On a sunny winter afternoon after New Year, we visited the world-renowned Taiwanese sculptor, Ju Ming. We found the artist's house, located in a mountainous suburb of Taipei, by the bronze sculptures placed in front of his house. When we parked our car, three big dogs started barking fiercely at us. We rang the doorbell, and out came the sculptor himself. After amiably shaking hands with us, he stamped his feet vigorously on the ground to shoo the dogs away.

Although I had learned from some magazine articles how unassuming and easy-going Ju was, I was still quite impressed with his amiable demeanor. Thin, short but brisk, wearing a work cap, an old shirt and a pair of faded jeans, he could easily be taken for a farmer or a worker. His easy air and unaffected manners can only be found in people who are always comfortable with themselves.

He led us into his spacious dwelling, which was tastefully decorated with his wood and bronze sculptures and other artifacts. Talking to the artist in his living room was a pleasant experience. He is expressive and articulate, and he embraces enchantingly lucid views about artistic creation.

"Art cannot be learned. The creation of art depends on self-cultivation. What I am most proud of after all these years of artistic creation is not what I have produced, but the concepts I have eventually come to understand. When you study art, you unconsciously absorb the styles and experiences of other people. In the process, you lose yourself, your innate nature. You have to cultivate yourself to find your true self and at the same time discard all your teachers' genres, so that you can establish a unique style of your own."

What Ju means by "self-cultivation" is very similar to the spiritual cultivation in Buddhism. Buddhists often engage in their spiritual cultivation by taking an everyday life approach toward the process of learning. It starts from what you eat, what you wear, what you think about--in other words, how you live your life. The sculptor illustrated his point by telling us the following story.

In ancient times, a young man went to a great martial arts master to learn kung fu. The master told him to sweep the floors. He swept the floors for several years. Then the master ordered him to fetch water from a distant well every day, and so he carried water for several years. One day, the young man finally lost his patience and mustered his courage to complain, "Master, why don't you teach me kung fu since I have followed you for so many years?" The master looked at him and said, "How dare you say such nonsense? I teach you lessons every day." The master was not joking! As a matter of fact, he had been teaching the basic essentials of martial arts--patience, perseverance and fortitude--by making the young man sweep the floor and carry water. The young could never have become a great martial arts master without these fundamental qualities.

"Cultivate yourself so that the goodness, beauty and truth within your intrinsic nature can be brought out," Ju remarked. "You can become a good craftsman by learning all the necessary skills and techniques from your teachers, but you need to obtain something related to goodness, beauty and truth to make you an artist. When you have acquired the elements of goodness and truth in your hearts, you can naturally appreciate everything beautiful. Then it will not be hard for you to create great works of art."

Looking at him, I could not help wondering--how did this elementary school graduate transform himself into an art master who could have such inspiring thoughts? How did a small-town woodcarver become an internationally acclaimed sculptor? The artist told us about his fascinating journey.

Poor childhood

Ju, born in 1937, was one of twelve children in a family in Miaoli, northern Taiwan. The family was so poor that the sculptor spent his childhood preoccupied with how to find enough food to eat. He often went to fields after the harvest to glean vegetables or anything edible that had been left behind.

He must have had some innate gift for art since, given his family circumstances, the chances of his developing such talents were virtually non-existent. His artistic talent became evident when he was in elementary school, the only education he ever received. Nothing in the textbooks aroused the young boy's interest, except for the pictures of historical figures in history books. He often endured boring lectures by drawing ancient heroes with gusto. When he showed his drawings to his oldest brother, the latter was amazed: the youngest child of the family, so poor at his lessons, surely could paint. From then on, Ju's sketches were regularly displayed on the walls of the family home. Looking at them, people shook their heads, marveling at his having mastered such skill without having been taught.

