New Mission:  Becoming a Woman, Eventually

These days my obsession has been nothing else. Ever since my mother and I had a landmark conversation about who in my social circle was a woman and who wasn't yet (me), I have thought about nothing else when dressing up. Just a year ago I was lamenting that the low-20s were passing me by, and I still wanted to be a lithe young girl. How quickly the rules of attraction change.

I asked k, "Am I a woman?"

K: "I think you are still too thin to be a woman."

(Meaning, I suppose, that I have no curves.)

K: "You could take a risk and put on weight everywhere."

Unfortunately I put on weight on my face first, so I will not be taking his advice anytime soon.

Although I do see his point. I'm 1.53m with tiny bones: tiny ribs, tiny hipbones, tiny hands and feet. Being thin on top of being short makes me look like I'm 14 when I wear t-shirts and sneakers (reason that I don't wear either). Even when I dress up, people think I'm 20 at most. Good when I eventually age, bad for when I'm in a leading/teaching role. So I turn to makeup, but it seems that makeup is not enough to make me a woman.

But I don't think it's entirely curves or makeup. It's confidence, it's a quiet being. Finally, it has a lot to do with clothes and hair, and accessories.

Francoise Hardy: a woman because of confidence

A woman because of that watch, and the lack of any other silly accessory

When I was still working daily at seen, I dressed up to meet magazine editors and suppliers. But these days as a freelance artist, I have regressed into hippie skirts, flats and headbands. Maybe what it'd take to slowly become a woman is give up the excessive accessory, exchange the slouchy cloth totebag for a substantial arm-bag, and wear a serious watch.

So yesterday I consciously searched for a substantial bag to carry over my arm. Then I was complaining about how heavy it was.

K: "Real women don't complain."

Maybe someday I will give up this silly exercise of Becoming a Woman. But I do think it is about time to look for a new refinement.



Synaesthesia, at the Substation

Ceriph put together a matchmaking project between artists and writers. We would be assigned a text and come up with a typographic work based on it. I said yes, but "no vulgarities please, because I get awkward with those."

My work never shows up well in photographs because I like them faint and close-up. So if you drop by the substation and find my piece, go up close to find the hidden message.

Other pieces I liked: based purely on the artwork.

 by Winnie Goh, who also founded Ceriph

 by Speakcryptic

 by Xin Jie, whose work reminds me of my own

 

 Izyanti from two batches down

 Lau! When I walked in i knew this was hers, the treatment is very typical of her. She likes doing handson, crafty typography. This is carbon transferred onto tracing paper.

And Jonathan aka zxerokool, whose work complimented Jon Gresham's style very well.

Overall I think the pieces communicated the individual artists' pet styles more than the written pieces. Which was one of the dilemmas working on this for me. While I wanted to purely translate Desiree's poem into visuals, I was affected by the need to represent myself truly in this gallery of artists, which includes people like Eeshaun and MessyMsxi. And that affects the creative process, makes it impure somehow. 

I wouldn't say all the pieces captured the essence of the texts completely. There was definitely room for deeper inspection of the literature. But overall I think the matching of artists to writers took care of the basic style match; flashy artists with flashy writers, risque Mojoko with Magritte, and subdued artists with sensitive pieces. 

I hope this exercise happens again. Art can exist in its separate forms, purely colour and line, or purely text. But when put together, they create something new, and affirm the presence of each other. Almost always I am only able to create a drawing because I came up with a written line first. It's that line of words that becomes a picture in my head. And when I write, of course it goes the other way round. I see things in shapes and they fall into alphabets on their way down.

 Time for more muses. Spring colours, face painting, a little more rock-disco than usual.

Colours:

I'm a person who wears a lot of grey and black, but did you know that I am obsessed with a few other colours?

RED/ORANGE: my room is full of red accents. I didn't manage to get all the red in this one photo.

 

From the left, clockwise: clog from Malacca, flat pouch from Hongkong, cup from Tokyo, flowers from k from Feb'10, pepper grinder from Vietnam, clay pig from Vietnam, tin carousel from ann-m from China, knitting yarn, Origami book, scissors, wool hat, OPI nail polish from suning, Accessorize scarf, apple bell, Holga camera, strawberry foam hair curler.

NAVY: Not just any kind of blue, but the kind that can be mistaken for black. 

 

 From top: Marc by Marc Jacobs zip pouch from Dawn, brandless nail polish, OPI suede in navy, Face Shop nail polishes in two different shades of navy, ribbon from Holland Village, Bysi skirt and belt, Agnes b dog tag necklace.

TURQUOISE: Again, not in this photograph: my umbrella, makeup remover, and a dozen other things in this minty green shade that I happen to pick up. I'm not a Tiffany box kind of girl, but I gravitate to this fresh, watery color because it's not quite blue, not quite green, and not pastel either.

 

 Too many things to list.

 

 But this is my latest turquoise acquisition: China Glaze's For Audrey, purportedly the exact Tiffany blue. Compared it to the box, it's a bit darker and deeper than the Tiffany blue, but still very fresh.

 

A ring from eons ago. I bought a damaged ring and stuck all these beads on it.

 

 A crayon in the shape of a cat, picked up from Saturday Market when I was in Portland, Oregon.

And finally, a neutral palette of grey and brown:

 My favourite colours.

 

Isn't this beautiful. By Morimura Ray.

I've been working harder than I did all of last year, which makes me happy.

Some days I wake up and do some housework, then I cook my own lunch. Or else I settle down to work and don't stop until dinner. No more mind-numbing surfing.

My work has also evolved slightly, which is progress. Time to move away from the same old style, and improve.

By recent London College of Fashion grad Xiao Li. Looking at these, it's almost automatic to revert to common grumbles that fashion is never created for the human body.

But then, look at them on the human body!

This is one of those moments I'm proud to be Chinese, even though China is far from being my motherland.

 China Vogue manages to take fashion from the big houses and turn it into art on its pages. (Of course, I say that under heavy influence of the Art Edition of Vogue I bought in Beijing, that had a precious middle chunk dedicated to the art village and interviews with contemporary Beijing artists.)

But the sentiment here is the same--

These pieces were created for a Project Runway-type competition in China, in which Xiao Li made it to the final five. This would never be seen on the US Project Runway finals, which churns out safer and safer designers by the season.

And US Vogue. Gone are the days of art photographs as covers, for here is the era of celebrities-as-models.

China Vogue manages to retain that austere aesthetic distinctive to Chinese art. The only times it fails are when it tries to do punk, a look that never originated on austere Chinese women and should be left to the British.

May your Christmas weekend be as tranquil as this bathtub,

as traditional as girls in pastel poufs,

as surprising as this pair of Mykitas I found at work today,

and as restful as this well-dressed pup.

It has been a good year! Go hug somebody today.

What is my work computer full of? More muses.

 Basically I'm attracted to a lot of hair and a lot of layers.

Finally found the photographer who did this favourite picture of mine!

Jason Lee photographs his daughters here.

So funny!

Capturing the little bright sparks of the daily rut can make it all wonderful.

Like yesterday's nice evening cycle by the lake, seeing the people come out of their boxes to sit around the lake on all the new steps, and stand on the new bridge. And all the kite fliers filling the field next to jurong point. Am I too late to join in the kite action?