Attaining my ideal self:

The Ideal Artist - that messes with my head.

The Ideal Mother - that messes with my heart.

Both together!?!?

One of our greatest human abilities is to imagine our ideal, so we can live life at our best. It’s also one of our greatest curses. We forever judge ourselves against this ideal. Some thrive on self-judgement. Me? I’m crushed by anxiety.  Accepted wisdom tells us: To be an artist is to sacrifice all for your art. Similarly it says: To be a mother is to sacrifice all for your children. I constantly feel inferior to these lofty ideals.  How can we stop punishing ourselves for falling short? I had to start rewarding myself for moving towards my ideal - even if it was only the tiniest step forward. That’s how I returned to my Shodō practice. Shodō is the traditional art of Japanese calligraphy.  A brush sweeps gracefully, black ink across white paper. As youngsters we wrote Kanji characters every morning that anticipated our day ahead. We were told the process would engrave the ideal into our minds, and help us to make it real. Shodō plays an integral part in Japanese life. Considered a spiritual practice of awakening, our universe is revealed to us by this most simple of acts: a brush stroke on paper leads to the answer. To lift the heavy feelings of failure, I decided to treat my clay like Shodō. To do everything in one go. I simply committed to make one Shodō each and every day. Good or bad, it didn’t matter. And sure enough, 0 sculptures became 2 in just 48 hours. 1 week later, 7 sculptures stood before me. A month later, 30. Until in no time, 100 sculptures filled my studio. Now I could select my 3 favourites. And turn them into bigger, more substantial pieces. And so the new Shodō collection was born. An atomic shift. Because it resulted in actual progress. And changed my reality. Shodō showed me who’s in charge of my destiny – ME. That first dot, that first stroke, first word, first note, each and every day is our super power. With these collection of firsts, our ideal is realized. Our future depends on our willingness to take that one ‘first’ step today. Though we may not know what we hold within us, let’s take one stupidly small step forward from yesterday, together, now. And let the answers unfold through our actions, however tiny.

Hello Ideal, we’re coming to get you!

Noe Kuremoto

Black stoneware sculpture

H: 60 cm x W 54 cm x D 13 cm (approximately)