Jia Lu

Studio struggle

Jia is working full speed preparing work for her upcoming exhibition at Visions Fine Art Gallery in Sedona, AZ opening on May 26. We caught her in her studio adding banners to the background of an as-yet untitled large painting. "It's about eighty percent finished, but you never know," she said. The struggle is that every painting is an unknown quantity until it's finished. Jia keeps changing elements, details, color tone, poses, backgrounds, right up to the last date before the paintings go out the door to the gallery. Time budgeting is an almost impossible task because each painting 'behaves' differently as it comes together on the easel.
In spite of this pressure, Jia remains cheerful and optimistic. "They're my babies, but they don't always do what I ask them, and they often turn out differently than I plan."

Break from a busy schedule

Jia moved to Los Angeles to be closer to her collectors. Now and then they drop in for a visit and she takes a break from painting to play. We met Terry at New York ArtExpo in 2003 and he's been a part of our lives ever since, introducing his favorite parts of Manhattan when we're in town. Less frequently he makes it out to LA . Today he arrived with Glenn and Melanie in tow. We enjoyed a delicious dim sum lunch and afternoon conversation, with much hugging and love shared all around. Thanks Terry!

Top: Melanie, Terry, Jia, Glenn.
Bottom: Jia, Melanie, Glenn, Geoffrey, Kathy

Costume Shop

For the last few days, Jia's studio has resembled the spilled internals of a Joanne Fabrics warehouse. Repeated visits to Home Depot, Kids'R'Us, costume jewelry supply and notions departments end in bags of goodies scattered throughout the living room, front hall, passageways. There are toy swords,  plastic crowns, beads, Christmas decorations, hairpins, baubles, bangles, foam tubes, basting tape, rhinestones, fishing lines, swag, tinsel, gauze, copper wire, straws ... and gummy worms, all pressed into service as raw material for prototype costumes designs. While Transcendance gets ready to move into its fund raising phase, Jia is busy hatching her next, spectacular show.

We have had several summer visitors over the last two months. Two of them are models, one and athlete from San Francisco, the other a professional dancer from Beijing. Jia has already spent several days with them both, working out compositions for new paintings and making sketches.

We can't wait to see the results!

Welcome Back

You may notice something odd about this site. There are no posts since 2004. That's when we first set up this blog to accompany the new Jia Lu website. But when development work on the new site bogged down in a spaghetti bowl of javascript and xml, the weblog also languished. Two years and many redesigns later, we're getting close to finishing that site.

In the meanwhile blogging has become a respectable, dare I suggest civilized, way to communicate with friends, family, fans and strangers. Most of these entries will be written by Geoffrey, because it's not easy prying Jia away from her easel, but she'll be making frequent special appearances - Those will be marked with red text.

So, we're back. With lots of information and photos to share.