From a bucolic rural grocery shop to fictional battlefields and robot warrior bases, artisans are meticulously handcrafting miniature worlds that fuse reality and fantasy.
When he is not designing interiors, 51-year-old Hank Cheng (鄭鴻展) can usually be found in his studio conjuring tiny but intricately detailed scenes.
“I like to try to make anything, whether it’s clean, old or dirty, to let my imagination run wild,” he said.
Photo: Chang Chung-yi, Taipei Times
His creations range from a replica of a 40-year-old grocery store in central Taiwan that caught his eye, to an imaginary “secret maintenance base” for a legion of Minions made from a discarded Minion-shaped cookie box he recycled.
“When people ask me is there anything I can’t make, I joke: ‘Only air and sunshine,’” Cheng said.
In his youth, Cheng studied illustrations in Japan, where miniatures and dioramas have long been popular.
He only started making miniatures himself five years ago after spotting a photograph of a Japanese artist’s work that was so realistic he thought it was real at first sight.
Recycling is a recurring theme for Cheng, who was raised to cherish finite resources in a thrifty family.
One of his most detailed pieces is a painstakingly accurate model of an old Japanese restaurant selling eel rice dishes — complete with smoke-stained kitchen and greased floor — which won awards at a Japanese competition.
Another favorite design is a run-down bar with rowdy patrons, graffitied walls and a back alley littered with garbage so realistic that Cheng hopes viewers can “smell the odor” just by looking at it.
“I hope each of my creations tells a story to get people interested, and it does not just look pretty or look realistic,” said Cheng, who has also published a book on making miniatures and held solo exhibitions.
“I hope it shows some ‘warmth’ and the traces of real things,” he said.
Hikari Yang, 39, started making miniatures at a time in her life when she was feeling low.
She recalled that by the time she completed her first work — a Japanese-styled town of her dreams — she felt “healed” by the process and had forgotten about her troubles.
She set up the FM Dioramas studio in Taoyuan in late 2016 with several partners, maintaining a day job until she was recently able to switch to making models full time.
The group’s portfolio is filled with detailed models featuring real-life or sci-fi scenes that on average take eight to nine months to complete.
Her studio has cultivated a following by giving miniature-making classes across Taiwan and it also creates miniature items that are shipped to fellow modelers around the world.
“People come to our classes to learn to make what we call ‘healing little items’ like a tree in a park. Making the miniature from scratch provides a release of the stress in their busy lives,” Yang said.
Her partner, Chen Shih-jen, 45, said that building dioramas helps take the edge off his full-time computer programming job.
Commissions are varied. One custom order Chen received from a government agency was to recreate a miniature traditional Sediq home.
Another came from a couple who wanted a model of the restaurant they had their first date in.
A more elaborate diorama he built for his own collection contains an environmental message. The futuristic gas station — servicing flying cars in a world where rising oceans have swallowed the land — won a prize in Hungary.
“The work depicts how people would live when the land disappears,” he said. “Climate change and global warming are happening right now and I hope people will cherish the present. What we see as normal resources are limited and could be gone one day.”
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
‘SPEY’ REACTION: Beijing said its Eastern Theater Command ‘organized troops to monitor and guard the entire process’ of a Taiwan Strait transit China sent 74 warplanes toward Taiwan between late Thursday and early yesterday, 61 of which crossed the median line in the Taiwan Strait. It was not clear why so many planes were scrambled, said the Ministry of National Defense, which tabulated the flights. The aircraft were sent in two separate tranches, the ministry said. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday “confirmed and welcomed” a transit by the British Royal Navy’s HMS Spey, a River-class offshore patrol vessel, through the Taiwan Strait a day earlier. The ship’s transit “once again [reaffirmed the Strait’s] status as international waters,” the foreign ministry said. “Such transits by
RSS