A Quiet Practice

My yoga teacher and his wife are having a baby. At the end of one of his classes he invited us all to attend. Normally, I avoid these things like the plague, but I am new to the west side and LA in general, and have been making efforts to connect with people in Venice and Santa Monica to become part of a community.

Finding a fit has been hard.

I’ve found that the places I feel most comfortable are the ones where groups of people gather to do individual things, like yoga. I go to a gym in Venice which has a yoga studio that looks and feels like a cave. 

It has become my sanctuary.

In the warmth of that space, alongside other skilled practitioners, I get to breathe into my body and move in unison with those around me. It’s the most extraordinary feeling, to sink deeper inside yourself while feeling like you’re a part of a group. 

That’s what I wish socializing was for me. 

A sense of wholeness without having to say a word. 

To feel restored while being with other people.

I love practicing yoga by myself at home, but I’ve found the rare combination of being with people, many whom I’ve never spoken to, in a space that’s not mine, where I feel completely myself.

So I went to the baby shower. My first one ever. I think. Often I say that but then when I reflect days later a dormant memory pops up and I realize I lied. I also made a gift to bring, cause I think that's what you do for baby showers. 

The gift was something I learned about from my sister as she wanted me to make one for the birth of her first child. She told me about how infants respond to simple, high contrast images as they begin to develop sight. My artwork is right at home in this space, so I created a small set for Colin when he was born. 

For my yoga teacher, Blake, I was inspired to do the same. 

The more I thought about it, the more I fell in love with the idea. How special it would be to help develop a person’s sight. 

Imagine the earliest things eyes learn how to see are parts of my art practice. Images that will be forgotten before the child ever makes memories, but maybe in those ephemeral moments, something will stay with them.

A feeling before memory.

My mind then shifted from artist enamored with beauty into entrepreneur mode, and I began doing the mental gymnastics of turning the idea into a product. Something scalable. Something that could provide stable recurring income, to ease the burden of living as an artist.

Then I stopped.

Not everything beautiful has to become business.

I decided to let the idea remain a gift.

Learning how to throw pottery has been a desire of mine for years. It was once a small part of an omakase concept my 10 year sushi career was building towards called Pursue Underground, where I planned to make all the tablewares for my tasting menu concept.

The restaurant never opened, and with it, making pottery quietly disappeared from my life.

This year, in what feels like the worst possible time to pick up a hobby that requires both time and money, I felt compelled to put my hands back in the dirt. Not to make something new to sell, but to nourish my heart.

Just like yoga, I needed a creative practice that helped me feel grounded. Painting has become my work. I still love it deeply, but six years of evaluating every creative idea by its business value has slowly worn me down.

Pottery asks something different of me.

Like yoga, it demands my full attention. The moment my mind wanders, or hands wobble, the clay lets me know.

I think that's why I've fallen so deeply in love with both practices. They're quiet disciplines that let me disappear into my own work while surrounded by other people doing the same. Yoga and pottery seem to hold the types of community I can be immersed in without having the pressure to socialize to fit in.

Wheel throwing, like asana, rewards an obsession with detail, a sense of body in space, and a willingness to fail.

It feels strangely natural, even though I smash more than half of what I throw.