intimate terrain

in scale

2012-02-08T08:11:00.000-08:00

It is a common mistake to think that being in proportion means being small. Rather, it means being in scale, in making either a large or modest gesture, but doing it in a manner that lets us see the scale of our bodies embedded in its structure.

From Patterns of Home

The ten essentials of Enduring Design.

M. Jacobson, M. Silverstein, B. Winslow

from the archives

2012-02-07T20:49:00.000-08:00

patch, lancaster pa

(excerpts from a letter to a friend...) creativity is giving, but it's not just defined in terms of a physical manifestation- it's how you see the world, how you move through it, and how you live your life. Making things is over rated. To me it really is how you shape your life and how you are shaped by it... be curious about who you are and how you are. give yourself time to read and rest... find ways to be anonymous. it can be really simple.

and don't make anything if you don't want to- just listen.

in Japan, there are mountains and rivers that are unpopulated, but i will probably be in cities like Osaka and Kyoto, and in the pottery villages. ( i hope) There won't be the same vastness and expansiveness (of the american west) but the cultural and language differences will make me feel isolated in the same way. There is no way to insert yourself into that culture, but i am somewhat used to that. What i hope to experience is the aesthetic of the everyday that my friends talk about. How beautifully the food is presented, at home, for every meal-- for the gardens and temples and ubiquity of clay in the realm of the everyday. We experienced a taste of it in Cyprus. the pithari, the roof tiles, plants in terra cotta on every corner. (you must have some of that in Israel?) Where i live, almost everything is plastic, utilitarian in the worst and ugliest sense... Japan is going to amaze and confound me. that is what i loved about the West, and that is what i love about traveling. It wakes me up in a way that nothing else does. it reminds me of how little i need to live and be content with. If i could figure out how to do that in my studio and my life, then we would be getting somewhere... i want time more than anything. I want to slow down. I want to have my solitary time. I want to go camping and hiking and be outside as much as possible. I don't want to work so hard for so little satisfaction... and when you go to your work, filled with ancient broken pots, look at your beautiful, slender, sensitive fingers and thank them for all that they know and do while your mind floats above.

attentiveness

2012-02-01T10:01:00.000-08:00

"attentiveness is the only means by which we can know the nature and qualities of our moment by moment existence. the entrance gate through which a person can not just be in his or her life, but know it, taste it, consider it. attentiveness is what opens us into a conscious human experience. i do see the development of a continually deeper and more clarified and refining attentiveness as the path through which art and craft, as well as life are more fully revealed."

"...we seek in art the elusive intensity by which it knows..."

Jane Hirshfield

sidelong glance

2012-01-28T09:38:00.000-08:00

notes on Christopher Wilmarth

Long Memphis 1973

image from

http://art.1stdibs.com/art_detail.php?id=14124

"an artist is entrusted with an access and required to keep it clear and the tools change with the obstructions but the place is always the same... ungraspable phantom of life..."

"obliquity is essential to Wilmarth's metaphorical imagination- at first literally, when he shaped his lights to make oblique shadows, and later, in a more arcane way, when he thrust out into real space with standing pieces that played upon the convention of perspective and its misleading illusions. The sidelong glance of a sculptor given to reverie is indispensable."

From the catalogue: Christopher Wilmarth: Gravity and Light

memory

2012-01-18T08:59:00.000-08:00

"how do you make memory? What is the relationship between memory and anticipation? Can you make something that is physical which at the same time evokes the process of remembering? Is it possible to do this and make something fresh? Like dew or frost- something that just is, as if its form has always been like this?"

