Xuwei Zhang

JCAM: Where were you born and does that place still influence you?

XZ: I was born in Haining, a small city in the south of China, where the climate is clear in all seasons. It is a typical water town in the south of the Yangtze River, known as the land of fish and rice, the capital of silk, and the state of culture. Since I was a child, I have been influenced by traditional Chinese aesthetics and local culture. Until today, the local customs have influenced my creations.

JCAM: Do you have family, friends, or fellow artists who support you in your work, life and art making?

XZ: My maternal grandfather, an influential calligrapher, taught me to write Chinese characters when I was three years old. He was my inspirational teacher towards art and design. My wife is also an artist, specializing in sculpture and painting, and we often exchange the topics of traditional painting and modern art in our daily life. My friends around me are very supportive of my current work and art creation.

JCAM: When and how did you start making art?

XZ: When I was 13 years old, which was a playful age, I saw my sister drawing ink and watercolor paintings at home by chance, and saw the ink and watercolor under her brush turn into various animals. I remember it vividly, and I fell in love with painting at that moment. I had a collection of my grandfather's paintings at home, and by copying the characters, animals and landscapes in the paintings, I slowly tried to create my own paintings. I continued to learn painting for 30 years. Although I successfully completed my Bachelor's Degree in Visual Communication from Ningbo University in 1997, painting has always accompanied me in my growth.

JCAM: Why do you make art now?

XZ: I was introduced to art and design in 1997, and joined a newspaper group as a typographer in 2000. However, my greatest passion was graphic design and poster design. So I left my job in 2002 and created my own design studio to help companies and organizations solve some visual communication design projects. In my spare time, I am passionate about creating posters on a wide range of topics, including social issues, public welfare, environment and climate, and cultural promotion.

JCAM: What are you trying to communicate with your art?

XZ: The inclusiveness of Modern art and design for culture, and accepting diversified cultures to be displayed in various exhibition halls, galleries, and museums, has made me think about whether I can accommodate more cultures in my field with a broader vision to serve as a vein for creation. I am interested in the collective memory shaped by people in the city nowadays, how to respect the group, balance the trauma and the negative emotions brought by urban change, and I want to be able to preserve the memory of life in a warmer way, to salve the historical wounds and preserve the traces left by history. I hope to create works that can soothe the heart through the art of design.

In addition, I think that posters are a global context and a diversified art form, and I would like to use posters as a carrier to let my foreign counterparts and friends understand more about Chinese culture, art and social development.

JCAM: How has your work changed or developed over time?

XZ: I have been working in the graphic design industry for 29 years. I know that artists and designers are not only applying the design itself, but also learning and designing other knowledge, such as philosophy, history, science, marketing, etc. Meanwhile, as a designer, you need to love life, because a lot of inspirations come from your own feelings in life.

From my initial commercial design work, I gradually turned to art design. This process took about eight years. Starting in 2016, I accepted commissions from the government department to organize and plan exhibitions. These included the Zhejiang City Art Biennale, 2019 Lithuanian “Chinese Character Phenomenon" International Poster Design Invitational Exhibition, and the 2019 Beijing International Design Week Ink and Wash Exhibition; also in 2022 the First Sericulture International Poster Design Exhibition and many other influential international design exhibitions. For each of these, I designed the main image for these exhibitions. I feel honored that my creations have been recognized by the public.

JCAM: Do you have any creative patterns, routines or rituals associated with your art making?

XZ: I am very passionate about handmade creations. There is no fixed way of poster design, only the feeling that is suitable for the eloquent exposition of the theme and selfknowledge, which is most often carried out through handwriting, hand-drawing, papercutting and collage, and then finally through photographing, and then utilizing software to make the final adjustments and arrangements.

JCAM: What is your most important artist tool(s) and why?

XZ: There is no doubt that for me the most important tools for creating art are the pen and the inner mind

JCAM: How do you approach making an art poster and how long does it take you to complete it?

XZ: Creating a satisfactory poster requires a deep understanding of the theme. Before I create a poster, I read and understand the theme from many angles and look for the viewer's point of view as the main line. Then I try to make sketches.Depending on the situation, it can take as little as 30 minutes or as long as a couple of days to complete a piece of artwork.

JCAM: What new creative medium would you love to pursue?

XZ: The emergence of AI does not replace the existence of the artist, nor does it replace the designer, it only makes creation more efficient and brings us more creative inspiration and tools. By collaborating with AI, we are able to open up new areas of creativity and unleash unlimited creative potential. Whether you are an art lover or a professional creator, it is worthwhile to master AI painting technology and open a new chapter of creation!

JCAM: What strategies could you share with other artists on how to become successful professionally?

XZ: Do not work in isolation, be a collaborator. It is important to involve your client early in the project process so that you can work together to form the best possible outcome. Try to avoid surprises in communication that can lower your client's confidence in you. It is also important not to think too highly of your work but to have the mindset that you are working with your client and not just for them. Keeping in touch with clients is one of the most important ways for designers to succeed.

It is also important to have a work-life balance, but we have to take on a variety of different projects. Separate work into love, money and charity. Many designers seek a balance between their love of work and money, but few think about contributing to charity.

JCAM: What interesting projects are you working on at the moment?

XZ: Currently, I am planning a "Chinese Tea Culture Design Exhibition" project. This is a commission for the tea picking region of ancient villages in the mountainous areas of Yunnan Province, China. There the tea trees are more than 800 years old. Through this project, I want to help the local tea farmers to spread their tea and their culture to the whole world, which I think is a very interesting and meaningful thing to do.

