This is my first attempt of making an artist's book. (I have a few other ideas lined up, all of which would be much, much longer than this one when finished.) The few trips I've had to The Library Project has been an immense inspiration for me - the fact that you can just make things and release them to the public was something I've never thought of before. Some of the art work I've read were small in form factor and short in content; some of them are simply zines. It would give people who've been dreaming about this the impression of "oh I can do this as well", especially when you see some of them being put on display for sale in a bookstore in the city center.
People have been dismissing (at least some) modern art as something they themselves could do without any art knowledge because it seems so lazy and effortless; they can say all that all day long, but at the end of the day it's the artist who's gone and done it and not them. Never in my life would I even dare to declare myself as an artist, but a lot of my reactionary Christian acquaintances firmly believe that you should always be brave and willing to take risks because if God decide to save you then you're going to be saved no matter what; I suppose it's the same for making art: you should keep making things and the world shall come around and acknowledge your work in due time.
Speaking about being acknowledged, I suppose I shall tell you this story (that I definitely have told in multiple different places). So back when I was in middle school my family lived in a tiny ground floor apartment along one of the inner narrow alleyways inside one of the village-in-cities of Canton City; one day, for whatever reasons, the whole apartment was filled with smoke when I was alone inside the house. The smoke came from outside, I didn't know how it happened, and I didn't know how to stop it; good thing there's a community park nearby (about like 2 minutes walk), so I went there to seek refuge, thinking maybe the smoke would stop and go away if I gave it enough time. During my time there there were other people as well; among them was a father and his very young child - barely knew how to walk, wouldn't be older than 2 years kind. That kid was originally picking tiny flowers on the grass field, but then he (she? I couldn't tell back then; I certainly couldn't remember now) saw me, so he walked towards me with his itty-bitty step, showing me his flower that he held in his hand, probably intending to give it to me as a gift. You might find it all being very cute, but at that exact moment I had this revelation and then this awfully intense existential dread: much like many other middle school students, I too was writing my own short stories; what if - what if all the things that I did, all the things that I put so much of my soul (or whatever I considered as my soul) into were nothing but tiny flowers, and me releasing them to the public and getting people to read them was nothing but yet another toddler doing the same thing? Of course before that I shall and will keep on writing; but that dread never truly goes away.
2024.11.11
Dublin, Ireland