11/11/10 - parallels

It seems only appropriate that we are running this 'Run in Parallel' spread as we cross the date of 11/11.  Ceci left a phone message for me earlier, suggesting that today held great potential as a gateway date.  I have been holding our recent conversations to my heart and actions; expressing my excitement with zbook to my colleagues and family. We are in final countdown/preparation mode for a presentation of our collaborative zbook work at our "origin" point of UCSB.  Before faculty and students, we will be sharing story and images and creating an experience of our personal and collaborative narratives, spreading the inspirational impulses of zbook.  It's a seed pod bursting opportunity we've been taking steps toward for some time now.  In many ways, it feels like a jumping board, like a springing platform into a pool of something still as yet unknown.  We both agree that the manifestation of this symposium opportunity in the fall is completely in line with our mutual electricity in this season of wind and shift from light outside to light inside.  Looking at the image of "parallel", this emerging internal light is reflected magically in the luminoscity of this spread...it is infused with some serious incandescence.  What's amazing to me is how this spread transformed from something quiet and flowing to something pulsing and rushing.  As we were entering zbook in the last couple of years to bring closure and breadth of crystallization, we most often played in watercolor to cohese each spread.  On this spread however, our brushes stroked into life with these shimmery acrylic paints we both have had on hand in our painting quests, and the outcome shocked this piece with dynamite.  We should search our archives to see if we have an image of this spread pre white and purple and bronze, to view it in its quiet, browner stage, when it was mostly running words.

As I look closer at this spread, I see homage paid to a few striking moments in time.  In the following image, there is a note of the PSL family in the LA House.   The picture which arises for me in relation to that note is an oscillating scene, like a sticker with two images which flash through movement of  hand or head... one is a golden glowing room with a long table and a bronze lighted chandelier around which a dozen feasters are holding hands as a gray haired uncle offers prayers of Thanksgiving for the communion of family and friends; the shifted image is a blue black hue with jacuzzi drifters and moonlight sifters, overlooking a twinkling valley of lights.

I simply love how words and color wrap around each other.  The quote enveloped in pearlescent copper at right here looks like my lettering, though I have no recollection of its utterance context... most likely, it came from the jacuzzi!... "GUARANTEED"

On another note, it sure is strange how children bring challenges to streams of working time; they are so invested in every moment of the present, they cannot often be deferred to a future time when all other work is complete...isn't that an amazing gift to all of humankind, continuously renewed in each birth ... little bundles of the here and now - see me - help me - love me - leave me to myself - a constant cycle of learning and letting go for a parent.

So, I take my advice, post script to "Run in Parallel'..."walk in tennis shoes"!  Good advice!

-Be well and take care, -J. G.

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

6

parallel moments

"run in parallel" click to view

Continued... from my last post ....reflecting on the words in orange I one day wrote on Z page this week: "run in parallel"

I actually remember the exhale that released from me when I finish the last sentence. It was a waking up of sorts, like realizing you're dreaming and embarking on a lucid journey within the dream. It was breaking merely just the first layer out of a thick tundra of built up belief that my art would have to fit within some "art world" paradigm ignored to be valid and received. I would go on to be quite frozen in my art making in the years to come still allowing such a belief to stifle me.. yet always taking refuge in ZBOOK and thank GOODness for the gift of freedom and play that it always was and is for my creative sanity... which IS my sanity. I did draw here and there through out the next years, but it wasn't until 7 years later that I reengaged fully into my visual art... other than ZBOOK which was my main source for my expression and development during these more dormant years. 7 years later I was now living Los Angeles, a move I made to at last take myself serious as a singer... only to discover that ALL of me would come alive, musically and artistically. I felt very much that at the age of 33 I was only just starting out in life, finally embarking on the development of my arts, let alone the output of them.

In 2008, Jennifer and I took part in an art festival at the Waldorf school where she teaches and had a lovely exhibition of photographs from ZBOOK, of a selection of pages -where they stood at that time. We spent the day showing these photos, working in ZBOOK live, and sharing our story with people - for the fist time. The response was overwhelming. Even beyond the images, the people seemed to be quite impacted by our story of this pulse of creation alive for, then, 12 years. Children and adults alike shared with us how inspired they were. We were inspired by them!

