Where do you call home these days, and what does that place feel like for you?
My home location is Fremantle, Western Australia. I was born and bred in Perth, Western Australia, the most isolated city in the world. When I finished uni I got my a** outta Double-You-Ay (as we sandgropers refer to it). I swore on my mother's grave I would never come back. My mum used to call and ask, “When are you coming home?” and I would exclaim, “On your deathbed!”. She would exclaim “Aiyah!” and hang up on me lol.
However, I did come back in my mid-thirties. But it wasn’t on my mum's insistence, it was my daughter's. My first-born Kawa passed away eight years ago and we moved back for a peace of mind, heart and pace. It’s chill here. Couriers are friendly. There’s always parking at the beach. I call it the 0.75 pace.
Our physical home is a sweet old 1941 California bungalow and I adore her. She has sheltered us since we set foot upon her jarrah floorboards. She’s filled with flea market finds and paintings picked up from op-shops and painted by artist friends. Is it possible to be in love with your casa? If so, I deeply am. There’s a giant gumtree out the back that has offered us shade and shelter through grief and major change. I am a complete homebody. I love being home.
The older (and hopefully wiser) I get, the more I feel that home is intangible and unseen. It's a feeling in your heart where you truly feel you can be, exactly as you are, in this moment of time and space reality. Coincidentally, my new book is about home and what home encompasses.
If I asked the people closest to you, what 5 words do you think they might use to describe you?
I like to think of myself as funny. I had this boyfriend once, before we went to sleep, I would be like “PLEASE SAY IT! I NEED TO HEAR IT!! TELL ME!!” and he would sigh and be like “Okay, you’re the funniest I’ve ever had. Ok. Good night.” I just asked my husband what he would say and he threw out, “Infuriating, annoying, particular, loving and cute.” Then I texted this to a friend and she replied immediately, “Sensitive, intuitive, creative, authentic.” So the greater truth would be a combination of all the above :)
What does creativity look like in this season of your life, and how has it evolved over the years?
Creativity in this moment in time is the combination of words and pictures. I’ve been illustrating drawings for my book for the last year and it’s the first time since I was a kid that I draw almost every day, for hours on end. I draw a new illustration for my weekly Substack Woo-Tang that ties in with the word content. I’m actually not the best drawer. I just have a particular style and just roll with it. I have a friend who described it as “economy of line.” I try my best to produce drawings that capture the esoteric and non-physical concepts. This can be super challenging, like drawing “grief," “shame," or “ancestral home,” “heaven” or “the matrix.” But it’s super rewarding and fun when you land on the concept. I enjoy poking fun at it too, like satirical newspaper comics and a bit Basquiat where he writes words and crosses them out.
I studied journalism at uni because I thought it was “easy” and it would be my fastest ticket to get out of WA with a degree under my belt. I was told incessantly growing up that creativity is not a job. There is no future in design. You can’t do art for work by my well-meaning immigrant parents from Hong Kong. So I chose words to study over pictures.
After some years gallivanting the world doing odd jobs, teaching English and snowboarding in New Zealand and Japan, I returned to Australia to study design and visual merchandising in Melbourne. I entered the fashion industry as a visual merchandiser for American Apparel, then Sportsgirl, One Teaspoon, Minkpink and Topshop. I learned to create spaces or scenes with props, colours, and found objects. This is where my love for storytelling through visual space really blossomed.
At age 30, I quit my last job in the industry and began freelancing as a stylist. Soon after, I fell pregnant with my first born and began a homewares label called Kawaiian Lion with my friend Laura Liles. She went on to start Kinga Csilla and Ciao Ciao Vacation. We met working at a fashion label in Sydney and she taught me the steps to design and production.
My creative focus went from a macro storytelling lens and into the micro design lens. Being immersed in details—tiny buttons, fabrics and washes—filled my heart in a way that it had not been before. I loved the seasonal changes of fashion and design and how your mood, music, vibes shift and evolve accordingly and all of the work culminates in the photoshoot. I see product as the ‘lead characters’ and the shoot location is “the set” and every aspect of the design process is imperative to the storytelling. I’ve always felt a deep sense of satisfaction seeing it all come together.
Seven years later, when my daughter passed, I sold the business. I knew it was no longer serving who I was anymore. I was asked by Lou Bannister of former Lunch Lady publication if I wanted to do a piece in her magazine on grief. It was through answering her questions that I found my solace back in writing. It was the deepest form of expression I could muster of what was going on inside my heart, physical and spiritual being-ness, beyond pictorial form.
It was also through this process I realised that I was able to tune into a deeper source of untapped creativity. If you sit quietly, you can receive notes from above. If you tune in, you can hear fragments from source. I began to realise that for all those years, through my entire creative career, I had been picking up little clues. Now, instead of throwing them into a design or space, I could inject that into words and pictures.
When I write now, I sincerely try to convey a direct stream from higher consciousness that is unfettered and uninterrupted. I try not to interfere with the process and inject or reject words. Creativity to me, in this moment of time, is to translate universal wisdom into a tangible form in words and pictures to share with fellow humans.
