VietNamNet Bridge - As a physician,  Mr. Nam is entranced by sparkling colorful sea snails. He bought hundreds of kilos of snail shells to assemble into unique artworks.

At his home in a small alley on Phan Chu Trinh Road of Hoi An City, Quang Nam Province, Mr. Lu Ngoc Nam was gluing tiny seashells on a framed piece of white canvas. In this way, he has created more than 70 paintings about the ancient town of Hoi An, the One Pillar Pagoda, fishermen going out to sea...

Nam began making seashell-made paintings accidentally. In 2004, after seeing kids playing go (encircling game), he realized the value of colorful snail shells and flashed the idea of using them to make pictures.

He collected seashells on the beach and hired cleaning workers to collect seashells for him. He soaked seashells in water then cleaned and dried them to make paintings.

The first picture was assembled from thousands of shells, 1m long, 80cm wide, depicting a relic in Hoi An – the Bridge Temple. Nam’s wife was also fascinated by the painting. She began collecting snail shells for her husband. Nam’s eldest daughter in HCM City was surprised by her father’s talent. She designed a website introducing Nam’s works.

Nam said, to have enough colors to make a painting featuring the fight between a tiger and a bird, he used up to 40 kg of seashells. To make some special colors, the artisan used chemicals.

The artist said to make true colors, he had to sit several meters from the painting otherwise he would see only seashells. "Seeing any piece in the picture is not good, I had to remove snail shells immediately because if the glue is dry, I will have to break the shells and the picture will be distorted," he said.

Learning from experience, Nam made graphic firstly then glue seashells. From gluing shells on paper, he now makes seashell-made paintings on cloth and concrete.

Each painting took a week to complete and the average price is around VND400,000 ($20). Some large-sized paintings are priced $2,000. After two exhibitions in Vung Tau City, Nam’s artworks have been sold to the US, Switzerland, Japan and other countries.

In May 2006, the Vietnam Record Book Center recognized Nam as the first maker of seashell-made paintings.

T. Van