what a semester

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

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

"...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

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

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

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

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

"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

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

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

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

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

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

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...