#长文创作激励计划#
"Is this really a cut-out? You can't fool us with sketches, do you? ”
Many viewers who have seen the works of this Northeast elder sister can't help but question.
It's no wonder that the audience is skeptical, everyone looks at her works and sees them at a glance.
The light and shadow are strong, the black and white are distinct, and the characters are smiling and lifelike, which is really too much like a sketch work of sketching in the countryside.
But this is indeed a paper-cut work, with this "cut graffiti" skills, she successfully brought the 1,500-year-old intangible cultural heritage out of the country, so much so that it is called "the world's first cut".
The eldest sister in the Northeast is named Li Baofeng, she was born in the countryside and dropped out of junior high school to work in the family farm.
But she's more of a "Grammy Scissorhands" on a global tour than a farmer. Carrying a pair of scissors on the stage of South Korea, Indonesia, Singapore, Russia and other countries, let foreigners see that the original paper-cutting can also be cut into the form of oil paintings, watercolor paintings, and prints.
Li Baofeng's cut characters are even delicate on the wrinkles on the face and hair. caused foreigners to exclaim: "Is this the mysterious power from the ancient East?" ”
● Lee Bo-bong performs paper-cutting for a Korean audience in Seoul. Image source: Li Zijian Art Museum official account
Li Baofeng's unique skills can't help but make people feel gratifying: even Koreans can't steal them.
In the past, paper-cuts were mainly in the form of planes, and the paper-cuts created by Li Baofeng are full of three-dimensionality, which is completely different from the traditional paper-cut form.
So, how did this master from the Northeast create such an innovative form of paper-cutting and carry it forward all over the world?
Gifted and intelligent, he dropped out of school to work in farming
In 1966, Li Baofeng was born in a peasant family in Shuangyang District, Changchun City, Jilin Province, with four sisters.
Although the family conditions are not good, they still make dumplings, eat pig-killing vegetables, and cut window flowers during the New Year......
There are many kinds of New Year customs in the Northeast, but Xiao Baofeng only loves window flowers, and since she was 6 years old, she has been cutting them with scissors to learn to be like an adult.
● Li Baofeng's work "Niu Niu Reads"
Sometimes she ran out of colored paper and didn't have money to buy it, so she went to the cornfield to pick up corn leaves, and went to the mountains to pick some leaves and go home to cut paper.
From the clouds in the sky, the fish in the stream, the February orchid in spring, the lilacs in summer, and the torrential snow in winter nights, everything you see in your eyes is the material in Li Baofeng's heart.
She uses flower cutting to record the changes of the seasons and the changes of the years, just to alleviate the unbearable "flower cutting addiction" in her heart.
● Li Baofeng recalls his childhood picking up leaves to cut paper
Cut a lot, the craftsmanship is also a lot more exquisite, Li Baofeng put the beautiful cut flowers on the window, adding a bit of joy, the elders touched Li Baofeng's head, and boasted: "The little girl is really good." ”
When he reached school age, Li Baofeng was gifted and intelligent, and his comprehension of homework was much stronger than that of his classmates, and he could often learn the content of a semester in half a month.
But in the second year of junior high school, my parents said: "Why do girls read so many books, they have to get married sooner or later anyway." ”
As a result, 14-year-old Li Baofeng could only put down the textbook in his hand, pick up a hoe and work in the field.
She toiled in the fields day after day, watering the barren land with her sweat. After a long time, his hands were covered with blisters.
Once, Li Baofeng was dizzy from the scorching sun on his head, and suddenly saw that the mud on the ground was stained a little red. When I touched my nose, I realized that it was her nosebleed.
Although the farming days are hard, Li Baofeng still can't let go of cutting flowers. She borrowed books everywhere to read, comic strips, vignettes, and even the paintings on the glass cabinet on the kang were torn off and studied carefully.
Li Baofeng laid the foundation of her aesthetic foundation for flower cutting in addition to farming, and accumulated 400 flower cutting works over time.
At this time, she did not expect that these 400 works would be a stepping stone to change her fate.
From a farmer to a village teacher
In the winter of 1984, the county vocational high school opened a professional class of music and physical beauty to cultivate special students and cultivate talents for the teaching team.
Li Baofeng knew that he who dropped out of junior high school did not meet the enrollment requirements, but the county rarely opened classes for special students, and if he missed this enrollment, he didn't know when he would have to wait.
