People who know him often say to him, "What a pity you didn't start sculpting earlier. If you had, you would have achieved more." But Chang holds a different opinion. Being a devout Christian, he believes everything happens for a reason and that all is in God's plan. It never occurred to him that he had wasted a good part of his life by not starting earlier. "On the contrary, I believe I wouldn't have become what I am today if I hadn't experienced what I have experienced. For example, if I had entered an art college and become an academically trained sculptor, I might have let the influence of my teachers get the better of me and lost my own unique style."

He was an optician for over 20 years before he became a sculptor. Going from an optician to a sculptor seems like a rather radical change. But life can be full of unexpected turns. The reason that induced him to change the course of his life was also unusual: a dream.

Early career

Chang was born in 1937 in Touliu, Yunlin County, central Taiwan. His father, a public servant, was poor all his life, so when Chang was still a little boy, he was already full of ideas for making money. He remembers that his fourth-grade art teacher would draw pictures on the blackboard and ask the class to copy them. Because Chang not only drew well but quickly, he came up with the idea of drawing for his classmates, charging a few dimes for each picture. Although he was later punished by his teacher for doing so, his talent was recognized. Some time later, the school had to choose a student to participate in an extramural painting competition. Only those in the fifth and sixth grades could join the contest. Because no one suitable could be found in the higher grades, the school could only send Chang to the contest. Unexpectedly, the boy beat all the contestants and garnered first place.

Admiring his talent, Chang's teacher went to his father and suggested, "The boy is blessed with an innate gift for art. Why don't you let him go to art school?" Chang's father, however, listed three fields which he would not allow his son to engage in: arts, sports, and music. In his opinion, these three lines of work foretold a financially insecure future; as a conscientious father, he had to stop his son from making the wrong choice.

Because his family was poverty-stricken, Chang was only allowed to finish his education up to junior high school. At age 15, he became an apprentice in a watchmaker's shop. His daily duties included cleaning chamber pots and spittoons and taking care of the watchmaker's children. He was busy from morning till night, without a moment to himself. Life was hard, but young Chang was sustained by the hope that he would soon learn all the skills and stand on his own feet. His dream came true four years later--he opened his own shop when he was 19.

Several years later, through some church activities (influenced by his future wife, he became a Christian), he met Lin Chia-hsien, who held a Ph.D. in optics. Dr. Lin told him that the eyeglass business would become very prosperous in the future, and he suggested that Chang learn to be an optician. Thus, Chang became his student and even went to a vocational school in Japan to study visual optics.

In 1963, Chang opened the first optical shop in Yunlin County. He worked diligently and never ceased to learn new techniques. His eyeglass shop became known far and wide and brought him a good income. His customers greatly respected him for his expertise and he was even elected deputy director of the Taiwan Provincial Optical Committee.

A dream that changed his life

Because Chang was interested in bonsai, he started learning the art from Lin Yueh-tsung, a bonsai expert, when he was 33 years old. Bonsai, simply put, is the art of dwarfing plants or trees and developing them into an aesthetically pleasing shape by growing, training, and pruning them in containers. In addition to taking care of his eyeglass business, Chang spent a lot of time tending his bonsai. He was good at trimming and carving dead branches and wood on bonsai plants to make them look more appealing.

After he had worked as an optician for 22 years, he had a dream one night in which God told him to stop spending his time on bonsai and to use his spare time learning sculpting. He woke up from the dream, but did not think much about it. He lay down and went back to sleep again. But the dream went on. God said to him, "Why don't you listen to me? In two years you'll know why I told you to learn sculpting. The eyeglass business won't be so good two years from now." Chang woke up again, but this time he did not simply let it pass. He got out of his bed and recorded the weird dream in his diary. He remembers it was around 1:15 a.m.

The following morning he told his mother-in-law, who lived with them, about the dream. "Do you really believe God was sending a message to you through the dream?" His mother-in-law asked him. "Why don't you carve on a piece of wood to see if you can really carve? If it turns out that you really can, then I'll believe the dream really meant something."

Chang climbed upstairs to where he kept all his bonsai plants. He picked up a piece of dead wood and began to carve on it. One and a half hours later, the wood had turned into a sculpture of a chicken pecking at rice. Chang's daughter, a sixth grader, saw the piece and said to him, "It's so beautiful. Can I have it?" Looking at the finished work, Chang was amazed at himself. He had known since he was a child that he could paint, but he had no idea that he could sculpt. Yes, he did chisel on dead bonsai wood once in a while, but to produce such a fine sculptural piece... It really came as a surprise. Chang decided to give sculpting a try.

What was also surprising was that what God had predicted in the dream came true a couple of years later--chain eyeglass stores opened one after another in Taiwan, making the business a great deal more competitive.

After Chang had sculpted for a couple of years and made some good works, Lin, his bonsai teacher, reminded him that if he wanted to make something of himself in the field, he would need a good master to guide him. Lin, who was also a famous calligrapher, had once taught calligraphy to the internationally renowned sculptor Yuyu Yang [please refer to his story in our Summer 2003 issue]. Lin introduced Chang to Yang, telling the master sculptor that Chang was a real talent. Yang, however, had qualms about taking on such an old disciple. It was only after a year's observation that he finally made up his mind to accept him as his pupil.

