Where do you live? What are your everyday activities? Where do you go? What have you overlooked? Discover something new within your familiar surroundings and daily life; this might be an object, event, activity, or location.
#1
My perspective in life stems from my background and life experiences. I was born and raised in the northwest part of China and spent 17 years in a small town called before moving to Seattle. Despite the change in my surroundings, I have always found myself drawn back to a place where I have lived for twenty years; my body.
No matter what my geographic location is, my soul remains in my body. My physical self may be in a distant land, but my mind knows that my soul is always at home. At night, I draw the picture in my mind by creating both sides of the paper to show our “HOME”—our heads, the most important part of our body. They complete my life. This piece is a tribute to my brain for offering a comfortable home for my soul and for enabling me to make my idea become truth.
I have created these pieces for this application. More than that, my soul, hands, and my artwork create me.
#2
The pursuit of one’s dreams is a journey that often takes a lifetime to accomplish. There are those who reach the end of their lives without accomplishing what they wanted to do because the prospect of embarking on such a quest is intimidating or because they did not have the right opportunities in life.
A creative brain is indeed a blessing but it is also very important to have skillful hands. The wonderful things we have today will only stay in our imagination without hands to express these thoughts. It is easy to overlook how important our hands are but I like to spend my time thinking about new ideas and making them happened when I have chance.
This is a metal and wire project I made. I feel that it demonstrates my familiarity with my hands. However, I usually think that what if our hands aren’t built this way, what if it is built to be something else.
#3
The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. I firmly believe in my dreams and am not afraid to work hard to attain them. Given this passion, I consider my soul and my hands as the most important parts of my body for the things they make me learn and the things they allow me to create.
I strive to delve deep into my imagination to search for interesting ideas. In this piece, I try to prove my ideas and some of my unique art skill. My Chinese roots inspired me to create something new and beautiful, but close to my culture. The Chinese paper cutting skill has been practiced for thousands of years. I learned the art from my grandmother.
While many elderly artists have grown quite adept, none of them have attempted to merge two dimensional works into a solid piece. The three dimensional work I have cut and designed is one of a kind.
