A Person with Snail Shell Paintings in Hoi An Town

The house which we were looking for is far away in a small alley in Phan Chu Trinh street – Hoi An town (Quang Nam). In this house there is a person who is rather famous – at least famous with Hoi An people for painting by Ruoc snail shells. With the hospitality of Hoi An people and the composed manner of the old, he told us about the opportunity led him to this kind of art. He was proud of but did not show off when taking about himself and his spiritual children. He is Ngoc Nam Lu who wrote a new name: Tranh Oc (snail painting) in Vietnamese contemparory plastic art.

Where people can send their love

In spite of being paintings, Mr Nam’s works are not made from any colourful materials or stroke of brush. In fact, all his paintings are made from small snail shells with different colours. Snail shells – a waste product- become conscious when being put in the paintings throughout Mr Nam’ s talented hands and his delicate feel. The paintings are also the place where he can send his love of a citizen to the country, the husband love to his wife, the father love to his children and friendship to his friends. Mr Nam said: “My first work is Chua Cau because Chua Cau is a typical feature of Hoi An town. Two third of about 50 paintings he made are about Hoi An people and Hoi An life. In Chua Cau painting, he shows the love of a person who lives nearly all his life in this place. His paintings seem simple, friendly as the characteristics of the snail shells on the painting, but they are aslo very strange and fanciful for spectators. Besides Chua Cau, Hoi An has many different special features, and Mr Nam shows all the specialities in his paintings. Each painting is about one past part of his life such as a Che xi ma (a kind of sweet soup) burden of the man in black clothes on the corner where Mr Nam ate when he was a child, or the mossy alleys he used to made a shortcut when he was a young man. These all familiar scences are shown carefully in Mr Nam’s paintings as his valuable souvenirs because he was always afraid that one day all the memories in his gold days would go away.

Painting is also a hard job

The ideas of making paintings by snail shells – initiate a new plastic art- originated when his wife and children bought snails to eat. Mr Nam said: “At the beginning I just have an intention of making paintings by snail shells for fun. However, after I finished Chua Cau painting, all people praised, encouraged and supported me to make other ones. To make Chua Cau painting (1´0,7m) he needed 60 milk cans of snail shells to have enough colors and 20 hard working days. The material for snail paintings was not easy to find, and he bought all snail shells from hygiene workers. Afterthat, he steeped these snail shells in the river for 1 day to wash all dirt inside, and dried them for 2 or 3 days. Then he put them in sacks and tied tightly about 10 days to remove all the fishy smell. Then he distinguished them by their colours and sizes, so the main materials for a painting are also wood, cloth and snail shells. Another difficulty is that there is less snail shells which are majored in black, yellow, white, red, pink… so it was hard and scrupulous to create a work as the artist’s ideas. This work is just really suitable for people who are creative, artistic, specially scrupulous and serious to what are being done.

Mr Nam’s happiness is that his paintings were registered copyright, and this new kind of art will give Hoi An and Hoi An people a new handicraft product. In addition, Hoi An Information and Culture center created opportunities so that Mr Nam could exhibit his paintings on Tet holiday last year. In the near future, the local government will have practical support to develop snail painting job to serve the local tourism.

                                                                                                         (Cong An newspaper, Da Nang city)