Wind and Rain at the Brush

Mike Mei

Description

Being in a foreign country, immersed in the great atmosphere of western culture, what is still in my heart is the quintessence of China, and the DNA of Chinese culture still flows in my blood. The United States is a multi-ethnic country, and the cultural essence of various ethnic groups blooms here like the flowers of spring. Chinese calligraphy, the gem of Chinese culture with a history of 3,000 years and the genius of the world that has shocked the history of art, has been splendid in this melting pot!
The sages said: There are at least two aspects in life, one is life and the other is spirit. Once one settles in a foreign place, there will be spiritual pursuits; cultural factors will become active, childhood dreams will come into life, and flowers will bloom in the cradle of multiculturalism...
In the educational world dominated by western culture, eastern culture and Chinese culture are not featured prominently, especially in art departments in universities.
I am honored to be a practitioner and inheritor of Chinese calligraphy, and I am a frequent guest speaker in various schools and museums in New England, such as Harvard and Wellesley universities, giving lectures, demonstrations and exhibitions, etc. These invitations compensate for the neglect of Chinese calligraphy in the main curriculum and allow students to witness the creative process of Chinese calligraphy as an art form. In Asian art departments of western universities, there are capable people who study Chinese calligraphy theories from the perspective of westerners, but only a few who are capable of doing calligraphy. To answer this need I felt compelled to take up a teaching role, shuttling between colleges, high schools, and elementary schools.

Sujets

• Art Plastique
• Arts plastiques
• Rain
• Wind
• Art
• Calligraphy
• Brush
• Techniques

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 12 février 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669852568
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 7 Mo

Extrait

WIND AND RAIN AT THE Brush







MIKE MEI









Copyright © 2023 by Mike Mei. 847442

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.


Xlibris
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ISBN:
Softcover
978-1-6698-5257-5
Hardcover
978-1-6698-5258-2
EBook
978-1-6698-5256-8



Rev. date: 02/06/2023




AWARDS
1984 Won the 2nd prize in the Youth Painting & Calligraphy Competition in Guangdong C hina
1996 Won the prize certificate in the International Competition of Painting & Calligraphy for World Peace and Friendship in Changchun, C hina
1999 Won the “Award of Excellence” in the Forte Cup Twentieth Century Asian Pacific Art Competi tion .
Won the “20 th Century Award for Art Accomplishm ents”
2000 Won the special prize in the Chinese Painting & Calligraphy Art Exhibition and Competition in Beijing, C hina
2001 Achieved the certificate: “The Artist of Both Virtue and Talent” in C hina
2003 Achieved the certificate: “The Contemporary Calligraphy and Painting - Sage of 100 in the Country” in Beijing, C hina .
Won the silver prize at the 1 st Great Award Competition of Chi nese
Calligraphy and Seal Cutting in Beijing, C hina
Won the bronze prize at The “Jing-Shi Yuan” Cup of Chinese Calligraphy and Painting Great Competition in Henan, C hina
Solo Show – 25 times in New York, Chicago, Bunker Hill College, Beijing. C hina
In March 3—April 15, 2012, Exhibition in Harvard Univer sity.
Public Works
wrote a tablet of calligraphyfor Boston Mayor Flynn displayed at the gateway of China town
- Wrote 2000 different styles of the Chinese character “longevity”. It was carved in a marble in China as the most styles written of the character “shou”, meaning longevity, in the w orld.
Name in Books
Brief biographies have been listed in: The Artist of Chinese Origin in North America Directory, The Dictionary of the Achievements of World Chinese Artists, The Taiwan Art Almanac of Artists, The Chinese Figures Dictionary, The World Famous Chinese Artists Almanac, The Chinese Painting and Calligraphy of Well-Known Art ists .
Publications
1997 Mike Mei’s Brush Painting Cale ndar
2001 Mike Mei’s Art Calligraphy Cale ndar
2008 Book of “Mike Mei’s Calligr aphy”
2010 Book of “3 Steps Can Master The Clerical Sc ript”
2015 Book of “ Mike Mei’s P oems”
Lecture /Class
Teaching Chinese art in Brandeis Univers ity .
Harvard University, MIT, Wellesley College, Northeastern College, Bunker hill College, U Mass, Lesley College, Holy Cross College, The Art Institute of Boston, The Eastern Nazarene College, Wu-Yi University (China), Jiang Xi Normal College(China),Nan Chang University (China), Peabody Essex Museum,Worcester Art Museum, Foreign Language Teachers Association of New Eng land.
Collections
Art work of “Dragon “, “The Blue Waves are Rippling”, “Quiet to See All” and more have been collected by Worcester Art Museum and Peabody Essex Museum. Three art works are collected by the President Ma Ying-Jiu (Tai -Wan).



CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
PREFACE
Wind and Rain at the Brush’s tip — on Cursive Script
A Transition from Xingxiang Pictograph to Yixiang Imagery
Zhuan Li Kai Xing Cao -- Connections Among the Five Styles of Calligraphy
1. Zhuanshu (Seal Script)
2. Lishu(Official Script)
3. Kaishu (Regular Script)
4. Xingshu (Running Script)
5. Caoshu



INTRODUCTION
The Chinese people have a special affinity for their written language. It was created over 3,000 years ago, and although it has naturally undergone numerous changes since then, many of the written words used so long ago can still be read and understood by people today.
They used a system referred to as Chinese characters ( hanzi 漢字 ). What are Chinese characters? Linguists refer to them as logograms, which means they are symbols that convey ideas. The symbols are composed of several parts. Some parts are like pictures of the words they represent, those parts are known as pictograms. Other parts are used to indicate the sounds of the words when spoken, which linguists might call morphemes. These are ways of analyzing the written characters. Thus, the written Chinese characters convey both ideas and sounds.
But from earliest times they have also been appreciated as something of beauty. Depending on how they are written, they can release an emotional response from the viewer. When written with bold and equally proportioned sections, they convey a sense of seriousness and authority. The style of the “official script” ( lishu 隸書 ) is in this category. When written with flowing and curving lines, other styles pull the eye along a winding and flexible path. It seems the eye wants to run along with the brush strokes. This would be called the “running style” ( xingcaoshu 行草書 ). The earliest characters were written with the point of a knife, and when this type of character is seen, it helps draw the readers back into the ancient past when human beings and the gods were in frequent communication through written words. Indeed, the earliest writing was on turtle bones in order to communicate with the spirits of ancestors in the heavens. That would be the “oracle bone script” ( jiaguwen 甲骨文 ).
Throughout most of Chinese history the characters have been written with a writing brush ( maobi 毛筆 ). It is a thin brush, something like the shape of a pen. When the inked brush is pressed down on the paper, the written strokes come out as thick and bold. When the brush is lifted, the written line becomes thinner and then ends. When the brush is swept upward and off the page, the resulting line has an “unraveled” feel to it, as if the character has ended but there might be more to come. Being able to write handsome characters in a variety of styles is the skill, gained thorough years of hard practice, of a calligrapher ( shufajia 書法家 ).
Those of us who live in the New England area of the United States know that we have an accomplished calligrapher living among us. He is Mike Mei (Mei Yuguo 梅宇國 ) who was born in China and has been holding exhibitions in the United States since the early 1990s. His skill has been recognized in China as well as in the West. He has held shows in New York, Chicago, and Washington, DC. He was given two awards in Washington, DC in 1999. He was awarded special certificates for his work displayed in Beijing in 1994, 2000, 2001 and 2003, and has had shows in a number of cities in China. Mei’s work is held in the collections of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA and the Worcester Art Museum in Worcester, MA.
More recently, Mei has been especially honored here in Boston. In 2004 he was selected as the only Chinese visual artist to work with renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma as part of the world team celebrating the Peabody Art Museum. In 2013 he held a solo show that ran for forty days at Harvard, which had not seen an exhibition by a Chinese calligrapher for the past fifty years. Likewise, at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts Mei was the first Chinese calligrapher to be asked to deliver a lecture there in the past fifty years.
One of his on-going popular activities is offering classes in Chinese-style painting and calligraphy to members of the public. His classes are always filled with eager participants who gain much from his explanations and demonstrations. He has held exhibitions and offered lessons in Chinese calligraphy and painting in many of the universities in the Boston area, including Harvard, Wellesley, MIT, and many more. Students from novice beginners to serious aficionados have gained much from Mei’s patient and guiding instruction. This includes students from my university, Suffolk University Boston, who have enthusiastically told me how quickly they were able to progress because the lessons they received from Teacher Mei ( Mei laoshi 梅老師 ) were always helpful.
As a true creative artist, Mei goes beyond the basic ability to reproduce Chinese calligraphy in the recognized styles, and he has elaborated on the historical styles to write while creating in his own individual style. Much of the calligraphy he produces for public display is, therefore, beyond the strictly “accepted” historical forms and reaches out in innovative ways. A careful examination of many of the works in this collection will illustrate how the set styles of calligraphy have been adapted and expanded to result in the unique forms produced by Mei.
Teacher Mei’s philosophy is that one must move into the area of allowing the flow of the brush and the characters on paper to express the emotions of the calligrapher. They convey the meaning of the words being written but should go a step farther to make a connection between the calligrapher and the and the person seeing the writing. Once these emotions have been conveyed through the writing, the observant viewer will absorb and react to the strength and flow of the brush strokes and in that way will receive the energy and emotions of the calligrapher. In that sense one can appreciate and be moved by the writing of the words, even when the specific meaning they hold is not known to the viewer. Mei has selected a number of his works in this collection with such an idea in mind. It becomes the adventure and experience of the reader to contempl