elements of infinity

"infinity"   click

This page "infinity,"  during all 14 years of its transforming life in ZBOOK, was created with only 7 elements.  3 of which laid the foundation, which I shared about in the week eleven intro post: my ink flower, Jennifer's felt ink female in shapes, and the colors I painted to dance with both, while painting faces in Guadalajara in 1997.  In all these years of constant adding to and recreating Z pages, this page received only 4 more elements:

 The ring of gold twisted into infinity and landed into her hands...

The gold sign of infinity that the dancer (as I feel her to be) is beholding came during the same Guad visit in 1997.  The paint is not painted on, it is in fact applied.  From a cheap bottle of gold acrylic, the kind you find at a craft store, I had unscrewed the top and peeled off the ring of dried paint that had formed at its neck. In my hand this remnant became object and I had to find its use and place in the world.  Enter ZBOOK, this place where all beloved objects (and ideas, and observations, and experiments...) could find possible refuge and purpose.  The ring of gold twisted into infinity and landed into her hands.  hmm... like that.  And it didn't even need to be glued, I pressed the dried yet still gummy object into place and there it has stayed, wonderfully tactile, infinitely intact.

 

The band took root in infinity, where their music was already abloom...

The little Japanese band of musicians... also came from Guadalajara, this time in 1999 while I was living there teaching art at the elementary school for 6 months.  The newspaper in Guad so often had a plethora of great images to cut out and collage with.  These little dudes wanted to play another venue so after gleaning them from the newspaper we toured the pages of ZBOOK for their next residency.  The band took root in infinity, where their music was already abloom, and in fact has always been playing.  

 

Infinity humbly received a silver lining...

In 2002 a gel pen of silver at my local art shop surpassed in quality any gel pen I had since tried and left such a truly metallic silver trace that it eclipsed the mess of the classic metalic ink pens I grew up with, you know the ones you have to shake up, press the felt tip down often leaking out a bubble of ink, and are potent with fumes.  With my new pen I left silver traces, with delightful ease, where ever I could. Infinity humbly received a silver lining.

 

The dancer paints infinity...

This collaged piece is from Jennifer.  ~J, I had always seen the figure you drew as a dancer, and ever since you put this paintbrush in her hand I love to correlate dancer with painter, feeling that if you could trace the movements of dancers into lines you would see the most enthralling images, making them painters after-all.  Do you recall this element's origins?  If so, would love hear about it... I invite you to enter into this post and add its story here:
Jennifer insert: 
" Yes, the painting of dancing and the dancing of painting; Modes I am most in tune with - in both venues... Blessings on this hula dancer!
The paintbrush slice is gleened from a Huntington Gardens (Pasadena) newsletter.  When Hallie was 2 or 3, we bought a year membership and would enjoy the splendor of those grounds and also the images and stories from their monthly newsletter - thus that was in 2003/2004, roughly."
-J.

I look at this page now and am fascinated that it has stood stoic 

while a whirlwind of transmutation was ravishing all Z pages around it.  

With only 7 elements, versus the 100s that touched other pages, 

Infinity stands as a presence of grace, quite bare, baring witness 

to ZBOOK and our lives.

∞ ceci

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Dancer Be Well

Eight hours ago my grandma fell and broke her femur bone at the hip.  She's in surgery to receive a rod through the length of her largest leg bone.  I'm feeling a drowsy, nautious imbalance.  Please pray for healing and strength of thought for all our family.  This event has activated my pulsations to my cousin family.  We have been speaking and e-mailing as I update Grandma's condition.  It is a great relief to feel the warmth of support from friends and family... it is a huge hug of invisible arms allowing one to float - mahalo!

Infinity's Hula Dancer

My Grandma, Great-Grandma to my children, is 92 years old as of March this year.  She is a dancing queen.  You have never seen anyone strut their stuff till you've seen my Grandma.  In her youth and adulthood before marriage and children, she was a professional tap dancer, touring the states with the George White Scandals dancing troupe.  Before, during, and after that, she was a movie star with Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, specializing in dance and song numbers.  She looks great in Black and White and Technicolor.  Grandma Pearl's stage name was Carol Adams.  She met my Grandpa when she was doing a "soundie", where she was the star of an early music video; she tapped and danced, and maybe occassionally lip synced to a song of the day.  My cousin-in-law, Don Smith has done some tremendous research and gathering of Grandma's record of work from internet and such, and connected her with current celebrations of the golden age of Hollywood, where she is revered for her spry youthfulness and beauty.

"infinity"    click to view

Infinity's subject, the Hula dancer, is a celebration of the spirit of the dancer, the gesture of the dance.  There is no dance in me which does not have its roots, its ancestry in my grandma's shared dancing.  I honor her with these words and with my prayerful thoughts, and I send out my heart to ask for others healing prayers and loving thoughts toward my Grandma's recovery here in Maui. 


Blessings to you all and peace to all nations. 
Humbly,
Jennifer Gould

week eleven>> "infinity"

One of our fave pages, "Infinity" has stood just as it is for at least 11 years, since 1999, with the exception of the silver lining which I feel appeared in 2002 when I fell in love with silver gel roller pens.  Perhaps the most UNtouched page of ZBOOK, the page with the fewest layers and fewest touches, "infinity" knew just what it was almost immediately and, with conviction, has stood boldly ever since and never asked for more.  During my stay in Guadalajara in 1997, when I found myself painting all those faces out of thickly stroked shapes (as I've shared in week 7), 

click for larger view

I opened up ZBOOK one day and found this page with Jennifer's felt marker expression of a female dancing (composed of shapes! to my delight) on right and my ink drawing flower on the left, both of which had been drawn within the first 6 months of ZBOOK.  I dipped into each of the colors I was painting faces with and began to create thickly stroked tentacles from behind the flower.  And then addressed the negatives spaces created by Jennifer's dancing female. Only four things were added after that and then the page was done, for years.  While all the other pages around it went on wildly metamorphosing, this one incubated, gracefully.

∞ ceci

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