She is all round-round face wearing a grandmotherly benignancy, round eyes filled with childlike innocence, and a round nose (traditionally) revealing her shrewdness to the world. Her shoulders are round too, so that her purse straps slip off time after time. Grandma Lee is all round, from top to toe.
She is carrying a large wooden frame, wrapped in a newspaper. "Is this old lady a painter?" passers-by may wonder. Not really, but almost.
Unlike the other artists, carting can vases to be tinted by brush or pallett-knife, Grandma Lee's burden was accomplished with embroidery needles and colored silk yarns.
Passers-by might be somewhat more astonished if they knew that Grandma Lee was carrying a nude portrait in silk of the late Marilyn Monroe-one of her favorite screen idols-to an art exhibition sponsored by a church.
Mirror images greet each other on a silken ground. (File photo)
"This is art, not sex," emphasized Lee. "How beautiful Monroe is! Do you see her fantastic figure, the legs, the waist .... " Grandma Lee pronounces it "Moonro." She went on, "Marvelous! What a masterpiece! I like this one so much, but I do not know whether the church will permit me to show it."
The nude of the tragic actress, however, passed the church's examination. Then, for other reasons, the exposition was postponed. "It is much better to have the show later. I only have twenty works ready right now. Later on, I may embroider more," Grandma Lee explained. Like most other island people, she is always so optimistic, taking the most favorable view of events.
Embroidering is Grandma Lee's heritage by birth. "My hometown-well, Hunan-style embroideries are very well known," she boasts. "When I went to elementary school, I embroidered' my name on the uniforms all by myself. I even embroidered my cloth shoes, and drew the designs on them, too."
Grandma Lee's handicraft matured with long practice. When she was young, embroidering was a hobby. Since her marriage, the skill has been a vocational tool. However, her making-money designs seemed too dull and stereotyped to her, and she tired of them.
A photographic rendition of her daughter feeding chickens was most popular. (File photo)
"Hunan-style embroidery is surprisingly neat. Regretfully, it is lifeless," she declares. How to animate her embroidered work became a preoccupation.
By chance, she came on a form of embroidery utilizing a texture of threads overlapping in different directions- vastly different from the orderly Hunan-style embroidery. "That's it!" She was delighted.
She mastered the new technique, maintained its essence, but blended it into her own style. After perfecting her own way with her discovery, Lee was eager to find a special subject.
Fortunately, she possesses the proverbial Hunan characteristic - stubborness. Although nobody had accepted her work, she went on with it. "The lack of applause didn't mean that my work was no good; few people get recognition when they are alive," she said to herself.
Deeply addicted to embroidering, Grandma Lee usually stays up all night. Only when she encounters difficulty cannot grasp a person's appearance or carriage-does she quit early.
Lee met countless difficulties embroidering a portrait of Madame Chiang Kai-shek, China's grand lady. She recalled, "in 1957, every night before sleeping, I put a photo of Madame Chiang and my uncompleted work on a table, right in front of the bed. As long as my eyes were open, I kept comparing the two-whether they were alike. if not, why?"
Detail of a girl with flying hair. (File photo)
When the portrait was completed, Madame Chiang was attending a meeting in Taipei. Bringing her two kids along, Grandma Lee spent a day on the economy train to the capital. She came to deliver the embroidery in person, but Madame Chiang was at the meeting all the time. Since Grandma Lee had used up all her funds, and her two kids were hungry, she gave up trying to present the portrait herself. But it got delivered.
Surprisingly, Madame Chiang liked the work very much. Later, she received Grandma Lee and thanked her for her gift. "Madame understands a work of art," Grandma Lee still looked pleased just talking about it.
There are two embroidery techniques which give results vaguely similar to Lee Hsien-shu's. One is to paint on the white silk first, then, using a similar color of yarn, to embroider sparsely on the painting. Basically, it is embellished drawing. Another is to embroider the yarn on the silk by using a sewing ma chine. Grandma Lee's is all hand done.
Generally, all her embroidery has been subjected to three processes. She first draws a rough sketch on the silk. Second, white yarn is neatly embroidered as a base. Then, the different colors of thread are used with the white. The stitches come from different directions. The main principle is: the more intersections among the threads, the more beautiful the embroidery. A taboo: do not reveal parallel lines, which make the embroidery look flat. "This kind of embroidery must be seen under a crosslight, so its detail and layers will stand out. Facing directly into the light, you see only the irregular lines, which do not mean anything," she explains.
The more intersections among the threads, the more beautiful the embroidery. The detail shows up best in cross lighting.
Grandma Lee's work - A passion that carries her into the morning hours. (File photo)
Inspired by Madame Chiang, Lee continued to embroider industriously. In 1959, she held an exhibition. "Without considering the consequences, I mailed invitations to many people whom I did not know at all. I did that only because I thought an exhibit must have some visitors. I just hoped that some of them would come," she said.
"The first day, few people came. However, after an introduction by the principal of Kaohsiung Municipal Girls School, many people did come. Just like the population thronging a bomb shelter during the war, the hall was so crowded," she depicted the situation jubilantly. ‘My works were' not for sale, though; I only sold photos of my work."
The rent for the hall was NT$100 (US$2.50) a day, a heavy burden for her back in those times. Luckily, the income from selling photos paid the rent. But, she owed favors to her neighbors. "During the exhibition, my whole family stayed at the hall. Neighbors watched the house, and every meal was cooked by my neighbors and sent to us. On the third day, people swarmed into the hall continuously, and we were asked to prolong the exhibition. Regretfully, we could not. We were all tired out," she still seemed to feel sorry for that.
In that exposition, one item-a lot feeding chickens, was specially popular. It was Lee's daughter, Hsing-nan, feeding her chickens. In the embroidery, three-year-old Hsing-nan was sprinkling rice for the five hungry chickens- her expression seemed so natural.
"Hsing-nan was clever. Although she was only three, she always threaded my needles for me. Now she's a mother of two kids and is too busy to help me," she said.
The silk embroidery yarn is sold in a unique store in Taipei, and the price has now risen from NT$1 a skein long ago to NT$60 (US$1.50). At the same time, she feels the quality is not as good. Grandma Lee fears that no more good yarn will be available in the future, and wants to embroider everything quickly.
Sitting beside a window, wearing strong glasses, and threading a needle, she is embroidering a picture of a saint, a young girl.
A Catholic, Grandma Lee has embroidered many portraits of Popes, saints and lines of prayer. "It is difficult to embroider a full-face portrait of Pope John II, especially with glasses and rosary," she smiled bashfully, as if afraid to offend the Pope. "The Pope's profile is easier to embroider-only one eye, one hand, and smiling mouth with three teeth to be seen," she explained.
Lee elaborates on colors and details in each embroidery. For example, a girl's black hair may be subtly composed of different colors of yarn-white, light grey, dark grey, brown, black, and even gold-and her cheeks embroidered in white, brown, grey, and pink yarns.
Delicate ornaments, eye expressions, dimples, and tufts of hair across a forehead are all special challenges to Grandma Lee. She just finished a work of her granddaughter, looking in a mirror. Her curly hair and convex fore head really bothered Grandma Lee. "The most important thing is to grasp the person's whole character and expression," she explained. She not only embroiders portraits, but scenery too; many well-known Chinese landscape paintings have been her subjects.
Having worked for her family for years, Grandma Lee is now embroidering for herself. Since her personal exhibition is scheduled for the near future, she continues to embroider as always-sedulously, and cheerfully - By Chiang Chia-yu, "Min Sheng Pao ''/Translated by Yvonne Yuan