Fuyuu 9-12, 2013

Intaglio

12 x 12 in.

Fuyuu 9-12, 2013 sits at a formative point in my practice, where memory, material, and repetition begin to converge into a visual language I still explore today. Created during a period of sustained experimentation, this piece reflects my early engagement with abstraction as a means of holding time, of allowing the past and present to coexist.

The composition is structured through repeated marks and stitched lines that reference both natural phenomena and the rhythms of handcraft. These gestures echo patterns found in traditional Japanese practices such as sashiko, though here they appear intuitively rather than illustratively. At the time, I was not consciously referencing Mingei or Edo-period craft, yet "Fuyuu 9-12" reveals how deeply those visual memories had already embedded themselves in my thinking.

Fuyuu, or "floating in the air", captures my work's central tension: a sense of suspension between grounded labor and quiet impermanence. The piece is a study of how small, ordinary impressions linger, repeat, and subtly transform over time. Looking back, "Fuyuu 9-12" anticipates my later focus on elevating the ordinary, on repetition as meaning, and on the emotional continuity between lived experience and material process.