BJ Robinson: In this edition of "KPBS/Arts," a San Diego singer who isn't afraid to dive deep to write her lyrics.

♪ I'm so sick of feelin' this sick ♪ ♪ around all the things that you do ♪ ♪ I'm beyond exhausted with the power I keep givin' you ♪ BJ: Artists transform pay phones into time capsules.

Jeanette Degollado: So the TréPhonos Project is a collaboration of 24 artists and residents in the Third Ward.

They're repurposed pay phones that had been hacked and programmed to feature audio that is from the Third Ward.

BJ: Glass art that reveals visions of America.

Emily Bartelt-Juel: I'm trying to familiarize people with art on trains.

When you tie in graffiti to trains and boxcars, it's like this stream of messaging that's happening.

BJ: And a carpenter and artist blazing his own trail.

Donna Bundy: The arts are like the whipped cream on dessert.

Dessert isn't even necessary, and if you can add something to make people be aware of it, I think that just enhances society.

BJ: It's all ahead on this edition of "KPBS/Arts."

♪♪♪ BJ: Hi, I'm BJ Robinson, and this is "KPBS/Arts," the show that explores art of all kinds.

San Diego native Brisa Lauren is an award-winning singer who also fights for social justice.

We take a look at how she uses music for healing and truth-telling.

♪♪♪ ♪ I'm so sick of feelin' this sick ♪ ♪ around all the things that you do.

♪ Brisa Lauren: My style of singing is still evolving.

I consider myself a lyricist at heart.

One of the things I love most about my artistry is using it as therapy and using my music to breathe and using my music to release.

I write from personal experiences.

♪ When did anxiety become a language that I speak?

♪ Brisa: It's very vulnerable, and it's very raw, and it's basically my journal but with a beat.

It showcases me as a mom.

It showcases me as a writer.

It showcases me as a singer.

It shows my connection to God.

It also talks about some of my struggles with depression, and it talks about the tools that I've used to continue to move forward in life.

One of my earliest memories and one of my most impactful performances is when I was 11 years old.

I was singing in this kid's group called King's Kids, and I had this solo, and it was a remix of an Aretha Franklin song, and I just kept telling myself, "I can't hit this note."

Like, "My voice is too raspy.

It's too low.

There's no way I'm gonna be able to hit it."

I had not hit the note once in rehearsal.

I had not hit the note once in practice, not in the shower, and I would always, you know, go into my head voice to hit it and just chicken out last minute.

And I got onstage and the lights are on, and the only person I could see was my mother.

She was sitting front row, and I just started singing, and the crowd was so energized.

They were so into it.

They were so into my performance.

I just remember saying, "Go for it," and I hit the note.

I couldn't believe I hit the note, and my mother stood up and said, "That's what I'm talkin' about.

That's what I'm talkin' about."

She's jumping in the front row, and, of course, nobody has no idea that I've never been able to hit this note.

It came out so effortlessly, and I just realized then that I've been in my own way, and if I just allow myself to just be fully present in the moment and have fun, there's nothing I can't do onstage.

Brisa: How're you feelin', San Diego, how're ya doin'?

Brisa: I believe everybody has a moment where they say, "I wanna do something more, and I wanna get involved in some way."

For a lot of people, you know, it's been what's been happening recently in our society, but, for me, it was 2012, when Trayvon Martin's mom went on CNN for the first time and spoke publicly, and I realized that I had to do more in my world and in my city to advocate for not only myself but for my son, and so that's how I got involved in social justice, and I'm very humbled that the social-justice community has accepted me and has not only loved on me but poured into me.

You know, some of the greatest social-justice leaders have planted seeds in me and took time to water those seeds, have opened up doors for me, and I feel extremely loved and appreciated by these individuals that it allows me to keep fueling and funneling the work of social justice.

Music and performing arts should no longer be used as an accessory to activism or to social justice or to the movement, but it should be used as an anchor.

I think we really need to spend more time finding ways to create messaging through performing arts to create awareness, encouragement, empowerment through the arts, through music, through storytelling and really use artistry as an anchor to fuel and move the social-justice movement to a higher place.

♪♪♪ BJ: And now here's a look at some of the arts events happening this week in our community.

BJ: A group of Houston, Texas, artists collaborated on an interactive project that uses decommissioned pay phones to tell the story of an historic neighborhood.

Take a look.

Marc Furi: I personally consider Third Ward the cultural epicenter of Houston.

It's a predominantly African-American area.

I look at Third Ward as, like, the Harlem of Texas or the Brooklyn of Texas.

You know, it's a place where everybody comes.