When Ju finished elementary school at the age of thirteen, he could not find the heart to continue his education. As young as he was, he thought it his duty to share the financial burden of his poverty-stricken family. During those days, his mother often had to work late into the night knitting straw mats. Every time the young Ju, aroused from his sleep, urged her to go to bed, his mother always answered him lovingly, "My silly boy, if I go to bed now, what will you eat tomorrow?" These scenes helped Ju make the decision to start working, although it was against the wishes of his family.

Foundation in wood carving

When he was sixteen, a skilled wood-carver, Li Chin-chuan, came to renovate the town temple at the invitation of the local people. The restoration of the religious sanctuary was a major event for the townsfolk, so Ju's father often dropped in to look at the progress. Before long he became acquainted with the master wood-carver. One day when he was admiring the refined woodwork created by the master, an idea struck him. "Why don't you take my youngest son as an apprentice?" he asked the master bluntly.

Ju thus became the seventh apprentice of Li Chin-chuan, who later stayed in the town and opened a shop of his own. With his remarkable skills, Master Li led Ju into a world where his talent would be given full play. The master told the young boy that to be a good sculptor, it was important to learn how to make sketches. "A sculptor who cannot make sketches is like an architect who can build a house but doesn't know how to draw designs for it," said the master. Therefore, Ju studied woodcarving by day and painting by night under the competent direction of his teacher.

Master Li's teaching laid a solid foundation for Ju's carving techniques. It enabled him to be precise and accurate in dealing with a piece of wood. "The training I underwent made me so dexterous that when I cut a piece of wood, if I wanted the cut to be one inch deep, it would be one inch deep, and if I wanted it to be three centimeters wide, it would not be wider than three centimeters."

Quick-witted and eager to learn, he made rapid progress. But he soon grew tired of carving reliefs for wardrobes, tables or wall panels, commissions which Master Li often got. "Why don't we carve statues, like those we see in temples?" He thought this to himself secretly but dared not speak his mind. After some thought, he decided to secretly carve a sculpture of a water buffalo. He borrowed a camera from a friend and went to the countryside to take pictures of water buffaloes.

But his brother and father found out about this. Thinking highly of the product he had made, they showed it gleefully to the master. Instead of taking offence at Ju's working behind his back, the master commended him heartily. Because of this incident, Li started to teach his apprentices the skills of carving three-dimensional sculptures. The products were then put up for sale at shops in Sanyi, a nearby town famous for its sculptures.

Several months later, another idea occurred to Ju: "Why don't we enter some artistic works in competitions?" Master Li laughed this time. "Our sculptures, however good they are, are only handicrafts. Only real works of art can be sent to competitions." "What are real works of art?" asked the apprentice. The master, admitting that there was a limit to his ability, could not answer the question. But he mentioned Huang Tu-shui, who was considered the first fine-art sculptor in Taiwan, and said that one had to be as good as him to be an artist.

From then on, Ju began to pay special attention to newspaper and magazine articles about Huang Tu-shui and sculpture. During one such perusal he found another name, Yang Ying-feng (also known as Yuyu Yang), the first Taiwanese sculptor to gain world attention. Little did Ju, an obscure craftsman at that time, dream that he would become Yang's student one day and become as successful as him.

Ju stayed with Master Li for three years and four months. Traditionally, only after such a period of time could an apprenticeship be considered complete. Now a qualified woodcarver, Ju was ready to set out into the world.

The turning point

Ju opened a workshop and began to teach students. His skills were generally acclaimed and the shop flourished. At twenty-five years of age, Ju married Chen Fu-mei, who supported her husband with unbounded confidence and backed every decision he made.

During his leisure time, Ju tried to create works that he considered art and he entered them in competitions. His attempts failed. He tried again and again he failed. After several tries, his works began to be accepted at exhibitions and even won prizes.

During one Chinese New Year holiday, when Ju was thirty-one years old, a friend of his came to visit him. The prize-winning sculptures caught his eye. "You are such a good sculptor," said the enthusiastic friend. "You should go to Yang Ying-feng." He then went on to reveal that Yang, the celebrated sculptor, was a personal friend of his.