Antony Gormley about Domain Field

practice

2012-01-08T08:17:00.000-08:00

practice

so much sky

2011-09-29T17:30:00.000-07:00

i awoke at 4:00 am this morning worried that i would oversleep and miss my flight to reno, but also full of ideas for drawings, sculptures, cups, installations,weather, white on white, finding a studio. fulfilling the promise to harvest from all of the traveling that i have been doing in the past year and a half.

i feel invisible in/to my work right now, or my work feels that way to me. what am i doing? what do i want? how do i take it forward, take it public, find a place to be and think and make things that suit me? so many ideas, how to hold them all and still finish everything that needs to be attended too?

fragments

2011-09-11T12:56:00.000-07:00

bones of the painting- one of my favorite parts.

week one of mural wall- gridded and ready to rough in.

whoever comes are the right people

whatever happens is the only thing that could have

whenever it starts is the right time

whenever it's over, it's over.

china texture

2011-08-28T04:18:00.000-07:00

we cover the universe with the drawings that we have lived.

G. Bachelard

first impressions

2011-08-27T04:58:00.000-07:00

"i have been in china for 3 days, so jet-lagged and worn out from the summer project. I am sick with an ear ache and sore throat, it's starting to go away, and i can feel my energy coming back. Joy said that i have a deer in the headlights look, and small wonder. china is outrageous. I feel so unprepared, but there is no way to prepare for this...."

stripped down. tenacious. unrelenting. hard scrabble. utilitarian. lush. watery. fishing ponds. rice fields. new trees. so green. efficient. corn fields against lotus ponds. so much meat. piles of broken down abandoned things everywhere. vegetable gardens in front of houses. agrarian mind. coastal plains. many white cranes. few animals. everyone piles onto scooters. horns blowing. loud talking. square-on. forthright. staring. saying hello. black milk tea in the morning. incredible museums in xuzhou, night markets. darkness. haggling with a calculator. hand made nation. smiling elders. so cute. mangoes. good friends. stories to discover and tell.

i can't decide if i love it or hate it, but so happy to be here.

foundry kitchen

lunch

grocery store rice bins

mung beans

foundry broom

shoes

jetlag

2011-08-27T04:04:00.000-07:00

what a journey i have been on this summer. I worked on phase 2 of the Shissler Recreation Center that I started last Fall, with my 2 assistants, Mike Reali and Chris Williams, and 2 more great guys, Brad Carney and Mike Konrad, who were the instructors for 12 city high school students. We worked together on a mixed media approach to a site near my house.

The day after we finished I left for China for 2 weeks, so it has been tricky to catch my breath, or have some time to reflect on everything. I expect the next couple of months will allow much time for silence, reflection and art work coming in response to everything that I have been working on, looking at and thinking about. That my work gives me the opportunity to be immersed in art and to travel is something that i am immensely grateful for. It is what I have been working for. I met sculptor Joy Brown in Nanhui to work at a foundry for a couple of days, and then travel together and separately for a week or so.

I got home from 2 days ago and landed into the shopping frenzy created by hurricane irene. I restocked my refrigerator and pantry, started unpacking,- weathering the storm with jay. sleeping and not sleeping at all the wrong times.

When i first landed in china, laying in bed that first night, my body still felt like it was flying, the roar of the jet engines still hummed in my body- and I was happy to be in that feeling of liminal space. between time zones- between knowing and not knowing. between languages and words. the displacement is never as bad coming home, i have the comfort of the language, my house, my love, my friends.

nanhui view from house balcony

foundry workshop

tofu squares- the only vegetarian option on the shanghai train-

shanghai train station

landscape from train...

landscape from train

a year ago today

2011-07-26T16:01:00.000-07:00

I was in shikoku making drawings.

fascinated by simplicity

2011-07-11T18:53:00.001-07:00

Terrain

exterior

Terrain, door in cafe

with

watering can counterweight

Delaware quarries

right now my day job

includes

looking at natural materials

to bring into a recreation center

spray park

great view of the

Delaware River.

current focus

of research

photo from:http://designformenmag.com/?p=154

"i was fascinated by the simplicity in which people lived, while still being very beautiful, and very soft, and with a great sense of comfort using almost nothing at all. Materials are indispensable for me. I am a very tactile person, I like brutalism in a sense. I like raw materials, but I also like the ways you can use them. How you can go from a rough stone to a polished one."

" ...they are all objects (all the architectural projects, high rise or house) it's just a matter of mastering scale..."

"... I don't want things to be too clear, I want to provoke infinite curiosity. I want people to be more and more curious, b/c that means that there are still many things I can show, and many things I can tell them and life is like that, it's infinite. and fortunately, it's that way b/c that's what beauty is, what strength is, what energy is. That's what gives me the desire and the strength to continue. I like suprises... I like that my work evokes emotions. For me it is important to be timeless, infinite..."

Vincent van Duysen

the sea and the mountain

2011-06-28T09:06:00.000-07:00

always provides perspective and inspiration for how to live and make work...

I just got back from a week of traveling, some down time, some ocean time, and some time in the deep woods of ct and vermont. Sand is still spilling out of sheets and pillow cases...

So beautiful and green, I was at Stone Harbor for the first time w/ jay and new friends, it was overcast the first day, but a perfect excuse to play wiffle ball. On Monday morning a whole pack of us went to the point to look for shells and walk. It was raining pretty hard by the time we got back. So cool.

I was given a ticket to Wanderlust Festival, a yoga and music festival at Stratton Mountain. I am still absorbing 3 class days, (thats 3 yoga classes) lectures, incredible music and so much rain. I used that as an excuse to stop off at Still Mountain Center to hang out with Joy, Jimmy and Ryo for the day. I was able to make some pots in the studio monday night, then joy and I went to see her exhibition at the Billy Morris Gallery in south Kent Ct. The work looks fabulous! check it out if you are in the area.

I got to Stratton Mountain around dusk, glad to land. I stayed in a cabin off site with a bunch of cool people and spent most of my time at the festival taking a variety of classes (some anasura, ashtanga and vinyasa). So interesting, so spacious and intense. I was kind of fine with all that rain, b/c the energy was so high to begin with. It was good to meet new people, I was inspired by the ease and sense of protection the mountain offered. I didn't get to go on hikes or get outside enough b/c of the rain, but loved being inside watching it all happen.

please check out:

Jeff Haynes

http://jeffhaynesmusic.com/

and

todd Boston

http://www.toddboston.com/

drawing workshop at Nabarts

2011-06-10T08:58:00.000-07:00

i finally signed up for a workshop that i have been contemplating for years. the time was never right, or something. I am so happy that it worked out this time. 3 days of looking at things, trying out new materials, looking at books... I am incredibly inspired by the experience. I found out that i actually like charcoal (compressed) and adding wax to the mix can create areas of translucency, opacity, density and atmosphere.

I worked with Tim Hawkesworth and Lala. Slipping open books into my studio of artists, aerial views or looking at work with me. It was such a generous exchange. I'll be thinking about this for a long time. Reminding me again how necessary it is to be in the studio. in silence, attentive observation.

check it out:

http://drawingworkshops.com/

let them think twice

2011-04-28T08:43:00.000-07:00

these pools, that, though in forest, still reflect

the total sky almost without defect,

and like the flowers beside them, chill and shiver,

will like the flowers beside them soon be gone,

and yet not out by any brook or river,

but up by roots to bring dark foliage on.

the trees that have it in their pent up buds,

to darken nature and be summer woods-

let them think twice

before they use their powers

to blot out and drink up and sweep away

these flowery waters and these watery flowers

from snow that melted only yesterday.

spring pools

Robert Frost

spring has been so rainy and changeable here, we started installing the mural about 2 weeks ago, but the weather has been cold/hot/rainy and windy. yesterday Mike and I started mixing color. I love going through the mixing phase. It is always interesting to see what the internal response is- and how non verbal it is. Looking at gallons of pure color is really exciting. And I always remember going to fabric stores in Lancaster, laying color over color to find the combinations of dull and sharp to make into quilts. My color sensibility has definitely been influenced by the family quilts, handed down. Muted, dusty, worn but sophisticated, instinctive responses to unusual color combinations and dye lot changes.

I also planted some radishes, arugula and herbs in the garden that I am sharing with friends. so excited for greens and things. A couple of drawings.

For Japan

2011-03-16T06:34:00.000-07:00

http://www.savethechildren.org.au/

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2011/03/13/japan_earthquake_tsunami_relief_efforts

even a small donation will help the relief effort.

