TRUE BLUE TREBLE

Hello! I’m Jessica, a Chinese-American artist and musician with synesthesia. I like playing woodwind instruments and cutting paper into interesting shapes. If you love things like music, astronomy, oceanography, or anything blue, I hope something of mine will resonate with your soul.

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1st time winning an #art prize 🎉 and 1st time being in an exhibition! 🖼️

"Niulang and Zhinu at Great Bridge, VA" was chosen for the Anne Pauley Award, plus a Popular Choice Award by the Park Gables gallery visitors. thank you to the art council and staff at VMRCharrisonburg for hosting a fun event yesterday!

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read more about "Niulang and Zhinu" at: https://www.truebluetreble.com/niulang-and-zhinu-at-great-bridge-virginia/

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just floating away on a jellyfish while playing mozart's clarinet concerto || more of my musical paper art

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Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity

Measurements: 20″ diameter papercutting

Medium description: single unbroken sheet of cut acid-free paper

This papercutting is my depiction of the largest planet in our solar system, using music from Gustav Holst’s Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity, part of his orchestral Planets suite (transcribed for and frequently played by wind bands). Holst’s stately Thaxted hymn runs across the center bands of the planet, surrounded by other more exuberant melodies and motifs to the north and south. At the poles are frenzied polyrhythmic layered ostinato which open and close the piece.

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Perceived circles or lines are not exactly circular or straight, and true circles and lines could never be detected since by definition they are sets of infinitely small points. But if the perfect ones were not real, how could they direct the manufacturer?

Plato, Cratylus, paragraph 389.

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Music of the Winds and Seas- Part 1: “Hubris”

Measurements: 24″x36″ 

Medium description: single unbroken sheet of cut acid-free white paper mounted on single unbroken sheet of cut acid-free black paper.

Music of the Winds and Seas is planned four-panel piece, currently in progress. Each panel measures 24″x36″, and features the music of a wind band composer. The series as a whole is an observation of humankind’s relationship with the sea.

“Hubris” is the first panel, and takes its name from the first movement of Wine Dark Sea, a symphony for band by John Mackey. Mackey was in turn inspired by the tale of the Odyssey. His music portrays Odysseus’s ship being struck down by Zeus for his prideful offenses against the gods.

I took Mackey’s melodies and placed them on masts rooted to a cruise ship– the Costa Concordia, which sank in 2012 off the coast of Italy due to the reckless stunts of her captain, a modern-day Odysseus. Mackey’s bassline runs in the waters beneath the ship, connecting to the bassline of Harrison’s Dream in the next panel.

On the smallest mast, nine bars are spaced out in morse code for “SOS,” a rhythmic distress call which Mackey has the drums play in the disastrous climax of Hubris.

The style of the wave was inspired by Hokusai’s Great Wave off Kanagawa. However, instead of the harmonious way Hokusai’s little boats bow in submission, I wanted to create the discordance of a captain’s ill-advised, ill-fated clash with nature.

For the 32 people who perished aboard the Costa Concordia, their souls are represented as 32 stars in the sky, which are arranged in the constellations Argo Navis (the Ship Argo) and Delphinus (the Dolphin).

Thank you to John Mackey for kindly giving me his blessing to use his music!

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Measurements: 2″x6″ each

Medium description: layered cut papers

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ARTIST STATEMENT

I draw inspiration from the seas and skies, the beauty of music, and our desire to find meaning and connection in all things.

Connectedness is at the heart of my papercuttings, both in concept and medium. Paper is inherently cohesive. On it, I weave musical, scientific, and historical themes into intricate designs before carefully hand-cutting them from a single sheet, using connectedness to maintain structural integrity. The result is is delicate and lacelike.

With blueness—the color of infinity—I want to draw focus toward all that is intangible, like Plato’s perfect circle. In Cratylus, Plato writes: “Perceived circles or lines are not exactly circular or straight, and true circles and lines could never be detected since by definition they are sets of infinitely small points. But if the perfect ones were not real, how could they direct the manufacturer?”

The realm of the perfect circle is where I believe arises all art, music, and human ingenuity. And I want to celebrate our striving for the unreachable. It is wonderful to aspire toward knowledge, beauty, and the sublime. I hope my art is an invitation to reach beyond the horizon, through a sea of stars and music notes, and connect with something greater than ourselves.

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Harrison's Dream Papercutting- work in progress

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Music of the Winds and Seas- Part 2: Harrison’s Dream

Measurements: 24″x36″

Medium description: single unbroken sheet of cut white acid-free paper, mounted on single unbroken sheet of cut navy acid-free paper.

Music of the Winds and Seas is planned four-panel piece, currently in progress. Each panel measures 24″x36″, and features the music of a wind band composer. The series as a whole is an observation of humankind’s relationship with the sea.

Continuing from Wine Dark Sea, this second panel takes its name from Peter Graham‘s Harrison’s Dream. Graham based his composition on the story of John Harrison’s feverish struggle to create the first marine chronometer, an extremely precise clock which solved the navigational problem of calculating longitude at sea, which was causing deadly shipwrecks. Harrison’s achievement saved countless lives.

The clock in this papercutting was drawn with loose adherence to Harrison’s original H4 chronometer blueprints, with Graham’s melodies whirring in the clockwork. Graham’s bassline runs in the undercurrent, continuing in the same key from Mackey’s bassline in the previous panel. Above in the sky are the constellations Circinus (the Compass) and Horologium (the Clock). The panel as a whole is meant to represent humanity’s effort to tame the seas.

Thank you to Peter Graham for giving me his blessing to use his music!

Update: in April 2024, Harrison’s Dream was selected as the featured two-dimensional entry in the Library of Congress Professional Association Art Show.