My first tutorial left me feeling interested in how objects could spin a narrative. That week, I decided to experiment with water and glass paints to marble porcelain dishes and mugs and see what kind of art it would create. Here’s the video of the whole process:
At that time I added the touches of gold simply because they felt right when I was creating the pieces. But later, I felt they reminded me of ‘Kintsugi’, the Japanese art of mending pottery using gold instead of throwing the broken pieces away. It kind of emphasizes the breakage and subsequent repair as something to be proud of, as if it contributes to the history of the object. I still don’t know too much about this art but I intend to delve into it further.
I also ran into this quote by Errol Flynn, “It isn’t what they say about you, it’s what they whisper”. I didn’t know the context of the quote but to me it brought to mind the unrelenting commentary of the audience on a celebrity’s life.
And then I began to think of objects having a history or a story to tell. I began to imagine pieces of old hand painted dishes, broken apart and their fragments collected; each fragment telling its story in a whisper, except in those fragments you would never be able to make out the entire story the piece was trying to tell. It inspired me to create these two pieces using marbled porcelain, broken apart and pieced together randomly on MDF board.
Again, since the 2 girls gallery exhibition was all about experimentation I decided to take one step further out of my comfort zone and create a video out of the process. I found the following quote, and thought it had that feeling of pieced together narratives.
“To hear never-heard sounds,
To see never-seen colors and shapes,
To try to understand the imperceptible
Power pervading the world;
To fly and find pure ethereal substances
That are not of matter
But of that invisible soul pervading reality.
To hear another soul and to whisper to another soul;
To be a lantern in the darkness
Or an umbrella in a stormy day;
To feel much more than know.
To be the eyes of an eagle, slope of a mountain;
To be a wave understanding the influence of the moon;
To be a tree and read the memory of the leaves;
To be an insignificant pedestrian on the streets
Of crazy cities watching, watching, and watching.
To be a smile on the face of a woman
And shine in her memory
As a moment saved without planning.”