Verify and evaluate suppliers in China!

In an earlier video, we talked about how to narrow down a list of potential suppliers to a select group of highly qualified candidates.

Now go ahead and contact this short list. This starts the RFQ (request for quotation) phase. The feedback from this initial contact should allow you to further narrow down the list to the top 2 or 3 based on pricing and non-price attributes.

The next step is to validate if the suppliers are legit. In my opinion there are two essential types of verification.

Type One is the Factory Audit. This is to verify that the supplier has a quality control system in place and they have the production experience to supply you with the goods they say they can make for you.

Type Two is an Operational Audit or Due Diligence. This is to confirm that the supplier has a good reputation and is financially strong enough to stay in business long enough to complete your order. In other words, they are not likely to disappear with your initial payment.

There are professional service providers available who conduct these types of verification at very reasonable prices. I highly recommend you engage professional support if you don't have the skill set in-house to audit factories in China on your own. Contact me and I would be happy to recommend the 3rd parties I use for verification. But for your reference, here are some other tools you can use on your own or in conjunction with those 3rd parties.

    It doesn't cost you anything to ask for references. If a supplier can't give you a few happy clients to visit with…this is a big red flag.

    Confirm that you have the right to visit the production line and check on your order. If they come up with a bunch of excuses why you can't visit, it either means they don't have the ability to produce your product and are scared that you won't like what you see if you visit or it could be as simple as that they are a trading company and worried you will cut them out of the supply chain once you realize they provide little value. Speaking of trading companies, sometimes, especially if your order is small, it makes sense to use them, but I hate trading companies that say they are the factory when really they are just brokers.

    Ask to see the suppliers Quality Control Manual. If they don't have an ISO compliant, written quality management system…run away. If you want to see what a Product Quality Manual looks like, you can check out china company verification at the link below:http://www.cnbizsearch.com/search/cc/

Having verified that your suppliers are legit, the next step, and our next video, deals with negotiating the price and then moving into production.On that note, as always, I sign off-wishing you successful sourcing in China! And if you found the information in this video useful, consider returning the favor: subscribe to my YouTube channel, hit the "like it" button and post some comments. Or check out my blogs and monthly newsletter. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out via Linkedin, find me at the China Sourcing Academy or visit my company's website.

 

Why renting an electric mobility scooter could be great for you

Electric mobility scooters can enable people whose mobility impairment makes it hard for them to carry out activities in their daily lives that they can’t otherwise do—like getting from home to their mailbox, shopping at a grocery store or visiting their neighborhood shopping mall.

Electric scooters can be of great help to individuals living with asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), arthritis, severe osteoporosis, heart disease and angina pectoris among other conditions. As well, they can significantly aid in the mobility of elderly individuals. Severely obese people, whether young or elderly, can also find comfort and mobility by purchasing or renting an electric mobility scooter.

Scooters come in three-wheeled or four-wheeled configurations and are available for both outdoor and indoor use. Heavy duty scooters are ideal for heavier people and light weight, portable scooter models are easy to travel with and to fit in a car or van. Brand new scooter models usually run between $790 and $1000 in price, whereas deluxe models can be priced in the range of $3000-$5000. The costly nature of electric scooters means that some might difficult to afford them. For these individuals, renting electric scooters instead of choosing to purchase them, could be a convenient solution.

Scooters can be rented by the day or by the week and the cost per week is considerably lower than the cost of purchasing a scooter. In many cases, scooter rentals are partially or entirely covered by medical insurance. Some of the accessories that are available for use with electric scooters are cup holders, cane holders, scooter batteries and baskets to carry items like groceries or personal belongings.

Electric scooter manufacturers also offer add-ons like seat belts, flags and rear view mirrors to increase the safety of the user. Cover canopies can also be installed to protect he user from the rain or the sun. Individuals who want to transport their electric scooters on cars or vans might decide to adapt their vehicles to better fit them if necessary.

Beyond making electric scooters available to individuals, most mobility scooter dealers also offer additional equipment to facilitate the lives of the patient and caregiver. Patients can rent or buy lift chairs, manual wheelchairs, rollators and hospital beds among other products. While many mobility device suppliers can be found in the state of Florida, the staff at Mediplus Mobility hopes you will choose our company as a reputable medical equipment retailer.

Our mission is to improve the daily life of patients who need home health care. Comfort and increased mobility are within reach for anyone who needs it with our option to rent instead of purchasing equipment. To learn more about electric mobility scooters, please visit: http://www.escooterchina.com/about-us.html

Practical guide on how to verify chinese company

Thanks to ecommerce, companies in US are able to sell products/service to China, a country you have not yet visited, you don't speak the language, you are not aware if the legal systems are similar, you don't know and don't have the resource to know if the counterpart Chinese companies are real.

So we face a question: How can I check Chinese company? How to check the legitimacy of your Chinese buyers/partners? Are they a real company.

Some facts:

China don't have a organization like BBB(Better Business Bureau) in US, where you could check the legitimacy and background of a Chinese company.

Chinese administration of industry and commerce is the governing body that in charge of company registration. However, they don't have a nationwide website or database system that open to public to inquiry the authentication of Chinese companies.

Sourcing China blog recently published an excellent article, sharing how to make china company verification without visiting their premise. Here are some tips on their blog:

1) Do they have company bank account

Only legally incorporated companies can have business bank account. If the Chinese company insist you to pay their personal account only, be cautious.

2) Visit local AIC websites

Even though the national AIC don't have a nationwide system allow you to check the legitimacy of Chinese company. However, some(not a lot) local AIC do allow you to use their websites to check the legitimacy of Chinese company.

3) Websites and Email

If they don't have websites, use public email account like 163, sohu, sina, it is negative.

4) Hongkong offshore company

Be cautions doing business with Hongkong company, but operates only in mainland China. They are shell company. Read this article to learn the risk.

China Checkup offers a wide range of convenient and affordable company verification and certificate verification services that greatly simplifies the process of verifying a Chinese company.Do you have other tips for verifying a Chinese company's legitimacy?

 

A Two Wheel Stand Up Electric Scooter Won't Run As Well Without the Correct Power Source

In the past, an individual would have to use their foot to push themselves in order to get around on a traditional two wheel stand up scooter. Back in the old days, a person could only dream of what it would be like to own a two wheel stand up electric scooter, in which one could ride around free and relaxed with both feet planted at ease. Thankfully, technology has increasingly changed just about everything and this includes the performance power of this well loved type of scooter. Unlike seated scooters, a stand up scooter can provided a greater view to the surroundings, as everything is seen at eye level or higher. An added bonus of an electric stand up scooter is that it generally runs a lot faster than a traditional one.

Most electric powered scooters use batteries as the main source of power. Typically, the range and speed of the scooter will be determined by the type of battery it has. However, fuel cell technology has since been developed and is sometimes used as a power source as well. An individual seeking to purchase a 2 wheel stand up electric scooter should take time before making the purchase. One of the most important factors to consider before buying is deciding on what the scooter will be used for. This will greatly affect the type of battery one should look for, as the battery will greatly affect the functional abilities of the scooter and should be considered carefully.

An alternative to a 2 wheel stand up electric scooter is a motorized stand up scooter. Generally, a motorized scooter is powered by gas. Owners of a motorized scooter will often seek to travel longer distances than can be handled by a scooter that is electric. Some of the larger and more expensive motorized scooters may use a small utility engine. The spindle drive can be one of the most simplistic drive mechanisms in a motorized scooter.

Although, a two wheel stand up electric scooter may be more comfortable than the traditional self powered stand up model, it still is not intended to travel far with. Even with an electric 2 wheel scooter, the legs of the rider will eventually become tired and need rest. For this reason, it is safe and smart to remain local on any stand up scooter.

 

Verification of a Chinese company

How the verification of a Chinese company should look like? What kind of information can be obtained through this process? Is it really an essential step, or can the whole process be skipped? We will answer these and similar questions below.

Usually, the whole process begins when we’ve finally find a suitable Chinese company. Many depend on when we made the first successful contact: if we simply received an e-mail offer, risk factor is higher than in the case in which we met our supplier during trade shows.

The most important thing that we will find out through verification process, is the type of a company and its scope of activities. Chinese companies, which are dealing in international trade, usually fall into two categories: these are either trade companies or manufacturing companies. Sometimes the former impersonates the latter, but a proper verification process will help to reveal the real identity of the company.

In many cases, the person who claims to represent the Chinese company has no legal title to do so. Therefore it is always necessary to find out, who is the legal representative of the company. As we say:chinese company credit.

Verification is helpful in revealing the physical address of the factory. It is important, if we want to proceed further and send someone to check our shipment. On the other hand, ISO 9001 certificate is awarded to a particular facility, not to the company as a whole. Companies which possess factories cannot be simply shut down overnight – it may happen though to some of the trading companies, especially after receiving our payment.

Through verification process, the authenticity of provided documents and certificates will be also checked. The rule is simple: the Chinese are able to forge everything, but the truth can usually be easily revealed.

If you want to know more about the most popular methods of fraud, documents necessary in the import process and during the custom clearance, please refer to our other guides.

 

At home with the grim reaper

The biggest and most unusual work of art on display last month at the Agricultural Fair was "The Grim Reaper." Scaring little kids and adults alike with its hollow eye sockets and beckoning bony fingers, this towering wood statue won first prize for sculpture, as well as a Special Award. It's back home now in the Lambert's Cove studio of its creator, carpenter and wood sculptor Simon Hickman.

