Art and Antiques

Been out of the loop for a while following the sad passing away of my Father-in-law. Anyway I’m back and trying to get focused again on art and life.

Some of my more decorative pieces are part of a show coupling traditional Chinese antiques with contemporary fine art. Eight artists are showing. I haven’t seen how they are going to marriage the art and antiques together yet, but I'm curious to find out as there is a lot of art and a lot of antiques to stuff in. The opening is this Friday, May 16, so if you are in the Tienmou area of Taipei drop in, chill out and check out the art. Food and drinks will be available.

Here’s one of the pieces on display. It’s part of a series on the theme of ‘Elements’. This one is air – moving, flowing, rising, falling, cooling, twisting, etc. It was cut in four colours of silk, then painstakingly cut up and re-assembled. Boy oh boy did it take a long time!

Liu Ren's Paper cuts

Beijing city government has promoted traditional folk arts by encouraging artists to set up shop in an area of old hutongs in Beijing city. These are traditional court yard houses which are rapidly developing in the name of modernization. One of these hutong is occupied by Chinese paper-cutting artist Liu Ren. Liu Ren set up a paper-cutting home museum in 1999 for the purpose of carrying forward the traditional handicraft and sharing with others the joy brought by paper-cutting. It seems she regularly holds workshops at her home.

Her work has a graphic quality that really appeals to me. Its organic nature and imagery is not rigid and formalized though it obviously relies on a rich corpus of traditional symbols.

See more of her home by following this link