I’ve been drawing a lot from two subjects: milkweed and Kintsugi. The two subjects intertwine, dance around in my head and combine into collage artworks using Japanese paper, digital photographs and now words. In so many urban landscapes, milkweed survives and even pushes through cracks in the sidewalk. Kintsugi displays cracks which represent healing. Both are survivors.
I have a memory of milkweed that keeps circling back in my head. My Japanese American mother was already in her 80s when I used to take her on little outings to North Park Nature Village Centre in Chicago. She saw some milkweed bursting its seeds. With the joy and surprise of a child, she picked it up and cupped it in her hands. “Don’t touch that,” I said. But it was too late, and it was fine.
Kintsugi is a newer idea to me. I found out about it while scrolling through Instagram one day. Kintsugi is a Japanese philosophy involving repairing broken pottery with gold lacquer. The brokenness can add strength and the cracks emphasize the beauty of imperfection and impermanence. Brokenness ends up adding strength after the pottery is repaired. It survives after it has fallen apart, as we do with aging and chronic disease, and the so many other things we claw through in our lives.
I melded the two words together. Milkweed and kintsugi to make “Milsugi.” A friend suggested I take the “k” out to make the word flow better.
I’ve created visual art around the idea. Currently, I have two Milsugi pieces on display at Northern Contemporary in Toronto (The show is extended until May 7th.) I invite you to embrace the flawed and broken aspects of life in a new light. Doing so brings beauty to brokenness.
Stay tuned for more visual art pieces, and haikus in the next chapters of my Milsugi project.
