Kotoba, kashimashii and chūshin

All of the last three words are from the Japanese language. One thing I love so much about Japanese is the kanji characters. It's really cool to be able to communicate so much with a single character! And different parts that go into the kanji character have stand alone meanings. For more information (very cool info) go take a peek at Kelly's blog: Modernancientglass.

The word kotoba means, well, "word". The basic unit of oral communication, I went kind of obvious with this although I do like to think about the different ways we communicate, many of which do not rely on the spoken word at all.

Kotoba:



Kashimashii is such a fun word to say, though I am not sure if I am pronouncing it correctly. I wonder if the final two "i's" make the "shii" part of the word two syllables instead of one? And that sort of mindless meandering is often what keeps me up at night :o)

Kashimashii means noisy or mischievous. I got a little noisy and mischievous in creating this when I decided to look upon that ugly black powder with disdain and push it aside. I dug out some bright, pretty powders to play with -- it brought a bit of color to my day, I hope it does the same for you!

Kashimashii:

Chūshin is defined as "heart, core, mind, inside feeling". I guess you might say I was a bit mischievous with this one also, once again eschewing that black powder.

One consequence of any powder work that incorporates more than one color of glass powder is mixing/contamination of single colors. When I make a piece (like kashimashii, above) that requires more than one color, no matter how careful I am, I always end up with some mixing of cast off powder. Powder is pricey, so I collect those mixed colors in a jar to use for practice pieces, screen printing and such.

I dipped into that mixed powder jar to create my picture for chūshin, because our hearts, our cores are very complex and sometimes seem very mixed up. What goes into our heart can never be removed, it just gets incorporated into all of the other emotions and experiences that already reside at the core of our being. There is nothing simple about the heart or core of our being: it's complicated!

My chūshin is centered around a nucleus of energy that radiates out in varied and interesting ways.

Chūshin:

As always, thank you for stopping by!
....TRrrish