Guo Meihua, female, born in 1965, is a famous paper-cut artist in Shanxi. He is currently the president of Shanxi Folk Paper-cut Artists Association and the vice chairman of Shanxi Folk Arts and Crafts Association. He also worked in Shanxi Art Vocational College, engaged in folk art research, and was hired as a special folk artist by the Ministry of Culture and China Poetry and Painting Academy.
He has won the "Mountain Flower Award" in China folk literature and art, the China Paper-cut Art Expo and the "Gold Award" in the 6th China Folk Art Festival. The first person to hold a personal paper-cut art exhibition in Shanxi Province. He was awarded the titles of "Top Ten Golden Scissors", "Top Ten God Scissors", "China Paper-cut Double Award", "New China Paper-cut Artist" and "Master of Folk Arts and Crafts" in China.
Chinese name: Guo Meihua
Nationality: China.
Ethnic group: Han nationality
Place of birth: Xiaoyi, Shanxi
Date of birth: 1965
Occupation: Paper-cut artist
Graduate school: Shanxi Staff College of Literature.
Main achievements: Won the "Top Ten Golden Scissors" in China.
"Master of Folk Arts and Crafts" and other titles.
Chinese Paper-cut "Virtue and Art" Award
China Folk Literature and Art "Mountain Flower Award"
China Folk Art Festival "Gold Award"
The first person to hold a personal paper-cut art exhibition in Shanxi Province.
Representative works: a handful of dates, Shanxi pasta, loess customs, Shanxi folk songs, Shanxi specialties, coal legends.
Paper-cut style
As an intangible cultural heritage, paper-cutting has a history of thousands of years in Shanxi. On holidays, all kinds of paper-cuts representing auspiciousness and happiness are posted on the doors and windows of every household. Living custom is a social factor to promote the development of paper-cutting, and at the same time, it has formed rich paper-cutting content and different regional styles of paper-cutting schools. Reading Guo Meihua's paper-cut works, she was raised by the Yellow River and the Yellow Land, and she can fly paper-cut and dedicate her feelings, talents and good wishes to paper-cutting. Her paper-cut works have a rough, bold and simple temperament and character.
From the initial window grilles to the later paper-cutting art creation, Guo Meihua's paper-cutting has formed its own unique bold, simple, rich and simple style for more than 30 years. "I like the rugged character of northerners, and my character and paper-cutting are also rugged." It is this roughness and simplicity that created a new paper-cutting art. Her work "Guo Meihua's paper-cutting art movement Zodiac" won the praise of Professor Chen Jing, secretary general of China Paper-cutting Research Association: "With rich brains, imagination and symbolic thinking, she used modeling methods such as personification, exaggeration, simplification, addition, metonymy, analogy, splicing, embedding and decoration to create the Zodiac movement beyond the limitations of time, scale and perspective at will.
Guo Meihua has always believed that "art is actually a feeling, a kind of consciousness, flashing in your brain, so I use scissors to record these thoughts and ideas." Shanxi paper-cut not only embodies the temperament of the Chinese nation, but also affects the folk culture of the world. "
Paper-cut works
Guo Meihua is an energetic and prolific paper-cutting artist. He often said, "When I pick up scissors, my heart will be strong." It can be seen that paper-cutting has been integrated into her blood and has become an indispensable part of her life. She often thinks about a topic: how to better preserve the paper-cut works, and make them become the national style with China characteristics to show to the viewers. After continuous trial production, in early 2005, her paper-cut works "A handful of Zizyphus jujuba", "Shanxi Pasta" and "Loess Style" were published by Shanxi Ancient Books Publishing House. In 2006, her Nostalgia Paper-cut Art Series, Shanxi Folk Songs, Wutai Mountain Tour, Rooting in Folk, Shanxi Specialty, Song of Golden Thread Clip and Legend of Coal were published by Shanxi Chunqiu Electronic Audio-visual Publishing House.
details of life
Plum blossom has four virtues: life is yuan, flowers are constant, fruit is profit, and maturity is virtue. For more than 30 years, Guo Meihua, like Meihua, has gradually grown into a leading folk paper-cut artist in Shanxi from birth, flowering, fruition and maturity. She held a "Personal Paper-cut Art Exhibition" in the Provincial Literature and Art Building, which was the first time that Shanxi Province put personal paper-cut art into the exhibition hall.
Speaking of paper-cutting, many people can think of such a scene: an aunt with gray temples, sitting cross-legged on the kang, humming a tune and holding scissors in her hand. In an instant, a beautiful "window" appeared. But this folk artist only reached middle age. She is elegant and fashionable. As Jin, former president of China Paper-cut Research Association, said: "Who would have thought that Guo Meihua would write so many wonderful paper-cut works? She is really too young. "
Paper-cutting is affectionate.
Guo Meihua's home is surrounded by a strong "local customs", and various paper-cuts are posted on the walls, glass and furniture. As long as there is open space at home, she hangs her most satisfying paper-cut in front of her eyes. In her words, "I like these paper-cuts, and they look practical."
