He Fa on the Leather-Tulip Poet

Lake-blue soft leather bulges at waist and belly, then narrows above the knees, making me resemble a tulip being worn. Orange-red lower legs emerge below, while an acid-green tuft curls into a question mark atop the head. The plant outline makes the image memorable, but double-stitched seams keep reminding me that cutting and joining are taking place here; natural growth cannot explain everything. The growth metaphor is tempting because it makes the shape seem to possess its own reason. A bulge looks as though it ought to bulge, and a narrowing seems to follow some inner order. Yet every leather seam involved a choice: where to turn, how much room to give the belly, how to let legs emerge from the hem. Calling the finished object natural would exempt those decisions from discussion.

He Fa's round nose and low eyelids have not acquired a purer expression to match the flower, and dark-green long sleeves connect both hands back to a specific body. They make me willing to retain some discord: within a metaphor from nature, a person can still operate things, repair them and feel uncomfortable, without remaining forever in bud merely to resemble a flower.

Breaking everything into craft decisions can also lose the overall feeling a metaphor brings. I do not want a seam to cancel a flower. The question is whether metaphor and making can remain visible together. We can first be moved by an outline, then follow the creases to ask how it was made, without requiring a choice between feeling and analysis.

I let the lake-blue leather keep bulging forward, and the hem leave two clearly separated legs. If a panel needs recutting, the flower's name can come later. What deserves preserving in this body may be precisely its ability to borrow the imagination of growth while daring to admit it is made of seams, and can therefore one day grow a new shape that the metaphor has not approved in advance.