I made little progress on the sculptures. I wasn't quite happy with the lines and I repeated building up and tearing apart. The tall piece did not feel like the drawing in the sketchbook. I opened up the spine again and cut the head off after all at the end. I am spending too much time on this. It started loosing the freshness.
Day Seventy-One
I am building three forms loosely following a sketch I made a few weeks ago. I use the drawing as a starting point and then I add more clay here, take out more there, so and so forth the shape shifts during the process. One of them is a tall squeezed cylinder wth multiple teeth on one side. As I locked the studio on leaving I noticed the key looked strangely similar to the from I was just building, with the top tooth being the widest followed by smaller teeth just below it. It's like encountering the inspiration in a backwards way. I did not think this standard steel hardware-store key has been speaking to my subconscious. Sure, I could probably draw the similar outline without looking at it. I use it every day. Now I am back home and my toothbrush also again looks like the form. A big head, with smaller teeth below it. If this is to imply what "inspirations are everywhere" means, I really need to start exploring somewhere beyond my studio and my bathroom.
Day Sixty-Eight
I went to PS1 to see James Turrell's work. It was so beautiful and so powerful and yet so simple. It made me see the New York sky as if it was my first time.
Day Sixty-Seven
The day I came back to Brooklyn after the trip to Montauk I skipped going to the apartment and went to the studio with my backpack on me. I could still see the open horizon that surrounded me the previous few days in mind and coming back to industrial Brooklyn made me wonder if being in an enclosed space was actually good for me or not. Although, the sound of cars and trucks resembled the sound of waves a bit. I checked on the drying pieces that had already started showing cracks even before I took off to Montauk. I worked on them as sketch pieces so I worked quickly, but I should have worked more with care so I could have had good uncracked works. But what's so bad about cracks on sculpture pieces? I decided to accept them as they were and move on to the next.
I started working using recycled sticky sculpture clay with lots of grog and sand, which feels like crack proof or so I hope. I massaged it a bit here and there and and tried building a form but was not able to get my hands and mind to work. I only stayed for a few hours without having done anything much and left to home. My head hurt. I fell asleep. I woke up in the morning but was not able to pull myself up, I had low energy. I fell asleep again. I was on on off sleeping for 24 hours. And then another 24 hours went on with a series of complicated dreams. In one of which I was in a front row center seat viewing a theater performance where actors were dressed in an abundance of fabric on a stage of sea of fabrics. The play was organized by a textile company - I was thinking of a future play involving lots of ceramic sculpture pieces and then woke up before seeing the ending part of the play.
I finally got out of the bed and was headed to the studio feeling like an wrinkled old laundry that did not get either the sun nor the fresh air for a long while. I went through emails, invoices, shipments, and bills, and did not touch clay. Tomorrow I will start making.
Day Sixty-Three
I was with my aunt at the local beach when she asked me what was between the ocean and the sky. I looked at the horizon, thought about this a bit and thought there was nothing in between. She said the answer was a "to", a word for "and", which has the same sound as the word for a door. It was supposed to be a riddle but her answer left me unsatisfied. I remember this when I see the ocean and the sky.
Day Sixty-Two
From where I am sitting in the living room I see moving clouds and the water changing its color by minute. If I lie down in the couch it looks like the house is floating in the sky. Yesterday we hiked the Seal Haulout trail hoping to see seals, which were said to come out to rest on the seaweed covered rocks during low tide, but any moving things that we thought could be seals were birds. It sounds like no one in this town actually have seen sleas coming out to the shore. We did not see anyone during the 3+ mile hike. It snowed a little bit on the way back but by the time we got back to the lighthouse out in the sky were toy-like pink clouds that looked like something sugary. The clouds are becoming thicker over the ocean. The compass is telling me that I am staring in the direction of Turks and Caicos Islands.
Day Sixty-One
I am in Montauk, staying in a cottage that overlooks the winter ocean. Yesterday the wind and the waves sounded like a storm. The yellow sand beach was empty; we came across just one family with a giant dog and two kids during an hour-long walk. I am looking forward to cook, read, write, draw, walk, eat, and look at the wavy horizon. The water is much calmer this morning.