Top News Henan Business Daily reporter Song Hongsheng intern Jin Ping
At the end of 2021, Liu Yuwei, a 38-year-old Xinxiang native, ushered in a great joy - with his superb face shaping skills, he was selected as the fifth batch of representative inheritors of provincial intangible cultural heritage in Henan Province.
Tiger Baby
As the Spring Festival of the Year of the Tiger approached, Liu Yuwei took the theme of "Yellow River Tiger Baby" and pinched out a group of "Tiger Baby" face sculptures with different forms. The tiger's body is colorful, and the Fuwa riding the tiger is cute and vivid. This group of works with an average "height" of only 5 cm is hard to believe that it can be matched with "noodles"
【Works】 "Kneading" folk customs into the face sculpture
"China's 'tiger culture' has a long history. In the past, the image of the tiger's head was made into tiger head shoes, tiger head hats, and tiger head belly pockets, which accompanied countless Chinese growth. Liu Yuwei said that near the Spring Festival of the Year of the Tiger, he took the tiger head shoes as inspiration and combined the traditional "tiger head" image with the face sculpture technique through kneading, pasting, pressing, setting and other techniques, and produced a series of "Yellow River Tiger Baby" face sculpture works. "The image of 'Fuwa, Luwa, shouwa' in this place has traces of traditional folklore, and also expresses my New Year wishes, I hope that everyone will have a happy life and good health in the coming year."
Pictured: Liu Yuwei is making detailed adjustments to the "Tiger Baby"
Kneading folk customs into the face sculpture, Liu Yuwei is not the first time to do it.
Three years ago, in order to welcome the Spring Festival of the Year of the Dog, he created a miniature sculpture work "New Year Customs in Walnuts". Without the help of any amplification equipment, this set of works integrates micro-plastic noodles into the world of pecans, and "pinches" the traditional customs of xinxiang into the walnut shell. From the "Twenty-Three Sacrifice Stove Officials" to the "Fifteen and Sixteen Temple Fairs", a total of 20 small and exquisite micro-carved face sculpture works, each of which contains different national characteristics.
Liu Yuwei's micro-carved face sculpture not only pinched into the walnut shell, but also "sat" on the coin.
On the exhibition shelf of Liu Yuwei's studio, several face-shaped Luohan discs sit on coins with a face value of 5 cents. Through the magnifying glass, you can clearly see the complete details of the Luohan and the realistic facial expressions. "The production of face sculpture, pay attention to clever, fast, accurate, moist, dazzling, that is, clever design, fast technique, accurate production, soft shape, dazzling colors." Liu Yuwei said that in order to prevent the dough from drying, it is necessary to make it in one go within tens of seconds, the hand cannot be shaken, and if there is a slight difference, it will be abandoned.
In the past 20 years since the marriage of face sculpture, Liu Yuwei has almost pinched the characters in the four famous works. Under his exploration, the micro-carved surface sculpture can reach the size of 1 cm, and the facial features and hand and foot dynamics of the characters can be clearly seen.
【Friendship】From food carving to face sculpture art
Face sculpture, commonly known as the kneading person, is one of the traditional Chinese folk arts, with a history of thousands of years. It is folk art that uses flour as a raw material, blends different colors, and creates various lifelike images with hands and simple tools.
Before learning face sculpting, Liu Yuwei was a food carver. At the age of 17, the head chef of Liu Yuwei's hotel invited two face sculptors to teach on the spot, and originally wanted the chefs to learn from the skills of face sculpting, but unexpectedly made Liu Yuwei fascinated by face sculpting.
"Food carvings have a short shelf life and often don't meet the standards I asked for." Liu Yuwei was ruthless, quit his high-paying chef job, and embarked on a career of learning art from a teacher. He successively studied under Li Xuezhen, a descendant of the Tang Sect in Beijing, and Li Jincheng, a state-level non-hereditary inheritor, and became a closed disciple of folk artist Ni Baocheng.
Absorbing the strengths of all the families, he mastered the most basic essentials of character shaping in a relatively short period of time, and formed his own face sculpture art style through the integration with local folk customs and folk customs. His face sculpture works have the characteristics of no mildew, no cracking, no deformation, no fading, suitable for long-term preservation.
