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This piece is entitled "Faker." Pictures courtesy of artist Jeff Shih.
Jeff Shih: Digitized Calligraphy for the Modern Times
In his art show "One-Liners," Jeff Shih takes the concepts of multiculturalism and abstraction and tackles the traditional Chinese brush-calligraphy style, creating a modern spin by using technology and molding the form into his own. APA talks to Jeff about his inspirations and future projects.
In September, emerging artist Jeff Shih had his artwork adorning the walls of Rooms Cafe in West Los Angeles. This marked his first show, entitled "One-Liners," which he describes as a collection of avant-garde Asian art based on digitized calligraphy and stamping. Doing double time as a fourth-year graduate student at UCLA, getting his PhD in political science, Jeff had been a constant patron at Rooms Cafe, often found there typing away at his laptop. Little did the owners know that their dutiful regular had some ambitious, artistic talent up his sleeve. As a result, they kindly provided an outlet for Jeff's creative missions. "I highly recommend this place to everybody," says Jeff. "They have art all through the year, so every two of three weeks, you find a new artist there. I love it. You meet a lot of artistic people, and it's very non-corporate."
While Jeff claims that he finds inspiration from, in his own words--the Holy Trinity: Mahatma Gandhi, Bob Marley, and Conan O'Brien--his art show "One-Liners" was inspired by Shih's one-year stint working for AmeriCorp, where he was placed at the Healy School in Chicago, working as a youth mentor for the Illinois Youth Corrections. Seeing his students doodle graffiti-esque symbols while they were supposed to be doing math got Jeff's creative juices flowing, and he began to create compositions of his own. In "One-Liners," each piece is characterized by one simple yet strong line, and they also all include four other elements: a Han character, a black stamp, red stamp, production date--finished off with his signature. A style was born. APA talks to the artist himself:
APA: You say that you were originally inspired by your students in the Chicago Youth Corrections program. What was your experience like working there? Was it intense?
Jeff Shih: It was very enjoyable actually. Most of the kids were in there for drug violations, but some of them were there for stealing pizza. That's kind of sad, huh? But then, some of them were there for murder. So there were all kinds of kids there. It could be intense though. They were juveniles between the ages of 14 and 17. There would be times where I had to chase them around the classroom. But, what happened is that I'd be teaching them math, and these kids will just doodle on their scratch paper. They do exactly what I do! And I shouldn't have been letting them do art because I was supposed to be teaching them math, but I felt at the time that these kids had artistic talent. They'd draw gang signs, but I didn't know they were drawing gang signs. [laughs]
APA: So how did the idea of digitized calligraphy emerge from that?
JS: Well, I started in pencil, which looked a lot like what these kids were doing, but eventually I decided that the lines were too simple. I started putting in my own cultural traditions and eventually it evolved into what it is today. I noticed that a lot of these random scribbles look like certain animals or people that are jumping out of these random scribbles. I wasn't conscious of it, but it just came out. So once I noticed that, then I became more conscious of it and started to consciously make these bubble drawings.
APA: It seems like the style of Chinese calligraphy that you use is more of the cursive type than the traditional rigid bone structure of writing the Chinese characters.
JS: Yeah, it's more like "cao-shu" [cursive script]. In the future, I could put more angles in it, to make it more "kai-shu" [standard script]. I've only started to do this. I think the more I do it, the more it'll change. In the future, what I'm going to do is instead of using very dark ink, I'm going to use light ink, so that way you can see how the water diffuses on the paper.
Calligraphy is really interesting, because it's not like Western painting where you are using lots of lines to depict things. A lot of times you're only using one line, you're using one blotch, to depict a 3D object. You put multiple colors on one brush and you just twist it.
APA: Yeah definitely. In Western art--for example, oil painting or even sketching--it takes forever, because there are so many layers. But in calligraphy or a lot of Chinese brush painting, it's quick and you have to do it right the first time. There's almost no room for error.
JS: Exactly, there's definitely a different style.
APA: So what is the process you go through to make each piece?
