Making breakthroughs
Chen has stayed at the art of crafting tin through all of life's ups and downs and fate's twists and turns. When the tinware industry in Taiwan was at its lowest ebb and many master tinsmiths had left the field, Chen's innovations caused people to take a new look at this centuries-old craft, which in turn led many old tinsmiths to return to the field. Chen takes particular pleasure in that three of his sons have followed in his footsteps to become tinsmiths. His third son Chen Chih-yang has won three National Handicraft Awards of his own. Having two master craftsmen in one family has earned the Chens a high reputation, and has also given the struggling tin industry a new lease on life.
From an early age, Chen Chih-yang was fully immersed in the tin industry, but he also had considerable talents as a painter and liked to doodle. This fondness led him to the graphic design department at Ming-Dao High School in Taichung. After graduation, however, he desired to break through the limitations of two-dimensional arts. By this time his father had a more stable situation in life and had started to design artistic tin pieces, and as Chih-yang saw his father take his draft designs of animals and turn them into lifelike three-dimensional objects, Chen Chih-yang suddenly discovered that the tin sheets that he had been around since a young boy were the best material available for moving from two dimensions into three. At 18 years old, he devoted himself to learning at his father's side the techniques of a tinsmith and the various properties of different metals.
In 1992, when he was 20, Chih-yang won a National Handicraft Award for Struggling Upstream Against the Current, which displays his depth of understanding of the properties of metals and his control over the metalworking process. The different colors of various metals in the work create a marvelous melange effect. In 1994, Chih-yang's The Eight Immortals Cross the Sea was a winner of a Third National Handicraft Award. In the well-known story, the eight realize that problems of the world come from people themselves, and they are able to break through the shackles of human baseness, follow the Tao and become immortal. Chih-yang's work displays the special characteristics of the eight and their mutual expressions of warmth and harmony as they cross the sea, thus conveying his hope that the human world will move toward greater harmony. In that same year, Chih-yang won one of the ten prizes given at the Second National Heritage Awards for Youths.
In 1995, Chen Chih-yang's work Peony Beauty won a prize at the Fourth National Handicraft Awards. This work depicts the beautiful expression, slender figure, and graceful aura of a classical beauty standing in a courtyard wearing pleated clothes that rustle in a slight wind as she holds up a lantern in a courtyard to admire a beautiful peony and seems ready to break into dance. The work employs the original colors of different kind of metals, intricate shell inlay, and fine carving to achieve the beautiful patterns and ornamentation of her clothing. With the evocative peony and modelled mountain rock as the backdrop, the result is an abundantly colorful and attractive work that achieves its results while leaving the metals in their original colors.
Study abroad
Traditional crafts often represent the lonely road to the land of the starving artist. Yet the young Chen Chih-hang was steadfast in choosing this path. "Tinsmithing, to be sure, has fallen on hard times," he thought to himself, "but because it's not a crowded field there is more room for new thinking and creativity. Therefore, its future ought to be pretty good." Coming into contact day after day with the fires of the smelting furnace and hot liquid tin, Chen Chih-yang's thighs bear the scars of many burns, but these don't seem to bother him. "Although tin is just one metal," he explains, "when you add other metals to it, it results in different coloration. By combining these with glazes, you can give tin even greater variation and creativity in its coloration and appearance."
With his father encouraging him to study different cultures and creative methods, Chen Chih-yang used his portfolio of prize-winning works to apply to the BFA program at the School of Visual Arts in New York in 1995. This school, which emphasizes creative experience, encourages their students to be spontaneous and infuse their work with sudden inspiration. This threw Chen Chih-yang for a loop because he had always considered and reconsidered his ideas time and time again. The creative method of grabbing hold of the moment got closer to his true inner way of thinking, without being affected by tired theory.
In 1999, he obtained his BA degree and returned to Taiwan. When he first came back, he was obsessed with exploring the special qualities of his own culture, so he left the tinsmith shop and went out to see Taiwan's mountains and rivers for himself and to understand the local people and culture. For more creative inspiration, in 2001, he entered the master's program in the Graduate Institute of Applied Arts at the Tainan National College of the Arts, with a focus on metalwork.
Created in Taiwan
In 2002, Chen Chih-yang's Formosa, a work deeply imbued with the character and spirit of Taiwan, won Tainan County's first Sweet Osmanthus Award for Handicrafts. In the work, Chen depicts Taiwanese scenery on the outside of a tin canister for tea leaves. The design focuses on the Central Mountain Range and sets against it city skylines and vistas of rivers and flying birds. An occasional cloud may drift by, but when the rain passes, the sun shines on the vast land of Taiwan.
Although he has embraced innovation, Chen Chih-yang has also not forgotten to learn from tradition, which he uses when combining tinwork with various other handicrafts. He has, for instance, been known to use bamboo-weaving techniques. For a tin jar in the shape of a flower vase he increased its elegance by ornamenting the body of the vase with metal weaving. At the National Tainan College of Arts he studied with a lacquerware artist Lai Tsuo-ming. Because the natural colors of metals are quite fixed, and he doesn't like to dye metal, he has chosen lacquer as the best means to add color variation to his metal artwork.
With his father's encouragement, Chen Chih-yang has not only shouldered the responsibility of carrying on the family legacy of crafting tin, but he has also struck out forcefully on his own. In so doing, he has only added to the glorious reputation of this family with two masters under one roof.