2022 Scholarship Awardee

Chenxi Gao

My early experiences growing up in Laiwu, Shandong, a small town in the north of China, influenced me heavily as a person and an artist. My family has a strong handcrafting/art tradition. My mother’s family was poor, but they found pride in their skills. Her father was good at woodworking, drawing, and calligraphy. Her mother made clothes and wearable ornaments for the family and decorated them with embroidery. She and my aunt made clothes for me when I was young. My mother introduced me to origami and crocheting. I was immersed in this rich tradition at an early age and believed in its value. My parents and I moved to Nanjing, Jiangsu when I was 7 years old, and my life changed ever since. It was a modern city in the mid-south of China. It was economically and culturally developed. I stopped wearing handmade clothes, hid my northern accent, and buried my interest in crafting in public. I wanted to be like my new classmates in the city and felt ashamed about my underdeveloped hometown. However, in my family bubble, we kept our traditions and continued to be proud of them. Unfortunately, this is contradictory and painfully confusing to me, even today. The memories are fragmented and blurry. However, the objects associated with my family are evidence.

The hand-made objects evoke the feeling of love, care, and happiness and remind me of the struggles after the move. Visually, I have been obsessed with their textures, colors, and structures since very young, such as the red dining table with built-in storage space underneath and the woodgrain that was dark and oily after years of use. I intentionally incorporated this childhood obsession into my artworks for the first time in 2021. My recent prints and paintings juxtapose objects and landscapes of my hometown and self-portraits. They function as a path for expression, discussion, healing, and relationship rebuilding. In the print "It rains so heavily where you live," I used the crochet pattern as a connection with my mother. Imageries of fragmented objects from memory overlap my self-portrait folded into a book in "Treasure Box." By turning the pages, I re-experience the exploration of objects from my childhood. The eastern paper I use resembles what my grandfather used for his calligraphic works. Printmaking processes connect closely to my family’s handcrafting/art tradition. Both require being sensitive to materials, techniques, craftsmanship, details, and the ability to follow specific instructions.

The act of carving into blocks or drawing through the ground rebuilds my connection with the subjects and makes them permanent on the matrix. I carry on the family traditions and reflect them in printmaking through imageries, alternative processes, or altering the finished prints. I received my BFA in painting from Baylor University, Waco, TX. I am a current MFA student in printmaking at the University of North Texas, Denton, TX.