my artistic abilities.

I didn't know what outlets existed, and so I found that much later in life.

And I think that's the power of public art, and so I'm really happy to be a part of that for, hopefully, the next generation.

[bouncy jazz music] - [Diane] To find out more, visit puntourbanartmuseum.org.

Now here's a look at this month's fun fact.

DonCee Coulter is a fabric artist.

With his X-Acto knife, he works with leather, suede, and denim to render unique textured artworks.

We head to Ohio to meet the artist and learn about his technique.

- [Coulter] I grew up in Columbus, Ohio, went to Columbus High School.

After I graduated high school, I went to CCAD, took up ad design and illustration, but somehow I ended up doing fabric artwork [laughs], so that's a totally different story.

[energetic hip hop music] It started with just growing up in the hip hop era.

We used to love to just create, and I would, we would go to shops and things and we would buy these partly torn jean jackets, and then we would tear them up even some more, and then what I would do would paint on either like denim, sometimes even just canvas and we would get a seamstress and she would sew in some of the scenes into the jacket.

So that kind of really got me into studying fabric.

After a while, I would start going to the fabric stores and just start buying fabric and just creating clothes just freehand.

Just didn't, when you think about patterns, I was just, basically just being basically my creative self.

Well, the technique, I guess, it's a collage style.

So it's a process of where I'm taking something and I'm just putting layers on top of layers.

[bouncy jazz music] Obviously, I'll start from the background and move it up to the foreground.

When I initially started working, they were more or less like two tone pieces, and what, I would go into art galleries and I would look at my work compared to other paintings and I said, okay, I gotta do better, I gotta step what I'm doing.

I was like, I want to take this to the level of where it looks like a painting.

So it, there was a lot of trial and error, and lot of experimenting.

I mean, in the beginning my pieces were really bulky 'cause I would use the more heavier fabrics.

When I learned a technique for cutting the thinner fabric, that was, it was almost like game over for me because at that point I was able to put shadows and highlights and bring more different elements into my artwork without it looking bulky.

That was the key.

And that's why today people look at it and they can say this looks like a painting until you walk up on it and it's like, no, this is all fabric.

Oh, number one, leather and suede.

Number two would be denim.

And everything else after that.

I think that the, when I work with leather and suede it just really translate really well with my pieces and I just love the texture of it, and I think that it really comes out.

Denim is another totally different look.

I really like that as well.

I love blending the different types of denim together as the same way with the leather and suedes.

My only tool is the X-Acto knife, and the technique is just learning how to cut those thin fabrics with accuracy.

There are a lot of little different techniques that I use, I don't want just kind of like disclose them all.

I'll go and I'll say one technique I'll use.

If you got a real thin fabric, there's a certain glue that you can use, you can apply to the back of the fabric, which at that point kind of gives it a more of a solid feel, and it's easier to cut.

Typically, I would say about 95% of what I do is basically comes from outta my head.

I typically really don't use references a lot, it's just things that I just think about.

I just love to create.

[relaxed electronic music] So when I'm creating a piece, I really get into it.

So if I'm creating, let's say a city scene, and I'm creating buildings, I'm not just an artist, I'm an architect.

If I'm doing a portrait and I'm creating a person, I am also, I'm designing their outfit, designing their look.

So yeah.

Well, that's the thing, when I do a piece I am all in.

I think the funnest part is when you're, you know, right in the middle and when you can see that vision come together, 'cause, initially, when you're creating a piece, you're like, oh, is this gonna to work?

And then as you're working you're like, oh, starting to see it now, it's coming together.

On the flip side, the worst part, I think, is coming towards the end, trying to finish that piece.

'Cause at that point you're ready to move on to the next piece, and that's when you really have to be careful 'cause I'm like, no, stop, take your time, make sure you complete this correctly.

One of the reasons why I use the bird, it represents freedom.

And when I first started doing art work, I kind of felt like that actor that gets typecast.

People were expecting me to do a certain type of artwork.

And one of the reasons why I adapted that bird, 'cause that bird allows me to do anything I want to do.

You know, if I wanna do an abstract piece, it's gonna be, I'll do that tomorrow.

