Losing all before finding dough
Pindy’s husband spent all her savings, making her a penniless single mom struggling to bring up two small children. She wanted a better life for her two-year-old toddler and less than a year old infant, and so she made the difficult choice to place them in the care of her own mother while she went to Taiwan for work. Pindy’s eyes well up with tears as she tells the story of parting from her children.
This time in Taiwan, Pindy was once again assigned work as a caregiver, but what she didn’t anticipate was how a spell nursing her patient in a hospital would open the door on a whole new life.
In the neighboring bed an elderly woman was being attended to by her son, Young Chingjen, a master in the art of dough sculpture. Young, who understood the endless hours of hard work that go into invalid care and had long been deeply committed to the issues of migrant workers, invited Pindy to take on dough sculpting as a leisure activity to help her unwind.
At first Pindy just thought it was fun and didn’t consider her toy figures all that attractive. Through Young’s constant encouragement and her first attempts at crafting subjects from Indonesian culture, though, Pindy soon discovered a passion for the art form.
There are essentially five pigments used in dough sculpture: red, white, blue, yellow and black. In order to bring out the vivid colors of the traditional wedding attire worn in her native land, Pindy studied advanced color-mixing techniques with Young. For example, if she had a need for the color brown, she could make it by mixing yellow, red and black into the sculpting media. Colorful hues in a variety of shades and tones can all be achieved by adjusting the ratio of the basic colors used.
Pindy’s skillful hands have transformed subjects that combine memories of her local region with photos of Indonesia from all over, into dough sculptures. Her creations capture the distinctive essence of her native culture. The subject matter for Pindy’s creations is replenished from the deep wells of diverse cultural content that originates in the myriad islands of the Indonesian archipelago.
Pindy incorporates images from Indonesian culture into her works, sculpting exquisite one-of-a-kind creations.