ampulets

Yesterday at the market beside my new flat (hehe I couldn’t resist taking my mom to check out the reno in progress! And it is looking so fabulous!!!!), I saw these chrysanthemums still wrapped in gauze and knew immediately they would be large but not crass in their beauty. Brown flowers! How cool is that! Look closely and you can see that the colours are actually composed from strands of yellow and orange and peach and burnt earth.     You know how there is that famous Bible verse where Jesus chides people for worrying. He points out that God made the wild lilies more beautiful than the most exquisite robe King Solomon would have, to illustrate that the provisions of a mighty God are immense and beyond our human comprehension and human effort. Well, I realised that the next verse, also a famous one but seldom linked, is perhaps the lesson for me.     In the past few days I was hearing this: If indeed the maker of so much beauty is your God, it is not just “do not worry” (hard enough as

The relationship between word and image is one that has interested me since young. I wrote and drew stories, made them into books....oooh, for a long time. In my teenage years, they were typed and painted books, and brought to the neighbourhood photocopy shops to bind. With a computer and learning later how to bind my own books, I could make editions.  As part of packing up my house, I found a few that were made in the 1990s.  This book was made in 1993/94, perhaps during the long summer break in the first year of university. There was an earlier version draft with colour, but I decided in the end to keep the covers coloured but the inside pages in B/W.  The cover is this velvet textured paper I found in the "fancy paper" shop at Bras Basah and the pages are printed on "Conqueror" paper. I had laid out the text on Word (maybe then I used the software called "Word Star" or "Word Perfect"....remember those?), printed them out, and drew directly on

I have never really "moved house" before. I did move my things to live with J 15 years ago. But it was a flat he was already living in. I simply carted my clothes and books over. After he died, so many friends have hinted that I should move. But when I finally did sell my flat and when I bought a new one, I had these two questions from friends - One: "Oh, why did you decide to move - I thought you were not going to? Can you bear leaving the flat?" Two: "How come you can decide so quickly - and then sell and buy a new flat so fast?" My answer to the second question is simple. Where I am moving to was a place J and I had always looked at as a possibility. I know what I like. I don’t have grey zones when it comes to things or people I like.  My answer to the first question is just as simple, but it takes the more amusing form of a dream. I had just woken up from an afternoon nap. My room was filled with light. The flat has white walls and cupboards, so light

I reproduce in full the introduction of the art book A Day To Wake Up To . It says all there is about this project - the project's genesis and process. (  To see more of its design or to order, go to >> www.neighbourgoods.sg  ) The introduction also explains why this project had a second birth at the Singapore Art Book Fair in 2019, and for this reason, I am very grateful to Fair director Renee Ting for agreeing to my greedy request for a space of 5tables to launch this project at the 2021 fair and display all the actual drawings. A Day to Wake Up to  -  Introduction This is a project James and I have been working on since 2012, inspired by our time in the MacRitchie Nature Reserve, and now, made complete with the love and work of friends.     We enjoyed every moment of our time together, walking or running along the trails. These visits taught us much about ourselves and nature. The lessons never grew old. They were about stopping to appreciate the beauty around us; about no