Design by nature and the outdoors

At the time of this writing, we are going through a corona virus pandemic. Admittedly, the past couple of years have been a struggle, but it hasn’t all been a bad struggle. There is also a good kind of struggle that has helped me grow and progress as a designer. As Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, “A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor”. Through an ongoing pandemic, isolation, reduced access to resources, and loss of determination, I was able to find ways to reimagine my designs and branch out into other mediums such as ceramics and metals to produce pieces and find inspiration in new creative ways.

A lot of my inspirations from these recent years have come from the outdoors. In Japan, there is a concept called, ‘Shinrin-yoku’, which means ‘forest bathing’. It is a form of ecotherapy where you saturate yourself in the ambiance of the forest to heal yourself. Through ‘Shinrin-yoku’, I was able to move forward and explore my design aspirations.