The Reaper originated as the trunk of a Music Street Elm tree in West Tisbury and evolved over the past year. "You have to hollow out the wood soon after you get it, or it will check, or crack," Mr. Hickman says. Checking occurs when a large piece of wood dries faster on the outside.

The Reaper's skull, skeletal parts, and the blade of the scythe he carries are made of rosewood. The limb of a tulip tree outside Mr. Hickman's workshop proved just the right fit for the Reaper's giant scythe handle. A garment made of hammered copper mail, topped by a short cape, covers the figure's torso. A light bulb gives the creature an eerie glow. To accommodate Mr. Reaper, who reaches 10 feet from his feet to his cowl, Mr. Hickman had to reconfigure his workshop. He installed a carrying beam for a chain hoist so that he could maneuver the tree trunk and "make sure he didn't run out on me."

The Reaper joins many other sculptures in Mr. Hickman's collection, some of which fairgoers may remember from past years. They are the products of a wonderfully perfervid imagination and include Vlad the Impaler, the Tower of Babel, and the Titanic. In addition to the sculptor's stores of wood, objects salvaged from the backyard of his 16-acre former farm make their way into his art. One of his Agricultural Fair entries, a full-sized maple shark, now hangs suspended from airplane wire in the family's pool house.

"If you touch his tail, he'll swim for 45 minutes," Mr. Hickman says, pointing to the surface spalting, patterns caused by a fungus feeding on the sap in the wood."I average about one piece a year," he says. "I only do it when I have a big chunk of time." These products of long, painstaking hours of work have sensuously smooth, highly polished surfaces and all – with the exception, perhaps, of Mr. Reaper – invite touching.

Born in England and raised in Kenya, Mr. Hickman is an inveterate saver and a collector. Arriving on the Vineyard in 1978 to work on an Edgartown restoration project, he never left. He had spent part of his youth hitchhiking in Australia and Indonesia and pursued his artistic bent then by creating oil paintings."I'm kind of saving oil painting for my retirement," he says.

Each of the artist's creations has a story behind it. He bought the rosewood log used in the Reaper 30 years ago. It came from a stack of the tropical wood stored behind the site of the long-gone Nobnocket Garage and former home of the Artworker's Guild, a 70s landmark in Vineyard Haven. A chair in Mr. Hickman's studio is made of native honey locust, and this very hard wood allowed him to incorporate lots of detail while keeping the piece structurally sound. A grimacing head he calls "How Do You Feel" started as an oak burl and has teeth cut from the ivory keys the sculptor rescued off a piano about to be bulldozed at the town dump.

Farm parts from hay wagons, horse buggies, and tools have gone into a throne-like chair, complete with hoofed arms and a tail. Made of chokecherry, a finely hatched lizard has humanoid hands. Pieces of metal Mr. Hickman found in the woods on his property help provide the necessary support for a table fashioned from Linden trees. Serving as a dumping ground for the caretaker of the old Makonikey Hotel, the wetlands at the back of the Hickman property has produced silver forks and spoons, along with many other discards.

Other examples of his skill at rescuing abandoned materials include the concrete balustrade from a French villa on-Island that now rims the family's swimming pool. A massive mantelpiece from the Corbin-Norton mansion in Oak Bluffs graces his living room, and he has fashioned chandeliers from deer antlers. The giant Linden that once shaded Main Street near the Capawock Theatre in Vineyard Haven is now a bar in his pool house. Mr. Hickman volunteered to remove the rotten tree, after the Town advertised to find a home for it. The sculptor discovered the tree was almost entirely hollow, so he made a trapdoor in the oil painting reproduction, lowered himself inside with a chainsaw, and cut it in half to save what had not rotted. When necessary, he makes his own tools, in one case attaching a chisel to a copper pipe so he could work in a narrow cavity.

"As I get older, my sculptures are getting bigger and heavier," Mr. Hickman says. He hasn't exhibited much outside of the Agricultural Fair, although for several years he and his wife Marion, a calligrapher, ran Chickamoo Gallery with the late Richard Lee, in the barn that now houses his Lambert's Cove studio. He suggests the subjects of his often surrealist imagination are no cup of tea for people buying art on the Island.

As “The Da Vinci Code” proved a few years back, people love to uncover the secrets locked away in the masterworks of art history, and though “Tim’s Vermeer” does nothing to interpret Vermeer’s work, it sheds new light on the way he might have gone about it. Technically, the notion that Vermeer might have used a camera obscura as an optical aid has been around for years, backed up by mathematical calculations in Philip Steadman’s book “Vermeer’s Camera.” Jenison proposes an even simpler solution involving a simple hand mirror, enlisting both Steadman and “Secret Knowledge” author — and artist — David Hockney to test his theories as he goes.

But Teller’s inventor/subject goes one step further than the scholars did, attempting to reproduce Vermeer’s “The Music Lesson” himself — and this is where the film crosses over into a fascinating tale of obsession, as Jenison uses his primary expertise (as founder of NewTek, he revolutionized the fields of computer graphics and digital video) to re-create the artist’s studio in a San Antonio warehouse. Using rendering tools to calculate the exact dimensions of every object seen in the original painting, from stained-glass windows to the models’ costumes, Jenison then constructs everything by hand and positions it just right in the room — a 213-day job, short by comparison with the actual task of painting.

Read the full products at http://artsunlight.com/!

Baltimore Woods exhibit features

Skaneateles Lake and the surrounding region have inspired both artists in their creative process, and the show reflects each artist’s interpretation. The exhibit includes drawings and paintings in oil, acrylic, pastel and watercolor and is open to the public with no admission or parking fee.Harms describes her work as becoming more organic in nature since moving away from cities to a rural area, and her artwork leans toward the abstract.

“The mood and nature of Skaneateles Lake, whether driving by, walking by or swimming in, is reflected in my recent drawings and paintings,” Harms said. “I am influenced by place, by color, by light.  Not in a direct landscape sense but as memory and sense.” Delmonico’s work has a realistic quality, often depicting local landscapes. Much of her work has an impressionistic feel.

“Painting, for me, is an honor, a privilege, a struggle, and most often, pure joy," Delmonico said. "To attempt to capture a scene or the essence of nature and create something interesting and exciting with light, texture and color is what motivates and defines this ongoing journey for me."Harms earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from the Parsons School of Design in New York City and a Master of Fine Arts in painting from the Chelsea School of Art in London.

An English-born artist, Harms has exhibited throughout the United Kingdom and the United States, including London and New York City and recently in Syracuse, Aurora and Skaneateles. Delmonico received her Bachelor of Arts from Boston College, majoring in studio art and elementary education, and a Master of Science in elementary education from Syracuse University.

Delmonico has exhibited widely in central New York and nationally, in venues such as the Everson Museum, Cazenovia College Art Gallery, the Schweinfurth Memorial Art Museum and the Pastel Society of America’s Annual Exhibition.

But the erased workers seem stereotyped and taken advantage of as their identities are elided. Labor can be depersonalizing and demoralizing, but it isn't by default so. These images deny the workers any chance to take pride in their labor or to own it as a personal accomplishment. Like a few other pieces in the show, these worker images need some subsequent thought.

“Worker Skins” is comparable to the white-out works, but it’s the best piece in the show. Hakanson-Stacy cut coveralls into hand-sized human outlines and dragged them through cement. Then she pinned them to the wall in a tight cluster. The more heavily caked ones clump and curl, oil painting reproduction, expressing the physical toll of manual labor. The others give the feeling of staring back at you with a posture of exhausted witness. The overall shape of their cluster is ambiguous—it could be the continental United States or it could be nothing intentional at all.

For the piece “One Minute,” Hakanson-Stacy cites Bureau of Labor statistics to compare a minute’s earnings, represented in pennies, for the average CEO ($116.66) to those of a minimum-wage worker (12 cents). The CEO’s pennies overflow a large glass bowl to scatter on the floor around its pedestal. The minimum-wage worker’s pennies are barely visible at the bottom of the kind of glass ramekin that servers bring your ranch dressing in.

“One Minute” could have been put to better use in WRK, Inc. Rather than locating the pedestals against a wall in the last corner of the gallery that you visit, they could have been placed in the middle of the gallery so that walking the show would redistribute the fallen pennies throughout the whole space, unifying its message.

Instead, a poorly executed video work entitled "Success" dominates the show, taking the front half of the gallery and suffering almost total illegibility from sunlight during the daylight hours. You can’t escape the audio drone of William Penn Patrick—a John Birch Californian who ran for Governor against Ronald Reagan (and lost for being further to the right of the Gipper)—reading his essay "Happiness and Success through Principle." The monologue is perforated occasionally by the pop of a balloon, which is shown onscreen. Hakanson-Stacy very effectively conveys the boom-and-bust economic reality beneath Patrick’s theocratic rhetoric with “Success” but, at almost 30 minutes, the audio loop is too long and a television would have been a better choice than a large video projection screen. One could easily assume that the video was turned off, it’s so washed out by the sun.

More disappointing was "Dreams," an audio piece that you listen to with headphones while staring at red threads pinned to a wall that a fan blows upon. The recording sounds as if it was made in the same bar all on the same night. A succession of young, white-sounding twenty-something voices basically state that, if they could do anything, it would be to travel, drink, and eat, in that order. Unselfish aspirations rarely appear. These narrators fall heavily on the lazy, “I don’t wanna work” end of the labor struggle, and the recording is embarrassing for the unnamed people who lent it their voices.

