Woodcarver Chen Chi-tsun carves deities and mortals alike.
At his studio in southern Taiwan’s Tainan City, Chen Chi-tsun (陳啓村) puts some final touches to a statue of a deity. The woodcarver’s skillfully executed work won him the 2020 National Craft Achievement Award, the country’s highest crafts prize.
Born into a salt farmer’s family in Tainan in 1963, Chen started his apprenticeship in traditional religious carving at a local shop after he graduated from elementary school. After working there for five years, he was inspired by a book on Michelangelo and wanted to apply Western aesthetics to his work. To implement this change, Chen started to sketch. He said that there is a divide in traditional woodcarving, where carvers create by following drawings made by those who are solely draftsmen. Chen learned how to draw himself and started to prepare his own sketches for his carvings. This enabled him to carve nontraditional temple subjects like children and ordinary people.
Chen has won numerous art awards. His creations range from religious statues to human characters and are displayed in temples around the country as well as in museums at home and abroad. Although coming to woodcarving from a traditional apprenticeship background, Chen has evolved other skills to enrich his prowess.
—by Jim Hwang
Chen’s sketches provide detailed information for creating his carvings.
A Country Woman, stout camphor, 1987
Detail of Liu Xuan Ling Gong, a deity that protects against plague, stout camphor, 2016
Chen’s woodcarving tools produce extraordinary results.
Youth, stout camphor, 1996
Various deities, phosphor bronze, 2006