Design.

I pour a coating of salt on the table
and make a circle in it with my finger.
This is the cycle of life
I say to no one.
This is the wheel of fortune,
the Arctic Circle.
This is the ring of Kerry
and the white rose of Tralee
I say to the ghosts of my family,
the dead fathers,
the aunt who drowned,
my unborn brothers and sisters,
my unborn children.
This is the sun with its glittering spokes
and the bitter moon.
This is the absolute circle of geometry
I say to the crack in the wall,
to the birds who cross the window.
This is the wheel I just invented
to roll through the rest of my life
I say
touching my finger to my tongue.

[Billy Collins, 1995, The Art of Drowning]

This poem strikes an emotional chord with me (unexpectedly, so did "Where the Wild Things Are" in reference to how hard growing up is). I recently explained to Harvey how I'm attracted to making things; it allows me to control and create an entire universe. Deep down artists are just control freaks. I love how when Reed speaks, he draws lines with his fingers as though he’s creating a mental grid to organize his thoughts. --You study and discover, you understand, and then you respond.-- My "art" is how I organize the chaos that surrounds me. It's all about space and the relationships between things. You should lead your viewer through your piece- show them where to take their shoes off, stop and look, trip, and open doors. More than anything Reed teaches seeing. I see so much more now.

I'm interested in Kiyoshi Awazu, a pioneering Japanese graphic designer as I embark on my next personal project. He unfortunately passed away this May but left a lot of art theory in addition to his famous posters. He too had something to say about seeing:

"We cannot escape from our memory of the act of seeing. Art exists only through the experience of seeing. At the same time, we try to see the unknown world to escape from the memory of seeing. But even if we try to discover the unknown world, our memory either continues to float in the unknown world or remains as an analogy. Creation is an attempt at seeing something. If we cannot see things, we cannot create things. If creation means seeing in an artistic sense, there cannot be a border between creating and seeing. Only differences among individual observers exist."

I'm going to do something that uses Chinese characters. I don't know how I'm going to make forms of out them. Stay tuned.