Tag Archives: artist studio

Creative Process, November 2016.

A flower petal drawing in progress.

November 13, 2016. While bed-ridden with a common cold, made a decision to drastically cut down my use of mobile devices and a magic called wifi. After all, my eyes are LED sensitive and the whole thing of me is now recoiling from EMF signals. Days of feeling slick and current streaming anywhere is over. Hard to part, surely will miss.

November 14, 2016. Super Moon Monday. A router in hand, called my provider, show me where the switch is, I gotta turn this necessary evil off. The support man was also lightly a comic, was so with zero malice and I noticed, after the call, my eyes were already hurting less*.

November 15, 2016. Woke up fairly fine after four days in futon. Maybe it was my mobile no longer zapping my zzz, or the highly anticipated Moon sending me its ‘super’ through streaks of dark clouds. Either way, it was the kind of night the only thing missing was wolf howls in the distance.

Art works in studio.

The photos are of a dyed silk dress series called “Spider Lily Red”, the 1st (top) and the 2nd piece, both in the making. I harbor an ambition to finish the first dress and open my web shop before 2016 is over, which may come to pass now that my smarty phone is nearly just a telephone.

Time seems to fly faster when I halve my attention. A hint astringent persimmons on the side of wild wolves’ grace alive in digital. Things that precious can get thinned down if consumed half-hearted. Was that an excitement of the world flooding through a device in my palm, or did I begin to let a gadget babysit my existential loneliness. In any case I think I downplayed to myself the physical, attentional, and emotional discomfort. Yes, emotional. It gets kinda hollow when I’m not really there.

So what now, what about your wolves? Well, wolf videos, only on cable-connected computer for now. Minimal mobile usage, most importantly never with my persimmons. As for my existential loneliness, will be kept under my care so I can nurse it in my palms as I would a wounded swallow. I’d like to think I got my TLC intact but sometimes, it has a way of slipping through my fingers.

* A little about the eye hurt I mentioned earlier, as this may not be uncommon: is a sensation of light-pulse drilling my eyes, felt at times more like a shallow headache.
I first took notice of this when I switched to iPhone 4s, my introduction to Retina screen. Within a week I was having a clearly noticeable increase in sensitivity to light, which I call iSquint. (LED sensitivity seems to worsen when coupled with their Retina screen.) Now with 6s, the symptom seems to reduce significantly when turning the airplane mode on.

Thank you for your visit, enjoy the last bit of 2016 and in any event, don’t drive and mobile :)

Artist at Work, July 2016.


Artist in Studio.

Sat, sipped, pondered: will this look okay in red? July 11, 2016, a moment before diving in.
The project in question: Spider Lily Red, at a delicate transition from pencil-on-paper to acid-dye-on-silk.

Artist at work, 2005, Kawasaki.

Artist at work.

“Is it ‘flowing’?”
Yours truly, trying on one of her prototypes, which, a year later, became a piece called “Aqua Dragon Dress 2”. What she’s standing in is called “pre-relocation mess”.
Autumn 2005, Kawasaki, Japan.

Lily and her friends – June Studio Report


A flower bouquet in art studio.

A flower bouquet in art studio.

While teaching myself how to use fabric dye, I worked in a office translating mostly medical professionals’ scribbles. I’d carve out five minutes here, ten minutes there, to somehow get my art thing going, until eventually I became the only worker on self-appointed flextime.
On Mondays during lunch I’d walk past several cafes with too many tiny tables, on a cluttered Tokyo street down to a florist, and for a couple hundred yen choose just one flower to place on my desk, a beige-gray rectangle. As an ongoing art education I’d pause between each paragraph for a few moments and closely observe the blossom of the week.

Flower shop flowers always made me a little sad: straight stemmed, sterile, tagged. I eventually parted ways with the scribbles, but what I’ve seen in each flower stayed with me, it’s the remembering of the field somewhere outside their greenhouse, accumulated stories woven into their roots. Years later, they found their way into an enlarged flower petal about to be painted on a dress, on silk with the fabric dye, now my medium of choice.

Artist at work with summer flowers.

A flower bouquet in art studio.

Despite the art interferences, I fulfilled my responsibilities at the scribble’s. Enough so that few years later the same people invited me back, flextime and all, which was very nice of them, but I had already made other plans, to give my all to the art thing.
The choice smart or otherwise? One thing I know, it was the only one, and I blame it on those flowers with stems too straight, and all the moments I shared with them.

A flower bouquet in art studio.

