about me, 2022
hello stranger-friend,
welcome to my infinity-garden-house on the webs. allow me to give you a little tour of this place.
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(2) here’s the project i’m most proud of in recent months
(3) here’s where i am now
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my name is kening, pronounced like “away-kening.” I’m chinese by birth, raised in the american south, and moved to new york city when I was eighteen. nine years later, thoroughly disillusioned, I packed a suitcase and started to slow-travel the world. the pandemic began. I went to nine countries.
I make contemplative art about inner worlds — ways of seeing ourselves, and the world around us.
I write poetic essays about place, make microfilms & animations, experimental visual projects, handbound & unfolding books, handmade art gifts, and through it all, document the lived process (of being, creating, feeling, seeing, knowing) in my ongoing journal, which is more like a garden of wild things.
I also teach courses on creativity, and work with clients in my web studio.
I send a monthly artistic newsletter, a weekly letter on process, and a private letters to patrons.
I try to live my life as poem. embrace the yin in all things. daily rituals are the way I breathe — and deal with frequently stormy scorpio weather. I journal to remember my sanity.
I barely use social media. I like digital solitude. I like to turn my rooms into forests.
I believe that art is an imperative, not a luxury. its process is a way of living fully awake, a vision for seeing life with more beauty & soul. a mysterious kind of alchemy that can transform — anything.
for more on my journey of wayfinding, here’s a post I wrote in 2019: the art of finding my path. then, two years later, I made an 8 minute recap of my 2020.
I’ve always thought of my work as its own magical ecosystem and my website as an infinity space — a portal mirroring my kaleidoscope mind, a documentation of my heart and soul. when I forget myself and who I am — I return here, to this page.
lately, I’ve been asking the question: what is the best way to travel through an infinity room? hence, I’m continually uprooting and replanting this place. right now, I’m working on creating journeys and rooms. the internet not as a noisy feed, but as place, as experience.
my intention for 2021 is to be in full flow and power. I’m slowly discovering what that means for me.
I’ve been in the mood for film and sound. here’s a 43 second microfilm I made from the evening bell, and jewelery hanging in my room.
I started exploring animation as a complete form — interweaving my writing, my voice, and art in motion. here’s a three minute animated drawing that took me 19 hours — I created this while totally high and drunk in love. can you tell?
I was always skeptical of the nomadic and rootless, because I’m such a homebody. but, then I started traveling with the intention of bearing witness. making art. I travel with my eyes wide open, to absorb as much as I can — from what I see and feel. I try to capture a moment, a mood, a time, a space. here’s an audio-video postcard from a hot evening in napoli, italy - last summer — in a room of italian physicists, playing music.
though I love experimenting with form, I think my soul’s voice still lives in the written word. in college, I studied nonfiction creative writing and history — but instead of taking the path of an MFA, I decided to pursue my own homegrown MFA, in the lecture hall of the world, of life.
I write in order to remember (or forget) a place. even if that place only exists in my mind.
here's an essay on leaving new york for paris, in january of 2020, when I began this journey: crossing worlds to paris. then, when the pandemic started, an essay on the experience of fleeing europe, and the coronavirus as a virus of fear.
when I landed, I found myself in a tatami mat room in rural japan and wrote this piece: library-house of grandfather buddhist priest. and that’s how I spent the first lockdown — my japanese spring with my friend karen — and those were, perhaps, the happiest months of my life.
you’ll find as you browse, here, that so much of my work is extremely personal, and emotional, and about experiences of pain and heartache. about being more at peace with this strange, uncontrollable game called life.
here’s a piece I wrote earlier this year: I calculated how long it takes me to get over a man. I read it when I feel too attached, and out of control with my emotions.
when I feel rage, it’s an unfamiliar and scary sensation. I can barely handle that energy. that’s when I vomit out pieces. here’s one about a sexual assault experience, (which I didn’t know was assult) until months later: bad things happen to us.
yes, dark weeks come, but I survive — I always survive. certainly, that’s what my art is for: surviving — and making beauty from darkness. I swim the abyss of my own pysche. and I dive for jewels. this is a museum of jewels.
over the years, I’ve realized that I’m gifted (or cursed) with very dramatic internal weather — an endless source of creativity. so I became obsessed with documenting practices for wellbeing. then I made art out of it. here’s a daily moon journal I made in 2017 to track my daily moods, after a breakup which felt like a trainwreck.
to get over him, I pretended he was exiled to antarctica. we went on a roadtrip earlier that year, which I documented in these visual diaries. I can still remember each place.
I always felt that the mind and heart states were places, too. here’s a 2016 project I did about mind spaces — called inner landscapes. this is anxiety as a place:
these days, my visual work has been mostly digital — via the infinite notebook (ipad) but when I had an apartment of my own and the illusion of a “settled” life, I was a 100% handmade, handcrafted, tactile kind of person.
here’s an experimental, unfolding children’s book I made for a friend called spaceship earth. I bought an art printer and made 18 copies by hand, which I shipped around the world.
earlier that year, another handmade book: a collection of short essay-poems I wrote about tango, that all-consuming passion which I seem to have forgotten...
that spring of 2019, when the flowers started blooming outside my apartment in queens, I started painting one minimalist flower a day, and pairing it with a poem. I compiled this project: poetry as prayer, and read each poem outloud.
I painted in gouche — my favorite medium. it had the fluidity of watercolors, but with a deeper, more saturated intensity. here is a painting called muse in love from a series of soul portraits I did.
oh yes. I can’t forget to mention that I experimented with various client projects through the years, including this art installation in oakland (which was a shameful failure the first time around). I wrote a post about it called: the gift of starting over.
these days, I’ve been reflecting on how to best offer my gifts to the world — and shifting my focus away from clients, and more on sharing content — insights, wisdom, and processes, rituals — which are distilled down into self-guided digital experiences (rooms & journeys) — and deeper dive through courses.
during the first lockdown, I built and ran this course on creative processes, called creative beings - which started out as an experiment, but felt so, so right.
I realized that the most magical things come from an energy of possibility, play, and experimentation. I plant seeds into my earth. I water them. I wait to see what grows.
so, thank you, thank you — for reading about my journey, seeing my work, and visiting my world. I’ll leave you with some ways to keep in touch, until next time.
xo, kening
ways to keep in touch
sign up for monthly artist digest
sign up for my weekly letters on process (guidenotes)
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write me anytime. I love hearing from strangers.
curated shortcuts
VISUAL ART
our paths crossing
inner landscapes
moon journals
poetry as prayer
soul portraits
visual diaries
WRITING
I calculated how long it takes to get over a man
the japanese houses of grandfather buddhist priest
crossing worlds to paris
bad things happen to us
fleeing europe
antarctica
ongoing journal
the art of finding my path
13 nourishing practices for wellbeing
the gift of starting over
scorpio self-care guide
artist vlogs
2021 in 119” seconds
2020 recap
january artist diary
handmade things
cigarette kisses
little clay birds
spaceship earth book
tango essays booklet
animations
variation on the word sleep
do you want anything from afghanistan
a forest grows in berlin
tempelhof in fog
microfilms
the melancholy of twilight
will summer always smell like this?