I dont want art to be as special as right now...

Today, I was listening to an artist who was giving a lecture at Otis, and he both inspired me and also discouraged me a lot at the same time for saying that he does not care about outside the art-world audience because 'normal people' just do not get it.
But my concern in art making is to break through that kind of distancing of people by separating people by the idea of "insiders" and "outsiders". I am also concerned about closed-mindness of humans. I often find myself trying to find out some ways to smudge the line in between art and life. I want to make something that may be called "art" that doesn't limit the audience. I want to make something that maybe called "art" that brings positive questions for the audience. I want to generate the potential bond in between people through my creations as a part of the world.

"Moon Without Rabbits"

"Moon Without Rabbits" writing mika soma 2006

World without monkeys. Make marshmallow-bricks and build a soft, sweet, wall to block a view. Mortared crane flies over salty water. A suspended floor dripping over an ugly cake. A tightly connected scarf choking us to death. It scratches in my eyes and they pop out. Tomato juice is too green to me. The sun floats through shattered windows. Boil-Boiled-Boiled. Hard, heavy clouds fall down to the earth. Shadows grow into the sky. Kuramubon kuramubon, I want to see kuramubon. Childhood dream. A vast rice-cracker-fields over that marshmallow walls. Dirt-Driter-Dritest. A mouse takes me to the other side. Very far, and very close. Luke warm breeze stabs through my ears to deaf. Wavy and static voice calm my pulse. #? or $? A rooster with a secret-key-shaped beak. The day watcher looks at the Moon without rabbits. Excessive use of drier in June. Treasure of the island. The corner shrinks to spread. A shaking dog sleeps on a melting roof for tomorrow to Come-Came-Come. Fill the bowl with a bunch of universe. Vacuum the wethers out of a Luis Vuitton bag. Traces of airplanes. Ichigo-shoto hitotsu onegai shimasu. (One strawberry cake please.)

My interests in Senses and Textures***

Marshmallow:
I have been thinking about candy lately because my partner has been doing very interesting things with gummies and hard candies. (I am not telling the detail*)
But what interests me is how pretty it is, and its connotations of childhood and sexuality.
The hard candy that he made was so beautiful. I think its beauty can be used in some interesting ways in making art.
But I just happened to get some marshmallows from my friend Nick, and I was telling him how I never really liked its taste, but I have alwasy loved how it feels on my finger tips and cheeks.
Maybe I should make some marshmallow to play with.
http://home.howstuffworks.com/question128.htm

Its texture resembles that of a "daifuku-mochi". A soft sweet red bean paste covered with mochi, which is coated with very fine flower. I love how this feels also.
Daifuku matress, daifuku garmet, daifuku person.....

A Sketch for "A Trip To No-Where" Project

I decided to do a sketch for my "Trip To No-Where" project with Aaron Freeman.

We had a dice, video camera, a notepad, and a pen in my car.
I drove and rolled a dice whenever I had to make a decision to turm left or right, or after driving for 10 minutes in one direction. We decided that even #s would be a right-turn, and odd #s would be a left-turn. Aaron videotaped my rolling of the dice, and recorded the turns on a notepad.

Departing from our apartment in Westchester at 2:47pm, our first sketch went on for exactly an hour, until 3:47, which we ended up in a street in Hawthorn.

Originally, this sketch was going to be about a 4, 5 hours long.
However, as we went along, we discovered that there should be some adjustments in the system that we were using.

First, I wanted to be able to trace the rout that we took on a map later, but we did not rememeber to record the street names. It was a lot to do for Aaron and I did not want to ask him too much. Later in the process, we figured that we can just read the street names out loud for the camera to pick up our voice. (Maybe for the next try, we could have a map to begin with and trace it as we go?)

Secondly, we did not end up as far away as we would have liked.
It was an interesting discovery how the streets demanded us to make a decision to turn before we go straight in one direction for 10 minutes. Out of 14 turns that we made within an hour, there were only 2 turns, which I had to roll the dice because we drove for 10 minutes from the previous decision. What it did was that we kep going back and forth in between Westchester and Inglewood.
Aaron and I talked about how we should have a choice for going straight. Aaron sugested that we could try deciding the "directions"(North South East West) by rolling dice, instead of left or right turns. Then I thought about going as straight as we could go until we must make a decision for turning or deciding the direction to go.

I thought about the "good-old Yamato(Japanese) spirit" of well-determined straightfarwardness. Being on a road and letting go of our control over where we we go became symbolic of life as we went on. I have really been interested in Buddhism lately, which is from a Western philosophical view very illogical and irational. But I feel like that my frustration with the understanding of Western philosophies and Western way of thinking must stem from the fact that I come from a different culture, and I would like to examine that in my artistic practice, because I do not want to draw lines in between things, like in between art and life and everthing else, since everything is a part of whole (one).