Ume = Japanese Apricot / Plum. Pictured in photo #1 and #3.
“Demure, delicate, their fragrance so faint, their buds mature during the coldest time of the year, petals push open against late winter chill.
Soft yet Strong, they flower to signal the end of the Winter, and quietly retreat as Spring triumphs and flourishes in magnificent varieties of shapes and shades.”
The middle photo is a casual iPhone snap of the piece “Spider Lily Red – Flare 2” I’ve been working on, taken on February 28, 2023 at 16:29. Turned it into monochrome and part soft/off-focused to simulate a hand-held blur using Lightroom phone app, then applied vsco A5 filter, then, taken into Photoshop on computer and layered with a ocean/gull pic and the scribbles I’ve been using for sometime. In short, over processed some. It’s an experiment.
What I think is so wonderful about subtlety is that, it brings out a hunter, a seeker in a person, the opposite of things that explain themselves so loud they put you in a position of a mere consumer. If creativity is about connecting dots in new ways, it then naturally asks you to be the initiator.
Initiate, but not overbear. Intend, yet keep it open-ended. Candid, without making it all about me. I think about all this while remembering the fortunate times when I found myself encased in an elegantly subtle Ume scent cloud*.
Something different today, something that’s been on my mind.
Time to open my mouth and be a little vulnerable.
In a nursery rhyme style for easier read ( as opposed to a wall of text style ).
“You” here means those of you the following apply. If not, as they say, let it fly.
I share my works / ideas / experiments freely online. I love to share, I hope to inspire.
My choice. My pleasure.
Moreover.
Creative ideas are vague to define, where to draw the line.
Potent ones though, would make artworks pop. Make them soulful, make them come alive.
My take. My aspiration, I am aiming high.
I draw mine from Nature. Creation, if you may.
Many talents out there but I don’t look around.
Don’t want to be influenced. Too many signals in the world.
I could dull my sensor or put on a blinder. I chose the latter.
Just enough to focus, on what is Subtle. Sincere.
I lose out on some worldly goodnesses this way. My choice, and that’s alright.
If, though, a person choose to seek ideas from other people’s works,
it has got to be digested and be made your own before you show public as your work.
( Or end up looking more like an identity theft. )
Old fashioned creative integrity, still hasn’t gone out of style.
Little about me, enough to make sense.
I did not choose the beaten path for artists: education, affiliations.
I knew, for me, that was what I needed for the free flow of Creativity I was born longing for.
My choice, price to pay either way.
Along with it, continuous weeding of my inner landscape so as to receive Inspiration better.
You see, Creative Ideas aren’t free bags of Cheetos
(no offense, Cheeto, I used to love you much)
falling from the sky right into your mouth.
They are more like air waves, you got to know to tune in,
in the society of ours with so much at stake.
Good news though fren, you got your antenna to hone.
A reminder from me in case you had forgotten.
Got one last note to share, this may sound harsh.
Especially, but not limited to, those who found my work
because I gave you my up-votes on social media somewhere
and proceeded to engage in the above mentioned endeavour …
C’mon now people, your soul deserves better than that!!!
Well that’s all friends, please allow me to conclude:
I hereby would like to request your respectful treatment of my work.
(And not exactly my business, but your Dignity too.)
Thank you for your attention. I rest my case for now.
“How sweet it could be.” – hand written is a journal entry from 20 yrs ago during my lengthy creative block.
The artwork in progress was photographed, compiled and added to this post on March 18, 2021, an ongoing painting for the second piece of the two-piece series “Spider Lily Red” ( acid dye on silk / red on ivory ).
The painting started in May 2019, been almost two years. Some called me a perfectionist, but that is not what is happening here; there seems to be a place I can bring the painting to only with this super detailed approach.
The lines are my own personal interpretation of Red Spider Lily petals, and Organic Elegance flowing through every elements in their world. Some things take time.
–
Tapping into one’s own reservoir requires a decision.
To risk finding what you are made of. To dread if the well is empty.
To stand in one’s own truth. Owning one’s originality makes the person stand alone, sometimes also apart.
To own one’s Light. Fearfully, hesitantly, awkwardly.
To feel content in a truest sense. Fulfilled, in a way nothing else ever could.
Pictures (counted from top):
The Beauties of the world – Spider Lily Petals, my muse (1,5,7), and a Spiral Shell (3).
Artwork named “Spider Lily Red – Flare 2”, part, process, acid dye on silk (2,4,6). (Flare 1 is done.)
Background / layered chicken scratches are a journal entry glued on a cardboard, done about 20yrs ago during my lengthy, and severe I might add, creative block. Thought “Garbage!!” but I kept it for there may be a practical use for the cardboard, not the things on it.
Above is the first photo I post online in the new decade. Of a leaf I found one day in mid January, on the ground I was walking, lit up with a special Nudge I’ve learned not to ignore.
A moment before that I was dragging my feet lamenting on my photography fatigue, gazed down which turned out to be a good thing because, the Leaf, as the Grade A Plus abstract art, catapulted me out of the enthusiasm desert.
Photographed is the Leaf’s reverse side. The shiny side has the chicest colors but I’m not posting it because, I am pretty certain you can find a leaf at where you are, a Leaf just as potent, even if you live in a most desolate inner city.
And also, much like that: you always have You, under any circumstances. Yes you do, a Leaf and You, and are way more than enough to ignite the unfolding of Your Visions. Your Truth.