In Liu Yuwei's hands, whether it is a street seller, a funny boy, a Qi Tian Dasheng who is in a storm, or an eighteen arhats with different looks, or a smile, or angry and angry, each lifelike face sculpture seems to be given a soul by Liu Yuwei's hand. Today, more than a dozen sets of his works are permanently collected by the Henan Folklore Museum, and he has also won the silver medal of the National Folk Arts and Crafts Exhibition and the first prize of the First Folk Art Exhibition of Henan Province. At the recent exhibition "Hundred Crafts and Sacrifices to Celebrate the Centenary", Liu Yuwei's face sculptures won one first prize and two second prizes.
【Innovation】Face plastic pinch out of the "Chinese painting style"
"We can't always copy and imitate the things of the ancients, the face mold must have vitality, and life is the best material." Liu Yuwei said that in his studio, the face sculptures displayed not only have traditional images of Fu, Lu, Shou, Tianwang, and Immortals, but also figures close to the current hot spots.
In the early days of the new crown epidemic, Liu Yuwei integrated modern aesthetic concepts on the basis of inheriting traditional face shaping techniques and created a series of distinctive anti-epidemic character images. There are Zhong Nanshan, who is fighting at the forefront, medical personnel who are fighting in the frontline, and village party secretaries who "shout" and do not let villagers visit the door. "This is not only to record this special period, but also to pay tribute to the frontline anti-epidemic heroes through face sculptures." Liu Yuwei said.
How to make more people feel the beauty of face sculpture? Liu Yuwei innovated creative ideas, tried to find inspiration from traditional Chinese painting art, and took the ink landscape as the keynote, and integrated the style of "big freehand" in Chinese painting into the face sculpture works, forming a unique artistic style. Liu Yuwei called this style of face sculpture "face rhyme".
The face-plastic version of "Five Kings Drunk Returns" is a work that Liu Yuwei is very proud of. The horses in the work are formed in one piece, using multi-color chromatic techniques, mixing a variety of colors, and the different colors are three-dimensionally blended to present a natural feeling emanating from the inside out. The character image of the horse is very three-dimensional, the facial expression is natural, and the character and the horse are harmoniously integrated, which is the embodiment of the "face rhyme" style.
At the same time, Liu Yuwei also tried to combine face sculpture with traditional skills such as Chinese painting, oil painting and calligraphy to explore the living space of traditional handicrafts in the new era. In view of the problem of poor waterproofness of the face plastic, he tried to combine the face plastic with the lacquer process, and the waterproofness of the works created was greatly enhanced, and the texture was thicker. "What we want to do is not simply mixing, but creating 1+1>2 works of art." Liu Yuwei said.
【Inheritance】Continuation of the "genetic code" of facial plastic
How can the art of face sculpture, which has lasted for thousands of years, be passed on in the context of commercialization? In Liu Yuwei's view, the "genetic code" of face sculpture is to return to the children's group and promote face sculpture education, "so that every child can contact the art of face sculpture at least once."
Liu Yuwei goes to the campus every week to take plastic club classes, and his students include primary and secondary school students and college students. In order to make more students interested in plastic surgery, he constantly improved the teaching methods suitable for students of different ages, led the children to make various types of human face sculptures, and taught traditional Chinese culture stories in class, which was very popular with students. Before COVID-19, his studio hosted hundreds of students every month.
"As a carrier, the face shape has become a tool for emotional communication. In the face sculpture class, everyone can interact, and they can also learn etiquette and culture, which is the meaning of carrying out face plastic education. Liu Yuwei believes that through kneading and molding, you can also see the child's psychological problems to a certain extent. He calls it "facial plastic psychology" and tries to heal the psychology of problem children through certain facial plastic guidance to the production process.
"In the Internet era, commercialization and art dissemination do not conflict, and the former can also promote the latter." Liu Yuwei opened his own short video account "Yuwei Face Sculpture" on the Douyin platform, he combined the content of "Water Margin" with face sculpture, through the form of telling stories while pinching noodles, sharing traditional culture and showing the skills and methods of noodle kneaders, attracting the attention of many fans. Through live broadcasting, he sold his own facial plastic courses, face plastic material packs and other goods online. "I hope to spread the face sculpture culture more widely through the Internet platform." Liu Yuwei said. (Edited by Wang Hongchun, Xiong Ziwen)