You know, either you eat and you go to school, you meet people, and that sort of thing.

There's all kind of cool things to do on the Alameda Strip and Emancipation Corridor Strip, a lot of thriving businesses, and that sort of thing, and a lot of artists live here.

Jeanette Degollado: So the TréPhonos Project is a collaboration of 24 artists and residents in the Third Ward.

They're repurposed pay phones that have been hacked and programmed to feature audio that is from the Third Ward.

recording: That's "Z" to the "I" to the "N." recording: --May I take your order, please?

recording: It is a beautiful dream realized.

Jeanette: There's three visual artists.

There's the three ambassadors who also curate the pay phone.

Kofi Taharka: My name is Kofi Taharka.

I have the privilege, the honor, and the responsibility-- Jeanette: And we worked with 18 residents that are historically relative to the area based on, like, history, or musicians, local musicians that have been in the community for years.

male: All right, how many hip-hop fans I got in here?

Kofi: All of the ambassadors or curators, we all live in the community, so this is not, you know, a new story or somethin' that goes off.

We live it.

Matt Fries: There's three phones.

One of 'em's got songs, some Third Ward musicians.

Another one's got spoken stories of history, I think, Third Ward residents.

And the third one has field recordings of the neighborhood at significant locations.

Matt: So, as soon as you pick it up, it gives you instructions and an introduction, a brief one from all the three ambassadors for each phone, and whenever you push one of the buttons, one through nine, it'll play you either a song or a story or a sound depending on which phone you're at.

female: So I'm listenin' to the Jack Yates family right now, and I know them, but I'm learnin' some stuff I didn't know.

female: Yeah?

female: It's really interesting.

Matt: And whenever you hold "star," it records your voice onto the handset.

When you hit "zero," it'll play back your recording, so you can leave a message for the next user.

recording: --So great.

Matt: And whenever you hit the "change release" button, it'll play you another little Easter egg.

recording: The change you're looking for starts with you.

Matt: And if you hold down the "coin release" switch at the top of the phone, it'll click an external speaker, so you can hear it with multiple people.

recording: Bottom line, we got this-- Jeanette: And there's something about pushing a button also that's very satisfying.

At least, it is for me, as opposed to these fake buttons that we use on the phone on interfaces, right?

It's fun.

[all laughing] Kofi: Well, it's quite funny.

I'm a pretty hard-core activist in dealing with issues that confront people of African ancestry, and when I was invited into the project, I didn't know how that was going to work out, but it worked out tremendously because they allowed me a opportunity to put forward the stories, the foundation of the Third Ward community, and they did the artistic part which has been a beautiful marriage.

Marc: My particular phone is called the TreSonik Sounds Project.

recording: What do I love about Third Ward?

What's not to love about Third Ward?

Marc: Yeah, it's really cool.

I also have haikus on there.

You know, I did some haikus on gentrification and how I feel about that.

It's vintage, but it's futuristic at this point 'cause a lot of people haven't seen a pay phone.

Jeanette: I mean, there's this sense of, like, uncanny, and I think that's really exciting.

recording: Today, I'm speaking with the founder and executive-- Jeanette: It opens up something inside you like, "What is that?

I'm interested."

recording: When you invest in the people, salvation is in line.

Marc: I was privileged to have been around when pay phones were pretty much everywhere, and now they're not.

You know, now it's like you'd have to really dig to find a pay phone, so here we have these time capsules with our own spin on 'em, own unique creative spin on 'em, and they're really cool.

They look great.

They're wonderfully crafted, and they're for anybody to enjoy out in public, and you don't have to even put a quarter in it.

Kofi: So, this phone, when we talk about Third Ward, it's talking about major institutions like Texas Southern University, Emancipation Park, and many others, and it's coming from people who actually lived, have worked this particular history, and there's no filter between the people who pick up that pay phone and hear the stories, our story told from our own perspective.

Being in the artistic realm has helped expand my horizons and the way I look at the world and how we can change.

female: We are phenomenal people; forward ever, backward never.

Jeanette: You're in Third Ward, and this is a history, and this is a way to ingest that history and know-- recording: We are phenomenal people; forward ever, backward never.

♪♪♪ BJ: To find out more, visit ProjectRowHouses.org.

And now here's a look at some of the upcoming arts events around San Diego.

BJ: Emily Bartelt explores aspects of daily life through glass.

Her creations reveal visions of American culture and often challenge assumptions about morals and ethics.

Emily Bartelt-Juel: So everyone wants an engine, and everyone wants a caboose, and I want--I just want a boxcar.

They're a box on wheels, but there's so much more to it.

