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

getting in touch

"touch" click to view

On the other side of Z page "Touch" is the story who a girl who invited a story. As I have shared before (visit 4/28 post) there was a time in 1999 that I taught art at an elementary school in Guadalajara, Mexico. After a wonderful visit from Jennifer I had ZBOOK with me in Guad and brought it with me to school everyday. One day when sharing ZBOOK with 2nd grader Paloma, she began asking me about my friend who does ZBOOK with me. "What is she like?" I told her that she is fun, loves to play, and loves postcards. "I want to write her," Paloma said. So I opened up ZBOOK to a blank page and offered it to her with my blue pen. On the upper left of the page you will see the words:

click to view

click to view

from Paloma.... Hi....what is your name?..... Are you a friend of Ms Ceci?..... Write me over here----->

She followed her words with a column of horizontal lines. "She can write me back here," Paloma told me. Jennifer did write back (in purple pen) later that year, unfortunately by that time I no longer lived in Guad and had already bid farewell to those lovely children.

click to view

Many years later appeared this neuron atop this correspondence, which I would normally assume came from me, but this one has such the watery feel of Jennifer, the very veins I know so well from her hand... hmmmmm. Do you remember, Hemphill? It does seem evident that it was the last element to grace Z page since its body of veins extends perfectly into the space created by the leaf and correspondence auras. Right in the same spot... the birth, with Paloma's writing, and the close, with the hovering neuron.... full circle of life. Fitting for the season we are in, of autumn, fall, harvest. Perhaps that is why the leaf found its way here to this page spread. Fell right in.






∞ ceci
6

I heart neurons

my first drawings of neurons straight from Histology textbook
click these for larger view

When I was living in Gudalajara, Mexico in 1999 I fell in love with neurons.  Those microscopic nerve cells that transmit information in our bodies, or in other words communicate.  Vinh, my then partner (and dear friend today) was studying medicine at the time and had given me his Histology texts because the images of the microscopic cells and tissues reminded him so much of my drawings, which at the time were made of super intricate lines with ink.  I was fascinated by these books and by the  incredible correlation between my art and the images the books revealed on the structure of our micro inner landscape.  One night I came upon the nervous system chapter and encountered neurons.  I was gripped at once; they appeared to be liitle entities, life forms with individual attitudes, identities, characters.  The nucleus of each neuron seems like an eyeball.  And that alone gives these little dudes personality.  And the fact that these cells do in fact serve as individual communicators in the body, well they might as well be their own life forms living in the galaxies inside the universe of our bodies.  I began to draw these lil' dudes of connectivity at once and incorporate them into my drawings of macro/micro worlds.  And on this page of ZBOOK, during this same time in Guad, I drew one here on the left, in purple fine point sharpie.  Years later ~J~ came in with blood red ink that set it off, connecting it with all the other life forms on the spread.

The Observer, acrylic on found wood, March 2010   click for larger view

To this day you will find neurons appear in my paintings.  What if the intelligent "life" we wonder about is not only "out there" but in here.  As we've been breaking down cells into atoms into protons and electrons into quarks and beyond we discover only more and more expanded space.  I'm fascinated by the life forms on all levels of being, inner and outer space, and what we all may have to communicate to each other. To reflect for one another in the learning about what is possible in ourselves.



∞ ceci
6