02: days 4 - 7

08.26-08.29

    The past few days in Taipei have been packed with local activities and our own D-School workshops. While I’ve definitely been enjoying all of the different places we’ve gotten to experience, I do feel like a whole lot of my focus has been on completing my project—which concluded this morning!

    Looking back on the past few days, my favorite activities were definitely our visit to the National Palace Museum followed by our trips to the Yingge Ceramics Museum and Tai Hwa Pottery. The National Palace Museum is one of the most beautiful buildings I’ve ever been in, and I loved getting an in-depth look at some of the art pieces and hearing the reasons for their designs. They had the Ivory Ball, which was literally an 18-layer ball carved out of ivory (it was also so crazy busy and I couldn't get a single good photo). I can’t wrap my head around how this art piece even came to be, or how long it must’ve taken to complete, but it was unreal to see in person. After the guided tour, a handful of us UW students also went out to the garden and got to experience the atmosphere along with taking some cute pictures, so I really enjoyed that small bonding experience too!

Exploring the garden together

    After the museum, we split into our project groups to walk around Yongkang Street for a few hours and discuss our projects. We ended up grabbing a quick bite to eat with our group while we talked about our project direction and got to know each other a bit more before ultimately heading home to do some work individually.

Group outing on Yongkang Street!

My favorite work at Yingge

    On the 28th we took a field trip to Yingge Ceramics Museum, which was honestly my favorite museum we’ve seen so far (as someone who loves museums!) and was full of mind-blowing pottery. I think I’m used to only seeing ceramics as dishes, so I was shocked seeing so many large-scale artworks without this kind of functional purpose. I was really captivated by this artwork with the birds hanging over the mirror and the shadows reflecting all over the wall. The exhibit was about human interaction with the earth, and seeing these birds made in such a delicate material really strengthened the meaning and was just really beautiful to see up close. I hope we get to see more like this over the next few weeks of this program, as I also felt like it was really inspiring for my own artwork.

Another favorite from Yingge, a huge wall tile piece

    Later that day we got to paint some of our own pottery at Tai Hwa, which was just a crazy building overall. It spanned three floors full of ceramics—some of the huge vases being much taller than myself—all with some of the most intricate paintings I’ve ever seen. As we finished up with some quick painting before heading back to NTU to wrap up our projects, I felt it was a cute way to conclude our field trips in Taipei. I’m really looking forward to seeing how everyone’s pottery turns out once we get to Tainan!

My pottery: The Grimm from the Prisoner of Azkaban!

    To close out our program at NTU, we did our final group presentations this morning. Seeing everyone’s unique approach to the prompt was a pleasant surprise after the stress I’ve been feeling about the work, and I’m happy that everything went successfully. My team ended up with a teabag-lantern experience product, which was definitely something I wouldn’t have ever thought of on my own and therefore ended up being an educational project as someone without much knowledge of Taiwanese culture! I’ll really miss my NTU friends, but I’m excited to meet some of the NCKU students and do similar projects with them in the upcoming weeks.