- Hi, I'm Satori Shakoor and here's what's coming up this week on One Detroit Arts and Culture.

A celebration of watercolors in Detroit, sustainable practices at a restaurant in Clawson.

A married couple reminisces, and a tattoo artist.

It's all just ahead on One Detroit Arts and Culture.

- [Announcer] From Delta faucets to Behr paint, Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

Support for this program is provided by the Cynthia & Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit Public TV.

The Kresge Foundation.

- [Announcer] The DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit Public TV, among the state's largest foundations committed to Michigan focused giving.

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- [Announcer] Nissan foundation and viewers like you.

(contemporary music) - Hi, and welcome to One Detroit Arts and Culture.

I'm your host, Satori Shakoor, and I'm here at Tipping Point Theater in Northville.

Here's what's coming up on this show.

The Michigan Watercolor Society celebrates 75 years, plus a Japanese restaurant in Clawson and their sustainable practices.

Then a married couple discusses how their cultural differences only make their relationship stronger.

And tattoo artist Lorri Thomas.

It's all coming up on One Detroit Arts and Culture.

The Michigan Watercolor Society celebrates 75 years in 2022.

The Michigan Watercolor Society was founded back in 1946 by a group of young artists who wanted to further watercolor education and be a forum open to all points of view.

This year's annual MWCS exhibition is taking the society back to its roots in Detroit.

They're exhibiting at the Kayrod Gallery at the Hannan Center.

It opens Saturday, June 4th.

- I love the fluidity.

I love the surprises.

I feel like my work comes out better when I let the surprises work for me.

The water and the paint and everything mixes together.

- I've had a lot of people say, well, how, how can you get that bright of a color?

I've had people say, well, you must be using like a fluorescent painter, but it's not.

It's just tube watercolor.

There could be an area in a watercolor that has 7, 8, 9, 10 layers of light to dark colors.

- I'm not one that thinks about, I just kind of do it intuitively.

I'm not writing it down or drawing or anything preconceived.

It just when I originally started just throw color on and then it goes from there.

- I decided I wanted to be in a group of artists that were like-minded with me, because what I do is more solo and I Googled societies that had to do with watercolor, 'cause that was my passion.

- You get to see on a regular basis, a lot of the work that all of our members are doing, and it's really amazing to me what a talented group of people we have and they come from all different backgrounds.

Some of 'em are graphic designers.

Some of them have been in fine art all their life.

Some people just picked it up because they liked it.

- The Michigan Watercolor Society, a nonprofit arts organization formed in the 1940s by members of Detroit's universities and cultural institutions to provide resources and education for watercolor painters and exposure for the medium.

The organization is preparing for its 75th anniversary exhibition, opening June 4th at the Kayrod Gallery in Detroit's Hannan Center.

- The Michigan Watercolor Society started back in 1946.

Professors from Wayne State University of Michigan, the DIA, the Scarab Club.

And they started with I think some 40 people and they had their first show in I think 1947.

- It's really just a community of artists.

We offer workshops.

We offer Zooms with various artists, so it just gave me a community of people.

And now they're my friends and inspired me I guess, is what it did to become a better artist.

- 75 years, back in Detroit, thanks to Richard Reeves for hosting us at the Kayrod Gallery in the Hannan Center.

- The true mission of the gallery is to be a place where seniors, people 55 and older are, have a safe place to display their work and explore art and learn about the business of art.

I love the, the opportunity that the Watercolor Society does with actually educating their artists.

And also just the idea of, you know, some art is very representative and some is abstract and just the whole idea of bringing all those things together and showing that watercolor is just a, just definitely a viable, viable, medium to use as an art form.

- Being in Detroit where this all started and, and just, I'm hoping that the founders are looking down on us and saying, thanks for keeping us alive.

Thanks for remembering us.

Thanks for carrying on the mission and bringing it back home.

- When you see the artwork in person, it's so different than seeing a image, you can see the paint on the paper.

All the artists have their own particular way that they paint, which makes it so interesting.

- For me.

It's just a, it's a motivator.

I will go to the show, I'll see the other work.

There's so much really, really topnotch work there.

And you know, I'll look at a piece I'm like, wow, that's that's really done well.

I need to up my game.

It just really, really pushes me to, to just put out the best that I can.

The very best that I can every time.

- Well, we're a volunteer organization to begin with.

So everyone that gets involved, it's through a passion of love for art, being part of a community, a like-minded community.

It deals with just working on techniques as watercolor techniques, 'cause there's just hundreds of them.

