"Flower Arrangement Lady", whose real name is Ku Lan Shu, 1920 10/2, was born in Wangcun, Equatorial Township, Xunyi County, Shaanxi Province, in the northwest of Weibei Plateau. "Miss Flower Arrangement" is her own name. Speaking of this title, there is another legendary reason.
1985 In the early spring, 65-year-old Ku Lan Shu unfortunately fell into a pit several meters deep. After being rescued by her family, she lay in bed for more than 40 days, of which more than 20 days were in a deep coma without dripping water. Just as her family had begun to prepare for her funeral, she miraculously opened her eyes.
What is even more incredible is that the first thing she did when she opened her eyes was not to find food, but to find scissors and colored paper. She sat on the kang and chopped up the paper.
Ku Lan Shu was smart when he was young, and his paper-cutting was vivid. After falling off the cliff, her paper-cut image became more vivid. She can cut with scissors without making a draft, and her knife work is superb, which is quite different from her creative style when she was young, and her creative length has also expanded from small to large.
According to statistics, her work has more than 3,000 points in a square, all of which were cut and pasted by her own hands. For an old man in his seventies and eighties, the workload is unimaginable.
But she still enjoys the process of paper-cutting, bold image composition and unique color matching, and no longer sticks to any inherent form, cutting at will, and the fine pieces of paper have become different after her processing.
In the process of paper-cutting, she created a unique method. She first cut all kinds of colored paper into various shapes, and then stacked them on top of each other to form a picture. Paper-cut also casually made up a string of ballads:
Miss Flower Arrangement cut and sang in Shaanxi dialect, and used her unique tune to have a unique charm.
Everyone in the village knows that the flower arranging lady was ingenious when she was young, but she was still amazed at the changes after she fell off the cliff.
She explained that in the past few days when she was in a coma, she was confessed by the flower arranging lady in the sky. The flower-cutter gave her all the secrets, and she has been a flower-cutter since then. In her mind, she is the embodiment of Miss Flower Arrangement.
She also created many flower arranging ladies: round face, big eyes and small cherry mouth. The image of Miss Flower Arrangement varies from big to small, sitting or standing, but nothing seems to be repeated carefully.
As her fame grew, a series of honors flooded in:
She herself became the first person in China to be awarded the title of "Master of Folk Arts and Crafts in China" by UNESCO.
Her art paper-cut works have been exhibited in Xi 'an Art Museum, China Art Museum and the Exhibition Hall of the Central Academy of Fine Arts.
His works won the gold medal in China Folk Art Exhibition.
1995 Her works were exhibited at the World Conference on Women held in Beijing, which was highly appreciated by women representatives from various countries.
1997 65438+In February, her works participated in the China Traditional Art Festival held in Hongkong, and she was invited to give a live performance, which was the first and only time for her to leave the yellow land.
Her masterpiece "Miss Cut the Flowers" is regarded as the emblem of the festival.
Professor Yang Xueqin of Xi 'an Academy of Fine Arts once commented on her works: "On the theme figures, the headdress corolla is supported by solitary and hook-shaped symmetrical lines, giving people a strong and strong aesthetic feeling around the body. The round face outlined by the black solitary line, long meniscus eyebrow, big eyes and red nose, crimson lips, yellow, white and black eyes are relatively coordinated, the face is full, the facial features are compact, and the red wisdom points are added between the eyebrows. The characters seem to be injected with aura, given life, and appear graceful and quiet. "
President of China Paper-cutting Society commented that Ku Lan Shu's works have a strong sense of integrity and rhythm. Through these romantic, optimistic and fictional pictures, people can see the author's pure and kind heart and amazing artistic mind. Foreign scholars even praised her paper-cut works as comparable to those of Picasso and Matisse.
However, behind these fame lies her unknown bitter experience.
Lan Shu's nickname is Taoer. She was very clever when she was a child. At the age of 4, he was registered by his parents for an early marriage. 1 1 years old, I went to Sanyuan's relatives' home to study and got excellent grades. She especially likes to visit the Chenghuang Temple near the school, especially the statues, hundreds of embroideries and painted murals in the temple. These colorful images also planted the seeds of artistic creation in her mind.
She is diligent and studious, and learned a lot of skills about cutting, cutting, embroidery, sewing and knitting from her mother, which laid a solid foundation for her future artistic creation.
Due to the forced marriage of her husband's family, 17 years old had to drop out of school and get married. From then on, her bitter days really began.
After becoming a wife, Kushulan has to endure not only the difficulties and persecution of her parents-in-law, but also the torture of her husband. Husband is a man with five big and three thick, has no education and always takes it out on her. In her life, fists are always more than words.
Under the oppression of her husband, wrapped in little feet, she could only kneel in the field to collect wheat and cook. Because paper-cutting is addictive when cooking, several pots are burned at home, and it is inevitable that my husband will beat me.
Once she was drying dates in the yard, and her husband came back from outside with cows. She hurriedly stopped the cow with trepidation, but still let the cow eat some dates in the yard.
The husband didn't say anything, and didn't reflect on his own fault. He picked up an iron fork and poked it directly at her arm, and suddenly his blood flowed. I don't know how many times this nonsense has been ravaged. Until her death, there were still two obvious scars on her arm.
Almost every day after marriage is spent in such abuse, even after she has been the mother of several children, love has never been gentle.
She had 13 children in her life, but only three of them were brought up in the end. Suffering from illness and famine, the remaining 10 children left her.
In that era of arranged marriage, she was unable to resist, so she could only get used to resignation and survive in the cracks. Paper cutting became her spiritual sustenance. She devoted all her life's hardships to the art of paper-cutting, arranged and sang with ballads, and expressed her inner yearning for beauty through this form.
A poem "The leaves of Chinese cabbage turn yellow when spread on the ground" tells the hardships and helplessness of a lifetime.
In her life, in addition to the daily hard work, I am afraid that only her husband's punches and kicks are left. She used paper-cutting to relieve her depression, and showed her understanding of life in her works, which made the dark life see a glimmer of light.
On June 65438+February 65438+February 9, 2004, the legendary master of art ended his difficult life. She left, leaving with her art kingdom. However, her strength, her optimism and her longing for a better life have been preserved with her works. Perhaps this is the most precious spiritual wealth she left to future generations.