My Life, My Coffin is a part of Life Before Death, an initiative of The Lien Foundation to start a candid and honest conversation about death and dying. FARM generously invited me to participate in the project. It is a poignant and meaningful endeavor, one that allowed me to confront my cynicism and overcome the fear of forging meaningful connections with strangers.

My subject is Ms. Kitty Fogh, a vivid storyteller and teacher. Succinctly put:

90-year-old Kitty is one of the most colourful characters you’ll meet at the nursing home. This affable former English teacher is of Danish-Ceylonese parentage, and has lived at St. Joseph’s for over 30 years. By her own admission, Kitty has led a full life and enjoyed a very satisfying career in education. In her day, she also coached netball, and was involved in drama, the choir and folk dancing. She still speaks fondly of her teaching days, her students and her former colleagues. Kitty is especially proud of being invited to teach country dancing to members of the royal family of Malaysia’s Johor state.

I want the artwork to embody her lively spirit and, at the same time, to address the issue of death in a gentle light. Searching for a solution, I stumbled upon a poignant quote by Louisa-May Alcott, author of Little Women, and much like Kitty herself, a Renaissance woman, a teacher, and a throughly independent spirit. The quote says: Love is the only thing we can carry with us as we go, and it makes the end so easy.

The quote is rendered in organic, flowing form and warm color palette. In addition to that, I created little characters, cheerful boys and girls, to represent Kitty's students, the source of her pride and happiness in life.

project overview

artwork page, artist bio

Thanks to Ms.Deanna Ng for the photos.

Curiosity

Nostalgia

Close-ups:

+ one more artwork.

'Curiosity', 'Nostalgia', and 'Euphoria' make up a series of hand-drawn illustration for 'Food for the Soul', an ongoing creative exhibit for local talents, as curated by kichn. Artworks available as A3 Prints (archival ink & professionally framed) and postcards. Visit kichn to peek closer / make a purchase!

Year-end card for pupilpeople.

gingerbread girls

'Gingerbread Girls' is a homespun project put together as my own way to celebrate Christmas and to give a humble gift to close friends and family. My initial idea was to craft a greeting card made of hand-drawn characters which can be perforated off the card ( like paper dolls ) and hung on Christmas trees, or stuck into cupcakes with the help of wooden toothpicks. Greeting cards are often the first thing to go into the trash can once the season ends, so I like the idea that a part of the card will remain and last for years to come, even if the card itself isn't. Since then, I'd encountered issues challenging the idea's practicality, especially the perforation part. In the end, I settled with a panoramic greeting card that comes with dotted lines ( around the characters' outline ) instead of perforation holes. The recipient will have the option to cut the paper dolls out of the card if they wish to. Alternatively, they may keep the card in its original form. 

for DDB's Fresh Air for Women campaign. Mid/Early 2009.

in the kichn

 

kichn is a concept cafe & creative platform initiative by pupilpeople. See the poster series here.

gingerbread girls - drawing

artwork for OIC's third anniversary exhibition ( 3 x 3 x 30 )

The theme is 'three'. Clue: look at the shadow the monocle makes. Always wanted to work monocles into an artwork for a while. I really adore The New Yorker's gentleman mascot, and it's also a bit of an in-joke.

love, joy, kindness - for a series of posters

cut & paste : experimental poster. illustration & typography

experimental poster : illustration + typography. color pencil, mechanical drawing pencil and your friendly neighborhood Adobe Illustrator ( for the type ) 

click here & here to see bigger. 

one, two,....

Celebration / L'Officiel Singapore

for upcoming issue

L'Officiel December 2009

Beauty Opener

Whoops, sorry for being inactive for the past month! I've been quite busy.

On the art front, I've been dabbing into watercolors again. As usual, it is a bit hard to control and not really my best medium ( I prefer pencils and pens to brushes ) but it is good to play with it again after some time. I also have an exciting project going on right now, the sketches are coming soon after I get them transfered to my computer.

Also, I feel very flattered to be featured in Carmine Magazine courtesy of the lovely Miss Jami Rosa. I enjoyed reading past interviews, especially finding more about Zoetica and Sarah Ferrick and the beautiful, organic jewelry-sculptures of OctopusMe. There's also an interview and write-up about my works on the newly launched KVLT magazine, which promotes independent art and culture scene of all mediums in Singapore. It's really encouraging to see such local movements here, personally, so I wish the team the best of luck!

Medical ethics

Inspired by this article in NY Magazine

"Can One Sibling Pull the Plug If the Others Don’t Want To? And five other vexing medical-ethics dilemmas, examined."

commissioned

Full size here

Another experiment with book covers.

From Amazon:

"Animals, especially imperiled animals, make ominous cameos in nearly all of these stories. There's the wounded anteater who crashes the hotel room of two old friends, both of whom seem willing to sacrifice their friendship for a few nights of banal, artificial romance. There are the thousands of cows whose imprisonment in a beef-processing plant haunts a young man, himself imprisoned by a relative's blithe and repeated attempts at suicide. There's the sheep struck and killed on the road by a driver rendered temporarily insane with unfocused, diabolical jealousy. And in the last and most curious story, there's a chatty talking dog named Steven, who narrowly survives being thrown in a river and commits the remainder of his spared life to running, eating and playing with maximum gusto."

P.S: I could have done the typo better. The 'hungry' was kind of shoddy.








for Jeffrey Eugenides' The Virgin Suicides.

Synopsis from Audiofile:

What if all the pieces in the kaleidoscope were black? Meet the Lisbon daughters. Cecilia is first to end her life, followed not long after by Lux, Bonnie, Mary, and Therese. The girls, shielded from life by overprotective parents, leave everyone wondering--why? Jeffrey Eugenides, who won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Middlesex, reminds listeners that sitcom suburbia is a facade, that troubles lurk just behind the pretty paint. Narrating from the point of view of the town's collective consciousness, Nick Landrum makes the ethereal feel real and the unusual, commonplace. Whether voicing the sisters, reading their diaries, or revealing the secrets of "boy-think," his voice nudges the listener into a strange place that seems oddly familiar.

For an article about the new wave of androgynous fashion.