A childhood friend can tell you something simple and open your eyes. I recently reunited with one of my high school friends I have not seen since our graduation. Someone told me that she was living in NY a long while ago but I did not make an effort to get in touch with her. We met at our studio a few days before I left to Milan and found that she wanted to do ceramics. So she came back yesterday to spend a few hours playing with clay with me. She said something interesting - something I did not make a connection myself but now it makes a lot of sense - that in my works she sees the beach we grew up on. The laid back beach, with Mt Fuji in the background on a clear day.Shells. Little creatures. A pile of concrete tetrapots. Of course.
Day One Hundred One
I have not decided how I want to spend the next 100 days. I have been spending more time on computer writing, organizing files and editing photos than on a wheel. My work bench these days are covered with paper cutouts than clay. My hands are smoother than a few weeks ago. With piles of repetitive sketches I do not know what is to be done first. I will just work for the next few hours, just physically work and see what will come out of it.
Day One Hundred
This marks the hundredth day so I want to look back and try to summarize what I have found so far. I went back to the log on the first month's mark, on 33rd day. I still agree with what I have listed - the importance of keeping good daily routines - eating well, sleeping well, excercizing, keeping the surroundings clean - and I am going to list additional things as they pop in my head.
Projets involving others are more fun. Salon Night at Forest and this 365 day project have been unexpectedly rewarding.
The more I spend working on my own projects the more I need to get the works out there, which seems a healthy thing to do. Showing does something to take me to the next project. It's not editing. It's responding. Also keeping things to myself makes it easy to fall into a thought of "what's the meaning of...?"
I want to think I am selling dreams, not ceramics. Or exchanging dreams with others. You may call it happiness, motivations, or inspirations.
When I feel exhausted, useless, worthless and meaningless writing thank-you notes to friends uplifts my soul.
I am still making timid work. I think too much.
I miss working with paper. I love cutting and constructing with paper, and its texture. My next project is going to involve other materials like yarns and paper.
I still feel that I am not putting all I got into works I make.
Usually, do it, than not do it, works for me, when I'm debating either doing it or not.
Day Ninety-Nine
I woke up this morning realizing the one third of this year is almost over. What have I accomplished? I feel rushed. Time can past like a dream if I don't pay attention. It warps and takes me to a place where I want to belong forever until I get exhausted and only when I come back I can realize much time has passed. Sounds familiar. It's easy to think of things undone. So what will I want to do next? What is the process I want to spend the next four months with? Keep writing: because it helps me, to reflect and remember the day. It makes moments stick. I want a project that I can take to the showing phase, the phase after the pieces are made. Studio shows are fine, but I can only bring my fiends, who already support my works. There is nothing wrong with this but I have done it and want to try something else. I quickly drew up a calendar. I can only fit five projects.
Day Ninety-Eight
I want more time to read. I started the book by Edmund de Waal about porcelain, his obsession, on the plane back to New York. His stories take you to Venice, to China, to his childhood memories. I traveled with this book to Milan and back, and then on the subway to Manhattan while I make little progress. I have to make the time to read.
After finished trimming a few pieces I started planning the upcoming studio sales, and then in the afternoon went to a pencil shop in the Lower East Side I wanted to go for a long time. There were about five people, enough make the store full. Different kinds of pencils and erasers. Lots of Japanese pencils in fact. I tried a few samples and remembered how each of them feels so differently - some are harder to the touch, others feel sticker and oilier. Some pencils are packed in a case like cigars. It is a museum of pencils.
Day Ninety-Seven
I am now back to Brooklyn. I spent the afternoon at the studio throwing production pieces. It's been a while since I sat at the wheel. The studio looks like as I left it, except that the smaller hibiscus plant has about two dozens of flowering buds in two rows.
On the plane back I sketched out a list of projects I want to do for the next few months. Among the shows I saw in Milan I am most interested in seeing the environments and how objects interact with the viewers. We talk a lot about telling stories and making emotional connections with the audience these days. It is never just about a product. The same wine in a plastic cup I have in a tight and hard airplane seat while staring at a screen 10" from my nose cannot taste the same as the one I have in a beautiful stemware while a seeing a gypsy guitar music performance. I am just remembering after school camping dinner about a half of cooked white rice was left in the bottom of a cooking pot. Everyone said they were full so were unable to eat it. I made rice balls, with no pickled plums or seasoned seaweed but just triangular packed rice. I made several of them, perhaps 4 or 6. Then kids came and ate them. In a few minutes all rice balls were gone. It's the same rice. It's interesting how the look changes our perception, - also how we remember insignificant events that seemed to have no meaning when they happened.
Sidetracked - going back to the project list: I want to make happy things. Happy colors and happy forms in a happy environment. I spent a few weeks making creepy forms trying to define fantasy and nightmare but it is time for me to stop observing and thinking if this is this or that. Now I want a project that keeps the fantasy alive. I want to think about how the pieces interact with the audience so the project will not stop when the pieces are made. I like happy things. Fun things.
Day Ninety-Six
I’m on my way back to NY from Milan design week and I am happy that I’m going back. I cannot wait to go to the studio and start using my hands and making again. After a few days of being an viewer I feel like something is wrong, as if the same shirt I wore the other day somehow does not fit me anymore at all. I wrestle with the white envelop trying to adjust my shoulders and arms so I can stretch but I can’t. A bit of claustrophobia.
I’m not complaining, I’m happy that I came; conversations and the time I had with people around me are the best things I take away from this trip. It is not my habit to talk about my projects - but that’s exactly why I do it - talking in my own words is not always easy because sometimes it can seem ordinary and boring but that’s okay, I do it today for what I’ve got and if I don’t like it I can do it another way tomorrow.
One of the great shows at Fuorisalone I saw is Nendo: in design it is easy to talk about visuals and mechanical functions - What Nendo’s works do to me is they seem to be able to erase cookies in my brain and make me see things I have seen million times in my life fresh. I am looking at their works as if I was a child finding new things because they are still new to their surroundings. They can make a crushed ball of office printing paper the most fascinating thing you have ever seen. They make me go, wow a folded piece of office paper! Wow, a torn poster! How often do we encounter things like this, and they can do this without explaining with words.