Friday, January 29, 2010
Friday, January 08, 2010
Friday, December 25, 2009
Friday, December 18, 2009
Monday, December 14, 2009
Xio Yau and Wei Baogong
Wei took the picture of Xiao and I in the post below this. Xiao's son, whom I got to know well, is called "humanity" in Chinese. I could not understand the word, sadly...and so called him wo de xiao peigno (pidgin is off)-- my little friend.
They live in the village next to mine in Songzhuang, as they have for 9 years. Wei paints, Xiao is a mastermind organizer and coordinator. Formerly a soldier in the army, she met Wei and now lives the art life--facilitating, translating, planning, orchestrating.
We met in 2005 at Red Gate. Xiao arranged for Wei and a friend to take me to the Great Wall on a freezing December day. They picked me up early; we ate dried grape fruit on the way. Delicious. The three guys wore green Mao coats with fur lining that were very warm. Once we reached our destination, about two hours north of Beijing, we crossed a footbridge and paid a few yuan to a local family before heading to an old, crumbling part of the wall. We were the only ones on it that day. Mountains rose and fell around us; shadows moved across them as the sun shifted over the sky. After several hours of hiking, we returned to the family's home, where they made us a warm meal. A photograph of Mao was on the table.
Afterward Wei, his friend and Xiao drove me to a Buddhist temple, with expansive grounds. They told me to go in alone. I entered a passage lined with bamboo. Moving over the grounds, I saw enormous Buddhas, an 8,000 year old tree spread over a lattice and another extremely high mountain with a criss-crossing path. I sighed. How could I not climb it, though my feet were frozen solid and my legs sore from the Wall? And as I climbed, and climbed, I reached the top, where Beijing spread out before me, a flat field illuminated by a gold sun in the distance. As I descended the second major climb that day, I heard bamboo soughing in the wind. The van with Xiao, Wei and their friend idled in the parking lot outside.
I was transformed. I had seen scrolls from my own perspective, the journey they represent over a duration of time and moving through a place.
Wei loves Yuan Dynasty painters and has a copy of Huang Gongwang's landscape book. He is a classic Buddhist Chinese scholar, adept at painting, calligraphy and also serving tea. Four years later after the Great Wall, when the picture below was taken, he was sharing his books on the great Chinese painters. Later, we shared philosophers--he did not know Francois Chen, but told me about Red Pine and others working in the United States. I continue to learn a lot from Wei Baogong and Xiao Yau.
They live in the village next to mine in Songzhuang, as they have for 9 years. Wei paints, Xiao is a mastermind organizer and coordinator. Formerly a soldier in the army, she met Wei and now lives the art life--facilitating, translating, planning, orchestrating.
We met in 2005 at Red Gate. Xiao arranged for Wei and a friend to take me to the Great Wall on a freezing December day. They picked me up early; we ate dried grape fruit on the way. Delicious. The three guys wore green Mao coats with fur lining that were very warm. Once we reached our destination, about two hours north of Beijing, we crossed a footbridge and paid a few yuan to a local family before heading to an old, crumbling part of the wall. We were the only ones on it that day. Mountains rose and fell around us; shadows moved across them as the sun shifted over the sky. After several hours of hiking, we returned to the family's home, where they made us a warm meal. A photograph of Mao was on the table.
Afterward Wei, his friend and Xiao drove me to a Buddhist temple, with expansive grounds. They told me to go in alone. I entered a passage lined with bamboo. Moving over the grounds, I saw enormous Buddhas, an 8,000 year old tree spread over a lattice and another extremely high mountain with a criss-crossing path. I sighed. How could I not climb it, though my feet were frozen solid and my legs sore from the Wall? And as I climbed, and climbed, I reached the top, where Beijing spread out before me, a flat field illuminated by a gold sun in the distance. As I descended the second major climb that day, I heard bamboo soughing in the wind. The van with Xiao, Wei and their friend idled in the parking lot outside.
I was transformed. I had seen scrolls from my own perspective, the journey they represent over a duration of time and moving through a place.
Wei loves Yuan Dynasty painters and has a copy of Huang Gongwang's landscape book. He is a classic Buddhist Chinese scholar, adept at painting, calligraphy and also serving tea. Four years later after the Great Wall, when the picture below was taken, he was sharing his books on the great Chinese painters. Later, we shared philosophers--he did not know Francois Chen, but told me about Red Pine and others working in the United States. I continue to learn a lot from Wei Baogong and Xiao Yau.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Saturday, November 07, 2009
Solo Museum Exhibition
Thursday, November 12th, 2009 is the opening of my solo exhibition
A World of Splats, Gestures and Images
at the Albany Museum in Albany, GA.
A catalogue is available with an interview by Tyler Emerson-Dorsch.
I am extremely excited!
A World of Splats, Gestures and Images
at the Albany Museum in Albany, GA.
A catalogue is available with an interview by Tyler Emerson-Dorsch.
I am extremely excited!
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Monday, October 12, 2009
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Friday, August 28, 2009
New American Paintings
Edition No. 82, curated by Ron Platt of the Alabama Museum of Art...I'm in it!
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
The Camera Lies Fallow
Wanting to write more--take less pictures--collages in the studio abound, ready for the next step.
Thinking with my eyes, how travel makes its way felt into a painting through the process of making.
Thinking with my eyes, how travel makes its way felt into a painting through the process of making.
Saturday, August 08, 2009
The Daily Rumi: August 8, 2009
You that come to birth and bring the mysteries,
your voice-thunder makes us very happy.
Roar, lion of the heart,
and tear me open.
-Coleman Barks, trans.
your voice-thunder makes us very happy.
Roar, lion of the heart,
and tear me open.
-Coleman Barks, trans.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Friday, July 10, 2009
Paul Jenkins
When I saw Jenkins' paintings in Paul Mazursky's Unmarried Woman in the late 1970s, I thought nothing of it...but later, they had an impact. Both kitschy and beguiling, the paintings offered the pour as a solution to my work, when I was questioning how to make a spontaneous painting in the manner of Chinese scrolls. Jenkins was influenced by metaphysics and this too is interesting, for part of my love of Chinese painting has to do with its confluence of all matters, earthly and ethereal, in landscape.
Thursday, July 02, 2009
Two Great Blogs on China in June 2009
Stefani Foster LaBrecque and James Prinz blogged their recent trip to Dunhuang, Gansu Province, where they represented Northwestern University in training the Dunhuang Academy photographers to use a rig for photographing the MogaoKu (Mogao Caves). Jim's blog is linked above and Stefani's can be found below; both offer rich visual essays of China.
http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=106496542856&h=fBdmj&u=HOIMz&ref=mf
http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=106496542856&h=fBdmj&u=HOIMz&ref=mf
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