Story of An Artist

My name is Juli McEachern-Havens but everyone who loves me calls me JuJu. I am a Dallas based visual artist. My work is organic in nature paying tiny tributes to anatomy, the quantum continuum, natural sciences, how things work, the contemporary human condition and the history that got us all here.  I also just have fun. I have only recently truly understood the value of having fun.

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Many years ago I was a successful artist in Atlanta. Success for me then was painting every day, selling enough work to pay my bills,  people enjoying my ideas in their homes and on their walls. One day a framer accidentally ruined one of my paintings. It was certainly a happy accident as we ultimately fell in love, were married, and moved to Dallas. We had two children and I became unexpectedly immersed in the magical experience of being a mother.  The day inevitably arrived, however, that my children reached the age of desiring to seek their own independent endeavors.

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My next chapter is a long story but the highlights are, one day while walking my dog I accidentally became a dental assistant.  I am someone who loves to study anything and everything. I followed my curiosity, certifications, and classes to eventually working as a surgical assistant.  I used my advanced CPR skills to revive a patient who had inadvertently crossed over before his time. That was fun and rewarding.  I pursued this amazing accidental healthcare career for almost 10 years until one day it came to an abrupt stop.   I suddenly lost my memory. It was not a brain injury or stroke  I  simply could no longer remember where I kept my kitchen silverware, find my way home driving, use my computer software, or work.  I was weirdly a stranger in my own body. Countless doctors' appointments, brain scans, therapists, loving support,  and three agonizing years of recovery  I'm now like a videogame re-spawned character. I possess the very same traits and personality, but with a historical blank slate.  Thankfully like my first character, I am an artist.

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Now I know creating art is the thing that makes me actually "me". I call it "Brain Bloom"  as my memories return one by one with each lump of clay I sculpt, each stroke of my paintbrush, or canvas I build.  I would never have made it back without the love of my friends and family and amazingly gifted healthcare professionals who kept faithfully telling me I would heal until I was finally convinced. We are all

"creatives" possessing an infinite variety of important unique talents that make real magic for all of us.   Every day I am filled with gratitude for the magic of collective creativity I have observed and experienced everywhere in everything in everybody and I want to contribute mine.