Frankly, “Dreams” pissed me off. It’s tantamount to middle-class whining, turning an overeducated, underemployed and disenfranchised generation into slackers complaining that their entitlements aren’t being recognized. Meanwhile you can hear the bartenders and dishwashers clinking craft beer glasses in the background, earning their wages. This piece takes a tipsy swing at class struggle.

If this critique is harsh then it’s because Hakanson-Stacy is obviously sincere and passionate about the issues she’s concerned with in this show, namely that a corporate ideology has been so driven into us—governmentally, societally and personally—that we can hardly get outside of it enough to think and talk about it. Her expression embodies that position at the expense of her sincerity and passion at times.

Read the full products at http://artsunlight.com/!

Ludington Library truly a community center now

Just in time for Ludington Library’s one year anniversary of its reopening, I found another hero, and this time he is a Republican: former Haverford Commissioner Charlie Bloom, Esq., who heads up the Lower Merion Library Foundation, raising private funds so that all six of the township libraries can be renovated and/or enlarged, just like Ludington and Bala Cynwyd.

Last week, I met Bloom and Margery Hall, head librarian, at Ludington Library and I felt like Alice in Wonderland. Just like falling down the rabbit hole and landing in a strange new world. That’s how different the Ludington Library is from the place I remembered, thanks to Vitetta Architects.

It starts with what is now the entrance from the parking lot. Instead of stairs, there is a ramp made of flagstone, inside the building, and the space created by the sloping entrance is called “The Gallery.” Paintings hang along one wall, and sculpture and ceramics are behind glass on the opposite wall. The featured artists are from the Center for Creative Works in Lower Merion.

Bloom donates so much of his time and talent that he and his committee have already raised more than half the private funds that he was charged to raise. That means $2.6 million in donations, and only $2.4 million to go. The township is supposed to be paying for the oil painting reproduction, which will total $28 million for all six libraries.

Hall said the crowds were so thick at the grand re-opening of Ludington that the electronic counters lost track. She figures more than 4,000 people came that day. The daily count since then is about 1,000 people.

When you enter the library, the first thing you see is New Books. And Hall showed me the Playaway section - that’s like a book on tape, except it is a small self-contained unit, with headphones. You can “read” the book while exercising, walking, any place any time.

There are Kindle downloads as well as ones for Nooks and the Sony Reader and iPads and any other electronic device you can name. And you can check your books out yourself on the electronic card reader, located just below the portraits of Charles and Ethel Ludington. Charles endowed the small existing library in the 1920s in memory of his wife Ethel. Their descendants, Nick Ludington and Ms. Fytie Drayton, are still around and have participated in the capital campaign. The original portrait of Ethel is by Cecilia Beaux, and that’s in a museum in New England. But Ms. Drayton donated an impressive and beautifully framed print of the original portrait.
There is a community room that is free to all organizations, and it is equipped with any audio-visual gadget you could want. Just beyond the community room is the original library with its beautiful dark walnut paneling. The handsome large oil painting of Independence Hall by Walter Biggs was donated by the Curtis Publishing Company in memory of Charles Ludington, who was an executive with the company.

Hall pointed out that the library had taken pointers from bookstores, and there are sections marked with large signs: gardening, travel, cooking, home improvement, etc.

Bloom is especially proud of the Teen Room, and Hall showed me the shelves of graphic novels. I spotted a table with built-in chess/checkers/backgammon board. Edie Dixon, widow of F Eugene Dixon, endowed the Teen Room in memory of her mother, Sarah Robb, who had served as president of the library’s board of trustees. The Teen Room is for those 12 to 18, and Bloom said that every library is destined to have one.

Bloom was delighted to point out a treasure which not too many libraries have: a complete set of Fortune magazines, courtesy of Stanley Ginsburg, who donated the collection and $25,000 for the shelves to hold them.

When a professor read about the donation, he showed up and was ecstatic. Seems for ten years he had been searching for an August 1946 copy of Fortune, and even the magazine headquarters did not own a copy. He needed it for his research, and he found it at Ludington.

The plaque in the newspaper and periodicals section lets you know that Julie Jensen Brysen donated in memory of her father, the physician James A. Jensen. John Bogle endowed the Business Section.

Upstairs you can see how the addition has doubled the Children’s Library. It now can be divided into two sections, according to age. I loved the C.A.T.T. sign on the wall. Hall explained it stands for “cars, airplanes, trucks and trains.” So any little kid interested in those four topics knows exactly where to go. The beautiful huge phonographs on the wall are the work of Hall’s niece, Jennifer Anist. The mural in the Children’s Room was created during the last renovation and was preserved and re-mounted and forms the backdrop for Story Time.

When oil and pastel painter Sara Qualey attended the John Herron School of Art in Indianapolis, Indiana in the 1960s, abstract art was in. But she didn’t see the world that way. When she saw a peach, she wanted to smell it, touch it, taste it, not throw it against the canvass and watch it go splat. For a time, however, she thought maybe she was lacking in some way. Luckily, she got over it. At 63 going on 64 years old, Qualey’s on a roll. Nothing can stop this woman from being who she is: an intensely concentrated, representational painter who eulogizes tin cans, light bulbs, extension cords, flowers, fruit, or anything that otherwise might end up in the trash or the compost heap.

Read the full products at http://artsunlight.com/!

Broad strokes

Contemporary Chinese painter Luo Zhongli's representative oil painting work Father made a very deep impression on many Chinese people when it won a national prize in 1981. The large-scale photorealist portrait of a weather-beaten old Chinese farmer has a strong visual effect and emotional power.However, few people pay much attention to the small ballpoint pen that pokes out from the farmer's white turban. And even fewer people know that there was no ballpoint pen in Luo's original painting.

Father is currently being exhibited at the Power Station of Art in Shanghai. At the exhibition site, Li Xu, the deputy director of the venue, told visitors the story behind the pen.After Luo finished his original version of Father, many of his friends, who were painters, teachers or professors in China's fine arts circle at the time, reminded Luo that it was better to depict the farmer he painted as representative of farmers in the new, modernized society of post-1949 China.

Therefore, after reflecting on it, Luo added a small ballpoint pen tucked behind the farmer's ear in order to show that he was a "literate (youwenhua)" farmer.Soon after that, in 1981, the painting was awarded the first prize at the second China Youth Art Exhibition, arousing a huge response from the public.

For people today, the story of the pen probably sounds a little absurd, and indeed, the pen looks rather incongruous in the otherwise highly realistic portrait of an old farmer. However, it demonstrates that in that era of China, the desire to adhere to Mao-era political correctness was still deeply ingrained in many Chinese people's minds, even in the circle of fine arts.That is probably the significance of Luo's Father appearing at the retrospective exhibition titled Portrait of the Times: 30 Years of Chinese Contemporary Art at the Power Station of Art.

The ongoing exhibition features about 117 Chinese artists and 300 works of art. The works span from the late 1970s, the era of reform and opening-up, until today and include various forms including painting,oil painting reproduction, installation, video and photography.Li is the curator of the exhibition. He told the Global Times that during the past 30 years, China's economic and cultural development, as well as Chinese people's growing self cognition and social involvement, are reflected by Chinese artists' works over these years.

"Through this retrospective exhibition on the past 30 years of Chinese contemporary art, not only can visitors have an overview of the development of Chinese contemporary art, but more importantly, it shows the huge changes that China and Chinese people have experienced in the past 30 years."In 1993, the 58-year-old Shanghai-born artist Gu Wenda launched his worldwide art project, the United Nations Project, to make a series of installation artworks using human hair and cryptic calligraphy.

The United Nations - Human Space, one of the art works from the series, is currently hanging on the top of the exhibition hall on the first floor of the Power Station of Art. It is a huge installation work consisting of various national flags made from human hair from different countries.

"The hairs could be regarded as a metaphor for the mixture of races," Li said, "and the artist gathered them together to show his idea about the internationalized evolution of human identity."Gu, who studied and worked in the US, Canada and Australia after leaving China in 1987, has achieved recognition on the global stage. The British art historian Edward Lucie-Smith called Gu "the most celebrated of a new generation of avant-garde artists who emerged from China in the very late 1980s and early 1990s."

"I always remember my first solo exhibition held in Xi'an in 1986 was shut down by the local authorities," Gu told the Global Times. The exhibition, which featured paintings of fake ideograms on a massive scale, was thought to carry subversive messages. "But now, almost 30 years later, my works can be displayed in a State-owned art museum." The Power Station of Art is the first State-owned contemporary art museum in China."When I left China in 1987, there were no private art galleries here, but now, the whole country is practically covered with art galleries," Gu said.

The works of Xiao Quan and Lu Yunmin, two well-known Chinese photographers, are also on display at the exhibition. It is not often that an art exhibition in China will include photography works.Xiao's portrait works, Our Generation, focus on the elites in contemporary China's culture and art circles, who were mostly born in the 1950s and started their careers in the 1980s. His subjects include the celebrated film director Zhang Yimou, the pioneering rock star Cui Jian and the well-known contemporary artist Zhang Xiaogang.

