My Life In Savannah (Part 3)

3. Street Passion 

Life as a “street artist” wasn’t easy. There were good and bad days, occasionally I could go home with nothing. The working condition was rough. Beside the uncomfortableness like heat or coldness, humidity or mosquitoes, the most troubling condition was weather. Georgia’s weather was so “capricious” that sometime it would rain instantly in the middle of my portrait process. At this moment I usually moved into stores, whose employees were kind enough to let me staying there for a little while, until I finished my works.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

But all these hard time could not beat good time. How can I forget all those beautiful faces I drew, the joyful eyes that looked back into mine, or the broad smiles that messed up my drawing process but lightened up my heart? Once after I finished drawing a lady and her newborn baby, the lady gave me double amount of money and asked no change back.

My Life In Savannah (Part 2)

2. River Street 

The first (illegal) job I got in America was working in restaurant: washing dishes on Sunday, from 11am - 6pm, paid total $48. It was on the fourth day after I came to this country, when I had not yet settled down myself. Since then, my daily life was mostly from classrooms to restaurants, and back to my cheap apartment at late night. I was impressed by the beauty of the city, but could only enjoy it during some brief moments like when biking to school, or taking bus to restaurants. Most of time, my focus was on one thing alone: survive.

Hanging out with "rich friends".
Jacksonville, FL. 1996.

Working in restaurants didn’t help me to “survive”. SCAD is an expensive private art school. The first quarter’s tuition pretty much took most of (borrowed) money I brought with me from China. So I had to work very hard every day. However, despite of situation, mentally I was quite relaxing. I hanged out with rich students (most students in this school are from rich families), went to beach couple of times, occasionally went to parties, had lots of fun. One day in library, a guy from China told me he decided to quit school, “advised” to me that I should do the same: “I can’t believe you go out with those Taiwanese or Japanese… their one meal would cost your whole day hard work in restaurant!”