If you look at a train and you look at the wheels of it and the mechanics of it, it's just this, like, marvel.

I just love it.

I love the way it looks.

I imagine being inside of it.

I just think about, like, all the crazy places we could go.

My name is Emily Bartelt-Juel, and I'm a mixed-media artist.

♪♪♪ Emily: Trains are these solid hunks of, like, steel that are impenetrable, and I'm using this, like, completely delicate glass to imitate it.

I love people's reaction when they're, like, "It's glass?"

It was a medium I was already working in.

Glass, flamework glass, cast glass, and enamel paints.

I always joke that, when I lived in Italy, maybe a glass blower pinched my cheek 'cause my mom said I used to get that a lot, and I got the glass bug.

They say the glass gods steal your soul as soon as you touch it, and it's 100% true.

The movement, the temperature, everything about it, you get lost in the material.

♪♪♪ Emily: I guess none of them in particularly have a specific message except I'm tryin' to familiarize people with art on trains.

When you tie in graffiti to trains and boxcars, it's like this stream of messaging that's happening.

It's been a thing that's been around forever, but maybe putting it in this context warms it up a bit, so, that way, when you see it in public, in the real, you're not like, "Vandalism."

You know, maybe in a different eye, you're like, "Oh, this is so beautiful, this is art," you know?

It's like taking that jump.

This train is a collaboration I did with Leo Tecosky.

It's a cast-glass train.

It has copper-foil edges.

It's soldered together.

I use enameled paints to put the decals and illustrations onto here.

A lot of the times, I want them to be a recreation of something that I've seen.

I think there's something really cool and interesting about being stuck in traffic and, like, seeing someone you know's graffiti.

I can't tell you how many times I think I've made someone's day better and just because they wasted the time instead of complaining, sending me a video of the passing train, which makes me so happy because, like, they're then connected into my project, and they, like, don't even know it.

I'll reach out to the people through the internet, artists that will have, like, Instagram pages, and say, "I really love your work.

This is who I am.

This is what I do.

Can we do something together?"

♪♪♪ Emily: I've had work from Navid, who I've collaborated with on "Trains of Thought."

For a really long time, my friend actually gave me and my husband some of Navid's paintings, and I had them hanging, and I loved them, and I was like, "One day, I'm gonna meet this guy, and I'm gonna buy a painting from him."

Navid Rahman: I first met Emily as she was installing a show.

I later found out that she had followed me on Instagram for a while and had a bunch of my work.

Emily: I was also like, "Let's be friends."

And then, somehow, him and I, like, started working together, and now we have this beautiful installation.

♪ Hope they hold together.

♪ Navid: I'm an illustrator.

It's definitely the architecture that I was interested in, creating an environment for her trains to live in.

Emily: He did a show last year using this girl and said, "I love her.

Can we put her down the side of a train?"

And that's where our collaboration first began.

Navid: In this case, you get so many metaphors for things that you come across later on in life, reading a book and then slowly developing throughout the city into, like, someone older and, like, more understanding.

♪ Like wildfire, dreaming the unexpected.

♪ Cheryl White: The train just kind of floats right on top of the city.

I love it because, when kids come in, it's like they're at that level, and they're there, and they're looking at it, and then, all of a sudden, they look up, and there's this other kind of world that's taking them the other places.

Emily: The fact that glass is already seen as fine art and it was a way that I could showcase my friends in a fine art gallery as well and kind of put it up there and say, "You're already gonna classify my work as fine art because it's glass, but I'm pushing this "Graffiti is a fine art" theme in a lot of my work.

♪♪♪ [bell dinging] [train whistle blowing] ♪ I live where I live.

♪ Emily: Growing up in Pewaukee, Wisconsin, my dad's military, so we moved a lot between Italy and Wisconsin and Virginia.

♪ But I never feel home.

♪ Emily: When living with my grandparents, I was really missing my family, and, you know, there was this train that went by every night, and it was awful.

I remember being like, "Oh, I'm never gonna go to sleep.

I hate this place."

You know, I just wanted any reason to complain, and it ended up being, like, the thing that I waited for to, like, go to sleep, and so, when I hear it now, it makes me think of home.

It makes me think of my grandparents, and I think it kind of changed my perspective on trains and why I loved them.

♪ My roots in the ground.

♪ Emily: I think it's really interesting that, when you look in the past of America, trains are such a huge part of, like, the way we connect as a community, and for it to be still so prevalent in our society and be something that you see every day, especially in our town, is really incredible.

Emily: I try to think of it as this, like, beautiful crossover where, yes, these things aren't being built for art, but why not put a little piece of art on them?

I just see it as, like, really beautiful art going past.

