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.

Work in progress

This is from a series of monoprints/collotypes I did last week at the wonderful and talented Sheila Coppola's place, Sidereal Press, www.siderealpress.com. I am working out some imagery for a public arts project I am submitting for. These are in a raw state, prior to my usual cut/collage assembly process.

Shenzhen Convention Center

It looks like I will be heading to China on May 13th with a delegation of arts and cultural representatives from Seattle. We'll be in Shenzhen for a week attending the International Cultural Industries Fair, as the guests of the fair. Stay tuned, I hope to be able to post from afar...

Upcoming show

Here's the info for the Shoreline Community College Gallery where I will be having a solo show in March next year.

New Work
March 2 to March 30, 2010
SCC Art Gallery
Shoreline Community College
Administration Bldg. 1000
16101 Greenwood Ave N
Shoreline, WA
98133
www.shoreline.edu/gallery/
Natalie Niblack, Gallery Director