What daily rituals do you always return to? Are you someone who follows flow and feeling, or do you need structure to hold your days?
I wake up early and walk our black lab Nami. We then sit and meditate together. We’ve been doing this since she was a puppy. She lies in front of me and I put on a meditation mixtape and place my notebook next to us. This is our morning time together, before the kiddies wake up. The walk and meditation is the structure I adhere to and allows for the flow and feeling for the rest of the day.
Being a mother to your three children, Kawa Leaf, your angel child, Rafa Rose, and Beau Sunray, what moments or memories of motherhood live closest to your heart?
A Kawa memory that just popped up immediately is one in Mona Vale. My mum had given her a jade bracelet after a trip to Hong Kong. We had to use oil to slip it onto her tiny wrist. I had one when I was little too. She was jumping from a bench seat to another and this time, she landed onto her hands and the bangle clunked on the pavement and broke in half. We both stood there for a moment aghast, taking it all in, looking at the jade pieces. She looked over at me expectantly—and then we both burst into peals of laughter. Better broken jade than a broken heart.
Beau, our little guy, was born after Kawa passed, however he has a very intact connection to his angel big sister. Since he was little, he would say “I saw Kawa last night” or tell us how he went to her “cloud house.” I do my best to remain open and hold space for these conversations. He’s very inclusive of Kawa, despite her not being here physically. It fills my heart every time he says her name.
Recently, I introduced Spaceballs the movie (1987) to my kids. It's one of my favourite movies. It's slightly inappropriate yet absolutely brilliant. We watched it almost every night together before bed while we were in Tokyo. Rafa is really great at remembering lines and repeating them. Listening to her act out the dialogue from the film makes me laugh so hard, I am crying while my heart beams.
“Light speed is too slow! We will have to go... ludicrous speed!”.
Grief has taught me in ways that have been both brutal and beautiful. How has grief shaped you over time, and how do you live alongside it now?
Grief is exquisite, no? I just watched an interview with Chloe Zhao the director of the film Hamnet where she says, grief connects us all. Which could not be truer, right? Grief brings you to your knees. It removes any artifice or superficiality. When you have truly grieved, your comprehension and acceptance of humankind grows beyond compare. Grief is the greatest teacher I have in this lifetime. I have had past lives where I rejected grief and refused to learn the beauty and wisdom that wells from suffering. In this lifetime, I have committed myself to grief, like a lifelong partner. I have learned what true joy is because I have endured grief. I have learned what beauty truly is, because I have surrendered myself to grief.
When you first grieve, the weight is overbearing and unwieldy. Over the years, the load can lighten. Now I see grief as an amulet of sorts, that you always wear. You can’t take it off, it's always with you and next to the heart.
Love is. holds so much quiet magic. What was the journey of writing it and bringing it to life like, and what did it give back to you in return?
Bringing Love is. to life was perhaps the most rewarding creative experience thus far. When Covid hit, it proved to be a blessing in disguise—all that time at home, I spent pouring into assembling and illustrating a picture book. I had no idea how to do this. I had never written a book before. I knew nothing about publishing. But I was committed. Over a span of two years Love is. came to fruition and was self-published with funds from a Kickstarter campaign. I found the key to this process was to not get overwhelmed by the whole macro picture, but to focus on the daily micro tasks. Every day you spend on your purpose-led project is an accomplishment closer to the end goal.
You recently travelled to Japan with your family. If you could bottle one moment from that trip, what would it be?
Omg I love this question. I recently returned to Japan after 20 years. I had lived in Japan as an English teacher for two years in my early twenties. We stayed in Shibuya, and I took my family to Tower Records so I could tell them a story.
“My first weekend here in Japan, I beelined for Tokyo and my Canadian colleague took me to Tower Records. I walked in and saw 8 floors of magazines and music. I was in sensory heaven. I opened up a copy of British Vogue with Gemma Ward, a Perth model, on the cover. In the background was the most beautiful beach scene. There was a surfboard that was airbrushed with the coolest, cosmic sky. That photo burned into my retina and brain. Then, a handful of years later, I decided I wanted to learn how to airbrush pictures like the ones I had seen in that magazine. And that's how I met your Dada—and THAT'S why you guys are basically here—cos’ I went to Tower Records lol.”
It was a tender moment to share this with my kids and husband. It’s when you realise how those seemingly inconsequential events, tiny moments, are actually monumental and paramount to shaping your path. We are given clues, little crumbs that we can follow, that will lead you down a path much further in the forest, beyond our current knowing.
What’s been nourishing you in unexpected ways lately?
A pinch of Maldon salt, a squeeze of lemon (or citric acid if you don’t have any) in warm-hot water every morning.
And finally, playlist or podcast? What’s in your ears?
I am a big spirituality podcast nerd. I listen to woo-woo or creative stuff.
~ Alan Watts Being in the Way https://open.spotify.com/
~ Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin https://open.spotify.
~ Know Thyself https://open.spotify.
~ Eckhart Tolle Essential Teachings https://open.
~ Creative Codex https://open.spotify.
~ The World Needs Creatives https://open.
Dee Kawai Tang Drawing
