Well, I’m ensconced in my new Studio now, but it has really been a bit hectic. I got picked up from the Apartments on Monday as scheduled, deposited here. The studio is very large, with an abundance of late-student second hand furniture, a nice kitchen with a new microwave oven, ill-stocked with utensils and no foodstuffs. It has taken a lot of pushing things around to create something that is both reasonably comfortable and serviceable. The loft bedroom is large, comfortable, and blessedly has a very modern and functional temperature control unit. Also has a TV that doesn’t work but can be used for DVDs. There is a ton of ancient broken electronic and hi-fi equipment in the studio that serves no purpose whatsoever – I hope to simply get rid of it.
A quick tour of my Studio #6, in the Shangri La Art Complex
or, as the sign proclaims, the “S_angr_ La Art Complex”
Looking from front door toward kitchen, below loft.
Looking to the left
The right side. This is the large painting area.
From the kitchen toward the front door (that has to be locked or it swings open).
From the loft. Note how high the space extends.
The bedroom- comfortably warm even if the Studio isn’t.
Emma gave me a quick tour of of Feijiacun (pronounced Fay-Ja-Tsun) where our Studios are located. It is a charming little flea-bitten town, with its myriad little stores, restaurants, bakeries, produce markets… Emma would have bought anything I thought I needed during our tour, but I just wasn’t yet into to a mode of “let’s see, how about butter, bread, some vegetables, maybe some meat and eggs…
Emma, Liang who kinda handles whatever needs handling here and speaks some English and I did go to lunch at a house right around the corner that prepares and serves fixed-menu basic, substantial all-you-can-eat meals for workers, both lunch and dinner. Bring your own dinnerware and chopsticks. The cost was a rousing 10 kuai, or $1.63. Worth every penny!
Yesterday for lunch I had a tasty bowl of food in a restaurant “downtown,” for what would have been about twice that price around the corner, except that I’d taken along my sketch pad. One of the Chinese patrons had me listen to his phone, where a woman with excellent English said her friend would like me to sketch his picture. So I did. He was happy with it, and insisted on paying for my food. Wish I had taken his picture, and maybe a picture of the sketch. He used his phone again to have his translator say how happy he was. I have her phone number, and might invite her through WeChat to come to the studio and say hello, if I really can contact her.
A scientist by training, I retired to travel, then landed in Philadelphia to paint - and recently, to explore alternative materials for art. Currently I create Bas-relief Cardboards as my unique environmental medium.
