My Visit to Dafan Art Village in Shenzhen

Dafan Art Village Entrance

When you are sitting around in Shenzhen China with nothing to do there are a few options. You can visit the Minsk, a decommissioned Soviet era aircraft carrier, go haggle for iPad covers and fake watches or you can try to find some hand made stuff. Well, hand made as it turns out is a little difficult to find. At least hand made as we expect it to be. So today a friend and I tried our luck Dafan Art Village in North East Shenzhen. According to what we researched online it was an area known for mainly for oil paintings but we hoped to find something a little bit more. After all, where there is an art community there should be a variety of artists.

As we approached the area a large hand with brush sculpture (left) invited us to enter the artists coven. Other sculptures were scattered around a small garden reminiscent of the Venus De Milo with accompanying quasi Greco Roman architecture. Once you pass this area you begin to see the more familiar scenes of Chinese communities (below). Rows and rows of merchant streets with small alley ways bisecting them.

Dafan Art Village Street

(left) Dafan Alley | (right) Inappropriate Sculpture Arrangement

The remarkable thing was it really is 95% oil painters! We barely saw any other type of artist here. Both of us had hoped to see sculpture, pottery, jewelry or any other nameable art form. But it really was an oil painting village. That's not to say we didn't enjoy it though. Looking at painting just by themselves is always fun plus there is ton's of entertainment too. One of the few sculpture's we saw had these on display (left). I call it "The Inappropriate Sculpture Arrangement". The red guy in front is part of a trend in Asian art I saw two years ago in Paris. Caricatures of Asian people with exaggerated facial features. But the guy behind is clearly Bruce Lee and let me assure you he's anatomically correct. I'd show you a different view but I kinda wanna keep my blog PG-13. You get the idea.

The genre's on display do vary but the two very dominant one's were classical Asian and European reproductions. If you have the time (as I did) you can sort through the stacks and stacks of canvas and pull out the gems. You can haggle too of course. I got all of these (below) for $27.00 USD and I probably could have got them even cheaper if I was an ass. I haggled on quantity and started to haggle on the larger canvases and then I put things in perspective. I couldn't get one of these small one's for $27.00 back home so I'll give this guy a break. Plus, he let me use his bathroom which is a story for another blog entitled, "Places You Can Go To Feel Better About Your Life".

All Of These For $27.00 USD

These are all original oil paintings. Which brings me to one important little warning if you should ever find yourself here or any other similar market around the globe. Take a close look especially when there are duplicates. For instance, you can see the two paintings of The Cathedral of Notre Dame side by side as well as the Eiffel Tower paintings. The compositions are the same but the details are different. People are in different places, building facades vary, trees have moved and are different scales, altered perspective, etc. This is a sign that they were original paintings done by a skilled artist and NOT a paint by numbers hack job. I busted a few small outfits painting over digital ghosts on canvas. It was pretty obvious though with every duplicate looking exactly the same. Plus, the stroke work wasn't up to par either.

The last cool little things I want to note is you can get one of these artists to do an oil of any picture you can supply. So if you want an oil of your daughter, your dog or yourself you can drop off a picture and come back in a few days to get your painting. Personally, I've always wanted a really obnoxious 19th century painting of myself in Scottish Military Regalia (Right). It would have to be in my Lamont tartan though and I would add a loyal West Highland Terrier too. I can picture it now hanging above my mantle where I can stare at myself until I grow old. Next, trip . . . it's happening!

Next Sunday before I head back home I think I'll try another enclave that's rumored to have jewelry and stones. I can always use some raw material for my work and I have just the thing in mind if I can find good stuff.

Midnight In Paris - The Part Critics Missed

Midnight In Paris

Don't worry, I'm not getting in the movie review business and technically this is not a review. However, there is a relevant point involved with being an artist/creative that Midnight In Paris touches on quite well. It's a point that I didn't see a single movie review on went I went looking for it so I felt the need to blog about it to my friends.

