cowのlife
a cow’s life
an oxymoron of the English
‘cow no life’
Hello there, I’m craftcow — a pseudonym that I gave myself in all online platforms possible simply because of two things:
1) the year of the Ox
2) having being involved in craft work in all manners possible, since I was little
by craft work, I mean all these, since elementary years: air-dry clay work, cross stitch, decoupage, papier-mâché, batik, printmaking, paper cutting, clay sculpting and so on.
With each year, there’d be a new craft form that I’d be curious to learn about. It must have been rubbed off onto me from my mother, who is one of the handiest people on Earth that I first came to know. Growing up, I received many handmade items from her, ranging from crocheted hats, micro-beaded necklaces, and bags adorned with cross stitch or hand-sewn appliques. She is also whom I have had by my side while working on Art assignments or craft projects for school in my elementary years, helping me out to get materials or brainstorming for ideas. The love and curiosity to create was nurtured since those years.
If I can make it, I won’t buy it.
a mantra I have inculcated whilst growing up
In my pursuit for the arts, I have indulged in learning many various crafts in my adulthood in varying spurts of duration: sewing apparel, knitting, leather work, pyrography on leather, bookbinding, miniature clay art, rubber stamp carving 消しゴムはんこ, shoemaking, and so on.
In 2014, I joined the Singapore Urban Sketchers to understand the concept of creating an artwork based on on-site live observation of one’s surroundings. This grew to become a habit of mine, of the relationship between observation and making a mark. Till today.
Creating this website on my own was one of the many personal curiosities I wanted to fulfil. A random thought that occured while in the midst of finding myself during this episode of life we call a pandemic in 2020 — COVID19 aka coronavirus. Initially, this space was thought out to just include my art-related portfolio compilation of sorts.
After sitting on it, revisiting the unpublished site space on a monthly basis, the ideas kept changing and evolving into an online space I would like to call my own — inclusive of a journal component, regardless of whether there would be an audience.
The social media platforms that I’m currently on, couldn’t quite ideally fulfil that journal aka wordy component of myself, very well. Therefore.
I hope you find your visit to this site a fruitful one, one way or another.
What I do
explore
a curious person who likes to explore, wonder about what others think about, and how they choose to portray their thoughts
enjoys interpreting what she sees, hears, smells, feels — senses in her own muddled thoughts and words
meaning-making at its best; of the everyday, of the people, of life’s curiosities, ironies and such
work
grew to be an educator at heart after approximately 10 years in the education sector, teaching Art, English, Math and Science at the elementary level
the children became a priority, and work was at the forefront; a priority of my everyday, figuring out what makes the children tick and how best can they be taught what’s necessary, relevant and at times, spontaneously incidental
am thankful to have been given opportunities to be a professional developer for the teaching fraternity, as well as being a part of organising committees and teams for national based projects, events, conferences and syllabus writing with the ministry, to name a few
am in the 2020 JET Programme as an ALT
my work CV is on LinkedIn; get in touch to connect
currently situated in Tokyo, Japan
music
someone who tried to learn music on her own, given the limitations of means while growing up; and still loves music
used to sing soprano in the school choir
favourite piece to play would be Moonlight Sonata
decided to take flute classes for a while from 2017-2018
Want to collaborate?
Curious about something?
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