Charles Hecht | Writings

Day 3 Wednesday
August 16, 2006

After an early breakfast I went to the studio to work with Li Gang’s foundry crew to patina the large “Long and Slender.” After washing the sculpture, they applied a sulphur nitrate solution and then used a torch to “bake it in.” The sculpture surface immediately darkened. That process took most of the morning. In the interim, Abe Lubelski came over with a Japanese artist, the principals of Gallery Color Enfante in Valencia, Spain, which had previously shown Hannah’s Flags, a Japanese antiques expert and assorted other persons. Li Gang took us on a tour of the artists studios at SAC. What struck me is that back in April SAC was almost empty as I was one of the few persons working there and almost no one lived there. Now in August almost every studio is occupied and the artists have returned en mass. It is very active. We visited a number of studios, the works ranging from resin molds, ceramics, photography, photography and painting combined and painting. There are lots of interesting ideas.

After lunch at the Artist Inn, which was a banquet prepared by the chef for this group, I continued to work with Li Gang’s foundry people in putting on another coat of patina because we wanted a darker color. When that was done, I noticed that there was some remains of the mold still on the sculpture. Le Shang, Li Gang’s carpenter and I used wire brushes for approximately three hours to get off as much of the mold residue as possible. It was extremely hot and working in the hot sun made it even hotter.

Li Gang had invited me for dinner with his wife and his daughter Wendy as part of our annual celebration of getting together whenever I visit. Li Gang was 45 minutes late for dinner as he wandered off on an errand. Because it was getting late for Wendy we decided to eat dinner at the Artist Inn. With Li Gang there and being one of the owners everything was cooked to order and it was very very good. We then met a Chinese photographer, Tiam Yibin, who had asked Li Gang if I could review the English translation of the text insert in his catalog for his upcoming show at The First Sound Gallery. After dinner, in which a group of ten joined us for a total of 16 and lots of beer they asked me to stay because the printed out English version was ready for me to make into more readable English. They needed it right away because they were going to the printer tomorrow morning. I worked on it for over an hour. It was extremely dense and difficult as most of it related to a particular Chinese philosopher. Fortunately, I had seen Yibin’s work on my tour of the SAC facility with Abe’s group earlier. So I had some type of understanding of what he was trying to achieve. I asked Li Gang why these descriptions were so dense and utilize so many very large words. His answer was that is the typical Chinese way. While I was doing this Li Gang made arrangements to obtain a light to light up the big “Long and Slender.” It looked terrific lighted up. I took pictures of it and after drinking some more beer I wandered off to bed.
It was extremely hot and the fan was not helpful. There were also loads of mosquitos..

< Back Next >