Best Season

Here. There. Everywhere. • Solo Art Show

September 30, 2023 • 6-9PM • Lido Peninsula

Artist Remarks: Jenny Doh

COMMON AS THEY ARE

Each of us have come here tonight from all sorts of places with all sorts of stories. All sorts of loss, all sorts of hurt, and all sorts of renewal.

What I want this show to accomplish is for the art to help us feel the innocence of childhood and the related pensiveness of adulthood. I want those shared feelings to help us acknowledge our commonalities. In these current times when we might feel the exhaustion of social divisions, there is no denying that our stories, as unique as they are, are also common as they are. Because we've all been through it. The innocence, the loss, the hurt, the renewal. 

BEST SEASON

The season I currently find myself in is no longer spring. It's also no longer summer. It's probably late fall or maybe early winter. I recently heard Presbyterian Pastor Bryan Eckelmann recount a story about a cute young toddler on the plane that they were both traveling on. The toddler was looking out the window and excitedly point to a plane and saying "Plane!" And then point to another and another saying "Plane! Plane!" Bryan then asked the parents of this boy whether the boy realized that he himself was on a plane. Because sometimes, we don't have the wide angle on us to realize that what delights us is what we are in.

As a kid when my season was spring, I didn't realize that I was in what many consider the best season. I just remember wanting to be in the next one, so I could do grown up things.  

When I was a new mom, I longed for a season in the future where my babies could feed and bathe themselves so i could sleep for a continuous eight hours in a clean shirt.

Consider with me, the beautiful words of Chinese poet Wu-Men as he writes:

Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn,

A cool breeze in summer, snow in winter, 

If your mind isn't clouded by unnecessary things, 

This is the best season of your life.

What delights us over there is also here. It's everywhere. You and me. We are always and already on that plane of the best season of life.

//

Thank you to event sponsors Emery Financial, Lisa Heaney and Adam Heaney.

Thank you to the organizing team: Matt Norred (Installation), Kiersten Short (gallerist), Shawn Marie Turi, Jordan McAuley, Hannah Cooper, & Iain Stewart (photography).

Thank you to musicians: Nick Yee, Destinee Alera, and Greg Remender

Photo gallery by Iain Stewart.