Day Two Hundred Twelve

I need to read more. The more time I spend outside of my head the better. Go outdoors. Be in the nature. Use the body. Do something for others not for myself. Be kind. Be alert. Be adventurous. Be playful. Be open. Be active. Be creative. Be generous.

The sun is golden and the music sounds like a Christmas song. what I like about this view is that I can hear the BQE and I only see running shadows of cars behind the trees, disappearing into the new building of three-story high, the second floor not yet occupied. From here I hear the traffic in the morning and at night, and if I try I can hear the sound of the ocean. 

Day Two Hundred Eleven

I would usually spend the last part of studio hours cleaning up, which I would be perfectly happy without doing, only if I could find a way to keep the work area clean without actually cleaning it. Often I think it's a good thing that I have other people working in the studio because it forces me to maintain the space. It is important for me that they are happy working in the space. Also, although of course this is not the reason why I do the event, the monthly Salon surely makes me at least once a month move the clay boxes and vacuum and mop those small corners and wipe the counters, the stools and the doors. Tasks that can be so mundane if they were for my self can suddenly become painless if they were for others. 

Now I have a new approach: at the end of the day it is a time to prepare for the next day, not to close the day.  Some people seem to work out this concept naturally but unfortunately I was not the one of them and took me months to come up with this simple solution.  The key is to change the way to look at it. In stead of cleaning up the mess I made I'm preparing for tomorrow. This now changes eventually the same type of tasks from a chore to a motivating job. At the end of the day my body is tired and my brain exhausts its decision making muscles, so it is a perfect time to do non creative but necessary work. This allows me start working as soon as I get in in the morning, without spending an hour and my fresh energy in preparatory work. 

It is in a way I become an assistant for tomorrow's me. Making sure when tomorrow's me comes in in the morning all the tools are ready, work bench set up, clay prepared, schedules made. Tomorrow's me would come in, change to the studio clothes, get a bucket of water and start working. So far so good. I hope this will continue to work. This is pretty much the same thing as what they were trying to teach me when I was at kindergarten: get your stuff ready the night before. I should have listened.

Day Two Hundred Nine

I was going to show the Time Vessels pieces at the Governor's Island's art fair this fall if I was accepted and planning on making additional 50-100 pieces to finish the series.  Now the project has untheatrically ended without completion. I considered making the additional pieces anyways but somehow the original idea that motivated me to make those pieces does not fit me well so I decided to take a break and start on a new project. I have been writing to see what would come out; now I'm mainly interested in holding the present time and not so much about going back to the past to amend my youth wastefully spent or visiting the future to know what my current doing and being should be. My desire is about now, about my everyday activities and immediate needs. I want to make the present moment longer so I could be working on a project as long as I like and could spend time generously, drawing every single petals of dandelions without thinking that I could grow old while making worthless paintings of these ordinary flowers. I want to be at multiple moments at the same time so I could be painting, working, walking, playing music and spending time alone and with friends, and traveling and staying home at once without having to pick just one. 

Day Two Hundred Four

I do not remember how exactly I became interested in medicine cabinets but I suspect it was when I was in a bathroom that was not mine, alone, like any other time I use a bathroom. I don't have a habit of breaking into to someone else's medicine cabinet but it occurred to me that it was sort of funny a box that could potentially hold something very personal was in front of my face, available to be secretly peeked in. 

They say a steamy bathroom is not an ideal place to store medication but it is still a convenient place for storing items used on our bodies and must tell something about the owner. Mine for example is a very boring one, and only contains standard items off the shelf like toothbrush, dental floss, toothpaste, nail files, a tweezer, a box of bandages, q-tips, hair ties, hair products, a bottle of sunblock lotion. Even so you can tell that the owner is a female, who goes to a Japanese hair dresser, and the minimum maintenance is all she needs. 

Medicine cabinets are American things to me. The two houses I lived in Japan did not have one. All ten homes I lived in New York, including the apartment only accessible by a metal fire escape through the courtyard attached to the end of the next building had one. 

In horror movies when a heroine stands in front of an open medicine cabinet and closes the door, everyone knows what will come next. 

I like bottles - for they can contain things, remedies. I sat down in front of the wheel and made about 100 of clay bottles with a small mouth and squeezed them together side by side so each of them takes the form of the adjacent bottles. Making these bottles reminded me of things I used to treasure, like the first perfume I bought when I was 18, sample bottles of skincare product I collected as a teenager, and bottles of candy that looked like a tiny star from the local candy shop in my childhood.

Day Two Hundred Three

When I first became interested in ceramics one of the things I wanted to try was formulating my own glaze. I did not know anything about the chemistry and even how to go about it.  So to start I read a book by Mimi Obstler on glaze rate materials and ceramic surface, which title excites me even now: Out of the Earth into the Fire. The author describes the heat transformation of the glaze and the clay body as formation of magma.  She is telling me the inside my electric kiln there is a small living world of the earth's interior.

Clay is a fantastic material that I think everyone should try. It is such an intimate material that lets me play with the fundamental elements of the world we live in - the water, the earth, the fire and the metal.  Working with clay is a collaborative work with these elements. 

Day Two Hundred Two

I write about my process of making and where I get inspiration from: 

Ideas can come from a book I read, a conversation I have with my friends, or emotions like dissatisfaction, curiosity, and fear. In a notebook I keep ideas in words and shapes as a reminder.  Ideas I am interested in and want to explore more would appear frequently in the notebook and sometimes friends would tell me that I have been talking about certain things often. I will be spending weeks and months on a project so I want to make sure that I am interested in the subject. Once I have decided on a project I set a deadline, think of a way to show the finished work and start making forms to see how I feel about them. I read and write and show the works in progress and talk to my friends. Make more, destroy more, and make more.

I don’t have a the set process to follow and prefer not to have one so I can be flexible and see what works. Sometimes I make drawings. Sometime I do not make any sketches nor decisions on finishes and dimensions and start working directly with clay. I am attracted to being obsessive and working frantically and this process of just making without thinking can be satisfying. I would make lots of forms knowing that the majority of them would be discarded.  The process depends on the project but it is important for me to use my hands and physically produce works while developing ideas into objects. 

When I feel uninspired the best thing for me to do is to physically work and use my hands and pay attentions to things in life. I don’t have a particular place to go or things I go see. For me inspirations do not fall from the sky. 

Day One Hundred Ninety-Nine

I was asked about my first full time job and remembered the time when my manager asked me what title I wanted to have, I said Artist. This was completely irelevant to my actual tasks in space survey involving walking in and out, measuring and documenting millions square feet of space. I thought the question was funny, as if it was a makeshift position, something to fill the blank. But I was far from being an artist, in fact I believed I was incapable of becmoing one. Within my family I was never considered an artist. I was the one who lacks concepts and beliefs in the core, and by this I mean that's how I remember. My family now may say otherwise, and even if this is a memory I made up this notion has stayed with me. Even now once in a while it comes out and tells me that I have nothing important to say in my work.  I came across an article on how self delusional thinking can help continue producing work, with a quote by Michael Lewis, "A lot of my best decisions were made in a state of self-delusion. When you’re trying to create a career as a writer, a little delusional thinking goes a long way."  I can use this method myself. Somehow we, I, rather, assign a frame to be in. But can we cultivate a new image of ourselves even by tricking ourselves into believing being what we want to become. To this I say to myself I am a confident woman who has ideas to pursue.