floating stage

i’m often told that my work is “polite” and “timid” and i can’t tell if it’s a minor(ity) feeling or racial thing or if there’s truth to it. okay so obviously it’s both. there’s truth to everything. i think i’m so scared to fail that i keep from taking risks

what’s upsetting is i don’t think i’m like this in real life. i take risks (or at least, i thought i did), it’s all just relative. so when in art school…when the perception is that im holding back, idk it’s just so disheartening because i want to just scream like, i constantly exist at the edge of my comfort zones i just don’t wear it on my sleeve

the things i’ve pushed myself to experience in my twenties…no one here sees that, they just respond to the WORK. which is fine but…ughhh i’m too tired to even see where i’m going with this

basically, yes, i acknowledge i have a lot of work ahead of me in terms of learning to be comfortable with failing and learning to take things farther and learning to commit to my ideas in a fearless way

but at the same time i resent being called “timid” and “polite” because i don’t act those ways out of fear (which is how people commonly receive those words), i act those ways out of convenience AND respect. i act those ways because of my status in this country. i act those ways to protect my energy. it’s calculated. and i think that’s what’s aggravating. in some ways i think of my behavior as anarchic. non-asian people think of my behavior as meek.

and always ALWAYS i just want to scream, if you only knew of the things i’ve done. if you only knew. the ways i’ve fought, the ways i’ve changed things. i don’t live in this world to perform. i live in this world to receive it. and i feel contempt for people who don’t understand and accept this.

but but but

is all this defensiveness exactly what They are talking about?

i have walls, impenetrable walls…

the walls constrain my art and extinguish its possibilities…

in model-making we are on a cycle of reading drafts and building + painting a model from what’s shown. a while back i made that crypt staircase that i hated. i really wanted to redeem myself with this one and...i’m actually very proud of it. initially i was planning to do a pixelated bed like this:

or this:

but in my research i fell down the lofi rabbit hole (this happens often to me):

and discovered this:

which resulted in this:

i wanted the whole vibe to be peaceful, and i wanted the color choices to be precise. when we’re done we usually gloss our projects with something called workable fixatif but i decided to keep things matte here for a “dusty” effect.

here are some progress pics:

and here are two epic ones that my classmates put together.

Jellycats bed

BDSM bed

quick work update tho

since i last posted, i’ve submitted: (1) my first ever completed set design model for my intro to scenic design class; (2) a 4′ x 8′ landscape painting for my foundations of scenic paint class; and (3) a bed in 1/2″ scale for model making. i’ve also started on my next set for intro to scene design, and i’ve started assisting (alongside the two other grad students in my year) on our spring production of the play Dangerous Corner. and i’ve gotten to sit in on two set critiques of our schools productions of Roe and Amadeus.

we won bitches

every year the departments duke it out in a pumpkin carving contest

in other words, i need a threshold of fantasy to fall in romantic love. and this manifests in lots of ways, some probably unhealthy, but i think one of the more innocent ways is sharing music and movies. it means a lot to me to be given access to these things, not only because i love those art forms but because then i can learn about people through mining lyrics, enveloping myself in the atmosphere of a song or story, imagining them listening to it, watching it…

i remember specific moments of falling love last summer. she would always have a playlist on when i came over and we would sit on the couch together awash in the mood. sometimes she would play the same song three times in a row. sometimes she would fake play the guitar or dance around the room…we would also watch movies together but i would watch her face, observing how intently she paid attention and how sometimes she’d get nervous when it became apparent i wasn’t. all these moments are what keep me in love now in a way…i can’t let go of what i think might still be true, that there’s a person out there who finds so much meaning and value in these things, these songs and movies, who i can imagine sitting at home at night and on weekends, basking in the wonder of these stories that aren’t hers. i saw her at a screening once and she had her head down, scribbling notes about this old animation in a notepad. i’ve embalmed her memory in this persona now, and i can access her by witnessing the same art.

i feel like i’m not explaining clearly. i’m still trying to understand it myself. but in contrast, when someone isn’t able to share or communicate art to me, i feel like their inner world is completely opaque, no matter how much they try to explain it. sometimes descriptions of what they were like as children help, or examining their bedroom. i do find myself feeling in love with people when i’m offered access to their homes or see what they made as kids or am able to peep an old journal or blog…but…it’s not as salient for me as being given access to the art they love and how they engage with it. only then am i able to feel that rare, deep swell in my chest. it’s better than seeing a physical space or past mementos or hearing about thoughts and memories verbatim…because art is liquid. it doesn’t fill up space in the same way, it’s porous, it gives you room to work in your own imagination, your fantasies. there’s a fusing that can happen that words, something more solid…can’t really achieve. an essence can be floated toward you in art sharing, things that are inexpressible even to yourself…

in the spirit of all that, here are songs that mean a whole lot to me because they were shared with me by those i’ve loved

