Ric Swenson on wed 21 may 08
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Greetings from JingDeZhen, China.
Of course the sad news from SiChuan about the 8.0 Earthquake has shocked the nation and the world. The response has been rapid but difficult, as aftershocks now cause more landslides and collapses. The TV coverage is 24/7 here. The press seems to be completely free to film and document the rescue efforts. Quite different from past disasters I think. The openess is astounding to me. There was a three minute national memorial as the 2:28 PM may 12 Quake was marked nationwide. The government has cancelled all entertainment programs on TV and computers for three days.
Body count is at 40,000 now and will go up, unfortunately. God bless the survivors.
I not-so-fondly remember the 9.2 Quake in March of 1964 in Alaska when I was 16 years old. An experience you really do not want to have. Believe me.
80+ days until the Oylmpic Games in BeiJing. A lot of excitment last week with the Relay Torch reaching the top of the World's highest peak. We call it Mt Everest, the Chinese refer to it as Zhumulangma.(in Pinying)
I visited several potteries and a decal maker last Saturday with Zach Davidson, one of the other Oral English teachers/potters here at the Institute. The tile makers make HUGE tiles, by hand. two strips of wood about 1CM thick and a piece of pipe. Some of these tiles are as big as 1 M by 3 Meters! Flat and thin and quite amazing. Many are used to make glazed paintings in Blue and White or in multi-colored pallette. Traditional Chinese floral themes, landscapes, portraits and so on. Also contemporary painting with glazes, and China paints is done on these porcelain tiles.
We visited a clay factory and watched the workers using a blunger and a filter press and finally a pug mill to make a huge truck-full of porcelain clay. The slugs of moist clay are put in plastic bags and loaded on a an 18 wheeler, to be delivered to factories around town. They don't put the clay in cardboard boxes at all.
The decal makers work with ceramic glaze stains and squeegie the "inks" onto aluminum plates and then print them on thin rice paper. All sorts of designs and colors available. One can choose the plate/design that you want and watch them print them in a short time. They work very quickly. One can simply transfer the images to fired, glazed forms or tiles and re-fire at lower temperatures.
Weather has gotten a little warm here. Some rain and humidity too. The evenings are cool and pleasant , but the afternoons are reaching 30 C. Birds are nesting and insects are reappearing. Mosquitoes here are much smaller than the Alaskan variety, but they pack an itchy punch !
I am busy teaching at two colleges and tutoring an interesting variety of foreign students. I teach oral English to a young woman from Brazil, two Italian helicopter designers, 11 Chinese managers at the local helicopter test flight center,(ChangHe/Augusta/Westland), 4 Korean High School students, 5 middle school girls, a Chinese guy preparing for the TOFL tests and also tutor a high school boy who wants to improve his oral English to do well on the college entrance exams. Keeps me hopping. We sometimes even play SCRABBLE to help build vocabulary.
Tough to find time to get to the studio, but I did get there last week. A film crew from Chinese National Channel 10 was on campus and they filmed me throwing a textured porcelain jar and lid, Zach working on a face tile and Sai, who is from Myanmar, making a ceramic sculptural represntation of an American Indian Chief. He says he loves to read about Native Americans and studies their artwork and totems. He is working on his master's degree in ceramic sculpture here. The film crew is making a documentary about the 50th year celebration of the JingDeZhen Ceramic Institute and interviewed a lot of the faculty and resident artists.
Met three architecture students at the Pottery Workshop the other day. They are from RPI in Troy N.Y. and have been spending the semester in ShangHai at the Art and Architecture School there...they are in a larger group of students from RPI visiting JingDeZhen for just a week, to learn about the porcelain architectural tiles made here. The Institute will host another group of West Virginia students this spring for a few weeks of work here and travel to other spots of interest in China.
Lots of western potters and artists here now enjoying the spring in China. After last Friday's lecture at the Pottery Workshop, I chatted with a German woman, a gentleman from France, one from Sweden,several Chinese potters and three Americans who are here working now. The studios are improving all the time. They have expanded their capacity of studio space and residence facilities too. They had their first soda fire a few weeks ago. The lecture two weeks ago was by Paul Mathieu, author of 'Sex Pots'. Han Feng, NYC designer of fabrics and apparel gave a talk last Friday. There were so many people there they had to have the lecture outside in the courtyard of the Sculpture Factory.
I have shown a DVD to most of my classes here. MY FAIR LADY. with Audrey Heburn, Rex Harrison and Jeremy Brett. Good theme for oral English students and they enjoy learning about the costumes, society, class and women's issues, history and of course the classic songs by Lerner and Lowe..
Went to supper with John Pillshaw, NJ potter who is here working at the Pottery Workshop. We went to supper at San Bao and saw large group (70) of Univ. of California Economics students, who are touring China. They come from all over the CA system and most were Chinese -American students.
Hope you are all well.
I have missed seeing the postings for the past week or two on Clayart.org.
