Da Fen

On our Chinese New Year trip we spent a few days in Shenzhen with our friends Tim, Wendy, and Rosalee Allen and Avis Larson. We tagged along with them as they went around and explored an area that they had lived in before. On our trip Tim and Wendy had the plan to visit a city called Da Fen which is like a suburb of Shenzhen. This place produces 95% of the world reproduced art. I mean Mona Lisa, Van Goghs and anything that you could possibly buy in Bed Bath and Beyond or Kohls. Now you might have heard about this place because it has been on the news lately with the closing of so many stores the painters are slowly going out of business.

Anyway that was the sad note to this...but the place was any artists dream. Painters just line up and paint all day long...now mind you not all the reproductions were great but it was still art.
In the picture about two gentlemen are wheeling probably over hundred painted canvases on their bike to the store where they will be sold. It was pretty cool.


Here is just one building...store where they sold artwork...most of these places had a store with tons of artwork just stacked up and then some hanging outside. Also many of the people that worked in the stores also painted. When you walked in the store there was usually a little area with paint everywhere and two or three artworks being worked on at once. They usually had a folding chair and that was it. Pretty amazing.

Here's a close up of some of the artwork....I just found it so amazing...In mean I could have just bought replications of so many artworks so my students good understand the greats. Doug was so great through all of this we just kept looking at art and talking about it and discussing things. We just had a blast...and for lunch after buying tons of stuff we got to have KFC.

This is me walking around with some art we bought and going into every shop I could even though they started to look the same. It was great to buy presents and hang out...even though it was freezing!

Here's a picture of an artist's studio area...pretty coll huh? Mixing paint, working on two or three artworks and in this store like so many others there was no heat!!!! Da Fen was pretty cool.