ampulets

Last evening in Taipei I decided to drop by a bar I haven’t been before - a speakeasy kind of place. It was everything a bar on a Monday night would be - a Murakami short story minus the missing cat and half-tragic mystery. Well, okay, take those things away, i t actually won't be much of a murakami short story. So let’s be honest - it ain’t no short story, just a n othing-happening account of strangers at a bar  on a Monday night. The lady who let me in through the hidden door was Russian. The long-haired dude pretending to do his pretend at the shopfront smiled. Russian ladies they are a bit bossy - you know, they always look like they will shout at you for no reason or maybe something more violent may happen. Anyway she spoke English with an American accent, so I figured it was safe. There were 2 white men at the bar counter. The bartender is a good looking Chinese boy with waist length stringy hair in a ponytail and a nose ring. He wore a faded Radiohead tee the way I wear a fa

“Some Dreams are like Country Music” is a kind of secret book and soundtrack made for all you lonesome cowboys/girls/humans. It’s made small so you can tuck it into your saddle bag, together with other dessert essentials like a photo of grandma and a sweet harmonica. And on a sleepless night as you lie down under a moonlit sky…you can reach for it to keep you company. Ok, I translate.  “Some Dreams are like Country Music” is an art book. It is a collaboration between ampulets and leather artist Tze Ling  @secondnatvre . I wanted to make something small, physically and artistically. I thought it was time, after all the elaborate projects the last couple of years, to make a small book of tiny drawings and mini stories with a very clean, compact emotional palette, one that you can hide inside you. Like the lyrics of a song. 8 dreams: fiction and small fancies I don’t dare to call poems. (Watch the video in Image3) There is also a QR code where you can download a playlist of songs I have s

  I have been neglecting this blog. Most of the action have moved on to IG: yampulets . But things have also been pretty mad at work....and then there was this - A Year Made Object. Where should I start? Perhaps I should just reproduce the introduction in the "A Year Made Object" book. And at the end, I will archive some images of the book I produced with designer Jerry Goh and photographer Jovian Lim to make a time capsule of a time capsule (edition of 150, numbered/signed by ampulets, limited copies still available - DM). You can explore more about the artists/designers and everything about this project that took more than my last 18months >  IG: ayearmadeobject. IF TIME WERE AN OBJECT, WHAT WOULD IT BE?   During one of the many “phases” of the pandemic, there was a moment when I could not tell what year we were in. I reflected on this dislocation, sat at my desk, and started to write this note. It is titled “A Year Made Object”:     No one plants time capsules anymore.

The cleaner looked at it and declared - “沒戏了”.  She literally means “no show”, or “the show has ended”. It’s a good way to describe the plant - “show over”. I told her that the Hoya Linearis’s native setting is the Himalayas and my recent enquiry with a plant seller for a very beautiful specimen that was over 2 meters (mine was perhaps just over a meter) revealed a price of $250. Her reply to me was this - “不急，等著遇” Which means “No hurry, wait for a meeting.” It’s both wise and poetic advice. This morning the printed pages of a new book project arrived! The book is called 密語. Image 1 shows all the component parts - ink drawings of plants I made during the “Circuit Breaker” month, the text that accompanied the drawings, and companion IG posts by James @jampulets. This, I promise, is the absolutely LAST book project I will make with his input. A plant book of his plant photos was also the very last project we had discussed, and so, it feels good to not owe him this. The book is A3 in size