week thirty >> "run in parallel"

"Portal" acrylic on hoop drum, 2000 click to view large

It was the spring of 2000. Vinh and I were spending the season up in the Sierras, housesitting for my mom's husband Mike's property (affectionately called "the Pocket") in Meadow Valley, right outside Quincy, California. Vinh was studying for his Medical Boards exam and I was working on my latest commission that year called "Portal," a hoop drum I was painting both sides of to create a piece that would eventually be installed with adjustable inner lighting in a home in Orinda, Ca (as seen in my 11/4/10 post). Each day Vinh and I worked hard and steady on our respective focuses in our own spaces of the house. One evening I was getting a bit crazed in the intensity of living inside of the piece I was painting and in turn it was affecting the process of the piece itself... but even so, I was so committed to my work that I couldn't think to pull away from it. Then I looked over and siting there was ZBOOK... and suddenly I was pulled to it, like the hand of a good friend, and I began to do what was definitely not on the "agenda" for the day: Play. A total departure from the regiment I had built into my process with the commission, I allowed myself to do flow on the whims of the moment, those that Z pages beckoned for and surrendered to spontaneous markings without premeditation.

But suddenly I began to feel guilty for not being "on task" with my "official" and "important" work. But that was the thing, my creative work was feeling like work and not so creative and the absence of feeling creative was what was making me crazy and I looked down to find ZBOOK in my hands, this salvation, this gift of creative outlet, this place to give my self permission to create without "task." And then it hit me, this play, this art made from live moments of pure creativity, this book that collected all the bubbling expression that percolated out of Jennifer and myself, THIS was IMPORTANT work too! ZBOOK was going on 3 years by now and for the first time I looked and it with whole new eyes, eyes that saw this book as not just a journal, but as a journal that was also our ART... our IMPORTANT work. My feeling on this soared out directly to Jennifer in my head and in my heart. And in that moment I stopped right where I was in ZBOOK and wrote this:

I am honored to work with you. Our work in very important to me. Tonight, in what I can only describe as flow, I put the drum aside and found myself in here. It seems the other piece I want to work on, I choose to work on is this very one. Our work is very important to me.

"run in parallel" click to view

It was a moment I'll never forget.


To be continued...








∞ ceci

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