Noren in Naoshima

wall painting in Naoshima

Go'o Shrine by Hiroshi Sugimoto, Naoshima

Seto Inland Sea, Japan

what you sing to comes.

2011-02-04T06:34:00.000-08:00

i woke up last night around four, thinking about all of the work that i have been making, and planning my day. My early thoughts are always intertwined with students (i finished teaching at 9:30 last night.) - things I should've said, things I wish I had said... and always hoping to be better, more clear and insightful and articulate.

I am balancing many streams at the moment, cups in the studio, a big mosaic/mural, small drawings, small sculptures wanting to be made. I was leafing through a sketchbook from about 4 years ago, I can't believe how many of the thoughts, drawings and ideas have found their way into the world. I thought I couldn't draw then, I was so hard on myself, I have been putting the time in, and can feel the effects, like any practice. Honing, honing... I have always written or drawn in some form, keeping a record. It still amazes me to find things that I have tracked, and followed and dreamed about have a way of appearing, sneaking up on me. Reminding me to be careful what you ask for. Be prepared to receive it.

lucid maps of stillness

2011-01-14T14:28:00.000-08:00

"Words begin as description. They are prismatic, vehicles of hidden, deeper shades of thought. You can hold them up at different angles until the light bursts through in an unexpected color." Susan Brind Morrow

"Winter on the Colorado Plateau has not been arduous, only a thin cold without storms, a lucid map of stillness. Caught in the abrupt instant of its rising, our faces take the tangerine sun, our backs dissolve to silhouette in the brilliant dazzle of its incandescent beam. The nights come less as a smooth pause than as a steep, enduring purity of eye-blind dark. The mesas creak and stain in the frigid air audible only if I lay my ear to them. The colors in their flanks-- terra cotta, blood-red, salmon, vermilion-- bear the temperament of iron."

from "the Anthropology of Turquoise." by Ellen Meloy

I remember reading this to a friend while we were sitting in a truck in Philadelphia. This week I flew into and out of and back into snow covered landscapes, and thought of it again.

2011-01-04T11:22:00.000-08:00

research phase

r long, chinati foundation

odessa shed

ice flow maroon bells

sun shadow photo from http://3.bp.blogspot.com

Girl on boulder photo from http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net

all i want to do today is stay home and read books...

early january work piling up- lots of things cooking, new design work, a new semester to get ready for, and a 90 day yoga session to start. I love January, it always feels like the time to hunker down and get some thinking done... here are some of the things that I am looking at and thinking about.

what a semester

2010-12-23T08:34:00.000-08:00

Happy holidays. So happy that there is time to catch up on sleep and reading for a little while.

I'm in Chicago with my brother and his family for Christmas, the drive out was great, f-l-a-t, plenty of sky, sun and snow on the ground.

"the hardest thing in the world is to simplify your life. Its so easy to make it complex."

Yvon Chouinard

image from the George Nakashima workshop near New Hope Pa.

re entry

2010-09-06T14:58:00.000-07:00

some of my favorite shots, always changing streetscapes

re entry to Philly has been a little rough, but things are going well, now that I am back on schedule and through the first week of school. I love being back in the library and the studio.

work is flowing.

peace

the blue of distance

2010-08-15T17:37:00.000-07:00

"...we treat desire as a problem to be solved, address what desire is for and focus on that something and how to aquire it, rather than on the nature and the sensation of desire, though often it is the distance between us and the object of desire that fills the space in between with the blue of longing. I wonder sometimes whether with a slight adjustment of perspective it could be cherished as a sensation on its own terms, since it is as inherent to the human condition as blue is to distance. If you can look accrose the distance with out wanting to close it up, if you can own your own longing in the same way that you can own the beauty of that blue that you can never be possessed? For something of this longing will like the blue of distance, only be relocated, or assauged, by aquisition and arrival, just as the mountains cease to be blue when you arrive among them...

