Sounds of Vermont
This series of prints by Chng Seok Tin and printmaking student Poh Kwee Choo emerged from a month-long art residency in Vermont, USA. Chng produced over 120 works, whilst Poh executed over 20 pieces at the Barbara White Studio of the Vermont Studio Centre, noted for its art program of inviting artists from over the world. This exhibition showcases a selection of Chng's and Poh's works and extracts from the artists' visual notebooks.
The scope and possibilities of a visual artist's practice are often defined in relation to sight. Its diminished capacity would thus, unquestionably, be a source of intense personal and professional distress and frustration. Ironically, Chng's sight impairment has enhanced her sensitivity to other sensory experiences -prompting her to rearticulate her artistic expressions in more complex and compelling ways.
Printmakers Chng Seok Tin and Poh Kwee Choo were part of a month lon.g residency program organised by the Vermont Studio Centre. The prints in Sounds of Vermont were produced during a 'transition' period -as winter moved into spring in the small town of Johnson in northern Vermont, USA where the printmakers were residing. For Poh Kwee Choo, the crossing of one season to another offered an extraordinary visual spectacle, evident in the large stretches of ice on the Gihon River crqcking and melting, surrende.ring to warmer, more forgiving conditions and by fields of white snow interrupted by sprouting trees and vegetation.
In another respect, these prints bring us to another kind of 'border-crossing' -to the borderlands of different senses, where sight, sound, touch and the imagination cross and collide. The drama of Vermont's mountains, rivers and forests in the pristine starkness of winter is evoked in these collographs, monoprints and dry-point pieces as gusts of wind, craggy rocks, wisps of vegetation or as enlarged snow-flake shapes. Chng transcribed into visual forms her experience of sharp chilly air and volatile wind, whilst Poh describes her pieces as inspired by 'molecules' of falling snow as well as he·art-stopping aerial views of the landscape.
Like so much of Chng's practice, the Sounds of Vermont prints and notebook sketches assume a spiritual quality that takes them beyond mere 'delightful tributes' to the expansive beauty of the Vermont landscape. They may be considered little visual poems, much like the self-contained existence of Johnson town. And whilst many of the prints suggest a distinct vulnerability and volatility in the landscape, these impressions are not without humour or whimsical edge. In the Footprints series, Chng alludes to the candlelight virgil and walk undertaken in an anti-war protest as America de.clared war on Iraq on 19 March. Over 100 town residents and artists walked some 300 metres before symbolically planting their lighted candles in the snow before the town church. This print hence features quirky 'foot-prints' making treks in untouched snow.
If this series as a whole visually captures the sounds of VermonAt then the individual prints by Chng and Poh are small, pleasurable music oratorios. Their 'visual ·voices' are lush whispers at times, crisp and precise passages at other times, and still on other occasions, they are sonorous, fluid or humming reverberations. The two printmakers' works 'speak' always in rich cadences and timbre -always with resonance -telling us of aching isolation, or of persiste.nt restlessness, fleeting sensations or of the sparkling life that vividly marks and measures Vermont landscape and space.
Lindy Poh is a curator, writer and lawyer specialising in the art & heritage fields.
Size: 39 x 31
柏梦情
白皑皑厚敦敦的雪地，漫天纷飞的雪花， 迷蒙的远山，绚丽多彩的晚云，落光l绿叶的树林。苍老剥落的桥栏，龟裂的柏油路。桥下，负驼着大大小小冰岩雪块的吉鸿河，变幻多端汩汩滔滔，奔流向远方。
那只有五百个居民宁静如诗的小镇， 那清香可口的枫树糖浆（柏梦的特产），那随处可见四时常绿的柏树，那仓劲峥嵘的枯树与灿烂的冬阳合作。在雪地上挥洒出一幅幅韵味十足，疏密有致的水墨画。午夜时分，我与桂株踏着满地的冰雪，应着月光，小心翼翼的从画室走回宿舍。
更忘不了那丰富多彩，无日无之的艺术活动：小说朗读，诗歌朗诵，幻灯欣赏，名家讲座，画室开放参观，交流分享创作经验。。。外头时零下的寒冬，餐厅里，消闲室内，讲堂内时间一到，总是人头攒动，温暖如春。来自美国各州，来自亚洲各地：南京，台南， 东京，京都，马尼拉，西贡，巴厘的艺术家，各展所长，彼此观摩学习。一个月下来，大家都熟络的有如一家人，一旦骊歌响起，都不免依依不舍。
那一桩桩，一件件温馨的往事，欢乐的回忆，悠扬的亲韵，婉约的三弦琴声（日本雕塑家西村成生的随身物）犹在耳边回响。那一首首在雪地上，在寒风中，点点摇曳的烛光里飘扬的和平之歌依然在脑际回旋。它们将成为我心田里不可磨灭的追忆。
按：Vermont, 一般译为弗蒙特，但我以文学的感情之译为柏梦。柏梦艺术中心的创始人是 John 与 Louis 夫妇，他们于二十一年前与一批志同道合的朋友来到这个荒僻的小镇，开始筚路褴褛的建设。如今它已成为世界有名的艺术中心，二十年来，已先后接待过近四千名来自世界各地的艺术工作者。
2004年1月10日
心珍于斜阳阁
