a season of change ft. studio hua

Apr 18, 2024

I woke up to some very exciting news yesterday morning, and it’s just as good of time as any to share it with you: my business is now international!

It’s the first step towards that dream I mentioned in my last post (omg can you believe it’s already been almost four months, how does time even), and now that it’s starting to solidify I can finally tell you about it:

I’m establishing my art studio in Tokyo!

It’s the culmination of all that I figured out about myself last year, the six months of being in liminal space and accepting that I had no idea what came next and just letting myself stay in that place of uncertainty and introspection. And then it all came together one morning (in the shower actually, on my birthday—dunno what it is about shower thoughts and birthdays) that the way I wanted to go forward was to split time between San Francisco and Tokyo: client work in San Francisco, and my personal art work in Tokyo.

So for the last four months I’ve been trying to figure out exactly how to do that. I already have my LLC in California where I’ve been taking on client work for the last eight years. The tricky part was the Tokyo part, aka. trying to get long-term work/studio space in a country that I’m neither citizen nor permanent resident of 😅 I spent an entire month researching all of my potential options, and landed on the one that felt the best: to start a company in Tokyo (a Godo Kaisha, or G.K., Japan’s version of an LLC), so that I can sponsor my own work visa, legally rent (a beautiful) space, (hopefully and respectfully) integrate into the local community, and (even more hopefully) be able to work with and collaborate with local artisans and designers via the G.K.

So I am very very excited to share with you my brand spanking new, fresh off the grill, established as of yesterday Japanese company: studio hua 🥳🎉🎊

I’ll be operating all of my art business out of this company, and I’m actually particularly proud of and excited about the name. hua in Chinese can mean 画 (art), 花 (flower, aka. my favorite thing to code 😂), 话 (words, conversation), or 化 (change, evolution), and I love all the huge potential that this one name holds. I actually came up with it in 2018 while hiking (or rather, climbing hundreds of stairs lol) through national parks in southern China (a deeply meaningful trip to me, it’s the last time I got to travel with my dear grandparents), and I’ve been savoring and saving the name for something that felt truly special. And then I decided to start my art studio in Tokyo, and it felt the most right.

I had to write down the “purpose” of my Japanese company and the “business activities” that it’ll engage in (lolol) for registration purposes, but to be honest I have no concrete plans yet of what to do with it. For the foreseeable future, maybe even the next two to three years, I want to take the time and space I’m there (I’d imagine being there 2–3 months at a time) to concentrate on my own art. What last year taught me is that I was able to figure out a lot about myself and my art in grad school, but I have so much more I still want to figure out.

You might be wondering, why Tokyo? Why not New York (where I currently live), or even San Francisco (where I used to live)?

I live in a very modest 700 sqft apartment in New York, and while beautiful, my workspace is in the living room and it really doesn’t allow me to get messy. I tried to re-arrange it to make it more conducive to making, and I even looked (passively) for a separate studio space. But I’m (unfortunately but I have come to accept this about myself) so influenced by place and space, I’m most motivated to work when I’m in a bright, airy, and pretty space. And what I saw in New York was either small, dark, far, super expensive, or all of the above. It started to feel really stressful and stifling, like every little thing I wanted to do (rent space, get materials, wait for electronics to arrive, get help with documentation) needed a lot of planning and consideration and decision-making of how to allocate my resources.

Then we were back in Tokyo for three weeks in December (for a completely different reason that I’ll be able to share in a few months!) and I was reminded of how artistically inspired I’ve always felt in Japan:

I am deeply influenced by the Chinese ink paintings my mom used to have in my childhood home, a set of four long scrolls that depicted the seasons. I’m inspired by the Miyazaki films I grew up with, the lush landscapes, his masterful use of pauses to set the tone or build tension. And I love the minimalism in Japanese design, the way they focus on beautiful, curving lines and organic shapes, and that they’re deeply inspired by nature.

I wrote in my notes that I feel like I’m on the cusp of figuring out something with my art, and I feel like coming back to where I grew up (in Japan) is part of the answer. That if I could just dedicate some time to studying Chinese and Japanese art, to trace their histories and learn their artists’ names, that I’d arrive fully at my own style.

That’s my short-term, next few years goal: to figure out a way to spend a longer period of time in Japan to study East Asian art history, with a concentration on the last 50 years and new media arts. And perhaps, someday, in China too.

If you know a way to make this happen—please let me know! I’m all ears and so interested.

And that December morning, I realized that I had all the potential to make it happen myself, if I could just sign the client projects I needed to (because as it turns out, it takes a lot of money to start a company in a foreign country and travel back and forth between them, lol). And in January, I was able to sign those client projects 🎉 and move full force towards my dream.

(Which is why you haven’t heard from me in four months, because I’ve been juggling three client projects, starting a company in Japan, and another yet-to-be-shared Big Life Thing lol. I will admit that I might have overdone it a bit.)

A letter I sent to a former and current client who chose to invest in me, and enabled me to dream this dream. I poured my heart out like the sap I am.

So it fills me with indescribable joy and anticipation (and tbh also a bit of trepidation) that I get to start this next step? part? chapter?? of my art in the country I spent the majority of my childhood in—watching Ghibli films and reading manga and running through rice fields, that I’ve visited every year for the past decade in search of the childhood I left behind, that I’ve yearned to live in because I have the deepest gut feeling I might find a part of myself still there.

That’s why I’m putting a whole ocean between the work I used to do for others (and will happily continue to do as long as there are people willing to work with me), and this fragile, new thing I’m starting for myself.

It feels sacred.

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On a more logistical? note, I’m really excited to find a gallery-like space I can design shows and document my work in. I find that I’m most creative when I have constraints, and having a dedicated space would mean I can get really detailed in how I integrate my art within it.

And because Japan just has such a strong maker culture, I’m hoping to be able to get my hands on materials and electronics and experiment and prototype really quickly.

And once I feel settled with my art and integrated into the local community, I hope I can start working and collaborating with local artists, fabricators, and designers, and eventually even invite my artist friends over and put on shows together.

Admittedly, it’s going to be a very bumpy ride. I’ve already hit the first bump, which is that not many landlords/ladies want to rent their place to a brand spanking new company with no financial records in their country—and I honestly can’t blame them 😂

But I’ll figure it out somehow, because the golden daruma told me that I’ll get out what I put in, and to go forward without hesitation—and I gotta have faith in something 🤣 And I’ll definitely keep you updated.

Me yesterday, ecstatic.  And the golden daruma with the fortune, roughly translated as “A premonition that you’ll win your dream.  The more that you put into it, the more your probability of success will rise.  Go forward without hesitation.”

And I’ll leave on this exchange I had with my dearest mother (on the phone, in the grocery store of all places), who came to America with the hope of giving me a Very Stable Life and I’ve instead gone and found probably one of the most chaotic career paths I can, who tries to understand my life choices but just cannot fathom why I do what I do lol:

If you know that you’re 99% likely to never make any money with this company making art, why even do it?

Because of that 1% chance, mom. I’m going all in for that 1% chance.

💖,

Shirley

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P.S. thank you so much for reading my very personal ramblings to the very end, and thank you so much to those that take the time to respond! If I haven’t had the chance to reply to you yet, I’m so sorry—but I read and appreciate every response ♥️ thank you especially for those that gave me advice on setting up a blog and RSS! I’m hoping things calm down a bit in the summer and I can work on transitioning this newsletter over to my website instead 😊