A Month of Grieving Underwater (Revised)

Temmoku Exploration

Solemn Melancholy

Deconstructed Decay

A series of vessels called “Deconstructed Decay” meant to symbolize death. I am mechanized to perfect. But what if like fire my decay obstructed beauty? I threw these vessels and then attempted to neatly deconstruct them after. Like fire, this notion of death also embodies the rebirth of a new life. Like shards of burnt paper, like firing in pottery, my vessels, broken and deconstructed, show how the death of perfectionism, of symmetry, of function, can perhaps invoke a new interpretation to life.

A Month of Grieving Underwater

This series was first inspired by a snorkeling trip that I had a week into the start of school. I was joined with my best-friend’s mom who’s mother had just come out of surgery. I remember comforting her, telling her that all this beauty and life surrounding us while out in the sea, a world that’s so out of our touch exists, that she shouldn’t feel guilty for being present and here with us. A week later, her mother died. At times when grieving seems so out of touch because its new, comforting a best-friend while they’re grieving is also new. With pottery as well comes a process of waiting. A month of creating and taking care of vessels that are meant to represent ‘life’ to me when grief was in the picture. Nurturing yet humbling, deceiving yet devastatingly grounding… but I guess this month was a glimpse of connecting with nature, being humbled by it, shocked by it’s cruelty, but also coping, coping by creating, coping even when grief manages to find a way to show up in my works.