Intolerant of cold, the beautiful lotus of the summertime has always been a favored subject for artists and poets, but tends to lose its glamour as the seasons move on. Woodcarving artist Chien Cheng-hsing (簡政興), however, has his own interpretation of withered lotus leaves. While many viewers are simply amazed by the realism of his works, which mimic pieces of dry, broken lotus leaves down to the finest details, others find the shape of the curving leaves gives them the impression of a meditating monk, an elegant dancer or something else. “In contemporary art, you call it abstract and in Buddhism, we call it formless,” Chien says. “When something is formless, it allows space for the imagination.”

Born to a farming family in Daxi Township, Taoyuan County in northern Taiwan in 1957, Chien understood as a little boy that he would have to work to help support the family as soon as he completed his compulsory education. The question was what his profession would be and the answer came in the final year of junior high school when Chien, who was working as an intern at a piano manufacturer’s Daxi factory, watched as a craftsman of traditional Chinese furniture carved a block of leftover wood into a crane. “I was so fascinated by the technique that I knew immediately it was a career I’d want to pursue,” Chien recalls. “I asked if I could learn from him, he said ‘yes’ and I became his apprentice right after graduating from junior high school.” Motivated by a strong interest in the craft, Chien picked up the techniques of decorative Chinese furniture carving quickly and became a craftsman after 40 months as an apprentice.

At the time, Daxi was one of the production centers of traditional Chinese wooden furniture. Business was good enough to keep all the town’s craftsmen busy, but there seemed to be something missing for Chien. “There are strict rules on what you can do and how you can do it, and apprentices follow the teachings of master craftsmen to the letter,” he says. “The same stuff has been taught and learned by generations of furniture craftsmen, and a sense of aesthetics and creativity is usually not needed in the trade.”

Chien Cheng-hsing works on one of his interpretations of withered lotus leaves. (Photo by Huang Chung-hsin)

Beauty and Creativity

Such relatively unchallenging work kept Chien from developing his abilities until he got a long break when he had to leave the trade temporarily to perform his compulsory military service. To develop his sense of beauty and creativity, Chien spent most of his free time during his three years in the military reading art-related books and learning sketching, Chinese painting and calligraphy. The interruption of his carving career, as it turned out, became an opportunity for advancement.

Shortly after completing his military service, Chien became an apprentice of master craftsman Chen Zheng-xiong (陳正雄). Chen had been recruited to work on the restoration of Sanxia Zushi Temple in New Taipei City, which was then under the supervision of master painter Li Mei-shu (李梅樹, 1902–1983). After Li took charge in 1947 of the third restoration project of the temple, which was originally constructed in 1769, he insisted on doing the work in the traditional way by employing traditional craftsmen, Chien says. The policy continued for a period of time after Li passed away, so when Chen took Chien on at the long-running restoration project in 1984, there were a lot of opportunities for Chien to learn from Taiwan’s best craftsmen. Later, traditional craftsmanship was replaced by using cheaper carvings produced in mainland China.

Since different techniques are used in carving different parts of a temple, Chien had the chance to pick up skills other than those used in furniture carving. One of the key techniques he learned at the time was hollowing carving, which, as the name suggests, is a technique that removes some of the interior of a block of wood while keeping the outer layer intact. Some simpler works using this technique include the ball-in-cage, in which a single piece of wood is carved into a cage that encloses a freely moving ball, and wooden chains. Since there is very limited space when working on the inner parts, hollowing carving is seen as one of the more difficult carving techniques to master. But although his experience of working at Sanxia Zushi Temple provided a great opportunity to advance his craftsmanship, Chien did not find too much creativity in temple carving. Patterns or animals featured in temple woodworks, for example, are often associated with Mandarin homophones and are intended to convey specific cultural or religious connotations. “Compared to furniture carving, temple carving has even more rules and restrictions,” Chien says. “You don’t want to offend the gods by crafting something unorthodox.”

Crouching, Listening to the Rain
Taiwan red cypress
60 x 146 x 40 cm
(Photo Courtesy of Chien Cheng-hsing)

Chien left the restoration project in 1989 when his mother passed away and he had to return home to take care of his father. He set up his own workshop where he made traditional Chinese furniture and carved statues of gods. For the latter, he started to cultivate an understanding of Buddhist doctrines. In fact, for a trained craftsman, it is not difficult to carve a statue of a god, but Chien says that “to translate the spirit of a god into a wooden statue, you have to know the teachings and meanings of the doctrines.”

