Leroy Forney

It seems that China has not treated me very gently on this trip. April has been a tough month. The air pollution has been a pretty constant irritant, and we’ve had next to no rain to clear it away. The Air Quality index, measured as micrograms per cubic meter, typically runs at about 150 with excursions up to 200 or more. I think the US safe limit is 50. So, my eyes were frequently burning a bit and my voice got a bit deeper, and I started wearing a mask most times when I went outside.

But then, about the second week of April the air was full of these little floating cotton balls, thanks to all the Sycamore trees in our courtyard. I am quite allergic to Sycamore, and my eyes and throat both took a dive for the worse, with lots of additional coughing, wheezing, nose blowing and painful eyes. Friends began telling me my eyes looked bad, and finally I took a look at them in a mirror myself. Weirdness! Crimson eyelids and bright raccoon circles around my eyes! My white eyeballs were now a blue-gray, like a mauve. Quite an interesting pallet of unusual colors!

Clearly, it was time for advice and help. I checked in with Diane, my medical resource in California (thank you Apple FaceTime) who worried mostly about my coughing and insisted that I get a solid medical diagnosis, fast. So Matthew and I spent Wednesday afternoon (the 16th) at a Beijing Hospital where, over 5 hours we: Met with an MD, got a blood test, breath-stress test, chest x-ray, met with an eye doctor for an exam and consult, picked up all the test results at a kiosk, returned to the original MD for a consultation based on the test results, paid the bill, and picked up four prescriptions at the dispensary. All in one afternoon, and for US$65. Of course, Matt’s fluency with the Chinese language and procedures were indispensable, but why can’t we manage to have a medical care system that efficient?

The diagnosis? 1) Strong allergic reaction probably to the Sycamore, maybe (or maybe not) exacerbated by the air pollution and/or the other issues, ie: 2) Rather severe conjunctivitis, to be treated with two kinds of eye drops.   3) Pneumonia, to be treated with a broad spectrum antibiotic and pills for symptomatic relief. Stay inside and avoid significant activity for three days, then come back for a checkup.

And so for now, I’m hanging out at Matt’s apartment in Beijing, not doing much but making day-by-day progress. We should have that checkup tomorrow (Saturday) or Sunday, and I hope to be back in Feijiacun shortly after that. We’ll see.

Happy Easter everybody!

PS.  Of course, this is happening at the worst possible time.  The owner of the Red Gate Gallery, Brian Wallace, threw a big party at his spectacular home for his favorite Beijing artists their friends and his, and we were of course invited also. I hate to have missed that opportunity to see some of the best current contemporary Art, and talk about it, and with some of the artists who are producing it. Today I am missing an informal open studio in Feijiacun. I suspect that it was rather disorganized, but a lot of fun. A good way to meet the REALLY local artists, and to show my own stuff as well. So it goes. The gang has rented a bus for a jaunt up to The Great Wall on Monday, and I sure hope I don’t miss Thai, too!  Stay tuned.

Jennie Collier is a journalist for The World of Chinese, and friend of a friend of mine. She came out for our Ba-Da-Bing Open Studio, and interviewed most of the Red Gate Residents who were exhibiting, including me. I wish I could publish her article here – especially since I spent most of today trying to find a way to do just that. But no luck.

So it’s up to you to click here to read up on what kind of characters we are and why we are here.

Happy reading!

Stuff keeps happening.  It gets it the way of keeping up with blog postings, because new stuff happens before I have time to work up the photos and descriptions to post about the past stuff.  On top of that, we keep periodically losing our wireless connection to the world.  They have been retarring the roof of our studios, and I think our access must be through one of those dish thingys on the roof that they have probably tarred over.

Then my phone time expired, so until I realized that and bought one of those phone scratch cards, I was completely isolated.  Nothing digital worked.  I’m sure Patricia thinks I have gone native or just given up on the world.

A week or so ago (my, I have neglected this blog!) I was riding my bike through a rather grungy semi-industrial area, and suddenly came upon this proclamation of the Deshan Art Space.  So I was peering through their glass doors to see what it was, with a yappy dog barking at me from the other side, when an older Chinese gentleman, Kao Yunqi, came and invited me in.  Not much appeared to be happening, but they have an immense display space, many large paintings in storage, and Kao Yunqi was photographing some amazing art that he had created.  It is frustrating to fall into situations like this and not be able to explore them sufficiently because of the language problem.  Still, stuff keeps happening.

