The Odyssey explodes: Cai Guo-Qiang's gunpowder drawing ignites

Last night I had the honor to assist Cai at the ignition ceremony, putting down cardboard, handing him bricks and putting out small embers.

Each of us who had helped Cai felt some ownership of the success or failure and therefore some anxiousness and anticipation as the fuse was lit. After so much preparation the actual creation of the drawing was fast and loud. Then it was followed by an agonizingly slow reveal of the drawing from under layers of cardboard and glassine.

I was amazed by the delicacy in some areas and the strong, dark lines in others. The drawing has changed so much from his pencil sketch and not simply in scale. In the video above he mentions that perhaps the volunteers will be able to point out to their families and friends the areas that they worked on. Well, I can say with pride, here is the lotus flower that I worked on, and didn't Cai do a fantastic job of bringing out its delicacy?

A lotus flower from Odyssey

Tuesday at the warehouse

Cai Guo-Qiang explaining his Odyssey sketch

Tuesday saw a live audience join the cameras in observing the Odyssey project. Luckily the audience do not pay to attend since the first two hours they were watching four museum art handlers lay out the panels. Those guys made the panels look so easy to manoeuvre, but I know better! Once that was complete, however, Cai Guo-Qiang spoke to the audience and the volunteers to explain the project and his vision.

The 42 panels of Odyssey will line the walls of the Arts of Asia gallery at the MFAH, and will be a backdrop for the other works of art. For this reason Odyssey is part landscape - a traditional Chinese landscape of mountain and waterfall - and part Chinese garden with peonies and lotus flowers. Cai quoted a Chinese saying "Tall mountains and flowing water welcome a dear friend" and mentioned that he was giving flat Houston its own mountain.

Right now his drawing, which we have converted into a stencil, looks very related to the long tradition of chinese landscape painting. However, I cannot even begin to imagine what it will look like by late Wednesday. Look for yourselves - from 9 a.m. on Wednesday the action will be live online at culture map.
After Cai spoke we lifted the stencil, in three large sections, and placed it onto the panels. That sounds really easy, but it's not! It took a long time to get each section straight as some of the more delicate and intricate areas threatened to rip and collapse in transit.

Working on a glassine and card mask for Odyssey

Our final task of the morning was cutting masks from glassine paper and card to place over areas of the stencil. I believe these are used to direct the smoke and reduce the oxygen to create different marks with the igniting gunpowder.
Who know what I will be doing tomorrow morning? Stripping fuses or holding a bowl of gunpowder perhpas! Whatever we are doing will be fascinating since I am working with a great group of people for a man who exudes calm and serenity.

Counting down to Cai's Odyssey

Odyssey warehouse location

This morning I joined around 30 others to work on Cai Guo-Qiang's Odyssey. They let us loose with X-acto knives, cutting around the brush marks that Cai made, to create a cardboard stencil. None of us volunteers knew each other before we started, but after you've worked on your knees, side by side trying not to stab each other with a knife, you bond pretty quickly.

Cai works from a long drawing, a little like a scroll painting, using a long stick with a Sharpie for drawing and a wide brush for painting. Although there must be a lot of planning involved, he does make adjustments and changes as he works. Although he has a lot of assistants, they are mainly carrying out and translating his direct instructions, or overseeing standard work such as taping the stencil so that it can be moved around. I have often wondered how much an artist does when they have assistants or volunteers, and I can say that I am not adding one iota of creative input to this project. All the creative decisions are coming from Cai.

Today we learnt that the volunteers will NOT be handling the huge panels. What a relief. I would much rather point out the areas where I cut the stencil than the dent in the panels where I dropped one.

The Houston site Culture Map has a series of articles on the Odyssey work and they will have a live webcast of the work on Wednesday leading up to the ignition ceremony in the evening. There will also be an ignition party at St. Arnold's Brewery.

The above photograph is the only one I will be able to post. Although there are cameras around us at all times (which is a little off-putting at first when you're crawling around on hands and knees with your behind in the air), the volunteers are not allowed to take photographs. If I get chance I will make some quick drawings of us working.