This beautiful publication by the China Academy of Art just came out on the workshop which I taught there in 2011. The Architecture School is run by the Pritzker Prize winning architect, Wang Shu of Amateur Architects, a firm which he runs with his wife and partner, Lu Wenyu. The stunning campus is a master work by their firm.

(Jeremiah Watson, Hao Chen, Kyna Leski, Wang Shu & Ron Henderson)

This publication contains the essays: “The Poetry of Substance,” by Wang Shu,  “Finding Your Way,”  by Kyna Leski, and “Where to go,” by Jiang Weihua. Jiang Weihua and Jeremiah Watson were teaching assistants who really co-taught the workshop with me. It was a moving experience. Most of the communication was made through a drawn glossary on the blackboard and with materials like rope, pipe, springs,  and wood in our hands.  What follows is an excerpt from my essay:

“Thirteen point eight billion hands are at work today. The spiraling combinations of mother and father genes, descended from ancestors, back to the mutant gene that gave origin to the thumb and then finger joints that spirally rotate, endowing the hand and the human mind an ability to grasp. Our hand has traveled a million-million combinations, twists and turns.

The hand extends the mind into the world. Articulated gesturing, enacting and making. The lines of one’s hand shape and are shaped by the past, present and future. Material in hand, ideas are made and not stuck in thought. Material doesn’t always do what you want it to. It gets in the way, or goes between the pre-conceived idea and the revealed idea of a process.”