I read a biography of Quentin Tarantino once.
And his best friend said thank goodness he ended up
being a movie director and script writer,
otherwise he would have been a mass murderer.
So I like to think artists would have been terrible human beings
if they hadn't been artists you know.
The creative part of the brain
has got these deep roots into the unconscious
and puts things together in strange ways and poetic ways
to help us understand whats going on in the world.
Creativity is there to help us explore who we are
and puts you in touch with whats happening to you
so that you live more deeply.
I'm a stitcher.
And I use my art as a way of
making sense of my life.
With the up and down movement, the rhythmic movement,
it's a very quietening work.
You are in the present, you are in the moment.
You sit and you stitch... you have a lot of time to think.
Becoming mindful of whats going on through my head
and slowing it down a bit.
The creating process in the workshop
is the way of philosophy for me.
I can't think a lot
just sitting and working things out in my head.
I must do it together with my hands.
My hands will communicate my thoughts
better than my voice would do.
While I can't always see the problems
but I can always feel it.
And one day I can see things
that I couldn't see in the older days.
Our egos are little corks floating on the ocean.
What we know, and our identity, is this small,
and the unconscious is that big.
So you've got this massive resource of the unconscious
and we are trained, I think by society, not to trust the unconscious.
If you value your own creativity
as a huge resource to help you process
your own life and anxiety,
you come to terms with your life,
you come to accept the things that happen to you.
I was bullied as a child.
It was very sad at that time, I can still cry about it.
When you have a sad memory
it's a scar that remains in your heart.
And it's the same as paper...
once you crease it, it remains.
It never goes away.
But you can use that line to make another shape.
In a way, it's necessary to have that crease.
So you make use of what lines and points there are
and you can create something out of what you have got.
I've recently been through a very traumatic time.
I couldn't see a way out of this situation.
And writing was the thing that got me through actually.
It contains you when you are flung apart with anxiety.
Because in writing you can be characters
that you would never be in your normal life.
So on the page you are exploring
a part of yourself that you wouldn't really let out.
And things start happening on the page
which you can never get to in your logical brain.
You never know what's going to arrive from the unconscious
because you're not working with what you know.
You don't have to process it necessarily through words.
You can process it through an image...
take it to the clay, or do a collage.
And then you have a conversation with what you don't know you don't know
about your own anxiety.
There is something redemptive about making art
and cathartic you know.
By externalising those things that you cannot express any other way.
That you can pin things down, that you can stitch things in.
If it is emotions or if it is thoughts...
you've made something out of something
that might just have been sitting inside you or worrying you.
It's a way of working things out.
You can use too much time
just watching what others do,
forgetting that life is something you create yourself.
And if you just sit and let other people
think for you, produce for you,
you lose your life.
In my work with wood,
I think I have found back to that feeling of being in the play...
not just standing outside and looking.
I can have one day left in my life
or I could have some more years...
but that's not the point.
The point is the now.
The now is, in a way, life.
Paper is a metaphor for life.
You only have one piece of paper, like you only have one life.
It's very important that I had that painful experience as a child.
Because of that I can relate to children who are sad.
So I'm able to use that painful memory for something better.
Teaching origami... what I want to create is that awareness
that our situation can transform, just like paper.
I want them to have a sense of hope
that they can do something with their own lives.
We just need to believe that it will transform
because nothing stays the same.
If we valued our own creativity for its own sake,
for our own mental health sake,
I think the world would look like a very different place.
I can always choose to make something better,
to be able to encourage.
Life is an adventure...
you need to open your heart for it.
Just trust in life and stitch...
it will be fine.
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