I recently reached out to Chinese artist Sheng Dongqiao to propose a joint exhibition of our work to appear in China and America. Mr. Sheng paints work similar to the historic models that have inspired my work since 2006. He creates magnificent landscape paintings using traditional Chinese methods.
My colleague Berlin Fang, who works in ACU’s Center for Teaching and Learning and grew up in China, first introduced me to Mr. Sheng’s art. He also assisted me by translating my correspondence with Mr. Sheng.
The Response
Sheng Donqiao responded enthusiastically to the idea of exhibiting our works together. And he said some very kind things about my work and the sensitivity of my response to Chinese art. He advised me that, “According to Chinese tradition, we highlight the guest’s works first. So when the joint exhibit happens in China, [your] work will be the first part of the exhibit. If the exhibit happens in the US, my works will be the first part of the exhibit.” Then, he surprised me by combining our paintings into a grid, which he posted to his social media. As you can see below, the works already speak to each other.
The five images in full color are details of my paintings, which are then followed by four works done in ink by Sheng Dongqiao.
Mr. Sheng acknowledged that the COVID-19 pandemic will delay the process of having an exhibition in China. But we agreed to begin laying the groundwork in the weeks and months ahead.
Workshop for Students
Additional plans are underway for Mr. Sheng to conduct an online workshop/demonstration for ACU art and design students in the spring of 2022. This is an exciting opportunity for my students! They’ll learn approaches Chinese artists take toward pictorial composition and representation, and get to observe his amazing brush techniques.
The Art & Design Faculty Exhibition, which opens tonight in the Shore Gallery on the ACU campus, features group of deluge paintings by Robert Green. These three recently completed works are part of an ongoing series dedicated to the deluge theme. Like my prior works, these share much in common with Chinese landscape a paintings. Each has a vertical format and highly abstracted references to mountains, water, and various atmospheric conditions.
Marking systems typically used in map-making allude to these various landscape features. These do so in ways that shift in perspective.
The time-intensive work necessary to complete these paintings was supported by Cullen Grant from Abilene Christian University.
I recently returned from 14 amazing days in China, where Connecting Hearts Through Art: A China-U.S. Artistic Exchange Exhibition opened on May 15. The exhibition remains on display at the Yuan Contemporary Art Museum in Nanjing, China until June 15, 2025.
Travel Companions
I traveled to China with my colleague Professor Kenny Jones and former student Allen Smith. There, ceramicist Kiki Liu from Los Angeles, artist Zhao Jianmin from San Francisco, and artist and scholar Wang Qingxiang of New York City joined our group. Each of us had up to three works in the exhibition. Our primary hosts, Zhai You and other members of the Jiangsu Chinese Painting Society and the Yuan Contemporary Art Museum, warmly greeted us all.
From L to R: Wang Qingxiang, Gao Yun, Zhao Jianmin, Zhai You, me, Allen Smith, and Kenny Jones
Other American Artists in the Exhibition
The exhibition also included works by Bonny Leibowitz of Richardson, TX and Jingyi, a Chinese American artist from Abilene, TX. Neither artist was able to make the trip to China.
Historic Implications
This exhibition was groundbreaking. It featured 12 Chinese artists and 8 American artists exhibiting, collaborating, having meaningful dialogue, and joining forces to produce an artwork for the very first time in China. As such, it received huge print, television, and social media coverage across China, and even in nearby Japan and Taiwan. Everywhere we traveled as a part of our pre-planned agenda in China, photographers and videographers were along to document our activities to promote the exhibition and the goals of this exchange.
Some of the Chinese and American artists displaying an artwork they produced together; Kiki Liu (L).
Cultural Exchanges
We had roundtable meetings with local officials, the leaders of art and literary organizations, teachers, administrators, and supporters of art in Nanjing, Jintan, Anqing, and Tongcheng, China, as well as the Xuan Paper Company. At each site, we collaborated with local artists to produce a work of art together, each of which remains in their various collections. We also shared fabulous meals together and engaged in friendly conversations that highlighted our affinity for one another, our shared values, and our hopes of friendly relationships between the people of our nations.
Our first meal at the Xuan Paper Company headquarters.
Expression of Thanks
Before providing a brief summary of our activities in China, it is important to thank the individuals whose commitment and diligent efforts made this exhibition and exchange possible.