Belles in the bouquets, all picked in the wild, from top, Japanese name in brackets for accuracy sake:
– Bell Flower (Hotaru Bukuro) / Honeysuckle (Suikazura) / Hyacinth Orchid (Siran)
– Hydrangea / Spiderwort (Murasaki Tsuyukusa)
– Dame’s Violet (Hana Daikon) / Yarrow (Nokogiri Sou) / Oxalis (Imo Katabami – the pink in focus. They were “asleep” at the time of photographing, which was immediately after getting picked from under a shrub.) / Cherry Sage (Yakuyou Sarubia – leaves only) / Fennel (leaves)
– Polygonum (Hime Tsurusoba) / Coral Flower (Haze Ran) / Herb Robert (Hime Fuuro)
– Adenophora Gaudi Violet (Sobana) / Gooseneck Loosestrife (Tora no o) / Prunella Vulgaris (Utsubogusa) / Gymnaster Savatieri (Miyako Wasure) / Spiderwort

In blurry background is the various stages of the dress series “Spider Lily Red” in the making in chronological/ascending order, with photo copies of 2 large pencil drawings of a spider lily petal pinned on the wall.
Also refer to my previous posts for the actual size of the petal, and the daring demeanor of each petal and my earlier attempts at grasping some of it upon fibre.

Dye test in April.


Cherry Blossoms by the river at sunset.
Art works in studio.
An abstract art in process.

Been conducting a little dye test between visits to local cherry trees at sundown. Also, spotted a few swallows swishing through the hazy late pm light today, the very first of 2016.

In praise of Her Highness – Spider Lily Red update.

Art works in studio.

How do you gather your red, while waiting for the autumn in the lightless soil?
When the three a.m. air tells me the summer is near, I think of your bulbs, eavesdropping on the night.

An artist working on her drawings.
A drawing and an artist’s hand.

Project Name: Spider Lily Red
Current Status: On
References: Progress of this project / Previous dyed items

Where Angels Dare to Tread

Reflection of a woman in camera in a mirror.

“The path of love is a dynamic balance of opposites, a painful creative tension of uncertainties.”

Table surrounded by artworks.
Night sky of Los Angeles with blurry lights.

All photos are of the apartment I lived in in Los Angeles, California, 1997. Initially posted on my website, possibly on MySpace and Flickr as well, around late 2006.

The jacket in the top pic is a meticulously patchworked circuit-board inspired abstract design, precursor to my “Dyed Threads” series. The piece is called “Mao Jacket”, as it was designed after the socialist Chinese uniform, there, my own variety of un-obvious socio-cultual commentary and conceptual twist in their budding stage. The person in mirror is my then-self, to whom I will give a warmest, sweetest bear hug after I’m done writing this.

The fancy text below the photo 1 is a line from “People of the Lie” (M Scott Peck, 1983, p.267, Chapter 7. The Danger and The Hope / A Methodology of Love).

The second from top is a snap shot of my dining table, in small kitchenette by the window where I did lots of stitching. My bestie Sofi who was a canine creature at the time of photographing used to take refuge beneath it. Facing right, half showing is one of my 2D abstract (acrylic on cardboard, 1995-ish), using lines in multiple colors attempting to depict Energy/Movements I see in my mind’s eye.

The last one is the view from the rooftop, taken on one of those warm southern California evening. I moved there in late 1980’s when West Hollywood Oki Dog was still in its original location. When there were not much tall buildings so the sky above greeted everyone open and wide, when the city of Angels itself was the wild side in its own right, offering the likes of me about a ton of spaces to jump in, be silly to the max, and push it to the edge. I am a firm believer that, if aspired to create beauty one cannot just look at pretty things in Light*. I wanted to feel the otherwise, come alive in it, not so that I will rot in a swamp but to survive it somehow and bring the experiences to the creative table where I’d stitch, draw, paint, freely envision while my toes resting on the soft thick coat of the beautiful creation I had the honor to share residence with; a potent reminder of what is True overseeing lovingly, the painfully petit existence of mine.

*Please be noted: what I share here is my experience. Each of us, as you may be well aware, is in charge of keeping oneself safe.
Simply because no-one else can know your strength: psychological, spiritual, physical, emotional and more. Knowing that oneself is hard enough. From my experience tho, my soul/heart would know, and to be guided from within I need only to ask. In order to sense/hear It’s subtle directions however, to the best of my ability, I’ve got to not lie to myself about the realities of my existence. That, between me and Me, I must enough-grasp, at very least not look away from, my own truth. Then I have the best chance at keeping myself “safe” – as Life is not always safe, and clutching onto safety too tightly it seems to negatively affect one’s creative freedom and quite paradoxically, punch security holes in the person’s existential firewall.

History

Published:
13Oct22 @20:32 JST
Edits:
16Oct22 Added the quote in fancy text.