Xiao's photos make an interesting contrast with the portrait photos that are hanging on the opposite wall, taken by Lu. Titled Shanghainese, the photos record vivid moments in the daily lives of Shanghainese families.Before she got angry, local artist Elizabeth Berry’s watercolor and oil paintings reflected snapshots of stunning colour and pastoral beauty around the world. Vivid poppy fields in France. Pretty East Coast fishing coves. Strutting, scarlet-crowned roosters in the Carribean.
But then came the morning after the Victoria Day long weekend in May.Her regular, early morning walk on the waterfront brought her to a scene on Woodbine Beach that got her so mad, she immediately beetled back to her home on Neville Park Blvd. (a 6.5-kilometre round trip), picked up her paint gear and returned to the scene of the grime to immortalize what she saw.

It’s evocatively titled Woodbine Beach Litter, a 15-by-22-inch watercolour that took her about four hours to create on site, with a return trip the following day at which she added one of the litter’s few fans, a seagull, and waves.The garbage depicted in the painting — pizza packaging, coffee cups, pop cans, cigarette butts and more — was all real and on the scene — and repeated in various clumps throughout the beach.

It’s nothing new, but it’s getting worse, says Berry, who’s in her late 60s and walks the boardwalk every day. She sees all sorts of litter — from food-related to personal, like abandoned diapers — continually along the route, although the quotient goes up as soon as the good weather arrives and stays high until after the Labour Day weekend.

When the historic Annapolis Market House reopens in the next couple of weeks, patrons will walk underneath Jean Tyson's bright red hollyhocks and Dixie Sangster's Cubist rendition of a vase of flowers.The two women are among 16 artists who contributed artwork for banners that will hang near the ceiling of the Market House. Eight banners, each more than 8 feet long, feature works from the Annapolis Senior Center's corps of art students, one on each side.
All of the artwork features brightly colored flowers. The idea is to give a vibrant pop of color to the interior of the Market House, even when it's dark and gray outside in the winter, said Sally Wern Comport of ArtWalk, the organization that linked the senior center artists with the Market House.


Read the full products at http://artsunlight.com/!

Airy abstractions alight this summer

As Gary Lichtenstein took in his fill of the artwork around him in the studio of New York City artist Charles Hinman, he said his gaze settled on a series of watercolor images."I took a look at these works, which had been done many years ago, and I thought, those are really nice," he said of the airy abstract images that were reminiscent of kites.

Lichtenstein, a master printer and artist based in Ridgefield, has collaborated with many artists. He and Hinman first started working together in 2011.As the artist and printer looked a bit more deeply at Hinman's work, a creative concept began to take flight -- their next collaboration would be inspired by these images.

"He never lets any piece go out of the studio without a title," Lichtenstein said of Hinman. "So, he said, `Let's call these kites.' "After months of work, the project has landed at the Silvermine Arts Center in New Canaan. "Kites," which features multiple silkscreen prints, is the second major collaboration between Hinman, a painter who is considered a pioneer in the art of sculpted, three-dimensional canvases, and Lichtenstein. Their first project, "Gems," came out in 2011. As with that exhibition, the two worked to employ color and subtle hand embossments to ensure that the suite of prints would maintain the dynamism of Hinman's sculpted canvases.

"It certainly was not the norm," Hinman said of his practice of repurposing the traditional canvas into a sculptural form, by stretching the canvas over multiple frames, creating contours and employing color for sculptural effect. "I like to make work that is a new experience for me and for others."It is a philosophy he has employed since he first made a splash in the early 1960s when he was in his 30s. At 80, he said he continues to look for new ways to create and express himself.

"He happens to be one of the most inventive individuals I know," said Lichtenstein of Hinman.The duo's collaboration appears to foster respect, breed creativity and spur innovation. Both cite the other's knowledge of color as a crucial connection.

"We love discussing color," said Lichtenstein. "It's fascinating because I love drawing out of an artist colors that they really do love ... I get a lot of enjoyment in the interplay."Lichtenstein can draw on his own experience as an abstract painter who has attracted critical praise for the way he layers multiple colors.

Lichtenstein grew up near Waterbury, but has spent much of his 35-year artistic career in California. In 1978, he opened a printmaking studio, SOMA Fine Art Press, which became a hub of artistic collaborations. About 12 years ago, he returned east and has since worked out of his home studio in Ridgefield.

When he works with Hinman, whether in Ridgefield or New York City, Lichtenstein said it is a fluid experience, as Hinman is open to new ideas and ways of expressing his art."After we've made a few prints ... we'll ask ourselves what if we did this or oil painting reproduction," Hinman said. "Much can arise through experiment. Sometimes, we don't know ourselves where we are headed."

A similar quandary awaits visitors to another of the center's galleries, where works from members of the guild are featured in "Where are We (going)?," Silvermine's second summer exhibition. It also will close Sept. 7.New York City artist Emily Cheng curated the exhibition, using the work of guild members as her starting point. After going over hundreds of images, she settled on Easton artist Susan Sharp's abstract painting "Where are We?" and then got to work finding threads that would tie together multiple artists and media.

"I also was taking into consideration that Charles Hinman would be in the next gallery, so I wanted a show that could be different, but compatible," she said. "I wanted it to feel like a continuation or elaboration of a thought."Sharp's piece is abstract, constructed with multiple panels. It was spurred by a photograph in a magazine, an interplay of shadows and water, that Sharp turned on its side. Suddenly, she was inspired.

"I began to pour layers of paint," Sharp said, of the process that begins all of her works. As shapes formed and colors intersected, a landscape formed, albeit one without the concrete shapes and point of perspective of a more traditional scene."I enjoy this sense of disorientation," Sharp said. "It probes this question of where are we ... and further, where am I and where am I in my life.

"For me, what makes this painting exciting is that you can have different interpretations," she said. "You are not able to nail it down."The exhibition features photographs, prints and paintings. As for the theme, Cheng said "Where are We (going)?" is less a statement about the content of the work and more about the state of mind brought on by viewing it -- it's about what you might find when you peer around the corner.

Read the full products at http://www.artsunlight.com/!

Change is in the air

It's the sky. In Myanmar, it dominates the horizon and dwarfs you, whether you are passing through the green fields or on the Irrawaddy. And it's a watercolour. It can never be an oil painting. The luminescence of the light will not allow it to be. From the airplane window, Myanmar is spread out like a Kashmiri carpet, all the pastel hues, an orderly pattern of beiges and greens. The sky is big even in Yangon, a city that feels like Rangoon, but not for long.A hotel room under $100 a night in Yangon is a steal. Rents in Yangon are “more expensive than Manhattan,'' says a diplomat. In Golden Valley in Bahan township, a leafy, posh diplomatic area, even the UN has moved out. “It is all the oil money,'' says an embassy official. An expat family recently moved out when their landlord upped their rent to $10,000 a month.

“Traffic jams,'' says Rajeev Rawal, associate director at Dr Reddy's Laboratories in Myanmar, when asked what has changed in the country. “Four years ago, you never had any.” When the Rawals moved in, the junta was in control. “The army could come and check your house at midnight,'' he says. Mentioning anything political was risky.This seems firmly the past today. The chaos of democracy may not be a reality at the moment, with the junta just playing the game, but there seems to be a freshness in the air.

At red lights in Yangon, hawkers can barely hold the newspapers they are selling. There are now more than 30 of them. Most of the newspapers are in Burmese and have been launched recently. An English daily is due to start soon.New flyovers are being built. “You pass something every day thinking one day you will return to take a picture,'' says Anne Celeste, who left Paris for Myanmar, 12 years ago, after a trip to Bagan, the land of the thousand pagodas. “Then, it disappears. Yangon is changing so fast,” she says.

But, it still retains some from the old. The two worlds have not collided as yet. It is chaotic, yet peaceful. Surprising, yet predictable. There are five-star hotels. Even dance bars. But, the image of a monk in deep maroon, walking with an umbrella, oil painting reproduction. That picture, which has come to symbolise the country, the colonial stereotype, is common enough. Women and men with their face covered with a thick paste of tanakha [a cosmetic preparation] still amble along the streets that are lined with hoardings advertising face-creams. Men still wear longyis. Chai stalls dot every street corner. It looks as if time has stood still.

“It is like the India of the 1950s,'' says Anil Vishwakarma, project director of Essar, which handles several projects in Myanmar. There are malls, but they have not really become a way of life. A holiday is still a time for people to stroll down the lake, holding hands. Children play on jungle gyms. Couples armed with huge umbrellas sit with their back to the world, hiding behind the span of the brollies. But that is only half the picture. There is also the skyscraper that is coming up next to Inle Lake hotel, a condominium with a coffee shop. Another shop sells cappuccino and wine, right next to a stall of Aung San Suu Kyi merchandise.

Air traffic is busy, with Myanmar all set to be the next hot destination. The golden triangle of Bagan, Mandalay and Yangon is connected by four flights a day. As one taxi driver puts it, “Myanmar is booming.”Pansodan Gallery, hidden behind a flyover and up a dingy staircase, is reflective of this change. Piled up with old posters, pictures and paintings, the gallery is a treasure trove for those looking for something beautiful from the past or wanting to invest in bolder strokes of new artists. “This was the first window for artists,'' says Aung Soe Min, the owner. “Now, they get paid better than actors.”

Myanmar isn't simple. It is superstitious. Former dictator Gen. Ne Win shot his reflection in the mirror as an astrologer had predicted that he would be shot. International roaming may still not be available—though in Yangon in some places there was signal—yet at a simple restaurant, the waitress will take your order on a tablet.

