Everything is in a moment: a moment is in everything

Abstract

I am holding a pot in my hand. It is no ordinary pot, but one made about 1,000 years ago. It was a gift from my grandmother. I am first impressed by its wonderful condition--it is in perfect condition, without any cracks or chips to mar its line, nor markings on its surface. How could it have passed through so many ages without breaking, I wonder. Second, I find it very impressive that ancient craftsmen could create such a beautifully simple shape. When I pick it up, I feel a very utilitarian shape, and a smooth texture, one that I assume was achieved from being used again and again by hundreds of people for a millennium in time. When I smell the pot, it is like smelling the earth. I look at it, the faded pinkish color of the surface, the color of human skin, along with the slight stain on it that was probably made by many years of use. It all just intrigues me. All of those impressions transport me through time, beyond a thousand years, connecting the potter, his family, and the society of that time to myself. The pot is timeless, no matter when it was created, it speaks out to the holder. This experience made me start to think about "time." Even though there are a thousand years distance between me and the potter, we can still connect through the pot, as long as I touch and feel it. For me, until I saw this pot, time was an objective phenomenon, as other people normally think of it. That is, time does not go backward, only forward. But in this moment when I touched and felt this wonderful pot, "time" in my mind travels back and forth, disregarding the minute hand of the watch which marks the real passage of time in the present and relentlessly toward the future. One of my prints for my thesis exhibition, I printed hundred times with multiple colors and images on each time, and the other print has only few layered colors and images, but they were held at the same space at the same time, and were also mysteriously harmonized together. I intended to put together those prints made of different time, different colors, different layers, but also made of the same technical process. Each print's history is unique by the subtle color difference, and composition of the central dot image, but they are also all similar in the soft color and the dot images.