I then gave a lecture to Industrial Design and Ceramics Students at the American Center at the University of Shanghai Science and Technology. I also gave a gallery talk to them on the Exchange Exhibition on view.

With my friend “Po” Guangzhen Zhou I visited the Shanghai Institute of Art and lectured to the ceramics students. My last lecture was to the ceramics students at the Nanjing University of the Arts.

I gave a couple workshops and demos as I have already blogged about. I found the students to be engaged and enjoyable. I hope to keep in touch with a number of them through WeChat and see them in the future.

This was BFA and MFA exhibition time and the entire museum is turned over to student work. Very exciting. I have been also attending orals for masters and PhD’s and it is interesting to witness this process in another country.

A visit to the Nanjing provincial museum was overwhelming with rooms of pottery, study collection style, from various dynasties and as old as Paleolithic. The display areas are stunning with some of the finest examples of work in clay.

 China + USA Exchange: Good Things Come in Small Packages

An international collaborative exhibition exchange between UF SA+AH’s areas of Ceramics and Graphic Design with Wuhan Textile University College of Art’s areas of Design Sculpture (Ceramics) and Graphic Design.

In my role as a Chutian Scholar at Wuhan Textile University College of Art, I co-organized this exhibition of small scale sculptural and vessel objects made primarily of clay by Ceramics faculty and grads with packaging designed and executed by the Graphic Design faculty and grads.   Participants were paired to work together to create two comparable pieces. There are ten pieces in each set and I took one set in a suitcase to Wuhan for an exhibition in their gallery. I brought back a set from Wuhan Textile University and the result of the exchange was presented at UF’s Grinter Gallery.   This is the third venue for the exhibit.

One of the most notable aspects of this exhibition is the wide range of ideas and materials that can be found among the works. Though the format is small, the pieces have a strong presence.

This week I spent time preparing for next week when I will lecture twice and also give a tile decorating workshop. Stay tuned for those events in my next post.

My host and friend Yi took me on a trip to Jingzhou this weekend. It is a very old city in the same province as Wuhan, Hubei, on the Yangtze River. We took a smooth and comfortable two hour train ride to get there. It is famous for its ancient culture and artifacts as the seat of the Chu culture from pre- Qin to Sui Dynasties.

The museum is amazing and I was visually treated to Neolithic pottery, some wheel thrown. The bronzes were exceptional and this is considered the original place for those famous bronze chimes. The lacquer and silk objects showed such great skill; it was hard to believe how ancient they were. There was even a well preserved 2000 year old mummy on display. The city has a number of walls and gates and we visited one of those as well as a period home.

I am always amazed at the richness of culture of China and its people. When asked if I ever get tired of going to China, I describe the variety of places, cultures and histories. Despite my extensive travel in this vast country, I have not yet scratched the surface.

After the mornings filled with  presentations, we hopped on buses and saw the city in all its splendor, often with expert guides.  We had access to places not just any tourist could visit.  I will write more about the sites of Barcelona in upcoming posts.

The Museum of Ceramics  is a gem.  I loved how they displayed works with shards at the bottom of the case.  We were toured around the city and visited two of the production factories, one that specialized in the lusters the region is famous for. This town is considered one of the most important ceramics centers of Spain.  Many of the mudejar tiles we saw in this region were actually produced in Manises.