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Diane Carr
has had a great involvement in the arts, among other things establishing
the Canadian Craft Museum in Vancouver and running the Potter's Wheel,
one of the first Canadian galleries to show pottery and ceramics as
fine art. Pots are art! She knew Jack and Lin Chien-Shih and admired
their work and its role in bridging East and West. (interviewed
by Angela Andersen, Victoria, B.C., March 2001)
How did you know Jack?
When I came back from university in Oregon, where I was given a very
different concept of what art is all about than perhaps might have
happened here, I wound up running the Potter's Wheel. Perhaps it was
a very Asian way of looking at things, presenting ceramics as art.
I had an exhibition of a young artist from England and Jack happened
to come, and as a result he and I became friends.
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Jack Wise
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You almost can't
talk about Jack without talking about Chien-Shih. They're inseparable,
really. Chien-Shih got him to move to Calgary. Chien-Shih did the
Ba Chih, the Taoist form of telling fortune, so Chien-Shih would direct
all of our lives by Ba Chih. He wanted everybody to move to Calgary.
Well, he got Jack there for a while, teaching. I think it was a great
distress that Jack didn't stay there, to Jack, to Chien-Shih and to
a lot of friends and students. If Jack could claim to be influenced
by anybody, it was Chien-Shih, because he had the discipline and the
philosophy; he talked about the requirements of discipline. Freedom
from discipline is the Oriental way - I remember Jack saying
that. From freedom comes discipline. I think if you don't say anything
else about Jack, that's really central.
He has had an effect on so many people. Do you think that his work
will continue to have an impact?
You'd have to predict what was going to happen to people's consciousness
and I think that's really difficult to do. There will always be people
who have that interest in Eastern Philosophy and who find a strong
connection through Jack's work, and through Chien-Shih's and Mark
Tobey's. I think that looking at the three of them together could
perhaps add more. There have been not that many people who have tried
to bridge culture the way that those men did. Perhaps the more that
we do become aligned with the East, they will be seen as forerunners
of whatever art comes out of that. Art has to do with what's happening
at the time that things are being painted. At the time that we all
started to get interested in Chien-Shih and Jack, there was a whole
thing happening with a recognition of the East. Perhaps there will
always be people who seek that anyway, and this art will speak to
them.
Do you feel you can get a sense of who Jack was through his art?
If you think of the artist as a tool that the creative force comes
through, no matter what tool you use, it effects the work that's done.
Depending on the kind of brush, you can see it in the brush stroke.
There is a concept called "mu ga" in Japan. "It is
not I who is doing it." It is part of the holistic act, not two
forces working. I remember Jack saying this, "And then, after
a long attention, the artist leans back, and re-creates duality."
Isn't that lovely? So you've got this absolute, single focus attention,
where you get out of the way. There is no painter.
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