A Visual Dialogue Across HumanityCentury Mountain and the Embracing Nature – Field and Forest Culture & Arts Festival

Introduction: Festival as Crossroads of Art, Nature, and Humanity

In August, the Catskill Mountains of New York hosted the First Anniversary of the “Embracing Nature – Field and Forest Culture & Arts Festival.” Nestled in Hanzhuang New York (33 Tao Road, Catskill), the event brought together an extraordinary fusion of art exhibitions, poetry readings, recitals, tea ceremonies, martial arts, music healing, and sky lantern rituals. Yet among its many offerings, the centerpiece was the monumental project Century Mountain — a collaborative body of work between Chinese dissident poet Huang Xiang and American painter William Rock.

The festival was not a simple art fair. It was conceived as a living dialogue: between East and West, past and present, history and nature, suffering and transcendence. The program was polyphonic, with contributions not only from Huang Xiang and William Rock but also from artists such as Liao Dayuan, Cheng Bai, Li Jianzhang, 成败, Monica Sarmiento-Archer Castillo, and Victoria Zhang.

The festival’s setting — in nature, among forests, tea rituals, and sky lanterns — was not incidental. It fundamentally reframed the works, shifting art from gallery walls into environmental ritual space. Here, art did not exist in isolation but as ceremony and encounter.

This essay reviews the entire scope of the exhibition and festival, offering in-depth analysis of each artist’s contribution. It seeks to uncover the cultural, philosophical, and social significance of the works, situating them in dialogue with one another as part of a global, intercultural conversation about humanity, history, and our shared future.

Section 1: Huang Xiang and William Rock – Century Mountain as a Visual Dialogue

At the heart of the festival was Century Mountain, a collaboration born of exile and empathy.

Huang Xiang: Poetry as Flame

Huang Xiang is a legendary Chinese poet, imprisoned for more than a decade for his dissident writings. His calligraphy erupts across the canvas in wild, fiery strokes — not controlled literati elegance but ecstatic, storm-like gestures. His words are charged with existential urgency, political defiance, and cosmic yearning.

William Rock: Portraiture as Presence

By contrast, William Rock’s portraits are meditative and contemplative. Working in acrylic and Chinese ink, he renders historical figures not as static likenesses but as spiritual presences — solemn, wounded, luminous.

Together, their work constitutes a “visual dialogue across humanity.” Rock paints the faces of world-historical figures — saints, martyrs, poets, reformers — while Huang Xiang overlays them with his blazing calligraphy: poems, quotations, prayers. The result is a fusion of image and word, East and West, painting and poetry.

Century Mountain: The Concept

The project envisions a symbolic “mountain” constructed from the moral and spiritual giants of human history. Unlike Mount Rushmore, which enshrines political leaders in stone, Century Mountain consecrates poets, visionaries, dissidents, and martyrs. Its message: true civilization is built not by empires but by those who carried light through darkness.

Section 2: Individual Portraits in Century Mountain

Each portrait in Century Mountain is more than an artwork; it is an ethical mirror.

Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce

Rock depicts the Native American leader with solemn dignity. Huang Xiang’s calligraphy proclaims: “Any Native American’s disappearance or death is a loss to all humanity.” This portrait mourns colonial violence and re-centers indigenous wisdom as global heritage.

Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln’s gaze is sorrowful yet determined. Huang Xiang writes: “You dwell in immortality. You die in non-death.” Lincoln here is both martyr and prophet, embodying the unfinished struggle for freedom and justice.

Li Bai

The Tang dynasty poet is rendered as a cosmic reveler. Huang Xiang overlays verses about wine, moonlight, and the brevity of life. Li Bai becomes a symbol of poetic ecstasy — reminding us to drink, sing, and embrace impermanence.

Vincent van Gogh

Rock paints Van Gogh’s tormented face, while Huang Xiang writes: “Lines twitch like exposed nerves.” The portrait blazes with fiery yellows and reds, reclaiming Van Gogh not as “madman” but as martyr of beauty.

Mother Teresa

Here, Rock portrays Teresa in humility, while Huang Xiang distills her essence in a single line: “A mother’s tear is enough to tilt the world.” Compassion, not conquest, is the axis of the earth.

Anne Frank

Rock renders Anne’s innocence against the silence of history. Huang Xiang’s words rise: “Freedom will not stop breathing. Truth will not close its mouth.” Her portrait insists that memory resists erasure.

Lao Tzu and Confucius

Placed as twin pillars: Lao Tzu’s Taoist paradoxes and Confucius’s ethical teachings. Their portraits represent cosmic balance — being/non-being, wisdom/compassion, water/mountain.

Buddha

The Buddha’s form dissolves into mist. Huang Xiang writes: “The cosmos is a wordless scroll; humankind has guessed only a few words.” A meditation on silence, solitude, and the limits of knowledge.

Jesus Christ

Rock’s Jesus is mournful yet luminous. Huang Xiang blends scripture with poetry: “The deadly enemy of evil and injustice… Therefore, he shall rise again.” Jesus becomes not sectarian savior but universal martyr for truth.

Section 3: Century Mountain in Nature

The exhibition’s power was magnified by its context: the forest festival.

Visitors encountered portraits while sipping tea, sketching among trees, listening to sound bowls, and releasing lanterns. Art here became ritual. The forest was transformed into a temple, the artworks into icons, the audience into participants in a collective pilgrimage.

By situating Century Mountain within a natural setting, the curators reframed art as environmental ceremony — a return to the origins of art as ritual offering.

Section 4: Huang Xiang’s 《大石磐》 Boulder Chime

Beyond Century Mountain, Huang Xiang presented his monumental work 《大石磐》 (Boulder Chime).

