|
For Proust, it was all about the madeleines. For me it is unquestionably strawberry jam. During my childhood, I lived in a five story concrete apartment block, number 82, in a vast complex of anonymous buildings in a corner of Seoul, Korea. I still remember that it was slightly humid as I walked home from the bus stop, although I can’t remember whether I was wearing my favorite pair of mustard colored corduroys. The entrance to our section of the building was a pair of heavy glass doors, and only one side opened. On that day I pulled open the door and was hit by the smell of strawberries. It was a concentration of an intense fruity strawberry scent with an undercurrent of sweetness, like caramel. We lived on the top floor, with no elevator, so it was five flights of stairs to get to our apartment; ten half sections of steps broke up the trip with 180 degree turns. I remember that the strawberry scent became stronger and stronger as I climbed, but it never occurred to me that it could be originating from our family’s kitchen. I was 9 years old. I rang the bell and when my mother opened the door, I was hit in full force by sweet, sticky, strawberry-ness, a total immersion, which included all the heat and moisture from the kitchen that comes from cooking fruit down and boiling the jars to preserve homemade jam. Deleuze talks about the "rhizome" in his writings, particularly in A Thousand Plateaus. It is, as I am beginning to understand, an idea about multiplicities: interconnections that are non-hierarchical chains that may not be directly joined but belong as a component of a greater whole. How does this connect with strawberry jam? I am an American living in London, grateful but displaced from much of what was familiar while I go to graduate school. Encountering a new culture, living with a different syntax of my native language, and struggling with the strain of lockdowns plus disruptions due to the Covid19 pandemic. I climb the five flights of stairs to my apartment, even though there is an elevator, and they are also divided into ten half sections with 180 degree turnings. A spoonful of strawberry jam, savored slowly; 40 years drop away. That morning, at the market, my mother had acquired the bargain priced boxes of overripe strawberries and had spent hours washing, then trimming, then cooking down all the fruit. It was a labor of love. 
0 Comments
I just found the following post, hidden, buried in digital ephemera of my own website. It was written just a year before my husband died suddenly and my world was upended. I don't recall writing it, or why. I've learned a lot about fear since then, it happens when you look into an abyss. I post it as an offering for anyone who wrestles with fear. February 4, 2016 It is that unnamed thing that lurks just under my rib cage and travels up while I least expect it, often while am happily working in my studio. So, what does an artist who has to wade through skeins of fear do to tame the unnamed fear? Name it, so as to slowly unravel it. Work fast enough to keep any paralysis from over-analysis at bay. Chirp my optimism out loud so as to keep redirecting my brain. Meditate. Pray. People don’t realize that I choose, every day, to be positive. To say “yes”. To feel the fear and move forward anyway. Sometimes I can barely keep my thinking in a straight line. The greatest gift I received was the observation made by another—that before you can have compassion for another, you must engage in compassion for yourself. It’s much harder than it sounds. Real compassion is not feeling sorry for yourself, or being narcissistic or letting yourself of the hook. Real compassion is accepting who you are at that moment: accepting your flaws, seeing your gifts and acknowledging the choices you have made up to the present moment—easy and hard—and accepting them as lessons for the future. Compassion is choosing to recognize the value of a thing, person, yourself, even when it is beyond your understanding.   The novel coronavirus, Covid-19, has been declared a pandemic and university facilities are being shut down. We don't know when the studios will reopen, and are packing what we can to take home. I cannot not pack everything, I do not know when we will have access again. Left on my studio wall are the traceries of the paintings and drawings I have been working on. In some ways, more than the work itself, the wall declares: Romi was here.
 What do I mean by proposing that big shifts are usually camouflaged? Looking at the above piece, anyone familiar with my work over the years could easily think, "Wow, what a big shift, what the heck happened?" And in fact, I actually thought that myself...isn't it funny that artists are the last ones to identify the patterns in their own work? But after looking at photographs of pieces I'd been working on, I realized a "Big Shift" in my work had already taken place a couple of weeks before, it had simply been camouflaged by the use of familiar materials and palette. Life, outside the studio, is the same...the big shifts are usually camouflaged.  A lot of my non-artist friends ask me how I come up with ideas for my work. Perhaps it was easier when I was focusing on ceramic vessels? But here's a prime example of how ideas intersect, or sometimes encounter each other and align. While reading Carlo Rovelli's book, Reality is Not What it Seems (the journey to quantum gravity), I encountered the above illustration on the upper left addressing packets of space, and later reading about the granularity of time. I have stopped considering it a coincidence that I picked up this particular book at Daunt books, a travel bookstore of all places, during mid January when I was wrestling with how time is illusory, and how memories puncture through time and space.
