#gary wu

[simonsaquascapeblog]

Favourites: "the Nest"  by Gary Wu Size: 152 X 51 X 58 (375 Litre)

Crazy One by Hong Kong`s Grandmaster Wu, he`s always unconventional, appreciating this! Like it!

[simonsaquascapeblog]

Favourites: Beyond the Nature by Gary Wu

This is one of my all-time favourite aquascapes. This scape is from around 2010, when techniques were not so advanced, and this floating island was a fresh new style for the scene. Learn more about this tank following this link here.

[permanentadg-blog]

Gary Wu and the Creative Aquascape Union (CAU)

The Creative Aquascape Union is a member-supported organization of aquascape artists located in Hong Kong. They promote, practice and support the delicate art of aquascaping through their substantial and rich website. For those who are getting a first glance at aquascaping as an art form, it might appear to lie somewhere between Bonsai and diorama, but Permanent was lucky enough to interview CAU member Gary Wu to get a deeper look into this precise and multi-disciplined art form 

What is your position at the CAU and how long have you been involved? I am one of the co-founders of CAU, and have already spent five years in the union. I act in an administrative role for the union. What inspired you to begin designing aquascapes? I had my aquarium back in my teen age years, and I started my first planted tank about ten years ago. I wanted to have a new tank to decorate my home. At that time the internet was getting better and I ran into a lot of aquatic-plant excitement in the aquatic forums, from people enjoying their aquascapes. Because of my design background, I knew I could do something similar so I started decorating my tank rather than just planting it. It was very encouraging to post your layout on the forum and people would either appreciate or criticize your layout; it is good to read people’s comments as this is helps with the momentum for continued improvement. I met most of the CAU core team there and we gathered every week to discuss our layouts and planting techniques and that became the foundation of CAU.   You mentioned your design background, do you work as a designer?

I am a graphic designer since about twenty years ago and I also graduated from a design institute, so any art form is not that strange to me. Currently my duty is still related to design coordination and project management.  

What are the origins of aquascaping? Mother nature is most of the origin, however aquascaping for me is not just replicating the natural environment; my layouts always want to express some message. For the past few years, I present different kinds of water inside the tank; another series is about trees. My series “Beyond the Nature” expresses environmental concerns. As an art form that works with living materials, how do these materials constrain and/or enhance the design process? We are creating a living environment, so not only do the living objects change from time to time, the condition of the water also changes if we cannot maintain it properly.  This is not the same as other living art forms; it is not a flower arrangement that you can just arrange and fix as is. Aquascapes have to grow to final form, and it usually takes at least two to three months for it to mature. Its similar to Bonsai miniature trees or gardening design, however those are using natural resources: air and sunlight... an open system where the water element is not much of a concern. The aquascape is like a closed system, we have to adjust the light source, water quality, temperature and  fertilizer level, and if any one of them becomes unaligned, not only will the plants not grow, but also the fish will die and algae will bloom. What, in your opinion, are the limits of using life as a material to be used in design projects? For all the decorative material: substrate, stone, driftwood...the major concern is whether it will affect the water quality. Once the water swings in the wrong direction, we have to give up, so that limits the use of decorative material in a planted tank. For an aquascape, a harmonized environment, we have to choose plants and creatures that can live together.  In the water world, even fresh water zones, there are many different characteristics. Take as an example the pH level of water, most plants and creatures like to live under slightly acidic water, but some African creatures like slightly alkaline water; some creatures protect their living zone, some attack others. So we must have a basic understanding about behavior and you can’t just use their appearance to select the layout.  

A step by step description of how Wu grew this layout (A Tree's Life) can be found here.

What is your advice to beginning aquascape artists? Aquascaping needs a lot of knowledge to support it: you need an artistic sense, a planting technique, some chemical knowledge, some lighting knowledge, some water quality knowledge, some biological knowledge, some knowledge of photography and the most important thing is you must be patient. It’s not like painting and sculpture that already have commercial value and can be relocated easily.  Aquascapes are almost impossible to move, and they don’t have as high a monetary value as other art forms at the moment. They have different maturation periods and rates, some fast growing plants you can only keep for about a week at a time in a perfect shape, so a final photo is very important to capture the best moment. All the work that we’ve done for the past few years are gone, because we cannot afford to keep all the tanks going, the only way we can  keep them is in a photo and in the moment when you are able to release your working pressure and relax in front of the tank. Are there other organizations like CAU in the world, and is there a region where aquascaping has most of its fans and artists? I think we are the first group of aquascapers to come together, but now there are a lot of people who appreciate our approach and have formed similar groups. Some also use their web site as a showcase, a lot like us. Below are some of the similar groups. We have over ten thousand members all around the world. We also have a lot of aquascapers on facebook we have not met before, they are Portuguese, Spanish, German, French and many other nationalities. We use this platform to share aquascaping news and events. See other related websites here, here, and here.  Where are some of the best places to purchase tanks and other materials online and perhaps some locations you might know about in the US or elsewhere? Being located in Hong Kong is convenient, but I know some people might not have the convenience to do shopping in an aquarium, so mail order is very common. For the tank, if it is small size it can still be attained by mail, but for larger sizes, most of them require a custom order or you have to ask for a logistical arrangement with the aquarium. I’m not familiar with the shops in the US, but I could recommend Aquatic Gardeners Association, as they are an association that have organized some aqua-related events, publishing titles and organizing aquascaping contests. Other members' layouts from the CAU: