Taiwan Today

A mother and daughter are working to promote the art of freestyle embroidery.

The skill of embroidery developed early in Chinese history, along with the practice of raising silkworms and making silk. Archaeological finds confirm the beginning of embroidery to some point during the Shang dynasty (1766 B.C.-1122 B.C.), but historical documents record the use of embroidery in China as early as 2255 B.C. Collections of historical embroidered items are quite diverse and include robes, theatrical costumes, shoes and more. A museum visit can be a good opportunity to appreciate the various embroidery styles that have evolved alongside technical and artistic developments over the centuries, as each style has its own special features. At the same time, more conventional styles of traditional Chinese embroidery clearly follow strict rules such as "knitting-the-pinhole," (positioning the stitches together as closely as possible without overlapping) and "aligning-the-thread" (working the stitches in the same direction).

Earlier this year, some 80 works by 85-year-old embroidery artist Chen Sie-hsueh and her students were showcased at 's . These works, while sharing the same meticulous needlework and refined color palette of traditional embroidery, are quite different from those in any museum collection. Chen herself prefers to call this style "flying needle embroidery," although it is also known as needle painting, freestyle embroidery, random stitch embroidery, or crisscross stitch embroidery. As the names imply, this style uses seemingly random overlapping layers of stitches in different lengths and in many directions rather than following the traditional rules, and as a result it is able to achieve a visual effect of tone and depth. Freedom from traditional embroidery rules also means freedom from traditional designs. Needle painting artists, like artists working in oils and ink, can "paint" just about any subject matter they desire.

Major Breakthrough

The style was created by Yang Shouyu (1896-1981) in the early 1930s. Yang, an artist working in the fields of both embroidery and Western painting, felt that traditional embroidery was a little flat and thus developed a style that combines painting and embroidery techniques. "The idea is to use needles as pens, threads as paints, fabric as paper," says Chen, who learned the technique from Yang some 67 years ago. "It was a major breakthrough in Chinese embroidery in that it allows freedom for creativity, which turns a traditional craft into art."

Born in Zhejiang province as the daughter of famous painter Chen Zhifo (1896-1962), Chen Sie-hsueh started grabbing her father's brushes when she was only three or four years old and showed great artistic potential as she was growing up. "I wasn't exactly a good student in many subjects, but I managed to cover all the free space in my textbooks with drawings," she says, recalling that her favorite subject matter during junior high school was Shirley Temple, drawings of whom she then gave to her classmates. Though gifted, the little girl's chance of receiving a formal art education was postponed due to the Sino-Japanese War. For several years, the family had to move from place to place to dodge the war. Finally in 1941, far from the war zone, Chen entered the Zhengze Girls' Vocational School in province, where she learned painting and had her first contact with embroidery.

From Yang Shouyu, Chen learned the basic techniques of needle painting, but her embroidery classes came to an end when she entered the art department of Nanjing's National Central University (now Nanjing University), where she was taught by her father and several other famous painters. With professional training and support from her father, it seemed that everything was ready for the talented young woman to start a career as a painter when she graduated in 1947. Fate, however, had other arrangements.

The Chinese civil war sent Chen, her husband and their one-year-old daughter fleeing to in 1949. Busy taking care of the family in a place where Chen had to deal with language barriers and other challenges, creating art was not really a priority and the only cultural activities left to her were occasional visits to art exhibitions. One day, when Chen walked into an exhibition showcasing artworks by military dependents, she saw a needle painting by one of her former classmates. "It brought right back all the good memories of those school days," she says. "It also made me think that it would be a shame if I just gave up everything I'd learned and enjoyed."

It did not take Chen too long to make up her mind to pick up art again. It took an even shorter time for her to decide to go the embroidery route instead of painting. One reason was that there were already many painters, but very few embroidery artists, so Chen thought that she could do something to keep the traditional art from disappearing.

Practical Considerations

There were also practical considerations. "The most important reason, actually, was that needles and thread were much cheaper than brushes and ink stones," she says. " was just recovering from the war and every penny counted for a family that relied on a small military paycheck." So with NT$5 (US$0.12 at the exchange rate then) of colored thread, Chen started to familiarize herself with embroidery once again.

As a fulltime mother and housewife, Chen began creating embroidery pieces as a hobby only. The push for Chen to get serious about her work came in 1962 when she learned that her father, who stayed in after the civil war, had passed away. "The only thing I could think of was that I needed to do something to honor him, and I began to stitch and stitch and stitch," she says. Within five years, Chen had completed 50 pieces and held her first solo show at the (now the ) in honor of her father. In addition to showcasing Chen's "flying needle" embroidery style, many of the exhibited pieces demonstrated Chen's admiration of her father. In the piece titled Barriers to Peace, for example, two pigeons are blocked from home by wire fences, symbolizing her sadness of not being able to return to . Another piece, Father, based on a small black-and-white photo, was taken to years later as a gift for Chen's mother.