Simone Weil wrote to a friend on another continent "let us love this distance, which is thoroughly woven with friendship, since those who do not love each other are not separated" for Weil, love is the atmosphere that fills and colors the distance between herself and her friend. Even when that friend arrives at the doorstep, something remains impossibly remote: when you step forward to embrace them- your arms are wrapped around mystery, around the unknowable, around that which cannot be possessed. The far seeps even to the near. After all we hardly know our own depths." R. Solnit

thank you tokyo

2010-08-15T16:32:00.000-07:00

I'm down to the last couple of days in Japan, before heading back to philadelphia. I am staying with a friend in the Shimo-Kitazawa neighborhood. It is a kicky little place, lots of dogs being walked and little shops on every corner. It is smoldering here this morning, I'm about to head out for another day of Tokyo street life. It is so fun to be back here, when I got here after Toyama I was so excited- I remembered so much from the first week here. I'm on a quest for some art books, other than that, just taking it slowly enjoying it.

Yesterday I was looking for last minute things, and books, and found an interesting street in Naka Meguro. There is a little stream lined with trees in the middle of it, and some great bookstores and american vintage stores. I have been trying to find some japanese designed bags, and every I see something I like, it is american vintage or swedish. I can say that the buyers are great here. I love the selections, but I'm not paying tokyo prices for things that i can get at home.

I'm entering the pre flight time zone confusion. Tomorrow I will give my phone back to Charlie and then I will feel even more displaced, but looking forward to all of it. The last minute walks, shopping, packing, giving things away, the general spacyness that flying induces, and the arrival back into everything that is familiar. I will be able to read and understand signs again. I will not live out of a back pack for a little while. I am already plotting my return.

I will continue to post about Japan and my work, through the next couple of months. Time and memories are non linear, folding and layering into my life. I was really surprised when I first got here, at the memories that kept coming up from all phases of my life. My childhood, friends, people I've lost, and my friends whose lives are full of sadness and grace. It has been so interesting, maybe because I had the space and time for it to emerge.

This time has been like dipping into a pool of silence, cast in on myself in ways that I haven't been in a very long time. In a letter, a friend was talking about how traveling is like studio time, you are always confronted by the unknown, uncertainty and your own habits, strengths and weaknesses. I just felt like I wanted to pay attention to every moment with relaxed alertness. Partly because of the language barrier, and partly because the people that I met were so rare, beautiful, generous and fascinating. Because we spent much of our time in silence, the exchange was charged. I wanted to pay attention, to be ready for anything. I am so grateful for this time. It has given me so much.

"...most people are much more unusual, complicated, playful and creative then they have the time to express. play is the thing that we put on hold because we get distracted by other things... play is sort of a reminder of what it was like to be a kid... we never lose that in the end... I think its always there. I mean you carry your past inside of you, it's clear, so why should it disappear?"

Oliver Herring

if language were liquid

2010-08-12T19:23:00.000-07:00

it would be rushing in

instead here we are in a silence

more eloquent

than any word could ever be...

(s vega)

Staying at shige san's was a revelation. Again. Being here with 15 sentences of Japanese has been so fascinating- to see how I express myself, how I introduce myself and my work, how we communicate, or if words were necessary at all. Artists are such a prickly, sensitive bunch. I've been called finicky, persnickety and worse... But living and working with Shige san and Tanaka San was truly remarkable, I could feel myself reverting to a childhood experience of bilingual existence. My parents spoke another language, I understood the gist of it, the cadence, intonation, the sentence patterns. They spoke english to me, but my extended family usually did not. To be surrounded by 30-40 aunts, uncles and cousins wearing black and talking around you just changes everything. I could never fully relax, because who knew when the next half teasing question was going to come. I couldn't tell them apart sometimes and that was so emarrassing, so many boys and girls. You can bet they all knew my name. It was my first training in alert stillness, observation, trying to dissapear so I could watch and listen, understanding far more than I was capable of conveying. But I love asking questions, and getting surprising responses.

