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Published: July 13th 2011
This has been a difficult year to keep a blog. I know so many more people and keep busy with friends visiting and socializing that I do not have the evenings to sit and write as I have done in past years. My friends from Jinan were here the past three days and left this morning. I am going to try and put a few entries online with at the least photos and captions.
Sanbao
This is my sixth year doing a summer residency at the Sanbao Ceramic Art Institute. I have seen so many changes over the years and the evolution continues. As always, it is wonderful to see the no long time friends I have meet over the years. Wendy Li, the Sanbao director, I keep in touch with all year long and has become a good friend and supporter of my work. I had emailed her and told her which day I would be flying from Beijing to Jingdezhen. She said she would meet me at the airport. I departed the plane to find the new Jingdezhen terminal completed and operational. There remain only three destinations flights connect to, Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. Instead of walking
a few hundred yards on the tarmac as before there is an actual boarding ramp connected to the terminal. I had to laugh as there was a sign directing people to connecting flights that at this time and probably never will exist. My checked bag arrives quickly and I exit to the lobby. I could see Dryden Wells from the Potteryworkshop near the gate and waved to him. There must be one of their artist-in-residence arriving on the same flight. I do not see Wendy so walk up to Dryden to say hello and to my surprise he says, “Wendy asked me to pick you up.” My mind races for this seems very peculiar. Then I hear a giggling behind me and turn to see Wendy hiding by the wall. She set me up and used Dryden to be the straight man. Welcome back to Sanbao Gary!!!!!!! We pull my bag out to her new car and find her husband Lao Mai waiting. He surprises me by saying hello in English and coming up and giving me a hug. It feels good to be back with friends.
Changes at Sanbao this year is the new museum Jackson Li and
Sanbao are building is getting larger. Last year it was only a skeleton of an old traditional house they bought and reconstructed on site. Connected to it is a large girder structure going up. This surprised me for I thought Jackson had said the old building was going to be the full extend. A new idea I guess. This was also the space he said would be finished and I could have had my exhibition in this summer. I never believed it would be finished and it was the correct instinct as it is still very raw.
The biggest change is in the resident artists studios. We have always been in the studio down near the creek and rice patties. Jackson, Wendy and Lao Mai have now come to an agreement that this building that had just been remodeled one year ago will now be Jackson’s studio. He was asked to choose which space he wanted and then Wendy and Lao Mai took control of the other. The three-story building housing the gas kilns will have the group and resident artists studios upstairs. I had walked through the rough space last summer and liked the view. They have hired
Sabastion Piementa, a Brazilian artist who has been to Sanbao three times before, to be their studio manager. He speaks Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, English, a little Italian and Spanish. He has twice brought Brazilian ceramics artists with him to Sanbao. He is a good fit for the job because of his language and understanding of the workings and shortcomings of Sanbao. They also have Thomas Hayes, from the UK, here for six months as an intern. He works four hours a day and has full access to the studio to pursue his own work. The two of them have been working extremely hard to make the resident artist studios a professional space and the surrounding buildings more organized. I have been hearing all the stories about complaints from Jackson, Ma Shifu (resident master pottery) and Xiao Shifu (glaze guy). Pimenta and Tom have cleaned and cleaned and cleaned! They say, “Why do foreigners like to clean?” (Physical health, mental health, prevention of silicosis, to name a few) My first day in the studio was a Sunday, the day they have student volunteers come out to help. They are English language majors who are told they can come out to practice
their English……as if being told what to do in English is helpful. This day they were going to clean out the kiln room. Sanbao just celebrated its tenth anniversary and there are things sitting around everywhere for that full time, left behind, unclaimed or ignored. Pimenta and Tom’s job is to sort out, clean and organize. What is Jackson’s they put in his studio where they have no say in its condition. Other then one building housing Jackson’s office Wendy and Lao Mai have control over everything else. This is such a positive step and the improvements are startling.
With the artist studios upstairs we now have privacy to our working environment. In the lower building Jackson would invite friends or business associates in to have tea and chat. Or as with last summer invite some Beijing artists to work there for a while with a bratty, whiney five-year old hanging around while they all smoked and talked loud. Worst was when small or large groups of people would come out to take a tour and eat dinner at Sanbao. They would walk right past the sign that said private space – keep out and come wandering in wanting
to practice their English or ignore the no photography sign and start taking pictures. Once a large group of school age kids came out and enveloped the entire building while peering in through the windows at the strange Laowei (foreigners). Wendy hates this and now has created our haven in the trees to keep us more private. Funny I write this for just today four young people strolling around walked right past the huge “private do not enter” sign and came up the stairs to look around. Though Chinese I believe they belong to my friend Paul’s family in Wisconsin. Paul said when his father saw a sign that said do not enter he would tell his son, “That does not apply to us.”
The second floor studio is for wheel work though it is where I am working with my molds. Their will be a plaster and slipcasting room but is not finished yet. This room is approximately 40’x40’ and has a balcony space with pipes hanging out to put wareboard with work out to dry in the sun. Off the back of this room is a Chinese squatting toilet and outdoor patio where someone could work if
they choose to. Near the stairwell to the third floor is the mold working room (18’x18’). The third floor is the handbuilding studio (30’x30’) a hallway with a seating area for tea, a library of books, another small balcony and a painting room for underglaze of overglaze painting (10’x20’). On this floor there is another restroom with a western toilet……horah for sitting instead of squatting while you poop! Western pleasures greatly appreciated.
The kilnroom has three gas fired kilns, small, medium and large. There are two electric kilns for bisquing which laowei use sometimes for the Chinese do once fire and the idea of bisque firing is a strange concept. There is a small woodfire kiln and a large dragon woodfire kiln up the hill behind the studios. It would take a lot of work to fill the kiln so it is maybe fired once a year. Sanbao has built a small raku kiln as well. We buy our glazes in town at the glaze shops where they sell plastic liter bottles full of your favorite color. I took Xiaowen to one of the glaze shops to show her the wall of erotic glaze samples: phallic shaped porcelain forms
with all their glaze samples placed on shelves covering an entire shelf. I took her photo in front of the samples and told her she could make a Christmas card to send to all friends and family……if she celebrated Christmas that is!
All in all, Sanbao’s new facilities are a huge improvement and good place for artists to come and work. The only drawback for me is how to get a ten-gallon casting slip bucket up the stairs to the second floor. The workers at Sanbao have been kind to do this for me since I am still protecting myself after January hernia surgery. I have suggested a pulley system so no one gets hurt.
Being here several years in a row my perspective to Sanbao is that of my home away from home. I am so familiar with the people and layout that not much surprises me or is new. The main chef, Panzi (fatty) from all my previous years has left. He was an amazing chef and a good pingpong player I would challenge some nights to a game. The new chef is also from Jiujiang city, where Jackson and Wendy grew up. I must say
that the food was better with Panzi here. My taste bud memory is everything being spicier, while now most dishes are just average. There are some new dishes that I do like a lot. I will do a blog entry about food later.
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