Hello. I’m Yoo Wan Yang, a glass artist, and I run Mowani Glass. I handle and work on the material with care so the beauty of glass itself, formed at high heat, stays intact. I craft everyday glassware designed to bring a quiet joy each time you reach for it.

The lamp I made is called Bandi. The bubbles rising through the light looked to me like fireflies clustered on a plant, lighting it up, and that’s how it got its name. Our days always rush by, but I made it hoping that looking at the bubbles left in the lamp, one by one, might give you a moment, however brief, to pause and look at how you’re feeling, or at what’s around you.

It would have to be knowing ‘when to stop.’ When you’re blowing glass through the pipe, you can keep refining and adding details, only to end up drifting far from your original intention. So when I work, I try to let go, a little, of my own urge to add more and watch the unique flow of the glass itself. To preserve the natural play of light and form, you have to stop at the right moment. When these spontaneous curves meet the quiet spaces shaped by chance, the piece finally finds a beauty truly its own.

I believe art lets us hold on to moments of beauty. There’s no day, I suppose, that you like from start to finish. But if there were a few moments in it when you felt something beautiful, isn’t that a day’s worth of small happiness right there? I work hoping that my pieces, too, will help people find that kind of ‘fleeting happiness’ in everyday life.

Starting the day with my body and mind feeling well, and finding ordinary happiness within it. That’s why, even for a simple meal at home, I try to plate it with care on pretty dishes. When I’m treating guests, naturally, but just as much when I’m on my own. A nicely set meal feels like a small gift to myself. The food naturally looks more inviting, and it leaves me feeling so much better. In the end, it’s the dishes that are treating me. I think it’s these small but heartfelt habits that add up to ‘a good everyday life.’

To me, a good object is ‘an object you reach for every day.’ Among cups that look alike, there’s always the one you reach for first, and among all the lamps in a house, there’s the one you always end up switching on. An object that never gets dusty because you use it daily, one that’s always within reach. That’s the power a good object has, I think — to seep naturally into the daily round of eating and sleeping and make our lives more pleasant.

I hope my pieces find a place in people’s daily lives in that very same way. Rather than trying to create something grand, I want to add a small pause to an ordinary day—that is the essence I hope my work carries.

Rather than any particular setting, I think it shines brightest wherever there’s a little empty space. When you give a piece a small spot within the space you live in every day, the light or the shadows it casts can change the mood of the room.

Rather than trying to do anything in particular, I’d simply recommend looking quietly at the photograph. Put your phone down for a moment and look back slowly over your day. If you can take even a little time to focus on yourself that way, I believe the mood of your everyday life can shift a little, too. And if those small pauses add up to a day that feels a little more at ease, then that, I think, is what a moment of wellness with Bandi looks like.

I take sound sleep seriously. Wellness usually brings to mind exercise that calls for a range of movements, stretching, or all kinds of therapies, but for me the most important practice for wellness is sleeping well. As the saying goes, ‘sleep is the best medicine.’ After a full night’s sleep, body and mind both feel that much lighter, and I can start the day at my best. Quality sleep is, I think, one of the most basic building blocks of a healthy lifestyle.

I think we can move toward my own beauty when we aren’t comparing ourselves with others. Comparison works on what the eye can see, but the beauty we have is made of things that can’t be seen. The positive energy I give off, my warmth, my scent, my voice, my sense of ease. To create that kind of New Beauty, one that comes entirely from within, I think we need to make plenty of time to steadily build up health and positive energy inside ourselves, rather than worry about other people.

Making art, too, is something that can’t be compared with anyone. I don’t think it should be compared with others, of course, or with my past self either. Instead of comparing, I try to put who I am at that moment into the piece, just as I am. That attitude of freeing myself from comparison is how I bring my own beauty into my work.

I hope the photograph of Bandi lingers in someone’s mind as a faint afterimage. Even if only dimly, as a moment that felt special and lifted your mood. And through memories like these, I hope you’ll start collecting the small beauty in everyday life we’ve passed by without noticing.