The junta can willingly 'relinquish' power to start a democracy. The military has donned the civvies and is on the road to democracy. But, “There is not one official in the director level who is an ethnic. Chief ministers of every state are ex-military,'' says a diplomat. Myanmar has a secret police, one of the most efficient in the world. George Orwell apparently got the idea of 1984 from his stint in the country. Yet, trust is something that is handed out like candy. You can leave your bag with jewellery somewhere, even in a taxi, and will get it back.

Identities are complicated in Myanmar. Your family can have lived here for generations, yet you can be identified as Indian on your national ID. “The whole national movement was against the British,'' says Harn Yawnghwe, executive director of Euro Burma Office. “We don't want any foreigners. This feeling carried on with south Asians and even Indians, who came with the British and stayed on. These elements have not been dealt with. We need to revisit history,” he says.

Yawnghwe is back after 48 years in exile, to help cobble together a peace settlement with the armed ethnic groups. His father, Sao Shwe Thaik, the first president of Burma, died in prison. His brother was shot dead by the army in the coup by Ne Win. There are many such stories of suffering.But in Myanmar, you don't speak of suffering.

Than Win Htut, the planning editor of the Democratic Voice of Burma, too, is back, to start a television talk-show, the first of its kind in Myanmar. There is heated discussion about the format. “We interviewed this couple in which one partner was Buddhist and the other Muslim,'' he says. “I suddenly got a call from a Buddhist monk who told me I was a sympathiser.” These issues still simmer. And will determine the country's future. “My friends have told me to be careful. This whole thing may still be an act by the government. This is new for us. Earlier, we were not allowed to interview officials. Now we can,” says Htut.

The feeling that change may not be everlasting, at least when it comes to politics, comes up in conversations. Do not bring up politics on your own, is what the guide book tells you. But, in Myanmar, politics is like the rain, it is a constant companion. “The government has lied to us for years. They may be lying again,'' says Zarni Mann, a reporter at The Irrawaddy Magazine, who lived in Delhi for seven years.

Democracy may not change the fortunes of the country, but economics will. The biggest challenge for the country will be capacity building. “Money is not a problem. It is flowing into the country like the Irrawaddy,'' says an Indian diplomat. Post-1964, all the teaching in schools was done in Burmese.
Convent schools were shut and foreign teachers were asked to leave. “It is a fairly literate country. But, English is a problem, even for engineers and doctors,'' says a diplomat.

Every city has a story, the kind that defines it. In Bombay, it would be a rags-to-riches story. Delhi has its share of crazy drivers. Or the loud Punjabis who insist that you come for a meal to their house without ever specifying the date. But in Yangon, it will be probably be about generosity. It is the kind of city where you can go into a restaurant, order a soup, get it spectacularly wrong, and not get charged for it. Not because you asked. But the waiter noticed you had not touched it.

Read the full products at http://www.artsunlight.com/!

Lux Art Institute begins seventh season

Lux Art Institute, closed for the month of August, is poised to enter its seventh season of welcoming selected artists from around the world to spend a month in residence, creating new work and interacting with visitors of all ages.The 2013-14 season will open Sept. 5 with Matthew Cusick, a native New Yorker, currently based in Texas, who makes haunting collages out of fragments of maps inlaid in acrylic.

“Through a process of cutting up and reassembling fragments of maps from different places and times, I am attempting a more complete representation of an existence,” he writes on his website. In honor of his first long-term stay near the Pacific, he will create a large-scale ocean collage.

Nov. 5 will bring Melora Kuhn, a painter who draws her themes from history and myth. Born in Boston and educated at the Art Institute of Chicago and the School of Lorenzo di Medici in Florence, Italy, she lives in Brooklyn, and her work reveals a world where classical and contemporary elements coexist. The piece she creates at Lux will be a response to the history of the American West, and the extermination of the buffalo.

Three more resident artists will round out the season in 2014: Multimedia artist Marcus Kenney, from Savannah, Ga., is known for his “reclaimed taxidermy,” a backhand homage to the family of hunters he grew up in, and his whimsically macabre Southern Gothic pieces. At Lux, he will be working on his version of Bruegel’s Tower of oil painting reproduction.

Jarmo Makila, an artist from Finland who explores disturbing memories of his boyhood experiences, will create a series of clay sculptures of boys, one for each day of his stay that Lux is open to the public.

Beverly Penn, from Austin, Texas, finds inspiration in nature, interpreting delicate flora in durable bronze. She will collect and cast some of San Diego’s native plants, a number of which can be found in Lux’s own native gardens.

The plan was to meet at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday at a coffee shop at Fourth and Gaskill, where Kelly likes to read. But it was pouring rain. So Miller called Kelly on her cellphone - yes, she has a phone - and they agreed to meet at Kelly's current residence, under the canopy at Headhouse Square. Kelly went over to Xochitl, a Mexican restaurant, grabbed a cardboard box from the trash, and folded it nicely as a seat for her guest. Miller, a retired English teacher at Edison High in Philadelphia who lives in Society Hill Towers, took up painting eight years ago.

She sees beauty in the most unfortunate and met Kelly this winter, when Kelly moved back from Boston after nine years. Kelly, who modeled in the nude for many years for art students at the University of Pennsylvania, is quite proud of her appearance. She's trim, clean, with clear skin. She eats no meat or dairy. "I can't keep my sanity unless I have my nutrition," she says. Were it not for her red and blue shopping carts spilling over with plastic bags holding all her worldly possessions, Kelly might resemble any of the other women of Society Hill, right down to the Crocs on her feet, though, she says, "I prefer Benjamin Lovell."

He also demonstrated his artistic prowess by finishing a small painting in front of the guests. The piece was then auctioned off.Describing his art as more expressionist than abstract, Quah said he painted intuitively without any pre-conceived notion of how the final product would turn out.He said his style was influenced by Van Gogh, De Kooning, Zou Wai Ki and other artists."My work depends on my mood. Most of the time, I paint in a happy mood as I always keep myself happy," said Quah, who was born in Taiping, Perak, but moved to Penang when he was 17.

He has written articles for international publications and been interviewed and featured on radio, television and in the print media many times.He said his Retrospective exhibition at the Penang State Art Gallery in November 2011 was one of the highlights of his career.

While enjoying his time back in Penang, spending time with his family, meeting old friends and making new ones, he said he was still painting in his studio, looking over the horizon for more challenges and new ground to cover.

Read the full products at http://artsunlight.com/.

Visalia Senior Center hosts art exhibits

Residents of Visalia may not realize the Visalia Senior Center is host to talented oil and watercolor painters. There are also photographers, ceramicists and tole painters. One such artist, Bill Dillberg, loves to travel with his wife, Jan, and take photos as they go. Their most recent trip was to Ireland, starting and ending in Dublin with stops in Kilkenny, Cork, Killarney, and Galway. His goal in retirement is to travel and take photographs.
The photographic result of their trip is currently on exhibit at the Visalia Senior Center. The photographs depict the essence of Ireland from the quaint villages, pubs and cottages, as well as castles. The seniors love the color photographs of the sights from Ireland. In fact, four women from the oil painting class taught by Debbie Navarro asked to paint Bill’s images.

Pauline Hesse says she fell in love with a photo of an older gentleman with his donkey, dog and a goat by the side of the oil painting reproduction. “He is so neat to look at, he looks like a leprechaun,” she said.

Marlene Singleton chose to paint Dillberg’s photo of an Irish cottage because she’d love to go to Ireland. “It’s so beautiful and I love to paint flowers.” She plans to paint another photograph, a street scene in Kinsale.
The Visalia Senior Center shows works in the activity room at the Visalia Senior Center. Art by the watercolor class is also currently on display. The exhibits are ongoing, and rotate every six weeks. The oil class will show in September. Oil instructor Debbie Navarro and her students will also show their works at Taste the Arts in October.

The Visalia Parks and Recreation Department offers several art classes for seniors. The watercolor class will start Sept. 18 and oil painting starts Sept. 4. Other art classes offered at the Senior Center include ceramics, tole painting, digital photography, photo editing, basic and advanced drawing, in addition to fitness and dance classes. The fall/winter brochure comes out soon and will be mailed to Visalia homes.

Also on display at the Senior Center are historic images of Visalia provided by historian Terry Ommen. The images provide memories in retrospection for seniors as the photos reflect history a lot of them remember. There are scenes of the 1945 flood, opening of the Fox Theatre in 1930, the Palace Hotel, which was located to Court and Main Streets and several more line the hall.

Stop by the Senior Center’s Open House from 4-7 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 25 to tour the facility and see all of the great art works. This event connects seniors, families and caregivers with community programs, classes and resources available for older adults.

The concept of displaying visual art and poetry is not new to Don Seybold and Jeff Smith. They have exhibited together once before and have outdone themselves with their current exhibit in the Northwest Gallery in the Tippecanoe Arts Federation.Many times in this small gallery, artists have achieved a complete visual overkill by hanging far too many works much too close together.

Seybold’s poems on white paper are the perfect buffer separating Smith’s paintings. They become a visual palate-cleaning element that helps refresh the eye before continuing inspection of the abstract paintings. Due to my less-than-adequate knowledge of poetry, the focus of this review will be the recent paintings of Smith.It is such a delight to see the creative evolution of an artist. Over the past several years, Smith’s surface complexity, coloration and mark making skills have truly expanded.

The majority of the work has a searching energy of layering and over-painting that completes the artist’s intent to create a balanced composition, which contains both line and coloration. The artist has presented the viewer with several approaches to abstraction.

