Making Snail Conscious

For the paintings of Mr Ngoc Nam Lu, a citizen of Hoi An town, it is both right to call “draw” or “make” paintings. Throughout the talented hands and creative mind, Mr Nam made Ruoc snails – a kind snail which is beautiful, circle-shape, small as pomegranate seed – become a special material used for landscape, still-life paintings and portraits with different sizes. A waste product was become a new art with soul and beauty by an unprofessional artist.

Ngoc Nam Lu has been making paintings by snail shells just for a few years since he discovered the natural beauty of this hard shell molluse. He wondered himself “ If people can make paintings by tearing and pasting papers, egg shells, dead leaves, sand, why cannot I make paintings by snail shells?” Because of this question, at the old age, he tried to make paintings with the material discovered by chance.

Although Mr Nam has been making snail paintings for few years, just some people know this kind of art because Mr Nam has not organised an approriate painting exhibition. When being asked why he smlied and answered: “When there are about 100 paintings, I will have a exhibition”. However, there are still some people knowing his paintings come to buy paintings, so in his house there are not so many paintings left.

According to Mr Ngoc Nam Lu, the difficulty of making snail paintings is not about frame, but it is the labour to collect and treat material. Ruoc snails do not exist all the year in Hoi An. There are Ruoc snails only from January to February, so at this time the painter tried to save them to use for the whole year. Snail shells are taken to river, sieved and washed many times until there is no fishy smell. Then they are dried, sprayed chemicals and selected. Ruoc snails have few colors, and most of the colors are dark, yellow, gray, brown. Therefore, to have a perfect portrait or a landscape painting which is not so gloomy is a hard process. Some people advised Mr Nam to dye snail shells to have necessary colors, but he refused. Mr Nam explained: “ A dyed snail is not natural. Moreover, dye stuff will destroy its shell.”

Snail paintings are vivid, expressive and attractive due to the glitter colors of the snail shells. In Chua Cau painting, a symbol of the old town and its mossy alleys, spectators seem to be able to experience the salty taste from a mass of snail shells on the painting. The painting’ s values are not only art  but the labour as well. it took Mr Nam a month to finish an usual painting, and a few months for one with  1m ´ 1,5m size. The money he can get from selling paintings is not much, just the same amount to a building worker. “No problem, I am happy when I can make snail shells conscious” Mr Nam smlied and explained.

Besides making paintings according to customers’orders, Mr increased Ruoc snails to another position: making snail shell paintings on flower vases. There are vases which are higher than 1m used to introduce to tourists in Hoi An as a new kind of art, and the materials for this new art come from the seabed.

Thai Tran

 (Binh Duong newspaper Oct 22nd, 2004)