“Swimming is simply moving meditation“
Cesar Nikko Caharian
I think all the swimming first thing in the morning five days a week over the past three months has emptied my mind out so the job of renovating my apartment has shifted too and I am seeing all the different possibilities to make it minimal and empty but functional too.
I felt a bit guilty as the last few days Thursday and Friday I only did forty laps or two hours in the pool rather than my sixty laps or three hours which I had got up to a bit over a week ago. I find it really relaxes me and leaves my mind feeling Zen for hours after the swim.
Oz my friend and builder has installed my new IKEA kitchen but it’s still not quite finished. But it feels and looks amazing.
I am hoping Oz shall repair the floor in my bathroom and put medium white tiles and repair the joists and tile the shower stall too. However, I like the retro toilet sink and cabinet and towel rack. However, he is booked out until March or April next year so the renovation shall take longer than expected. However, he was easy to work with and did a good job of my kitchen so it shall be worth the wait.
My friend Yannick has offered to help me paint the interior of my apartment and I want to reduce all the art hanging in my apartment and I don’t know how many photos paintings and drawings and a few ceramic sculptures I have but it’s a lot. Most are mine but there is also a lot of art I got in swaps with other contemporary Australian artists. There is also a beautiful painting and some drawings framed that I got from a swap with amazing South Korean artist Hansol Lim who I exhibited with many years ago in Queensland at Holly Gallery. I also visited her and her husband in South Korea since.
I have taken the year off exhibiting since the end of summer I think to focus on my health and renovate my apartment. However, I have still been drawing my ten drawings a day project and staged photo shoots and built a plaster building sculpture got a lateral thinking neon made and six A0 photos and also occasionally posting essays on my website mainly about art and life ideas around art, music, friendship, exercise and spirituality.
Once the apartment is painted, I shall reduce the amount of hanging art drastically.
Also, my ten drawings a day project mainly on the back of cut up grocery bags has ballooned out ridiculously cramping my bedroom with lots of cardboard boxes filled with drawings. There must be literally thousands of drawings.
So, to reduce this I shall buy at least six big plastic boxes with lids from Bunnings and put the drawings in storage with the lids on so they don’t go mouldy.
“Spiritual formation cannot, in the nature of the case, be a ‘private’ thing, because it is a matter of whole-life transformation. You need to seek out others in your community who are pursuing the renovation of the heart.”
Dallas Willard
Perhaps my renovation of my apartment isn’t just a practical thing but is also a renovation of my heart in a platonic sense.
In conclusion my tiny apartment as an art installation to live in is just as important for me maybe more so than my solo art exhibitions as I live there everyday day in day out and it moulds my thoughts, moods and makes me happy and feeds me creative ideas and time to rest by myself.
