The ugly truth behind the production process of “You Are Your Petals of Strength” and many other experimental works.
Years ago when I was responsible for a solo exhibition of an artist, I was planning to do a BTS video of her working process bc this would allow the audience to understand the philosophy and mentality of the artist.
I still remember the artist expressed that she didn’t want to do the BTS video initially because:
The life of an artist is not glamorous.
You hit a lot of walls, you go to bed frustrated and the next day when you wake up you try to work on something with the hope that it will work.
I’m very far from being an established artist as she is, but I totally understand what she means now. The process of neon-making is frustrating. Like I always said, it’s not always as fancy or cool as it seems on screen – There’s a lot of breakage due to different chemical or technical reasons in different stages.
I hit a lot of walls when I was creating this piece for Love Bonito, as it was an experimental piece that was stretching the physical potential of neon glass tubes. I have the tubes breaking and became unusable when they were done, almost done, halfway done – and I can’t express the devastation.
With the clock ticking as well, the only thing I can do is to think on the positive side: I tell myself this new tube will be bent and blown even better than the last one.
There was this pattern which I broke at least 7 tubes… I was so frustrated as it was 11:45pm when the almost perfect tube broke… Fred told me it was probably late for me and I should head to bed. I re-examined if there was another way for me to bend it, I spent another 15 mins evaluating that and came up with another solution. The first thing I did the next day was to test it out – thanks god it worked. This is amongst one of the first kinds of satisfaction I can get from neon-making: I problem-solved something and it seemed working!
This repeated trial and error process is not easy – I have to game up myself technically, physically and mentally. I have to thank my parents for making me participate in numerous competitions when I was young – I think they were good training for me on how to face pressure and stress.
This is yet another inner exploration I never would have expected from neon-making.
