October 2016 in Xian, Jiangxi, and Hangzhou and Shanghai

Xian with Dean
Jingdezhen with WuFei and Bi and coming baby
Ruichang for James' wedding
Hangzhou during National Week
Shanghai

I will post images and write about these at some point.
This is the placeholder.

Nanshan Waterfall at Yaoli

Click on post title or slideshow to the right to see bigger pics.

We paid the entrance fee, which was good for two days and included entrance to various sites in Yaoli as well as to the trail up to the falls. The trail is a one way loop and we are the only ones hiking. As I wrote in my post about Yaoli, this is a place whose tourism is being planned, but has not yet been invaded by crowds. As Dean Huang and I started up to the falls I was reminded of the pine and granite landscapes of New Hampshire and the gorges and waterfalls of my old haunt, Ithaca, N.Y.

But none of these favorite places features the vast waves of rustling feathery yellow green bamboo that we saw across the way and walked through as we descended. My Chinese friends are surprised when I tell them that we do not have this kind of bamboo forest where I live.

NanShan waterfall, I am told by a friend, but my research does not prove, is partially man made. From the base of this wonderful flow we cannot tell what is above. Is it a dam? No evidence from below. I have also been told that, due to some military secrets, the area has been at times forbidden to outsiders.

Waterfalls are my holy land and this one was a pilgrimage worthy of the hike, perfectly orchestrated for serenity and awe. Power of fast flowing water led us up to the unexpected force and magnitude of the large fall, followed by the peaceful hike down through the forest of bamboo.
We followed the sound of water rushing to find ourselves looking up a powerful wall of water.


Then we started down through the bamboo.


The trail brought us down past a small shelter with bamboo roots used to echo the curving roof lines of ancient architecture and tea harvesters finishing their day's work. The young leaves are harvested in the early and late day. When we ask around for a place to stay we find that the farmer's homes are housing the migrant workers now and so not available for us to rent rooms for the night. Across the river, we found a farmers house, shop with 3 rooms. We were offered the special room, with a television and a double bed for 40 yuan. We declined and negotiated the two separate rooms for the same price. We had dinner of fern stems there with the family kids, while the dad roasted tea leaves in a wide pan. My room was white washed, white painted beds, white linen, very soothing...sleep. Next day we hike up behind the village, past the Taoist hermits. I found fiddle head ferns, but we had eaten the stems. They don't eat the heads. And they looked perfect. Then a found a raspberry, one single orange raspberry. Dean had never seen a raspberry, he did not know what it was. He trusted me and ate it. One berry. They must grow somewhere in China.

LaoChang, the Old Factory area

Welcome to LaoChang, the Old Factory area.
It is a lively sunny day. The clay and plaster molds are all out in the sun. The pace of outdoor work is picked up with the sunshine after endless days of drizzle. Such is the universality of clay work. Things will dry quickly and time must not be lost or wasted. I find my way through endless alleys. A small girl finds a place to pee, a small boy discovers me looking at him.

There is nothing in my experience or definition of "factory" that resembles what I find here in this old factory area. In this area there are seemingly independent ceramic enterprises, large and small, every stage of ceramic process and life, interconnected by a main street and narrow winding ways, split by a railroad track. In the flat area below the tracks, there are potters, painters and glazers, throwing, painting and spraying.
Unfired pots are deftly moved through the streets on hand pulled wheeled carts. Beyond the tracks are masters with with rows of plaster molds being poured and released and turned in the sun.

Kiln Guys

Today I am loading the smaller of my two outermost Cape Cod gas kilns and find myself writing about kilns in Jingdezhen. Kilns there used to be wood or coal fired, but that has changed. The town used to have hundreds of stacks putting out smoky effluent of the dirty fuels. Sickly air quality has improved since they were closed in favor of gas kilns over the past 20 years. Like every other part of the ceramic process there, the firing of kilns is the province of the master. I used two of these in my stay there. This one is close to the Jingdezhen Ceramics Institute, so it is the one most used by the students there.

The kiln is unloaded at eight a.m. Between 8 and 10 the makers arrive to collect their finished work. Once collected, we show the work to the owner, who, with a glance calculates the fees, paid in cash, change made from a fat wad from the pocket.

New works arrive, students fuss with beads on supports of high temperature Kanthal wire and clay. I failed miserably at this, asking the wire to do more that the weight of the stones I made would allow. To me, everything was an experiment worth stretching the limits, losses are lessons. By 10 a.m. the loaded cart is pushed on its rails into a steel and fiber car kiln.

