The Tree of Life

While living and teaching in Shanghai, China, I soaked up the city's culture and history as a wide-eyed Canadian ex-pat. It was during this time that I formed the Visual Poetry team with three of my artistically-gifted students. Together, we create art from a multi-cultural, multi-disciplined perspective.

Art does not exist in a void; it has always been about connections - between the painter and the landscape; between the writer and the reader. Art reflects, and shapes, the society that creates it. Art is a process of continual interaction. Whether it is poetry or prose, Visual Poetry reflects this by combining multiple styles and media into each piece.

As I adapted to this new culture, and way of life, these three students, all born and raised in Shanghai, became my most influential teachers and creative partners.

Cindy Fay Xie is currently a freshman at the Pratt Institute in New York. A talented photographer and painter, she captures the beauty, as well as the harsh realities of life. Using her lens to critique the world around her, she visualizes many of the frustrating aspects of the modern world with expertise.

Maggie Chen is presently studying at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Her photography captures natural beauty with a sublime style as she brings to
life the idealistic, romantic side of beauty.

Julianne Vermilion, at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, is a superb painter and illustrator. Her eclectic visual-art styles blend flawlessly with the sometimes wild, esoteric, and psychological directions of the text.

Adela Fei and Sasha Sha recently joined Visual Poetry as leaders of the Mandarin translation team. Adela is currently completing high school in Tokyo, Japan, while Sasha recently graduated with honours from ShiXi high school in Shanghai. They merge their unique poetic styles to the art so that the text both reflects the English and resonates well in Chinese.

Together, we form an artistic team we call Visual Poetry. Working together, we collectively tell a story from our multicultural perspectives, combining our talents to create one holistic piece of art. The goal of Visual Poetry is to blend East and West through a stylish mixture of rhythm and colour, poetry and prose, modern and ancient, and romantic and real.