The Deshan Art Space is in an industrial area with taxi repair shops and stuff

These objects are all made from folded paper and can be pulled like an accordian.

This rather unsettling collection of heads was in a standing walnut cabinet and they looked like they might be floating in a liquid.  The photo on the left indicates the huge scale of their main exhibition space, although there is little evidence of its use.

The gods were smiling on us for our Open Studio event on March 19th.  The day was warm and sunny, blue sky and not a trace of pollution.  Our display studio had been patched and repainted for the occasion, and everyone had an appropriate area to display their work.  We had wine and beer, snacky stuff, and two street vendors making shish kabobs and bing (see definition of Ba-Da-Bing).  That attracted some 80-100 people to mix and enjoy the activities outside and the art inside.  People came early, and many stayed ‘way beyond the announced 6:00 closing time.  Matt was there, Louise too, and her friend Jennie interviewed all the artists for a report in “The World of Chinese” website.  The Red Gate owner, Brian Wallace, said it was the best open studio event in years.  Hooray for us.

Suzanna discusses her pairings of faces taken from portrait studies

An Art Patron studies my China Wall I and Wall II

The aluminum latter complemented my painting of an electrical tower

Vincent studies the video that Tiyan projectef

The perspective view of my ladder and tower painting

We collected quite a crowd on a beautiful afternoon

Petra projected an image above a series of multiple photographs

Tomash displayed a designer’s ideashop

The following day I was surprised to receive an email from the Jing Gallery in Beijing, complementing my work “which is motivated and interesting” and inviting me to visit their gallery.  I then had a very frustrating day of trying to contact them to set up an appointment (see digital/wireless problems, above) for tea and discussion.  On arrival, I was surprised to see Tiyan was there – and she was equally surprised to see me.  Yes, we did have tea and some innocuous discussion but that was the extent of it, and then we went together to another gallery so see a very interesting photography there.

At the end of March we all went out to a good restaurant in Beijing for a dinner in honor of the Residents who would be leaving.  Anne back to Australia, Dagur and Petra back to Iceland, Mika to the UK.  It was a fun evening, with excellent dishes of all sorts circulating among us on the Lazy Susan.  Suzanna had commissioned a wonderful cake from a local baker, with three whipped cream cats created to order.  But the topper was the flaming lotus that then dropped its petals to reveal eight lit candles while it played Happy Birthday over and over and over again.  So the birthday bit was a little hokey for a going away dinner, but it fit in well with the party atmosphere.

I so much like the mobility of a bicycle.  Last week I rode beyond FeiJiacun to discover that the adjoining town is similar but about 4x larger.  There was this great statue In a schoolyard – the girl is pointing and leading upward carrying a book, and a boy follows brandishing a rocket and holding a soccer ball.  Must harken back to the Mao era.

Schoolyard with iconic Leap to the Future statue

The portable pet store: chicks, rabbits, turtles, goldfish, plants….

Main Street in this relatively prosperous Chinese village

The town features a streetside restaurant

The local men’s club meeting.

Beyond that town the road continues under a railroad bridge into an absolutely surreal territory.  Acres and acres, if not square miles, of nothing but rubble and in the distance, gleaming skyscrapers.  The only people in the area are a few gleaners, chipping morter from bricks for re-use.  I guess it is the Chinese version of Urban Renewal, but this one seems to have gotten stuck in the Urban Removal stage.

Over the river and through the dell to……

There was a town here, wasn’t there?

Reuse and recycle

Wonder if it costs more in those buildings for the penthouse view.

It would seem that our Feijiacun could suffer the same fate.  It certainly wouldn’t take a bulldozer very long to blow away these rickety buildings, and the million dollar Villas in gated communities just across the main highway and the International Shopping Mall down the road must chafe at this decadent unruly village with its scrap yards and construction supply shops so close by, taking up such valuable subdivision space.  One theory is that such a transformation can’t happen until the huge electrical power transfer station and the tower complex that arches over the town is somehow removed.  I’ve completed two paintings that feature these towers and lines – they really are the major feature that you notice everywhere.

