An antidote to Beijing's infamous air pollution: In Fragrant Hills, a bee farmer carves a honeycomb from its frame

I look for raw art materials everywhere: in art stores and galleries, and even markets.

Since moving to Beijing, I've been experimenting with a local specialty: tofu skin from wet markets. It's a cream-colored blank canvas for ideas.

I'm an artist who lives where I don't belong. For the past few years, I've been lost more often than found. As a way to trace where I came from, and places I've wanted to forget, I've been carving maps from tofu skin. Backwards. 

When I pictured carving my home country, I shivered, afraid. 

A sign this is a good direction to take.

So I carved some words into the paper used for festive Chinese paper-cuts:

I was born here

I was destined to die here

but took fate into my hands

as much as anyone can

as my ancestors did

Then laid them on top of the skin to print a cyanotype…

They looked nice but didn't print well. Water and thin Chinese papers don't mix.

However it turned out ok once I gave up on the words. Mostly.

The tofu skin sculptures curl up as they dry, shaped by atmosphere just as much as by human hands.

Then I was asked to join an exhibition in Beijing's 798 arts district.

The timeframe was only a few days.

There was no time to experiment with new ideas or materials, or to wait for sunshine to burst through the smog of a Beijing spring.

So I made what I knew. Backwards.

And big, just like the countries they represent:

In progress: Backwards America, The Past is Another Country, 70 x 130cm

Backwards America installed at 3C Creative Space

Detail of sculpture curling as it dries

Chinese characters trace the transcontinental railroad across the map:

China & the US have more in common than most countries.

I stretched their proportions to fit the borders of the handmade Beijing paper used as templates, to emphasize their similarities. 

Backwards China in progress:

China carved with "peace" in its minority languages & scripts:

The Past is Another Country: Reverse China, 70 x 100cm, tofu skin sculpture

Detail: "peace" in Tibetan

Detail: "peace" in Uighur

More images of The Past is Another Country on Flickr

Part 2 coming up next week, with the hidden paper artworks from the exhibition…

There's nothing like a good story. Even if you can only understand a word or two of it.

For example, we ran into this guy during Chinese New Year.

His fake queue and fancy outfit attracted our attention.

"Twenty kuai each to look into the machine!" he shouted to passersby.

- That's expensive, I thought.

Then I had a look at his machine. It was beautiful. I wanted to see what was inside.

The machine had 3D glasses.

This is what we saw through them:

The storyteller sang to his own rhythm, a kind of Old-school Chinese rap.

It was the Chinese classic, Journey to the West. Ilustrated with line drawings and captions, like a 3D comic book. At strategic parts of the story, he'd flip the drawing – like a magician switching his cards onstage.

The storyteller sang to a tape recorder and a clash of cymbals, entertaining everyone nearby.

While it lasted five minutes at most, it's an experience I'd take over a Hollywood blockbuster any day.

You wouldn't think of an outdoor market as a good place to buy art supplies, but for contemporary artists, anything is game – from elephant poo to diamonds.

In China, even a trip to the market can be an inspiration.  Recently I visited an outdoor market, looking for tofu skin. Not for food – but for experimental Cyanotype blueprints. There was no tofu skin for sale that day, but I didn't leave empty-handed.

After a narrow miss with two e-bikes, a pushcart, and several bicycles, I left carrying a bag filled with a new drawing material: big chunks of wood charcoal. I had no idea how well it would work, but the texture of the charcoal was irresistible. I wanted to grab a piece of it and start drawing straight away. 

As I sketched, the charcoal made expressive lines. Some thick, others thin. Darkest grey or light, depending on the wood grain. It led my hands on paths charcoal never has before. I thought of Egon Schiele's self-portrait with purple hair and bony fingers, where he looks as arrogant and insecure as a Cure fan. Schiele's drawing style was one of a kind, particularly his hands: the charcoal of his drawings was controlled and wild, precise yet free.

So when I was invited to come up with a short workshop for middle-school kids, I knew just what to do.

First, I showed the students Schiele's self-portrait, then other paintings he’d done of hands: clasped, twisted, clutching. Hands that express intense emotions even when faces are frozen. 

