I am in Milan. It is the night before the Salone design week, the streets still seem quiet. It feels spring here - young green leaves, the warm air, the sidewalk tables and sockless sneakers. I am not able to sleep. My body clock is telling me something I do not quite understand. It is like this every time I travel and I do not ever learn. It is great to see familiar faces in a familiar place. The twin bed feels awfully comfortable tonight.
Day Eighty-Eight
I am interested in knowing why they make what they make, though personally I don't like talking about my own work. I think works are not to be described in words. - yet I want others to talk about them so I could feel closer to their work. I am now thinking about the time I moved to the US when I was 18 not knowing much to say in English. I had so many friends who equally did not know how to express in spoken words but somehow we became friends. Really good friends.
The Milan show is coming up - some of my pieces are going there. I decided to become very personal and let my experience out, filling it with handwritten notes and inked stamps - giving up choosing fonts and typographical structures that I know so little about. Fun. Fun is good.
Day Eighty-Five
I feel I did not accomplish much the past few days. Although if I look back the schedule I made up for this month I am not awfully off the track except a few things I still have to have done before next week. I am not falling out of it but I lack in sense of accomplishment. The problem for me now is that, because my motivations have been to satisfy my own curiosities and to see if I can actually make things I have never made before, it becomes a technique and time challenge which once I have accomplished does not hold the same meanings any more. I finish making and then, now what? I need to train my idea muscles to set out a bigger goal. Fantasy and Nightmare project is now in the third phase. The first phase was where I was looking for my ability to see the positive side. The second phase came when I realized I was more interested in experiencing the strange and unfamiliar things than comfortable things. And then I came across another thought - I was talking to my friend about these and she said it's a nightmare because the fantasy came true. This is true. As soon as fantasy becomes a reality there is nothing left for me to dream. So I dream the next. When people say it's the process and the journey, not what you get at the end that is important, I have not been able to fully agree because the statement seemed to devalue the achieved goal. I thought we say this because if we don't learn to enjoy the journey it will be terribly unpleasant along the way; in order for me to get what I want, I need to learn to apppreciate the process. But now I have a new thought: it is only in the journey where fantasy and dream live. Nightmare is when one achieves the goal where dream stops living. If I dream big, I get to live in the fantasy longer.
Day Eighty
I spent a few morning hours on paperwork before heading over to the studio. It took some time mainly looking for a document I misplaced - finding lost objects is the biggest waste of time for me and is something I ever ever ever don't want to do. I can't wait for the day objects grow legs and walk back to their home on their own. I got much better at spending less time looking for things by a traditional way of keeping things in a place they belong but more by not owning unnecessary stuff.
I went to the studio and loaded a bisque kiln and sent sculpture works to the heat journey that I could not participate. It used to be only glaze firing that made me want to take the moment to pray but after exploring a few pieces in bisque firing it's no longer something I would take any more lightly. I will not be reckless. I will not be attached. Good luck. See you in a few hours.
Day Seventy-Nine
I had spent many hours sitting down as my junk-drawer hour became hours and hours. I finally went outside of the door after 4pm and saw a human face over a cherry pie and a cup of coffee. A baby across the table swung her arm and her ceramic plate broke in half on the floor. My empty plastic plate was still on the table. The sky is high. Spring is here. I went to the studio, took pictures, strolled back home, and did some writing. That's it for today.
Day Seventy-Eight
I skipped one day and told myself no one would notice. Skipping the second day was easier than the first day. The third day was easier still. It is like when I left home and promised my mother that I would call every week and then I didn't, and another week passed by. I have procrastinated and accumulated enough work to make myself overwhelmed: the taxes, the insurance, the bank paperwork, the submissions I have to make, the writing I want to publish on my website, the blog contents I promised to my friend weeks ago, the logo design I was supposed to work on, consolidating the firing log, reviewing the expenses, and other sometimes uninspiring tasks which seem to take forever to complete even though, funny enough, in reality often they don't. I came up with an idea for a "junk drawer" hour where I would go through and declutter small random stuff I collect over a week. Whenever I come across unplanned things in middle of other projects I would put them in this imaginary drawer. The only way for this to work is that I make sure I go back to it once a week. Smaller tasks are harder to get done at times. Collecting acorns do not seem as rewarding nor glamorous as chasing a bison. Unless I find a golden acorn, maybe.
Day Seventy-Four
I woke up late and went to the studio to finish the tall piece. I wanted to do an inlay on the surface like a pencil hatching pattern with iron oxide. I guess the slip was too wet and pulled the one side away from the other half. I vacuumed the floor for just a few minutes and by the time I returned to the bench it developed a big crack running the two-thirds of the piece like a big scar. I should have known this would happen. I am not sure if I will remake this.