An accomplished painter, sculptor and poet, Lu Huan was one of China’s most celebrated artists. Now living in the United States, Lu Huan is struggling to build a reputation for himself in America. Spark visits this extraordinary artist at his home in Alameda as he works on a new carving of a rare Australian insect known in China as the Emperor’s Scorpion.
Lu Huan is best known in China for his miniature carvings of insects and amphibians done in painstaking detail. His works are made of single pyrophyllite stones — rare and valuable metamorphic rocks that the artist imports from mines in China and Inner Mongolia. The stones contain veins of surprising color and clarity that Lu Huan transforms into astonishingly lifelike creatures.
Each of Lu Huan’s carvings contains a poem that the artist composes and inscribes into the stone. The poems are written in classical five- and seven-word verse format and make use of a sparse imagery, reflecting the artist’s ascetic disposition. The poems are often meditations on animal behavior that reveal deeper truths about human existence and interactions.
Lu Huan was born in 1948 in Hebei Province, China. After graduating from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1969, he became an artist-in-residence at the Palace Museum in Beijing (also known as the Forbidden City) for 16 years. In 1989, after touring the United States accompanying a solo exhibition of his work, he decided to remain in America. His carvings can be seen in the Palace Museum, where Lu Huan enjoys the distinction of being the only living artist whose sculptures are in the collection.
