just keep going

 

history

paper & wire, 12 x 5.4 x 3.8 cm



Didn't think much of any particular history while making this spoon as it just so happened that I found the text torn in half among my paper scraps. The meaning of the word as his-story struck me. Isn't that the truth?



Recently, I came across some beautiful photographs of traditional clothing and textiles on Pinterest, which somehow led to some disturbing images of Chinese bound feet and half-naked mutilated eunuchs. I know they existed but didn't know the bound feet have been around for more than a thousand freakin' years and the eunuchs twice as long. Both were not banished until the 20th century. How could it take so long for something so wrong to stop happening? From the last eunuch I can almost understand but the ugly painful bound feet? Not really.

John said I am not understanding how deeply rooted the kind of thinking was at the time. Maybe I would do it too, given the circumstances. Those bound feet actually were never given a choice since their mothers/guardians started binding them as early as 3 or 4 years old to stop them from growing. So a grown woman with the size of a three-year-old feet was ideal beauty at the time. How could that be ok for a time span of a millennium? That's like 30 generations of billions and billions of women not being able to run freely for life.



Is it not much different now? What things will future generations look at us and be horrified about?

lights and echos

My biggest spoon yet. Cannot hear the ocean with it though.




Sound. thread, beeswax, paper & wire, 29.5 x 13 x 6 cm




Lights dancing into the night. Sisters secretly giggling over the brothers' echo laughing. Can't wait to be home with loved ones.

a cleansing

goodbye fears
goodbye time
goodbye waiting


beeswax, thread, paper & wire
34.5 x 16.5 x 3.5 cm

wounded

It's not really as fleshy and creepy-looking as above. More like this here:




scar, wounded series, wax, string, paper & wire, 13 x 2.8 cm

I made it last week. It's a new addition to the spoon series i thought i was done with last November:



It feels like i have only touched on the surface of what i want to explore. There should be hundreds more.

blood sisters

This is for you, ding dong.

unbroken

wrapped eggshells




above: my two favorites so far



I am so enjoying wrapping these. I think the pictures do not do them justice. You have to hold them in your hands and see. I showed one of two attached together to May and she just said they look like balls. John didn't get how awesome they are either. oh well. i appreciate you, dear eggyeggs.

These past couple of months had been really slow in studio. blah blah days. Some heartache here and there too but nothing a good heart-to-heart cry can't soothe. Oh and i am learning to garden! A day out in the yard with my parents beats all the horticulture lectures i was taking. So happy to see that the tomato plants my dad brought over are thriving. They were so wilty-looking when i first planted them. I didn't think they were going to make it but next day i checked they perked up like the sunshine :).

Not too long ago, i dreamt of K again. It was so good to see him, even if it is just in dreams.

My worktable right now is scattered with broken halves and pieces of eggshells. i sure eat a lot of eggs. I'm so excited. So many possibilities to make them whole again! Finally, ideas are brimming...

a love story

waxed thread through paper over wire, 22.5 x 3 cm together







Yesterday John ate and ate the horrible beef that i cooked up, along with the burnt piece of cake that i baked not from scratch; and i endured his endless one-sided discussion on Superman the first movie that i -almost- could care less about watching but watched anyway...

*
I wish that when i was younger, i could have known, understood, that no matter how annoyed or angry they got with one another, my parents would never leave each other.

*
Today i started making a bigger than life size spoon. I've also been collecting eggshells and drying baby gourds. Summertime my big bowl of dried grapefruit and orange skins got infested by moth worms and i am left with only a few unharmed pieces. Things decay but i have to remember not to let them collect dust.

It feels strange but good to be back here...Thank You to all who still took the time to say hello and stayed with me even while i was away...

.....

I've started with the idea of making a 'his and hers' spoon set, then switched to 'his and his' after 'hers' did not seem to fit. It felt gimmicky and i quit forcing it. I got thinking about other things.

Right now still having trouble deciding how to post these individually. How much to tell and how much to keep to myself...? They are almost too personal but that is not what i want them to be about.

these promises

more later...

fill me

Except for these clay pieces, nothing much is going on in studio right now. I haven't painted or printed anything at all these past few weeks (months?!). I'm about to burst.

This past weekend, i was home with the family, hanging out mostly with my sisters and cousins. Still so happy that Michael suggested going to the museum, which i totally did not know he would be interested in doing. You're my new museum buddy forever now, Mikey. None of us who went (me, M, and F) to the Whitney Museum were crazy with the current Biennial show but it was good just to have gone together. We all did like one wall drawing by Sol LeWitt and an installation by Carol Bove (okay, just Michael for that one; Francis doesn't like it and i would have liked it more if you could run through it).

Ting and May looking older, more grown-up, so beautiful and alike in ways i had not notice before.

The next day, May gave me a short short haircut that i've been wanting. In the middle of the haircut, the parents' visitors came and i quickly tried to hide and clean up. Saw how nicely the fallen hair got clustered together when i started to pick it up. And before anyone could catch what i was doing, i stuffed it in a bag for me to take back with me. Look where they are now:





Wish i had collected more.

big brother blue

<--This guy here is the tall one in the blue installation:

It is steel rod, wire and twigs wrapped together in duct tape, standing at 8 ft tall. The shorter guys are just twigs and tree branches wrapped in the same blue and black duct tape.

By itself, it is a sculptural object but in the blue installation, it is to be viewed more as part of a painting than a sculptural piece.

A close-up of the blue "paint" over black: