Every day (毎日)
The creative process is not straightforward or predictable, and that is one of the best things about it.
A long time ago I found these concrete blocks on the side of the road. They might be casts for making wheel chocks for a nearby warehouse, I’ve never been sure. But immediately I had a vision in my head, how great they would look with brass metal strips attached on the back. There was no purpose to this, maybe it could be a book end or something, mainly I just how beautiful the concrete was and knew I wanted to do something with it. I couldn’t work with the blocks yet, so I set them aside in the garage where they sat for years.
Separately, this year I got myself a Himekuri daily tear-off calendar. It has big pages covered with bold Japanese text, lovely translucent paper, and poppy graphic colors. Admiring the paper but not sure what to do with it, I kept each tear-off page in a growing pile, and once again set the materials aside.
Finally, some months back I saw the very cool apartment of Japanese ceramicist Ryo Kaneko. His home is filled with all sorts of beautiful and unique things he’s made and collected. But what really stuck in my head are these beautiful sculptural lamp shades he formed from newspaper. Seeing these, I knew immediately that it was what I wanted to do with the calendar pages and concrete pieces.
I started the project in June. First, a simple cone with masking tape to explore translucency and basic shapes. From there I graduated to armatures, using mod podge to seal the leaves. Over the next few weeks I tried many iterations and different types of light fixtures and hardware - pendants! harps! candelabras! - before settling on simple industrial light fixtures.
The paper itself is a beautiful material, and each page is meaningful in that it represents a day. As I tore them off, I used the pages as scratch pad for drawings and other work. These scribbles and sketches are now part of each piece, captured in the layers of paper.
At the same time, I experimented with different forms. The original idea was a simple geometric shape like a cone. Then I began imagining more organic shapes: garlic cloves, flower buds, twisting dried leaves. As I worked with the paper I also began to appreciate its qualities: how it crinkles, holds its form, and softens the light. How it lends itself well to being built up in layers. Sometimes in the process of adding another layer, the paper would crinkle in an unexpected way and completely transform the shape into something new. As a result, each piece wound up resembling something in nature that is always undergoing changes, like a chrysalis, a bloom, or a bud.
I like that these pieces say something about the passage of time, how life changes and grows in unplanned ways. They reflect where I was in that moment, what I was working on, and what I cared about. Because of this, I call the resulting work Every Day (in Japanese, 毎日 or “mainichi”) after realizing this is what I was doing: capturing and illuminating every day as it passes.
