Designing a form of sculpture is difficult for me, hence I always struggle the start so that I prefer starting in the middle. Frankly speaking, most of time I enjoy the process of sculpturing rather than the completed sculpture. Technique and craftsmanship are engaging for me. If I make a sculpture for show a sort of technique, indeed, it may be boring and incomprehensible for the general audiences who had no experience of those sculpting process. Consequently, I engage to think and find a way to share my sculpture experience to them.
Once I had a trip to a village of Hebei, there was a matter impressed me. In the farm, two elders who sat on the two different benches and held an old fashionable two-man saw to cut a timber together. They looked enjoyable and relax; actually they just have fun with it. They were drinking a cup of tea and have a leisure chat while cutting. They were not care of how many blocks of timber had been cut, indeed had joy for an hour though sawing. It inspired me to design a sculpture project “Slice” to invite the other people to saw with me.
Fortunately, I had an opportunity to access it in Hong Kong International Sculpture Symposium 2012 which held in Quarry Bay park. Within two weeks, I invited over 100 visitors who help to slice over 150 pieces of wood with two-man saw. This heavy exercise absolutely caused me exhausted but was still affordable, by contrast, the harder challenge was how to let them relax and enjoy cutting the wood with me. Therefore, I try to keep chatting with each of them. The youngest participant was only 7 years-old, the oldest one was around 80s so that the context of our chatting was diversity. Cartoon, philosophy, history, art, pop culture, Hong Kong and international news and their personal story so on were involved. Since some visitors liked to chat and work with me, then they visited me day by day, even we were to be friend after this project. Saw is not only a tool for sculpting, but also help me to make friends.
Hand saw was hard to cut precisely; particularly most of them had no experience to slice the wood so that each slice was uneven. Therefore, all slices were jointed together with the screws that became a sort of curve. It was never able to be designed because it depended on the participants. The curve was an evidence of our encounter and dialogue. Though it looked abstract, there were still over a hundred people able to interpret and love this work due to their participation. Some residents even helped to guard it every morning in the park. That is my public sculpture which was produced by the public.
Ling Chin Tang Parry 