Dr. Berlin Fang. None of this would have happened without Dr. Fang. He facilitated and translated my correspondence with Chinese artist Sheng Dongqiao, encouraged and assisted my efforts to organize an intercultural exhibition with Chinese artists for over four years, and traveled with us to China, translating the vast majority of our conversations.
Madam Chen Chunmei, Minister of Culture and Tourism at the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Washington, DC. Madam Chen read my correspondence with Sheng Dongqiao, thoughtfully reviewed an exhibition proposal that I developed which included works by Sheng Dongqiao, his son Sheng Yingmiao, and me, opened the door for me to collaborate with the next individual, and endorsed the exhibition in China.
Zhai You, VP and Secretary General of the Jinagsu Chinese Painting Society. My commitment to an intercultural exhibition happened to align with a vision Mr. Zhai had already begun implementing with the artists of other countries a decade ago. He skillfully organized this exhibition and all of the events, an amazing feat that he made look easy.
We toured historic sites in the ancient city of Nanjing, China, including the tomb of the Hongwu Emperor, Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum.
In Jintan, China, we visited an archeology museum featuring artistic objects dating to 6500 BCE.
As the special guests of Ninghai High School in Nanjing, we toured a campus that is training over a thousand students to become artists. While there, we saw an exhibition of the students’ work and visited an active drawing classroom and answered students’ questions. Later, we met in a conference room with faculty, administrators, and students for discussions about the goals of art education in our respective nations and schools.
Our visit to a Ninghai High School drawing classroom; Dr. Berlin Fang appears center left.
During a tour of the headquarters, mountain factory site, and city factory site of the Xuan Paper Company, we experienced a paper and paper-making process with a 1000-year history. We met and shared meals with the CEO, CFO, and other top administrators. During our tour, we witnessed the handmade processes of paper-making that literally gave shape to the history of Chinese painting and calligraphy. Prior to entering the plant where the paper is created, dried, cut to size, and packaged for sale, we were informed that we were the first American artists to visit the Xuan Paper Company since Robert Rauschenberg came in 1982. Then our hosts promptly took us inside to see what Rauschenberg was never permitted to see.
My colleague Kenny Jones assisting in making a sheet of paper at the Xuan Paper Company.
Witnessing brushes being made by hand was a highlight of our visit to the shop of sixth-generation Master brush-maker She Zhengiun.
Dr. Wang is translating the description of the brush-making process provided by She Zhengjun (right).
We participated in a walking tour of the historic village of Zha Ji, which remains much as it existed in the Qing and Ming Dynasties.
A visit to Anqing Normal University, where we toured historic structures and a history museum, observed students training to join the opera, and met with fine art faculty to discuss differences and commonalities in our approach to educating young artists.
The chief curator gave us a guided tour of a Confusion Temple in the city of Tongcheng, China.
And, finally, I met the Chinese artist Sheng Dongqiao whom I began corresponding with about 4 years ago. It was during our correspondence that I proposed a joint exhibition of our work that ultimately culminated in this much grander exhibition and intercultural exchange.
Chinese artist Sheng Dongqiao and me in Tongcheng.
The Modern Art National Exhibition opened at Dallas Metro Arts Contemporary on Dec. 15 and runs until the closing reception, 6:00-7:30 pm on Jan. 9, 2021. DMAC is located at 1412 14th Street, Plano, TX. See an overview of the exhibition here but I encourage you to visit in person if you live in the area.
Roundabout, one of my paintings, is included in this exhibition.
On Friday evening Oct. 18, a reception was held for Coincidence of Opposites, my exhibition with Polly and Kenny Jones. As you can see from these photographs, there was a large turnout. It was an unexpected surprise to see a few former students and colleagues. They showed up mainly because the reception coincided with ACU’s Homecoming. Thanks to Chris Jimenez, Jr., who photographed the reception and gave me permission to share these on my website!
To see the works I included in this exhibition, follow the link below.
My drawing exhibition entitled Flux continues at the Center for Contemporary Art in Abilene, TX until Nov. 9th. For those of you unable to make it to see the show, I’ve uploaded a file that will let you browse the works at your own pace. Follow the link:
The opening of Flux on Thursday, Sept. 12 at the Center for Contemporary Art in Abilene was an enjoyable time. Many people turned out to view the works, ask questions, and engage in friendly conversation. There were several other art show openings and events happening during Artwalk. Just outside this space, the Center was premiering its national art competition. Here are some other photos of the evening. All the photos were taken by ACU Art and Design student Chris Jimenez, Jr.
