New Work 2010 Show

Here are some shots from my new show currently at Shoreline Community College, through March 30th.

Jordan on You Tube

Seattle Art Evening Montage

Dinner last night at Agua Verde with some wonderful folks, where we continue discussing ideas generated by our trip to Shenzhen.

Susie Purves, from Northwest Film Forum, Peggy Weiss, head of the Harborview Art Collection and independent curator, Margery Aronson, independent art curator in Seattle, Arthur Zhang, a friend of Wei's who is the VP at Federal Home Loan Bank Seattle, and Wei Liang, artist and dear friend.

We sat and talked about so many art exchange possibilities that my head was reeling; we needed to take notes, but I know Margery, Peggy and Wei will remember it all and make most of them happen.

Wonderful evening in sunny Seattle.

HK

Last bit from Hong Kong. A view of the immensity of the Hong Kong area, a tiny shelf dense beyond belief, rimmed between steep hills and ocean, and a shot of the bamboo scaffolding that I was both horrified and delighted to see they still use. I first saw it in the eighties, and it still works, I guess...

Front Page

Susie and I landed on the second page of the 'Shenzhen Economic Daily', captured in a moment of capitalist glee. The one time we shopped, I swear, and it lands on the splash page. In color. The angle makes us look like Bullwinkle and Rocky at the Macy's Parade. Maybe next time I won't wear such a loud pattern...

Night at the Opera

Peggy took this shot of us backstage at the Opera, after the production of 'Bi Hai Si Lu', a wonderful show about the founding of the Han Dynasty, sort of a fairy tale wrapped in a quest rolled up in a love story - you know, Opera. It was a lot of fun, wonderful singing and dancing, and some cool visuals, the part I really love. The young star was adorable, and JC got us the photo op, and his autograph.

On Our Own

For our last day in Shenzhen we were on our own and went to visit the Dafen Art Village, a sort of quasi-old, kinda fake new art enclave in the midst of high-rise Shenzhen. It has a fascinating blend of street life and storefront small business, most of which are making oil painting copies of art - good, bad, and worse. We found great portraits of Mao, and Susie promptly bought one for her son. Luckily, in the intense heat, we found a beautiful oasis of a shop to sit in and try and cool off. It was a very calm Zen-like space, quite different from the rest of the city.

Then we headed back to the hotel and that night went to an art opening, where we met the only ironic Chinese person of our trip, a hip guy who had a sister on Long Island, wouldn't you know ... The young woman whose work was being shown was quite sweet. She did malevolent paintings of cats. Really. The gallery was in a very lovely part of the city, a small area of reclaimed warehouses that just screamed art space. I am sure it will soon be over-gentrified like all such places. Love it while you can.

Third Day

We have been very well taken care of by our guide JC Wang, a lovely young woman who has studied in the US or UK, like most of the young people we meet here. She has made our days and evenings fun-filled and well-organized, along with my intrepid friend Wei Liang. The third day we visited the Cultural Arts Village, an old village that has been rebuilt and re-purposed for the fine arts world. It houses a wonderful fine arts print facility. Artists from all over the world come here for residencies in printmaking, and live and work in a quiet, beautiful spot. We all immediately wanted to apply, even the non-artists among us... sigh. Peggy and Wei instantly hatched an idea to bring an exhibition of prints from the Center to Seattle, and I somehow get to help. Details to follow, but it will be exciting. We saw a great dance/opera performance that third night, and then got to go backstage to meet the stars! They wanted us to go up on stage at the end of the performance as the stars were bowing but we refused, so they took us backstage. It was really fun to see all the young dancers changed back into street clothes, and we met the director. We are being treated as though we were VIPs but my only claim to fame is having yellow hair...

Second day: Dinner and Friends

On our first night we went to visit Wei's friends, Wang Ping and Zhang Li, who have a film production office in Shenzhen, and then to dinner with them at their favorite restaurant. The food was wonderful. It was an outdoor seafood place in a part of the city known as the "Eating Street'. Just one food spot after another, all filled with young people enjoying themselves. We had shrimp and duck and scallops and a wonderful soft deep-fried tofu, and a nice fresh green with a good sauce. And lots of beer. We went home early and just crashed like falling logs.

The next day we tried to man our booth at the exhibition, but it had been ravaged by the crowds and the noise was SO deafening we fled after seeing as much of the other shows as possible.

Wei presented his talk on 'Making it in the Art World', in a room filled with spill-over sound from the exhibition that must have reached 100 decibels. No one could hear to think, let alone what he was saying, so blessedly our talks, which had been scheduled for the next day, were either going to be moved to a new venue or cancelled.

That evening we were invited to Wei's brother's 49th birthday party, which was quite an honor. I guess in China they don't celebrate the big ones, like 50, because they don't want to talk about it, so they instead have a big party for 49. We joined Wei's extended family and friends in a swank hotel in downtown Shenzhen, in our own private dining room, that in typical Chinese fashion was lit like an operating room. But the company was wonderful and the food was glorious. Course after course just kept coming, seafood, soup pots, duck, greens and lots of mysterious but delicious things. Wei produced a beautiful slide show of family photos from all through his brother's life, and I felt a pull at my heart from the images that flashed by that I knew had been taken during the Cultural Revolution, a period when Wei's family, along with millions of others, had beeen torn apart. But today they are together and have an inspiring joy for life.

I find the people here are irony-free, direct, open and earnest in a most attactive way. I especially love the spirit of Chinese women. Just strong and fresh and full of energy to give life a go.

Our First Day

We spent our first day at the Exhibition Hall. It was beyond amazing - a fantastic dream crossed with a nightmare. We saw some incredible things, performances and artworks, but the volume of noise was overwhelming. The Egyptian travel booth across from ours had belly dancers and Rumi Sufi twirlers and had their sound system turned up full blast. But that didn't matter since EVERYONE had their sound system turned up full blast...it's like sonic war escalation.

The Exhibition is in 8 or 10 huge connected halls, and we have a tiny booth in the center of one of them. We sat at the booth in the morning. We talked to many people, visitors to the booth, and almost all of the promotional materials we brought with us were cleaned out by noon. It was a lot of fun but exhausting. About mid-morning, just as Wei had promised, the heads of the city, provincial and national governments came by, surrounded in a knot of TV cameras and photographers, and we were introduced and shook hands. I think that's how we got on Chinese TV , but none of us saw it so we don't know if it was from this incident or from the small riot we caused at the paper-cut art booth later that day...

Yesterday, traveling through the airport and crossing the border at customs with other travelers, we felt like walking disease vectors, being obviously from the US and all, but today I felt like Big Bird from Sesame Street as I stood out so much in the crowd, and a few people followed me around to get my picture... We stopped in one booth to buy some cool paper cut art and caused a scene. People were snapping pictures and asking us to pose with them and shake hands... now I know what Britney Spears must feel like with the paparazzi after her... or sort of.

Everyone is very friendly and relaxed and happy to try and talk to us and help, but not many people speak English and we can only say 'shi shi', which is 'thank you' in Chinese, but that goes a long way...

Home from China

China was wonderful. Also hot and LOUD and immense and astonishing. We spent four days in Shenzhen attending the ICIF exhibition, and then two days in Hong Kong seeing the sights.

I'll try and post a bit of what we did and saw over the next few days.

Fabulous architecture of Shenzhen

It's off to China tomorrow, I will try and stay connected.