A few of the paintings, such as “Impact,” echo the artist’s early work. The breaking up of space by lines or geometric shapes has been a constant for Smith. These paintings present a feeling of all that is urban: a mix of shapes, lines and color that take on the visual sense of tall buildings clustered together.

As well done as these pieces are, it was even more interesting to see Smith’s approach to color field painting, which consists of large fields of solid color, usually rectangles of squares floating above a solid background.

Of great interest to me were the three pieces, “Street Poster #1,” “Street Poster #2,” and “Mist,” that contained absolutely no representational subject matter. Perhaps these paintings were the artist’s answer to Seybold’s poems.

Read the full products at http://artsunlight.com/.

Dickson's art explores Sea and Shore

Encouraged by her artist mother, she occasionally won drawing competitions for young people. She wished to paint, but supplies were difficult to find during her teenage years in the 1930s.In 1949, alone with a young family in a remote logging camp, she began to paint greeting cards in watercolours, and then to use oil paints and pastels received as gifts. She received her first commission of three compatible watercolours there, then in 1952, she won first prize in Duncan for an oil painting.

By 1958, she was a serious artist, had joined The Crofton Art Group, painting in oils weekly with Arnold Burrel and other well-known artists, and was showing regularly. She then took an 18-month art course with Jack Wilkingson, then of Victoria. The class finished in the instructor's studio.In the '70s, she participated in a month of daily art classes and chose to work in batik.

By 1975, now able to pass on her art expertise, Ruth taught two day workshops for 12 students. Her work sold well and, combined with her teaching earnings, she was able to enrol in the University of Victoria's Fine Arts program during 1979-80, taking second- and third-year drawing, oil painting reproduction, printmaking, and poetry.Her artwork hangs in homes, offices, and collections in Canada, USA, New Zealand. She has created special calendar art and museum backdrops, and has participated in numerous shows, in Comox at the Pearl Ellis Gallery and the Filberg Park and Lodge, as well as in Cowichan and Nanaimo.

Ruth loves to express her love of her environment, but has not restricted herself to any particular subject or style, although she enjoys the realist style. She is proficient in a variety of mediums, including oil, acrylic, soft pastel, ink, watercolour, batik, charcoal and pencil. She has also made collages from tissue/masa paper and seashells.

Before God made man, he made a beautiful world for him to live in, and we see that beautiful world around us on a beautiful day off the coast of southern California. Jim saw a lot of God’s beautiful world in his life. He grew up in the beautiful green hills of Yorkshire, and he loved to recall his bike rides—once even down to the North Sea. He lived on three continents (in England, Iceland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the US).

God didn’t put man just anywhere in the beautiful world but in a garden where he would work as a gardener. Anyone who’s been to Jim and Teresa’s house knows that they are gardeners. You can see the care they’ve taken to make their plot of earth beautiful. They decorated their house inside and out, and especially at Halloween, Christmas, and Easter they put up a lot of extra decorations to make the neighborhood a nicer place to live.

But the beautiful garden wasn’t enough. God saw that it wasn’t good for man to be alone. He brought animals for man to name. I got to see the special relationship Jim had with animals when I saw how he loved his little dog, Abbie, and Abbie loved him.

But animals weren’t enough. God made man a companion who was exactly right for him. God gave Adam Eve, and he gave Jim Teresa. Anyone who saw Jim and Teresa together could see at once that in a special way they were made for one another. They were married for almost fifty years. We know that marriage is a gift from God, but in these days it’s worth pointing out that when a couple stays together as long as they both live, that’s a gift that they give to their family and to their community.
But God would not let death have the final word. He sent his son to die for us, to deal with the sin that alienated us from God. Jesus was willing to make the great sacrifice it would take to defeat evil and gain back the life and liberty God intended for us. The Bible says that “God so loved that world that he gave his only begotten son so that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). Through Jesus our sins can be forgiven and we can be reconciled with God and have access to eternal life.

God’s plan is not just that our spirits would live on after death. He promises to resurrect the bodies of those who believe in his son. Jesus said, “This is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him should have eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day” (John 6:40). When we see a body reduced to ashes and dust, it seems hard to believe that one could be raised up again. But it’s only reasonable to believe that if God made man out of dust to begin with, he could do it again.

When we remember Jim and his life, we are reminded of the remarkable power and goodness of God in creating him, breathing life into him, and pouring gifts into his life. When we remember his death, we are reminded that we have sinned and that will die as well and return to dust.

But when we remember Jesus and his death, we are reminded that our sins can be forgiven. When remember his resurrection, we are reminded that our only hope is that God who created us in the first place would re-create us, breathe life into us, and allow us to share in his eternal life.

Read the full products at http://www.artsunlight.com/.

Taihang Mountain looks good in oil

Oil painting may have been introduced to China from the West, but Chinese oil painter Fan Miao has found his own way to give the medium an Eastern flavor.His exhibition, Landscapes of Mind, at the National Art Museum of China displays 26 of Fan's oil paintings. All his works focus on the landscapes of Taihang Mountain in Hebei province, using painting techniques from neo-Impressionism.

At first glance, Fan's works lie somewhere between oil painting and Chinese traditional painting. The composition of his works reminds people of traditional Chinese landscape paintings, but they are all created with oil on canvas."I want to localize oil paintings in China, so I put the spirit of Chinese landscape painting into my oil painting reproduction," says the 50-year-old artist.

Yang Feiyun, dean of Chinese Academy of Oil Painting, says, "Fan's oil paintings have inherited the spirit of China's traditional culture. The magnificence of the mountains in his pictures echoes the mindset of Chinese painters' love for nature."Many of Fan's works feature snow-covered Taihang Mountain, with trees, villages and the Great Wall. The images are drawn from the artist's memory of his hometown of Baoding, a city at the foot of the mountain.

Scenes typical of Baoding are often featured in Fan's work - red-brick houses with square yards, poplars without leaves and mud roads stretching into the far mountains.In his pursuit to be an artist, Fan has never left school. He is now an art professor at a university in Hebei province. He studied oil painting both for his bachelor's and master's degrees. During his study tour abroad, Fan visited France, Italy and Britain, countries where oil painting originated and continues to be popular.

After seeing the work of the masters of oil painting, Fan decided to incorporate elements of Chinese paintings into his art to distinguish his paintings from those in the West."My husband walks a road different from other artists. He changed his art style years ago. It's a risky road, but he never gives up," says Fan's wife Wang Lijia, a Chinese ink painting artist.

Fan says Chinese traditional landscape paintings try to show harmony between man and nature while oil paintings attach more importance to humans. That's why his pictures always have no people in them, only landscapes, to show the feeling of the painter via his brushes.

“It’s one thing to see what happens and it’s another thing to do it,” Chapman said of Julia Child’s words from her book about life in France, where she fell in love with French food and found her true calling.

“For instance,” Chapman said, “It’s one thing to watch people draw, which is really helpful, but it’s another thing to pick up the pencil and draw what you see.”
The 20-year-old woman, a 2011 Old Lyme High School graduate, is working on a bachelor’s degree of fine arts in painting at Boston University and plans to earn her art education certificate upon graduation, followed by work on her master’s degree. Right now her sights are set on the fall when she applies for a spring semester abroad in Venice.

Helping her along the way will be the $2,000 scholarship she won from the Latin Network for the Visual Arts based in Gales Ferry. The nonprofit arts organization sponsored the award, which the Community Foundation of Eastern Connecticut distributed this summer. It is the third scholarship given by the LNVA to students pursuing the visual arts in college, in keeping with the group’s mission to enrich the southeastern Connecticut community through visual arts created by contemporary Latin artists whose roots lie in Romance language speaking countries.

LNVA Co-Founder Mimi Daumy noted in Chapman’s thank-you letter that the student said “you are making it possible for me to focus on my studies while I am in school” even though she is quite busy “in a cooperative house doing chores and cooking dinner in return for affordable housing.”

She based the cardboard sculpture off the skull of a triceratops from the Harvard Museum of Natural History, first creating sketches, then working with cardboard and hot glue, applying specific strengthening techniques for strong layers.

Chapman also enjoys portrait painting because each one is new and interesting. She worked from a mirror for her self-portrait, while a portrait of her longtime friend Sarah allowed her to focus on facial features and likeness, and she developed her portrait of Renee, one of her housemates, through a series of mini portraits.   

“I love to work with clay, charcoal and oil paints,” Chapman said. “I love the three dimensionality of clay because it informs my paintings. It allows me to bring more depth into my work.For a clay sculpture, she chose an organic food object – a green pepper – which required news skills in looking for organic forms, enlarging it in clay and painting with acrylic.
  
Her first priority aside from academics as an art student consists of the demands and responsibilities of living in and managing affordable housing for undergraduate women. Translation: Chores. Weekly chores, weekend chores, managing chore rotations for bathrooms, chore rotations for the house and cooking several nights a semester for 24 people.   “Being a part of the Harriet E. Richards (HER) Cooperative House at Boston University has been the absolute best thing that has happened to me while at school, among many other amazing opportunities,” Chapman wrote in her scholarship-winning essay to the Community Foundation.

She wrote that she is part of a community on campus that has a rich history dating back to 1928 that creates affordable housing for undergraduate women. The cooperative house provides affordable living for students who need it to complete their education and it operates on a philosophy based on past traditions and a life book by which members abide as a whole.“In return for reduced cost of living,” she wrote, “we complete duties and promote a healthy community within our house.”

