Just before arriving at VCUarts, Craft/Material Studies BFA candidate Cassie Yushan Sun discovered something in her native China that would change the course of her studies. After high school in Beijing, she became interested in helping bring exposure to traditional Chinese crafts in danger of being lost. When she met the Tu tribal people and learned of their intricate PanXiu embroidery, she had found her focus. “I thought – whoa – I’ve never seen this before,” says Sun, who originally hoped to learn PanXiu herself but soon discovered it too complicated. “It takes a lifetime to master, but that seed was planted,” she says.
The seed grew with the help of a VCUarts Dean’s International Study Grant and an Undergraduate Research Grant, which helped her develop her idea into the Reviving Project. She asked contemporary American craft artists to incorporate a piece of PanXiu embroidery into their work, culminating in an exhibition that opened at VCU’s FAB gallery and then traveled to Beijing.
“The project was very large in scope for an undergraduate to take on,” says faculty mentor Kristin Caskey, who added that juggling an international exhibition and relationship with a bureaucratic Chinese government agency is no easy task, “but Cassie met each new challenge with aplomb.”
At both exhibitions, attendees were enamored with the unusual, double-thread embroidery. In Bejing, Sun says there was also a sense of, “wow, [what a] shame that we need help from other countries to revive techniques from our own.” Plus, “having work from America was very new to them.”
The benefits were mutual, says Sun. “In China, the craft world is more traditional and more market-driven, and in America there is not a super long contemporary art history, so when paired, they really help one another.”
Sun is expected to graduate May 14 with a B.F.A. in Craft/Material Studies with a concentration in jewelry/metal and a minor in Painting & Printmaking. She’s already considering her next incarnation of the Reviving Project.
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