Ah Leon's workshop is located on the fifth floor of an apartment building in Neihu, a suburb of Taipei. The workshop, though inconspicuous, is the birthplace of many of his ingenious artistic creations that have catapulted him to international fame. On a table in one corner of the workshop stood a clay sculpture, colored and textured so ingeniously that it looked just like real wood. Ah Leon pointed to it and said, "It's my most recent work. Took me six months to finish it." These days, the artist produces no more than six ceramic pieces a year; all of them are purchased by collectors even before they are completed. The popularity of his work is obvious.

The artist has been engaged in the field of ceramics for more than 25 years--it is a creative path he has stuck to with hard work, dedication, and enthusiasm. He says that the love of art is ingrained in his nature. Ever since he was a child, he has derived a great deal of pleasure from drawing. His artistic gift has garnered him a lot of prizes. During his junior and senior high school years, he was a constant winner in painting competitions. His talent for art, however, almost got nipped in the bud. When he graduated from high school, his three older brothers, who were all farmers, asked him to work on the family farm to help put food on the table. Ah Leon was not one who could easily give in to what was arranged for him. After a fight with his oldest brother, he ran away from home.

An unrealized dream

Determined to enter the National Taiwan Academy of Art, he arrived in Taipei and enrolled in a cram school to prepare for the entrance exam. The competition was tough, with more than 3,000 people fighting for 40 vacancies per year. After sitting for the entrance exam three times, he finally passed it and was admitted to the academy.

In order to pay the tuition, he taught painting to children after class. Working his way through college with zealous determination, he dreamed of one day becoming the best painter in Taiwan. The dream was short-lived, though. Soon after leaving the college, he had a rude awakening. It was the 1970s, and there was no market for art in Taiwan. "I found that art, which was so great in my eyes, was little valued by the general public."

To earn his bread and butter, he tried his hand at pottery making. At that time, tea drinking had become a popular pastime on the island, and there was a steady demand for teapots. Ah Leon himself was fond of tea drinking. One thing led to another, and he became interested in throwing pots and vessels. Serious about the craft, he learned the required techniques from several senior master potters; with his agile mind and artistic sensibilities, he soon excelled at it. In 1985, he was good enough to hold a solo exhibition at the Spring Gallery in Taipei. His teapots sold so well that he was able to buy a house out of the proceeds.

As a professional potter, Ah Leon enjoyed great commercial success. His teapots, noted for their aesthetic and technical refinement, commanded a higher price than other similar products on the market. To make tea brewing and drinking more enjoyable for tea lovers, he paid meticulous attention to the design of his teapots. He devised many ingenious patented inventions, one of which was a teapot with a lid that has a steam hole big enough to pour water through. The pot can be easily refilled without bothering to remove the lid. The steam hole is located in a raised central knob with a pinched waist so that no water can escape when the pot is tilted for decanting.

Ah Leon could have easily made a fortune by producing his patented inventions in great quantities. But making functional ware was after all too much of a mere craft and did not allow much space for creativity. With his inborn love for artistic creation, it was difficult for him to rest contentedly on his achievements as a teapot maker. Sooner or later, he needed to find a way to satisfy his creative urge.

America, the turning point

In 1986, Ah Leon's girlfriend went to the United States to study modern dance. Before she left, he gave her a teapot as a present. Little did he know that the small teapot would greatly change the direction of his life.

His girlfriend, who later became his wife, often used the teapot to make tea for her friends. One day, she showed the teapot to a pottery teacher at the school where she studied. "It was made by my boyfriend," she said. The teacher's face brightened upon hearing that. He not only lavished praise on the quaint little teapot, but also said, "It's such a fine piece of work. Can we invite your boyfriend to the United States to demonstrate his skills?"

At the invitation of the teacher, Ah Leon stepped on American soil in 1987, when he was 34 years old. He taught at the State University of New York, Brockport, as a visiting artist. Because of his perfect mastery of his craft, the classes he conducted were very popular. Schools and workshops invited him to impart his expertise. Unstintingly, Ah Leon gave his energies to his students and shared with them his knowledge of pottery making, from recipes for clay mixtures to firing techniques. When he first arrived in America, he could barely speak a word of English. But he trained himself until at last he could use the language fluently and even give lessons in English.

Spending time in the States also broadened his artistic horizon. "My eyes were really opened." At that time in Taiwan, pottery was still regarded more or less as a craft, and its creation was restrained by conventional ideas. But in America, people embraced a far more open attitude about it. A piece of pottery could be created purely for art's sake--it could be devoid of any practical merit outside of its aesthetic value. Ah Leon found a liberating and refreshing freedom in the way American ceramists dealt with clay. A whole new vista opened up to him. "I was originally a traditional teapot maker, but after coming into contact with new ideas in America I began to think of making breakthroughs." It was as if he was spiritually reborn, getting ready to realize his lofty dreams about art which he had had since he was young.

Reminiscing about this early period in the United States, Ah Leon related an encounter which he could never forget. In the winter of 1988, carrying a suitcase of his teapots, he visited one gallery after another in the SoHo area in New York City to find a chance to exhibit his works. It was freezing cold, with the temperature down to 30 degrees Celsius below zero (-22；). After visiting five galleries and getting rejected by all, his courage almost failed him and he could not bring himself to enter another gallery. In the end, he steeled himself to try one more time. He stepped into a gallery where a nice elderly lady named Terry Davis was in charge. When he showed her his work, she exclaimed, "Your teapots are so exquisite! I have never seen anything of the kind in my country. I am sure they will be greatly liked." She asked her colleagues to come and look at the teapots. But because the gallery did not sell pottery, it did not intend to display Ah Leon's work. The lady called many other galleries, including the prestigious Garth Clark Gallery, to recommend Ah Leon to them. Although none of them expressed interest, Ah Leon was still full of gratitude to the woman. Her sincere and enthusiastic attitude warmed the heart of an aspiring young man who had come from a faraway country to the United States to pursue his dream.

