Charles Hecht
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Beijing: On multiples artists...Part II

By Charles J. Hecht


To Read Beijing: On multiples artists... - Part I - Click Here -->


At about 10:00 I went to my room and read some of the new de Kooning biography before going off to sleep. I was up early to try to coordinate a side trip to Shenyang. Four phone calls and five e-mails made me realize that I was going to focus on completing my work on the new sculptures and making some marketing contacts in Beijing. That morning Gang and I discussed the hanging of one of my large combination flag sculptures, Journey, on the outside of the Pickled Arts Centre until it was sold. I thought it was a good idea and the sculpture was delivered to the arts center that morning. We then decided where and how it was to be placed. Then Gang, Peter and I decided to have lunch at a local dumpling restaurant. Again, the food was excellent. Although Peter is an architect, he had never worked at an architecture firm, but had been able to get isolated jobs on his own. He was in Beijing for three months to do the architectural work for a Norwegian sculptor who was having a major show later this year. He had been very sick the prior week and he was just starting to feel better.

Upon my return from lunch, the 4 small sculptures that I had worked on in my prior visit were at the arts center. However, each needed to be polyurethaned so I made arrangements with Gang's staff to transport the sculptures and my bike over to the SAC complex. After putting on an initial coat, I then went back to the computer store to pick up the discs, since the disc prepared from the photographs was too imprecise for the etching of the calligraphy. After I got there the principal of the computer store decided to repair the computer so that it could create data discs. Gang then contacted the fabricator who came over and picked up the discs.



I then went to dinner with two employees of the American Chamber of Commerce for China. Before dinner we toured the arts center complex and spent some time in the gallery. They were very impressed with the facility and thought it would be a great place for private parties. Both Martha Vinson and Jim had been recently transferred to Beijing from other American Chamber of Commerce offices, but were totally unfamiliar with the Bei Gao section or the thriving artist community. I took them to the same Beijing duck house, because I knew the food was reasonable and very good. Jim collects antique maps of Asia and explained that in Taiwan this is a very hot area. After graduating college in Canada he taught at a Korean school. He then became employed by the European Chamber of Commerce and transferred to the American Chamber of Commerce and had been stationed in various parts of the world. Martha had previously been in charge of the American Chamber of Commerce in Indonesia. However, her fianc'e lived in Beijing. Since they wanted to get married she resigned her position in Indonesia and was offered a position in Beijing which she gladly accepted. Mrs. Vinson explained the role of AmCham China and had an idea. Would I lend one of my Chinese flag sculptures to AmCham in exchange for an article about me in their monthly magazine? She felt it would expose the sculptures to American businesses with offices in China and the theme was consistent with AmCham-China'92s mission. She would make arrangements to pick up the sculpture and have it installed with the understanding that there would be no charge for the rental, but if I sold the sculpture then they would release it. I thought it was a good idea and if it was moved while I was in China I agreed to supervise the move and work with their maintenance people on how to install and maintain the sculpture. She said that they would be there the next day to pick it up and let me know when the truck was arriving at the Pickled Arts Centre, so I could direct them to the other Li Gang studio where the sculpture was stored. They then dropped me off at the arts center. I was ready to go to sleep after a long day.



I still had no working refrigerator and did not want to impose any more on Li Gang's family. After a cup of tea, I decided to walk to the main street to have a late breakfast at the dumpling house. I met John on the way out and we walked together down to the main street where he caught a cab to meet a friend to do some sightseeing. Unfortunately, the dumpling place was not going to be open for another hour so I decided to walk back to the complex. I ran into a young Australian painter and his wife, who are also going into town for some sightseeing. After visiting for about 15 minutes, I went back to the compound and got on my bike so that I could put on more coats of polyurethane at the sculptures located at the SAC studio of Gang.



I called Li Long Ling and she came over to look at what I was doing and to invite me for lunch. Her studio/living quarters were also in the SAC complex. She then showed me the studio and upon closer look, what I thought was a 20 foot sculpture of a fierce Chinese soldier, was really a sculpture of a sad migrant construction worker. Her husband apparently had done a whole series of smaller bronze sculptures on this theme. He was represented by the Red Gate Gallery. Ling considers herself a designer. She uses ordinary materials such as tires, threaded pipe and plumbing fixtures to construct furniture, and was branching out into more decorative sculptures. Her latest line of sculptures were pieces of different types of threaded pipe, with each piece the same diameter, constructed to look like a man or a woman. The man had a faucet and when you unscrewed the faucet, you then had a woman. Each of the other parts of these sculptures was movable to a limited degree. There were a series of candelabras made with the same threaded pipe. She also used two tires laid flat on the ground and then stitched fabric over the top tire to form chairs. At the Pickled Arts Centre she had designed a chair using threaded pipe and then stretched a piece of leather for the seating area. It was made for someone who is Chinese.