JCAM: What are your artistic goals for the future?

XZ: My future goal is to continue to promote traditional Chinese culture to the world through the medium of modern posters.

JCAM: What or who inspires you?

XZ: Learning to look closely at the people and things in your life can give you a wealth of inspiration for your creations.

JCAM: Do you have a favorite – or influential – living artist?

XZ: Yes, Niklaus Troxler. Mr. Troxler has been interested in jazz since he was a child. Now he organizes jazz festivals and makes jazz posters himself. Troxler is a sincere and simple person. His design is characterized by naturalness and authenticity. He combines the nature and spontaneity of a small town with the sharpness and tension of jazz in his poster designs. Troxler enjoys the small town life and believes that keeping an open mind is the most important thing. Niklaus Troxler designs posters in his hometown, but his work is universal. That is why I admire him so much. His personality and the sincerity of his creations have touched me and influenced me a lot.

JCAM: Where do you find ideas for your creative work?

XZ: From my life.

JCAM: What does being creative mean to you?

XZ: Creativity, unlike what we commonly think of as coming from people with unusual ideas, is any idea, action or thing that changes an existing field or creates a new one. Creativity will make you happy, let you have a life you like, and let you do things you like, as if your soul is singing. It ultimately allows you to find purpose and joy in an uncertain state of being. This is the key!

JCAM: What is the best advice you ever had about how to be more creative?

XZ: There is a famous saying in ancient Chinese painting theory: To learn from the outside, to learn from the inside, which means that artistic creation comes from learning from nature and generalizing it, boldly taking away or reconstructing it. The beauty in nature cannot directly become a work of art. To transform natural beauty into artistic beauty is the pursuit of self-enlightenment, which requires the integration of the artist's inner emotions and skills. Art originates from social life and is higher than life. Artists are no longer reproducing and imitating social life when creating art works, but rather, they need to go through the artist's aesthetic consciousness and aesthetic creation, which is a high degree of unity between the subject and the object, and between reproduction and expression.

My teacher Mr. Jiang Hua (member of AGI) once told me that "the unity of knowledge and action" is the same interpretation, and that only when the artist's thoughts and practical actions are highly unified can he or she solve problems efficiently.

JCAM: What other events in your life, if any, have affected the way in which you make art, or changed the direction of your art?

XZ: I have a great interest in Chinese characters. Every morning I look for a Chinese character and create it in a graphic way, which I call "One Character Zen". The Chinese characters have evolved over 5,000 years, and you can see that today's characters are completely different from those of 3,000 years ago. They are the distillation of scenes from the daily lives of the ancient people. It is also my reverence for the Chinese characters that has changed my perception of them through years of creation.

Contact information

Social media - https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100059071346381

Web: https://tinyurl.com/2pvuzm66 / https://tinyurl.com/yc6rj3my

Climate Impact

Medium or Media - Paper Poster (digital printing）

May 2020

Future Neighbor Medium or Media - Paper Poster (digital printing） August 2022

Journey To The West

Medium or Media - Paper Poster (digital printing）

2022 The First International Poster Biennale of Peking Opera Art May 2022

Green city

Medium or Media - Paper Poster (screen printing）

The 6th Lublin International Poster Biennale August 2022

THE SORCERER AND THE WHITE SNAKE Medium or Media - Paper Poster (digital printing）

10th Sofia International Theater Poster Triennial

September 2021

The Waking of Insects

Medium or Media - Paper Poster (digital printing）

2021 Bolivia International Poster Biennial & The 5th International Poster Biennale in Leipzig, Germany

September 2021

Peaceful Coexistence

Medium or Media - Paper Poster (digital printing）

NO WAR International Poster Exhibition – Warsaw 2022

November 2022

Rodchenko 130 years

Medium or Media - Paper Poster (screen printing）

Bolivia Poster Biennial 2023

July 2020

Imaginary Nightmares

Medium or Media - Paper Poster (screen printing）

INTERNATIONAL BIENNALE OF THEATRE POSTER Molière 2022

July 2022

The Last Word

Fall 2023 – Vol. 8

This issue of the Journal marks the 8th year since our first JCAM publication. We are proud of this milestone and humbled by the trust put in us by the visual artists, creative writers, and project creators who have allowed us to publish their work and share their stories on our online platform.

We began this digital publication with the idea that we (two university art professors) could, without significant funding, or a large staff, reach out online, mostly through nocost tools, to connect with creative visual creatives internationally. For the most part, we have been able to make that happen and, in the process, a community has been built around the efforts.

For example: Over time have heard from a number of JCAM artists who have collaborated with each other in some creative way(s). We also regularly receive updates from previously published artists and writers whose work has later been presented in significant venues some place on planet earth. This is very gratifying indeed. These kinds of activities are exactly what we hoped might be kick-started when we began our preliminary planning for the Journal back in the summer of 2014. It is wonderful to see our ambitious plan produce such positive results.

We are already planning our next issue which will be published in the Fall of 2024. This publication will feature JCAM alumni and be focused on updates to the creative careers of a number of international artists working in a variety of media. We already have a number of commitments and look forward to bringing in even more alumni for this special publication.

Finally, the JCAM staff is always interested in how we might betters serve the online visual arts and writing communities. What other kinds of features would you like to see in future issues of JCAM? What are the names of the contacts to whom you might direct us? Let us hear from you: jcam.jal@gmail.com

JCAM Editor