From the Sketchbooks of The TreeSpace Studio » innocence

When We Didn’t Have Much…

thetreespacestudio — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 23:26:18 +0000

...we improvised.

SNEAK PREVIEW!

A few days ago I read a disturbing article in a weekly news magazine we receive in the mail. It pointed out how kids today spend 90% of their waking hours connected to some electronic media or the other (among them the usual guilty triage of Apple paraphernalia, and various types of virtual reality apparatuses) They also multi-task, which meant they were consuming a few hours more of digital information than the hours they actually had!

This was not news of course, it has become something of a standard rant in my household, my husband and I could have a field day discussing this and comparing what (in our opinion) were superior yesteryears.

I grew up in a really small town in a far away distant land, we didn’t have cinemas or malls, and I remembered when the very first traffic light in town went up. It was a joyous occasion, we were finally a real town! It has been many moons since, and being occasionally guilty of media overload, I wanted to remember how playtime was when we didn’t have much else.

This project, fueled by requests for a collection of childhood illustrations from my parents, became in the end, a series of 12 vignettes-each one a little precious nugget of memory. It is a project just as much for myself as it is for anyone who cares to reminisce of a simpler time, not so very long ago.

It’s raining, it’s raining

thetreespacestudio — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 17:23:24 +0000

rain rain don't go away

puddle

It’s been raining all week . After 8 months straight of sunny, perfect Southern California weather, the gray, moody days are a welcomed reprieve. They remind me of growing up in the tropics where the monsoon season kept perfect time, was never tardy and shook up your daily activities for weeks to come. It brought along loud clapping thunder, searing lightning, and many days of looking out the window as it poured and poured and poured. When it was all over, you could hear the frogs croak and see the sun peeking timidly at the freshly laundered world.

teacup

raindrops on the front step

Rainy days are rare in this part of the world, and I treasure it when it chooses to rear its stormy head. It’s the perfect excuse to stay indoors in the studio, turn on the lamps, brew tea and listen to big band playing on a vintage record player. I’ll pretend I have my monsoons again, even if it’s just for ever so brief a moment.

atelier

the color gray

crackling swing

Boudoir for A Girlhood Passed

thetreespacestudio — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 22:44:09 +0000

Sumptuous

One of my favorite pastimes these days, is to recall my childhood fancies and attempt to bring them into some form of renewed, adult fascination while pondering on how, if any, age has changed my views, thoughts and aesthetics.

Carressed

As far as I can remember, the tomboyish side of my youth that rebelled against feminine frou-frou with Daddy’s pants and polo t-shirts, oversized steel-toe boots and shorn hair disappeared completely within the confines of my girlhood bedrooms. In there, my Georgina alter-ego hung up her dirty scout uniforms and flannel shirts. My bedroom was something that was always completely, utterly and undeniably feminine-pink bedspreads, fringed tablecloths, stuffed toys.

These days, I have reconciled with my girlish ways and while the tomboy in me still surface sometimes for internal wardrobe battles, hitting the golden age of 30 has brought upon a new flush of meaning. Now I have womanhood ahead of me to contend with. Right on cue, I have been secretly coveting a boudoir since discovering it’s spatial meaning beyond corset fetishes and midnight rendezvouses. Defined as a room or space within the home that offers a comfortable and unabashedly feminine respite, it glorifies and celebrates womanhood and all of its pleasurable rituals.

The lovely pictures I have attached above are from The Paris Apartment and really best exemplifies what I believe to be the adult incarnation of the girlhood bedrooms of my past. I am most inspired by the notion of the boudoir as a heightened den of pleasurable textures-lace, silk, fur, satin, brocade and the refinement of craft-both in objects and in furniture.

While Parisian aesthetics can at times appear too ornate for my liking, it is the richness and bold embrace of materials, textures and unrestrained delight for beauty that rings most loudly for me. These set of spatial virtues probably explains why there are so many versions of the woman’s boudoir in so many different cultures, all raw, beautiful, romantic and deeply personal.

Of Memories and Art Classes

thetreespacestudio — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 06:46:55 +0000

Exercises from The Structure of Man

When I was growing up, I drew a lot. I spend many days on my belly, with a pile of papers and a pencil in my little fingers. Family friends gifted stacks of blank papers from the discarded corners of their lives. At school in those days, we had actual functioning art classes. We were given assignments and graded on imagination and technique. But it was at home that I drew the most. Reading, on the other hand, filled up the hours when I was not furiously scribbling away. It was necessary to be able to continually fill up the draining wells. I needed muses for my paper stories. I devoured fairy tales and stories about life in lands far away from the tiny little town I grew up in. Then I talked to myself and made up pictorial dialogues that I put down on paper about the people and places I read about. Book cover illustrations were a peculiar obsession. There were hours spent studying the planes and angles of the faces of characters so I could recreate them in my own childish versions.

At some point during primary school, I was enrolled in a local art class in town. It was an interesting and unique little place. A small, dark ‘shophouse’ lot amongst a row of other shophouses in the heart of town. It was a few doors down from my favorite coffeeshop and across the street from the favorite student hangout-a corner stationery store that sold everything a little small town kid could want. The teacher was a middle aged man, gruff and stern, and to this day, the only person that ever called me by my Chinese name. He had old wooden tables arranged in his class where kids sat in groups on little school chairs. You could look out to the street if you want/dare, there was no door, only a large wide opening typical of such a shophouse. The fan blew above and kept us cool.

All around the upper walls of the dim but naturally lit room were hung portraits our art teacher had done of various people, in charcoal and oil or poster paints. He also had stacks of his laminated artwork that we would go through and select. We learned by example, copying from his laminates or we could bring in a book or a picture. He hovered over us giggling and gossiping schoolchildren, wagging an invisible cane while we pretended to paint. It was the place to be for a sheltered convent schoolgirl. Here I met kids from other schools around town and came to know them by name through the end of secondary school and to this day. It was a rite of passage for those of us who grew up in our little town-at some point or another, we all knew and have painted furiously under his intent watchful eyes.

I haven’t drawn in years. It ceased at some point during secondary school, once I discovered other social interests, friends, boys, plays and school responsibilities. I certainly haven’t been in art class since the little shophouse one of my (almost distant) youth. There were drawing classes of a different kind in architecture school, but nothing that loose and intuitive. Perhaps it is time again? I am toying with reconnecting with this long forgotten childhood pastime. An old masters oil painting class is being held nearby, where I could get my hands dirty and learn figure and portrait drawing the way I had only dreamed about as a little girl.