INTERCONNECTEDNESS 万物相通
- Lin
- Jan 28
- 4 min read
——CLOUDS, HORSE AND GRASS 云，马，草
In-store Solo Art Exhibition Feb. 16th - Apr. 25th, 2026
Opening reception Feb. 21st, Sat., 2:28-3:58 pm
528 SW 3rd Ave, Portland, OR
The Luxury Exchange
Dear friends and strangers,
I’m writing to share that my solo art exhibition will take place during the Lunar New Year of 2026 at a sustainable boutique store in Portland, The Luxury Exchange.
Interconnectedness is the central theme of the exhibition, a long word but not a difficult idea. It simply means that we are all connected. But who are “we”, and how - and why - are we connected?
We are everything: clouds, sky, moon, trees, plants, animals, horses, humans, mushrooms, rocks, chairs, plastics - objects as small as an atom, as vast as a galaxy. All of it. We are connected because we come from the same origin, at the beginning of everything. We are not only the children of our parents; we are children of nature - siblings of animals and plants.
Clouds, horse and grass are the three core concepts of interconnectedness.
Clouds, in this context, take the form of hanging sculptures and installations suspended from the ceiling. Horse is the contemporary calligraphic painting created for the Year of the Horse, along with handmade linocut prints. Grass is represented by a large-scale mixed media painting of giant grass rooted in the ground, bringing the energy of Mother Nature into the space.
Clouds—
December 22, 2025, a Thursday - the day before Christmas Eve - my partner Sandee performed a 15-min stand-up set at an inclusive community event at COFFEE BEER, hosted by our friends Esau and Phillip. I was there, and so were Jude and Tyrell. We watched Sandee’s show, listened to poems and enjoyed R&B music together. At the end of the night, Phillip handed out church candles to everyone along with a printed pop song lyric. We held our candles and sang the I-never-know-how-to-sing song together. We had a wonderful night and celebrated “whatever-it-is” holidays. I kept one candle and later made this hanging sculpture with it, Altar, as a remembrance of that night. As an atheist, I found this new way of experiencing church-like thing was quite fun.
For my hanging sculptures/installations, materials found in nature - such as wood branches with moss, plant seeds, sea-drifted bones, and driftwood - along with objects collected (trash/waste) from my everyday life, including used teabags, fruit netting, plastic covers, dried pomelo peels, dried flowers and dried leaves from my garden, are intuitively suspended with recycled cotton string on a main structure. The process is spontaneous, random, and unpredictable. The works are delicate mobiles, always in motion, requiring me to constantly search for balance. This reflects both my artistic and philosophical practice — finding equilibrium between myself and the world, between a human being and nature, between an Asian female and U.S. society. This body of work is just like my personal memory, history, and perhaps even an epic of my own.
Welcome to my world, friends.
Horse—
Seal script (篆书), an ancient style of writing Chinese characters developed from oracle bone script, is used here within a contemporary calligraphic practice. The handwritten character is
马/馬 （mǎ), meaning “horse” in Chinese, carrying two wishes: to live unrestrained, as a celestial horse roaming freely through the sky (天马行空); to take dreams as one’s steed (以梦为马), in page 1.
Even as peace and order in the world would be repeatedly stirred into chaos and madness this year, each individual still has a life to attend to and a faith to hold onto. Through this work, the artist invites the viewer to explore, to discover, to enjoy the unrevealed fragments of the life journey —— unrestrained as a dream, bold as if never stopped, and free as a child of nature. Happy Year of the Horse, my friends.
Printmaking is something I began learning last summer at Paisley’s studio. I immediately fell in love with it and started exploring different techniques: monotype, linocut, Tetra Pak, drypoint and more. Each little print carries a tiny piece of my soul, some revolutionary thoughts and sparks of inspiration.
Grass—
I grew up in a rural village in northwestern China. I remember running barefoot across the land all the time. The trees, bushes, crops and weeds—everything—were taller than me. I love the meadow, because it is my hometown and also my spiritual home. One day, from nowhere, I started to paint a habitat for my soul. From there, the Grass series began. In this series, each work features a vast cluster of giant grass, growing alongside water, a moon, clouds and sky—a place I’d never been, would never arrive but always wanted to be.
Pink Grass, is the No.3 in the Grass series.
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That’s it — some stories of myself and a small part of my work for the exhibition. I hope you can find peace and joy in it. Have a beautiful life, my siblings;-). See you there.
Thanks.
Lin
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