a warm memory : cave garden

When we are born, the first thing we are confronted with is air. We scream. Our lungs fill with this air. It is a euphoric, bewildering sensation, taking our first breaths.

The first thing I crave every morning is fresh air. To walk outside, to breathe in the wind, it is my ecstasy. Euphoric breath and oxygen. I am noticing how much I write about air, too. The crisp breath of autumn, the season of Vata (air), of Libra also.

I am noticing the way it feels to give and receive air. To let go of the breath and to sip in a bit more. Our breath links our mind and body, letting us flow from one state to another.

When I am inside for too long, I feel I am in a cave. A private, unseen world, where I can’t breathe quite as easy.

Some people have the opposite problem. The outside world can feel too vast. There is too much expanse, freedom, infinite space. They feel more comfort in their cave.

I am learning the balance of the interior and exterior world. When to step out into the open, not as an escape, but as a gesture of joy.

Living in New York means I exist outside a lot… in the beginning of living here, I would eat meals outside more than inside. It felt like my favorite parks were communal living rooms, for the community to gather and simply be.

I hear a plane soar high above, coasting through the atmosphere at hundreds of miles per hour.

I feel this speed, this rush of moment that from far away… seems slow and gentle.

These digital artworks contain layers of my tactile drawings on paper. My first series of digital works were in 2020, a series called mind:garden.

In these ongoing new works, I make digital feel primal. I am entranced by earthy textures of rock and stone. It feels like a digital cave painting — composing a dance of the material artworks into becoming immaterial, pixel-ized. Ephemeral, ethereal.