“The Beauty of Hua Hin” is a unique art workshop and exhibition being held at Nern Chalet Beachfront Hotel featuring 12 artists from eight different countries. This amazing event is organized and co-sponsored by Khun Caranee Thianthai (P’Tod) and Naidee Changmoh and is taking place for the first time since July of 2018. Caranee, nickname “Tod”, is the proprietor of the lovely Nern Chalet Beachfront Hotel which is located at the end of Khao Takiab Rd. across from the Green Bus Terminal. She is an avid supporter of art, not only in Hua Hin and Thailand but internationally as well. Naidee Changmoh is a renowned artist in Thailand as well as internationally. Together they have organized this “artist in residence” event which brings some very amazing and worldclass talent to Hua Hin to workshop, network and produce fine art in several different mediums.
This year’s focus is on ceramics and there are 12 very creative, imaginative and passionate people who were creating magic right before my very eyes. A few of them were kind enough to sit down and share some of their experiences, influences and inspirations with me. Cybele Rowe is an Australian born American resident who works in all mediums but whose preferred medium is large scale sculptures fabricated from ceramic and cement. She has worked in wood and bronze sculpture and also paints. Cybele is very well known internationally and her work is in high demand with high profile clients world-wide. She showed me some of her larger installations and they are stunning. She has perfected the art of making and selling her work without galleries or agents. She has been so successful at it that she developed and taught a college level course in how to make art and money as well. She has created ceramic and cement installations and pieces that have endured outside in the elements for decades.
Contrary to that form of enduring sculpture, artist Ruth Ju-Shih Li from Sydney, Australia creates very organic and personal sculptures that are ephemeral in nature. They are formed from clay and she does not fire or glaze them and this makes her work a limited “one time only” pieces. She creates very intricate and detailed fantastical flower-based pieces made of clay for every show on the spot and then leaves them to disintegrate back to nature. Her work is organic, imaginative and finite in its duration. Ruth says that she uses influences and inspirations from all around her environment in Sydney, and her studio in China, whether in nature or her urban existence. She is one of two returning artists from the 2018 Artist in Residence and I was completely enamored with the pieces she made 6 years ago.
Another New Zealand/Australian artist making her debut appearance at Nern Chalet is Camilla Slater, whose medium is acrylic and oil on canvas paintings. Her focal subjects are finely detailed plants, fruits, trees and other forms of vegetation. Camilla is a very cool and laid-back person who also owns a regenerative and organic farm in NZ, a couple of hours south of Auckland. Here is where our interview focus shifted from art on canvas to the art of regenerative and sustainable maintenance of the land and environment. Their harvest is organic and used for consumption. Their livestock is sold to other farms who also want to regenerate the land with grazing animals like cows, sheep and goats. All of these endeavors are what inspires Camille to paint the subjects that she paints; her land, crops and animals placing none above the other in any hierarchy; particularly humans. It is symbiotic in nature and substance.
Mahmet Tuzum Kizilcan comes to Hua Hin from Turkey where he has been a highly renowned and award-winning ceramics artist and art professor for five decades. His work is displayed all over Turkey, Europe and the Middle East. His work is beautiful, intricate, soft and rife with pastel colors. For this show he has chosen seeds to be his theme because they are the birth of everything and he focuses on the shapes for contrast and shadow.
Another returning artist from Australia is Michael Bell. Michael is one of the two painters to return from the 2018 show. His work is oil on canvas and he paints whatever he sees and feels as any given moment. Hua Hin and the area around Nern Chalet has been a huge influence on what he has painted this week. His work is vivid, bold and full of slices of life. He showed me about 5 paintings that he is working on and they contain soi dogs, monkeys, beach life, palm trees and temples.
“The Beauty of Hua Hin” art exhibit ends on Saturday with the artists displaying their finished pieces. Visitors are encouraged to stop by every day for the rest of this week, 10a to 5p and there will be a final open house and exhibition on Saturday 13 July, 10a to 7p.
Author: Sandy Beach
Content Creator, Entertainment & Food Correspondent