Her parents were visiting for a month, since her husband was doing some postgraduate work in Amsterdam. Her aunt was going to do the cooking, and one of her friends, who I had met at one of the Beijing duck house feasts, came over to join us for lunch. Long Ling did not like tall or heavy furniture so she'd come up with a unique solution for the dining table. It was on the second floor immediately above the staircase. The legs were only 14 inches high but she cut a hole in the floor so that you would sit Japanese style with your feet going in the hole in the floor to dangle over t.he staircase. Because her mother had arthritis, she sat in a regular chair away from the table. Once you got used to the sensation, it was a very comfortable way to eat. Lunch was stuffed buns and dumplings. The stuffing was various vegetables with garlic and seasonings, which were very good. A glass of beer was an excellent accompaniment. It was decided that we would talk in English because she and her friend wanted to practice English. Neither of her parents nor her aunt spoke English, but we managed to communicate.



I got a call from Gang that Martha Vinson was over at the Pickled Arts Centre to pick up the sculpture. So after lunch I biked back to the arts center. Gang offered the use of his truck and employees to help move the sculpture. It took us the rest of the afternoon to transport the sculpture to the AmCham office, including almost an hour and a half to come back because of the incredible traffic of downtown Beijing. They were going to install it the next day.



When I got back to the Pickled Arts Centre, Li Gang invited me for a drink with a Norwegian architect, his wife and a Norwegian expatriate who had decided to retire to Beijing with her nine-year-old son and Alex, a Scottish art history teacher who was spending the night on the cot that I had previously used, before flying back to Scotland the next day. He'd been traveling for two years throughout the world and was anxious to get back to his family. He was a very interesting person and had a lot of good ideas. After some tea, Gang decided to drive us to a special tea house, which happened to be owned by an American, not far from the Beijing duck house. The place was unmarked and down an unmarked road. The building was beautiful and was magnificently landscaped. They gave us menus that looked like New York City menus with New York City prices, but we were there to drink beer. The cost of beer was what he would spend at a fancy New York restaurant, but it was a beautiful place to drink. After a discussion of art and architecture, the Norwegian architect told me that America got what it deserved when the World Trade Center was destroyed. Since I did not know the relationship of this architect to Gang, I attempted to defuse the situation. Shortly thereafter it was time to drop off the Norwegian couple and proceed back to the arts complex.



Upon my return there was a group of artists talking outside. There was the Australian painter and his wife, Mick, an Irish composer/artist, and his wife Irene, a food artist, Brian Wallace, the proprietor of the Red Gate Gallery, John Sundvquist and his Australian friend who is writing a book on the sacred places in China. Tracy and a few other artists joined us for dinner and we again went off to, surprise, the same Beijing duck house that I had dined at three out of the five previous evenings. But it was the company that counted.



I sat next to Mick who described how he was combining sound and art to create something unique and was to give a performance of his art in Japan the following week. He discussed why he believed that John Cage was such an important composer. Mick also described the 10 day train trip he and Irene had taken from Moscow, through Siberia, then through Manchuria and finally arriving at Beijing. The best part of the trip was the silence of the Gobi Desert as the train chugged through the ever so quiet and bleak landscape. He also noted that Russia was like a desert wasteland and that the moment the train came into China everything seemed to come alive. He compared the silence in music to the open spaces in painting and sculpture. We then discussed ways of creating space in our art and life in general. For example, on my walk I noticed many different sounds but did not hear the sound of any birds, notwithstanding the numerous trees in the area. Although there are lots of dogs it seemed that the dogs hardly ever barked. Irene then described some of her food sculptures and that Mick, who is a chemist at the university, sometimes worked with her on these projects. They had managed to use their ideas for art projects to get enough grant money to fund three months of adventure. After we completed dinner we then went over to join Letitia, the owner of Imagine Gallery, and the two French artist agents who were just starting their dinner. We then made arrangements to have a local taxi to take us back to the arts center, where we all went our separate ways as everyone was tired.



The morning was spent installing my "Journey" sculpture on the outside wall of the Pickled Arts Centre. Although I agreed to pay for a special hoist to lift the sculpture, which weighs approximately 300 pounds and is 13 feet by 5 feet with a depth of approximately 2 feet, Gang and his helpers believed that they could lift the sculpture using a pulley and manpower. An hour and a half later the sculpture was installed and secured. We then took some photographs to commemorate the event. Everyone seemed to like the way the sculpture looked and worked in the context of the entrance to the gallery.



