Hello!

Apologies for my absence lately. Life has...well happened. We have been super busy getting over colds, finalizing visa papers, attempting to have a social life and keeping up with class and some personal paintings.

Class has been going great, we have life drawing at the moment. Its pretty free and we can do whatever we want. The teacher did a really nice sketch of me the other day. Professor Ou did this of me while i was drawing.


This link is of some goofy photos...

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=62069&l=e79c7&id=681242245

This link is of us being obnoxious and having a good time with some of our fellow students. We had "Hot Pot" and played games...it was a blast!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=62068&l=80f74&id=681242245

This link is of one of the nearby villages that i went to with Alvin...i took some cool photos!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=60891&l=db0d3&id=68124224

Guilin...

I do not think my words can begin to do this justice, so i offer photos:

(click on view album to see the slide show larger)

View Album

Get your own

Guilin!

Change of plans...Jessica and i are going to Guilin for 5 days.

Hopefully an adventure awaits and photos upon my return.

Hasta

Mid Autumn Festival

Tonight the Mid Autumn Festival was celebrated.  There was a talent show put on by the freshmen and everyone ate mooncake.  There were fireworks everywhere and no school tomorrow.  It was quite the celebration and many of the students went to their home towns to visit their families.

The village

the never ending still life...

Shenanigans

I think landscape painting in China may be more difficult than i anticipated.  Genetic defects make some predators albino and ruin their chances of survival.  Their prey see them coming from long distances and evade capture.  They usually end up malnourished or die.  I am the awkward albino in this landscape.  I sat out to paint by a temple in front of the water.  I was doing a small landscape painting for about four hours, that should have taken me two.  I think in some odd masochistic way i will miss being the freak show celebrity here.  People's curiosity lead them to me.  To talk, to stare, to ask, to try to befriend.  In a way it is flattering, but unproductive.  It is really difficult to draw in public, when the public is staring at you.  It is a hard to compose when six people ask to take photos with you.  Difficult to concentrate when two people want to be your friend for the sole purpose of practicing their english and seeking information on how to go to the states.  

I smile and abide.

Some photo seekers...

little paintings that keep me occupied...top right is the one i did today

::peace sign and smiles::

Second week...

Hola hola,

The second week is coming to a close.  It has been raining quite a bit and i have never heard thunder like this.  Its cracks and rumbles hurt my ears.  We are still working on our still life in class.  He is having us cover the canvas in desaturated colors and we are blocking in.  He strongly encourages the use of liquin to thin out the paint and glazing.  We have one more week with Professor Xie, then we will have a new instructor in our studio.  One of the recent familiar sounds i hear in the morning, during class, and night are the marching soldiers.  Every college student in China has to serve in a two week military program in their first year of college.  It is grueling and they go all day long.

Freshman orientation

Jessica and i have also been frequenting downtown Guangzhou trying to get our residency figured out.  In order for it all to go through, we had to get physicals through China.  Luckily with our American physical check ups we only had to have blood drawn and an chest x-ray.

Street performers

Jess laughing at the stares she gets

we just had to go to Starbucks...

One more week of this class, then we will have a 7 day break.  Our next conquest is Xi'an.  Our friend Sophia is taking us for the week.  It is one of the main tourist attractions in China and houses the Terra Cotta Soldiers.  I am pretty excited.

Hasta

First week of school is up!

Hola Hola,

Jessica and I survived the first week!  We have not started painting yet, but have or canvases prepped and ready for action.  This studio is very concerned with the process and doing everything exact from the beginning in order to have a beautiful smooth painting.  One of things i found quite odd was the addition of oil into their gesso.  They do not buy buckets of wet gesso like in America, rather mix their own latex, powders, and water.  On the last coat of gesso, he added black ink and oil into the mixture.  It goes against the whole oil should not be mixed with water and latex that i learned back home, but i am here to learn, so i abided.  Today i am going to finish my preliminary drawing to show Professor Xie tomorrow.

Professor Xie showing us the mixtures...

The gesso that we created

Our beautiful still life i will be investigating for the next three weeks

Everyone chose their own still life...this duck is amazing

quack

quack

Yesterday we spent all day at Chime Long Water Park.  It was a unique lesson in humility.  Everywhere i go, i get stares.  My visit to the water park further escalated this awe in the Chinese people.  Being over six feet tall, hairy, bearded, tan (by comparison), and light eyed is everything these people never see.  I get wows from people just walking through the park.  I received cheers when sliding down one of the large water slides.  Mind you this is my first visit to a water park and i do not quite know how things work.  The next water slide i went on was larger and i went down feet first without a mat.  I was gifted a chlorine water enema from the high speed.  Live and learn.  After my unpleasant blunder a huge thunderstorm hit and sent us all running.  We ventured home eventually and i slept for about 12 hours.  Now i am off to draw!

Stormy

Very stormy

pool with Winnie and Alex

Smiles

Bye!

Internet!

Hey all,

My main source of internet lately has been sitting out on my balcony stealing internet from a neighbor.  It stopped working on Monday and just kicked up again, so I am out on my balcony once again.  We are getting DSL installed in our rooms next week for a more reliable connection.  We have had a wonderful week and have started classes.  Jessica and I are in Studio 1 with Alex and Winnie (Possibly the cutest couple ever).  Studio one is the most traditional oil painting studio in GAFA.  There are five studios total, 1 being the most traditional and 5 being the most contemporary and modern oil painting studio.  Based on the professor's lecture and slide show he made it readily apparent that studying with Yu Ji has instilled the "Northern Style."  Here at GAFA all the students have a high level of technical skill and are very talented.  They draw very smooth and paint with many glazes.  I find their work quite beautiful, but have grown to love what Yu Ji has taught us.  Although i have his teachings in my head, i am here to learn and i am quite excited to try their style.  Our first assignment is a three week long still life.

