Eliza Holliday Letterist.com: Bobbi's Ladder to Heaven

Monday, July 13, 2009

Bobbi's Ladder to Heaven

A group of Jacksonville calligraphers recently had a small tribute show for Bobbi Yoffee, who died about a year and a half ago from ovarian cancer...this show motivated me to finish a small sculptural piece that I had started after she died, but never completed (actually, it mostly existed in my head, until I actually had a deadline! My collage students can verify, all I had was the back spine -about 15"x4"- collaged with joss paper!). I never got a proper picture of it with good lighting; all I have to offer it this quick snap in my studio.

3 comments:

lori vliegenJuly 14, 2009 at 5:34 AM
i'm one of the lucky ones who has seen this piece in person....it's absolutely stunning!! so much to see with the tiny little boxes of used nibs, and the gorgeous, gorgeous brush lettering! bobbi would have loved it! :)
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Lisa HoltzmanJuly 14, 2009 at 10:30 AM
This looks beautiful Eliza. I wish I had seen it in person since I know I missing much of the wonderful detail in your work. I did see some of your work close up at an SFC workshop in L.A.
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Cindy YountFebruary 26, 2010 at 2:38 PM
Still my favorite - this is absolutely beautiful! :)
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A Speech to the Garden Club of America

Thank you. I’m glad to know we’re friends, of course;
There are so many outcomes that are worse.
But I must add I’m sorry for getting here
By a sustained explosion through the air,
Burning the world in fact to rise much higher
Than we should go. The world may end in fire
As prophesied—our world! We speak of it
As “fuel” while we burn it in our fit
Of temporary progress, digging up
An antique dark-held luster to corrupt
The present light with smokes and smudges, poison
To outlast time and shatter comprehension.
Burning the world to live in it is wrong,
As wrong as to make war to get along
And be at peace, to falsify the land
By sciences of greed, or by demand
For food that’s fast or cheap to falsify
The body’s health and pleasure—don’t ask why.
But why not play it cool? Why not survive
By Nature’s laws that still keep us alive?
Let us enlighten, then, our earthly burdens
By going back to school, this time in gardens
That burn no hotter than the summer day.
By birth and growth, ripeness, death and decay,
By goods that bind us to all living things,
Life of our life, the garden lives and sings.
The Wheel of Life, delight, the fact of wonder,
Contemporary light, work, sweat, and hunger
Bring food to table, food to cellar shelves.
A creature of the surface, like ourselves,
The garden lives by the immortal Wheel
That turns in place, year after year, to heal
It whole. Unlike our economic pyre<
That draws from ancient rock a fossil fire,
An anti-life of radiance and fume
That burns as power and remains as doom,
The garden delves no deeper than its roots
And lifts no higher than its leaves and fruits.