New Artist Statement (Now With More Fiber)

The Oregon coast landscape is imprinted in my childhood memories. For over a decade our family has traveled from Eugene down the Oregon coastal highway to visit both my American grandparents in Coos Bay, Oregon, and my Chinese-American grandparents and relatives in the San Francisco, California Bay Area. My first serious encounter with Chinese landscape scrolls came during my Chinese art history class in my first year of college when I noticed how the Asian landscapes distinctly echo the Oregon coastal regions. My project is a stylized Oregon coast landscape scroll influenced by classic Chinese landscape art. The drawn landscape is combined with a looping soundtrack and animated projections, creating a symbol of my own cultural duality and also a living, subtly changing environment to be observed. The project is a metaphor to me; in order to make the journey to either side of my dual heritage, I must travel through a mix of scenery that echoes both cultures at once.
The classic Chinese landscape scrolls possess majestic, meandering mountain and tree lines with expansive bays. The mediums used are primarily ink and charcoal. The visual connection that the Oregon coast and Chinese landscape scrolls have is a representation of the full-circle quality my background possesses. Either the Asian characteristics have manifested in the Oregon coast, or vice versa. This matter takes a very interesting turn when considering the fact that I, a Chinese-American born in America, have never been to China. My concept then takes on a strange and fascinating set of both connections and disconnections. I am creating manifestations of my Chinese heritage, which I have only experienced certain qualities of, while mostly experiencing an American upbringing. The final product turns out to be a combination of these cultures and also a unique entity all its own.
The use of scrolls as a medium represents information made into a visual landscape. The scrolls provide references to linearity and timelines. By presenting my journey of cultural duality in this way, I achieve a continuity with a beginning and an end. Information is laid out in a sequence one part at a time, or viewed as an entire journey if the viewer steps back.
I employ the form of the scroll as a tool to tell the narrative of my cultural duality. This is a physical representation of my Chinese-American cultural environment, something that is not exclusively of one or the other world, but a byproduct of those two places put together and existing by itself as something very unique. The fact that a drawn highway runs through parts of my landscape symbolizes a story of my travel from one culture to another and its experience. I am also exploring the possibilities of a subtly changing landscape by using projected animations such as a slow-moving sky and sea, and fast-moving elements such as birds, to go with the static drawn elements. Both the animations and soundtrack will play continuously in twenty to thirty minute loops. While most of the animated and audible components will be subtle, like a real landscape, occasional events like animated gulls flying across the animated sky or animated waves breaking on the drawn rocks will attempt to draw viewers in and keep them waiting for more, much like sightseers before a landscape, waiting for something interesting to happen.
My project incorporates landscape scrolls that blend both Chinese and Oregon coast landscape characteristics, which in turn reflect the cultural duality of my Chinese-American heritage. The project literally and metaphorically illustrates a cultural journey by featuring bits of highway running through the drawn landscape. Furthermore, my project exists on a different level by using looping, projected animated components on the drawn landscape and a looping soundtrack, with occasional events like waves crashing ashore. This gives viewers the sense they are watching a living, changing environment, and commands their attention as they wait for other things to happen.