Gao Feng Art Exhibit
The artist, Gao Feng, was born in 1928 in Xiang Yun County, Yunnan,
P.R.C. In 1949, Gao, age 21 began working for the Yunnan Third Engineering
Construction Company. He was a teacher and then the principal of the
high school attached to the company for 38 years. After retiring in 1987,
he devoted himself to the study and practice of Chinese calligraphy and
since 1996, the Dongba culture of Lijiang, in particular, their
pictographic script. His 3 series, Worship Heaven, Worship Dragon, and Worship
Wind, incorporate Dongba pictographs into calligraphy drawings to
narrate for Chinese readers three ancient Naxi myths interpreted by living
Dongba shamen from their ancient pictographic books.
Published by Yunnan Nationality Press in December of 2000, the texts of
all three were translated into English for the 2005 publication
accompanying the U.S. Exhibition of Gao Feng’s Worship Heaven at the Texas
State Museum of Asian Cultures in Corpus Christi, Texas, USA. Other Gao
publications —— Dongba Pictographic Reading Book for Pupils and A
Workbook for Translating Names of Modern Things into Dongba Pictographic
Scripts, and others —— are in progress.