Four years later, when Ah Leon's work gradually received attention in the States and the Garth Clark Gallery invited him to hold an exhibition, Ah Leon especially called the lady to thank her. "I made it! Thank you. You're an important person in my artistic career in the States. It's because of you that I had the courage to continue working here." Ah Leon is grateful to all the people who have extended him a helping hand along the way. It gave him courage and supported him in the pursuit of his dreams. Without these people, the path of artistic creation would have been very lonely.

Bridge

The bustling American ceramic scene made Ah Leon want to try clay sculpture for art's sake instead of simply making practical vessels. Because he was familiar with the texture, grain, and shape of wood through his interest in the art of bonsai, he came up with the idea that he could manipulate clay to mimic the appearance of wood. Thus he created a series of "Tree Trunk T-pots"--nonfunctional teapots that seemed hewn and carved from logs and branches. He used the trompe-l'oeil (fool-the-eye realism) technique in the creation of his T-pots; his mastery of the technique was so great that viewers had a hard time figuring out whether the sculptures were actually made of clay or not. Through his Tree Trunk T-pots, he liberated himself from the dictates imposed on a traditional teapot maker and played ingeniously with the forms and features of functional teapots. His work attracted a lot of attention and made him famous in the United States.

A real artist is one who constantly strives to go beyond his current capability. After creating Tree Trunk T-pots for three or four years, Ah Leon found that it could no longer satisfy his creative impulses. He wanted to make something even less traditional. "I remember one American potter told me that the key to success was to make a piece shocking: either make it huge or red or gold." So Ah Leon started thinking in this vein. He consequently created Bridge, his most famous work, which fulfilled his ambition to work on a monumental scale.

It took Ah Leon nearly four years to complete Bridge. He used all his savings to buy five tons of clay. In order to fully concentrate his attention on making Bridge, he stopped producing functional teapots, which were his main source of income. His family's finances were strained (he was married by that time). To solve the financial problem, he mortgaged his home to the bank for a loan of NT$2 million (US$50,000). He took a big chance on implementing the project. "Before Bridge was completed," he said, "no one knew for sure whether it would turn out to be a great piece of art or a five-ton piece of junk."

Bridge, 20 meters long and 1 meter high (66 x 3 ft), takes the form of a dilapidated old wooden bridge. It is assembled from hundreds of beams, posts, and planks. Because Ah Leon's kiln was only a meter long, he had to make Bridge in pieces. Every detail of it is made of clay, including the bent, rusty nails that seem to hold it together. All the planks and beams were fired and textured to look like weatherworn, rotten, or sun-bleached wood. Bearing the ineffaceable marks of years of traffic and use, the bridge starts off firmly at one end, sags in the middle, then rises again. There are small pieces of wood and stray nails scattered underneath the footboards. As a powerful metaphor, the bridge is charged with meaning. It can be used to symbolize life's journey, with its ups and downs, hopes and disappointments. If viewers are observant, they can detect the imprint of a truck wheel or a footprint on the bridge. "Bridge is full of feeling and nostalgia. Countless people have crossed it. You can even see it as a connection between the old and the new." Like all meaningful art, it gives viewers a great deal of room for imagination and interpretation.

Undoubtedly such a gigantic work took Ah Leon a lot of sweat and painstaking effort to complete. Fortunately, since its completion, it has been received in the art community with high regard. Jan Stuart from the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington, D.C., which hosted the world premiere of Bridge, said, "With this clay masterpiece, Ah Leon splendidly demonstrates the creative potential and modern standards of Taiwan's best ceramic artists and brings international attention to contemporary Chinese art beyond the more widely appreciated realm of painting and graphic media." As one of the few examples of Taiwanese installation art to have attained recognition in the West, Bridge won Ah Leon a lot of kudos, and it also established him as a maestro in the ceramic art world. Ah Leon could never have imagined all this when he first stepped on American soil.

An artist with creative originality

When asked what the key to his success was, Ah Leon said that his achievements were made possible because he did not blindly copy international ceramic techniques. "If I simply borrowed ideas from the West, if I took a shortcut, I would never have been able to make a name for myself in the art community." With his trompe-l'oeil Tree Trunk T-pots, Bridge, and tofu installations (his more recent creations in which he imitated blocks of tofu placed on wooden pallets), he has obviously created a distinctive individual idiom--something many talented artists have tried to do but failed. Ah Leon is glad that foreign collectors can always recognize his works on sight. "Upon seeing my works, they know they are made by Ah Leon from Taiwan."

Ah Leon feels fortunate for having become a ceramist instead of a painter. "Unlike painting, ceramics, as a much newer artistic medium, allows a lot more space for innovation." He expects himself to be not only an artist, but also an original, creative artist. "As I see it, few artists today create original works of art. They are simply repeating what their predecessors did." In order not to produce works that have little value, he knows that he needs to constantly plow the ceramic field with diligence. Only by doing so can he stay atop the pinnacle he has reached.