Cynthia Chuang & Erh-Ping Tsai
Both my husband, Erh-Ping Tsai, and I were born and grew up in small country towns in Southern Taiwan. While I worked as a nurse in the Naval Hospital, he served in the Armed Forces. We met when we were both classmates at the National Academy of Arts in Taiwan and were majoring in crafts and ceramics. The basic training in chemistry which I received at the Medical College where I studied proved to be a great help in the study of ceramic chemistry. Erh-Ping’s two years experience as a mechanic during his service in the Armed Forces helped him improve the technological skills he would later use in his craft.
After graduating from the academy of Arts, we established a workshop with friends. In addition to mastering craft design, we also designed products for some ceramic companies. With similar interests and character, Erh-Ping and I got married and came to America for advanced studies in art. After getting our M.F.A. degree at Parson School of design in New York, we entered New York studio school and received further instruction from two sculptors, Ronald Bladen and William Turkor. Not only did we gain a greater concept of space and structure, but through them we learned a new way of thinking and creating.
During that period of time we traveled a great deal throughout America. In addition to every national park and most state parks, we also visited the famous museums and main cities, especially Indian Pueblos. We were trying to experience America in its broadest sense first hand. The views and experiences from these trips as well as the knowledge from books and schools came to influence our artistic form.
As our artistic views were evolving we became particularly attracted to personal ornamentation and jewelry as one of the vehicles to express ourselves. We studied Egyptian imperial jewelry which was designed with extremely exquisite and delicate skills, and were full of mysterious and rich colors. We also studied Oriental ceramic technology which was used both in royal and folk arts for the making of everything from vases for emperors, to Chau-ji Ceramic, a decoration in Buddhist temples.
The ideas for our designs in sculpture came mainly from our love of nature, including plants and animals. Erh-Ping grew up in a family where they cultivated their lands on which were thousands of plants and trees. The exposure to nature and his love for it has been with him since childhood. Besides that, many members of his family were students of nature sciences. All of this gradually led him to be involved in his own studies. He carefully observed every change in nature, especially the life and habits of insects and bugs. He searched for and read related books in libraries and museums, and then made private observation on his own land. Consequently, his recent works have been most particularly designed around themes of nature. As to the materials, we also try to look for them from the natural elements. From a trip to Yellowstone National Park, we got and idea that the earth itself was like an enormously enlarged ceramic piece made from the same material and produced by the same burning procedures use
