Perspectives: Cayla Zeek
Multi-disciplinary artist Cayla Zeek is melding the dark side of her work with the light
At the cusp of turning thirty, Lafayette artist Cayla Zeek only wants peace.
Since graduating from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in 2015 in visual arts, teaching at Ascension Episcopal School (AES), hustling her wares on Frenchman and Magazine streets on the weekends, and working as a full-time artist since 2017, the visual multidisciplinary artist has become easier with stillness. Still she remains resourceful, frugal—reflective, she said. The pandemic has increased the number of nights Zeek spends alone, painting or drawing, burning incense or wafting Palo Santo, reading Tarot cards or practicing yoga. Playing with light. Playing with darkness.
“I just got into tarot,” she said. “It’s been really helpful. I’m a Libra with a Leo rising and Scorpio moon—that’s the one tangled up with sex, death, taboos, and intensity. I’m emotionally processing all the time.”
Lafayette residents will likely recognize Zeek’s work, often found in the downtown district. Her punny cards bedecked with bees, magnolias, and Allan Toussaint lyrics drenched in jewel tones can be found at Beausoleil Books, the Hilliard Art Museum, and Adorn. Her portfolio—spanning over a decade—expands to include music videos for local bands Speech Fuzz and Scenic World, art direction for photoshoots, an extensive collection of self-portraits, and massive paintings that explore death, grief, sex, and rebirth through the female or femme form.
“I’m a lot more at peace, with a lot less self-doubt, and I’m a lot more energy-focused,” Zeek said of her current approach to her art. This serenity is an extension of Zeek’s trust in the cosmic. In her spiritual arsenal, she has her tarot deck, astrological knowledge, Greek and Roman mythology—the ancient ways in which people understood the world. She says they are “like maps.”
But she had to start somewhere. “I was first a writer,” she said “When I was really little, I loved to just copy letters out of books and take books and re-copy them into a composition with a pencil. I loved writing, and I loved penmanship. I didn’t know full words yet, but I was still learning.”
"I’ve always worked, always strived for goals or recognition or feeling like I have to do something, and I’m coming to this point in life where I think the thing I want most in life is peace. I want to have peace with life and living and everything that comes with it and being myself.”
—Cayla Zeek
Over time, Zeek grew in her dexterity and creativity. An active tomboy, she skinned her knees and crafted cardboard houses and submarines from found materials. She credits her resourcefulness to her mother, Marisa Zeek, and says her father, EZBIS owner Ed Zeek, gave her the foundation for business sense at the kitchen table.
Zeek found more guidance in another mentor, the late Jillian Johnson. A multi-disciplinary artist herself, Johnson was a graphic designer, ceramicist, multi-instrumentalist, and singer. She sewed her own clothes to fit her six-foot frame; she co-owned Parish Ink and owned the River Ranch boutique Red Arrow, where Zeek worked for two years as a shop girl.
“That job propelled me into what I’m able to do today, even business-wise and art-wise,” she said. “It’s always there, at least for me. Jillian, to me, felt like the perfect bridge between making things that are marketable and commercial for the community while being an artist in her own right. She had projects and things she wanted to create for herself. She definitely showed me you can be all of those things but also be more practical and business-minded. It definitely gave me an entrepreneurial edge.”
“I think my biggest thing that I want is peace,” she said. “Inner peace. To me, that’s become the challenge. I’ve always worked, always strived for goals or recognition or feeling like I have to do something, and I’m coming to this point in life where I think the thing I want most in life is peace. I want to have peace with life and living and everything that comes with it and being myself.”
[Read Publisher James Fox-Smith's "Perspectives" profile on Chase Mullen here.]
Today, the spectrum of Zeek’s work grows broader by the day. But she’s melding it all together. To be quick and clever and commercial and dark and viscerally rendered is her narrative, and she’s telling her life story in real time.
“My work is becoming this fusion of myself,” Zeek said. “I feel like I used to divide myself into marketable, sweet, cute things, and then I’m doing this really dark shadow-self work. And now trying to bring those together. I feel like it’s making my work more honest, truthful, and well-rounded. It has darkness and still has the light. It’s about bridging gaps within yourself. I think my work is showing that to me.”
Find Zeek’s work available for sale at Studio Mattea on etsy.com, and follow her journey on social via @matteastudio on Instagram and Facebook.