Meanwhile, there is a lot of new construction – pretty shoddy downtown, but also quite utilitarian and substantial buildings for yet more artist studios.  Like just about everything else in China, it is all confusing and seems to be going in several directions at once.

The little bush I tie my front door to, suddenly back to life.

Yeah, I’ve been goofing off.  I promise to make a decent, more personal post very soon.  But meanwhile, let me sluff off (slough off?) by sharing an article that was published in TIME OUT – BEIJING that includes mention of our Open Studio event.  The article really contains a good description of this little village of Feijiacun and why it is of interest to artists.

So then, for your interest and edification:

Time Out – Beijing:  published on 7 Apr 2014

Feijiacun open studio day:  Artists in Beijing’s lesser-known art village open their studios to the public

Just past the Fifth Ring Road, off the ever-busy Airport Expressway, lies a dusty path leading to a series of boxy concrete buildings. Among these buildings are shops and stalls hawking street food, clothing, household hardware, repair services and more – all for cheap. It’s a village in the modern Chinese urban sense: small but hardly serene. It’s teeming and noisy during the daytime. The main stretch is packed with migrants buying necessities or doing business. Off to the side from this busy main stretch the noise recedes and a series of squat brick buildings become visible. Inside are artists: painting, constructing and creating their art through other means.

This is Feijiacun, one of Beijing’s villages on the northeast side of the city, outside many of the main areas commonly associated with art in Beijing. It lies past 798, the unapologetically commercial, kitsch-infested tourist hub; past Caochangdi, the hipper, rougharound-the-edges art district that’s home to Ai Weiwei. It’s closer to the city centre than Songzhuang, another enclave for artists on the eastern outskirts of the Fifth Ring Road. But unlike 798, Caochangdi or Songzhuang, Feijiacun has only one gallery and no museums at all. It bears no cafés or fancy restaurants. Feijiacun is a place for work.

The area has drawn the artists who work there through one surefire attraction: cheap studios. Most of the studios are occupied by independent artists, although Red Gate Gallery also maintains a series of spaces for its international artists visiting Beijing on residencies. The artists may come to Feijiacun for the cheap rent and plenty of space to work, but the out-of-the-way locale is convenient in some ways, according to resident and artist James Ronner.

‘There’s all sorts of resources for materials, between the scrap yards that are out here and all kinds of construction supply companies. You have access to a lot of stuff that you don’t in other parts of the city. In addition to that, you get to interact with a lot of interesting artists.’

There isn’t normally much to see or do for a visitor in this small village. But for one day this month, the normally closed doors of some of these quiet, modest buildings will be open to the public, offering us a glimpse into the workspaces and processes of some of the artists who have made it their home. It’s a good chance to see, first-hand and relatively unmediated, the work of artists like Xi Danni. Xi makes playful oil paintings and collages with flat perspectives and bright, vivid colours that transform mundane subject matter into something fantastical.

Nick Geankoplis – another resident artist – uses clay sculpture and video to create installations that reflect upon decay and the passage of time. Similarly physical in its creation is the work of James Ronner, who uses his space in Feijiacun to experiment with materials beyond glass. ‘I do a lot of collage work [in the studio],’ Ronner tells us. ‘But to be honest, it’s also the space were I break s**t.’

Note:  “Jimmy” Ronner and several other artists live just across the street from our studios, and has become a good friend.  Jimmy is a gregarious guy who teaches English Lit at two local Universities, and still keeps up his art work whenever he is not teaching.… or setting off fireworks in the courtyard.

The open studios in Feijiacun are often casual and congenial affairs. Red Gate Gallery’s open studio in Feijiacun last month included not just art but also a vendor making tasty jianbing pancakes. In part, the open studios are a celebration of the arrival of warmer weather. ‘[The studio space] is great in the summer but awful in the winter – we have wood stoves,’ says Jeffrey Miller, a resident and artist who will also be participating in the open studio.

The studios aren’t luxury spaces, and Feijiacun’s hardly the most glamorous spot to experience art in Beijing. But there are already plenty of places for the Audi and BMW set to browse for expensive pieces of cultural cachet. What Feijiacun offers is a bustling example of everyday life on the outskirts of Beijing; a space in which the artistic process can be realised.

