In this semester, one of my students came to me in need for help because she was having a hard time with anxiety and thoughts that she is never enough. Although she was one of the promising students in the studio, I couldn’t change her mind. She could not be productive anymore since she worried about being bad in architecture, in her art, never progressing, and so many other poisonous ideas that we all had from time to time.

After chatting for a while, I found myself saying, “Let’s say you are bad, your art is bad, what is the harm? Just do it bad; produce the ugly. But never stop. Every ugly product of yours is still better than the perfect one which do not exist”.

After considering this conversation, I felt dishonest about myself and my words. In fact, me too, have never let my work be anything less than perfect. But I could never have reached that utopian, idealistic perfection I dreamed of. In the end, I produced less, wrote less even read less, if not any.

So, I decided to follow the suggestion I gave to my student and began to let my work be ugly. I took a sketchbook and drew without thought to train myself to fight perfectionism. I kept drawing without criticizing my sketches. I had never finished a sketchbook before and never had more peace in my art. So here is my sketchbook and suggestion for all,

Let it be ugly.