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Stories of Vendors
WK Fuan - Where light incites Joy Give
light, and the darkness will disappear of itself Forty eight year old Wong Keng Fuan's work, or Fuan as he is know, needs little introduction. He is a glass artist in Penang who has touched international standards. His works are known around the world and many have found homes in countries far and near.
I first met Fuan some four years ago. At a late night party in his studio, I stood admiring a small emerald green glass bowl delicately sitting atop drift wood, at an unreachable price. On telling him that it was gorgeous he calmly told me that, "You like it only because of the light hitting it. Otherwise it is nothing."
For me, Fuan captures and frames light, in all its glorious colors, within the icy transparency of glass – just so that one can take its warm, spiritual glow home. He plays with the weightlessness of light, swathes it into chunky, tactile glass, igniting it with life. It is a major reason why one should have a piece of his work in the home - it brings serenity and beauty to spaces in a very tactile manner.
And he is in great company. Check out Famous Faces and Names with Bipolar Disorder on the net and you have Francis Ford Copolla, Lord Byron, Agatha Christ, Napoleon Bonaparte and the list goes on and on. Manic-depressive illness is a mood disorder, and those afflicted with the condition experience alarming variations in mood, ranging from energetic, euphoric highs to melancholy, listless lows. In her book Touched With Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament, Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison argues that the birth of new ideas often takes place during the manic phases, but the refinement of such thoughts may occur during the artist's melancholic periods. In other words, you can have great creative bouts in the high state and the depression allows you to hone this creativity into your piece of art.
"I would like others out there experiencing what I went through to know that you can overcome this, like I have, and get something wonderful out of it, like I have." This does not mean that his journey into his art has been easy. His original dream was to be a rich loafer, a good English gentleman who funded exhibitions and adventures or went on one himself! So what happened? The youngest son of a father who was a well known Penang orchid hybridizer, he states clearly that plants inspire him. Like his work gives me joy, Fuan finds the same in his garden, "Take a look at just this three square feet, the rosettes, the spirals, forms and shapes, all art comes from nature". Pointing to a mother-in-law's tongue, he says, "Isn't the color crazy inspirational?"
His workshop, gigantic kiln and all, is sited on the side of his home and opens up to his lush garden. He has spent numerous hours in his garden, not just planting and contemplating but also searching locally, nationally and internationally for unusual species of plant life.
And it was that love for nature that started his addiction with glass. "I was helping a friend with her garden and she needed help with a piece of stained glass. It was then that I realized that glass was the medium I wanted to work with", he states. That was when he was 28 years old. Prior to this age, he admits he was just being a "bum" and did not quite know what he wanted to do with himself. What he did realize was that making things made him feel good and being productive kept the demons of manic-depression away. "You do not feel that you are wasting your days away." So why glass?
"This process is also very organic. You have to go with the flow and let the process dictate the end result. What comes out may not be what you want." This must be true as his neat workshop has a number of broken and odd pieces of work stacked, again neatly, against its walls. Fuan
designs in fused glass, a term used to describe glass that has been
fired (heat-processed) in a kiln at a range of high temperatures from
593º C (1100ºF) to 816º C (1500ºF). He is self taught, learning much about the technique of fusing from books and then experimenting. This completely enlarged his appetite for technique, style and craft leding him to produce, not just small pieces of art, but also large blocks of work.
"I work to please other glass artist as only they could understand the pain, sweat and tears that certain processes involve,." is his answer on how he manages the size and complexity of pattern of some of his pieces. "Understand the sheer weight of raw material needed to make a door sized piece, the time it spends in the oven, sometimes as much as a week and the number of people needed to move it." Today, Fuan feels that he is no longer bipolar as he has had no major episodes for many years. At worst he is manic most of the time, quite intense all the time and producing a lot of work. "I admit I am cantankerous and impatient. But I have endless patience for my work, in fact I reserve it all for my work. My greatest failure is not being able to have this patience with people," says the man. And what happened to that beautiful emerald glass piece I first saw of his works? Well, that cantankerous and impatient man gave it to me as a house warming present. Something I treasure, not so much as a beautiful piece of art, which it is, but for the fact that he had remembered that I loved it. Written
and Photographed by Ambiga Devy |
It's
the person that interests me - the person who told me in all frankness
that I could write about his illness, something most people hide, and
mull it around in my mind to see how it affects his work. That amazes
me.
That
started my journey into the essence of light on glass. I have since
not been able to look at his work without searching for the reflections,
tones and colors that light makes upon them. Often light creates iridescent
rivers of icy water-like images on his glass pieces, difficult to turn
away from, leading me back to contemplate them whenever I need a sense
of peace.
Fuan
is bipolar, or in a more understandable term, a manic depressive. "I
knew something was wrong since the age of twelve but was only diagnosed
at about 35. It was good to be able to place a term for what I was going
through, to know that it could be managed and that I was not alone",
he tells me.
Fuan
talks about this darkness in his life frankly, "The illness is
cyclic. I would go through long periods of depression followed by periods
of mania, and sometimes the cycles were changing so fast that they began
to overlap. I could not understand what was happening and this can lead
to a person becoming suicidal."
"Glass
has a life of its own and it's a very democratic process. It has a say
in what it wants to be. You can be like a parent cajoling and pleading
but generally, it will go the way it wants to go." As an example
he shows me large pieces of beautifully colored glass which had fractured,
refusing to stay in the form that he wanted. "It is also a sensitive
material. If you do not understand its nature it will confound you."
