Bridging Cultures through Calligraphy and Brush Painting

By: Mario Jimenez

The Verostko Center’s new exhibition, “Bridging Cultures Through Chinese Calligraphy and Brush Painting”

From March 13 to April 5, the Verostko Center for the Arts hosted an exhibit titled “Bridging Cultures Through Chinese Calligraphy and Brush Painting”. Part of the centennial celebration of Fu Jen Catholic University in Taiwan, the exhibit was a celebration of Chinese art and how it is connected to American culture.  

Dr. Sophia Geng, the organizer of the celebration and curator of the exhibit, was delighted with its reception and turnout. She expressed her thankfulness to Saint Vincent College (SVC) and everyone who visited the exhibit and attended the conference.

“The exhibition had three components. We had a first and second rotation for both calligraphy and brush paintings. Both rotations had 30 paintings each, making a total of 60 paintings. Lastly, the third component is the exhibition for the foreign centennial anniversary on April 3rd and 4^th,” Geng said. Geng is a professor at SVC, and the director of the James and Margaret Tseng Loe Center for China Studies.

The overall exhibition presents works created by artists from Zhenjiang City, Jiangsu Province—the Chinese hometown that shaped Nobel laureate Pearl S. Buck's worldview. Born to American missionaries and raised near the Chinese river port known locally as Sai Zhen Zhu, Buck absorbed and later recreated the beautiful landscapes of her childhood years. Buck was particularly famous for her mission of bridging Eastern and Western cultures and promoting cultural understanding.

The exhibit also represents and demonstrates the bridging of Chinese and American cultures through the James and Margaret Tseng Loe Center for China Studies’ involvement. James and Margaret Tseng Loe, who the center is named after, hoped their five daughters would integrate the American ideals of freedom, equality, and democracy with the Chinese cardinal moral principles of propriety, filial piety, integrity, and self-respect. The Loe sisters fulfilled their parents’ wishes through philanthropic work, such as endowing the James and Margaret Tseng Loe Center for China Studies at SVC.

The paintings bridge cultures and encourage cultural understanding.

The paintings in the exhibit also reflect the values of Chinese culture.

“The artworks consist of figure and landscape paintings. In the landscape paintings, the mountains, the waterfalls, the pagoda, and the hut are imagined ideal worlds of Chinese literature,” Geng said. “They stress peacefulness, balance, and the immersion of humans in nature. Portrayals of the family, flowers, and animals–such as fish, cows, and butterflies–are vivid and stress the importance of life. It is really in alignment with Chinese people's passion for life - they use vivid bright colors.”