journal

ongoing...

♥ An archive of interests, research, and resources. A space to practice writing and working out incomplete ideas in the open.
♥ If I have committed any spelling or citation errors, feel free to let me know.

04.13.2024

slow journal got slower through december, january, february...and now here we are in mid april. my priorities shifted: a new job, a breakup, spending more time with friends.

here is a list of resources including a newsletter feature, a mix, NYC food, and other things that have crossed my path lately:

♥ Push Projects: push pics 046: kristina lee
♥ In Praise of Shadows
♥ Eating in Translation: fascinating food in New York and occasionally farther afield
♥ NTS Radio: GIGI FM PRESENTS VOICES FROM THE LAKE MARCH 2024
♥ @fundsforgaza: a rotating list of fundraisers for Gazans

11.16.2023

Earlier this summer, I discovered the Euphoria Quilt Project and decided to participate, mailing my quilt block submission the day before the deadline. Below is a description of this beautiful initiative, which seeks to create space for and celebrate 'gender expansive joy' via quilting. I feel honored to participate and grateful to the organizer, Eliot, and other participants for their creative labor. I can't wait to see how the project grows. From the About the Project Substack page:

The Euphoria Quilt is a group quilt project that aims to be a communal archive of gender expansive joy during a time of unprecedented persecution and scapegoating of trans and gender variant people.

Any trans, nonbinary, intersex, or gender nonconforming person is invited to send in a quilt block that explores or exemplifies their own gender-expansive joy.

Queer people (regardless of gender identity or expression) are also encouraged to send a block on the same prompt, with the awareness that to be queer is to challenge gender as a concept - something that the people who hate us find very threatening. You are encouraged to consider the ways gender-expansiveness adds joy and possibility to your life, as it does for all of us.

Once all blocks are collected, they will be pieced together and turned into a completed quilt top, and then hand quilted with community support. The hope is that the quilt will be an expression of a truth that trans and queer people have always known: that joy is far from frivolous, and it is ours to have.

♥Eliot's dreams for the project and quilt block maker map.
♥Follow the project on IG to view some of the beautiful blocks submitted and documented thus far.

My quilt block submission:

I can't recall ever publicly writing about the experience of being queer, nor have I contributed to a collaborative project celebrating queerness. It feels a little scary but more so healing. Here's a brief note that I wrote along with my submission:

I can't think of a better way of expressing my gender (fluidity) than through the process of getting and being dressed. Every day I lean into being queer through the clothes that I wear. Butch, femme, boyish, nonbinary, sporty, and sexy are some of the ways that I feel when I walk out the door after donning myself in a handsome fit.

The t-shirt is a ubiquitous fashion staple that falls into all the 'gender categories' of dress that I/we get to make our own every day. My 12-inch Euphoria Quilt block is made up of old black, white, and grey t-shirts as well as plaid button-downs. Each piece of fabric in its composition has held my skin's oils, scent, and sweat--a patchwork metaphor for the embodied experience of dressing, feeling, and being queer.

It's interesting though that I felt the need to describe my block so succinctly--perhaps in defense or justification?--when the prompt I was responding to was this:

Set me free!

♥ a photo of me under a rainbow in NH

9.30.2023

When I first started quilting about a year ago, I did not anticipate that some of the most inspiring moments would occur while documenting the work. On the search for places to temporarily install my quilts--laundromat carts, park fences, gates guarding industrial manufacturing plants, and apartment archways--I get to explore my neighborhood in Queens with a new POV.

I don't document the quilts on white walls; that's not how they are meant to be seen and experienced. (I have divested from showing my work in galleries, or at least maintaining the goal and/or expectation of doing so.) On a grey day with a gusty wind, that's the best condition for a shoot. Last week, before shipping out the "JSB quilt", I laid on the floor of an outdoor handball court and shot video as I watched the suspended blanket whip around in the wind like a hoisted flag. In the natural light, freed from the darkness of my cavelike apartment, the quilt came alive.