Or it's got social ramifications in their work.

This is a painting I did in reference to Ukraine and what they're going through right now.

It's mostly watercolor, but I'm using gouaches.

I'm using French watercolor crayons.

I'm using India ink.

We created a print for it and we're donating to help support the first responders in Ukraine.

- So this year's show, the piece that I've got in is called Isola Puerta.

And it is a, a old, old door from Italy.

- It's based loosely on a photograph that I took on a trip to Hawaii a couple of years ago.

And what I wanted to do was capture the sunlight and just really capture the movement.

- I think it'd be great for people to come, not only because of the artwork, but it's about people.

Michigan Watercolor is a friendly organization.

You'll learn a lot from a lot of different people from a lot of different backgrounds.

I, I tell people I learn something new every time I talk to another artist, whether it's a new gallery or a new technique, you'll never not learn something when you come and meet folks from Michigan Watercolor.

- Let's head to Clawson where the restaurant Sozai has a mission to bring sustainable sushi to its customers, with a close eye on traceability, fish populations, fishing methods, and farming practices.

One Detroit's Chris Jordan has the story.

- I wanted to really celebrate restaurants that are bringing a perspective to an area.

For Sozai specifically.

It's it's that perspective of wanting to serve sustainable sushi.

- Clawson, a small Metro Detroit city with a thriving restaurant scene.

During the first year of the pandemic, we followed Clawson's small businesses as they weathered the storm.

But since then, a new restaurant has opened and was named the Detroit Free Press restaurant of the year.

Sozai, run by chef Hajime Sato, one of just a small handful of restaurants in the whole country serving sustainable sushi.

I met up with Free Press food critic, Lyndsay Green in downtown Clawson at White Wolf Japanese patisserie to discuss her top 10 new restaurants list and why Sozai got the top honor.

- Restauranters really were intentional when they launched their restaurants over the past year, because I think that they saw what was needed in the industry.

I think they saw that you needed to be really mindful of diversity.

You needed to be really mindful of things like sustainability.

They really needed to pay attention to the impact that a restaurant has on our society and on our community and on the world at large.

What is interesting about Sozai is that sustainability as a pillar at the restaurant goes beyond even just his sustainable sourcing.

There's also this concept of sustainability within his hiring practices.

He offers benefits to his full-time employees.

I mean he offers health insurance, which is something that, you know, you can't be sustainable if you're not creating a sustainable environment for your workers.

His philosophy of going above and beyond is evident in everything that he does at Sozai.

- I booked a reservation at their sushi bar and showed up early to speak to Chef Sato and see him and his staff prep the kitchen for dinner service.

- It is really hard to think that the sushi can be sustainable, because we are literally talking about four or five species that everybody has.

That's probably 90% of the sales.

I cannot use any of that, that.

The sous chef has to make a decision of changing that.

That's almost impossible.

That's crazy, right?

- According to Lyndsay's article, the amount of sustainable seafood in American restaurants has actually decreased in recent decades.

And about 34% of seafood served in America is unsustainable.

Within like 10, 20 years, you're not gonna get any seafood left when you're doing what you're doing.

Sometimes I feel like you can make a little sacrifice in your life, a little bit, right.

Then that's gonna change a little bit, right?

Crazy guy like me changing the seafood sustainability and this like 25 seating restaurants not gonna change anything, but think about half of the entire population.

That's 10% reduction on let's say, I'm not gonna eat eel all the time, but maybe I I'm not gonna eat it maybe 10, 20% of the time.

Entire population did it, or half a population did it, that's gonna basically change entire dynamic of anything that you see.

- Chef Sato's advice to sushi lovers who want to eat more sustainably.

- Start with, go to the sushi bar or any kind of seafood restaurant, fishmonger.

Just say, where is this fish come from, right?

Why do you have this fish?

Just a little something.

Is it local?

Is it seasonal?

Whatever that is, right.

That's gonna change a little bit of people's mind or saying that, okay, is this sustainable or not?

Just say that.

- You also, you do more vegetarian stuff and more with vegetables than a lot of sushi places do.

- One of the things that I guess if you go to the sushi bar, if you say you're vegan or vegetarian, then you get like just avocado and cucumber roll.

We don't do that.

We do a lot of pickled vegetables in house.

And we even have omakase, which is the chef choice meal for the vegan people.

So you're gonna have a lot of choices.

And even if you get sashimi assortment, you get a lot of pickled vegetables.

And some people don't eat it.

It's like, eh, it's vegetable.

And I sometimes make them eat it, eat your freaking vegetables.

