GRACE JU MILLER

Grace Ju Miller is a Professor of Biology at Indiana Wesleyan University. Garth (husband), Grace and children , Zea (19) and Noah (17) spent 2 years in Morocco ( 2006-2008), where they taught at an orphanage before moving to Indiana Fall of 2009. Grace was the Seed Bank Director at ECHO (Agricultural Missions Organization, Ft. Myers, FL) for 4 years. She taught at Gordon College (1991-2001) and directs a course called Sustainable Tropical Agriculture which travels to ECHO and Haiti, Honduras or Guatemala. Grace has a BA in Art and Botany from Duke University, MS in Agronomy from UC Davis and PhD from Purdue University. Garth has a BSME from Purdue and has an M.Div from Gordon –Conwell Theological Seminary.

Grace studied Chinese painting with her father, I-Hsiung Ju, as well as with Yao Mung Kuo and Shao You Shien, two Taipei masters .She has had 3 one-person Art Exhibitions at Duke University, Beaufort Mariner’s Museum and the Art Farm Gallery in Lexington,VA. She attended a Chinese painting masters’ workshop in Taiwan in 2007.

CAROLE YEE

Carole Yee of Rockville, Maryland is a retired research biologist at the National Institutes of Health. Her main areas of interest were cancer cell biology and Dermatology. During her long career she has coauthored over 60 research articles and textbook chapters in the fields of science and medicine. She has been painting in the East Asian Brush style for close to 30 years. Currently she serves as the national treasurer of the Sumi-e Society of America. a national organization dedicated to the education and understanding of East Asian Brush painting. She is also a member of the Harmonious Group, a Rockville, Maryland based Chinese brush painting group of artists. She was a student of Prof I Hsiung Ju and has accompanied him on many trips to China. She has studied with many local master brush painters, as well as, in China. She has exhibited nationally and in Canada and has won numerous awards for her paintings. Her style has been very traditional but more recently has been experimenting in a more contemporary approach.

BRAD STEINBERG

Bradley Steinberg has been a litigation lawyer for the past 57 years. He has also enjoyed painting watercolors and writing poetry for many years in addition to. tennis playing and bicycling throughout the world.

During a visit to an art fair in Indiana he developed a relationship with Mike Kopald that led to an invitation to accompany Mr. Ju and his former student painters on an art tour of mainland China. This led to three further art trips to mainland China and Taiwan. These total experiences have inspired Brad in much of his artwork and his poetry creation along with his exposure to and deep appreciation of “the way” ie the Tao Te Ching. All of this has contributed significantly to his work, and enjoyment of life.

Brad’s encounters with Mr. Ju and his family, particularly conversations with Mr. Ju, have meant and will continue to be memorable and precious to him.

JAMALIAH MORAIS 

Jamaliah Morais, a Resident Artist in the Torpedo Factory Art Center in Alexandria, Virginia, has been an Oriental brush painter for more than thirty-five years. She first studied the ancient Chinese and Japanese art form under the tutelage of Professor Chen Bing Sun at the Chinese Artists’ Guild in Manila, Philippines where she lived for twelve years. In the U.S. since 1986, she has studied under other teachers including especially Professor I-Hsiung Ju, who knew Prof. Chen when he lived in Manila. Jamaliah had the pleasure of travelling to China twice on artists’ tours led by Professor Ju.

She made her debut with a solo exhibition in Manila in 1985. In the Washington, D.C. area, she has held solo exhibitions at the Audubon Naturalist Society, the University Club, the Embassy of Malaysia, the Green Springs National Park and the US Too Studio. She has also participated in several group shows in the United States and Canada, including exhibitions at the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Ronald Reagan National Airport, James Madison University and the Ratner Museum.

Jamaliah is a former President of the Sumi-e Society of America and is Vice President of the Friends of the Torpedo Factory Art Center. She teaches brush painting in the art enrichment programs in McLean and Alexandria schools and to private students. She has also demonstrated in programs and workshops at the Smithsonian Institution and the Wolf Trap Foundation.

CHARLENE FUHRMAN SCHULZ

What started for Charlene as an interest in watercolor and ink painting became an all consuming passion – a life-time vocation. She began her studies with Professor I-Hsiung Ju (1923-2012) in 1989, traveling with him to China and Taiwan where they visited scenic gardens and experienced the fantastic Chinese landscapes. Both China and Taiwan can be described as a land of mist, with thin mountainous spires rising through the clouds, when the mist lifts, sheer drops of up to 3000 feet or greater appear. Pines cling to the cliff sides, along with a few monasteries. This is the China seen in many traditional Chinese paintings, and this is the China that inspires Charlene’s paintings.

Her subject matter is nature, whether it is a traditional landscape or a bird and flower painting. She uses traditional materials, ink and brush on rice paper, to capture movement and life – making the brush dance and the ink sing as the brush meets the rice paper. Charlene has also explored the more abstract techniques of Oriental painting such as “Splashing Ink” or “PoMo”. Her work ranges from the very traditional to abstract and a blending of the two.

She shares her passion of painting when she teaches at the Art League (Torpedo Factory, Alexandria, VA). She has demonstrated Chinese brush painting for many groups including the National Sumi-e meeting in May 2012 to the International Children’s Festival, Wolf Trap Park in 1996. She is currently a member of the League of Reston Arts (treasurer) and the Sumi-e Society of America. She has a full-time professional career as a Land Use Planner working for Fairfax County’s Department of Housing and Community Redevelopment Authority. She received her Master’s Degree in Urban Administration from Washington University, St. Louis, Mo.

VIRGINIA LLOYD-DAVIES

A Chinese brush artist since 1976, Virginia Lloyd-Davies has paintings in collections in the U.S., China, Britain, Europe, Japan, Mexico and Kenya. Her teacher for 26 years until his death was Master Painter I-Hsiung Ju, with whom she traveled regularly to China & Taiwan.

Over the past 20 years she has given frequent painting performances and demonstrations on PBS-TV, CBS-TV, NBC-TV and Fox-TV in the U.S. and has appeared in news broadcasts in Britain and China. Her YouTube painting channel (www.youtube.com/virginiald) has garnered over two million views and increases by 1,500 views every 24 hours. She has just returned from London, where she gave several painting demonstrations and workshops.

She was commissioned by Hillary Clinton to create an ornament for the White House Christmas tree in 1993 and by Ambassador Prudence Bushnell to create paintings for the US Embassies in Kenya and Guatemala.

Her popular DVDs, “Joyful Brush”, “How to Paint Peonies” and “Autumn Waterfall” are available through her website, www.joyfulbrush.com and also as immediate downloads.

Born a British subject, Virginia Lloyd-Davies now has American citizenship and lives with her husband in the Shenandoah Valley near Washington DC.

Ms. Lloyd-Davies’ art name “Wei Jen” was given to her by I-Hsiung Ju. It is the Chinese approximation in sound of “Virginia” and translates as “Nothing But Love”.

MICHAEL KOPALD

Michael Kopald, born in 1951, is a 1973 graduate of Washington and Lee University where he studied Western Art with Professor I-Hsiung Ju. During his time at Washington and Lee, there were no courses offered in Asian Art; however, a year after leaving college, in 1974, Professor Ju led twelve students to study Chinese art in Taiwan. He invited Michael to join the group, and in the basement of the National History Museum in Taipei, Michael began his practice of Chinese Brush Painting. After returning home and completing graduate work in teaching, he moved back to Lexington and apprenticed with Professor Ju at the newly established Art Farm, the home of Professor Ju and his family.

Three years later Michael began a 30 year career exhibiting his paintings in galleries and outdoor art festivals around the United States. Over the years he received numerous awards, and his work resides in private and public collections around the country.

Michael was fortunate to make several trips with Professor Ju to Taiwan and Mainland China. On several of these trips, he received more instruction on the techniques of painting, but Professor Ju remains his primary and most influential teacher.

“I paint in the style of the Southern school of Chinese painting, also known as ‘painting without bones’.
This refers to the spontaneous nature of the brushwork. My work represents four traditional subjects of Chinese painting: plum blossom, orchid, bamboo, and chrysanthemum, known simply in China as, Mei-Lan-Chu-Tzu. My paintings are executed spontaneously, capturing the moment, much like dance or music. The Chinese consider painting a performing art, and the ink marks on the rice paper, traces of the performance.” – Michael Kopald

Michael resides in Lexington, Virginia with his wife Terry…still painting.