Travels to Shanghai Center

This week, I started taking the subway! I went to town three times, twice stayed overnight. It was time of dense experience. Here are the details of these trials.

Pottery Workshop Shanghai

On Saturday March 24: Sitting in traffic in a DiDi Chuxing (they bought out uberchina) heading to check out 乐天陶社 the Pottery Workshop on Shaanxi nan lu. 陕西南路180弄1号甲. It is a full hour away but I'm hoping to fit it into my life here. I got some clay from them when I arrived. One bag of porcelain that seems good for nothing without a wheel and some big pot stoneware that seems as forgiving as my wonderful BreadPot clay. Traffic in Shanghai is always terrible, the driver tells me. In the end it took over 2 hours and was only one of the travel frustrations of the day.
I checked out the Pottery Workshop and met the warm and friendly teacher Guo. I am looking forward to making it my clay home in Shanghai. From there I took the subway Line 10 to Longxi. I have been here five weeks now. Up until last week, slowed down by the broken ankle, my only outings were to see physical therapist Frank Fan and explore the neighborhood near Body and Soul, including a French provisioner right next door (ah baguette and brie) and LaoWai Jie, the Foreigner Street, with international restaurants. (Thai tonight!!). I came out from the subway with enough time to get to my appointment by bike. I tried to unlock a bike, but alas, my mobile network let me down. I could not receive the code. I walked fast, limping on my painful ankle, looking for a taxi, none around. I messaged that I would be late...that worked, so why not the bike. I found another bike to try and finally got one to work. Aargh. The travel frustrations stress me out, especially as I am not walking well or fast. Frank was sweet and understanding when I arrived sweaty and out of breath. After dinner of Pad Thai (alone), exhausted, too tired to figure out the subway home, I took a taxi back to my place. Third travel frustration--where I live is new and the address is a mystery, so the drivers have a hard time finding it. My phone battery is nearly dead, so my tools for communicating the location are fading fast. At last I guide him and I am back. 

On Tuesday I will go to Pottery Workshop again, this time to work. I can pay to work there by the day or the week, plus 25Y/kilo for any work fired. 

Jingdezhen tile for Argentina

In early April, while working at the Jingdezhen Ceramics Institute 景德镇陶瓷学院 in Jiangxi Province, China, the porcelain center of the universe, I received an email request from Cristina del Castillo to join in a collective mural tile project "Tiles of Artists III" in Argentina. I began a porcelain tile to the specifications requested. The color theme is blue and green, perfect for the Jingdezhen porcelain tradition. On the last night of my stay in Jingdezhen I was joined in my studio by an enthusiastic group of students and artists to paint the tile I had prepared. I had inscribed a circle on the square tile and then a grid upon the circle. Certain squares were prepainted with either green or cobalt blue underglaze. We could each choose to sgraffito (carve through) the color or paint with underglaze color on the white parts. I left the tile in the hands of Zhong, who glazed and fired it and has by now shipped it off to Argentina. Here are some pictures and videos of that night and the tile.

Xiao Li 李鹏, John Zhong钟友健, Tony Bi, We Fei 吴菲, Judith Motzkin 莫思怡, James Gao 高翔 , Dean Huang黄金雷, Hu Di 胡笛(Li Wenying, Ric Swenson, Agatha Gao, Kim and others also contributed)


TonyBi and Wu Fei signing the tile


















Wu Fei


















Tony

















James, John, Dean














Hu Di



















the fired tile