As a kid, I believed that my stuffed animals became free once I cut their tags off. They'd gain animism and vitality once snipped. Now, I believe that my quilts are 'activated' if not 'freed' when I bring them outside, document them, and finally ship them to their permanent cuddle partner(s). I enjoy taking my quilts for a walk. It's the last bonding journey I get to experience with them before they are passed to their owner for a whole long fulfilling life without me. Activated and worn by oils, skin, drool puddles, and snack crumbs--maybe even a good cry.

8.18.2023

Dear Mama,

Now that I am solidly committed to staying in New York (after 13 years), I find myself embracing it. The concrete, the hustle, the people, the many opportunities! The summer is abundant yet fleeting and then we do it all again...fall...winter...spring, and back. New York is wonderful but everyone works too hard and I am so so sleepy.

I miss California--watching the sunset off the western coast, swimming in our backyard pool, the dry heat. Remember? As a kid, I played outside for hours until my skin turned dark brown and my hair turned honey-colored. Summer was for making art. My friends and I made hemp necklaces with glass beads, mini polymer clay sculptures, and cushion forts with stuffed animal configurations. You made your seven-layer bean dip. Dad would open the hood of the car in the garage to work on whatever needed fixing and I would watch. That felt like art too.

It's near the end of summer here. I thought you should know that I am just learning how to play again. Talk soon.

xo,
Tina

♥beads
♥silly sticker
♥free children's books

7.30.2023

It's been a glorious July, which has left me with little time to attend to my tedious HTML journal.

♥Thoreau's Journal
♥Virginia
♥Sichuan ice jelly
Below are 5 resources that include a low-cost residency program, pay-what-you-can 12-week courses for POC, inspiration, and softness.

♥Denniston Hill - Too often residencies charge a fee to apply, require that you have the means to afford to participate for two or more weeks (with a car), and expect you to be a productive art-making machine. While you're at it, please agree to donate your artwork to the residency at the end of your stay! This kind of residency model perpetuates a system that privileges those who ALREADY have a baseline of material support. Denniston Hill is different. They offer a small stipend to cover daily costs, travel to and from the residency, and there is no fee to apply. They aim to support POC, queer, and indigenous artists and have a wonderful Downbeat philosophy that I love. From their website:

Imagine that.

♥Useful School - Pay-what-you-can classes in decolonization, branding, product design, and more for POC.
♥Soft Space - We love a soft space, especially on the internet.
♥Allan Wexler - Wexler has an amazing website that archives his work from the late '60s to the present day. I've been contemplating how I might activate my quilting work in new ways and I am particularly drawn to "Coffee Seeks Its Own Level" pictured below.

Coffee Seeks Its Own Level, 1990
♥Creative Codex - I've had several therapists attempt to guide me through "inner child" work but it never really stuck; I had blocks, they had blocks, whatever. Between health insurance plans and searching for a new podcast, I found Creative Codex's Guided Meditation: Inner Child (Active Imagination) episode, which helped me break through. The podcast in general is fantastic covering well-researched topics including Hieronymus Bosch, Carl Jung & Alchemy, and Emily Dickenson. While I usually balk at "creative genius" stories, these are just nerdy enough to binge.

Cheers to summer reading, lounging, and napping. Enjoy.

6.25.2023

I am reading Anelise Chen's, So Many Olympic Exertions. The work is part memoir, part research, as Chen reflects on the narratives of various professional athletes and the tales of their wins and losses. More often, the athletes who are in focus are not winners, but those who have broken the spell; those who have quit, failed, opted out, or taken a beat.

Reading So Many Olympic Exertions is validating my own interest in sport and sport metaphor. I have hovered around sport as relating to capitalism, labor, and art-making for many years but always felt a little embarrassed about it. My high school jock self rearing its head perhaps?

A magazine clipping with the words 'you can use a balance' made it into my envelope of torn papers while foraging for collage materials recently.

♥You Can Use a Balance.
♥There are many different kinds of balances.

Soon after, I read the following quote by Chen:

Bodies and what we do with them. The life of a body, the life of the mind. When there isn't balance between these two lives, things go wrong. Our well-being is such a complex mechanism of weights and pulleys.

