Swallow Lin, who has dedicated herself to the graphic arts for the past 20 years, is as pert and vivacious at 36 as her namesake, a constant message of spring to the world.
On first meeting, it is difficult to believe that she is entirely deaf. Though not completely fluent, she can still utter trains of words in full communication. Handicapped at the age of six by meningitis, she was educated at home by her parents. Her mother recalled: "At that time, even the cat and dog at our home could cry, but my own child couldn't even call me mother. What was worse, she wasn't really concerned with her deafness before the age of 10."
When Swallow was 10 years old, she suddenly told her mother that she would like to attend classes. Bending to her persistent requests, Swallow's mother took her to a school for the blind and deaf in Taipei. "But I changed my mind once I saw handicapped students 'speaking' to each other in sign language. I didn't want my daughter to confine her life to this silent world."
After much discussion, her parents determined to teach her to speak before she completely lost the ability. To begin with, Swallow's mother hired a tutor to teach her the National Phonetic Symbols for Mandarin. She then taught Swallow to carefully observe her lip movements. Though more slowly, Swallow progressed in the language to the level of regular students. The mother would ask her daughter to read, until both were exhausted to death. She proved a competent teacher. She taught arithmetic to the child, and she subscribed to several special magazines and newspapers to serve as abundantly available reference material for her daughter. In spite of Swallow's strong protests, the mother kept her to a tight schedule.
Mother Lin admitted that, several times, she was about to give up, because she could not bear the plight of her work—tortured child. Then she would remember how Helen Keller succeeded only after an ordeal of hard training from a dedicated teacher. The discipline was continued, and Swallow has the success of her later life to thank for it. Recalling those tearful days, Swallow falls in a pensive mood.
As Swallow grew up, one day her mother suddenly realized that the girl had shown intense interest in painting. Swallow's first creations did not produce happy results. The teacher gave her a critical "C" because she put stars, moon, sun, trees, mountains, and birds in all her pictures. According to the teacher, it was certainly not logical for the moon and stars and the sun to be out at the same time. Thinking about it, Swallow still fumes: "Why not, they were all one family to me at that time."
Her works are characterized by strong line and color
Her parents arranged for her to study painting with such masters as Ma Pai-shui, Chang Yi-hsiung, and Wu Hao. Swallow, however, largely attributes her success as a graphic artist to Wu Hao, director of the Oriental Painting Association.
In 1966, at 19, Swallow had created a unique style, and her first exhibition caught the attention of artistic circles both at home and abroad. Groups in such nations as the United States, Japan, South Korea, and West Germany invited her to hold exhibitions. In 1975, she was one of the year's "Ten Outstanding Young People" designated by the government, recognized for her active participation in national life and her immense success in art, in spite of physical disability. Swallow's art still ranks among the best sellers at the galleries.
Dragons, unicorns, mules, birds, butterflies, fish, lions, eagles, phoenixes, apes, resurrections from the extinctions of history and fable, plus denizens of today, are brought to vivid life under her dextrous knives. Characterized by strong line and resplendent color, Swallow's works radiate optimism.
However, it would be wrong to think that Swallow reaps a windfall. A visit to her studio proves that the creation and production of block prints is no easy task. Each part of the process takes from several hours to several weeks. The design alone takes considerable time. On the average, she drafts a dozen sketches before arriving at the organized confusion, fantastic distortion, and artistic unity that are pleasing enough to her to be transferred to the surface of a fine-grained block of wood.
Swallow and her mother haunt lumber yards and log ponds to find suitable wood for her work. The blocks vary in size and shape. Some are as small as a loaf of bread, others as large as a writing table, or even larger. She finds pleasure in the wood carving itself, and prefers as much as possible to utilize the lumber's natural qualities. For instance, in the work "Tropical Fish," she makes use of circling grain in the wood to create ripples for a fish pond. The crude, rugged outlines give it a natural touch. Then, the wood-carver's tools come into their own. It takes days of hard physical labor to cut away the background, leaving, in sharp relief, the delicate outlines of the print-to-be or, in some cases, a final production in the form of wood sculpture. This is not work for a weak or unsure hand—one slip and the block is ruined.