P.S.
Special thanks to The Oceana, photographed on my 56th birthday in late January. I now hear you, your Waves, always, even when I am away.
Photo #3 from top:
Workin’ hard, buried in seashells – the piece in progress is named “Spider lily Red – Flare 2”. (Flare 1 is completed / what I am painting is this drawing.)
May your pages be filled with what makes your heart swing.
This year, for the first time I bound my daily planner, crafted it in just the way I wanted.
With uneven edges and unfinished stitches, even let the stamped numbers dance, too!
All for the purpose of gifting myself daily, with a reminder that in Creativity there is, inherent, inviolable freedom.
The journal is photographed with dried spider lily blossoms from 2 autumns ago, with overlaid images of the ocean photographed during the first few days of this year.
The wound of the unloved, is that of the human existence. – Peter Schellenbaum
After contemplating and experimenting on various available options (since May 2015), I made the first Zine, in digital format, earlier this month (November 2018).
It is available for purchase here.
Below you find additional info, in a form of postscript / artist statement. I will keep it short, sweet and straight forward.
Format
PDF – viewable on any and all devices.
Aspect ratio – 2:3 (as 35mm films – I felt it is the optimal balance for this issue’s gentle monochromatic look).
Put out independently – ie. outside the ISBN system – like a flower in the field, I’d say (smiles).
In the future I may make available in other formats / ratios, or even with ISBN. But for now, above is the middle ground I decided to place the book on.
That being said…my ears are open to your suggestions and requests, and I appreciate heads ups.
Grey and Grey
All photos were (re)edited in October – November, 2018.
Pure whites / solid blacks were mostly eliminated from the black and white images – they seemed too immutable to me. While editing, I was thinking of soft, understated sheen from graphite pencils, as the suitable range of tones for telling this particular tale.
Large Sized
Both in dimensions (1600 x 2400 pixels) and in file size (nearly 20mb for 20 pages). Images are web-optimized but left in high quality, in hopes they’d carry all the nuances I had woven in in those grains.
The subject matter – the psychological process of individuating – comes with much subtleties. I made a clumsy attempt at including, as much as possible, what cannot be adequately expressed otherwise.
This book is meant as a gesture, of my sharing hopes and encouragements, for the blossoming of us, the mankind, and the beauty of our individual uniquenesses, when fully owned, would truly unite us.
Are you Individuated?
Years ago I embarked upon an escape route from the state of deep discontent and ended up falling for the process itself.
In other words, I no longer care where I’m at on an individuation scale of 1-10. Try to figure that one out, I discovered thru trials and fails, I’d end up tripping on a type of self consciousness, which acts as an enemy to my creativity.
I only know, and talk about what I experienced. I intend to stick with the stance to the best of my ability.
Lastly.
I dedicate this book to a special friend who left the human plane last July, no doubt to be joined, on the other side, by her “partner in crime” – if courage motivated by love is a crime in this realm, by quoting from a book I found in her storage back in 1994, in Sun Land, California, where I spent a pivotal few, fortunate years immersed in desert sunsets and coyote howls, sensing there is, within myself a seed, I alone could water.
How can I believe there’s a butterfly inside me when all I see is a fuzzy worm? – Trina Paulus “Hope for the Flowers”
Photos, all from the Zine, from top:
Career Cormorant, a portrait with Gardenia (2018)
Career Cormorant (Anklet) (2018)
Flower. (2018)
P.P.S. I am not a master marketer – in fact I suck at sales pitch. If you happened upon this page and think you know a soul or two who may like this book, please help me out by letting them know it exists.
Your support as such is muchas appreciated.
Thanks!!
Firstly, thank you!! to those of you who signed up for my newsletter, also for your kind notes and generous words. Please know you have my appreciation.
Above: Dream Lily (Nine), one of the very first photos I took of spider lily petals – a visual memo I made back in late 2012, of ideas for the dress series to emerge.
Below: fast forward several years. Spider Lily Red – Flare 1 (the series and its first piece), acid dye on silk, process, detail, photographed on 15th of July, a day after I stopped painting on the piece – there was nothing more to add.
Looking back to where it began before stepping into the remaining 2 percent, crossing my fingers.
“Hope you get to see the cherries fall – have you?
There’s this one day all the trees decide to let go of the petals, it’s not the rain, or storm…but when this one day comes, often a very sunny day, they release their petals and fill the gray and busy Tokyo with swirling mass of pink confetti.”
– from an unsent letter, three springs ago.
Photos: Spider Lily Red, in progress, pictured just yesterday.
The text is a repost from April 2014. Although the original post was deleted (it was not “dense” enough to stay – with each post I try to deliver something meaningful, personally and hopefully also somewhat universally.) I liked the text and every year I thought of it as the cherries fell. Because they fall, how they fall each year, as if the petals are held by micro hands that release the grip at the command inaudible to human ears, orchestrated in perfect timing optimal for the falling petals to dance midair.
I am also accumulating videos, of the blossoms, me painting, and other various scenes from spring I wish to put together at one point. For now though, I am focusing my effort on finishing the painting because.
Using dye is a delicate business. One must protect the budding piece from any moisture (e.g. sneezing, drooling..) and flying dye particles that become only visible once heat-set. It is best done in one sitting, in this case in one long sitting.
A macro shot of a spider lily petal, and,
the first of the “Spider Lily Red” dresses, close detail of the front panel, almost there, how it looked this afternoon.
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