Portraits, landscapes, anything, sports pieces.

I do it all.

If I feel it, I'm gonna do it Art is my therapy.

I really hope that, for the viewer, that it affects them the way that it affects me.

So a lot of times, if I'm dealing with something, I go into my studio.

The art is, that's my release, and I'm able to just basically deal with stress in that way.

So I want that to be conveyed with my artwork, also with the viewer.

So that's one of the things I wanted to also accomplish with some of these, my new pieces as well.

So I really hope that resonates with the viewer.

- [Diane] See more of DonCee's art at doncee.com.

And here's a look at this week's art history.

[bouncy jazz music] For four decades, eco-feminist artist Mira Lehr has been rendering abstract artworks that reflect on nature and our environment.

Through mediums such as painting, sculpture, and video, she conveys her message to the world.

We take a trip to Florida and find out more.

[mysterious acoustic music] - [Mira] The beauty is very important to me, but I have to take the bloom off the rose.

I'm Mira Lehr, I'm an artist.

All of my work has burning of some kind in it.

And I think it does reflect both sides of creation.

Creation and destruction, and that's what nature is all about.

It's always related to the environment.

I always drew when I was a little kid.

I never really knew I would be a professional artist.

As I grew older, I decided I was gonna study art history in college.

I was so lucky because at the time I graduated the abstract expressionists were holding forth in New York and it was a major movement.

So I was right in the middle of this really wonderful scene.

So from then on, I did art.

And I was not really into the environment as much in the beginning.

I just did nature, a lot of nature studies, but eventually I heard of Buckminster Fuller, a man who was very much about the planet.

And I saw an opportunity to work with him in 1969.

I went to New York and I worked with him on something called The World Game.

And that was about how to make the world work in the most efficient way, and doing more with less.

So from then on, I was hooked.

I'm feeling two urgencies.

One, I'm getting older, that's an urgency.

You know, how many years do I have left?

And the other urgency is how many years does the planet have left?

So we've converged.

Every day I get up raring to go.

In the Orlando exhibit, it was called High Watermark because that's where we're at, and that's where they felt my career was at.

So that show had very, very large sculptures of mangroves.

And you could walk through the mangroves and feel you were in encased in the roots, the root system.

There's something about being enclosed in the space that makes the viewer very much more attentive to what's happening, and so I watched people walking through the mangroves and they were all moved by it.

So that's really the first time I've done that kind of large scale sculpture.

I love doing it, it's a big, the smaller I get and the older I get the bigger the work becomes, it seems to me [chuckles].

And so now I'm back in the studio, and I'm turning to something I'm calling Planetary Visions because I'm doing images of earth masses.

I've also added writing, which, some of it is from Bucky Fuller about the planet, some of it is just poetry about nature.

I've always felt abstraction as the highest form, even though I like representation, but to me abstraction gets the essence, the essence of everything, and you can take it and go on with it, and it's more spiritual to me.

I think like Cezanne at the end of his life, his paintings became kind of dissolved in light, like light entities.

At the end of Rembrandt's life also, his work became less literal and more, also dissolved in light.

So light is very important, and that, to me, is the height of it.

If you have a light entity in your work, I think it's profound and meaningful.

The light on the big sculpture, yeah, those are special lights that grow corals in the laboratory.

And the sculpture is the shape of a wave, and it's mesmerizing.

You know, if the world falls apart and people are concerned just with their little everyday existence, I don't see a great future.

But I'm hoping there's still time.

The clock is definitely ticking.

And I'm not a politician and I'm not a scientist.

The way I can express it is through my art, and that's what I'm trying to do, along with having a wonderful experience making it.

[mysterious acoustic music concludes] - [Diane] Discover more at miralehr.com.

That wraps it up for this edition of WLIW Arts Beat.

We'd like to hear what you think.

So like us on Facebook, join the conversation on Twitter, and visit our webpage for features and to watch episodes of the show.

We hope to see you next time.

I'm Diane Masciale, thank You for watching WLIW Arts Beat.

Funding for WLIW Arts Beat was made possible by viewers like you.

Thank you.

[bouncy jazz music]