So, Li Baofeng ran to the principal's office with the 400 works he usually saved.
There are colored crayon drawings, there are fragmentary cut flowers. Although Li Baofeng has no professional training, her work is full of imagination.
The innate aura in Li Baofeng's works touched the principal, and she was exceptionally admitted as an auditor and officially entered the vocational high school.
● Li Baofeng's work "Snow Town"
Time flies like a white horse, and Li Baofeng, who ended his career as a specialty, was assigned to a rural primary school as an art teacher because of his excellent art performance.
In 1986, the village was in a poor environment, the playground was overgrown with weeds, and there were few basic teaching facilities in the classrooms. Crayons for three cents a piece are already a luxury for children, let alone snow-white drawing paper.
Originally, the children were going to use the used homework paper to draw, but many parents of the students have the habit of smoking dry tobacco, and in order to save money to buy paper, they will use the children's used homework paper to roll cigarettes, which cannot be reused in art class.
Li Baofeng only felt sad for a while, because when he saw these children who couldn't afford to buy textbooks, he felt as if he had seen his former self.
At this time, the new art textbooks in Jilin Province included many classic art works, but many of the works and techniques in them were never touched by Li Baofeng.
Li Baofeng thought that she didn't know how to teach children in this book, so she had the courage to write a letter of suggestion to the Department of Education, suggesting that the education department compile "local teaching materials" based on the actual situation of rural children.
Unexpectedly, a week later, I received a reply from the Department of Education: "Your suggestion is very good, can you try it first?" ”
Li Baofeng, who was affirmed by the superior department, added a little motivation, and she took the children out of the classroom, just like her former self, into the mountains and streams, and felt all creatures.
● Li Baofeng's work "Deer Singing Valley"
Since you don't have the money to buy paintbrushes and paper, you can simply let your child pick up some leaves and waste paper to cut paper.
The three years of outdoor teaching have made the children interested in paper-cutting, and they have also created many childlike paper-cutting works together.
Li Baofeng led these children to win many awards, and more than 200 of the children's works have won awards in provincial, municipal, national and international children's competitions, and even 13 works have been included in the "Selected Works of World Contemporary Children's Art Calligraphy and Photography".
Because he liked "Dream of Red Mansions" since he was a child, Li Baofeng had the idea of creating paper-cuts with this theme very early.
In 1996, Li Baofeng finally had the opportunity to realize this wish.
This year, Li Baofeng was rated as "Advanced Teacher of Jilin Province" and transferred to the county central primary school.
Teaching on a larger platform, Li Baofeng founded his own studio. Every day, in addition to the paper-cutting class, she has more time to devote to the creation of paper-cutting.
Dream of Red Mansions
Almost every day at four o'clock in the morning, when the sky is bright, you can see Li Baofeng busy in the studio.
In addition to drawing, cutting, and revising, she turned up the original book of "Dream of Red Mansions" and figured out the characters in the book over and over again. The 87 version of "Dream of Red Mansions", as well as various comic book villain books, have been read by her countless times.
Lin Daiyu's arrogance and self-esteem, Xue Baochai's scheming city, and Wang Xifeng's pungent and refreshing ...... The personalities of each character are very different, and Li Baofeng repeated the cut countless times until he was satisfied.
● "Dream of Red Mansions" group picture
It took Li Baofeng several years to cut this work, and in the third year, a foreign entrepreneur happened to see Li Baofeng's unfinished "Dream of Red Mansions" paper-cut.
This foreign friend actually offered a high price of 60,000 yuan to buy this semi-finished product.
You must know that at that time, Li Baofeng's monthly salary was only 40 yuan, and with this money, she could even buy one or two houses in Changchun City.
Li Baofeng struggled for a long time, but he still couldn't give up in his heart, so he rejected the buyer's kindness a few days later.
At this time, Li Baofeng did not expect that her "Dream of Red Mansions" would soar to a price of 2 million after 20 years.
In 1999, Li Baofeng took her Dream of Red Mansions, Grand View Garden to Beijing Grand View Garden to participate in an art exhibition. It is a masterpiece with a length of 3 meters and a height of 1.5 meters, and includes 55 characters from the original book.
● Detail of "Dream of Red Mansions: Grand View Garden".
