Faculty of Art

Drawing and Painting

Yi-Jen Lee

Black Bat Squadron

This work is about my grandfather who is a Command Sergeant Major of the Army named Black Bat Squadron during the cold war. Black Bat Squadron is a covert station of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), located in Taiwan. The government of Taiwan denies their existence for many years until recently. Thinking of him reminds me of who I am and where I came from. He never gets a chance to see his family again before he passed away. We recently found his family in mainland China after many years. I want to create a fantasy world using the scenes of his hometown I traveled before for my grandfather and his family finally unity in the afterlife. The Chinese poetry describes a soldier’s faith and their history of guarding their country which is similar to my grandfather’s story. The place this poem describes is the same as my grandfather’s hometown. By doing this body of work, allows me to pursue my inner peace by the closure of this process of hunting of his story.出塞:秦時明月漢時關，萬里長征人未還。但使龍城飛將在，不教胡馬渡陰山。-王昌齡English translation of "Over the Border":The same moon of ancient Qin also shined on the same fort of historic Han,Hardly any made a return from a thousand-league marching expedition.If only the Winged General of Han were around to fight the township of Basilisk,The barbarians and their horses would never have dared to cross the Mountains of Yin.- Wang ChanglingProcess: First, I drop the ink into the water and dip the rice paper to create unpredictable ink marks, simulating how something suddenly happened. Before I put my brush onto the paper, I begin my ritual. Circling the ink stick on the inkstone creates a sound that helps me to calm down. With my eyes closed and the ink mark flying in my mind, I can bring myself into an imaginary place with some flashbacks of the places I travel before. Freely expression along with Chinese poetry creates a spiritual place that allows me to pursue inner peace.