finding home
Last month (now two months ago, since this post took me a full month to write) I hit a huge milestone for myself - I was part of a small, informal ceramics show here in Brooklyn. The theme was bookends, and I was immediately drawn to the idea of making two halves of a mountain with houses embedded into it, inspired by pieces I've seen in several museums of ceramic water droppers.
Left: Joseon era ceramic water droppers, bottom sources MET and MOCA collections/exhibits (not on view), top 2 I couldn't find sources. Right: my bookends
I don't write a lot about ceramics on here, which is funny considering that it is my main form of creative outlet these days. Most of my practice (a word I don't love using because I worry that it sounds a little pretentious) focuses on making houses. I've amassed a small town of houses on our tv stand, to the point where many of them live in shoe boxes out of display because we're simply maxed out of house space.
left to right: Hanok and Pagoda style houses on our tv cabinet, Sicilian inspired house in progress, mini Hanok houses and lake and house birdbath
To put it plainly, I simply cannot stop making houses. I've been making houses for almost 4 years now. It is my favorite thing to make at the studio, almost a security blanket. If I've gone too long without making a house, it starts to nag at me like an itch I can't reach. I've written before about how my mind goes blank when I'm making something - nothing is more true for me and clay houses.
One of my favorite books I've read this year so far is A Bigger Message a book of conversations between Martin Gayford and David Hockney. Besides being visually stunning (full color reproductions of both Hockney's work and other references, on tactile non-glossy paper !!!). Favorite quotes here:
"They say you need three things for paintings: the hand, the eye, and the heart. Two won't do. A good eye and heart is not enough; neither is a good hand and eye."
"Most people feel that the world looks like the photograph. I've always assumed that the photograph is nearly right, but that little bit by which it misses makes it miss by a mile. This is what I grope at."
“Drawing makes you see things clearer, and clearer, and clearer still. The image is passing through you in a physiological way, into your brain, into your memory - where it stays - it's transmitted by your hands.”
Most of the work is referencing drawing specifically, but I think these things are true for any medium. To recreate and transmit a feeling through what you're making. It's never about perfection, or achieving a photo perfect reproduction of what you would see through your eyes. Art is 'transmitting,' to use Hockney's language, the feeling that you, as the artist, are feeling when you are witnessing whatever the thing is you are trying to convey. I am painting the light, the park, my street, not through the empirical colors and ideas of what it actually is, but how I feel looking at those things. You are conveying a feeling, not an image.
So, then, what am I trying to transmit by making houses to the point of obsession?
By far the most difficult part of showing at this event was coming up with a bio. I've never had to put into words (succinctly, since this blog is all about putting it into words....) what my identity is as an artist. The fundamental questions: other than being driven by an uncontrollable force I mentioned briefly in my last post, why do I do this? What drives me to feel compelled to these things? What am I inspired by? What is the message?
To be cliché, I have spent my life searching for home. But really, craving permanence. I cry every time I have to move apartments, and there is nothing more difficult to me than saying goodbye in a permanent way. I grew up in the same place for the first 18 (+ loosely 4 in college). Not just in the same city, or general location, but in my actual home. And like any teenager, at the time it felt so stifling. I never felt like it was truly me, or my space, or something I had any control over. And then moving away, to a place where I move every couple of years and nothing feels like mine, it's a different kind of home. More transient, more a general area, because I know that nowhere I am is ever really mine either. And even in my other posts, I feel I am constantly circling around the same thing - buying things, drawing things, writing things, all towards the same purpose of wanting to say I'm here I'm here I'm here. I'm here and I love knowing that people were here before me, and I want people after me to know that I was here too.
Model of a three-storied pavilion, Han Dynasty
One of my favorite things about making these houses is going to a museum and finding ancient ceramic houses. It's never a guarantee, or even really something that I can go searching for when I go to a place. It's either there, or it's not. I love making houses and seeing these old houses, feeling connected in not having had an original thought. Many of these houses are made as funerary decoration - to provide a home for those who have passed on. I love knowing that I, as a person, am connected and am making something that has been made thousands of times, as acts of love. I love not having an original thought.
In the end, I am a multi-disciplinary Chinese-Italian artist whose work is inspired by nature, shared memory, and feelings of home. "