This project originated when he picked up a stone in 2016 and experienced it as a cosmic manuscript. His text, written in sprawling calligraphy, imagines stones as scriptures: silent witnesses of time, carrying memory of deserts, stars, and extinction.

Performed aloud in a fiery recitation, Huang’s voice made the stone “speak.” The scrolls of calligraphy quaked with energy. The effect was prophetic — as if nature itself had been given language.

In the festival context, Boulder Chime expanded the dialogue: if Century Mountain honors human heroes, Boulder Chime reminds us of the pre-human and more-than-human voices of stone, silence, and time.

Section 5: Liao Dayuan – The Way of Nature

Liao Dayuan’s oil landscapes, also presented at the festival, honored the living presence of trees, mountains, and waterfalls.

Painted with spontaneous brushwork, his canvases were less about scenic beauty than about nature as teacher. A tree trunk became a philosopher, a waterfall a meditation on impermanence. His style evoked both Western impressionism and Chinese shanshui painting, but always with a Taoist sensibility: painting as collaboration with nature’s flow.

In dialogue with Huang and Rock, Liao’s work reminded audiences that before philosophy, there is landscape.

Section 6: Cheng Bai and Li Jianzhang

Cheng Bai – Rural Landscape Series (PPT Presentation)

Cheng Bai’s pastoral paintings — boats at sunset, eagles in storm, roses in bloom — were presented through PowerPoint slides, shifting their meaning.

Projected images became philosophical icons, rather than tactile canvases. His work functioned as memory-images of countryside continuity, a counterbalance to the violence and satire elsewhere in the festival. His art whispered of rootedness, harmony, and renewal.

Li Jianzhang – Satire, Trauma, Allegory (PPT Presentation)

By contrast, Li Jianzhang’s paintings, also presented via PPT, assaulted the audience with satirical and grotesque allegories.

· Last Supper parody: disciples replaced with identically bandaged women with apples.

· Raft of the Medusa homage: theatricalized female bodies reenact tragedy as spectacle.

· Beijing hair-roller figures: absurd juxtapositions of vanity and ideology.

· Bandaged smoker: portrait of liberation entwined with injury.

Li’s art interrogates body politics, Western art history, and Chinese modern absurdity. Seen in projection, his paintings became visual essays, forcing audiences into critical reflection.

Together, Cheng Bai and Li Jianzhang represented the festival’s intellectual spectrum: pastoral continuity and satirical rupture.

Section 7: Monica Sarmiento-Archer Castillo – Pre-Columbian Resonances

Monica Sarmiento-Archer Castillo, director of bi/Coa and a scholar-artist with collections at the Met and MoMA, presented her Pre-Columbian Prints on Paper.

Her works feature abstract, wave-like forms embossed on textured surfaces, recalling ocean currents, spirals, and ancestral glyphs.

Formal Qualities

· Embossed surfaces evoke archaeological reliefs, tactile memory of ancient artifacts.

· Blue and indigo forms suggest water, continuity, migration — an oceanic imagination.

· Minimalist abstraction creates contemplative silence, contrasting the noise of modernity.

Philosophical Significance

Sarmiento-Archer’s art bridges ancestral memory and contemporary abstraction. By invoking Pre-Columbian motifs, she insists that the Americas are not post-European inventions but civilizations with deep indigenous time.

In the festival’s intercultural frame, her prints connected with Huang Xiang’s calligraphy and Liao Dayuan’s landscapes — all reclaiming forgotten languages of earth and ancestry.

Section 8: Victoria Zhang – A Warning from the Solar Eclipse

The festival concluded with Victoria Zhang’s apocalyptic vision, 日全食的警示 (A Warning from the Solar Eclipse).

In her painting, a solar eclipse dominates New York Harbor. Lightning strikes the Statue of Liberty’s torch. Cargo ships crash. Onlookers panic. The scene fuses cosmic symbolism with political critique.

Her accompanying poem, written in Chinese and English, interprets the eclipse as divine warning. It invokes 9/11, the paralysis of the United Nations, and the fragility of modern civilization. The eclipse becomes God’s eye closing, a moment when humanity must choose between light and darkness.

Philosophical Weight

Zhang’s work is both theological and ecological. The eclipse reminds us of mortality, arrogance, and cosmic accountability. Her vision connects biblical prophecy, Daoist cosmology, and modern geopolitical anxiety.

Ending with Zhang was deliberate: her work lifts the festival into the register of the sublime. If Cheng Bai restores pastoral peace, if Li Jianzhang unsettles with satire, if Sarmiento-Archer calls us to ancestral memory, then Zhang confronts us with the apocalypse.

Her message is unambiguous: art must not only console or critique; it must also warn.

Conclusion: A Festival as Human and Cosmic Dialogue

The Embracing Nature – Field and Forest Culture & Arts Festival was more than a cultural gathering. It was an experiment in ritualized, intercultural art practice.

· Huang Xiang and William Rock gave us Century Mountain: portraits as ethical icons.

· Huang’s Boulder Chime made stone speak.

· Liao Dayuan honored trees and waterfalls as teachers.

· Cheng Bai and Li Jianzhang, via PPT, offered pastoral memory and biting satire.

· 成败 gave us lyrical countryside visions.

· Monica Sarmiento-Archer Castillo summoned Pre-Columbian ancestral memory.

· Victoria Zhang ended with cosmic warning.

Together, these voices formed a chorus across humanity, nature, ancestry, and cosmos.

The festival’s achievement was not merely aesthetic. It was ethical and spiritual. It invited audiences to reimagine art as ritual, witness, prophecy, and communion.

In a fractured world, such festivals remind us:

· That art is not luxury, but necessity.

· That memory and imagination are tools of survival.

· That beauty and warning, song and silence, portrait and landscape, all belong to the same mountain of humanity.

The eclipse has passed, but its warning remains.