Exquisite Arts Magazine Vol 1 - July/ August 2016 | Page 19

Why do you enjoy making jewelry and what
inspired you to choose metals as your
medium of choice?
For me, jewelry is not just a simple object but the
medium for people to express their own emotions,
attitudes and appearances. Therefore, each time that I
am making jewelry I feel like I’m telling the story of a
person and truly enjoying the process of doing so.

Your creativity is extraordinary and your
pieces are very unique. How important is it
to create work that is “different” from the
norm?
Actually, I did not mean to be different from others nor
deliberately seek to be unique.
I think that it probably originated from my spirit of
“adventure.” Since I was nine years old I had a great
interest in cooking. My mother tried to teach me the
correct cooking methods and I never listened to her.
On my own I explored how food is made. And on my
path of exploring, I invented my own cooking
methods.
When educated to do one thing, you will probably lose
the ability to innovate. When you have no idea of how
to do such a thing and no one is available for help, you
have to force yourself to explore. This path may be
tortuous but you will definitely create the style of your
own and gain more by doing so. In discovering my
own path, I neither stopped nor was satisfied with the
experience explored by others. Perhaps this is why my
works are “different” from the norm.

What is your first memory of beauty?
I have a lot of memories about beauty but what
influences me the most is the education from my
grandma. The Chinese economic condition in the 60’s
was not well; most families lived a very poor life and
each person might only have had one set of decent
clothing. My grandma however, taught my mother that
as a woman no matter how hard life is, you should not
be a disgrace or be messy. We should be decent and
tidy ourselves, this is the basic cultivation and quality
for being a human. In the era when each person was
sweating over meals, my self-reinforcing grandma
made clothes for my mother with a sewing machine.
My mother still has some of her tops which are in good

condition. Such education from my grandma passed
on to me from my mother. Therefore no matter how
busy I am, I will not go out in a mess. Even in the
hardest time, I will not forget to remind myself to put
on lipstick or shoes in my favorite color before going
out. We should live with attitude.

One of your pieces is called “Escape.” You
state that you chose this title as it illustrates
your hope to get out of pressure & flee to
freedom. How significant is freedom to
you?
“Escape” and “Freedom” are just a façade.
However, when people try so hard to escape from their
“undesirable” situations, they only end up finding
themselves running into other dissatisfactions. Hence
there is no real freedom. A good example would be
marriage. There is a book called “Fortress Besieged”
by a famous Chinese writer Zhongshu Qian, in which
he wrote “Marriage is like a fortress besieged: those
who are outside want to get in, and those who are
inside want to get out. For another case, children want
to grow up when they are young bec