I have these pho­tos sit­ting on my desk­top for a while now. For some rea­sons I kept putting off writ­ing about the project. I guess I’m just not sure whether I can clear­ly artic­u­late the com­plex­i­ty of it. But I guess it does­n’t have to be too com­pli­cat­ed. And it was a fun project to make :)

The exer­cise was about cre­at­ing a ves­sel that can hold uncon­di­tion­al love. It was for a group that I was run­ning with a cou­ple of my col­leagues, but because it was a small group that day and every­one seemed to be rather engrossed in their own projects with­out need­ing much help, I cre­at­ed a ves­sel as well.

It’s a shell that is made of many old shells. The imprints of the old shells gath­er sand and grits and sharp bits that pass by and trans­form them into a pearl that gives a guid­ing light, a wis­dom that shines through the sur­round­ing dark­ness of the ocean. The wis­dom to see one­self and oth­ers with clar­i­ty and compassion.

It was made of clay. Was­n’t fired or any­thing, just paint­ed with dilut­ed acrylic. I paint­ed the pearl with a mix­ture of pearles­cent and glow-in-the-dark paint. It glows some­what in com­plete dark­ness but too faint for the cam­era to cap­ture. I still like the way it turned out though. 

And I paint­ed the out­side of the shell with some sil­ver metal­lic paint.

 

And this short poem comes to mind. I came to know it through my mentor:

Last night, as I was sleep­ing,
I dreamt — mar­velous error! -
that I had a bee­hive
here inside my heart.
And the gold­en bees
were mak­ing white combs
and sweet hon­ey
from my old fail­ures
– Anto­nio Macha­do, trans­lat­ed by Robert Bly

 

Have an excel­lent, ener­gized start to the week, everyone!