JS: Well, it's usually on pencil first, and then sometimes I'll do it in brush. Sometimes I skip the brush part and go to the digital media. Then I add colors and the stamps and everything. You can create lighting effects in Photoshop. It's a lot of playing around. A lot of times when I start something, I don't plan out things before I do it. And the whole project has been like that. I feel like the artwork is outside of me. I'm just molding it.
APA: Have you always been into art? When did the interest start?
JS: I've been into art since I was a little kid, since I can remember. I've done realistic pencil drawings. I've done sculptures with clay. Actually, the stamps that I use in "One-Liners" were stamps that I made in high school in ceramics. So the stamps themselves are artwork. They're really elaborate. So the project just kind of fell together. Technically, I started on this project when I was in high school. [jokes into the tape recorder] It took 10 hard years of intense dedication!!
APA: How do your studies in political science influence your perception of art?
JS: Well, I don't think art and politics are different things. Politics comes out in art. Art is one of the languages that many human beings speak. Through art, we tell stories, and through stories, we talk about life, and through life we talk about our relationships with each other. And our relationships with each other embody politics and power. So they're all connected. A lot of the times, people will see a movie and they'll say that the movie is racist, and that's because in that art form, it embodied a type of politics. Art embodies politics, and art transforms politics. Because art acts as a medium for communicating our ideas about what's right and wrong, our ideas about what society should be like, what is beautiful, how should we live our life in a beautiful manner, in a just manner, in a pleasant, comfortable manner.
APA: So in that vein of thought, what are you trying to convey through your art, in that vein? Does it have something to do with the show name: "Celebration of Abstraction & Multiculturalism?"
JS: Yes, the Multiculturalism part is a reflection of my life, because I grew up in Chicago and I didn't exactly grow up in a Chinese community, so I'm not "Chinese" in that sense. A lot of influences that I had in my life are from many different sources, from people with different racial backgrounds, different class backgrounds. The people I met in the Ivy League school were different from the people I met in the inner-city high school. I didn't consciously do this, but everything I do embodies a fusion of a lot of different cultural heritages.
APA: What about the "Abstraction" part?
JS: Well, I think Chinese art/Chinese watercolor generally looks very abstract, and a lot of Asian art forms are very abstract. But the other reason I combined abstraction with multiculturalism is that abstraction is what allows us to build greater identities. Today we have all these different racial groups, different ethnicities, different cultural groups, and we feel like these groups will be here together, and they've always been here, and we'll always be in conflict with each other. But if we allow ourselves to start thinking at a higher level, thinking abstractly about what it means, not how to be a certain type of human being, but asking ourselves what it means to be human in general.
Race, to me, is in our heads, and modern science shows that in our biology, there's probably more differences within these groups than between the groups. A lot of these conflicts that I see in human society can be changed if we think creatively and think abstractly about what we really want in life. Through abstraction, we can make multiculturalism possible. Instead of putting ourselves in categories, we can combine all these traditions to create something even more rich.
APA: Can you describe the independent film that you are currently working on?
JS: Yes. Right now, I'm putting together a film, tentatively called Dating Asians. I'm trying to create a film that talks about how race matters to people's romantic lives.
APA: But didn't you say that race is abstract?
JS: [laughs] Yes, race is very abstract. So that would be a great question: How do you define who is an Asian person? How do I know I'm Asian? How do I know I'm dating? [laughs] What if I think we're dating, but she doesn't? See, all these things are up for definition. And that's exactly what I accomplish with the film, to talk about these issues in an intelligent manner. But at the same time, I want it to be entertaining. This is going to be a group project. I'm looking from roughly 40 writers and I'm going to weave together their stories into one narrative. I have my own views, but what I really hope to do with the project is to bring together people with different views. I hope everyone who participates in this film gets a more insightful idea of the nature of what race means. The film will be a connection of many different stories and perspectives.
APA: Sounds very interesting. Looking forward to it!
Check out Jeff Shih's website at www.geocities.com/jeff_shih.
Date Posted: 10/15/2004