R
Mondav. April 18. 1988 / University Daily Kansan
Chinese sculptor studies art at KU
By Julie Adam
Kansan staff writer
Elden Tefft and Cao Chun Sheng play a form of charades everyday, but to them it's no game. It's the way they communicate.
Cao, an associate director of sculpture in the Central Institute of Fine Arts in Beijing, is on a six-month leave to visit the United States. He came to University of Kansas in March to study sculpture with Tefft, professor of art.
But Cao doesn't speak English, and Tefft doesn't speak Mandarin Chinese or Russian, so the two use their common language of sculpture and a form of other sign language to talk to each other.
Cao said through an interpreter that he became interested in coming to KU after he saw a film of Tefft preparing a sculpture. He also met Tefft in 1986 when Tefft was visiting
the Jiaotong University in Shanghai. Cao will stay at KU until the end of May or the beginning of June. His stay is being supported by a grant from a man who immigrated to the United States from China in the early 1970s.
The man, Shih-Yuen Pai, lives in New York now, and Cao is making a sculpture for him depicting Pai and his family upon their arrival to the United States, he said.
Another sculpture Cao has done is a piece for Iraq. Cao said that the Iraqi wanted a sculpture of the symbol of their country, the eagle, to place upon a dam in their country. The sculpture was made of solid bronze and was 20 feet tall with a wing span of 30 feet.
Cao, who is living in Hashinger Hall during his stay, said that he observed that the standard of living in the United States was much better
than in China
He said he was taking pictures of everything he observed to take back to China with him. He is also taking back with him a little bit of the U.S. culture.
He attended and took pictures the Jayhawks' victory parade last week and said that it was equivalent to a national celebration in China.
Cao said that he was learning more about how the United States was different from China. Sculptures made by U.S. artists were more abstract and imaginative than sculptures made by the Chinese artists, he said.
Cao said that he was anxious to get back to China so that his students could benefit from the different sculpture techniques and ideas he has learned here.
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