The friend's words filled Ju with hope. He went to Taipei with this friend in anticipation of being taken on by the sculptor as his disciple. Only then did he find out that his friend in fact had only been boasting and that he did not know Yang at all. The friend asked many people to introduce him to the sculptor, but no one would consent to the request, because they looked down on Ju as a mere craftsman, a nobody.

As no one would agree to formally introduce him, Ju decided to go directly to Yang's house and introduce himself. Carrying two of his favorite works, Ju and his friend showed up at the master's door without an appointment. As it turned out, Yang was a very nice man without any airs. He received the two visitors from the countryside with warm hospitality.

After acquainting himself with Ju's intent and looking at his works, the master asked the young man: "How long did you plan to study?"

"A lifetime," answered Ju with resolution.
"What do you want to learn?"
"I want to pursue art."

Yang talked with Ju the whole morning. Finding that he was an honest, sincere young man, he took an immediate liking to him and agreed to accept him as his student. "Actually, what is essential in the pursuit of art is not mastery of aesthetic techniques, but learning to be a good man," the late master once remarked in response to a journalist's questions. "One has to be kind and compassionate to have real achievement in art. Patience is important too. If a man is anxious to become famous, he will never make it." Kind, compassionate and patient, these were obviously the qualities that he could see in Ju.

Afraid that the master would change his mind about taking him on as his apprentice, Ju went early the next morning to the master's house and started working. The master gave him a large piece of jade and told him to carve it. The finished product was to be given to then President Chiang Kai-shek as a present. Ju worked on it for twenty days. When it was finished, the master looked at the competently engraved jade and told Ju, "You have passed the test."

Ju started a typical day as an apprentice by sweeping the floor and making tea. Only after his chores were finished would he start creating sculptures. At night, he went back to his own home, which was now in Taipei, and went on making sculptures which catered to the popular taste. The works were then sold to support his family, as the master had advised him to do.

Ideas, not techniques

Under Yang's tutelage, Ju got an education primarily in the ideas rather than the techniques of art. By the time he went to Yang, he was already equipped with very good sculpturing skills courtesy of his first wood-carving teacher. Now, according to his new master, he had to find a new way of expression, a new spirit.

The master advised him to free himself of detailed and refined carving techniques and instead concentrate on creating rougher, more natural-looking pieces. "Master Yang taught me much of the conceptual, rather than the technical, aspect of artistic creation. 'Don't think about techniques,' he said. He told me not to focus on the form and shape of a subject, but instead to try to capture and transmit its spirit." Of course all this sounded rather abstract to Ju as a beginner, but as the days went by, learning at the side of the master, he gradually came to realize that everything depended on the heart and mind of the artist. "I must cultivate myself and have my own way of thinking." A man without a rich mind can never create works that touch people's hearts.

Thirty years later, Ju published a book, Ju Ming on Art, in which he talks about how he cultivated himself as an artist. He says that having completed only elementary school education, he is poor at books and reads slowly. Nonetheless he still learns a lot because he treats everything around him as a teacher. He says that as long as we pay attention, even an ant can teach us things. He remembers once he saw on the Discovery Channel on television how a large colony of ants crossed a river. These ants climbed one on top of another and built a bridge with their bodies to allow their partners to step on them and go across the river. He was deeply touched by their self-sacrificing spirit and the way they closely cooperated with each other. From that moment on, a feeling of respect for all living beings, for all things great and small, was nurtured in his heart. Ju says that things like this inspire him daily, push him to think, and accumulate into immense creative energy for him.

According to Ju, observing and thinking are the ways to stimulate and improve your mind. When you observe and think, you build up energy for your creations. "We cannot separate life from artistic creation. Live fully and observe closely, and then you will be paving the way for your artistic creation."

