While the Upper Farm areas are swarming with sightseers in the Cherry Blossom season, two fibre sculptors from Taiwan are busy working with their hands in the Kwun Yam Garden at the Lower Farm. With the assistance of KFBG volunteers, the two artists are preparing for an installation exhibition that opens next week.

"Nature is a piece of artwork by itself," said Pan Ping-yu who has been invited to be our Artist-in-Residence for the second time. Her work, Heart of Leaves, at KFBG this year express to her feelings and thoughts when she is enjoying and reflecting upon nature.

After busy exploring KFBG in the past few days and taking into account factors such as directions of beams of light, weather conditions and falling leaves, Ping-yu decided to use an outdoor area near the Kwun Yam Garden to plant her artwork in a natural setting. Her artwork will feature heart-shape nest assembled, by making thousands of gauze and metal wired leaves. The revolving pattern of subtle distinction between order and chaos resembles organic modeling of nature's fragmented and structured movements.

On another side of the Kwun Yum Garden, the smell of herbal tea is lingering in the air. "I am not having hot-pot here," said Chan Shu-yen, another Fibre Sculptor from Taiwan, "I am boiling leaves and extracting the coloring agents from them." Shu-yen has been collecting bark and leaves after setting foot in KFBG, last week, and will apply the colour on her artwork installation Catching a Glimpse.

"I am finding a way to remind people living in urban areas that we had, and we could, have a very intimate relationship with plants. Nature is not a friend from afar. You can smell, or you can apply botanical dye on the clothes that we wear. Plants are indeed integrated and intimately connecting with people," said Shu-yen.

Since her graduate school days, Shu-yen has been in love with tactile and rugged materials. In her work Catching a Glimpse, she will apply knitting and weaving techniques, using strips of bark and slender poles to create a web of space, and then colour the structure with botanical dyes

Shu-yen is expert in using complex media like bark fabrics and raw plant materials, her works often explore the relationship between man’s inner life and primitive nature, "I grew up in the countryside in Taitung. I love being with nature; nature calms and caresses me, it is the home of my soul." However, the more society becomes modernized, the more we are alienated from nature. People in the city are not familiar with plants, and forget how intimate they are with plants of the primal world. "I believe that the more we separate from nature, the more we separate from our own heart."

Birch Cheung, Art Officer of KFBG, remarks on the event, "We want to present the beautiful faces of nature through the language of art, to kindle care for all the wild places and the natural environment through artworks and to inspire the public to reflect upon the relationship between man and nature." The two Artists-in-Residence will be creating their artworks at KFBG from now till 16th February, 2012. Visitors are welcome to meet and chat with them about creativity for art-in-nature.

The completed installation art works will be on display from 19th February to 19th April, 2012 at KFBG.

Click here to see more about their artworks.

During the interview, fibre artist Chan Shu-yen demonstrated a crocheted funnel created by her, “this is made by using the barks from Roselle plants.” The crocheted funnels hanging in the air will sway in the wind, catching the currents and energy of the environment, simulating the feeling of being caressed by wind, so as to create a platform for a happy dialogue between artificial and natural elements.

The coexistence of "similarities and subtle distinction" can be found in nature and in human life as well.

Pan Ping-yu explains, "We all have a pair of eyes, a nose, similar contours; and we all experience birth, aging, illness and death, as well as moments of emotional puzzlement. We are all different, but yet the same. This is a basic principle of nature and of human life."