Guo Meihua, who grew up in Xiaoyi rural area, was deeply influenced by her mother when she was a child and became interested in paper-cutting. From the initial smoked paper-cutting to her later self-creation, she absorbed the essence of paper-cutting art in the folk land. When he was young, Guo Meihua studied in Xiaoyi Cultural Center. In order to collect paper-cut patterns scattered in rural areas, she traveled to every village in Xiaoyi, enriching her creative source. After coming to Taiyuan, Guo Meihua devoted her life and work to the art of paper cutting, and traveled all over the world with a pair of hands and scissors.
As an artist who expresses local customs, Guo Meihua lives in a modern city, but she never forgets the countryside. In order to inherit and carry forward the folk style of paper-cutting, her paper-cutting works have maintained the traditional folk modeling and have a strong flavor of folk life.
Behind the paper-cut
From the initial window grilles to the later paper-cutting artistic creation, Guo Meihua's paper-cutting has formed its own unique style: bold and simple, rich and simple. Guo Meihua said: "In my life, paper-cutting is an art and a condensation of life. I hope to show the charm of paper-cutting from the perspective of life, and life is also the source of my creation. Many times, a dream will also contribute to my creation. "
Referring to this dream, Guo Meihua relished, "It was in 2002, and I dreamed of the shabby old cave where I lived as a child. Due to the leakage of rain, the leakage marks formed a mass of white alkali marks in winter, like various animals running on the kiln wall. The brothers and sisters also discussed with great interest,' This is like a rabbit kicking a ball, this is like a snake dancing, and this is like a horse race!' After waking up, get up quickly to draw pictures and cut them overnight. At this time, the zodiac animals really seemed to have vitality and rushed out from under the scissors. Then, I'm going to let the Chinese zodiac come out of their dreams and take part in Olympic events, so that they can play football, basketball, ride bicycles and lift weights and win more gold medals for our country. "
This is the story behind Guo Meihua's creation of Guo Meihua's paper-cut art sports zodiac. At that moment, Guo Meihua's eyes showed childlike joy.
Jianzhanjin culture
The six paper-cut series, Rooted in Folk, Shanxi Special Products, Shanxi Folk Songs, Song of Golden Clips, Coal Legend and Wutai Mountain Tour, constitute the Shanxi Folk Series, which fully shows the local culture and regional characteristics of the Yellow Land. So why did Guo Meihua devote herself to publishing small paper-cuts into books? "I need scissors to improve China people's impression of Shanxi. In Shanxi, our tourism resources are rich, but our tourism products are very weak. In the existing tourism market, everyone takes gifts produced by southerners, which has no Shanxi characteristics at all. So I have been thinking, can we use Shanxi paper-cut to shoulder the heavy responsibility of spreading Shanxi culture, so I must create a situation of Shanxi paper-cut gift books. Finally, this dream was realized with the help of Zhang Jigang, the director and general director of the ballet "A handful of Zizyphus jujuba". It is precisely because of the paper-cut works of "A handful of Zizyphus jujuba" that the "Shanxi Folk Custom Series" was created. " It was in the process of Guo Meihua's continuous exploration of "paper-cut publishing" that she also obtained a "national patent". According to her introduction, "the paper of the paper-cut book is made by Jiaxuan. In order to make the paper-cut book artistic, she spent more than ten years looking for such paper and rushed to the paper wholesale market every day, so it was the first time to publish a book with such paper in China, so Guo Meihua's creativity was approved as a' patent' by the Ministry of Science and Technology.
Paper-cut plastic Olympics
Culture is so fragile and subtle. The passage of time, the variation of environment and the influence of foreign thoughts can make it lose its foundation for survival. When we move into a tall building, the function of paper-cutting as a window sash is lost; When we are struggling in the hurried pace of life, we don't even have leisure and elegance to appreciate the little window grilles; When we are gradually lost in the hustle and bustle of the city, what can those traditional cultural marks do? Should they return to the dust with their old friends?
Guo Meihua said: "Art is actually a feeling, a kind of consciousness, flashing in your brain, so I use scissors to record these thoughts and ideas." Shanxi paper-cut not only embodies the temperament of the Chinese nation, but also affects the folk culture of the world. I also know the preciousness of paper-cutting skills, so many people ask me why I don't pass on this skill, but want to devote myself to creation while I am young, and then accept me as an apprentice. This is also the original intention of my personal paper-cut art exhibition. "
In order to reflect the local culture and rich life flavor of paper-cutting in her solo exhibition, Guo Meihua specially bought "sorghum stalks" from the countryside, and then woven them into "photo frames" and stuck paper-cutting in them. At the same time, she specially moved the rattan dustpan and bucket used for drying grain in rural areas to Yatang, in order to more reflect the "original ecology" beauty of paper-cutting art.
Guo Meihua is a restless person. After the solo exhibition, she will continue to create "Paper-cut Collection Tickets for 100 Champions in China", and collect 100 China champions who won the Olympic Games in the form of paper-cutting. However, what she hopes most is to give these paper-cut works to "heroes" in sports history.
Guo Meihua's carefully created paper-cut works-Shanxi caves, Shanxi pasta, Shanxi opera and Shanxi folk songs. As a folk paper-cut artist, Guo Meihua hopes to "cut out" the profound connotation of Shanxi culture with her own scissors, but in the eyes of the audience, her paper-cut works make people feel as if they are in the Loess Plateau, with wide eyes and gloomy eyes.