The Feijiacun open studio day is on Saturday, April 19. To get to Feijiacun, take Line 15 to Cuigezhuang station. From there, take bus 415 to Mananli or bus 988 to Maquanying. The journey takes around 30mins in a taxi from Gulou.

Aaron Fox-Lerner

The plans were for most of us to go visit the Great Wall today.  But it is a bad air day, with the particulate count at 400 or so.  The US safe limit for particulates is about 50 I think, and the Chinese safe limit is 200 or 250.  Without a mask the air makes your teeth feel gritty, your eyes burn, and it interferes with breathing.  So we got together and decided to defer the trip to a later day.  The good part of this decision is that it gives us a bit more time to get our ducks in a row for the Open Studio event.

Suzanne, Dagur, visiting artist Alexei, and Anna consider whether to go to the Great Wall today

The Ba-Da-Bing Open House on Saturday will be in the large studio where Tomash, Petra and Dagur work.  It is across from the Imagine Gallery.  In spite of the amazing number of studios here in Feijiacun, the Imagine Gallery is the ONLY Gallery in the area.  That seems odd but then, many things in China seem to have their own logic that appear confusing.  It is just another part of the surreal discoveries that go along with being in China.

Tomash, Dagur and Petra take a football break between their studio and the Imagine Gallery

Keeping the ball in the air….

I have four paintings that will be in Ba-Da-Bing.  They are in my recent “hanging” series, that I think does vaguely harken back to the scroll paintings and brush drawings of traditional Asian art.  They are oil on canvas, of course, in a size range from 24″ x18″ to 24″ x32″.  I really prefer the rod on the top to be half-round, but that isn’t available here so I had to go with the clunky square look.

China Wall #1. No, it isn’t really that blue – I shot it under fluorescent light.

China Wall #2, also blue. And I think that is about enough of Chinese Walls

Power. I’d like to do a series of such towers as they march over villages and houses.

Tricycle. These transporters are ubiquitous throughout China.

Yes, it’s a selfie. Meant to show how I look on a bad air day.

First there was breakfast. I wasn’t particularly hungry, so delayed until mid-morning, then decided to walk to the other end of town for a change, to try some small dish at a different café. Stopped at an interesting place and began to use my automatic translation app to decipher the menu, as usual. The menu in this café was in a book – mpre upscale than the usual shop with a painted sign on the wall, or a one-page paper printout. But the Waitress was insistent that I order the fish she pointed to in the book. It looked like a porcupine and the cost was $8, about twice the usual meal cost in town. Finally I gave in and went for it, and so had the very best breakfast and fish imaginable. The flavor was delicate and delicious, with not a bone in the entire fish – except for the head standing up at one end and the tail standing up on the other. It was deep fried, and covered with a sweet and sour sauce. But the odd thing is that the flesh was cut so that it stood out from the fish like a pile of french fries. At least, that made eating it with chopsticks especially easy.

In English, the dish is called Squirrel Fish

In the afternoon, Tomash, Dagur, Suzanne and I took a taxi to the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) to buy more art supplies. The stores are in a white building across from CAFA, and its landmark is the ZOO Café that serves outstanding coffee and espresso.  Good coffee here is always a very welcome surprise.

Fabulous coffee here – and lots of animal paintings and dec

This store has three floors of art supply shops = the best art market in Beijing

We all coordinated our resources to create an Italian Pasta Party that evening. Suzanne decorated her studio with candles and even roses, and we combined our furniture and tableware to provide for the event. Dagur is a trained chef, and creaated a wonderful salad and sauce for the pasta. We of course had plenty of beer and sparkling wine, and Tiyan brought a French cake covered with whipped cream and fruit. The company included Suzanna of course, Petra and her Mother Brenda visiting from Iceland, Dagur the chef, Tomash his assisant, Anne, Tiyan, Vincent, and me.

Dagur and Tomash prepare the pasta

The table was set with candles, roses, matching napkins – Wowwie!

Tiyan provided the French Dessert Cake – lots of whipped cream and fruit!

Suzanna and Vincent discuss Art …. or something

Vincent isn’t a Red Gate Resident, but has been in China for six weeks and is working as an assistant in Ai Wei Wei’s Beijing studio in Caochangdi. It was fascinating to talk with him about that experince. I’ve always been very curious about how prolific internationally reknowned artists such as Ai live and work, and use assistants in their work. Vincent provided a small window into this world.