According to Ju, if you want to become a good artist, you must also learn to "let go." You must renounce or let go of what you have learned so that you can build your own style and have your own spirit. Therefore, after he had learned from Li Chin-chuan, his first teacher, he had to let go of this influence to achieve something higher. And after he had studied under Yang Ying-feng, again he had to let go of what he had been taught in order to build his own individual idiom. Without this letting go, he could never have found a space of his own in the art world.

Making a name

After Ju had worked as an apprentice to Master Yang for eight years, the chance came for him to make his debut.

That year, the National Museum of History in Taipei contacted Yang and expressed their wish to stage another exhibition for the master, whose works had previously been shown there. The master agreed, but at the same time another plan formed in his mind.

When the time for the exhibition drew near, he told the museum that he had far fewer works ready than was needed. Afraid that he would have to disappoint them, he strongly recommended that his student, Ju, fill in the slot for him.

The museum, however, had doubts about a novice that they had never heard of before. Therefore, they invited a famous sculptor from Japan to evaluate Ju's works. What was the result? "The Japanese sculptor greatly admired Ju's talent, but at the same time he was a little jealous of him," master Yang later revealed.

Yang's ingenious arrangement led to the exhibition which catapulted Ju to fame. The works displayed at the exhibition included sculptures of water buffaloes, an important symbol of Taiwan's country life, and historical and legendary figures such as Kuan Kung (whose statues were a common sight in temples around Taiwan) and Lu Chih-shen (a famous figure in a Chinese novel). Ju's rendition of these subjects was rustic and simple. With their articulate forms and sincere expressions of feelings, these sculptures had a power and charm that immediately captured the attention of the local art community. The media gave extensive coverage to the event as more and more people crowded into the museum to view the works. Through the exhibition, Ju became a prominent figure in the back-to-the-roots movement of the late 1960s and 1970s. It was a time when artists in Taiwan began saying no to the idolization of Western-style art and started looking for something more in touch with their own life and culture. Ju's style was just in line with what the local people wanted.

During the following years, exhibitions were held both in Japan and Hong Kong to showcase the works of the artist who was now on his way to international recognition.

Tai Chi and Living World

What made Ju a resounding name in the international art community were his Tai Chi and Living World series.

The Tai Chi series consisted of large, monumental sculptures in wood and bronze presenting men in tai chi exercise poses. Ju himself took up tai chi, an ancient Chinese discipline of meditative movements, after he had studied under Yang for about six years. The teacher saw that his apprentice was rather delicate, and he suggested that he practice tai chi to improve his health so that he could better cope with the physical and mental demands of sculpting.

"After practicing tai chi for a couple of months, I was so into it that I could not take my mind off it," said Ju. "Naturally the desire sprang up in my mind to include it in my artistic creation. My creation is always like this--it goes side by side with my life."

Compared to his former works, the sculptures in the Tai Chi series were more abstract. Because he had carefully studied each movement and posture of tai chi before he rendered them in wood, he was very good at bringing out the spirit of calmness, stability and strength in simple form.

Although the series drew rave responses from foreign viewers when shown abroad, it caused heated criticism at home. The people in Taiwan had been most impressed with his nativist art creations, and when he stopped creating in that vein, they scolded him as having stepped away from tradition. But the criticism did not stop him from taking this step.

"I don't like to repeat things that I've done before. Wouldn't it be boring if I kept on doing the same things I did ten years ago? You've got to keep moving on and finding new challenges to measure up to." Therefore, in spite of all the disapproval, Ju insisted on his own way. It was fortunate that he did, because without his persistence he may never have become a leading international sculptor. The Tai Chi series had such a universal appeal that even foreigners who did not know this particular Chinese kung fu were attracted to it.

The other series, the Living World, won him as much praise, if not more. It was first created when Ju went to the United States at the age of forty-six, and he continues to add to it today. He was already quite famous in Asia when he first went to America, but he fully realized then that he had to make another breakthrough to climb further up the ladder.

