, L L E W W A DR . L L E BE W joseph gordon
My Daughter’s Book
of
Reminders
ain tt b ac k ag ok abou e o f b li e s ’ r e u t n o a pic drawing
Book of Reminders
to
my daughter jenny grew up falling down.
falling down. with the cut chin here and a black eye there.
it’s a good thing she had her pencils. pens & markers
pens. pencils & markers with which to help draw herself back up to a steadier state of mind .
as all these wobbly pictures she made remind me jenny was born with a rare chromosomal disorder. it’s called i.p. and i.p. brought her into the world with a whole stuck tray of challenges.
she lacks the balance to stand or walk. and that’s just the tip of her iceberg. the list goes on. and so, her hands and her eyes -- the keys to drawing -- are compromised. she was fated to make her marks with manual imprecision. even so she knows exactly how to draw her way around to what she sees and feels. and so -- picture making brings her great physical release and emotional joy.
“I have no paper fright,� she says. indeed she’s never erased a single line. the pictures she made in a furious sprint to recover her missing self ten years ago remind me of the trying year she suffered after falling from her fragile sleep at a sleep away camp. So shattering was her fall that she was deprived of entire sheets of her memory. she lost her will to draw entirely. she fell picture-less and songless for four months into that hard to locate place where unrecoverable sleep falls. she left us for a while.
then, on a cobalt blue night in late december 2005, she discovered a bright red ribbon place mark bancing from my outdated book of weekly reminders. that bright crimson line re-lit her scattered mind. and sparked her return to her wobbly yet certain place on the ancient red line of drawing.
My Daughter’s Book
of
Reminders
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ah yussel
DRAW WELL, BE WELL.
COPYRIGHT 2014 JOSEPH S. GORDON & ANN SLAVIT GORDON ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
nyc chapter Graphic Artists Guild