Unlike most sculptors, who usually choose to sculpt human figures and animals, Chang settled on a different subject matter--landscapes. Yang told him to stick to it and not to carve human figures anymore. However, two years later, Chang submitted a sculpture featuring an old man with a broken arm and a hunting dog with a broken leg to a sculpture competition. The work, entitled Light of Life, won him a prize. When Yang learned about this, though, he was very unhappy.

Yang told him the art of figure sculpting had long reached its pinnacle of achievement in the West. In Taiwan, there was already the famous sculptor Ju Ming [see our Spring 2000 issue], who had made a name for himself by means of his figure sculptures--the Tai Chi and Living World series. If Chang kept on sculpting human figures, chances would be very slim that he would achieve any distinction.

Taking his master's advice to heart, Chang concentrated his full attention on sculpting landscapes and natural scenery. His efforts soon came to fruition. In 1988, he won first place in a sculpture competition held by the Council for Cultural Affairs. His work, based on a biblical story, depicted 108 lambs gamboling on magnificent mountain slopes. He continued to garner prizes during the following years and was invited to France, the United States, and other countries to display his works. Recognizing his achievements, the prestigious National Museum of History in Taipei organized a solo exhibition for him this year.

Giving new life to dead wood

In addition to his subject matter, what makes Chang's work special is the material he uses. He carves on dead wood, not wood freshly cut from living trees. When he was learning the art of bonsai, he often went with his teacher, Lin, to remote mountains to study strangely shaped old trees and their living environments. From these excursions, he found that dead wood was actually very good carving material. The wood he uses comes from camphor trees, boxwood, or other oil-containing trees (so worms won't eat them) that lived on the Earth for over 1000 years before being struck by lightning, blown down by strong winds, or killed by other natural disasters. After being buried underground for at least 200 years, such trees have become partly fossilized and irregular in shape. Being hard, they provide very good, durable carving material; when carved into sculptures, they can be preserved for over 1,000 years. In the past, Chang looked for this rare kind of wood in remote mountains and forestry centers in Taiwan. Later, he was told that there were collectors of this kind of wood, so he also went to these collectors to buy his materials.

"The dead wood I use, being uneven and irregular in shape, is not suitable for carving Buddhist statues," said Chang, "but it's good for carving landscapes. Often when I look at a piece of dead wood, I am inspired by its shape and think of some landscape to carve. That's why when I first started sculpting, I chose to carve landscapes."

Chang's art has gone through some changes and transformations. When he first tried his hand at sculpting, he tended to create detailed pieces of work. But his master, Yang, told him to free himself of meticulous carving techniques. "In Chinese ink painting, white space is considered an indispensable element. For us sculptors, white space is important too," explains Chang. "When sculpting, we should try to leave out unimportant details and only focus on the essential parts of our subject matters. Simplicity is beauty. What's important is to capture and convey the spirit and life of a subject." For Chang, to be able to bring forth the essential and preclude the inconsequential is what distinguishes real artists from craftsmen. It is also the hardest part of sculpting. "It's easy to start carving a piece, but hard to stop at the right place."

Chang is an important member of a Presbyterian church near his hometown. After seeing his works, some ministers questioned why all he carved were landscapes and why he didn't preach the Gospel through his sculptures. Confronted by their questions, Chang once had doubts about his creations. Fortunately, when he was 54 years old, he met Lin Hung-hsin, a doctor of theology, who cleared his doubts for him. Dr. Lin told him that nature had been created by God and that by carving landscapes he was extolling the wondrous power of God and preaching the Gospel through his artistic creations. At this, Chang was relieved and became even more determined to produce more artworks to glorify the Almighty.

Chang's art has won the admiration of many art connoisseurs and critics, including Chin Hsiao-yi, former director of the National Palace Museum (the most famous and important museum in Taiwan), who even gave Chang a work of calligraphy he created to praise his sculpture. Although Chang is happy to receive recognition and praise, he hopes he will not be influenced by them. "If an artist thinks too much about applause, material rewards, or things like that, it's unlikely that he or she can produce good art. My teacher, Yang, once told me not to create for now, not for today, but to create for 50 or 100 years from now--to create works that will touch people and make them miss you 50 or even 100 years from now. That way I won't be disturbed or influenced by criticism or praise from people around me."

In the future, he plans to create works based on the scenery of the Taroko Gorge in Taiwan and Mount Huang in mainland China, two places that he has found most full of natural splendor. As long as his eyes can still see clearly and his hands do not tremble with age, he will continue to produce works in the pursuit of another creative breakthrough. In order to devote all his energy to artistic creation, he asked his children to take over his eyeglass business a few years back. Now he spends 12 hours a day carving. Even so, he still complains about the lack of time. "Originally, I worried about not getting enough dead wood on which to carve, since it is not so easily procured. But then I realized that my biggest problem is time." At 66, he is playing a tug of war with time, not for any specific thing, but to complete the mission God has assigned him. For him, all glories bestowed on him belong to God. He hopes that he will live up to the expectations of the Almighty One.