For example, in recent years, I've noticed that whenever friends write to me, they tend to include a few sentences about what they're doing for exercise. They probably think it's an easy way to relate to my research. They say things like - "If I don't exercise I feel off-kilter," or "I like to get my ass kicked." The Crazier the person's life is or has recently been, the more they need their ass kicked.

Yet those who don't manage to exercise at all and instead choose to indulge in unhealthy vices are also, they claim, trying to relieve feelings of imbalance. It appears that our behavior, healthy or unhealthy, has the same aim. (Chen 142)

I've found clarity, or at least a continuum of similar questioning, in the pages of Chen's book. Exertions for the sake of what exactly? For the thrill? Self-accomplishment? Recognition? Am I a winner?! Am I a star!?! What are the stories of those who have left the race? If one does not exert, will they be deemed a loser? If exertion is eliminated and winning is no longer the goal, what then will be put into balance?

♥ Chen, Anelise. So Many Olypic Exertions. New York: Kaya Press, 2017.

06.11.23

I visited Joshua Tree for a week at the end of May. A long awaited trip to the desert that fed my creative, spiritual, and emotional needs. The memories I've stored from visiting there as a child live deep within my body. The dry heat, the grip of the course boulder surface under my feet, my muscles straining and growing, the sour smell of desert brush, the sound of lizards scattering. There is no other place that I crave to be in more year after year.

My stay was located just 5 minutes from the Noah Purifoy Outdoor Sculpture Museum, which I had never explored as a child. Like the desert itself, the outdoor museum is an overwhelming delight to take in. The textures and colors of ripped cloth, faded plastic, and eroding metal and wood being undeniable consequences of the extreme heat and dryness of their environment.

I found myself in awe of this place, full of questions. What takes place here when people are not around? How does the exhibition shift with the landscape over time? If haunted/occupied by the spirits of past performers/performances, are visitors welcome?

05.12.23

I was fired from my job a couple weeks ago and I've never felt better. Well, maybe I've felt better, but let's just say that it needed to happen and I am embracing a long awaited rest. It turns out that it's quite difficult to fall fully into relaxation mode after being paid/expected/on the clock to project manage, keep timelines, answer emails, etc. I am doing my best to be easy on myself regarding the things that I think I 'need' to do right now such as apply for unemployment, apply for medicaid, apply for jobs -- apply! apply! apply! I am crazy grateful for my friends (and therapist) who keep telling me to TAKE MY TIME. Thank you.

Slowing down is so nice. I can feel past ideas for creative projects, and the motivation for giving them any attention, starting to seep back in to my consciousness. A loved one very dear to me recently said that they have been witnessing me begin to 'walk up to my creative work again' approaching it slowly. I used to approach my work with so much anxiety that I had to stop some years ago. It's affirming to have this change reflected back to me.

Maybe it's because I have unemployment brain, or because the summer is basically here and the heat and angle of the sun has shifted, but I am noticing SHADOWS. Their colors and angles formed by the shapes of the ornamental iron gates found all around Queens and the thick layers of paint that landlords love to slather on New York apartments year after year. Above are a few photos that I took this week of wiggly and swirly gate shadows spotted throughout Ridgewood.

Some resrouces:
♥ Gaslighting Your Boss: Creative Experiments in Digital Sabotage by artist Sam Levigne
♥ Relaxing Your Neck and Jaw, The Feldenkrais Project
♥ Saving Time by Jenny Odell

03.18.23

Moving away from templated website services such as Squarespace and Cargo Collective to create a more personalized, exploratory space. A website that is more of a journey for the creator and user, and less portfolio driven. The quotes below from Laurel Schwulst's essay My website is a shifting house next to a river of knowledge. What could yours be? has changed my thinking from: I don't know what I want / don't know how to represent myself, to: What I want is always shifting / I am not a brand / I give myself permission to play.

