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EAST MEETS WEST - A Harmony of Calligraphy and other works
Coff's Calligraphers opened their 13th annual exhibition this last weekend, for the next week. The venue was at The North Coast Botanic Garden until the 3rd October 2005. 10am to 4pm daily. Guest exhibitor and the opener of the exhibition this year was Mr William Lai of Will's Quills.

The subject was "On the edge, East meets West". Entries in the exhibition were varied from framed pieces to sculpture and various innovative designs using the East/West theme.

William's entries as Guest Exhibitor
Here you can find the ways William views East and West from his unique viewpoint of a Chinese heritage and Western training in calligraphic arts. Each pictures abstracts are in William's own words.

"CHU'S MOTTO FOR LIFE" Bamboo Slat Book.
In ancient china before the invention of paper, documents were made up of bamboo or wooden slats, with characters painted on with a brush and using a paint - like medium. The slats are then ordered and tied together to form a book. That is why the book character is written as which is the picture of slats stringed together. Any learned person in history that has read many books boasts to have read "cart loads of "books". But by knowing how these books were built, compared to what our children have now, with the size and convenience of the paperback and or the e-book, we must have read much more books than most of the ancient scholars. But that does not mean we are any smarter than they were, considering how much they could do with so little information - and how little we could achieve with so much information.

I saw this modern "blind" sold in one of these home accessory shop and found it very interesting, because this "book" form emerged from history, changed its "tag" and called this a "blind" so it could hung to block out the view of people making outsider "blind" to the details inside the house. An old item with a new use!!! And they were made in China! So I decided to do a piece of work using this material.

The wording inside this piece of work are that of the old sage words of advice on how to lead a virtuous life for a scholar. In the 1960s my father bought a piece of Chinese calligraphy containing this magnificent essay from the new years eve flower market, from a struggling artist, needing money for his family for the festive season. The work then was in four panels and contained 516 characters. The work was hung in our lounge since the 1960's and still hangs in my mother's home in Australia. My father always read through the essay explaining the meanings to us every year during new years time.
We constantly refer to that essay during our "self appraisal" exercise. When I became interested in calligraphy I wanted to do this piece myself, and this is just a good opportunity for me to make it a reality, not just a wish.

Materials: Chinese bamboo blind, oops! sorry bamboo slat book, Australian acrylic paint, Wills Quills commissioned brush " the outstanding brush", hung with Nylon "cat's tail" stringed up with Indian wooden beads that slide into a Australian aluminium track.
Chinese text written by an Australian Chinese in Australia. Ha Ha Ha...

The second piece (on the table), is the Buddha's "Heart Sutra" written in black ink on white pebbles and set into a black sand tray. (See William's abstract, below in the next picture).

HEART SUTRA
The Japanese Kanji version of the Heart Sutra written on Indonesian River pebbles with Australian acrylic ink, with a Chinese brush, then laid into black sand.

The text is in Japanese Kanji, which is 98% Chinese traditional Chinese Characters. The Heart Sutra is a Buddhist prayer originated in India, brought into China by the Tang Dynasty monk (ably assisted by the infamous "monkey magic") It contains 266 characters in the main text and has been the tool for "void" development by the Zen practitioner.

My intention was to create something complete, then it is possible to mix them up again and reassemble them every day as a prayer exercise.
To facilitate the installation of this piece I had to temporarily stick them down onto ribbons and sequence the ribbons to form the sutra. I then put the sand in and used a brush to expose the pebbles fully. When it is all over I could remove the glue (it is easy because these are real pebbles and I could do the exercise during my retirement).

THE POINTED BRUSH LETTERING SAMPLER.
This piece is a fun thing I did with a brush on Chinese rice paper.

Through this experiment, I found that for absorbent paper with a fully loaded writing tool, the rate of bleeding is in direct proportion of the contact "time" of the writing tool and the surface.

The thin rice paper was "backed" with another layer of rice paper. I did not have time to get a traditional framing, so I used one of the canvases that had been gilded by my daughter Melinda, and simply collaged the work on.

"HONESTY IS THE HEAVEN'S WAY" Written in Chinglish.
The Chinese was written in a cursive style with a goat hair brush using
vermillion ink on Japanese machine made cotton "moon palace" paper, backed with rice paper.

The Chinglish was written with a modern Japanese fountain brush.
Chinglish is really English written in my Chinese way .
It actually looks half way between Chinese and Korean, but if you try
hard and work out some placement rules you could work out the English
words of "Honesty is the heaven's way".

The Chinglish was written on a piece of Indian hand made special paper. The two pieces of paper was then collaged onto a canvas that was decorated with gilding.

"CHARITY BEGINS AT ONE'S HEART."
We believe one must labour as the farmer labours and (till) work the field in one's heart, then we can establish the true meaning of charity in our own hearts.

"A HUSBAND'S WEDDING PRAYER"
The paper on these fans are sized with alum and starch, that is why you could see the shimmering surface. I have done the calligraphy on a completed fan.
It would be a little bit more easier if I had done the calligraphy on an unmounted fan face, which is also available. Ordinary Chinese ink will work perfectly on the fan face, but on the bamboo fan handles, I need to use Metal craft white.

"MY FATHER'S MOTTO IN LIFE." Chinese brush lettering with English text.
The English translation of this piece done in free roman was commissioned to David Wood in the early 1990s. It was actually engraved on my parent's tombstone in Macquarie Park Cemetery.

It is brush and pen work on "sand paper" (nothing to do with sand, only
because of its colour) the cheapest of the Chinese 100 fibre paper. It is not sized, which is great for Chinese brush work, and because it is so thin, there is not much fibre to absorb the ink, therefore with the correct application of ink, western broad edge lettering seemed to be workable but rather "dangerous" because if one ever deliberated a fraction of a second longer than intended, bleeding will instantly occur at that spot.

So every time I hit a snag, some of the fibres resulted in having a slightly longer (in time) contact with the nib where the ink is, hence a bit more ink is transferred, i.e. where it will bleed. It really taxes your readiness and challenges your ability to have your nib "gliding on top of the paper" but this paper is so thin that most of it is not flat…problem!

This paper is sold at 25 cents a sheet and is used by most print making artist for their "chincolate" work. I hope the spelling is right. I am frequently wrong. What I meant is the "Chinese" paper that is for "collaging".

After the work is dried, I basically "chincolate" it on top of a 260gsm Fabriano Murillo in Red.

"MARRIAGE"
This piece of work was a gift I made for my daughter when she got married. It was a quotation on Marriage by Sir Hugh Walpole.
My 2003 fashion of copperplate on tracing paper, and she did the decoration and mounting.

SOME OF THE OTHER ARTWORKS AT THE SHOW WITH EAST meets WEST THEMES

This entry by the well known photographer Lewis Morley is a dual mounted artwork. The negative of a large photographed landscape picture at the top, with some of Lewis' own Chinese calligraphy below in 4 parts.

These 2x Chinese artworks by the Sydney Chinese Painting teacher Franz Cheung were on show.

On the left is a work called "Finger Painting" that represents a Martyr's final words, these were written in blood, normally by bitting the fingers until bleeding and using a finger to write.

On the right is the 12 Chinese Astrological Signs that play an important part in Chinese Culture.