Kid is a mule. I won’t do it goes from verbal to gravitational pull connected to the earth in one sweeping motion. I don’t blame him. He’s his father’s son.
A guy at work, who is genuinely brilliant at anything to do with handcrafted labor, almost always says “That’s a good question,” when I ask him about how I should go about a certain process. He says it with a tone that says he hasn’t thought about it before or he doesn’t know, but that man knows. What he’s doing (at least in my interpretation) is inviting me into the work of listing out possible moves and choosing a path forward. It’s remarkable.
Fill your bowl to the brim
and it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife
and it will blunt.
Chase after money and security
and your heart will never unclench.
Care about people's approval
and you will be their prisoner.
Do your work, then step back.
The only path to serenity.
(Tao Te Ching)
A Steve Juras piece in our home. He had a sign painter, the sort of person who paints on grocery store windows, put very Juras language onto large sheets of paper. How good is that?
Zinnias are growing well. No hummingbirds at the feeder yet — I think they’ll find the feeder eventually. There’s a mourning dove that coos outside my window every morning.
I stand in the doorway to the kitchen. My boys curl around the corner wielding two sawed-off nerf shotguns, each loaded with 8 deadly projectiles. They smile at me. I remain nonplussed.
I look over their heads towards the front of our apartment. I tilt my head, raise my arm, and point towards the windows. They both turn their little bodies away from me and look.
I close the kitchen door, locking them in the other room, because they are dumb dumbs and I am and merely dumb.
Playing with Light
The boys and I live in an apartment that is filled with light. I am grateful for the architect, whoever they were 100 years ago, that added so many windows to the unit.
We don’t own the building, which is fine but also a bummer because I am always looking for ways to modify whatever space I’m in, be it a cubicle, metal shop, or home. If I own a space then I can add, move, remove, or leave alone any of the structure. And when I don’t own a space then my options are not necessarily limited so much as they are different, and it’s up to me to be curious about what I can do and then make moves.
Ok. Back to light.
I cannot add or remove any of the windows, but I can play with how the light dances with the room. This takes my mind to Tadao Ando, a Japanese architect that is very thoughtful about light and shadow.
Isn’t that wild? Feels cold, austere, like a myth from the future. Here’s a collage of how light and shadow show up in Ando’s buildings:
My friend Steve pointed me towards Ando. I saw a few photos then took a week-long adventure into whatever I could find, a path that led to me thinking about my apartment with the boys, our windows, and light as a material.
So I started to play.
It’s a good start. I like the direction. I’m working on leaving any analyzation at the door — just make the work as it feels right, put it up, live with it, make 10 more variations if it seems like something is there.
You were wondering about the zinnias. Me too. I looked and took a photo. Now we are each updated.