We then went to the sign maker to pick up the etched steel to take to the fabricator for bending the largest sculpture, which was going to be another flag waving in the wind, and to go over the details for completing all three sculptures. Tracy decided to come along for the ride, since I was leaving the next day. I decided to make more detailed drawings so that there would be less of a chance of a misunderstanding. Although they had a limited staff of approximately six employees, by utilizing a jig and careful welding of support joints they were able to easily bend the flag to a shape that I was satisfied with. I felt much more confident after this visit that this fabricator would be able to properly complete the sculptures. By then it was 2:00 and Gang, Tracy and I were very hungry. We went to the dumpling house where the three of us and Gang's driver, who is the same person who worked with me on the first coats of polyurethane, had lunch. Because I was told that this was a fairly typical lunch I will describe the menu briefly. We started with fermented tofu, seasoned with peanuts and chile, which was immediately supplemented by a type of barbecued beef off the bone, but similar to taste and texture to barbecued beef ribs, Hong Kong style beef noodle soup and three types of fried dumplings. We drank the local beer supplemented with a shot of a local rice liquor. The thought of getting back on my bike to put on the final coats of polyurethane on the four small sculptures was daunting.



Because that I had not heard from Martha Vinson on any problems concerning the installation of the sculpture and to thank her for the enthusiasm, I decided to give her call. She advised me that one or two of the Chinese employees had complained to the head of the American Chamber of Commerce office in Beijing upon his return from business trip. Without knowing anything about the sculptures they were upset that there was writing on the Chinese flag. Because one of the key missions of the American Chamber of Commerce in a foreign country is to better relations between American businesses and the local community, the head of the American Chamber of Commerce office in Beijing felt the better course of action was to return the sculpture. This was so even though almost all of the comments she was aware of were very favorable. This sculpture had been on display for one month at the Pickled Arts Center and there were there no complaints. According to Li Gang many of the Chinese viewers, especially those that understood the sculpture and how it came about, really liked it. I advised Mrs. Vinson that I understood and I did not want to get her or Jim in any difficulty. Subsequently, on my return to New York City, I came up with a proposed solution of doing a Chinese flag without any calligraphy, and having the calligraphy on a separate sculpture that would be located over the corner of the flag or separate from the flag. It could be either on an adjacent wall or to the side or above the flag sculpture. I also wanted to redo the calligraphy on " True gold fears not the test of fire." Since it is impractical to do it on the original sculpture, this means that I will have to create a new waving flag in any event. I also feel confident that I can do this from the United States thanks to my working relationships with the Chinese artisans and workers and the use of computer photography and email.



However, art must be served so upon our return to the arts center, I got back on my bike and peddled over to Gang's SAC studio to put on a final coat. The artists were still working on the background for the American painter were leaving as I was arriving. They asked me to lock up and wanted to know if I was going to be there over the weekend. I explained that I was going back to America and we talked for a few minutes. I again thanked them for their help and we said our goodbyes. Upon my return to the arts center Gang said he wanted take me for a farewell dinner. However, since we had eaten such a large and late lunch I was not hungry so we compromised by having a snack at his place. Also Chang was going stop by to drop off the completed scroll since he had previously taken the dried calligraphy back to his studio/home to make into a scroll.



In the interim, I decided to go back to the studio of the SAC facility to pick up the 4 small completed sculptures because I wanted to take one of them home, give one to Gang as previously promised, and put the other two in a safe place for storage. Gang'92s Uncle and I took the van over to the SAC studio. Unfortunately, none of the keys worked. Gang'92s uncle suggested that we climbed through the second-story window and drop-down into a totally dark studio with no lights and then scale the inside to bring the sculptures out through the window. Henry does not speak English and it took me about 20 minutes to persuade him that this was not a good idea, and that we would either get the sculptures early tomorrow morning or Gang would put all four in storage until we figured out how to ship one of them back to the states. Upon my return to the arts center Gang gave me the completed scroll and explained that since they did not know when I was coming back, Chang did not hang around. Gang said he would extend my appreciation and thanks to Chang. We then looked at the scroll and I asked Gang if he could send me a translation of the poem.



I got up earlier than normal so that I could make arrangements to pick up the 4 small finished sculptures at the SAC studio and was told by Gang that they were already on their way to us. He picked out the " Harmony " sculpture that he wanted. I took the other one, which we packed in bubble wrap, with me to the airport. Gang graciously arranged for his uncle to take me the airport.



In retrospect that this was another fantastic experience. I felt much more comfortable and was able to do a lot more on my own. This trip only reinforced my belief that the Chinese artisans and persons servicing their needs are industrious, ingenious and in almost all instances a pleasure to work with. I felt that I accomplished more in one week than I could accomplish in six months in New York. I know part of this is due to the fact that I could concentrate solely on art without any distractions. A major part of this is also due to the fact that everything needed to complete large and complex metal sculptures is located within a very small area, and that there were skilled people ready, willing and able to work with me to complete what I consider to be a joint project. Of course, without the help and contacts of Li Gang none of this would have been possible. His willingness to work with visiting artists, often sacrificing time for his work and his family, is something that I really appreciate. I look forward to returning to China to work on more sculptures at a truly unique space with the chance to interact with artists from all over the world. .

Part I -->

-> NY Arts Magazine, September/October, 2005 

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©Copyright 2005
Charles Hecht