Letter to Fire
Collage on Paper
11 x 8.5 inches unframed
Letter to Fire is part of a recent group of letters that address themes responding to the pandemic and specifically center on Self Care. This group of letters has also grown to become very three-dimensional.
In Letter to Fire, the bottom corner looks burnt as flames dance across the page beyond the borders of the lined paper. Fire can erase, but it can also cleanse. It can destroy, but it can also provide warmth and keep one alive. Most of us experienced extreme duality during the pandemic: loneliness vs. lack of personal space; rigidity vs. adaptability; death vs. rebirth.
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Here is the statement for my letters in general:
LETTER COLLAGES
The hand-written letter is an intimate form of communication. To take the time to focus on writing a letter expresses a sense of caring for the recipient and deepens the intimacy between writer and addressee. The letter presents a tactile experience which invites sensations and emotions in the reader. A letter becomes a moment captured forever, a historical record, and has an innate sense of permanence inviting re-reading and reinterpretation over time.
Each of my collages is a letter composed in color, form and pattern. The recipient of a letter might be real or conceptual; a person, a feeling, a place, an idea. I consider what I want to say and to whom I’m saying it. Instead of communicating through text I translate my thoughts and emotions into an arrangement of shapes and colors. I cut and glue each individual piece of paper, building “sentences” and “paragraphs” until a fully formed letter develops.
Recent letters address themes responding to the pandemic such as, social connections, personal feelings on coping and adaptation and the importance of self care. It is my hope that these letters will reverberate with others who are processing their own needs for self care and will bring peace, hope, and self love to those who experience them.