This is the view from Studio 1...the building at the end are our dorms.  Not to far of a walk.

This is the inside of Studio 1

Professor Xie teaching us how to stretch a canvas.  He is starting us out from the very bottom, and teaching us all the simple details.

Another exciting bit of news is that Jessica and I purchased a washing machine.  It was about 100 dollars and it is now situated between our rooms in the outside hallway.  I am quite excited about having it...because i am lazy and will try to evade washing my clothes by hand.  We bought it used and had to barter with the man, then he kindly delivered it on the back of his motorcycle.

Waiting on the washing machine...

Shrimp vendor on the street

beautiful rubble...

This man has the right idea...

this friend just dropped in out of a tree...

the marquee glowing in my window at night

MY NEW BABY!

I now introduce you to my new love...this is my Holga 120.  It is a cheap plastic 120 mm toy camera.  Its a very simple device that produces pictures with distortion, vignetting, and colored flash goodness.  Since its 120 mm it produces really high quality beautiful photos.  It was initially made in Hong Kong and is still produced here in China.  If you would like to read more about this sweet little piece, then check out:

http://www.lomography.com/holga/

Hasta

Another exciting day!

Hola,

First things first.  I must introduce you to my new love.  My bike.  It has all a boy could ever want.  It possesses a basket, tall handle bars, a bell, a tall seat, spray painted imperfections, and a sweet rack on the back that can transport a small Asian friend for a short distance.  I am becoming quite attached...

Sophia took us out to dinner last night and out to downtown Guangzhou today.  She took us on the metro.  It is the cleanest easiest to use public transportation that i have ever seen.  I have only used New York's, Italy's, and the poor excuse for a public transportation system that LA claims to have.  It was clean, effective, and air conditioned.  Our first stop was The Guang dong Museum of Folk Handicrafts that was housed within a temple.  It was filled with many little shows of sculpture, embroidery, and ceramics.  I was more taken by the temple itself than the artwork.  These temples possess something i have never experienced before.  Coming from a Mexican-American background i have experienced Catholic and Christian places of worship.  Although Europe had some breathtaking churches, none of them compare to this.  They were vast and housed some of the art that i can only dream of creating, but this temple touched me in a different way.  I felt a nostalgia for something that i never actually experienced, nor comprehend, or ever will.  I know those are awkward abstract words that don't even begin to verbalize my feelings, it is just difficult to describe the serenity and perfection of this place.  Nature and vast earth creations have the capacity to do this to me, but i have never been moved by architecture before.

the entrance

I make friends everywhere i go

intricate beauty everywhere i looked

the gang: Sophia, Jessica, Ying, and Luis

a building beside the temple...gorgeous

We then went to The Museum of the Nan-Yue King in the Western-Han Dynasty.  It was full of ancient relics and excavated tombs that we got to see inside of.  After that we went to "Old GAFA.," which i believe was the former location of our school and now houses GAFA's graduate program.  We wandered through the campus and saw they're huge sculpture garden.  There was also a show going on in their three story university art museum.  It was the 1st Grand Exhibition of Primary and Secondary School Teachers Art in Guangdong Province.  It was a beautiful show and i took many photos of the work.  After that we accompanied Sophia to buy some books then headed back to GAFA.

the street with the book shops

I am really enjoying it here.  The living conditions are good, the food is great, the people are wonderful, and now i look forward to the education.  One of the few things that strikes me time after time is the stares i that get.  It is slightly awkward and entertaining due to the fact that everyone does it.  Not just children or a few curious people, but everyone.  Definitely pins the foreigner sign on my forehead.  It really exemplifies that in California we live in a rich diverse area.  Perhaps we take that for granted?  I am an alien here, an oddity.  I am this because of my ethnicity, my height, my beard, and my willingness to put myself here.  

hasta pasta

Chancellor's Gallery

Hola,

A quick announcement for you all.  As i mentioned earlier in my blog while i was in Italy, some student art was chosen to be displayed at the Chancellor's Gallery in the CSU Chancellor's Office in downtown Long Beach.  They will display it for a year and frame it for us.  These are landscape paintings we created while in Italy.

This is my painting they chose.

This is Nick Skoug's painting that got chosen for the show.  It is of me painting in the park and i am painting the painting above that got chosen.

If you would like to check out all the art pieces that got chosen, then check out:

http://www.csusummerarts.org/chancellor_gallery/index08.shtml

BYE!

More shopping in the village

Hey again,

We went off to the village again, and i took my camera this time.  We bought some hot noodles and i learned how to order them.  They were delicious like everything else in this country.  I also went to the art shop and picked up all my paints, an easel art box for landscape painting, brushes, and some canvases.  Everything is very affordable and large tubes of paint are about $1.50.  So life is still good here and please enjoy the photos.

outdoor fruit market

watermelon!

fresh chicken!

Jessica

the art shops...

My room

 I finally got my room all set up. It is very simple and i have a mosquito net.  I spent about two days cleaning it, its not perfect my any means, but pretty good for my standards. Wow, I almost sounded ungrateful there...this room is actually larger than my room at my uncle's house in Hawaiian Gardens while i was going to Long Beach.  Not to mention that most of the students here share their rooms with 2 to 3 other students.  Their rooms are the same size as ours and 2 rooms share one bathroom.  I am very happy with my luxury room and here are a few photos.  If you click on the individual photos they will enlarge so you can see them clearer.

Closet area

My food shelf and Jessica

My desk and beautiful fan

My bed and mosquito net

Some photos!

Jessica in the spiral in the shopping center

Luis in the spiral at the shopping center

The bunker marketplace...

My lovely friends...

...and it is still hot here (Hampton Farming hat woot woot!)