Back into the water

Terttu came to visit yesterday!! It was SO GOOD to see her again. It's been way too long. Years! These are the little stickies I got for her in Seoul, so that she can study hard at Yale when she starts grad school next month. I think it's hilarious that we are both in CT right now, which we both find to be a super weird state. I love that she comes out to see me at residencies when she can. I was so out of it and too busy talking to her to take pics of both of us, but it was really great to have someone come and see what I've been up to and also all the hanji from Korea - she gave me some good ideas for directions to go in, which felt really freeing, b/c I had been so stuck on the directions that I thought I should go in. So now I'm all itching to be onto the next bunch of work - I'm two days behind the schedule I made.

Part of this comes from some serious administrative struggles since I'm now entering a give and take phase w/other people, and not everyone values efficiency and keeping deadlines. I am trying not to let that poison my work, but it's hard. It was good, though, to talk to Terttu about all of my major concerns. Near the end of her visit, she was like, "so, what else are you worried about?" But we had taken care of most of it. Mostly, I am just scared of making crap and wasting my time (not just my daily time but my time on earth). CLEARLY, someone needs to have a vacuum taken to her head so that she can clean up the neurotic dust bunnies. Instead, she spent the day downstairs weaving this and making lots of hanji dust.

This book is waiting for the one before it to get done. I'm hoping tomorrow will be the last day for these and then I can get to bigger work, fun stuff, for the second show this fall. I'm listening to Milli Vanilli and re-listening to Alain de Botton talking about things like how we live for the first time in an era where we worship ourselves and not things that are outside ourselves, or bigger that ourselves, or not human. Yesterday, I read a super depress-o article about our misogynist culture. Oh, and it's now crazy hot and humid, as August usually is. But otherwise, I am grateful for the time and the studio. And for the PVA that Terttu got for me in NYC! Total lifesaver. I loved being able to talk to her about being outside of the US and how that really brings out the differences in Americans and non-Americans - that idea of the individual as first priority, rather than the community as most important. So it was good to process that part of what I had learned in Korea with her. And also to eat lots of fruit.