dusk falling

window view for xiaodi, sunsetting, not dusk yet.

Wearing sunglasses as i am typing this by my window...don't know why i didn't think of this sooner. It makes looking at the computer monitor so much easier on my aging pinguecula eyes [warning! this link will take you to some not very pretty images]. One eye got inflamed from too much fun in the sun or something. Probably more from lack of good sleep is what it is...

I've been having some really bad dreams lately. It started with the one where i get a call that xm died. I actually tried emailing him the next day but the messages sent to different email addresses all bounced back. Have no other way to get in touch with him right now.

Other disaster dreams:
[two nights ago] I wake up and saw that my scalp is veiny reddish, and realized with horror that it is from hair falling out. My sisters are with me. We all turned to look at my pillow and saw a pile of fallen hair. May or Ting quickly grabbed all of it and threw it out, to save me from looking more at it.

[some days before the hair dream] I am in some construction site and running around trying to get to where i was going. Lots of pipes and tunnels. Bumped into someone who is bleeding and also trying to find a way out. He is also looking for his lover. It turns out i am in the middle of some secret planning for some world destruction. I woke up before i could get out of it.

[last night] I am driving and suddenly drove off the road. But thankfully, i did not dent the car or anyone. So i guess, it is not all bad. The two ladies at the insurance company are giving me a hell of a problem though.

In my waken state, besides my one red eye, i am actually doing quite well. So i really don't know what is up with these dreams. Thinking and absorbing too much maybe.

Well, there is some anxiety with the paintings i am working on...



This past weekend i was working on these* and boy doesn't it show that i don't know how to paint. I envy those who have such a natural sense of how the paint moves and how the colors could come together the way they want them to. Me, i have to keep trying and trying and pushing the paint around to see what would work. In a very clumsy and 'amaturish' way.

These are at their muddy state right now, and i will quit being ashamed of them:











(*They are actually panels from one of the cut-up black series paintings. Not sure if they will remain part of the black series or not later.)

spoons and forks II

etching (spitbite aquatint, sugarlift) & drypoint on arches printmaking paper, image size is 16.2 x 22.5 cm on 32 x 38 cm paper size
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● To convert centimeters to inches, multiply by 0.4
● To convert inches to centimeters, multiply by 2.54

new mini pink series?

oil & mixed media on wooden panel, 6"x 6" each

May, look what came out from the comment you left me on that pink painting (the first one above is supposed to be a mini version for you but it did not turn out as good as i thought it would...so it may have to be reworked into something else...)



I thought i could make use of the June letters to use on these but they are not working well with any of them. Just as Uschi suggested here, the background for those letters does need to be on a longer and slimmer canvas...and i was so excited thinking these letters will be my fastest completed works yet.

Instead, more new problematic paintings to add to my pile of unfinished works!

june letters not going anywhere

This is giving me a headache pissing me off...!

monna

pen & rub-on letters on aged/discolored loose leaf paper, book dimensions 6.2" x 5.25", 37 pages

Except maybe for the messy hair, these sketches do not look anything like my sister at all but i love them anyway. You can see that they don't even look like the same person among the pages. But i was so into the sketching at the time and so glad to have such a willing and natural (unposed) model, i didn't care.

Ting, so good you never complained how badly i drew you. :).






















--> view as slideshow @ Flicker: red red day

clayballs

I made these clayballs right before my parents came to visit earlier this week. They will be used for more wrapping sketches. The clayballs, not my parents.

My parents are my heroes. I wish i had not forgotten to take pictures of them while they were here. Especially of my smiley mom with all her crazy blanket purchases filling the whole bedroom, and of my dad showing me how to make the bittermelon egg dish. yummmy. We were all so caught up in the moment of shopping and eating and cooking together. Best is that they are becoming younger in spirit and i wanted to capture that.

I miss them already and they are right that we should all live closer together. They drove 5 hours south to see May and then 5 hours north to see me. Parents really should not have to work that hard just to get to see their kids. And Ting is half way across the country whom they kept mentioning as we sat around eating and talking.

This is the first time my parents came to visit me since i moved here with John. I was eager to show off our place, my scattered works and things, but i think they feel sorry that i am not living in a nicer place, having more fancier things.

But i already have so much that i am happy with that i am more afraid of losing what i have than thinking about having more.

remember what today is

paper and string on wire, about 9.5" across [work in progress, sketch]


This is my paper leaf hat, still in the working. In my rush in making it, i did not stop to get a better sense of how it will fit on a head. As it is, it looks quite stupid on my head so that is why there is no picture of me wearing it.

I am rushing through things these days, forgetting to let the fingers linger longer on the materials and for the eyes to dwell as much as they want to on the different markings and creases...too anxious to wrap it all up, too eager to show and tell, wanting still to recapture something that was lost or has been...

And i am seeing this not just in my work, but also in relationships with friends and family, wanting desperately to hang onto the moments, the feelings that once were...even if it is not with the same person or circumstances.

It is like what you said, John, about how some writers never went beyond their first great novel because they were still trying to recreate what they achieved in the past. Masterpieces can't be recreated, can they? Got to start fresh and build upon where you left off, not retrace and live backwards.

Something i just realized more concretely in the realm of friendships. Need to see them for what they are individually, and take time to let each one become what it wants to be at its own pace, and not impose expectations and the past onto it...

planet red*

My shelftop of little things and the big red planet candle that i bought all the way from Denver.

*For your curiousity, Uschi. :).

happy birthday, Ting-dong!

Look what i got you! don't know what it is really but it's super bright and squishy and smells a bit funny, so immediately i thought of you! :). love love.

blue day some days