The space between
On art that connects us
The other day, I picked Aya up from daycare and drove her to an artist’s house nearby. I met the artist when my friend and I took her koinobori workshop more than a year ago. My friend and I were both new moms, taking the afternoon to create these Japanese fish kites that traditionally hang outside of houses for Children’s Day, May 5. The artist guided us as we outlined the fish on heavy paper, then colored them with watercolors and pastels.
I remember the way I focused in that workshop, just the three of us under a fabric shade canopy behind the artist’s house. I always loved drawing and painting but did it less and less after high school. When I was young, I thought being “good” mattered so much. By third grade, I already thought I didn’t draw well enough to be an artist. By high school, I didn’t think that I could take studio art classes. Even if they had no prerequisites, how could I dare to place myself into a class with people who were so much more skilled? I was making art all the time, though. I collaged, drew and lettered signs, decorated my clothes and shoes, wrote stories with friends that I illustrated in MS Paint, and arranged decorations on my walls with as much energy as I’ve ever given a writing project.
In the artist’s backyard, I ringed my koi’s black pupils with green, yellow, and pink. I both did and didn’t care if the results were good. I wanted the arrangement of colors to please my eye, but mostly, once I fell into a state of focus, I wanted to commune with the materials, to gently drag the watercolor pigment and smudge the pastels. I remember the clear rasp of charcoal against the paper as I outlined the fish. I chose it because the artist offered a box of charcoals as we worked, telling us that she had been enjoying them lately. I welcomed the experience.
This week, we went to the artist’s house because she was planning to move and I’d bought a poster from her moving sale. I expected to pick it up at the door, but she invited us in, offered Aya a snack of roasted satsumaimo cut into cubes. We visited her studio, a room with windows on two sides, letting in the bright afternoon light, which bounced off the white walls and white drop cloth spread across the floor. Everywhere I looked in the house, I saw something magical: a collection of peach and cherry stones pressed into clay half-spheres, like reimagined fruits; a vintage Japanese music book sitting on the piano with bunnies on the cover; fan-shaped dried leaves hanging alongside paintings on the wall; a collection, a herd, of pinecones on the porch; “oh, a doggy,” Aya said, pointing to a small dog sculpture on the kitchen counter that the artist’s elementary-school-aged son had made.
I love houses like this, bubbling with art and life. I have a catalog of them in my mind that goes all the way back to childhood. They matter to me, other people’s semi-private, domestic acts of art.
At the artist’s house, I took a photo of Aya sitting at the dining table. Behind her is one of the artist’s paintings, a large-scale canvas with a scene that looks like the ocean floor: deep blue above and pale, glowing colors below, their shapes suggesting swaying seaweed and coral. In one hand, Aya holds a red, heart-shaped mylar balloon on a stick; in the other, a black crayon. In front of her sits a glass of water and a spring-green crayon. Beneath the sprout of her toddler ponytail, her expression is serious, eyes looking to the side. Only later did I realize the crayon on the table read MAGIC and the one in her hand, partly covered, read MA.
間, ma — A pause, an emptiness in space. Made up of the characters for gate 門 and sun 日. A space for the light to shine through. The silence between two claps. The grasses rustling in a Ghibli film.
I had accidentally captured an image of a powerful little creature wielding the elements.
I almost didn’t write a newsletter this week. When I started this project, my hopes for it were small. I wanted to write a mini essay during the time Aya was in daycare each Friday, at least four paragraphs long. But as the weeks went by and I surprised myself by being able to do more, my desires grew, too. I wanted each piece to feel like a real essay with room to sprawl and connect across distance. These take time, need both thought and silence to develop. They rise from their Friday containers, filling all the space they can find.
At the same time, I’m feeling tired and sad and horrified by the state of the world. Every day as I think about how to teach my child to notice and honor the everyday magic around us, I see images of Palestinian children dying in Gaza. My writing tends towards small moments — the birds and lizards in our neighborhood, the sparks of connection and misunderstanding between people, their frustrating and beautiful idiosyncracies. I really believe that paying close attention and constantly moving towards openness matters, and can be radical over time, when we do it together. But sometimes the small just feels small, ineffectual.
I take a pause, look around my apartment. There is a creamer pitcher shaped like a bird, made by Linda Hsiao, who was displaced from her home and studio by the Eaton Fire. A letterpress print of a crocodile in a red shirt by Alex Carter, who lost her home in the same fire. Paintings and prints by Evan’s great-grandfather, who was incarcerated during World War II. Washi paper tea canisters. A felt-ball trivet from Trader Joe’s as microwave cosy. A ceramic mikan and hedgehog I made in classes at Sooki Studio, next to a ceramic cat head by Lili Todd, another local artist displaced by the fire. A perler-bead Totoro by my friend Nicole. Aya’s toy kitchen from a neighbor’s yard sale, covered in stickers. A stool shaped like a turtle from my friend Susie’s childhood home, where her parents ran a flower shop. I’ve made the kind of living space I love, surrounded by evidence of other people.
Every week, I ask myself what is the point of art, and I have many answers, lots of doubt and conviction. At the moment, it’s this — evidence of other people alongside me, caring about beauty, the living world, the quiet moments of communing with the materials, working through their own doubts long enough to make something that I receive as a gift, regardless of whether I physically possess it in my space.
You meet a magical little creature in the bright light of afternoon and she hands you the crayons. What will you do next?
Journaling prompt:
Write about a living space that moved you.
A few things I loved this week:
The artist is Shizuka Kusayanagi. Check out her artwork and LA-based workshops here!
“The Time,” Naomi Shihab Nye: “Yesterday someone said, ‘It gets late so early.’ / I wrote it down. I was going to do something with it. / Maybe it is a title and this life is the poem.”
“Girlhood Exists in Palestine. You Just Have to Dig Under the Rubble to Find it.” by Haya / A Daughter of Pearl: “By the end of August, over 11,000 Palestinians were injured, and 3000 were dead. Wiped from the health ministry, never to be defended by international law, only to be grieved by their surviving family if there were any left. I wondered how many of the 3000 were 12-year-old girls, if they were nervous about starting middle school like me, and if they listened to One Direction, did they bicker with their sisters? What color nail polish did they use? What was the difference between a 12 year old girl in Palestine and a 12 year old girl in America?”