The next day my mom's husband Mike, who had been present at the exhibition, pulled me aside to share his gleaming impression of the show and ZBOOK with me... and asked me the simple question: have you thought about publishing? Whoa, I thought, no I hadn't, it had never occurred to me, I mean the casual one day exhibition alone was this significant outing for ZBOOK and we were still decompressing from that. But suddenly I realized, that here I was, just "starting out" in my life, feeling so much like a new born babe with all my vital work ahead of me, but wait, here in my hand is ZBOOK... IMPORTANT work that I and Jennifer have been doing for 12 (at that time) years!
In this very moment a rush of the moment from 8 years before flooded my awareness... the moment that the words in orange poured onto Z page, the first moment I had any perspective that ZBOOK was in fact important and serious work despite the Play and unregulated creative freedom it sanctioned. That moment back in 2000 up in the Sierras seemed to speak, seemed to sing, directly to this very moment in 2008 as Mike expressed his voice, and what he concluded was also the voice of the masses, that ZBOOK is vital work and needs to be released to the world. (Thank you Mike!) This idea of publishing, along with the response we received from everyone at the show, helped me see ZBOOK as not just a gem in our lives but a potential one for others in the world.... we indeed have a story to share that may very well serve to inspire the creative freedom in people, inspire people to collaborate and experience what is possible through trust and play, and celebrate the power of friendship.

In the last 2 years since then, creating the last layers and definitive closure to ZBOOK, we have decided that we would like to publish and have pondered continuously the many possible forms in which we could output ZBOOK... coffee table book, journal type mag, picture book with inspired verse, memoirs, or ZBOOK as is???? It has been something that bewildered us long enough to not have submitted for publication just yet. We have ben sure of one thing though, that we want to share our story. The story of Jennifer and Ceci and how friendship led to collaboration led to play led to trust led to freedom led to discovery led to our ART..... which produced ZBOOK. This year it occured to us that we could begin to do this right now, out putting our story and ZBOOK out to people immediately... with a blog! And thus zbook4ever.com was birthed.

Now that you dear readers have a taste of ZBOOK (for going on 30 weeks now, today!), what are YOUR thoughts on how we could publish it and our story? We'd love to hear from you and any possiblities you feel for outputting ZBOOK.... please leave a comment below! YOU out there have become a dazling source of inspiration for us in here... we would be honored to hear about your ideas and reflections, please click here or below to leave an comment!

in love & gratitude
∞ ceci
6

Filling In Skeleton

vampire skeleton cake

As I polished off a slice of cherry cake tonight, I couldn't help but think about this weeks spread "external" and the postings which Ceci has been sending out. My son, Jack, has been daily intoning me with the repeated question, "Mommy, when can we make a skeleton cake?" Actually, the description changed through the past two weeks, from Halloween cake to skeleton to pirate to vampire and back to skeleton cake. As it turned out, I was not the direct aider to his cake making fulfillment, Daddy engaged the mixing and frosting brigade with Jack today, as Hallie and I took some girl time together. I had to include my pics from their success with this weeks spread, as it is incredibly reminiscent (to me at least), of the Dia De los Muertos skulls Ceci posted earlier in the week, and echoed in the face of "external".

As the title to this post suggests, my intent here, is to simply fill in a few lines. I personally get a chuckle from this cartoonish left side of the page, in the toes I filled into the candy wrapper spaces, as part of my Dino body expression. Cec and I actually lifted the yellow crinkly paper recently to check in on the drawing, to see if it went beyond what's visible, and in fact, it doesn't, it is truly a filled in space - awesome!

In her last post, Cec posed a question to me about the book from which the attached sentence on external comes from and its original reference to me. The book is, Meetings with Remarkable Men, the 3rd book in the All and Everything series of G.I. Gurdjieff, who I was turned onto via Osho when I was visiting Puna, India in October 2007, an incredible and mind boggling set of stories, which I apparently read out of order, having made attempts at the first book in the series several times and failed to penetrate it beyond pg.200. - even this past summer, I made another hopeful pass, and was successful reading aloud into the three hundreds, but not yet beyond; this round was completely different I must say, perhaps I'm beyond some levels of delusion - or perhaps, I'm swimming in them! Whatever the case, I am here, and my story is here, where I am. Where are you? -J.