For Chinese pottery artist Zhu Legeng, the first day of the new year has a special impact, as he stays at his personal exhibition at China National Art Gallery, and received friends sharing the same love for pottery with him.
"Look at this item, this one is made out of high temperature which is very difficult to handle with," Zhu said to an old man, who was looking at his works very carefully.
"Actually, I don't know this man, " Zhu told Xinhua, adding he only wanted to share more with those who know something about pottery.
Zhu's wife Fang Lili commented his enthusiasm in pottery as a kind of "being obsessed". When they first get to know each other, the only thing they did together when dating was to collect clay and pick up broken pieces of pottery.
After their marriage, Fang recalled, Zhu went to Japan for further study and returned with books on pottery.
"Zhu is born to be a pottery artist who always inspired others with his inborn gift ".
Zhu, now 53-year old, was born in Jingdezhen city, known as "capital of pottery" in east China's Jiangxi Province. Zhu's father was also a well-known painter and pottery artist. Zhu took part in pottery making and received training on both Chinese traditional painting and western painting styles when he was boy.
During the course of watching the pottery making by old-generation potters, Zhu learned a lot of skills on folk pottery art, which later helped him develop a unique style of his own based on high-temperature pottery making.
At his personal exhibition, a series of photos attracted wide attention from audience, which was about the pottery work Zhu made for the inner and outside walls of the Wheat Music Hall in Seoul of Republic of Korea (ROK). Zhu spent three years in developing a kind of clay bricks that could combine a beautiful outlook and effective echo function.
Zhu gradually made 54 tons of bricks out of 1,300 centigrade, and install them into walls. These walls, giving a visionary effect of a colored picture featuring traditional Chinese ink painting style, also has strong echo effect that surpassed the professional furnishing material.
Zhu's works have been exhibited in numerous domestic or international ceramic art exhibitions; successively more than 40 works gained prizes.
Although many of his works were sold at high price, Zhu never reproduce them. "Every piece of work coming out of fire is a combination of nature and life. The copied ones will not have its soul even with the same outlook."
Shao Dazhen, well-known art critic with the China Central Institute of Fine Arts, said Zhu would have no boundary in his artistic life just because he never repeats himself.
The sun shed its light on Zhu's work and made them look brilliant in diversified colors. This visionary effect once again pushed Zhu into a sense of "being obsessed", and made him more confirmed of what he believed. " Pottery art should and will be passed on generation by generation," Zhu said, gently touching his works with his clay-colored fingers.
(Xinhua News Agency January 4, 2006)