Plan to be in Abilene between Sept. 11 and Nov. 9, 2019? If so, you’ll have opportunities to see new works I’ve created up close and thoughtfully presented. I really encourage you not to miss these exhibitions! Many new works feature shifting visual effects and subtle passages that can’t be experienced in digital reproductions (see three examples below).
Opportunity 1: FLUX
The first exhibition Flux features drawings. While I’ve produced drawings throughout my career, I’ve never before assembled an exhibition exclusively of drawings.
At the core of this exhibition are two sets of five shaped drawings that have never been exhibited before! The originality and complex interrelationships among these ten works on paper made finding a way to present them a significant challenge. The drawings share a title, Hither and Thither, which is an apt description of the nature of the works.
You can see Flux at the Center for Contemporary Arts, Gallery 4, 220 Cypress St. in downtown Abilene from Sept. 11 – Nov. 9. Expect to see the Hither and Thither drawings and about a dozen other small drawings that laid the groundwork for those explorations.
Opportunity 2: COINCIDENCE OF OPPOSITES
From Sept. 27 – Oct. 18, I’ll be showing new paintings produced over the last two years. This exhibition is called Coincidence of Opposites and you can see it at the Shore Gallery on the ACU campus. My co-conspirators for this show are friends and fellow artists Polly and Kenny Jones. I’m honored to be exhibiting with them again. Our two previous exhibitions together were Terra Incognita in 2013 and Palimpsest in 2008.
In Coincidence of Opposites, I’ll be presenting two different strands of work, one serious and the other a bit more playful and paradoxical. The first strand is a set of four paintings that pay homage to specific artworks produced by Chinese landscape painters working between the 15th and 17 centuries.
I adopted the practice of such artists to paint, as a form of tribute, in the manner of an admired master. I set out to pay a tribute of my own by “recreating” (initiating a dialogue with) four Chinese works using the language of maps. Such an approach ensured that the resulting works would be intercultural, hybrids of Eastern and Western ideas, values, and techniques. That I used a marking system strongly associated with quantitative and rational (e.g. scientific) impulses ensured that the new works meld different viewpoints and purposes.
The second strand is made up of small paintings on canvas boards and panels. In these works, I employ the language of maps in whimsical, self-contradictory ways. The works collapse pictorial space, seem intentionally self-contained, and hint at real and imagined environmental contradictions.
Back in October, a retrospective exhibition of my ceramic works called Out of the Floodwaters was featured in the Shore Gallery on the campus of Abilene Christian University. Some may be surprised to discover that I have been involved with clay over most of my lifetime.
I took a ceramics course for the first time in 1977 and fell in love with the medium. By the time I graduated I had an equal number of ceramic and painting courses and struggled to decide which of these disciplines I wanted to study in graduate school. I chose painting, thinking that would be the end of ceramics! Some years later when I was hired as a professor by ACU, I returned to making a few works in clay as a sideline–the university had all the necessary equipment and I needed no assistance to produce, glaze, and fire the works on my own. Then in 1992, our department lost its ceramics teacher during a reduction in faculty and I was asked to take over full responsibility for the ceramics curriculum alongside my duties teaching painting. I taught all of our ceramics courses between then and 2005. My good friend Kenny Jones was hired that year as a new faculty member, and since he had his own expertise in the area, he and I began to alternate semesters of teaching ceramics. Almost a decade later we began to hire adjuncts to teach these courses; still, I continued to teach a summer course in ceramics at least every other year. With the exception of a few scattered years, I made ceramic work pretty consistently through the years, always when I was teaching, though less so when not.
My ceramic work has never been featured on this website because the focus of the site was intended to be painting and a bit of drawing. That changes today–or at least for this blog post!
How this exhibition came about is a wonderful story, though that story is steeped in loss. This picture is a hint; so too the title of the exhibition, Out of the Floodwaters.
I was recently invited to exhibit a couple of pieces in a group exhibition held in the Eisentrager-Howard Gallery at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. One of the pieces appears above.
The invitation was extended because I am an alumnus of UNL’s MFA program and the show was organized to highlight art by graduates of the school between the years of 1983 and 1988.
Nebraska Alumni Artists 1983-1988 Exhibition opened on May 21 and will close on Aug. 3, 2018. Below is a link to the exhibition press release.
