Kids learn unique calligraphy style from Chinese artist

Dozens of fifth graders kneeled on a cushion and wielded their brushes, making long and careful strokes with black ink over a thin parchment.

Though the students’ calligraphy looked like complex Chinese characters, their writing was easily legible because it was actually English.

Students from W.J. Bryan Elementary School, a museum magnet program in North Miami, visited the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum on Monday morning to learn the art of Square Word Calligraphy in a workshop with Chinese artist Xu Bing, whose exhibit, «Writing Between Heaven and Earth,» is on display until May 24th.

Bing, who traveled from Beijing for the opening of his exhibition, taught the kids the basic rules of his own lexicography — which takes a word in English and, by placing the letters in a certain pattern, creates the appearance of a Chinese character.

«I tried to combine the two languages together. But it’s, in fact, English.» said Bing, who as a U.S. resident, has straddled both worlds and cultures.

Bing became famous in China and internationally during the 1980s with his landmark installation, «Book from the Sky,» which is on display in an adjacent gallery space at the museum, plus a few new pieces created specifically for the Frost’s exhibit. Hundreds of installments of characters filled the walls, along with handmade carvings, which took the artist four years to complete, and three giant scrolls hung from the ceiling.

Bing’s work has been displayed internationally in museums, including New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institution, the Louvre, the Joan Miro Foundation in Spain, the British Museum and the National Gallery of Prague.

«This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,» said Abena Robinson, W. J. Bryan’s lead museum magnet educator.

Kids learn unique calligraphy style from Chinese artist

Source: www.miamiherald.com