What I'm referring to is about nostalgia, what it says about you and how we use it as a coping mechanism amongst other things. In the film the character played by Owen Wilson is a writer who loves Paris and has a bunch of literary heroes with associations to Paris. As a result, he has nostalgia for the circa 1920's time period that he's teleported into. He's taken by how amazing it is to hang out with Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and a horde of other famous characters he has admiration for. As the meetings continue night after night he's able to discover things about himself that he had been avoiding or having trouble coping with back in his own time. You start to get the idea but the point gets driven home when he begins to fall in love with Adriana a character played by Marion Cotillard. On their first date in 1920's Paris they get transported an additional 50 years back to a time that Adriana had a deep nostalgia for. In a brief exchange they argued over which time period was better 1870's Paris or 1920's Paris. She hated her time period and insisted life was better and more interesting before. He argued the same point but coming from the present to the 20's. At last the epiphany revealed . . .

"Life sucks. We just sometimes choose not acknowledge it sucked before."

Born in the wrong time we say. For example, the romantic notion some women I know have about the Victorian Era or even Medieval Europe. Gorgeous dresses, grand balls, proper Gentlemen, etc. We are all aware this is a very slender view of the total picture and highly romanticized by modern media. Regardless of that knowledge we still like to imagine ourselves happier if only we lived in that time. We do this without regard for the fact that women were subjugated, more likely to be born poor and might very well contract a host of horrible disease because there wasn't any penicillin around.

I'm guilty. I've blogged before about my heroes and frequently pressure myself to live up to their standards. I've even attempted to use modern day challenges as an excuse for why I'm not further ahead when the reality is that my heroes struggled too. In some cases, they died unfulfilled and unaware of the real impact they had on the field or future generations.

So what the movie had me thinking about was nostalgia can be a good thing provided it doesn't hold you back. In the movie he had to come to this realization in order to move forward in his own time and reach his full potential. Secondarily, it had me thinking that perhaps I standing shoulder to shoulder with tomorrow's hero's. Many of my talented colleagues and friends may very well be in design tomes 50 years in the future but you can never imagine it. You just get caught up in the work. I can already picture future designers talking about how awesome it must have been to be a designer during the digital revolution. Things were probably a lot cooler then they they are now. Perhaps but we were all so busy working, climbing, struggling and living life in general to notice. Same as every generation before us.

Midnight In Paris made me think about it. And I'm better off for it.

Have I Made My Last Oberon's Gateway?

Oberon's Gateway

Normally an artist wouldn't lament the demise of a product particularly if it had run it's course. In this case though Oberon's Gateway (OG) hasn't run it's course and was one of the first I ever designed and put to market for Ferrochie. So it has importance to me and I feel compelled to celebrate it before it's untimely death. OG had it's issues in the sense that I had wanted it to be a wind chime and not a door chime. However, cast iron keys being what they are (heavy) and wind generally not being category four it needed a push so to speak. I believed in it's artistic value and went ahead with it anyway and although not functionally what I wanted, structurally it's been a sound product. It's made of cedar and sealed with polyurethane to handle year round outdoor punishment. I've had one of the first one's I made hanging outdoor since 2009 and it still looks great although the keys are more oxidized. That aside it's probably my most successful outdoor product. That said, being a small atelier like I am it's hard to get the word on on stuff period but since early 2010 I've sold a handful of my design including a few customs. One of those customs featured a striker at the bottom to convert it into a door bell of sorts. At last check with the customer it was still performing well in that capacity. :)

2nd Annual Etsy Spring Bash May 2010

OG was also the first product for Ferrochie to get serious press. The picture to the right is of my first major show with Etsy Dallas. You may notice four OG's prominently displayed in pairs. They caught the attention of reporter Raya Ramsey of D Magazine. She was kind enough to write an awesome online article about me, Ferrochie and Oberon's Gateway. http://shoptalk.dmagazine.com/2010/05/12/the-handmade-bash-reviewed-ferrochie-studio/

So why discontinue it? It's the keys! I just took an order yesterday that will consume my last set out of those beautiful vintage keys imported from France and I don't think my supplier has anymore. These keys MAKE the item and if I can't get any more it's a death sentence for OG and his mate Titania's Rapture. I suppose that only makes them more desirable in a sense. I'll know by the end of the month if it's over for this product and if it is . . . thanks for the memories!