Then, I brought out the bag of charcoal, and picked out the biggest piece. It was as big as an oversized potato. 

They gasped.

- You're going to draw with this today, I said.

 Cries and smiles of disbelief. 

- Roll up your sleeves, this is going to get messy! 

They did, grinning.

- One side of the paper is for experimenting. Go wild, scribble on it, figure out how your piece of charcoal works. Then on the other side, draw your own hands, wiggle your fingers around. Marvel at how they work together. Look at the wrinkles, the joints, where your fingernails are uneven.

And as always, they blew my mind. Here's a sample of what they came up with:

Hands with extra-long fingers,

Gnarly hands,

Hands that asked questions,

elegant hands,

Hands that look like trees,

Hands that look like chicken claws,

Others that look like bear claws…

Or human claws.

And even a city of hands. A skyline of fingers, topped with square fingernails, like the architectural flourishes that pop up all over Beijing. 

This is why my job doesn't feel like a job. There are new surprises waiting every day. You light a spark, and wait to see what happens next.

Every time, it’s a surprise.

Paper is deceptively fragile. It can tear easily, or dissolve in water.
But papers are stronger than they look – notably hemp or mulberry papers from Asia, which were once used as armor. Even today, papers are used to make windows and doors in Japan.

Many contemporary artists use paper as a starting point for their experiments. It’s an affordable surface to work with. Liberating, even. You can create without fear of destruction, because the destruction is inevitable.

The work of Peter Callesen embodies this perfectly. Death, life, and every cliche in between are fair game. In his artworks, the negative space is just as important as the positive.

Peter Callesen, The Short Distance Between Time and Shadow 2012 by Cite de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine

With patience, a knife, and a steady pair of hands, he transforms ordinary office paper into the extraordinary.

Callesen at work by elementalc

Another artist whose work deals with paper, negative space, and transience is Jum Nakao. He straddles art and fashion.

Photo by Pri G Guerra

Nakao and assistants spent up to 700 hours slicing and folding paper into dresses for a show. When models completed their turn on the catwalk, they ripped the paper dresses off their bodies for the finale.

Jum Nakao’s dress installation by Nexa Wiziack

In a micro installation, Nakao let rats loose among miniature versions of his paper dresses.

Closeup of rats by Kaka on Flickr

The rats found the sugar-coated dresses irresistible.

Vortex by Tomoko Shioyasu Photo by Cumulo-Nimbus

Tomoko creates three-dimensional paper sculptures out of intricately-cut paper, light, and air. In her installations, light shines through holes in her cut ‘paper tapestries’ to the wall and floor, and draft from ventilation soars through the room and moves through the paper.

This artist cuts gigantic sheets of paper with intuitive designs based on natural forms like leaves and typhoons. She works with a few feet of paper at a time, in her mother’s small traditional home in Tokyo. When she wants to see how the work is coming along, she and her mother take it to a community center on a bicycle. There, Tomoko unrolls it, and can finally see what she’s made.

Jeff Nishinaka- Bulwark 451 from BERNSTEIN & ANDRIULLI on Vimeo.

Jeff Nishinaka is an American paper sculptor. This video shows how he made an incredibly detailed scene of paper, then set it on fire. It was commissioned by a company hat makes fire-resistant clothing.

These days I teach art at an international school. My students were suitably impressed, particularly by the rats and burning paper. After I introduced the them to the artists above, I let the students loose with A2 size office papers, and here’s a sample of what they came up with:

A brilliant series of abstract sculptures. Instead of using adhesives like tape or glue, this student created a tab system, and curved the paper into abstract forms.

His classmate tackled the Great Wall.

They’re both just 13.

Every day there’s something in China that blows my mind. These days it’s my students. Each time we work together, they remind me of why I became an artist in the first place.

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At the China Exploration and Research Society, Hong Kong

Stark colors by the South China sea.
Two days.
Two (Burmese) cats.

Meals forgotten as I worked through one volume after the next.
Seven thousand pages scanned for my research.
One new visa processed for an exciting new art job in Beijing.
This cold winter will be a busy one.