Being here has given me the gift of that early stillness and responsiveness. I am amazed by what a gesture can convey, what intelligence and humor are held in our bodies, hands and eyes. I know that Americans rely on eye contact much more than Japanese, and that my hosts are making great efforts to meet me and make me feel welcome and comfortable. It is a beautiful thing. I appreciate it immensely. But I also love that we can be silent together. That we can be present for each other, and share the task of wadding pots, loading a kiln, chopping vegetables, making tea, and just take our time. Not feel pressured to try to say it all.

I spent 3 days wadding pots with Tanaka san, loading a glaze firing of Shige san's work. I learned so much about him handling his work. Wadding is a refractory clay used to keep glazed surfaces from sticking. it leaves a scar, another kind of record. We used the lick and stick method of wadding not glue. You make a pea sized ball, lick it, stick it to the foot ring, after you have 7 on the pot. you dip the balls into sand, and then place the pot into the one below it.

At times it was so boring, so quiet. At times I was intensely focused on not breaking anything, the pottery is incredibly fragile (at this stage, green ware, slipped and glazed) that time flew by. Shige san does not bisque fire his work, I love the rhythm of it. Make a pot, trim, slip, and glaze. then start loading the kiln. The pace was so slow, by american standards, excruciating at times. But liberating too, we could take as much time as the work needed. when the fragility is so close to the surface you have to slow down. I did not break anything. I got to feel the heft, cross section and surface of 100's of pots this week, from the studio to the kitchen. It's strong work, rugged, precise, imperfect, casual, sensitve and demanding. Much like Shige san.

water

2010-08-04T21:05:00.000-07:00

since heading south, I have been on rivers or beaches almost daily. I went to the aquarium in Osaka and got to pet sting rays. they are awesome. I cannot stop thinking about the gulf coast. Time will tell the extent of the devastation to the ecosystem of that area. We are all connected by water.

" pay attention and respect to all sentient beings."

on listening

2010-07-26T18:40:00.000-07:00

one of the great pleasures of Mashiko was meeting the incredible people who live there. I will write about 2 of them today. Yuko san and Ono san live in a traditional farmhouse, have a pet rooster and know how to throw a party. The night I arrived was cold and rainy, I got lost, got the wrong train, was starting to panic... but when I called ono san he put me at ease. "i am waiting for you." His studio is attached to the house with a beautiful irori, charcoal fire pit. there were plates of food surrounding the fire, in all sizes and styles of pottery. there were a bunch of potters and artists there with us, their faces in the half light of the kitchen were beautiful. we were like the potato eaters, hunkered down around a focal point of fire and food.

Ono san loves music and has an amazing stereo system with huge speakers, he played a great mix of rock and roll and jazz that night, I remember Cannonball Atterly and Janis Joplin, maybe some stones and miles davis? maybe... as the night got later and later we switched from sake to tea to coffee and cake. (3 ish?) then finally a bath and bed. I loved how we all started to relax, sing, listen, snack and tease each other.

Watching Ono san listening to music is a real treat. He can't talk, he sits back in his chair, eyes closed, listening with complete attention. it made me so happy. when i was a child, I didn't go to preschool, I hung out with my mom and listened to records and the radio. We had an old record player that I could stack up with 45's or 78's. I would put a pillow on the edge of the speaker and listen to music for hours.

I have started to listen to music in the studio, when trimming pots or doing things that allows for drifting and half listening. But I, too, am incapable of really listening to music and talking or reading at the same time. I brought a cd of unacompanied violin suites by bach back to them when I returned. We listened to it for hours, I remember falling asleep around the irori with the cd still playing, and finally crawling off to bed. Ono san had a recording of the same music by another artist, so we listened to that one too, hearing the difference in breath, pacing and interpretation. this was one of the highlights of my trip.

i hope you're keeping some kind of record

2010-07-26T17:55:00.000-07:00

"I'm just looking for a moment that I recognize and love

... just wait and be receptive in the silences, you mustn't want, don't think even...

catch the essence, better to soak it up, let it overwhelm you...

lucidity doesn't come with words all the time."