Master Status

The success of the show comforted Chen a little and was also a great encouragement for her to go on. Although Chen considered herself mostly a housewife who happened to enjoy embroidery, her extraordinary works in fact established her as a master embroidery artist. Over the years, she has won numerous awards including the nation's highest honor for traditional artisans, the Folk Art Heritage Award. She has been commissioned to portray both local and foreign leaders including Madame Chiang Kai-shek, former President Jimmy Carter, former South Korean President Park Chung-hee and several others as gifts for them. And she has held many exhibitions locally and abroad. One of the shows that is particularly meaningful to her was a 2004 exhibition hosted by 's --the museum's first solo show for an embroidery artist. It was very significant to Chen since is considered the kingdom of embroidery and is both the place where needle painting was created and where Chen learned the art. Moreover, needle-painting techniques in and have developed quite differently and the exhibition also allowed Chen the opportunity to show the "Taiwanese style."

The biggest difference, explains one of Chen's daughters, Myshree Tsai, who accompanied her mother to , is that embroidery in has strong government support and has been seen as a craft suitable for commercial production for the tourist market. Chen, on the other hand, has been improving old techniques and creating new ones to lift embroidery to the level of art. She has been able to pursue that direction as she does not have to worry about "the market," as there is none in , Tsai says.

Individual achievement, however, helps little in preserving and promoting an art. Most of the time, Chen just sat quietly threading her needle and stitching. But as she got older, she started to worry about whether or not the art form would be passed on. Tsai explains that embroidery has always been a minor art form in . "There are few artists, a small audience and little governmental or private support," she says. "No one was teaching it because no one wanted to invest their time in such a time-consuming art that has no real market."

Chen's concerns that the art might be lost seemed legitimate until about 10 years ago, when Tsai decided to join her mother. Tsai says that, although she had watched her mother embroider for as long as she could remember, she was never really interested in it herself. "One day, when I was watching my mother working, it struck me that she had been embroidering through four decades," Tsai recalls. "At that moment, I realized that she was getting old and was not going to do it forever. I needed to help."

Time and Patience

At the time Tsai, who was born in in 1958, was already an established watercolor painter. She had won several national awards since high school and held several solo exhibitions as her skill matured. Replacing brushes and paint with needles and thread was not too much of a problem in terms of technique, but the great investment in time and patience was challenging. Tsai decided to quit her job as a teacher at Fu-hsin Trade and in so that she could devote as much time as possible to creating and promoting the art of embroidery.

Tsai picked up the skills quite well. Mother and daughter embroidered at home all day and held occasional exhibitions, although none of this was of much help in promoting the art. Tsai thought that they should find a way to teach the art to more people and started to translate their skills into a set of teaching materials. As a graduate of , the task was not too difficult for Tsai. Then, when opportunity knocked, the mother and daughter were ready, opening their first needle painting class at 's in 2001 followed by classes at several other community colleges. The students attending these community schools, according to Tsai, are from all walks of life and of all ages. There are housewives, teachers and teenagers. Currently, the oldest student is 89. In 2004, the mother and daughter set up the Free Style Embroidery Painting Association. In addition to teaching and promoting the art, the association has trained about 20 members who are now able to teach freestyle needle painting.

New Possibilities

The promotion of the art might be just as time consuming as the embroidery itself, but there have already been some results. Last year, 24 primary and junior-high teachers from around the island attended a two-week freestyle embroidery camp organized by the for Traditional Arts. "The most encouraging thing was that through brainstorming, we worked out possibilities for blending embroidery and teaching," Tsai says. "It makes teaching come alive and learning more fun."

Freestyle embroidery has also been approved as a project for the Council for Cultural Affairs' Plan for Community Cultural Revitalization, which aims to use cultural resources for community development. One of the results is a huge embroidered work measuring 4.8 meters wide by 1.2 meters high in the titled . The piece, commissioned by LiteOn Technology Corp., which is headquartered in the , shows local scenes and activities from around Neihu and took 77 people--including more than 60 Neihu residents--eight months to complete. It will be displayed in the Gangqian Station on the Taipei MRT's Neihu Line scheduled to open in 2009.

Chen Sie-hsueh was one of the 77 needles that created the piece. Although she has not been working much since eye surgery two years ago, after embroidering her way through more than four decades she just could not pass up the opportunity to sit alongside a new generation of enthusiasts and fly a few more stitches.

Write to Jim Hwang at jim@mail.gio.gov.tw