A few artists whose websites (and work) I admire:
♥ Molly Zuckerman Hartung
♥ Elspeth Walker
♥ Kendra Yee

02.26.23

I am grateful to have lived my pre-teen years before texting was a thing. communicating to friends through hand-written letters was a creative outlet, an art, and a daily occurrence. I attended a public Junior High school in Orange County, CA from the years 1998-2000. during those two years, my friends and I wrote letters to each other CONSTANTLY. following after the good habits of my mother, I saved hundreds of the letters, which are stupid and fascinating. the pages are filled with code language, swear words, hyper-sexualized and homophobic slang, references to pop-culture and music, and stylized 'graffiti' handwriting. we exchanged secrets, expressed boredom, and often said funny things like 'wassup bitch?!'. we wrote about boyfriends, breakups, heartache, and crushes A LOT. we talked shit. we complained about school and described our weeks to one another. We said I love you.

I am flooded with joy, sadness, laughter, and admiration for the young women in those pages, a few of whom are still my friends 25 years later.

View:
♥ Letters to a Friend Archive

02.20.23

Intended distraction. Strategic interruption.

How many times have I opened my laptop or cell phone with a specific intention in mind, gotten distracted, and never fulfilled that intention?

Two resources by The Creative Independent:
♥ A Chrome extension to increase (welcomed) distraction
♥ How do you use the internet mindfully?

Enjoy.

02.13.23

since starting "Journal" a year ago, i've delved into the practice of quilting, sewing, and repair/reuse. hand quilting the stitches of a smaller than twin sized blanket takes so much time and labor but the end result is incredibly satisfying. i have been grappling with chronic pain in my right shoulder, so the task of hand sewing is a tough one. i have to remind myself that productivity is not the aim, the goal, or valuable. that rest and repair (of my body) is essential and takes precedence over all.

some invaluable resources/people/orgs that have helped me along an uncertain path towards a better, more kind art practice (read life) for the last year+ include:

♥ Repair Shop
♥ Anti-Capitalism for Artists (A4A)
♥ Fab Scrap BK
♥ Coherence Podcast

04.07.22

sticking to it. i'm sick today, home with a virus (not Covid). just read an article by Nika Simovich Fischer: Early Web Design Helped a Generation Express Themselves Online. How Do We Capture That Feeling Again? Fisher writes about the early days of MySpace and how customizable the platform was, which brings me back in time circa 2005...

i remember being excited and proud about my all black with white text MySpace page that featured both a background image of Bjork AND a song that autoplayed when you visited my page. i also remember a select group of my friends who had plans to go to UCLA, USC, Berkley, and Stanford boasting that Facebook was the place to be. you were "smart" if you were accepted into the Facebook community. you had a future. Fisher reflects on similar socioeconomic and racial bias annecdotes of her own regarding the attitudes and language of MySpace versus Facebook users and links us to researcher danah boyd's piece White Flight in Networked Publics. i recommend setting aside some time to dive into this research paper for a fascinating account of how teen preferences for MySpace versus Facebook reflect race/class/taste/aesthetic responses and biases.

03.13.22

curious about the origins of the HEART SYMBOL, i consulted with Wikipedia and was delighted to find a list of HTML ♥ heart ♥ emoji codes near the bottom of the page. here's another fun page featuring a comprehensive list of MISCELLANEOUS SYMBOLS AND PICTOGRAPHS.

during the classical era, the plant silphium was so integral to the Cyrenian trade due to its medicinal, contraceptive, and aphrodisiac utilization by ancient Greeks and Romans that it appeared on the majority of their silver coins. some of the silver coins depict motifs of the PLANT SEED (above left), the same shape of today's heart symbol/ideograph/emoji, and others the STALK (above right). i ♥ them both!

03.11.22

it's hard to know where to start when you're starting. after being introduced to designer Mindy Seu and enrolling in a web coding for artists class taught by Leah Beeferman, i thought it might be a good idea to start a journal/archive of things im seeing, learning, and being introduced to for the first time on the World Wide Web. choose your own adventure. HyperText, or HyperMedia, is a term that was coined by Ted Nelson to describe "text which contains links to other texts". the www uses HyperText concepts. here is a list of HyperText terms.

i've taken some styling tips from the Prof. Dr. Style (SEU references Prof. Dr. Style and uses it for her website, as well). i find these old-style academic websites to be quite charming, for example Prof. Dr. Eric Carlson. I wonder what his sign is...

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