It's the first day of my residency and I am excited to create! I will be dividing my time across my 2 ideas: building studio (practical) and sleep (conceptual). I will be noting down everything I do in a google calendar so that you can keep track of what I am doing, and so that I can later understand myself and my artistic practice better.

I felt like I wasn't making as much things throughout these 7 days. But upon looking back, I've actually made a lot of progress conceptually. The intactility of concepts, along with the tactile conotation of 'art' made me feel like im doing less than I was the past 7 days.

Realizing this made me become aware of my own artistic process. Just like other times I make art, I would spend months researching through reading and chatting with people. When I daydream during my day-to-day, my brain unconsciously synthesizes everything I've gained from my informal 'research'. Accumulation of several daydreaming moments leads to one lucky moment where the jigsaw puzzles would magically fit itself, effortlessly. The moment I get an idea feels so effortless that I don't know whether it is myself or luck that I should credit.

I started off this residency with 2 main topics. One was to build my studio, and the other was sleep. While I did both from day 1-5, today I realized that I've naturally fallen into one focus: my Comfort Object Project. The focus is neither one of the topics I chose but a common thread from both.

I wanted to create the studio with the intention of creating a comfortable space for myself to create. Meanwhile, I wanted to investigate my sleeping rituals as I felt it would be an experience I'd spend most time in during my residency; and I see art residencies as an oportunity to respond to direct experiences in the environment you are placed in.

Comfort Objects embodies the common thread of safeness and comfort that both has. I love realizing how the things I hold within my mind can organically shift and merge, without consciously deciding for it. Having an unconscious working part of me makes me feel like there is someone else with me I can rely on, and that I (my consciousness) am never alone. 

[i.e. The unconscious part of our mind is in a way similar to having another human being. We (the conscious part of you reading this)don't ever know what they will say or do next.]

Only 3 days are left of my residency and I've realized that I've only focused on making one main work – my Comfort Object Project. 

While I came up with several artwork ideas through experimentation and readings in my residency, I realized that it is fair to only have finished 1 work given that it has only been 12 days. This might be by far the quickest project I've planned and made. I spent one week on researching and experimentation, and gradually settled on one main project idea by the start of week 2. 

I will strive to finish this main work by the end of today or tomorrow so that I can work on one more quick piece on Saturday. While the main piece highlights the universality of my statement, the Saturday piece I'll work on acts to highlight an explicit link between the main artwork and myself.  Thus both these artworks, in combination, will both generalize and specify the concept of 'comfort' to me.

I did a lot of experimentation, and trials with the data I've received to the point that I now remember 50 people's comfort objects, object's names, and shapes by heart- it's crazy. These are such personal items of others and now I memorized them all.