~ Brigitte Lacombe via Charlie Rose

I love looking at photography and taking pictures, I started taking self portraits in Kyoto, I did it on the last road trip too, more as a kind of a joke, and a way of keeping a record. It's so curious that in every culture- at land marks, temples, museums -the grand canyon we need to have pictures of ourselves there. Why? I will sometimes take a leaf or a pebble as a way to trigger a memory. Once in a while I will ask someone to photograph me with my camera, but invariably the pictures are terrible, or not what I want...

Most of the pictures are really bad, but so interesting. I watched a guy taking a picture of his girlfriend in front of one of the largest bronze sculptures of the buddha in Kamakura. (of infinite compassion)... He dropped the camera-- they thought it was broken, and everything in that moment changed. her smiling for the camera turned into whining and nagging and then back again to smiling for the camera when they decided it was fine. It was a great moment, so telling of how we live, how we think we can treat each other and yet have this blindness to it.

I think that what I have been through by choice and circumstance has totally changed the way that I feel about life and love and work. I still feel heart broken sometimes, but I hope that I can recognize love and compassion and absurdity too. life is so crazy. What I love about photography is getting to take a longer look at what I see in any given moment. I have always taken it seriously- it is part of my internal development of how sensitive I can become to light, composition and feel. I'm thinking about my work so much right now, how my work is going to feel. I have been overwhelmed, so much is happening that I can't articulate, which is also strange, because I write as a way of working through everything.

Maybe it's just this extended period of solitude again. Cannot escape my head, trying to accept that things will emerge when the time is right. Trying not to just be in survival mode, but open and curious. I think that we all want revelation and transcendence, to be acknowledged. how we get there is a different story.

storm of stars

2010-07-26T17:35:00.000-07:00

I know the truth

forget all other truths

no need for anyone

on this earth to struggle.

look it is evening

look it is nearly night

what will you say?

poets, lovers, generals.

the wind is level now,

the air is wet with dew

the storm of stars in the sky

will turn to quiet.

and soon, all of us

will sleep beneath the earth

we, who never let each other

sleep above it.

Marina Tsvetaeva

japan is an island

2010-07-22T19:00:00.000-07:00

I have been spending the last week or so in the southern part of Honshu, in Osaka and Wakayama. I am finally at the edges, and on the Seto sea, on ferries, and beaches. I am so happy to be near rivers and oceans during this heat wave. I joined this group of friends for a couple of days, sharing yoga and meals together. They made Osaka for me. (l-r) Momoe, Emi, and Nanako.

doors

2010-07-12T06:51:00.001-07:00

i have always liked doors, old barn doors with home made slot latches, skinny screen doors that slapped closed behind you, the squeaky wooden doors in the house that i grew up in, especially the door to the attic because it had a cast iron handle that i could barely open. The door would swell in humid weather, but I could hear my brother announcing his imaginary baseball games, and I always wanted to hang out with him. I distinctly remember the white doors in my piano teachers house, because of the cut glass door knobs that were always cool to the touch. Gaston Bachelard talks about fingertip memory. " If the house is the first universe for its young children, the first cosmos, how does its space shape all subsequent knowledge of other spaces, of any larger cosmos? Is that house a 'group of organic habits' or even something deeper, the shelter of the imagination itself?" from the Poetics of Space

the doors here are fantastic, I have been taking tons of pictures of doors, door handles, and door frames. I think that I could build a house around one good door.

when my grandparents house was torn down a few years ago, I asked my dad to see if he could get a door for me- an attic door, a closet door- anything. He brought back a cast iron door latch and handle with a thumb depressor, he owes me a door. (he doesn't know this yet) but he is the best collaborator- we always have fun building things together. maybe that will be the door that inspires the house, who knows.

what are you doing this summer? what are you looking at and thinking about?

tomorrow I am going to do yoga with Nanako, we met for a yoga class tonight. She is teaching yoga, and studying ayurveda in Osaka.

other things...

