my paper purse

paper on wire and clay, about 10" across [a sketch]

cut me something beautiful

dried gourd with the top cut off, wrapped in Japanese mulberry paper, with cotton thread hanging at the ceiling, 1.5" x 2.5" [work in progress]

This was the first (and only, so far) cut i made on one of the dried gourds. After sort of nourturing them for a couple of years (drying, cleaning, drying, painting, scratching and wrapping them), it wasn't too easy to take the knife and decide to cut into one of them. They have become rather precious in a way one is drawn towards salvaging something fragile that has been abandoned and almost forgotten. But you gotta cut your hair sometimes. And the new cut isn't looking too bad so far, right?



On a *separate* note, can i just share how giddy with joy i was to find that Diana Fayt from One Black Bird has stopped by here? Totally unexpected and immediately felt a rush like having a secret crush on someone.

I stumbled upon One Black Bird late last year and was crazy about how Diana incorporated printmaking techniques into her ceramic work. And the best thing is that the whole blog is devoted to sharing the process of her art-making. Every post has at least one picture of something related to her studio and art. All really well-composed pictures, too. And her writing takes you close and delicately into her world of things lovely, and times struggled and conquered.

(It is also where i got the idea to have a blog rather than a portfolio website. Thank you, Diana.)

baby steps

So, first, I had to leave the gourds alone to be dried. Depending on the humidity, it takes about a year or so for them to be fully dried. Every so often while they are drying, i would need to clean off some smelly moldy build-up on the surface.

You can see that on the bottom of the dried gourd (above) three dark spots where mold was starting to grow. If i didn't clean it off in time, it would have eaten through the gourd.

I have tried using gesso and acrylic paint but you can see below that both do not stay on very well:




So that is when i started thinking of other ways to treat the surface. And what better way than to use my beloved mulberry paper that i have neglected since taking a break from printmaking?

More on those paper-wrapped ones tomorrow...

baby gourds

1.5" - 3.5" in height [click for larger image]

The gourds are lined up in chronological order from trying them out in gesso and acrylic paint to covering them in paper and woodcut print.

More details later...

summer

So two summers ago, i took an Intro to Cinema class, thinking that film-making is THE medium to get into, possibly my secret calling that i haven't uncovered yet. Forget painting and all this meaningless crap i was making. No one is going to look at my dried-up baby gourds wrapped in nice mulberry paper and think, "Wow, that was deep...i am so touched by the rebirth of that little one." Nor are people going to be crying over my happy dark paintings, are they.

Now, with movies...i'll be able to throw in some beautiful visual effects, tell a story and deliver some meaningful message and people could get it right away. And i'll have Cate Blanchette and Philip Seymour Hoffman to star in it...

Well, anyways, i am getting carried away. So i took the class, and one of the first assignments given to us was to make a flip-book. Sounds easy enough. Well, actually, it was quite not easy for me. I couldn't even do those little stick figure action thing, like maybe boucing a ball or something. Something with the timing and coordination of things i just couldn't grasp.

Finally, i came up with what i thought was a brilliant solution: why not paint in sections and therefore, show the movement of the brushstroke in the flip book? SO, i went out to get a stack of unlined index cards and started painting these bright fields of reds, pinks and oranges. At the time, i had some friends visiting and they kind of looked over what i was doing. I felt like i was having a small but very captivated audience watching me direct my little masterpiece. Yeah, just a bit delusional there.

As it turned out, in my enthusiasm, the acrylic paint was applied too thickly, causing the paper to become too plasticky and flimsy to flip through. But even if it were able to flipped smoothly, there was no movement of paint splashing across the pages. You would think it would work looking at these, wouldn't you?

Well, i wasn't going to let my effort go to waste, especially not with all that earnesty and excitement that went into it (i also painted the back of some of the pages). It just so happened that at the time i was also learning to make different sorts of boxes/enclosures for damaged books, so i thought i'll use these to practice on.

Long story short, film-making is not my calling, which is okay, because look what i got out of it:








Pretty little box paintings to brighten the wall of my office. I shall just have to conquer the world one wall at a time...

orange pink boxes [installation]

to be continued...

orange pink boxes

acrylic on index card paper, then
folded & pasted down into a box,
1.75" x 1.8" x .5"


acryic on index card paper, then folded
& pasted down into a box,
1.75" x 2.2" x .5"

More on these tomorrow...

the little teapot

oil on masonite board, 9.125" x 7.125" x 1.75"
(1.75" is board [frame] thickness from wall)