I mean, you see this huge thing, and, you know, it's beautiful all in itself, but putting a little piece of flair on it never hurt anyone.

♪ A little salt, a lot of hope, a pinch of sweet memory.

♪♪ BJ: To find out more, visit EmilyBartelt.com.

♪♪♪ BJ: Jeff Sonksen is a carpenter by trade but an artist at heart who loves to beautify his community and blaze his own trail.

Here's his story.

Jeff Sonksen: I always painted.

I think, as a kid, I liked to paint and draw.

My parents were real cool though.

Growin' up, I remember they-- I must've been eight, ten years old, they let me paint my room all the way around, just draw all in my room, all on the walls, all four walls.

So they embraced it.

They were real cool about it.

"Paint the Trail."

There's a bicycle trail, the Seminole Wekiva bicycle trail.

I hung up my first painting four years ago.

Back then, I was strugglin' as a carpenter, cabinetmaker.

It was after the housing bubble burst.

Somethin' I wasn't used to, I had a lot of time on my hands.

I'm a busybody person.

I like to stay busy, and I was really frustrated, trying to find work.

I don't know how else to describe it, but it was, sort of, just, a juvenile thing.

I did a couple paintings on some pickets and screwed 'em to the trail as the sun was goin' down 'cause I was tryin' to irritate everybody, so that's how it started, and I did that for about four months until I realized that people liked it and that it wasn't irritating them at all.

I painted Einstein and Yoda, two different panels that weren't very big.

I remember I had my screw pouch.

I grab a panel.

So I'd look both ways.

I wouldn't hear anything, and I think I'd run down about 40, 50 feet and screwed the paintings in and got out of there, and I thought it was hysterical.

I, pretty much, was almost laughin' out loud.

I never, ever in my wildest dreams, like, back then, would think that, four years later, I'd still be doin' it.

I was just gonna do four or five of 'em, and that was it.

I think it was sort of a thrill, not gettin' caught, and then you'd hear people talkin' about it.

Like, they were tryin' to figure out who was doin' it, and so that kind of amped me up a little bit to do some more.

I didn't ask permission.

I just stuck 'em out there.

I think I flew under the radar for, like, ten months or somethin' or almost a year before anybody really knew what was kind of goin' on out there.

I got busted by some people, and I remember the first guy that saw me--that ever saw me was--he stopped on his bike right away, and he said, "Hey, are you the one doing these paintings?"

And I said, "Yeah?!"

I was like...you know?

And he was like, "I love it."

Jeff: The county got ahold me, Seminole County Cultural Arts, and they awarded me Artist of the Year, which I thought was, you know, just nuts.

I figured I would get--you know, the police would come knockin' on my door or somethin'.

I didn't expect to get an award.

Donna Bundy: Well, I think it makes the trail more interesting, engaging.

There may be people who don't care for it or who feel that it obstructs some of the nature, but I think the fence itself does that, and this is adding art to a fence.

Jeff: I'm gonna paint five miles, and I just kind of said it as a joke, and I've said it so many times that, I think, I, like, I Jedi-mind-tricked myself into believin' I can do it.

If you look at the artwork out there, it's nothin' negative.

I never painted anything that would agitate anybody.

I kept everything upbeat, like, positive and, like, inspirational, so maybe I was tryin' to uplift myself up or somethin'.

I don't know what I was tryin' to do, but that's still the theme out there because I'm just tryin' to pass on positive vibes, that's all I'm tryin' to do.

When people go out there and they walk, and they reach some of that stuff, I just want 'em to walk away in a better mood.

If they see somethin' that could inspire them or make them feel better, then, wherever it is they're goin' that day, they're gonna be in a little bit better mood, and the people that they're with are gonna sense that.

Donna: I think it's spectacular to society, in general, because any time you can highlight the arts, the arts are like the whipped cream on dessert.

Dessert isn't even necessary, and if you can add something to make people be aware of it, I think that just enhances society.

Jeff: Since I've been paintin' the trail out there, that really changed my whole way of thinkin'.

Every once in a while, people will ask me if I could do this carpentry stuff for them or cabinet stuff for them, and I have no desire.

I love the art.

BJ: And that wraps it up for this edition of "KPBS/Arts."

For more arts and culture, visit KPBS.org/Arts, where you'll find featured videos, blogs, and information on upcoming arts events.

Until next time, I'm BJ Robinson.

Thanks for watching.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ CC by Aberdeen Captioning www.aberdeen.io 1-800-688-6621 female announcer: Support for this program comes from the KPBS Explore Local Content Fund, supporting new ideas and programs for San Diego.