Artnotes: Eight Immortals

 

My first Immortal (in progress)     Han Xiang Zi Almost every day, we go to the Chinese café in Roccamalatina for coffee and pastry.  Roberto and Lisa greet us.  We briefly discuss the weather – it was in the high 90s (38c) this week (in May!).  Blair and I tried to swim in the river, but the current, vicious with rapidly melting snow from Monte Cimone, felt like it would carry us away.  At the café, we choose between a cornetto or nut pastry – not exceptional, but adequate.  In any case, there is just something I have always liked about going there.  Maybe it’s the feng shui, or the fact we can sit in the window as long as we like and Berlino (sadly) barks at passing milk trucks.  I slip into some Chinatown fantasy when I arrive.  Lately I have been thinking about the Eight Immortals. Spring on a Black Backgroun     Laurie Fox Pessemier  Acrylic on Paper 17 x 12"  43 x 30cm  230.00  Blair and I associate the Eight Immortals with the Chinatown bank in Seattle.  Ben Woo, the architect Blair first worked for after college, designed that bank and commissioned the Eight Immortals ceramic sculpture (by Chinese artist Fay Chong).  It was the first Asian owned bank in the United States, founded in the 1960s.   Blair and I spent many a date in Chinatown, eating with chopsticks and watching  black-and-white Ninja and Samurai movies at the Kokusai theatre. Local Hare  Laurie Pessemier  Acrylic/paper  25 x17 "  61 x 43 cm  290.00 I love the idea of the Eight Immortals, some human, some fantasy, who represent different qualities and aspirations.  They were individual “saints” from the 6th century or so, who were united as the Eight Immortals during the Jin Dynasty (12th century).  They are rather surprising individuals, like Zhang Guo Lao, who is an emblem of the elderly, facing backward on a white mule that can be folded up like a piece of paper and reconstituted with water.  Or there is Lan Cai, the hermaphrodite who can make flowers bloom; or Li Tie Guai, the iron crutch, who lost his body and had to take that of an old broken man, hence the crutch.  Today, I started to paint Han Xiang Zi, who plays a flute to promote growth and calm animals. Peonies Laurie Pessemier  Acrylic/canvas 19.5 x 11.5"  50 x 30cm  450.00 The idea is to paint these figures on cheesecloth, so they wave in the breeze. I had to buy a roll of gauze 64 meters long, from China, via Amazon (who could get it to me in just 5 days (instead of 2 months) for an extra 10 euros).    The figures float on the air outside; or swish, when a door opens.  They are physical, not digital – they make no sense online.  They aren’t a cheap AI item.  They are about life size and move like ghosts, or spirits.    The paint holds them together.  I am just starting but I kind of like this idea already.  Stay tuned. Little White Flowers  Laurie Fox  Pessemier  Acrylic/paper 10 x 17"  25 x 43cm  190.00

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