The artist explains that over the long history of Buddhism in China, the manner in which a countless procession of craftsmen portrayed the gods became standardized and stereotypical. “But still, people can tell—or rather feel—the ‘differences’ from one to another,” he says of the varying connotations conveyed by different carvings.

The effort to understand Buddhism’s teachings gave Chien a closer understanding of the religion but very little financial reward. Taiwan’s overall woodcarving industry declined quickly in the 1990s as people increasingly chose to spend their money on cheaper products from mainland China. “We are confident in our craftsmanship, but there’s no way we can compete pricewise,” Chien says. “Price, unfortunately, is the dominant factor for most people when making purchasing decisions.” He explains that to increase productivity, mainland China has turned all types of crafts into mass-market products where craftsmen sit along a production line and each worker is responsible for a small part of the final item. In fact, even after adding the cost of all the raw materials, labor and shipping together, the mainland Chinese “products” usually are still cheaper than a block of wood in Taiwan. Faced with such a declining market, many Taiwanese craftsmen have shifted to other professions.

Heartless Cloud
Camphorwood
90 x 60 x 40 cm
(Photo Courtesy of Chien Cheng-hsing)

As with the few others who chose to hang in there in the woodcarving industry in Taiwan, Chien had to make adjustments to survive. Like most of those craftsmen, he decided to go the fine arts route. At first, Chien went with realistic carvings of small animals, birds and plants—subjects commonly seen in traditional carving. Realistic carving was actually not very challenging for the sophisticated craftsman, but the art training he gained during his military service years enabled him to compose his designs better than other craftsmen-turned-artists.

To make his name known, Chien started participating in woodcarving contests. He won “work of excellence” awards in a few of them, but did not do too well in many other contests and was hardly a name that most collectors sought after. The contests, however, offered great opportunities to learn, especially from young artists. Chien explains that younger artists, many of whom receive training at the university level, usually do not have the technical skills of old-school craftsmen, while the old-school craftsmen do not have the creativity of their youthful peers. “Our works look, well, real and solid, while theirs look unique and creative,” Chien says. “An artist needs to have a unique style to be noticed, but I guess I’d just been carving what everyone else had and I needed to find something of my own.”

Knowing what to do, however, is a few steps away from knowing how to do it. Chien found himself in that quandary until one day in 2000, when lotuses in a pond near his workshop caught his eye. He recalls that it was shortly after a typhoon and many of the lotus leaves, though broken, were still hanging on with a type of unique beauty. Determined to express that special beauty in his works, Chien started to carve his first lotus. In the beginning, he took the usual approach by faithfully and accurately carving lotus leaves down to the finest detail, but Chien was not totally happy with the result. “I’m not the first or the only artist to carve lotuses,” he says. “I was still just carving what everyone else was and I still didn’t have anything new.”

An Unobstructed View

After more observations and trials, in 2003 Chien completed See Through—the first “lotus leaf” carving he was really happy with. The work features a piece of broken lotus leaf and in its holes, the artist endeavored to “see through” the outer layer of wood, or, in line with Buddhist teachings, the material aspect of life. By doing so, Chien hoped to gain a better understanding of his inner self, as well as an unobstructed view from which he could interpret the world. Starting with See Through, Chien has used lotus leaves to express his understanding of Zen and Buddhist doctrines, as well as his life experiences and observations of society. For example, the Mandarin name for Love for a Leaf is Yi Ye Qing, which sounds identical to the phrase “one night stand” in that language. The work features a piece of broken lotus leaf with a spider web in one of the holes. The crumbling leaf and spider web seem so fragile that they could be blown away any minute, just like a one night stand.

Vision
Taiwan incense cedar
103 x 60 x 43 cm
(Photo Courtesy of Chien Cheng-hsing)

One thing Chien believes to be very helpful in expressing his ideas freely is his training in Chinese painting, in which the conveyance of mood or concept is emphasized more than form. “The shapes of the leaves are changing constantly and so versatile that they can be transformed into any ideas I want to express,” he says.

Since 2003, lotus leaf carvings expressing different moods and concepts have won Chien more than a few first prizes in various national contests. Meanwhile, the works have become so popular that collectors who wish to obtain one must now add their name to the bottom of a long waiting list.

Backed up by two decades of refining his woodcarving skills in furniture and temple carving, Chien has transformed from a craftsman to an artist. While his detailed lotus leaves are about as realistic as they come, the ideas the artist wants to express through them are mostly abstract. Under Chien’s carving knife, a world of imagination emerges from one simple lotus leaf.

Write to Jim Hwang at jim@mail.gio.gov.tw

Embrace
Formosan michelia
106 x 70 x 50 cm
(Photo Courtesy of Chien Cheng-hsing)