sin_blog

I’m thanking Johnathan Kochis for having an interview with me.

Read it.

Inkjet test print on photographic test print

It’s funny. Years ago when I was coy and reluctant to show my works, people said I should be more open to showing them. Gradually I changed. Now I become so exhibitionistic I post (almost) everything I produce, online. They still say I’m hiding too much, hiding too much in my room making my own works (that nobody could/would see).

With Internet users of the whole world as (potential) audience I’m still hiding. I wonder why. I suppose they mean serious (whatever that means) artists all go to galleries and museums. I don’t mind going to galleries and museums. I’d love to. But sometimes it doesn’t make sense to. As said I don’t make art all the time. Works that are not artworks shouldn’t go to galleries and museums (and there are those that are artworks that shouldn’t go to these spaces). You would not want to see this printed on 20″x20″ archival paper framed in double acrylic hung on white cube wall, you know what I mean?

As for the autistic practice of making things in my tiny little room and uploading 24/7, is it different from making things in a studio (tiny or not) and exhibiting non-stop? Maybe… and I will head to try that — if I don’t die too soon. Before that, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with what I’m doing.

Yet another demonstration of music-drawing. The perfect one by the most appropriate person, indeed. As I said I wasn’t acquainted with Surrealism before I started practising music-drawing. Therefore I could not be aware of myself doing anything surrealistic. It was only after I fell in love with Dalí(’s artwork) that I started knowing about Surrealism and automatic drawing, thus recognising the connection. Since it is about the subconscious after all, it makes no wonder that one would start so without realising. Different from music-drawing, however, surrealistic influence was obvious to me when I started Interpretation. The first piece was directly inspired by Dalí.

Was that a joke, that I’m not making art? Well, most of the time, I’m really not making art, and I’d like to clarify this. To make things simple and avoid turning this entry into a never-ending book, I should explain without discussing what art/artist is. Just a reminder to myself.

Classification is actually not very important. But it matters when people try to assess. Identification is necessary then, so that people won’t hire you as a photographer when you present a portfolio to apply for modelling, or criticize you for the wrong lighting. Equally, I don’t want the lousy pictures that I post on Facebook to be treated as my works of art. In fact, a lot of things that I post elsewhere online are not artworks, at least I wouldn’t consider so.

Consider sin_stuff. Call me conservative, but now I feel comfortable only with Interpretation and music-drawing being treated as art. The other things stuffed in the sin_art category are just for presentation’s sake. !postapostcard! fits barely but its drawings are free-drawings (automatic drawings), so I let it in or it will be put at sin_object. I didn’t know where to put Madcap Machine, so I left it there. The other things are named based on what they physically are. I didn’t use words such as design or writing, and there won’t ever be such a category called photography. There are several things that I am not (I’m not a lot of things, but speaking of arts-related subjects…). I’m never a photographer nor a writer. I do take photos and write, just like everybody else. But not everybody is a photographer and a writer. Right. I’m not a designer too. By job I may be one, but by nature I’m not. Sometimes I mess around with writing lyrics and melodies, but don’t mistake me as attempting to be a musician. Certain things at sin_activity could be easily tagged conceptual art in today’s context where everybody makes art, but please just let activities be activities. Simple.

Or maybe all the things can be called “blog art” or “bloghibition”, who knows.

Anyway, I just want to say, I don’t make art all the time. Most often, I just want to make something.

“Cathy, you like art. Why are you in a science class? Are you going to be an artistic scientist?”

“A scientific artist.”

The whole class laughed and clapped. Despite the humour, there was a seriousness to what I said. I never found entering the science stream (either arts or science for my high school) and my interest in art contradictory. I did not find it necessary to study art in school either. Science and art just go hand in hand in my life. Logic and aesthetics, to be exact. The two can never be and should never be separated, in my life or in this world. But people always find it strange for subjects that I take, and what I like to be.

And the story continues. Between Fine Art and Design I chose the latter for my Bachelor’s degree. Again, they don’t get it. I understand the relationship between science and art may be subtle to realize, but art and design, are they that different to puzzle you? Alright…there’s a difference, or else I won’t choose one rather than the other. $Practicality$ could be one reason. I also thought design mentalities would be a suitable injection to my artistic ones. Naturally enough to me, I went through university life with design studies.

Nothing is enough. For yet another time I’ve misplaced myself in others’ eyes. Currently I’m taking a curatorial programme. I can find nothing more logical to learn more about the art field, also because I had the chance to this course. As said by my friend, life is random, yes. I tend to take randomness. I’m young but not very young anymore. What if I don’t try now, and it’s just one year anyway.

Then you may ask, if I were to know more about the art field, I could have studied Fine Art in the first place. Why make another option only now? Maybe I really detour, doing art without ever touching the art field. Yet by moving along the spiral, I guess I can hit the centre a little bit more precisely. Maybe not as accurate as the golden spiral, but I will be there one day.

There are people who are not comfortable when you use a knife to kill people. Not because anybody’s harmed. They won’t feel good even if you use it for cutting hair. They want apple knives for cutting apples, fish knives for fish, frog knives for frogs, if there are such knives. Not only designers get angry because people come up with creative methods of using their products. Everybody else comes to condemn you for playing ping pong with iPone (there may be a lot of virtual-real applications, but I mean real hitting here).

I can decide what to learn and how to use what I’ve learnt. The knowledge is mine.

This is the infamous sin logo which 99% of the viewers think, looks like a moustache. Without much speculation, it is thought to be a moustache. Which makes sense, since I’m a big fan of Dalí.

It wasn’t a moustache.

At least it wasn’t intended to be. It is simply a graphic version of the word “sin”, my name. The above cutting is the prototype. The logo actually started as a little decoration for my wall. If there is anything that influenced the form, it would be Matisse’s paper collages rather than Dalí’s moustache. More closely yet, Air’s logo of mirroring A and R could be a direct influence on graphic treatment. Oops, I’ve just neglected Einstein’s advice to hide my sources.

In fact, the logo could be more things.

It could be birds

It could be a naked man looking like Jesus

Or maybe it could really be Dalí’s moustache