Stay warm, y'all…

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My fears for the future, and what I've got to do in 2013 to kill them

We don't talk about our fears in public much. Or our failures.
But every success comes from experiments.
Some of them pan out.

If I'm afraid of something, I try it.
Fear means something's at stake.
Easy art and easy choices lead nowhere new.

So on New Year's Day I let my fears loose, then boxed them up, sliced them apart, and colored them in. They were cute and corralled into submission. Using the same color family, I could see how they were related.

Divided and conquered, sliced away with Occam's razor. I got rid of the fat, back into the heart of what makes me most afraid. It's not this year, but the next that terrifies me, so I focused on 2014.

Like many people, what I fear most is failure. So I sliced it into colorful pieces.

It's easy to dream. Making it happen takes strategy, hard work, and getting up when a big dose of reality knocks you down. And sometimes, attacking a big fear, one piece at a time.

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What do paintbrushes have to do with poison? You'll soon find out. Read below…

We've all got choices to make every day. Choices sculpt our lives and help us make meaning and sense of our years. In my Beijing neighborhood, we have some unique choices.

For example, do I:

A. Sample the delicious-looking street food outside my door? It may smell divine but there's a good chance it's made with gutter oil
or
B. Eat at a respectable-looking restaurant? They, on the other hand, may use scandalous food products.

But food poisoning is nothing new, and life in China (and anywhere) is an adventure every day. So why not create some more adventures while you're at it?

For the rest of the year, I'm on a mission to share an adventure for 2013: I'm in the running for a 2013 WildChina Explorer Grant. WildChina is an adventure travel company based in Beijing which runs specialized tours to spectacular regions of China.

Every time you like, comment, and view my proposal, you'll get me a step closer to winning. This grant would help out with $1000 of my expenses, which will total about $5,500 to travel through the far reaches of Northern China for up to eight weeks with translators and qualified guides.

If you have the time, I'd appreciate it if you choose to visit one of my project's presentations, by exploring the 87-second video on on YouTube or by:

Commenting on/liking my blog post on on WildChina's Facebook page
or my project on their Blog,
tweet about it including @wildchina in the message,
Pin it or like it on Pinterest

Now, what do paintbrushes have to do with poison? Caravaggio and Van Gogh and many other artists may have been afflicted with poisoning from the sweet-tasting lead paints they used. This may partially account for the reputations of so-called 'mad artists'.

How did they poison themselves? Possibly by mixing their own paints or licking their brushes into a point, and probably by another common artist's habit: eating with paint-covered hands.

Today you'll rarely find lead in artists' paints. One exception however is Flake White. There's no other white paint with the same opaque coverage and neutral hue. (There are different types of white paint? Yes! And various blacks, too. They'll all mix differently with other colors.) Artists rave about Flake White's buttery texture as it's smoothed onto the canvas. There's nothing else like it.

So the next time you think about having lunch in your studio, remember to hit the soap before unwrapping that sandwich filled with holiday leftovers.

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Your Friends.


A friend photographs her neighbor, the day after her wedding. XiangCheng, Tibetan Sichuan

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Cyanotype experiment on tofu skin, 2012

Recent trials on ephemeral materials, printed on short and chilly northern days. They prove you don't need warm summer sun to make them. But I miss days as long as nights, damp skin on my rooftop studio in Bangkok, wiping sweat away from prints as the iron salts turned green then blue then Prussian white.

One drop of sweat will ruin a piece, fingerprints will stain a work. Make it unsaleable. But I've never really made a living just from selling my art. Not for long anyway.

The rapacious art/investment "scene" of China and my transient life here have turned me away from making saleable work to ephemeral pieces I can document, then throw away without regret. They are lush blue and cream for just a few hours. Then they shrivel into dark crunchy shadows of what they once were. These tofu skin pieces might even be edible: one of the Cyanotype ingredients is an iron supplement for products like Irn Bru, that Scottish staple.

I don't know where these experiments will go. Maybe nowhere at all, maybe somewhere new. But if nothing else, they're helping me get through the winter blues (i.e. the monkey on your forehead, chattering away about what a worthless creature you are).

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