When a wood block is finished, the printing begins. Printer's ink is spread over the surface of the block and worked in with a roller. The crevices must be kept scrupulously clean because this is relief printing. A sheet of Chinese watercolor paper is spread over the inked block. No press is used. Swallow rubs every inch of the paper with a polished tool, which may be an old spoon or the handle of a knife, until a perfect impression is obtained. Multi-color prints always present the problem of registration, since several separate blocks are used. Colors must be chosen and matched. Inks must be blended and backgrounds prepared. Finally, a limited number of perfect prints (15 at most) is produced, signed, and mounted.
In the past, Swallow destroyed the precious blocks after a print run. Now, though they are permanently retired, Swallow's mother keeps them for her.
Each work springs full-grown from intense imagination
Raising a dust-covered pitch-green block featuring an idle lion, Swallow noted that block prints are more expensive in the Republic of China because only a limited number of prints are made available from each block. "In Japan, a block may produce 100 prints on the average; naturally, they are cheaper. Connoisseurs' tastes vary. Some prefer the a.p. (artist proof) print; others, the final print. In my own experience, the second print is the most reliable for quality," Swallow expanded. She pointed out her habit of recording the name of each print buyer. Looking over an album of such names, this writer discovered that most of the collectors of her works are foreigners.
Swallow's block prints stand the test of lime. Her bright, fresh impressions of men, animals, and flowers vividly impact on the viewer. The first glance at one work, portraying the head of a man with an eye protruding from one side, might very well recall "E.T." Both head and body are composed of patterns of triangles and squares in a bold contrast of green and red. The artist's creative imagination has translated a commonplace shape into a vibrating image of thin lines, unrealistic color, and wild, dreamlike distortions.
The realistic disappears forever, and in its place arises artistic abstraction. Abstracted are the essences of two kids stealing calabashes to become fairies, of an eagle about to spread its wings, or of an idle cub. What is added shimmers with childlike fantasy: starry eyes, dislocated heads, and uniquely zany jaws. It doesn't matter that three heads employ only two bodies. No one cares if a man's eye has been squeezed into contact with his nose. Nor does anybody particularly note that one head has grown upon another or put upside down. Such portrayals can lift us out of dry-as-dust everyday life into the midst of wonderland. The prints almost shout that it is really a wonderful, mad world, and that we should begin to appreciate it before all our fancies dry up.
According to art critic Frederic Foley, Swallow Lin's graphics are intimates of China's long art history. China's graphic arts are evident two thousand years ago in the stone carvings of the Han Dynasty. Rubbings are still made from some of these museum pieces. Wood block carving began in the Sui Dynasty, though the first dated wood block "in captivity" is from the Tang Dyansty. The Diamond Sutra, the world's first printed book and the earliest example of wood block printing, dates from 868 A.D. It is thought that on his return to Venice, Marco Polo brought the art of wood block printing from China to the Western world.
Swallow's prints show influences from the tao tieh decorations of the Shang bronzes, and from the stark outlines of stone Han bas-relief carvings. They show evidences of affinity to both Taiwan aborigine totem boards and the facial makeup patterns used in Peking opera. We can add indications of relationships to childhood graffiti, stick figures scrawled in chalk by youngsters on the sidewalks of the world. This is only to say that she is universal, and human. Nevertheless, her creations are by no means just derivative; they aren't medieval, nor primitive, nor childish. Each work is an original, sprung complete and full-grown from the intense and complex imagination of the artist.
Swallow is so versatile that, currently, she also engages in such arts as paper-cutting, oil painting, and pottery making. Influenced by her long experience in wood carving, her oil paintings, displayed on the walls of her workshop, stress clear-cut contours and strong color contrast. Two oils draw special attention because Swallow applied leather and nails to create desired effects.
Block prints stacked toward a corner of her workshop dazzle the viewer with a trove of starry eyes and ladder eyebrows.
Joseph Kagle, professor of art at the University of Guam, characterizes her work: "A mixture of elegance (like Chinese Shang and Chou bronzes) and primitiveness (like Paul Klee), a blending of extreme detail, intricacy and refinement of rhythmic wonder, with the surfacing power of a free silent image from the nightside of the mind. This is the beginning to seeing the strength of Swallow Lin's works of art."