He found a cheap apartment in Brooklyn, New York, but he later found out that he was not allowed to work there because of the noise produced by his work. To avoid complaints from the neighbors, he hauled logs to his garage at night and did the sawing and sculpting when the neighbors were away at work. Working in the closed, stuffy space made his entire body pour with sweat, but piece after piece of art was created this way.

Ju carried photographs of his works from one gallery to another to find a chance to exhibit them. As any number of talented artists in New York were looking for the same chance, the competition was tough. But before long the Max Hutchinson Gallery noticed his works and decided to mount an exhibition for him. The display, featuring his new Living World series, was quite successful, and two items were sold. Grinning from ear to ear, the gallery owner called it a miracle because it was Ju's first exhibition in the States and it was extremely difficult to sell works by an artist who had not yet made his name.

The works shown in the exhibition, mostly in painted woods, consisted of coarsely carved human figures and large bas-reliefs filled with swarms of people. "That was my impression of New York," said Ju. "It was full of people." The faces of these people, some looking down at the ground, some staring up into the sky, were marked by vacant, sad or forlorn expressions. The English art critic Ian Findlay commented, "These Living World sculptures seem to force us to ponder the big philosophical question: where did we come from and where are we going? The feelings of uncertainty they create in the viewer are quite different from those inspired by the Tai Chi series, whose stable equanimity make one feel peaceful and serene."

The Living World series later expanded into a large collection encompassing sculptures in bronze, ceramics, sponge and stainless steel, materials that the sculptor wanted to explore. Several sub-series were developed, including the Sports series, representing people engaged in a variety of sports, and the Gossipy Women series, showing women in different postures--sitting, talking, standing or sleeping.

The Tai Chi and Living World series have been invited to exhibitions in many countries. The most important ones include those held at the South Bank Centre, London, 1991, the Musee d'Art Contemporain, Dunkirk, 1992, Hakone Open-Air Museum, Tokyo, 1995, and La Place Vendome, Paris, 1997. These were all large-scale solo exhibitions that helped establish Ju's reputation as a dynamic world-class sculptor. His works, often monumental in size, can now be seen in many cities around the world. The London Times even praised him as "the most distinguished and outstanding Chinese sculptor of the twentieth century."

Ju Ming Museum

Last year, the sculptor completed the largest work in his life, the Ju Ming Museum.

The museum is located in the mountains of Chinshan Township, Taipei County. It is perhaps a little misleading to call it a museum. It is actually a large, well-planned art park covering 9,800 square meters. More than one thousand sculptures by the artist are displayed on the open grounds and in the museum buildings.

It took twelve years for the sculptor to complete this ambitious project. "Originally I only wanted a place to store my works. But by and by I found myself buying more and more pieces of adjoining land as the number of my works grew. Therefore, I thought of turning it into an art park." Besides, he has always had the idea that he has gotten all he wanted from society, and so he wants to pay back as much as he can. The idea of an art park, open to the public, thus gradually took shape.

"I don't want to leave what I have to my children. I want to leave everything to the people, to society. It's where my works belong. If I leave them to my offspring, they may sell them all and get a lot of money. But what's the meaning of that? So I set up a foundation to take care of all my works. My works came from society, so now they will go back to society."

Building the art park was not an easy thing. The construction of the museum not only depleted Ju's savings, but also caused him to run up large debts. In addition, there were all sorts of unimaginable things which needed to be taken care of during the construction process. But with his patience and perseverance Ju did it. "He's the type of person who believes that when you have an idea, you have to go ahead and put it to work," a friend said of Ju. "No matter how difficult it is, as long as you persist, you will make it."

It is this perseverance and determination that made him who he is today. When asked what he will do in the future, he told us with a smile, "I need to work harder and create more sculptures to pay back the large debts I have accumulated."

The confidence on his face made us believe that no matter what difficulties lie ahead of him, Ju has the power to conquer them. We hope that with his determination and fortitude, he can go on invigorating the art world, both locally and internationally.