- And now you mentioned omakase, the chef's choice experience at the sushi bar.

Yeah.

Tell me a bit about that.

I want people to experience something that you would never ever eat from the menu if it's there.

And yes, used to the fried California or spicy mayonnaise, and today I might give you the sea snails, but be open minded.

You might like it.

I talk to the customers and even exactly the same omakase from the menu, I might do a touch different.

So every time it's different.

That's why there's a counter space over here.

That's the only time I do omakase.

Not at the table.

I think relationship's so important.

Especially these days, everything's kind of a internet base and there's no human contact that much, you know, people, I think misses that part of it in the restaurant too.

It's so mechanical sometimes, right?

- Right.

- I'm more old school.

I'd like to have a regular customer for life.

- For more info on Sozai restaurant, go to our website for onedetroitpbs.org.

In honor of AAPI Heritage month and in partnership with WDET, Detroit Public TV is amplifying the voices of Southeast Michigan's AAPI community.

They were invited to have meaningful conversations and share their stories.

Up next is excerpt from a conversation between Lily Mendoza and Jim Perkinson, who discuss how they've navigated the differences between their cultures, through their relationship and what they're still learning.

- Yeah, so very quickly, what, what I had to to learn was about the, the cultural difference Between my whiteness and being run through the inner city and your Filipinoness and so.

- And we have this core value in our, among our indigenous cultures in the Philippines, that's called Kapwa, which is shared being the other as part of one one's self too.

And, and so it comes with a whole complex of communication dynamic, right?

That is not, that is not this individualistic thing.

And a lot of it is, carries an indirection or requires an indirection.

- What I remember is.

- Sensing.

- Early on you one night asking me, "Babe, what do you want to do?"

And I told you, I don't remember what I told you, but something like I said, "Oh, ah, let's get a pizza and go see a movie.

And you were kind of put off by that.

And only slowly did I learn as you educated me, that what you really were inviting was for me to very obliquely indicate what maybe I might like to do.

And then you would do the same.

And then we would go back and forth in a, in a dance that was delicate and an exquisite and arriving at the decision was every bit as important as what we actually decided to do, because it was just a, a living out of the quality of the relationship and that kind of nonverbal, or very indirectly verbal sensitivity and knowing of each other.

So I'm still learning that.

- Yeah.

And for my part, I also had to learn a different way, especially when it came to, to our conflicts, right.

Well, we have this other, other cultural thing that we call (indistinct), you know, it's a delicate feeling of hurt where you withdraw and you expect the other person to read you and to, and to know.

- Something else I had to learn about.

- Yeah.

And, and I would get so frustrated because you couldn't get, you couldn't sense me, right.

And we had to work it so I would also learn to, to speak my heart.

- Yeah.

Very much back and forth.

Where in any given situation whose cultural assumptions and habits were going to be honored and who was going to adapt to whom and that's, that's part of the synergy of, I guess, any relationship, but it was a deep kind of thing that, that we had to learn and still are learning with each other.

- The other thing that we, we had to negotiate was the protocol around food.

You were frustrated being in the Philippines because we were getting fed you know.

- The first time there.

- Every, every single house that we visited, they would put a spread.

- So I, I, yeah.

I had like six meals in four hours.

I just.

- I said, rather than getting frustrated, you have to understand that food is a language in my culture as most indigenous cultures, also.

- For more of their conversation, the AAPI story series and our arts and culture coverage, just go to oneDetroitpbs.org.

I'd like to thank the Tipping Point Theater for having me here and be sure to come check out a performance during the summer.

I'm going to leave you with a segment from Detroit Performs Live from Marygrove, where I talk to tattoo artist Lorri Thomas.

Enjoy and see you next week.

Welcome everybody.

I'm sitting here with Lorri Thomas, who is a professional tattoo artist amongst other things.

What else is it that you do?

- I am a visual artist, been practicing fine arts most majority of my life.

And I also am the CEO and founder of the Ladies Ink Tour.

- Where did your passion for being a tattoo artist come from?

- I actually got into it because I attended a tattoo party in Detroit and the tattoo artist there, he wasn't really too much of a great artist, but he actually knew how to follow lines when it came to tattooing.

So I started drawing the tattoo I was going to get and tattoos for a friend of mine and more people saw what I was drawing and they wanted me to draw their tattoos.

And that's how I originally started, you know, wanting to, to take care of myself.

And I had a daughter at the time.

She was only one, so I just really needed to provide.

And I felt like using my natural talent that God gave me is drawing and turning to a different medium was the way.