Chapman’s “HER Cooperative House” oil on canvas painting, at 5-by-7 feet, is her largest and presented challenges of incorporating many of her cooperative house members doing daily activities, while not having them sit for her at the same time.

Read the full products at http://www.artsunlight.com/.

Exhibit IV opens with reception

Two Door County artists — oil and cold wax painter Nan Helscher and woodcarver Gary Orthober — pair up with oil painter Steve Langenecker and watercolorist Dannica Walker for Exhibit IV, the final exhibit of Fine Line Design Gallery’s 2013 season.

Helscher said she’d always preferred painting with oil on canvas, and three years ago, she started using cold wax and other media in combination with oils and hard surfaces. What resulted was a new method of “building the paintings up,” using layer after layer to color.

The FIsh Creek resident likes to say that she “sculpts” her paintings, using a variety of materials — palette knives, scrapers, steel wool, even fine paper — to produce her desired results.

Orthober showed an aptitude for woodworking at an early age, but it wasn’t until his retirement in 2003 that he returned to his passion of woodcarving, using a variety of hardwoods, oil painting reproduction, walnut, butternut, maple and birch. He said his goal as a bird carver is to simply carve and paint them as realistically as possible.

“In studying bird anatomy, I’ve found that birds are a lot like humans in that no two are exactly alike in size, color, or personality,” Orthober said. “I like to impose a touch of personality in my birds, whether it’s how they’re posed, how the feathers are fluffed or how I treat the eyes.”

Langenecker began painting at age 9 and has never stopped. Growing up in rural Wisconsin near the Horicon Marsh, he began to paint the fields, woods, and marshes that abounded near his home, with a special focus on the birds and animals that inhabited them. He would be juried into the prestigious Leigh Yawkey Woodson Museum’s international “Birds in Art” exhibit at age 19. Langenecker still paints the landscapes, birds, and animals that once inspired him as a boy.

After studying art in college, Walker went on to pursue a career as a dental ceramist. Returning to painting 20 years later, she believes that the study of faces, essential in cosmetic dentistry, had a great deal of influence on her portrait work.

Doris is mostly a self-taught artist, according to the artist’s statement posted on the Hospital Foundation’s Web Page. She took a few classes from Laverne Benteman and could draw buildings much easier after a few tips. Her first oil painting  was of her great-grandmother when she was 11 years-old.

Doris didn’t do much painting until her children were raised and she didn’t have so much to do on the farm.  For many years, her own children didn’t know their mother could draw and paint, only that she could help them with art projects.

After retiring as an employee of the Linn-Palmer Record, Doris started painting full time. She didn’t have anywhere to paint except at the kitchen table.  She really appreciated having a room just for her artwork after moving to town in 2006.

Watercolor became her first choice and acrylic her second choice of mediums. She felt oil was too messy and smelly for her. Doris enjoys the challenge of drawing and painting what people request. She has painted on several interesting surfaces, such as a bleached dear skull; murals on basement walls; the old laundry mat building in Linn and many cement retaining wall blocks. Many in the community have expressed their appreciation for having their farmsteads, registered cattle, favorite pet, and even babies painted on the blocks used as doorstops.

For a burst of pure color, have a look at Etarae Weinstein's quilt "Key Lime Pie." Its central section is comprised of variously colored horizontal strips of cloth, but what really makes you notice this quilt is a lime green-hued surrounding panel that's as inviting as, well, a key lime pie. Nudged by its prompting title, Weinstein's abstract composition does conjure up a summer dessert.

Most of the other artists in this show are much more overtly realistic in their compositions. Betta Wozniak Fraize has an acrylic painting, "Fun in Baltimore," that is a straightforward depiction of the National Aquarium and other tourist attractions. Little bursts of color are supplied by the bright red paint on the Lightship Chesapeake, which is docked next to the aquarium, and also by the green and blue, dragon-evocative small boats that tourists are using peddle power to operate.

Its depiction of a boy leaning against a badly abraded stucco-coated brick wall qualifies as realism, but a first-floor window in that wall is a dream-worthy aquarium. A turtle and some fish swim within a window frame that's colored a vivid blue, as if this window is an odd aquarium. Visually, the realistic wall and the surreal fish tank window seem like an even greater contrast to each other owing to the near-monochromatic paint treatment used for the wall and the festive colors used for the window.

One of the most appealing works in the show is Ann Horner's oil painting "Antietam." This contemplative depiction of that western Maryland battlefield features four old cannons resting in an otherwise peaceful field. People who have visited Antietam will relate to that mixture of martial and pastoral moods.

Also muted, though in a different sense, is Kathleen Stumpfel's watercolor "Delores." It presents a woman's face as a blend of brown, white and other colors that nearly blend into the similarly colored background. The watercolor medium facilitates this kind of blurring.

Several artists tap into the immediate associations made between certain foods and their coloration. Lisa Coddington's oil painting "My Maryland" is a still-life composition in which cooking pots, spice containers and a single crab definitely set the scene for a meal. That orange-hued crab is not long for this world.

Read the full products at http://artsunlight.com/.

Riding in Tandem

Her husband, Ross, calls her Mosquito because that’s what she looks like to him — all awkward elbows and determination — when he is riding behind her on bicycle trips here in Marin County, Calif., or, farther afield, on more ambitious tours through the hills of Idaho or Italy.

Nancy Goldstein likes cycling well enough, but with him and their two grown sons so crazy for the sport, and now all racing competitively, what choice does she have, really? She knows the lingo, keeps up with the American circuit and is resigned to having nine bicycles dangling from the garage of her sleek new house in Mill Valley, Calif.

Without the associated pull of spokes and oil painting reproduction, there is no doubt she would have spent more of her time in out-of-the-way galleries searching for emerging artists whose work moves her, art collecting being her No. 1 sport.

Occasionally, as happened one day in the walled Tuscan town of San Gimignano, her worlds collide. “We were on this really cool back-roads trip and had just made it to the top of a peak,” said Ms. Goldstein, 56. “We had all of 15 minutes to rest or eat when I spotted a gallery. Inside, I found this incredible oil painting of a bicycle coming out of the box by the Italian artist Marica Fasoli.”

She whipped out her credit card, and the painting almost beat them back to California. It is now prominently displayed in the home office where Mr. Goldstein, 66, a psychologist and author, spends much of his time writing fiction. His most recent book, “Chain Reaction,” is a romantic tale about (what else?) the world of competitive cycling, published in 2011. (The movie rights have been secured, and he sees George Clooney as the perfect choice for the hard-driving father of the young lead character, based not so loosely on himself.)

The bike theme runs so deep through their lives that when asked about her own role in the family, Ms. Goldstein, who worked in real estate before her sons were born, answered with a cycling term. “You could say I’m a domestique,” she said, deploying a clever and apropos double entendre. In cycling, a domestique is a supporting rider who tamps all personal ambition to do whatever is required for the success of the team.

Ms. Goldstein’s star turn came a couple of years ago when she found a lovely half acre of land on the outskirts of town for roughly $1 million. For a decade she had been envisioning their empty nest as an urban loft, an industrial backdrop for her growing art collection. She went about building a team, hiring Aidlin Darling Design as the architect and Susan Collins Weir for interior design.

The design they came up with centers on an open living area that flows directly into a courtyard with a solar-powered lap pool, making the 4,000-square-foot house seem even larger. On either side are the sleeping quarters: the master bedroom on one side and bedrooms for Chase, a law student in New York, and Graham, an undergraduate at the University of Southern California, on the other.

New York City composer David Crowell’s original music score accompanies the visual display of Rebecca Crowell’s paintings paired with artifacts from the Pratt collection. This is an unusual multi-senses presentation for the Museum.

Since 2002 Crowell has been working with cold wax medium and oil, according to her website, after earning her MFA in painting from Arizona State University in 1985, she has led a life “focused on painting.”
Crowell has worked almost daily in her studio in western Wisconsin taking time out only for travels and painting in England, Spain, the Western United States and the Canary Island of Lanzarote.

In the fall of 2011, she was an artist in residence at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annamaghkerrig in Ireland. Crowell is represented in fine art galleries in New Mexico, Colorado, Toronto and Wisconsin. She has recently signed with an agent to represent her in Ireland and the UK and was featured in an exhibit in Dublin, Ireland in October of 2011.

She uses a kind of “memory mapping” to create her works which, although visually quite abstract, often still retain faint echoes of landscape and nature;  its plant life, earth and rocks. For Crowell rugged textures, earthy colors and a feeling of light, open spaces reveals her subliminal interest in the colors, mark-making and abstraction of at least a “memory” of landscape.

Although her work is generally quiet, orderly and meditative in its finished form, her process of working in multiple layers, cutting, scratching and digging back can be quite violent. She couples sharp tools and aggressive “archaeology” with periods of careful editing and decisiveness. She considers the place of any fortunate accidents and random occurrences.

A commentator on Crowell’s website says, “Crowell is an artist of considerable talent and stature and it is not difficult to envisage a major breakthrough into the mainstream of the American art scene in the very near future. Recent international representation would indicate that her future reputation will not just be limited to America.”

Crowell’s work is displayed in galleries around the country and abroad. In conjunction with her show, Crowell will give an Oil and Wax Painting Workshop at Kachemak Bay Campus, this weekend, Aug. 9-11.
“The workshop is very popular and it’s full already,”  Kachemak Bay Campus University Director Carol Swartz said. Participants will explore methods of building up abstract paintings in layers, using cold wax medium, tube paint, powdered pigments and other media.

