Little Bang Theories: Dancing in Destiny's Footsteps

Sculpture maquette, ©Ivia Sky Yavelow 2012, folded paper on wood.

She is almost 20 years old. She is a little taller than me and wears her father's complexion outwardly but my complexion internally. Occasionally I am startled by her evolution. Very often I see my father in her and too often, myself. She had the patience and talent to become proficient at speaking Mandarin and playing both the violin and piano, but has now gravitated towards a more visual expression. Exposure to a artist parent's struggles sometimes serves to turn a child off to the career, but my daughter has decided to follow the siren of her heart's song and be a visual artist like me.

Mixed media throat house drawing ©Ivia Sky Yavelow 2012.

She arrived home for spring break from Bard College in a car loaded with artworks. Our house, already bulging at the seams with our creative by-products, accepted them all, in the same way as I imagine one would greet one's grandchildren arriving for a long summer with all of their gear. The artworks' presence has enlivened our home environment with a fresh new energy that is also oddly familiar.
At this point in her life her artwork reflects her strong interest in architecture. I am struck by the genetic threads she carries. Unconsciously rendering those genetic threads visually, she employed colorful embroidery floss in some of her new sculptures. The thread's role seems part harp strings, part space delineation, and part genetic bondage.

Variable wall or pedestal mounted sculpture ©Ivia Sky Yavelow 2012, wood & thread.

Art and architecture threads run through Ivia's background. Her grandfather (my father) has designed and built several houses and there are architects and artists on her father's side of the family, too. Her great- grandmother was a farm wife who didn't make art until her late senior years, having moved into a retirement community, but then greatly enjoyed painting. Her son, Ivia's great uncle, was a minister who painted his own murals in the churches that he served and embarked upon a self-study course in watercolor painting in his retirement. One of her great-aunts was both seamstress and painter. Other relatives were/are furniture designers. Although Ivia had equal talent and opportunity for science, the field of her father, she never exhibited the same interest in that subject and chose to attend visual and performing arts camps each summer. Herein lie the mysteries of parenthood. Why does this thread get picked up and not the other?

Drawing ©Ivia Sky Yavelow 2012, graphite on paper.

Modern neuroscience experiments show that much of our "decision-making" is done unconsciously. We think we are making a decision, but experiments show that the area of the brain responsible for decisions will light up before the subject has a conscious awareness of having made the decision. This has great implications for personal "responsibility". Perhaps we can only recognize the decisions our unconscious selves have already made! Perhaps my daughter has only recognized her inherent artist-being. She may have only made the decision that her unconscious brain released to her consciousness. We may all be simply dancing in the footsteps of our destinies.

Beena's Drawing ©Ivia Sky Yavelow 2012, wire & yarn sculpture.

Can any of us be responsible for our own decisions if those decisions were made unconsciously? David Eagleman writes about that question in terms of law and justice in his book, INCOGNITO The Secret Lives of the Brain. Tests on the brain of a homicidal sleepwalker proved that "high level behaviors can happen in the absence of free will. Like your heartbeat, breathing, blinking, and swallowing, even your mental machinery can run on autopilot." Eagleman goes on to write that "The crux of the question is whether all of your actions are fundamentally on autopilot or whether there is some little bit that is 'free' to choose, independent of the rules of biology. The research suggests that NO part of the brain is independent and therefore 'free'".

The ramifications for our expectations for family relations and of parenting practices might be profound as well. If your child does not, in fact, consciously choose the path they follow, then your job is not to steer them but rather to be on the lookout for what their path might be and nourish it. We parents like to think we have more influence and control than we probably do. Our job may be no more or less than to be caretakers of our offspring.

Recently I attended a concert of Music From Copland House collaborating with Music From China to "feature works written for hybrid ensembles made up of Western and Chinese instruments". One work was a combination of classical Chinese music and the Blues! My eager ears did not know what to do with the sounds. Familiar snippets in a completely unfamiliar arrangement totally confused my aural wiring and it was as if I didn't know how to hear it. I hope some new aural connections were forged from that listening. It is known now that learning gives rise to anatomical changes in the brain. This means that lessons and information learned cause physical changes that would impact choices and decisions...perhaps we parents are more powerful than the phrase "caretaker" would suggest. I did after-all provide Ivia with a constant supply of origami paper and books throughout her childhood. Origami was a constant fascination for her and those folding skills are clearly part of her art vocabulary in recent drawings and sculptures. Would she have "found" her folding paper passion without my support? Would she have grown into her fate in spite of the quality of our parenting efforts? Famous jazz musician Louis Armstrong was raised in extreme emotional and physical deprivation, yet he somehow thrived in his "vicious" environment to be a recognized jazz trumpet master. There are many other examples of people who rose to greatness in spite of very little nourishment or parental care-taking. Of course we will never know.

Ivia's creations are visual hybrids of the familiar and the radically new. The choice to create them may have been simply written into her biology. I can't come to any conclusions about this until the science progresses further, but watching the internal threads of generations being expressed in my daughter's life as well as watching her express a pull of threads artistically has been an intriguing part of being the artist mother of Ivia Sky Yavelow, my artist daughter.