Jing huang: Among colorful clouds

彩云间

The title of this exhibition, “Among Colorful Clouds”, is drawn from the opening line of “Leaving White Emperor Town at Dawn” (早发白帝城), a Tang Dynasty poem by Li Bai (李白) that expresses his joy in returning home and finding serenity after a journey marked by trials and tribulations.

朝辞白帝彩云间，Leaving at dawn the White Emperor crowned among colorful clouds,

千里江陵一日还。I’ve sailed a thousand miles through Three Gorges in a day. 

两岸猿声啼不住，With monkeys’ sad adieus the riverbanks are loud;

轻舟已过万重山。My boat has left ten thousand mountains far away.

In this poem, clouds serve as both a landmark and a metaphor: they crown Baidi Town and guide the poet toward freedom and homecoming. Clouds are important elements and motifs in Chinese culture and mythology, created between heaven and earth, representing vehicles for traveling between spaces.

This exhibition explores the movement of clouds, the fluidity of nature, and the artist’s memory and diasporic experience moving from one culture to another. Born and raised in the small mountainous city of Guilin (桂林) in southern China, Jing Huang brought her art practice to Canada in 2013 and later to the U.S. in 2018. After more than ten years away from her homeland, Jing finds in Li Bai’s poem a profound echo of her own journey. Like the poet’s boat, her ceramics navigate the liminal space between her past and present. Each handbuilt form unfolds without a preset plan, layered in clay and glaze until it reveals itself. They drift—like clouds—between the familiar and the unknown.

TOM RADCA & SCOTT ROSS: IN AND OUT OF GRACE

For years, Tom Radca's pottery designs have been treasured for their marvelous depth of color and lusterous highlights. Expertly handcrafted in the artisan's rural Ohio barn studio, Radca's trademark large scale designs feature 36" diameter plates and vessels measuring up to 60" in height.

Beginning at the potter's wheel, Radca often works with as much as 50 pounds of clay. The warmth and splendor of Radca's pieces are attributed to his carefully developed firing process. Color and effects result from controlling the temperature of firing and by introducing combustible materials to the kiln environment near the end of the firing process - a process he calls "Painting with Fire."

After the pots are fired and allowed to cool, Radca applies muratic acid that eats away at carbon buildup and exposes the color underneath. It took years of exploration for Radca to perfect this technique, as well as his unique firing process.

“We set this house on fire forgetting that we live within.”

- Jim Harrison, Saving Daylight

There are two built environments, the one that we physically occupy, move through and are contained by, and the one that is constructed within us. These sculptures, built of solid clay, wood and metal, are a visual trace of the effort to de-construct/re-construct the figure in space, both inside and out. The work conceptually engages with Jacque Derrida's ideas of Deconstructivism, in conversation with the basic tenants of Buddhist philosophy. Meaning, precedent, understanding, and enlightenment found from within through dismantling the ego by way of physical action. They are brought into being by the physical actions of making an expressive mark through the addition and subtraction of material.

The natural surfaces achieved through forming are enriched by long duration wood firings, which entail degrees of intimacy and care through extended hours of attending to the kiln. The pieces are a visual record of the connection between the physicality of emotion, the interior space of the self and the care one must take in such pursuits.