LEGO Digital Designer as after-work balm

I hurt myself at the gym and am feeling the stress from keeping so many balls in the air at once. My solution is generally either a shower or LEGO. Since my blocks are mostly in storage, I looked into downloading LEGO Digital Designer, LEGO's official virtual tool, and Bricksmith, a less-polished but more useful independent program with an extensive library of pieces. The latter will feel familiar if you've ever used Google's Sketchup or any other bare-bones 3D software.

Building the base for a pastel looky-loo using transparent blocks and of those WONDERFUL eyeball-printed blocks. They come in angry and non-angry varieties.

Turtle garden.

If I can't run my hands through a box of LEGO in person, I'll happily settle for this instead. It takes me an hour just to place one brick but I'm practicing putting up walls efficiently using the Clone tool. I'd like to build a temple or a mausoleum.

On hoarding & compulsive buying

The result of a compulsive, sick, overwhelming shopping addiction that took years to claw my way out of?

Collections of supplies I hoarded without finding a use for them, finally coming into their own in my studio.

I am a big proponent of facing your past vices and wrongdoings, weaknesses and mental illnesses, and using them as propellants to move forward.

Here are some embroidery threads that I spent months collecting, obsessing over, and re-arranging in boxes until I finally lost interest and stowed them away in storage for several years:

They are beautiful and I am lucky to have them.

They remind me of mistakes not to make again, but also of the promise of things that are borne of self-forgiveness and hard work.

Penland Session 3: Metals with Tim Lazure & Jen Townsend

I got some mail...

I got accepted to this workshop I'm really excited about! Scroll down to Session 3 to read about this class led by jewelers Tim Lazure & Jen Townsend.

From Penland's course description:

This workshop will offer a unique opportunity to see two very different approaches to ring making. We’ll cover a range of techniques from basic fabricating to lost-wax casting and make everything from understated bands to sculptural and flamboyant cocktail rings. We’ll also address object capture—whether this means a stone or some alternative material featured in the ring. We’ll discuss the meaning of rings throughout history and what these little pieces have to offer conceptually. Symbolizing love, status, affiliation, or commemoration, rings are small but potent. Come join the two-ring circus! 

It'll also be my first time attending Penland not as a work-study/scholarship student, but as a fully paid-up student with leisure time and 100% dedication to studio. The scholarship program at Penland is incredible, but it's a very different experience––and I'm excited to make the shift.

Purge or keep? Dementia toybox

My only living grandparent, my father's mother Sun, is in assisted living due to advanced Alzheimer's. While purging the apartment this afternoon, I came across an ugly Tupperware box filled with foam letters and beads she liked to repetitiously play with. This was used during the interim period before she entered the facility and was living at home with my father. I'd been eyeing the box up on the wall unit all month but had put aside a house-wide deep clean until today.

Dementia toybox

What to do with ugly sentimentals? What to do with the belongings of people who are no longer aware of what ownership or objecthood mean?

Traveling & purifying

This week has been all about self-refreshing via small trips around New York. Saturday was unseasonably warm and led to some spur-of-the-moment mini-paintings in the studio.

Red Hook sunset, March 15

The view from the Red Hook Fairway parking lot.

Between Sunset Park, Red Hook, Harlem, Williamsburg, the Flower District and Koreatown in Manhattan and a nighttime trip to Syracuse, home/work/studio all feel triply vivified.

Marcus Garvey Park, Harlem, while waiting to meet with Sally of Improvised Life.

Midnight snow in suburban Ballston, NY.

Mourning a Shamrock Shake in an I-87 rest stop parking lot.

Drinks with friends at Mary's Bar in Brooklyn. Look at the beautiful tin ceiling.

Choi residence, after Sunday gardening. Various succulents including an echeveria, some sedum and a crassula (left trio), rosemary (center), jade plant (right), marimo moss ball in slow death (far right), blue cat.