Another day, another firing to 1300C. There is no room for the kind of experimentation with fire that is such an integral part of my clay life. The loading of this kiln is exactly as I learned for porcelain firing, so familiar and known. The kiln guys at this kiln don't smile. I like the guy at the other kiln. This second kiln, in the Old Sculpture Factory area is fired on an afternoon schedule. In by 3 p.m., out by 1. I made the mistake of bringing work there on the day off and by bike--oops. Generally, pots are hand carried. With enough pots to carry, a guy with a hand cart or one with two hanging racks on a shoulder pole can be hired to walk from the studio to the kiln.

Themes in no particular order

• bamboo scaffolds
• Fired hard or soft
• the power of smile
• on bicycling and traffic
• 慢走man zou Slow go.
• chinglish and meizhonghua
• better a smoke after dinner than 99 years
• 100 steps
• Division of labor
• Bobo and the girls
• Passover
• Full moon
• Waltzing with Matilde
• Argentine International Tile Project
  
• James and the Gettysburg Address
• Painting Wu Fei
• Theme parks of Ancient Villages
• Yaoli and Nanshan Waterfall
• Hanging coffins LongHuShan
• Clay and Place
• Meeting of interests--Chinese culture and clay
• Sanctuary in a dorm
• Shifu, masters
• Visual depictions of Ceramic Processes
• Hutiaoxia sculpture
• Traffic
• Ming Qing Jie, Tombsweeping, shrines and incense
• Yoga
• Fear of nothing
• A foreigner speaking Chinese
• English Corner
• Food alley
• Music in the Studio
• Take the long way
• Kiln guys
  
• Laochang, the old factory
  

Flow of Wisdom

The porcelain of Jingdezhen goes back long and deeply into Chinese history. Jingdezhen porcelain, developed in the Song and Tang, was a treasure of the Ming and Qing Dynasties. The processes that make this clay workable are codified from the days of the Imperial kilns. In my first days of working in the studio at Jingdezhen, it was this fine white clay itself that invited me. I began exploring the clay in my hands, making, as I often do to start, stones and bones. The clay was soft. The weather was rainy. The clay, as it slowly dried, became chalky and fragile. This clay, made mostly of feldspar, is difficult to work. The stones and bones gathered to dry. Students gathered to wonder why I was making these stones, sticks, spirals, bones. 我还不知道。I don't know yet, I answered.




When I arrived here I thought I would do some work with bamboo, inspired by the lashed bamboo scaffolding seen in construction sites all over Asia and intriguing to me since my 1975 visit to China. Bamboo is an amazing plant, a grass really, that spreads its shoots shallow and far.
The bundle of bamboo trimmings I got from a gardener on campus the first day was of little use but to attract attention from students curious about the foreigner as I worked outside the studio sorting and trimming. Again, the answer to the question of what I was doing was "我还不知道? I still don't know". This not knowing was alien to the way of thinking here.


This batch of bamboo never found its way into the work. At some point I would know, or I would not. Some pieces come together after much consideration and planning; others find their way to being through the working. This was the kind of work that was to develop through the work, without clear ends.

Still unsure as to how to proceed, I, at last, appropriated a 3 meter split bamboo with a soft arching curve, with its strengthening divisions exposed and began to consider an installation using these made and found materials. I washed the bamboo and considered how to use it.

The stones and bones were finished to the "ring like a bell" density of the 1300C fire as my time in Jingdezhen was ending. And gently ring they did. I lashed the the ends, hung the bamboo from a tree branch outside the studio with help from James Gao and WuFei. I printed inspirational quotes in English on slips of paper that were tied to the lashing. These were copies of the ones I gave to students after an English Walk and Talk earlier in the week. Rich in cultural reference, I had explained the meanings to them. Quotations from Picasso, Martin Luther King and other Westerners were added to Chinese voices, from Buddha, Lao tze, Confucius, Dalai Lama, and Mao.

I sorted the stones were sorted by color of clay, from Tianbao clay browns to porcelain whites with painted cobalt blues and stripes of white clay through cobalt base between. I lashed each unglazed stick with ends glazed as jewels and hung it from the end of the bamboo. Together they rang lightly in the wind. A horseshoe shaped porcelain stirrup supported the other end. Stones flow like geologically from dark to light. A listening head looks up for more, absorbing knowledge dripping from above.

It didn't last long. I heard from friends that children pocketed the stones and by the end of May Day Festival it was gone. So it goes. Friends enjoyed the language of my art and process and will remember, as I remember the making.

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