CLAIRE's: 2009

The theme for this collage is about revealing/hiding, personal experience and framing of views. There's a play between foreground and background in this collage. The feeling of walking on the rockery impressed me that a likely way on walking on the mountain. There's little opening in rockery, which create a framing of view that similar to a revealing window. The geometry of the rock describes the feeling of walking on the mountain. The central piece draws the major attention, which tries to render the image that what you suppose to see through the rockery's opening.

This collage is trying to tell the relationship with tree branches and leaves. The yellow and red leaves I added on the front of this image is showing the slow and unstopped death of the luxuriance, just like the Chinses ancient dynasties dying in the history. The balk tree in the back is, yet humble and hidden, presenting a strong and long-lasting life basing on the root of a nation.

This is the thought from the comparison between old Chinese religion and old Chinese garden. One was the most popular faith at that time and one was the dream of people who wants to be. But both of them were limited by pure idealisation. The reflections and shadows make the bridge float in the air and the running water with the dropping rains mixed together as a new view.

The subject here is running stones and the relationship wiht the mountain. I cut the paper in nine little rectangles and then choose the photos of mountains from different gardens. The rearrangment is the major thinking in thiscollage making. The grids devide but also make a link between two photos. And the outcom, I think, is showing the idea sand reason to build up a mountain. An extreme nature is telling us that the official life disgusts those retired formal officials.

Trees are always the important to the old Chinese garden designers. It is bevelived that different trees present one specific meanings in fengshui which was a logical thinking in the ancient time. This collage is trying to tell a feeling by the shapes and the color of the leaves. The ancient girl figure gives a strong image which has impressed me in last few days. Also it is a gathering of leaves which make the sense of a ideal world.

For this collage, the idea is to show more details of corridors in the garden. The combination of the ceilings and the textures on the ground and walls would enrich the simple straight corridor as today's city roads rather than the sinuous pathways running in the mountains.

In this collage, the mixed media was used as a different collage making thinking. The materials that I used were rice paper, watercolor paper, photos, colored magazine and watercolor paint etc. The idea tends to present the relationship with the major elements using in Suzhou gardens, which were like flowing water, bridge, tree and mountains. The importance of arrangment of those elements would tell the taste and position about the owner. It was so wanted to created a ideal world for themselves which was excessively natural looking of using special rocks to make a small mountain or complex water systems.

This collage is talking about the layers of inner and outer views. I choose a very heavy color tone, which I think is much closer the feelings of the Chinese garden owner who wants to get rid of the difficult life in the reality. The rigid tree branches get towards along to the walls, and the heavier green presents the close shot of a closer view but facing the opposite way of sunlight. The second layer is little brighter than the first layer, which means there is a bit gap and makes an emphsis of the second layer. The upper left is my third layer with a darker color of another wall in a different view angle. The background is repressed with using a greenblack color.

This collage captures different snapshot of trees and patterns that found on the wall. In Chinese garden, there's a strong link between trees and walls. The trees and walls were supplemented each other. The tree climb up base on the wall, meanwhile the walls were gained texture and become textured because of the corrosion of the chunks. In this sense, I equalized these snapshots and organized them in sequenced. There's a horizontal line that draws the attention through the five photos. It tells the transformation about the process and creates a consequence for this composition.