Ah the sun on my face, the sweet breeze, the mannequin legs in the field......
And the rest of them in the stream....
I went to SanHe this past weekend to visit Joni and the high school she is teaching English at. This is a view of the school from behind across the wheat fields. The school is a boarding school of sorts, with most of its students, teachers, and faculty living on a gated campus.
This is Joni and Tang Wei (one of the school's best speaking English teacher's and Joni's friend) Many of the English teachers in fact did not really speak English, or if they did it was minimal. Three or four spoke English well enough to hold long conversations with and flow easily. The rest however...lets just say I spoke to them in Mandarin. The primary focus is to teach classes in mandarin and learn to read and write English. I have seen the outcome of this with many Chinese artists I meet. They neither understand nor speak English very well but ask them to spell ostrich and they've got it.
This is Tang Wei again on our bike ride. In between classes Joni lead us on a ride behind the school and into a farming village.
Our bikes parked on the way. (I borrowed another teacher's bike).
Tang Wei on her bike with matching outfit.
View of the mountains in the distance from which they have extorted much of the stone used in the building projects in Beijing. (note the large dust cloud)
Joni and Tan Wei getting ready to ride off.
A house under construction in the village. Despite the clothes Joni and Tang Wei are wearing it is about 95 degrees out and very sunny.
Tang Wei took us out to lunch. We, to my reluctance, had donkey meat sandwiches.....
Tang Wei and Joni in the indoor track at SanHe school. (It is under the bleachers that face the playing field).
The west campus building that faces the track.
Students preparing for a song competition.
Exercises. From as much as I could tell, the students after every class all trot outside and do group exercises for about 15 minutes and then trot back in to continue with the next period's classes. It is kind of amazing to watch several thousand high school students line up into perfect rows in the heat of the sun and do choreographed exercises.
A typical classroom. The students don't change classes, the teachers do. There are roughly 40 students per class, maybe more.
The art classes where students paint from a mixture of life and books. Everything is done realistically.
One student in front of her work (still life on bottom left). The teacher is holding up the board.
Another student with her portrait.
Students from Joni's 3rd class singing one of the songs she has prepared...a pretty unreal experience to hear 40 or so Chinese students singing "Country Roads"
A girl giving Joni the definition of DDT (as in the chemical) or at least trying to....
Joni teaching.
At the hot pot dinner with the teachers that speak English very well. The hot pot is basically a bowl in the middle which is filled with boiling water and has a cylinder of coals to heat it. You put in the vegetables and meat and then take it out when they are cooked and then dip them in a garlic sauce. One of my favorite things in China!
Joni in front of her apartment.
The best sign...I saw it on the way to Joni's. The sign advertises "Hopeful Grand Hotel" right next to the nuclear power plant.....
The paper cutting I made for my friend Hilde. She and I make up the Mandarin class we have on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She is from Switzerland and is having a baby in the fall and asked me to design a cutting she could put on the front of the birth announcement. This is what I came up with.
The garbage room in the village with powdered cement next to it. Everyone in the village basically packs the garbage room full and then once a week or so a truck comes by and they shovel all the garbage into the truck to take down the road to drop again at a walled in place to then shovel again into another truck to go god knows where.
This is my favorite dinner. It is barbecued lamb( ?) on a stick with a bunch of spices and a mantou or little barbecued bun. Costs about 90 cents and I get it from the man in the village.
This is a not so good dinner. I went into Beijing to look at the international art fair that some of my friends were in and ended up getting dinner here. I wanted a vegetarian pizza with just cheese and tomato. Well it came out as tuna pizza. I have never tasted something so disgusting in my life!!! I scraped everything of until I was left with just the bread!
A painting from the art fair.....pretty disappointing considering this stuff has already been done in the U.S. and about three years ago....at least they could have done a good copy!
A photo I liked. (international artist)
An installation from a group in Miami Florida.
More from the Miami group.
Don't know whose this is but I like it.
Another piece that looks liek something someone would have made in art school.
Saw this two years ago in New York. This is a Chinese artist who basically ripped off another artist and is trying to make sculptures that do an optical illusion effect as you walk around them.
A Chinese artists whose photos I like. (I took a really bad picture of it....)
Some more horrible work.
This was the gear box I made out of styrofoam a while ago and threw out when I moved into the new studio (about three weeks ago)
This a piece of the gear box I found one street over about 2 days ago, squished nice and flat. You never really think you will ever see your garbage again....but I guess this one is haunting me.
Ah the sun on my face, the sweet breeze, the mannequin legs in the field......
And the rest of them in the stream....
I went to SanHe this past weekend to visit Joni and the high school she is teaching English at. This is a view of the school from behind across the wheat fields. The school is a boarding school of sorts, with most of its students, teachers, and faculty living on a gated campus.
