Day of the Olympics-Wasai!!!

8/08/08 Friday
Artists were informed that today after dinner we would all be able to watch the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics in the hotel lobby, anticipation is palpable and I’m excited too. Chun Hua was tired today and didn’t show at the studio in the morning but did come in for the afternoon. There seemed to be extra energy in the studio today, Yu had moved an additional 500 pounds of clay into the workspace, which will be enough to completely fill the final forth form. Forth and final block of clay (above,and out of order) for the bronze sculpture. Some interesting information, to date, the amount of clay used by the artists is presently setting at seventeen tons, Oh my gosh…that’s 34,000 pounds, and four artists have not yet begun to place clay on to their armatures. Shau Yu as I call him now, it’s like saying Johnny for John, continued in the late morning placing clay over the steel armature in to the fourth form. I was spending the morning (and afternoon) coping the paper cut sheets for the stainless piece, for the fabrication team. This meant that Shau Yu would have to pack the fourth form by himself, not an easy job, I checked him once in a while to see if there were any problems. He worked very hard today and it was a long one.
Most all the artists assembled in the lobby ten minutes before eight o’clock for the Opening ceremony, the Changchun media was present and halfway through the ceremony I was “on deck” for an interview. It was pretty standard, oh the fame, paparazze everywhere…all I really wanted to do was watch the ceremony, which was utterly spectacular, words can’t describe the splendor. China can be proud and England should be nerves, China’s Opening Ceremony will be tough act to follow. Chun Hua had a great idea, she is going to the famous park that we had done to earlier, (the one with the group photo) to watch the Olympics with thousands of other people. She will have a video and I will get it up on the blog soon.