Regards,
Ric
_________________________________________________________________
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http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=7+wonders+world&mkt=en-US&form=QBRE
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Greetings from JingDeZhen, China.
Of course the sad news from SiChuan about the 8.0 Earthquake has shocked the nation and the world. The response has been rapid but difficult, as aftershocks now cause more landslides and collapses. The TV coverage is 24/7 here. The press seems to be completely free to film and document the rescue efforts. Quite different from past disasters I think. The openess is astounding to me. There was a three minute national memorial as the 2:28 PM may 12 Quake was marked nationwide. The government has cancelled all entertainment programs on TV and computers for three days.
Body count is at 40,000 now and will go up, unfortunately. God bless the survivors.
I not-so-fondly remember the 9.2 Quake in March of 1964 in Alaska when I was 16 years old. An experience you really do not want to have. Believe me.
80+ days until the Oylmpic Games in BeiJing. A lot of excitment last week with the Relay Torch reaching the top of the World's highest peak. We call it Mt Everest, the Chinese refer to it as Zhumulangma.(in Pinying)
I visited several potteries and a decal maker last Saturday with Zach Davidson, one of the other Oral English teachers/potters here at the Institute. The tile makers make HUGE tiles, by hand. two strips of wood about 1CM thick and a piece of pipe. Some of these tiles are as big as 1 M by 3 Meters! Flat and thin and quite amazing. Many are used to make glazed paintings in Blue and White or in multi-colored pallette. Traditional Chinese floral themes, landscapes, portraits and so on. Also contemporary painting with glazes, and China paints is done on these porcelain tiles.
We visited a clay factory and watched the workers using a blunger and a filter press and finally a pug mill to make a huge truck-full of porcelain clay. The slugs of moist clay are put in plastic bags and loaded on a an 18 wheeler, to be delivered to factories around town. They don't put the clay in cardboard boxes at all.
The decal makers work with ceramic glaze stains and squeegie the "inks" onto aluminum plates and then print them on thin rice paper. All sorts of designs and colors available. One can choose the plate/design that you want and watch them print them in a short time. They work very quickly. One can simply transfer the images to fired, glazed forms or tiles and re-fire at lower temperatures.
Weather has gotten a little warm here. Some rain and humidity too. The evenings are cool and pleasant , but the afternoons are reaching 30 C. Birds are nesting and insects are reappearing. Mosquitoes here are much smaller than the Alaskan variety, but they pack an itchy punch !
I am busy teaching at two colleges and tutoring an interesting variety of foreign students. I teach oral English to a young woman from Brazil, two Italian helicopter designers, 11 Chinese managers at the local helicopter test flight center,(ChangHe/Augusta/Westland), 4 Korean High School students, 5 middle school girls, a Chinese guy preparing for the TOFL tests and also tutor a high school boy who wants to improve his oral English to do well on the college entrance exams. Keeps me hopping. We sometimes even play SCRABBLE to help build vocabulary.
Tough to find time to get to the studio, but I did get there last week. A film crew from Chinese National Channel 10 was on campus and they filmed me throwing a textured porcelain jar and lid, Zach working on a face tile and Sai, who is from Myanmar, making a ceramic sculptural represntation of an American Indian Chief. He says he loves to read about Native Americans and studies their artwork and totems. He is working on his master's degree in ceramic sculpture here. The film crew is making a documentary about the 50th year celebration of the JingDeZhen Ceramic Institute and interviewed a lot of the faculty and resident artists.
Met three architecture students at the Pottery Workshop the other day. They are from RPI in Troy N.Y. and have been spending the semester in ShangHai at the Art and Architecture School there...they are in a larger group of students from RPI visiting JingDeZhen for just a week, to learn about the porcelain architectural tiles made here. The Institute will host another group of West Virginia students this spring for a few weeks of work here and travel to other spots of interest in China.
Lots of western potters and artists here now enjoying the spring in China. After last Friday's lecture at the Pottery Workshop, I chatted with a German woman, a gentleman from France, one from Sweden,several Chinese potters and three Americans who are here working now. The studios are improving all the time. They have expanded their capacity of studio space and residence facilities too. They had their first soda fire a few weeks ago. The lecture two weeks ago was by Paul Mathieu, author of 'Sex Pots'. Han Feng, NYC designer of fabrics and apparel gave a talk last Friday. There were so many people there they had to have the lecture outside in the courtyard of the Sculpture Factory.
I have shown a DVD to most of my classes here. MY FAIR LADY. with Audrey Heburn, Rex Harrison and Jeremy Brett. Good theme for oral English students and they enjoy learning about the costumes, society, class and women's issues, history and of course the classic songs by Lerner and Lowe..
Went to supper with John Pillshaw, NJ potter who is here working at the Pottery Workshop. We went to supper at San Bao and saw large group (70) of Univ. of California Economics students, who are touring China. They come from all over the CA system and most were Chinese -American students.
Hope you are all well.
I have missed seeing the postings for the past week or two on Clayart.org.
Regards,
Ric
Explore the seven wonders of the world Learn more!
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