Read the full products at http://artsunlight.com/.

Feature wildlife-art giants Maynard Reece

At age nineteen, aspiring artist Maynard Reece was introduced to Jay N. “Ding” Darling, Pulitzer Prize winning syndicated cartoonist, nationally acclaimed conservationist, and fine artist. Darling soon became Reece’s aesthetic mentor commenting on the younger artist’s images of wildlife and native landscapes. They became colleagues and friends for the next twenty-three years.

Darling’s images, both cartoon and etchings, became the conscience of conservation for over half a century. While Darling has many legacies, one of his most enduring was the development, creation and implantation of the Federal Duck Stamp Program in 1934 under the U.S. Biological Survey (now the United States Fish and Wildlife Service). The proceeds of this program remain directed towards wetland refuges for wildlife where millions of acres have been rescued, restored and preserved.

“What Darling accomplished during his tumultuous 20-month tenure as Chief of the Biological Survey is dizzying—it would not be far wrong to say he single-handedly revitalized the agency—but the Duck Stamp is the thing everybody remembers.” – Tom Davis

Maynard Reece has won five of the Federal Duck Stamp competitions beginning in 1948 and continuing in 1951,1959, 1969, 1971, more than any other artist. Reece’s wildlife art has been published in many national magazines and his oil paintings are prized by collectors.

“With his design of white-winged scoters in 1969 and cinnamon teal in 1971 (just the second stamp to be issued in color), Reece became the first artist to win five Federal Duck Stamps—a record that’s still unmatched and one that makes him the contest’s undisputed king. When Reece and Ding Darling were proclaimed “perhaps the two most oil painting reproduction in the history of the Federal Duck Stamp” in the exhibition Artistic License: The Duck Stamp Story at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Postal Museum, it only confirmed what everyone familiar with the program already knew.” –Tom Davis

The exhibition, In Pursuit of Wildlife Conservation: Jay N. Darling and Maynard Reece will include 75 etchings by Jay N. “Ding” Darling, including Darling’s original 1934 Duck Stamp and etching, and 30 paintings by Maynard Reece, including the five paintings for the Federal Duck Stamps. A highlight of the exhibition is a newly commissioned painting by Maynard Reece to commemorate the Reece-Darling relationship with wildlife conservation.

The show, now in its 45th year, is open to all those with a Vineyard contact address and draws exhibitors from across the country. The Tabernacle in the Camp Ground was transformed into an open air gallery, with paintings, collages and photographs hanging from wire walls ringing the structure. Artists sat just off the path, displaying items for sale and chatting with the crowds that passed through. Mrs. Barden sat near her own watercolor entries — a trio of Vineyard scenes that featured a heron, Memorial Wharf, and the Oak Bluffs Bandstand. The paintings were done back in California, she said, based on photographs she had taken while on the Island.

A slight breeze ruffled the leaves of the Camp Ground trees, and the sun glinted off the glass on the framed photographs and paintings. Earlier in the day, said show committee member Marietta Cleasby, the stained glass windows of the Tabernacle beamed their colorful light down on the dozens of ribbons waiting to be handed out.

“It’s what you always dream a summer day should be,” said Mrs. Cleasby, whose oil paintings hung on a nearby wall. She’s seen overcast days, windy days, and rainy days in the 20-plus years she has helped organize the show, and declared Monday’s “the best day we’ve had yet.”

Judges roamed the grounds with clipboards, and attendees roamed with star stickers, deciding which entry will merit their Viewer’s Choice honor. Stickers still cost just 10 cents, but each person gets only one. Decisions were not to be taken lightly.
Cousins Abaigh Flaherty, 12, and Claire Fresher, 7, walked around the entire Tabernacle studying each entry before deciding on their favorite piece. Claire decided on a Kate Murray-Joyce waterfall painting, stretching on her tiptoes to place her star, while Abaigh added hers to the three stars already on Heather Capece’s vivid mermaid painting. The painting was later awarded Most Popular, earning eight stars.

Committee member Peter Yoars said that although the number of entries was down compared to previous years, the volume of visitor traffic was the same. Artists can show no more than five pieces, in categories ranging from acrylics to mixed media, or enter the portfolio category, where a maximum of 30 pieces offered. They set their own prices for the works, but some are priceless, listed as Not For Sale.

One such painting, a watercolor by Donna Blackburn, earned the coveted Best of Show award. Mrs. Blackburn lives in Edgartown and enters the art show on a yearly basis. She began work on the still life, which features her friend Virginia’s colorful tea set against Mrs. Blackburn’s favorite brocade tablecloth, last Sunday.

Read the full products at artsunlight.com.

Picture Frames Are the Art

At a gallery in Long Island City, Queens, Diego Salazar displays his unique collection of art, which is as lovely as it is peculiar. About 250 pieces hang in his main gallery, stacked one inside the next like Russian dolls. Some are covered in cherubs or crosses, others are gilded, and a few are more than 400 years old.

They are picture frames, but nearly every one of them stands empty. The frames themselves are the art.“Sometimes I buy a painting because I fall in love with the frame,” Mr. Salazar said, gesturing to a lonely portrait banished frameless on the floor. “Then I put the picture up for auction.”

Mr. Salazar spent many decades manufacturing frames out of Brooklyn and Queens, and today he is a collector and dealer of frames that are antiques, and can easily cost tens of thousands of dollars each. But as one might imagine, the market for such treasures is limited, so happily for Mr. Salazar, he does not just own that elaborate and varied collection of frames, but also the 40,000-square-foot building in which they hang. When he bought the building, according to his tenants and his wife, the place was a dump.

Mr. Salazar has a sharp eye for things most people briskly overlook. The outlet for this skill that has brought him the most satisfaction, he says, are his antique frames, a collection of about 1,000 pieces that he describes in tones usually reserved for beautiful women. The outlet that has brought him the most money, however, has been real estate, a collection of three buildings in neighborhoods that were long disregarded.

“When he first took me to see the building he bought in Greenpoint, it looked like somebody had dropped a bomb and then left for a year,” his wife, Gladys Salazar, said. “He said, ‘Look at this wonderful place.’ And I was like, ‘Oh my God!'”Large two-bedroom apartments in that building now start at $3,650 per month.

Antique picture frames can generally cost anywhere from $8,500 to $500,000, depending on the age, rarity and quality. But even enthusiasts like Laurence Kanter, chief curator at the Yale University Art Gallery, says those with an interest in the frames themselves are an uncommon breed, and have been for centuries. Asked to put Mr. Salazar’s collection in context, Eli Wilner, a frame dealer who restores antiques and sells precise replicas from his collection of 3,500 pieces, said he could think of only one other person, a client of his in Florida, who collected frames for their own sake.“Almost always, people buy a frame because of the painting,” Mr. Wilner said.

Today, Mr. Salazar owns the rental building in Greenpoint, once a commercial laundry facility that is now packed with skylights and exposed brick walls, as well as two buildings in Long Island City. One of those, which looks a bit like an abstract Lego creation, he developed himself. The third, on 44th Avenue, houses his gallery. (Mrs. Salazar said that when they bought that building 20 years ago, they welcomed themselves to the neighborhood by making daily calls to the police to complain about a constant parade of prostitutes and their patrons.)

Even the tenants that the Salazars have chosen for their building on 44th Avenue display their tendency to look where others might not. More than 40 of the building’s 49 spaces are occupied by painters, sculptors and other artists who use the brightly lighted spaces as their oil painting reproduction.

There is Elinore Schnurr, a painter who rents a room down the hall from Mr. Salazar’s main gallery, and who has been in his buildings for the better part of 30 years. There is her next-door neighbor, Christina Zuccari, who is third generation in a family business devoted to restoring oil paintings. And just upstairs, there is Robert Jon Badia, an architect and painter who admits that Mr. Salazar’s enthusiasm for frames has rubbed off on him.

The Japanese owner of a Pierre-Auguste Renoir painting, which was stolen from his home in 2000, was surprised to discover that Sotheby’s in London sold it for more than $1,000,000 in February.The oil painting, “Madame Valtat” -- completed and signed by the famous French Impressionist in 1903 -- was taken, along with five other works from a Tokyo man’s home, in August 2000, according to investigative sources cited in a Japan Times report.The art collector -- who has not been identified -- informed Japanese police after noticing in March the piece had been sold at auction for $1.6 million.

Japanese investigators have not yet identified the thief, who also nabbed works by Russian-born French painter Marc Chagall and Japanese artist Ikuo Hirayama from the man's home.
The Renoir had not appeared on a list of lost or stolen artwork on an international database, so Sotheby’s did not catch it before it went on the block. The Japan Times reported that the owner notified police in Japan after the heist, but neither he nor the authorities contacted the stolen items database to have the works listed.The painting’s owner intends to get the piece back, but may have trouble identifying who bought it because Sotheby’s keeps client information confidential.

Sotheby’s told Japan’s Kyodo News that the seller of the Renoir had acquired it legitimately in 2000 and was able to prove rightful ownership with representations and warranties on the painting.Investigators believe the painting was probably sold to the seller shortly after it was stolen. Sotheby’s said it has been looking into the possibility the work was stolen and is communicating with the parties involved.

Read the full http://artsunlight.com/.