Two years ago, when I got into CCA, Mod gave me a Daruma Doll. This is what they are:
From Wikipedia
Daruma dolls (é?磨 daruma?), also known as dharma dolls, are hollow and round Japanese wish dolls with no arms or legs, modelled after Bodhidharma, the founder and first patriarch of Zen.[1] Typical colors are red (most common), yellow, green, and white. The doll has a face with a moustache and beard, but its eyes only contain the color white. Using black ink, one fills in a single circular eye while thinking of a wish. Should the wish later come true, the second eye is filled in. It is traditional to fill in the right eye first; the left eye is left blank until the wish is fulfilled.
Inside I found a little funny money I’d saved from some art sales and several notes I left for myself.
They read:
- A thing that’s worth doing is worth doing right
- It’s now the end of my first semester at CCA and I’ve discovered I LOVE textiles
- The king is dead, long live the king (reminder to myself that painting is dead and reborn all the time)
- The essential feature of adventure is that it is going forward into unknown territory -Agnes Martin
- There are endless directions. In and out. – Agnes Martin
- Determintation (my mantra throughot this journey)
- What is the worm of the orld that spoils exaltation? -Agnes Martin
- To try to understand is to court misunderstanding. -Agnes Martin
- Reciprocity toward nature (from the book The Gift, and an idea that is still shaping my work)
- We learn by faint clues and indirection – Walt Whitman
- Hope I can get gallery representation by the time I graduate
Sort of funny reading that last one now. It obviously didn’t happen. I’d like it to happen. I feel farther away now than I felt when I started. I kind of feeling like starting from scratch right now. Which is probably why I have an urge to paint over or destroy nearly every painting I’ve ever made.
This is my Daruma waiting for his second eye:
Here he is in all his glory now:
Thank you Mod! I love you!
Time to party.