The Paper World of Wu Chih-fen

This spring the main attraction at the cultural center in Changhua (located about 20 kilometers south of Taichung) is not an exhibit by a well-established artist but the work of a local woman, Wu Chih-fen, a reporter's wife and mother of two daughters. Wu herself guides friends around the exhibit, and watches closely the reactions of the other spectators, wearing sandals and carrying babies. "Is that really paper?" asks one. Such questions fill Wu with great satisfaction and contentment.

"I never thought I'd exhibit my work," says the 36-year-old Wu, who liked to scribble as a child. "Had I grown up in our family's old home in Yunnan, where we were rich and well-known, my father would have moved mountains to help his one and only precious daughter become a painter. But no such luck. I was born in wartime, when my parents were fleeing to Burma." Her family came to Taiwan when she was three, and Wu spent an austere childhood growing up on an army base near Chungli.

While studying at Shih Chien College, Wu lived a life of hard work and thrift in part to pay for classes in oil painting at an art gallery. Upon graduation, she returned to her old junior high school to be a counselor and teach home economics. Not an accredited teacher at the time, she spent her summers at National Taiwan Normal University working toward certification and taking classes which included paper-cutting, weaving, and Chinese macrame.

Soon Wu got married, to Ho Chihsiung, a reporter with the Central Daily News, had children, and found herself spending all her time playing teacher, wife, and mother. Her painting ambitions were put on the back burner. Living in Taipei, crowded and surrounded by strangers, also proved difficult for Wu, used to the spaciousness and friendliness of the countryside. Her husband noticed his wife's strain, and the family moved back to Chungli to give her some peace of mind. He also encouraged her to think more about painting again.

Between the kitchen and the classroom, Wu's busy life left little time for such ideas. Yet paper-cutting class began to hold more and more interest for her. She taught her students the traditional forms, finding that paper-cutting basically just required a bit of carefulness and hard work. Later the class held an exhibit of its work inside the school, which received an enthusiastic response from the students.

The experience caused Wu to reevaluate her attitude toward paper-cutting. Why couldn't it be used as a form of self-expression like painting? And so, using her unusual background and perspective, the reporter's wife started afresh in a new art.

She quickly went beyond the traditional boundaries of paper-cutting. Besides the usual red, black, green, and blue, Wu employed a variety of subtler hues. Where others would have made highly intricate paper flower petals, her hands produced a lonely, small yellow chrysanthemum. Her subject matter extended outside the old forms and soon encompassed anything that caught her fancy, being it something she saw, read about, or imagined.

Cutting pure and simple lost its appeal early. Scissors were replaced by hands, and aided by considerable amounts of paste, Wu began to tear, twist, and peel works of unusual texture.

Three years ago, the TV show Children's World was looking for someone to explain paper-cutting to its young viewers. They wanted a maternal figure that could tell stories and cut paper. A few people in TV circles knew about the wife of Ho Chihsiung, an expert at the craft and photogenic as well, and recommended her. It was the first public exposure for Wu and her work.

Later the features editor of the Min Sheng Pao saw Wu's pieces and wanted to feature them in a story. The prospect led her to put even more time and effort into paper-cutting, and some of the pieces became part of an exhibit that went to the U.S. Says Ho Hao-t'ien, who as former director of the National Museum of History has seen many paper cutting artists come and go, "Wu Chih-fen's art doesn't simply represent an object; it also expresses her emotions. In her cutting, painting, and gluing, you can see everywhere the mark of an artist."

In the newspaper, on TV, and on tour, Wu had accomplished her ambition of being an artist, not with painting but with paper.

Fame brought unexpected benefits. Unsatisfied with the consistency and stickiness of commercial glue, she turned to using glutinous rice. Eventually though, this difficult job fell to her retired father. Living alone in the country with little to do, he had been in poor spirits. But making glue for his daughter brought him out of his funk, and he went about his job with energy and enthusiasm.

Wu also received help from her daughters. Besides moving tables and fetching paste and paper, they were a ready source of ideas and enabled her art to include also a child's perspective of the world. Her mother and husband, in their own very different ways, also provided valuable advice and encouragement.

Wu Chih-fen is often inspired while doing routine household chores. Once while feeding papayas into a blender, pouring in the milk, and watching orangeyellow papaya milkshakes take shape, she had a brainstorm. Couldn't the old news papers piled up in the living room give her the shade of gray she was looking for?

And yes, the solution to what had been keeping her up at nights, how to get the grayish shade used by splash-ink artists, lay in the piles of yellowing newspaper. Pail after pail of mashed paper pulp made its way into the living room. Her father thought his daughter was bringing mud into the house. One night Wu used the pulp in painting pictures, and the next morning her father found that the "mud" was gone, and that his daughter at some point had picked up the basics of traditional Chinese art.

She also enjoys inviting friends for Yunnanese food, but cleaning the grease afterward off the pots and bowls is a dirty, unpleasant job. A second look though one day at the grease and sauces mixing together, sparkling in the pan, and she thought: how would this look on paper? The result was a bright, shiny effect that never went away, as if the "paint" had just been applied.

Besides relying on ideas that seem to drop out of the blue, Wu draws on books and exhibits for her inspiration. She teaches a night class in paper-cutting in addition to her usual duties as a school teacher, and gratefully accepts the assistance and concepts given to her by friends.

Her life is hectic, but with money in the bank, food on the table, and her childhood ambition fulfilled, Wu Chih-fen says, "What more could you ask for?"

[Picture Caption]

Wu Chih-fen and daughter happily collaborate on a paper-cutting project.

Wu as a child was good at drawing profiles. Today she uses her hands to tear the same shapes, often with stunning results.

(Top) "Cotton paper" and glue produce an oil-like moving work of art.

(Bottom) Wu feels that appearances to the contrary, everyone marches to a different drummer.

The hands of Wu Chih-fen turn ordinary cardboard into exquisite flower shapes.

To her students, Wu is a young, happy teacher.

Wu and her family steal an afternoon to relax outdoors.

Wu as a child was good at drawing profiles. Today she uses her hands to tear the same shapes, often with stunning results.

（Top） "Cotton paper" and glue produce an oil-like moving work of art.

（Bottom） Wu feels that appearances to the contrary, everyone marches to a different drummer.

The hands of Wu Chih-fen turn ordinary cardboard into exquisite flower shapes.

To her students, Wu is a young, happy teacher.

Wu and her family steal an afternoon to relax outdoors.