This is Joni and Tang Wei (one of the school's best speaking English teacher's and Joni's friend) Many of the English teachers in fact did not really speak English, or if they did it was minimal. Three or four spoke English well enough to hold long conversations with and flow easily. The rest however...lets just say I spoke to them in Mandarin. The primary focus is to teach classes in mandarin and learn to read and write English. I have seen the outcome of this with many Chinese artists I meet. They neither understand nor speak English very well but ask them to spell ostrich and they've got it.
This is Tang Wei again on our bike ride. In between classes Joni lead us on a ride behind the school and into a farming village.
Our bikes parked on the way. (I borrowed another teacher's bike).
Tang Wei on her bike with matching outfit.
View of the mountains in the distance from which they have extorted much of the stone used in the building projects in Beijing. (note the large dust cloud)
Joni and Tan Wei getting ready to ride off.
A house under construction in the village. Despite the clothes Joni and Tang Wei are wearing it is about 95 degrees out and very sunny.
Tang Wei took us out to lunch. We, to my reluctance, had donkey meat sandwiches.....
Tang Wei and Joni in the indoor track at SanHe school. (It is under the bleachers that face the playing field).
The west campus building that faces the track.
Students preparing for a song competition.
Exercises. From as much as I could tell, the students after every class all trot outside and do group exercises for about 15 minutes and then trot back in to continue with the next period's classes. It is kind of amazing to watch several thousand high school students line up into perfect rows in the heat of the sun and do choreographed exercises.
A typical classroom. The students don't change classes, the teachers do. There are roughly 40 students per class, maybe more.
The art classes where students paint from a mixture of life and books. Everything is done realistically.
One student in front of her work (still life on bottom left). The teacher is holding up the board.
Another student with her portrait.
Students from Joni's 3rd class singing one of the songs she has prepared...a pretty unreal experience to hear 40 or so Chinese students singing "Country Roads"
A girl giving Joni the definition of DDT (as in the chemical) or at least trying to....
Joni teaching.
At the hot pot dinner with the teachers that speak English very well. The hot pot is basically a bowl in the middle which is filled with boiling water and has a cylinder of coals to heat it. You put in the vegetables and meat and then take it out when they are cooked and then dip them in a garlic sauce. One of my favorite things in China!
Joni in front of her apartment.
The best sign...I saw it on the way to Joni's. The sign advertises "Hopeful Grand Hotel" right next to the nuclear power plant.....
The paper cutting I made for my friend Hilde. She and I make up the Mandarin class we have on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She is from Switzerland and is having a baby in the fall and asked me to design a cutting she could put on the front of the birth announcement. This is what I came up with.
The garbage room in the village with powdered cement next to it. Everyone in the village basically packs the garbage room full and then once a week or so a truck comes by and they shovel all the garbage into the truck to take down the road to drop again at a walled in place to then shovel again into another truck to go god knows where.
This is my favorite dinner. It is barbecued lamb( ?) on a stick with a bunch of spices and a mantou or little barbecued bun. Costs about 90 cents and I get it from the man in the village.
This is a not so good dinner. I went into Beijing to look at the international art fair that some of my friends were in and ended up getting dinner here. I wanted a vegetarian pizza with just cheese and tomato. Well it came out as tuna pizza. I have never tasted something so disgusting in my life!!! I scraped everything of until I was left with just the bread!
A painting from the art fair.....pretty disappointing considering this stuff has already been done in the U.S. and about three years ago....at least they could have done a good copy!
A photo I liked. (international artist)
An installation from a group in Miami Florida.
More from the Miami group.
Don't know whose this is but I like it.
Another piece that looks liek something someone would have made in art school.
Saw this two years ago in New York. This is a Chinese artist who basically ripped off another artist and is trying to make sculptures that do an optical illusion effect as you walk around them.
A Chinese artists whose photos I like. (I took a really bad picture of it....)
Some more horrible work.
This was the gear box I made out of styrofoam a while ago and threw out when I moved into the new studio (about three weeks ago)
This a piece of the gear box I found one street over about 2 days ago, squished nice and flat. You never really think you will ever see your garbage again....but I guess this one is haunting me.
4 comments:
that baby announcement piece is way way too cute.
Show us more work!
that was a good post, i'd been waiting for more pictures...
the baby announcement is the best chinese art i've seen! its awesome.
+manniquine legs
+joni's class (haha)
+finding your own trash
-donkey sandwiches : (
-bad art
-95 degrees!
that post was by me! maggie!
Laura,
I was going to tell you how neat that baby annoucement cutting was but some others beat me to it.
Can Edie and I commission a cutting announcing the purchase of our new (used) car?
That donkey meat sandwich...I think I see the ears still twitching.
Love,
Dad
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