 The trip to Oxford's Museum of Natural History and the Pitt Rivers Museum coalesced like some metaphysical experiment. One minute you're at Victoria Station in bustling London, and the next you find yourself in a quiet university town, complete with fantastical Harry Potter vignettes and hidden university courtyards. Another metaphysical twist was encountering Cliona patera, also known as Neptune's Goblet, a sea sponge thought to have become extinct in the early 1900s--only to pop back up on history's timeline, a hundred years later, in 2011. Oxford's specimen captured my attention with its stippled surface, exposed fissures and its interior cellular structure revealed by erosion and punctuated time. Three days after encountering Neptune's Goblet, I photographed the piece below:   Well Reader, I am sharing my take on a week in the art world, or rather the small world of this particular artist caught between ARTnews and life while still adapting to postgraduate studies... News, Sunday February 2, 2020: Please see Saturday’s news. Meanwhile: The Yankee artist starts the morning sipping tea and reading up on being a “Badass” and “how to stop doubting her greatness”. Red lipstick and a trip to the British Museum ensue, where she is moved by several prints and drawings shown from the Alexander Walker collection bequest: Edda Redouf’s Hidden Energy; Victor Pasmore’s spiral drawing, Untitled 1981; a Peter Doig etching, Blotter; and especially Brice Marden’s Zen Study 5. Upon returning home, she endeavors to faithfully execute her last "Week in the Art World" diary entry while fulfilling her weekly horoscope’s charge to “borrow some of Diogenes’ attitude in the coming weeks” by experimenting “with being brassy, saucy and sassy”. God bless America! Or should it be God save the Queen?  Brice Marden, "Zen Study 5" Well Reader, I am sharing my take on a week in the art world, or rather the small world of this particular artist caught between ARTnews and life while still adapting to postgraduate studies... News, Saturday February 1, 2020: Apparently there is no art news that happens on this Saturday, as artists and art organizations have better things to do than to make news on the weekend for ARTnews.com. This may, however, change on Monday. Meanwhile: Working in studio, experimenting with making an obsidian mirror, the Yankee artist frustratingly comes to the conclusion that she has no idea how to proceed. A playfully ornate drawing, with illustrated quote, from the esteemed Pakistani artist, S. Subzwari, comes to mind: F*** this s**t  Obsidian mirror, British Museum Well Reader, I am sharing my take on a week in the art world, or rather the small world of this particular artist caught between ARTnews and life while still adapting to postgraduate studies... News, Friday January 31, 2020: World Health Organization declares Coronavirus a public health emergency and Art Basel Hong Kong is likely affected; Los Angeles County Museum receives $50 million pledge for new campus; Dali sculptures and etchings brazenly stolen in Sweden. Meanwhile: The Yankee artist wakes to find that she is thankfully not hung-over after attending an art party at Rasheed Araeen's Shamiyana. Indeed, she is gleeful—for even though it was only 3 glasses of wine, she was definitely a bit giggly and the hangover probability was high for such a lightweight. At the end of the day however, much to her chagrin, she realizes that her English cohorts must be feeling depressed about the official end of the UK’s membership in the EU. She feels like a total dolt for not realizing this sooner. Damn Yankee.  Well Reader, I am sharing my take on a week in the art world, or rather the small world of this particular artist caught between ARTnews and life while still adapting to postgraduate studies... News, Thursday January 30, 2020: “Head of Coffee” job posting at Tate museum causes a stir; Research reveals Pompeii eruption vitrified sleeping brain. Meanwhile: Venturing out into the unknown, aka an "Art Party" hosted by artist Rasheed Araeen at Shamiyaana in London, the Yankee artist is grateful for her accompanying MFA cohorts. With the onset of great food, great company and unexpectedly overflowing glasses of red wine, she reflects over the course of the evening on art as social practice, the prospect of starting a foundation, as well as the delights of Bollywood style dancing at bus stops.  Photo credit: Shanzay Subzwari |
Author
Hi, I'm Romi. I'm an American artist who lives & works in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I have the amazing opportunity to live in London while working on a MFA program in painting and decided to blog about the experience. So here we go! Archives
February 2021
Categories
|
RSS Feed