Above: post steam set (the high-heat, steam-not-water procedure is outsourced to craftsmen in Tokyo who mostly work with kimono clients), red dye now bright and alive. Approx.120 things I secretly feared would go wrong, one of which being overdoing the dye, meaning way too many dye particles sitting upon fabric grain, from which a major trouble certainly results, a mistake I once made in 2003, did not happen. Dyed surface now stable, time for me to relax.
Below: a macro shot of a spider lily petal, the muse for the above piece I’ve been working on, photographed as I discovered its magic back in Fall 2014.
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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.
ALERT:
This video contains flickering / flashing lights.
(Sunlight beaming through leaves / blurred traffic lights blinking in distance.)
Today’s discovery: fishing boat is an experimental composer! Play the full range if possible.
Tascam-ed this evening as I sent it off to the moon-lit Pacific.
Task at hand: Spider Lily Red – Flare (One). Visual snippets are from late March to mid April, recorded easy breezy as the cherry blossoms came and went.
“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.
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.
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 :)
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