Studio Notes · May 2025
Storm’s Eye View, drawing by Kyna Leski.
ON MY MIND
Navigating.
As the semester wrapped up and I was organizing my library, I came across Kyna Leski’s The Storm of Creativity—a kind of guide to the creative process from her perspective as an architect, artist, designer, and educator. The storm, as a metaphor for creation, feels particularly apt: it begins from nothing, gathers energy and material, moves dynamically across multiple scales, follows a non-linear path, remains in continuous motion, repeats and reiterates, and ultimately results in an exchange with the world.
As an instructor of architectural design, I also appreciate Leski’s humbling reminder: Just like a meteorologist cannot make the weather, I, the instructor, cannot make creativity happen. I can at best help navigate it.
Notably, Leski’s stages of the storm—problem making, gathering and tracking, propelling, perceiving and conceiving, seeing ahead, connecting, pausing, and continuing—do not include a chapter on failure. Where one might expect to encounter that theme, she instead reflects on the importance of pausing and then continuing. Nearly three-quarters into the book, we find one of the rare mentions of the word “fail.” Even then, Leski underscores the ongoing nature of the creative process, suggesting that outcomes are not endpoints, but data points. As she writes, “Despite the real discouragement I feel from failures, the discovery of the unfamiliar when shipwrecked is what keeps me going.”
I find the trust in the current of the storm both accurate and inspiring. Yet, the metaphor of a storm also carries a sense of threat, and I find myself yearning for a different image—one in which all that air and movement evoke not turbulence, but levity. How does one learn to relax into the lulls?
In the process of loading the kiln.
Firing.
After a long break from working with clay, I’ve found my momentum again. Last week, I completed my first bisque firing using my new kiln—an event that felt momentous for me, my studio, and the slow build-up of the creative storm.
The contents of the kiln represent the beginnings of a new way of working for me—unknown territory. The current “problem” I'm working through is how to translate some of the Devotion drawings I’ve been developing into a wall piece that combines ceramic and wool. The final composition will be large but made up of many smaller components: 81 ceramic squares embedded into a field of wool. After numerous studies in drawing form, it finally felt like the right moment to begin making the three-dimensional work. The storm has gathered—and now, it wants to move.
Nothing energizes me quite like firing the kiln. Despite the uncertainty that comes with each unloading—cracks, flaws, unexpected surfaces—the alchemy that occurs inside is unlike any other moment in the process, one of thrilling discovery. Though I have no idea whether this new direction will lead anywhere, I’m taking Leski’s advice to heart and reminding myself that everything is in constant motion. That’s another comforting truth about a storm—it never stays stuck.
My first year of teaching architecture. Istanbul, 2013.
FROM THE HEART
Healing.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve encountered the idea of creative injury—a critical comment on one’s work that hurts, leaves a mark, and lingers. It took me back to one of my first architecture courses in college. For an introductory studio assignment, we had to rebuild an architectural element using different materials as an exercise in abstraction. I undertook an ambitious, in hindsight ill-conceived, idea to create a pillow—which I conceived as similar to a column in function but bearing a different weight—using metal mesh and yarn.
At the “crit,” or critique of the project by a panel of professors, I presented an intricate but unfinished piece. The feedback I received was that it looked like a project “someone would take up in retirement.” Heat rose to my face, a punch to my stomach, laughter from the group—a very public shipwreck.
Twenty years later, that comment stings much less but rather sparks questions: Did it mean work made by someone with too much time on their hands, no pressing career goals, or who was no longer “trying”? Or by someone relaxed, making for joy and with nothing at stake?
As a professor of architecture now, and as someone who cares deeply about avoiding causing creative injuries in my own students, I wonder how that feedback could have been more generative than dismissive. Perhaps the pillow/column was an inspired idea that did not ultimately land? So, how might the atmosphere in the room—when the group laughed—have been one of shared humor instead of humiliation? What if that comment held a piece of wisdom in disguise, waiting all this time to be understood?…Dear students, make work as if you’re retired: curious, fearless, and full of joy.
Until next month, hoşçakalın!