Peony Evening News all-media reporter Guo Weidong
On May 10, the reporter came to the home of Liu Yongqiang in Linzhuang Village, Wudian Town, Peony District, and it was like entering a pottery exhibition hall. More than a hundred different, lifelike, life-like works, if you don't see it with your own eyes, you can't believe that they came from a deaf couple.
In Liu Yongqiang's humble production studio, Liu Yongqiang is making a series of pottery works in the "Idiom Story".
Liu Yongqiang, born in 1976 in Linzhuang Village, Wudian Town, Mudan District, was injected with an overdose of streptomycin in 1977 and has since become deaf and mute. He has loved painting since he can remember, picking up a branch to paint on the ground and applying a pencil to the walls of his house. Due to difficulties in listening and pronunciation, I went home after less than half a year of school, but the painting continued.
After many inquiries, his parents finally found a suitable path for him, from September 1988 to July 1995, he studied at the Heze School for the Deaf and Dumb, focusing on cultivating painting specialties, and used 7 years to complete all the courses of primary school and junior high school. From September 1995 to July 1997, he studied at Shandong Rehabilitation Vocational Secondary College, where he studied painting and porcelain carving, and after graduation, he began to embark on a career in ceramic art.
Liu Yongqiang's wife, Jing Ruiping, met and became married in 2001 when she studied at the Shandong Provincial Rehabilitation Vocational Secondary College from September 1995 to July 1997. Jing Ruiping studied costume design in school, and the costume design of each of Liu Yongqiang's works embodies his wife's painstaking efforts, and when she hears and witnesses, her wife will also do pottery and become Liu Yongqiang's powerful assistant.
Husband and wife have always loved to pinch a variety of dolls, playing in the water, peeing, playing slingshots, pulling erhu, blowing trumpets, playing games, reading, etc., are full of rich local life atmosphere, the doll's expression makes people look breathtaking.
The mud they use is all purple sand mud bought from Yixing, kneaded, dried, and then burned in a special electric furnace for about 8 hours, waiting for 10 hours to cool down, and the finished product is baked.
The plum blossom fragrance comes from the bitter cold! I don't know how much more blood and sweat than ordinary people, after how much hardship of learning art, the couple finally took the first step of success. At the city's cultural tourism industry exhibition, the works of Liu Yongqiang and his wife became the highlights of the exhibition. Both adults and children stay in front of their couple's works and do not want to leave.
In October 1999, they were invited to participate in the Exhibition of Young Deaf and Dumb Pottery in oriental pottery village held by Beijing Le Pottery Art Garden, and won the pottery competition award. His works "The Farmer" and "The Earthen House of the Old Home" are collected by the famous dancer Yang Liping. In 2002, his work "Root Art" was exhibited at the Exhibition of Deaf-Mute Pottery of the Ministry of Culture in France, and his works were published in local magazines. In November 2003, his work "The Old Lady on the Road" won an award at the Shanghai Art Fair. Many of his works are collected by foreign art lovers such as Japan and Korea.