Love Letters: This Year

Just finished the 2009 Valentine; now my 18th year of doing this mailing....more and more, it's not a mailing to my entire client list, but more of a "thank-you" to clients who sent work my way, workshop hostesses and folks who helped me with my workshops, new friends, my support network, etc...it kills me, because there are so many people I would like to send them to, but time and the complication of the project prevents me from doing so...each year I meet more wonderful lettering and book artists, and I want to keep up my relationship with my extensive network of friends, especially now that that list includes people to whom I've sent valentines in the past, who are no longer alive! yipes!

This year's valentine came to me, as it so often does, in the second week of January and reflects the sort of "brother-can-you-spare-a-dime" times we seem to be headed for: I image folks staying home, telling stories to each other and making art out of whatever is at hand...the valentine collage is made out of hand-cut recycled cardboard boxes, rice paper from my studio, winter weeds, feathers, seeds, old newspapers, scraps of this and that, and one heart of real gold (laid on gloss medium) for HOPE, and scaps of writing, which most says: faith, hope, love and charity...obviously the love theme here is less personal and more universal...this gold is not the money we have, don't have, never had or might have had, but the heart we still have inside.....enjoy!

a good poem on Love:

myselves
ask "life, the question how do i drink dream smile

and how do i prefer this face to another and
why do i weep eat sleep-what does the whole intend"
they wonder. oh and they cry "to be, being, that i am alive
this absurd fraction in its lowest terms
with everything cancelled
but shadows
-what does it all come down to? love? Love
if you like and i like,for the reason that i
hate people and lean out of this window is love,love
and the reason that i laugh and breathe is oh love and the reason
that i do not fall into this street is love."


ee cummings