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Jack Wise had a profound command of Chinese calligraphy and had been doing brush stroke work for many years before he began his training with his teacher, Lin Chien-Shih (Lin Chien-Shih, Jack Wise, A Decade of Work). Chien-Shih assisted Wise in understanding the technique and the meaning of this intricate form of brush work and confirmed the validity of his work, and Wise referred to his great friend and instructor as his mentor. Chien-Shih was a master of Chinese calligraphy, a poet, seal carver, ceramicist, and sculptor who immigrated to Canada with his family in 1970. In spite of the language barrier between them, Wise and his teacher found that they were able to communicate because of the common visual expression they shared. Many of the lessons
Wise learned from Chien-Shih came from observing the master at work.
Lin Chien-Shih had a wide circle of friends, but he took on very few
private students. Once, he assigned a single calligraphic stroke to
a student to practice, saying, "I want you to do this a thousand
times". She returned in two weeks, bringing the thousand strokes
to Chien-Shih. He was looking at all these works, and finally he got
to one and he said, tapping on his choice, "That's the one".
The student just about fell over, and she said, "Well, Chien-Shih,
I was putting my brush away. After doing this, I was completely exasperated,
and I was just exhausted with trying to do this, and it never felt
right, and my brush fell on the paper". That was the one. He
was saying that's the way, to, translated from the Chinese, 'do without
doing'. (as told to Angela Andersen by Bill Porteous, 02/01)
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