| A calligraphy of four Chinese characters ¡§ ¹x¥ÛÂIÀY ¡¨ , which implies ¡§Even An Insensate Stone Would Be Ready To Approve His Achievements ¡¨, has been hung on Mr. Dong Zuo's office wall, which was a gift from the Master of traditional Chinese painting, Mr. Li Gu-Mo to recognize his contribution to the traditional folk culture and arts. This meaningful gift constantly reminded him that he should create more inkslabs which could be more practical, more artistic and more collectible, out of these seemingly ice-coldly apathetic, but profoundly wonderful Luosishih stones. That was to manifest the supreme realm of ¡§every day life for arts and arts for every day life¡¨. Throughout his decades long creative life, Dong Zuo , has always kept this motto in mind . | ||
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With respect to the particular themes of inkslab creation, he maintains that the historical development of Luosishih in Taiwan for the past 180 years tends to be oriented to practical functions or simple forms . For more than twenty recent years, he has been strict with himself for the fulfillment of quality requirements in order to reach the lofty state of art. For example, it requires a lot of labor for the creation of 9-dragons-inkslab, 100-dragons-inkslab and Twelve Chinese Animals , and so on. On the one hand, he hope s to break through and transcend his current level of achievement so as to lift up himself to one notch higher . On the other hand , he purports to imprint the image of his best works into the mind of future generations to ensure that he can live up to the encouragement from late Vice President Sie Dong-Min for a series of uninterrupted improvement. |
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In his life of creation, the topic for work sometime s can be readily available due to a flash of mind, but sometime s can come up with something only after a meditation for many days. Fortunately, his creative life never stops and he cans always some astounding works available for exhibition . In addition to the regular life of creation, he allocated part of his times and efforts in compiling his best works with an introduction of his theories and practices into a series of books, that were entitled ¡§ Dong Zuo's best works of Luosishih¡¨. From 1994 to 2002, five of these series was published as an overall review of Luosishih, describing literary quotations on the Luosishih, its manufacturing process, Dong Zuo 's vision on the composition of individual images as well as his carving methods . The reason why he is willing to generously shared these creative ideas and experiences with the amateurs was that he intended to preserve and propagate this Luosishih folk art from generation to generation. It is really admirable indeed . |
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The early Mr. Dong
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Uncle Dong's family. |
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