(and i mean loved in the romantic sense because…generally speaking, or weirdly…i don’t think too many people have shared music with me outside of ones i’ve been “into”

and if i wasn’t “into” someone and they shared music with me, the chances are high that i might’ve felt romantic love for them in that moment)

tinseltown in the rain by blue nile

over the hillside by blue nile

not by big thief

lorraine by big thief

two reverse by adrianne lenker

between the bars by elliott smith (very hard for me to listen to, even now. a song i refuse to share with anyone else)

say yes by elliott smith

everything is free by gillian welch (difficult to listen to)

thirstier by torres

gasoline by the weeknd

house of balloons album by the weeknd

disappointed in myself for turning in a project that didn’t mean much to me (a crypt staircase for my model building class), but also trying to remind myself that it’s not that deep, that i was tired, and that i did still put a lot of effort into it, despite it not turning out exactly as planned.

trying not to batter myself with expectations and focus on learning instead of performing.

in other news, i’m starting a script by a new-ish playwright for this play called “iphigenia crash land falls on the NEON SHELL THAT WAS ONCE HER HEART.” how gorgeous is that imagery?

it’s modern, mixed media, edgy, urgent, and self-described as a “rave fable.” i can feel my heart clenching as i read it. this is what it’s all about 🥺

i was trying to bring myself to do work again, mostly because i’m a little panicked about the quality of what i’m putting out lately and also about how much i need to get done in the two weeks before my new york trip. but i also felt like…idk, how can i make meaningful art when i don’t go deep within myself every so often? so i pulled up my journal and went back about four Septembers.

oh yeah, i’ve kept a daily journal since january 2014. that’s eight years…and i could tell you what happened or where i was emotionally for about 90% of those years. anyway, i don’t read old entries very often but i do like to time capsule when i’m in these states, just so i can remember who i used to be and link that up with who i am now. i’m a very nostalgic person but i don’t actively remember much…if that makes sense.

i’m still learning that myself, but (and i’m gonna put this in all caps to emphasize just how deep into this theatre tech cult life i’ve descended) SCENE DESIGNERS CONCEPTUALIZE THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT OF A STORY. THE TOOLS WE USE TO COMMUNICATE OUR APPROACH INCLUDE BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO: RESEARCH BOARDS, DRAFTS AND BLUEPRINTS, PAINT ELEVATIONS TO EXPRESS COLOR ASSIGNMENTS, AND SCALE (MINIATURE) MODELS OF ENTIRE SETS AND PROPS. 

in other words, we make really little things to guide the people that make the big things, and we are present very early on in the process of making a story come to life.

we have much creative power :) 

anyway, model-building with E (or shall we call him...Madame T, in honor of his favorite supermodel, Twiggy. i’ll do a full character reveal later). model-building with Madame T has so far consisted of a month-long introduction to the neurotic and intricate hazing that is using an Xacto blade. we were asked to review a draft (blueprint, basically) of a theatre portal for Fiddler on the Roof. 

(a portal is something that frames the opening of a stage. check out this one from Wicked. the portal is the dragon and that metal frame surrounding it.)

this is a process video of the portal we cut for class:

okay so notice all the tiny ass windows we needed to cut. that’s what i mean by hazing. nowadays you can do this kind of work with laser cutters but as first year scene design students, we aren’t allowed to use the laser cutters until later. my school is very into teaching skills the “traditional” way as we fortify our foundations as designers, and i honestly don’t mind it at all since that’s how i prefer to learn, too. but this project...

it’s not even that we had to cut all the tiny scallops on the side or all the windows. it’s that we had to cut everything multiple times because we were ultimately building this three-dimensional theatre portal. keep in mind that portals are usually “flatter” and “thinner” in design since they are meant to be very far downstage (close to the audience) and act as a “frame” for the rest of the stage and set. but just because they are meant to be flatter and thinner, doesn’t mean that they are 2D.

and also, the point of building a model is to express in a comprehensively detailed way what the final product should look like. so we weren’t cutting these lil windows just to see how COOoooL it would be to have a mostly flat thing with slightly elevated sections. we were supposed to be cutting a mini-version of the real thing, which meant that we had to cut as many layers as needed to express the real thing. 