But now I do it because I'm helping people.

- So Tara came to you as a client and she told you her story.

- Yes.

- And out of her story, what did you create?

- Tara started off as a client of mine.

And we have bonded since then and now like she's almost like family.

So when she told me she wanted a transformation piece, she wanted a piece that represented, you know, healing and transformation.

She did not know exactly what she wanted yet.

And we literally, I literally was thinking, thinking, thinking, and I came up with this design.

She did not know what she was getting until today.

And because of our conversations prior to, like I said, I've, I've connected with her.

And I kind of knew, you know, her story.

So I wanted to just show a connection between the heart and the mind and the growth.

So I included her birth flower and it's like the leaves and vines are like wrapping around the heart and leading up to the, and it's coming out the brain, it's growing out the brain.

So that's just how I feel, you know, that it would be a great way to show transformation.

- What did she think of it?

- She loved it.

And I was nervous because this is the first time that she has never seen like what she was getting before.

So I was like, please, like I prayed on it, meditated.

Like, I hope this is what, you know, when she thinks of transformation, I hope this is something that she can look at and say, yeah, okay, this is, this is me.

- So Tara said that it wasn't painful to her.

It was, it was therapy.

It was therapeutic for her.

And why do you think people endure that pain and how is it that Tara found it therapeutic?

- Well, we call it ink therapy as well, because everybody's not just getting a tattoo just because, because it looks nice.

Some people, there's very deep meanings behind these tattoos.

Like I have tattooed people who have experienced home invasions and have wounds from that.

And I've had to cover, you know, these wounds up so that they can have a better perspective.

So it kind of helps others.

Cancer, you know, patients, I work with a lot of those people who've just been through death, grief you know.

I actually do a lot of memorial tattoos and stuff.

So this kind of helps people with closure sometimes.

It just helps people go, you know, kind of go through it and process things.

And so it's therapy for a lot of people.

It's almost a spiritual thing.

- And I, I also heard Tara say at one point that she trusted you.

- Yes.

So how, how do you create that off the bat?

- I set clients through email.

They usually book a consultation.

That's when we can meet and talk face to face.

And that's when they can tell me their story.

The reason I'm behind the tattoo and like energy is everything.

And as long as you're willing to listen, people are going to trust you.

They've seen my work for the majority.

So they already know that I'm skillful and I'm capable of doing a great tattoo, but I just wanna kind of connect with them.

So I'm not just putting anything on their body.

I'm actually truly giving them something that they are going to walk away with loving and it's actually gonna change their lives.

- So you, you do a custom design for each.

- Yes, sometimes people will have like reference pictures and stuff.

And I always tell them, like, I won't do another artist's work.

I, I can create something similar, but it's always good to have an idea of what they want.

- Is there anything else you wanna tell the audience, your website, how they get in contact with you?

My website is www.ladyltattoos.com.

I also have ladiesofink.com.

That's L-A-D-I-E-S of Ink, I-N-K.com.

And we are a tour of all black women.

And we are from all around the United States and Canada.

When I first started the tour five years ago, it was just seven of us.

And we have grown to 27 and I'm just excited because our industry is underrepresented when it comes to black women, when it comes to black artists period.

So I'm glad that I'm able to inspire others.

And I mean, inspire, I get emails from people from India, Africa, just because they see what we're doing and it's making them want to become tattoo artists.

- I completely understand.

And maybe even get a tattoo.

What, what I would feel is your client feeling transformed, but what do you feel in your experience giving them that gift?

- It just feels good to know that somebody trusts you that much, 'cause it's deep.

They're literally living with this for the rest of their life.

And for somebody to say I trust you with this and to be so transparent to tell me their deepest stories and why they're getting it.

Like that's just everything.

So yeah, it makes me feel wonderful.

And that's exactly why I keep going.

And that's exactly why I feel like God keeps blessing me.

I feel like I'm really, this is the purpose.

It's my purpose to help people.

- [Announcer] You can find more at onedetroitpbs.org or subscribe to our social media channels and sign up for our One Detroit newsletter.

- [Announcer] From Delta faucets to Behr paint.

Masco corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

Support for this program is provided by the Cynthia & Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit Public TV.

The Kresge Foundation.

- [Announcer] The DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit Public TV.

Among the state's largest foundations, committed to Michigan focused giving.

We support organizations that are doing exceptional work in our state.

Visit DTE foundation.com to learn more.

- [Announcer] Nissan Foundation and viewers like you.

(contemporary music)