go to the beach

whale watching

stand under a waterfall

climb mt fujji? maybe,

drink more tea with mochi

daily yoga

daily drawing

daily photograph

I am really enjoying the slow time, and being able to notice all of the little things, I miss working though, and my studio- with my work under my hands. I am drawing a little bit, thinking alot. Feeling really grateful for the opportunity to experience Japan in this way. the rainy season has been beautiful and hot. I walk through city neighborhoods and temple grounds in sluicing rain, stopping for cold noodles or iced green tea. The pace of life is lovely.

week 3 signs and shop murals

2010-06-25T06:24:00.000-07:00

out to lunch

these images are of garage doors that close over shops surrounding temples. there are many tiny galleries, cafes, and flower shops selling all kinds of art and hand made things. I have recently become interested in the food trucks in Philadelphia, because they are ubiquitous, and seem to have so much potential. These shops feed the same curiosity and pleasure. It can be really simple. One thing I've noticed is that most of the owners have a workshop in the back, or are working on something at the counter, it feels comfortable.

floating away week 2

2010-06-19T08:25:00.000-07:00

I have been in and out of wireless range for weeks now, when I have it I am so tired that I end up writing and drawing before going to sleep. I wanted to post some pictures of the Lucie Rie exhibition that I went to at Tokyo National Art Center.

I had just started getting interested in pottery when I found the Hans Coper monograph at the Lancaster Library. I loved his work, and started to read about L.R. too. Ten years later, I was in nyc with my sister Elaine, in a flea market type store, and I recognized a tiny brown and white cup with sgraffito. It had a loose chip, but was intact, and I was able to buy it for about $4.00.

I was so excited to find this piece. (She had an account with Macy's for awhile.)

Seeing this retrospective was lovely, and it was beautifully presented. You could see the full arc of her exploration and development as an artist, complete with letters, glaze notebooks, photographs of her studio and home, an interview with David Attenborough and a korean full moon jar that Bernard Leach had lent her. Her work is so thin, has such intensity of purpose, and the bowls feel buoyant, like they might just float away.

food, inns

2010-06-02T21:52:00.000-07:00

Last year I read a Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit. It's not a book that you can just read through and forget about, I keep thinking about it, I gave it to a friend just before I left. Getting lost in tokyo is a rite of passage, it seems, and I have been enjoying wandering around, in no rush to get anywhere, just looking at things, and practicing Japanese. Here are some of the highlights.

I forgot the before photo, but the soba noodles are so delish...

vegetarian curry and all you can eat naan, but I could only finish this one

rainy sunday

even the trees get wrapped

back staircase at taito

interior window at taito

I found this stone wall outside of the museum near the Emperor's grounds

display in antique store specializing in African artifacts

miso at Takashimaya...

week 1

2010-05-28T04:49:00.001-07:00

Nakamura Ryuji

Ito Toyo

I've been in Tokyo for a week, the first exhibition that I saw was right up my alley. The work seemed to focus on space, scale and light... either using light to enhance the work, or using the work to show the effects of light. I loved looking at the approaches that each architect/group took. I have only showed 2 installations, take a look at the web site to get a deeper look.

Where is Architecture?

http://www.momat.go.jp/english/artmuseum/where_is_architecture/index.html#outline

tokyo

2010-05-26T02:11:00.000-07:00

the first day was really hot, I got lost trying to find my hostel in Asakusa, and found the perfect tiny ryokan instead, tonight might be my last night here. But every day I keep extending my stay... I like it because it is Japanese style. Tatami mats and futons on the floor.

the weather has been cool and rainy ever since. like home.

the flight out

2010-05-25T15:06:00.000-07:00

I love the space right after taking off and just before landing before the clouds obscure everything.

circling

2010-05-24T02:18:00.000-07:00

"Sometimes, when there’s a faint stirring in the bushes as birds settle for sleep, when the sun rests for a moment on the rim of a hill and the heat stands still before it... And I come face to face with what I have learned: our lives are a spiral and though we circle and circle, we never quite come back to where we began." Judith Kitchen Time and Direction

I have been in Lancaster for the past 4 days visiting family and friends, buying gifts and getting ready to leave for Japan for the summer. Leaving always makes me see things more clearly.