These 55 ladies are also sad and complaining, happy or sad, with distinct personalities, vividly reproducing the life picture of the prosperous place of flowers and willows.
In terms of character creation, Li Baofeng's characters are orderly, dense and not scattered. The pavilions and pavilions on the red paper are lush and green, which can be said to be Qiluo wearing the forest and shadows all over the garden, and the poetry and painting are endless.
Li Baofeng became a sensation with "Grand View Garden" and completely made a name for himself in the Chinese art world.
Zhou Ruchang, the master of "Red Learning", was full of praise, and with a stroke of his pen, he wrote a poem: "The red lamp is now in the Red Mansion, and the eyes are full of flowers." It is also like Emperor E's paving colored stones, and the magic is skillfully cut into the world."
After becoming famous, Li Baofeng did not just put the paper-cutting art on the shelf, but tried to make it into a local characteristic industry, for which Baofeng Paper-cutting Art Company was established.
The financial crisis could not shake the business
At the beginning of the business, Li Baofeng encountered the first difficulty.
Because he didn't understand the market, Li Baofeng fell into the dilemma of "making cars behind closed doors". Her work is exquisite, but without the corresponding packaging design, it will appear a bit monotonous.
This directly led to Li Baofeng selling 1.2 yuan in the first year of business, and even lost a lot of money.
The loss also made Li Baofeng change his thinking again, and began to actively connect with the market to understand the art that young people like.
In addition, in the application of paper, Li Baofeng is an original patent, and after cooperating with paper manufacturers, he uses his own technology to process it, which achieves the effect of making the paper not fade within ten years, and overcomes the problem of paper fading.
In 2005, Li Baofeng's paper-cutting company had begun to take shape, but she did not delay in refining her skills, but grasped both art and business.
● Li Baofeng
Li Baofeng's paper-cut works break through the original monotonous red, integrating Chinese painting, New Year painting, printmaking, oil painting, decorative painting and photography into the art of paper-cutting, and at the same time absorbing the elements of local opera, poetry and songs, folk songs and ethnic minorities, creating a large number of independent artworks in the world.
This is the 3D three-dimensional paper-cut design work "Spring Water Long Flow", Li Baofeng uses multi-layer color-matched paper-cutting techniques to present the Miao girl's headdress with a great sense of weight, and even shines in the sun.
● Partial view of "Spring Water Flows".
The difficulty of multi-layer color registration technique is that to connect each single layer of paper, it must be "cut continuously", if it is cut by a fraction, the whole layer of paper will be destroyed.
● A Miao girl cut out by Li Baofeng
There is only a "fraction of a centimeter" between art and waste.
The innovation of techniques, coupled with the understanding of consumer preferences, Li Baofeng's paper-cut works are very popular in the market.
In 2009, the financial crisis swept the world, but Li Baofeng's paper-cutting company was not affected at all, and orders increased instead of decreasing. One of her paper-cut works ranges from tens of thousands of yuan to hundreds of thousands of yuan.
Drinking water and not forgetting the people who dug wells, Li Baofeng did not forget the villagers in Kanto after becoming rich.
In order to promote the art of paper-cutting and help local villagers find employment, she has trained more than 2,000 students in Changchun City and Dehui City.
Whenever the company designs the layout, the sample will be sent to the trainees and the salary will be paid by piece.
These trainees can get a salary of 500-1,000 yuan per month, and Li Baofeng's move directly solves a long-standing problem that has caused the government to be a headache, and has led to the employment of thousands of laid-off workers and rural women.
In 2020, Li Baofeng brought her works to Changsha Li Zijian Art Museum for exhibition. In addition to the "Dream of Red Mansions: Grand View Garden" that changed her fate, there are more than 100 works such as "Journey to the West", "Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Three Heroes and Lu Bu", "Water Margin Juyi Hall" and so on.
● Partial map of "Water Margin Gathering Hall".
In addition to exhibiting in various places, she also gives free classes to some deaf and mute children and autistic children, just so that they can learn a craft to earn a living.
Although he gave up teaching and business 10 years ago, Li Baofeng's students are all over the world.
So far, Li Baofeng has trained more than 30,000 students.
Whenever someone asks what Li Baofeng can do for the society, Li Baofeng has only one answer.
"I donate my culture because it belongs to everyone, regardless of nationality, rich or poor." Text/Liang Siyu