so the cutting in the video...imagine that x 5. not every house, window, or roof shingle needed five layers. but many things needed ~3. i’d say this project took at least 25 hours worth of cutting. this is what mine looked after i had crippled myself hunching over my desk for days with an Xacto:

my green paint was inspired by this Nat Geo photojournalist’s accounts of an Arctic village. i’ve never seen Fiddler and opted to just go wild and tap into my own tiny reservoir of cool things i’ve seen over the years. all i know of Fiddler is that there’s Russian architecture so my mind went, what do I know that’s Russian? AH, yes. Evgenia. Look at how stunning:

T_T i think the color palette is a bit moody for something like Fiddler, but again, wasn’t really paying too much attention to the actual content lol. not for this one. 

this is how my portal turned out:

it’s not my favorite thing i’ve done. painting is not my strong suit and in hindsight i would have neutralized the buildings a lot more (thinking more gray tones) so that the sky could pop. i think it could’ve only really been one or the other, but i realized that too late. i also wanted to take some white Pebeo and mix it with glitter to top off a lot of my buildings for that snowy effect. but i didn’t have white Pebeo and ran out of time to get it. i’m considering still doing it though, even with the project being technically over, just cuz i want to hang it up as something i’m proud of. i also finished it with this glossy spray like the glaze you paint onto ceramic pieces but i don’t know if it was the right effect. i also feel like i overdosed on the color green which is a shame cuz it was my favorite color and now i feel like i can’t even look at it >.< 

learned a lot though. wish i could do it again minus all the cutting. 

here are some other cool takes by my classmates!!

Barbie Fiddler

Addam’s Family Fiddler

Nighttime Fiddler (look at the shadows on the wood T_T)

“the new abundance made the city overflow with new materials, buildings, objects; new people flocked in from outside; nothing, no one had any connection with the former Clarice, or Clarices. and the more the new city settled triumphantly into the place and the name of the first Clarice, the more it realized it was moving away from it, destroying it no less rapidly than the rats and the mold. despite its pride in its new wealth, the city, at heart, felt itself incongruous, alien, a usurper.”

if that doesn’t describe my crisis of identity now and these past few years, i don’t know what does...

anyway, i didn’t end up picking something so abstract as Clarice. i was mostly drawn to the idea of “thin cities” because (if i had to go deep with it) there was something utterly calm about imagining a city existing on a needle point, teetering on one system. my final three were: Armilla, city of pipes; Octavia, city of ropes built vertically and suspended over a chasm between two mountains; and Aglaura, city that has magnificence hidden in its mundanity but imprisoned by the inability of residents to translate that magnificence into language. i fully intended to pick Aglaura but i made the big mistake of researching Armilla first. and after going so deep with research, i decided to just take it all the way and choose Armilla as my final city. 

so in the book, Armilla is described as this sensual, watery place where there are no walls or floors, where everything is made of pipes that have no end and simply pour out streams of water which are then used by nymphs and naiads to bathe. it’s described as being immersed in singing. ignoring the part about the naked women, i emotionally responded to the peace of such a place. i imagined somewhere soft, pink, and orange. i saw water breaking beams of light, quiet interludes of running, dripping water and even fainter interludes of bird song. in my research i was reminded that green things grow where there is water, but i also remembered that in times of flooding plants can also become overwatered and tint until they are almost translucent, the palest of greens. 

in deeper internet holes i was reminded of the many forms of pipes, of organ pipes, of Australia’s Organ Pipes National Park, of hallowed out bamboo...all things i wanted to incorporate into my final project, which was more officially supposed to be some sort of embodiment of our city concept. so, not a set but more of a...sculptural vision board. 

i also remembered something i learned lurking an architect’s instagram years back: these ancient Indian temples with musical architecture. somehow these temples were constructed such that you’d be able to play music on its columns. earlier i said that Armilla is said to be filled with song. in Calvino’s description, it’s the nymphs that sing. in my interpretation slash determination to ignore the part about the sexy nymphs, i wanted to make the pipes sing themselves.

so this is where i landed. sound on for the surprise at the end!

a lot of people have asked me how i created the lid-music. i’ve actually had the idea for years but couldn’t find the right excuse to execute. it’s super easy though. i just took the module that’s found on the inside of recordable greeting cards, recorded the Indian temple sounds onto it, then installed it into the lid of the middle piece, which is meant to act as a sort of sundial that inspires the mood of the outside layer. 

finally, i’m going to try this thing where i share the mundanities of my life. i think there’s something affirming about being a full person, someone who values the “boring” stuff. i’m often dismissive of the small things but...it feels powerful to share them. to not feel like you need to entertain people in the things you say...i think there’s a lesson there.