I once made an origa­mi rose for a friend. Written inside was a poem I com­posed one night when I had an excess of for­lorn emo­tions. One of my best pieces. In order to read the poem, she would have to destroy the rose, ruin­ing the piece in itself, though sati­at­ing her curios­i­ty. If she nev­er opened it, she would nev­er be able to see exact­ly what I wrote.

For me, art must have three attrib­ut­es; it must be aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing in some way, it must car­ry a mes­sage, and I must be able to under­stand it or relate to it in some way. So many peo­ple seem so super­fi­cial to me when they put paint­ings in their house, or stat­uettes, about things they don’t under­stand. They own these pieces because “they like them”. They enjoy look­ing at them. Do they under­stand what the artist was think­ing when he or she used a cer­tain stroke of the brush? For all they know, the sculp­ture could be a mes­sage about any­thing they nor­mal­ly would­n’t agree with. They don’t under­stand what the artist was try­ing to do. They can’t appre­ci­ate the piece. It sad­dens me.

So I made anoth­er piece, as a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the rose I made for my friend, because I enjoyed it so much, it is a sym­bol for some­thing I cre­at­ed. It is a sim­i­lar rose, but with the words “art for art for art for…” writ­ten all over it. When I look at it, it reminds me of my friend, what I was think­ing when I gave away such a pre­cious piece, and what she’s doing right now.

And to this day I don’t know if she opened it.