I can confidently say that I’m a creative person but I will probably never be an artist in the strictest sense of the word. I cannot draw to save my life and I probably will never be able to create a piece of sculpture. But that doesn’t stop me from admiring artists and how they are able to incorporate a piece of themselves into their creations and also be inspired by both likely and unlikely sources. In turn, they also inspire other artists and creatives to evolve with their own pieces.
Designer:
Shiyuan Xu is an artist who was born in China but is now based in the U.S. Her body of work has been inspired scientific and microscopic phenomena, ranging from oceanic single-celled organisms as well as land-based plant seeds, and of course the building blocks of life forms themselves, cells. Another source of inspiration is Scottish mathematical biologist D’Arcy Thompson’s book On Growth and Form which traces the scale and shapes of living things. But her experience as an “outsider in America” also adds to her creations as she incorporates Chinese ceramic color palettes in her sculptures.
Some of these uniquely shaped pieces will be on display at a museum in London as part of an exhibition dedicated to Chinese contemporary studio craft. She worked on these sculptures using porcelain, glaze, and Paperclay which is a mix of clay and cellulose fibers. What came out are these amorphous shaped creatures that seem to be pulsing with life. Most of them seem to look like amoeba and various organisms that feel like they are expanding and contracting in intricate patterns.
She says that she had to go through a labor-intensive process in creating her sculptures and at times, they were also pretty repetitive. This became a sort of therapeutic response to her experience as a foreigner living in an unfamiliar environment while balancing two cultures. The pieces became a metaphor for her personal life, showing her evolution and journey and incorporating all of these in her work. Even for those of us who may not wield a sculptor’s tools, her pieces resonate with a universal understanding of growth, adaptation, and the beauty found in the intricate details of life. Her sculptures, like her journey, are a testament to the transformative power of art, inspiring us to see the world, and ourselves, with a renewed sense of wonder and appreciation.
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