Sorting Letters and Prototype

Originally uploaded by love not fear

Last time you wrote you said that you thought collage was a nostalgic impulse. I think you’re wrong. Can we argue about this? Kurt Schwitters would laugh up his sleeve at you for saying that. His collages are like writing letters. Letters are collages. Educations are collages, too. –Jolene Iolas to Martin Sloane; Martin Sloane, Michael Redhill

So often, when I’m working on a project, layers of that project reveal themselves to me in other aspects of my life. Recently, I was introduced to the writer Michael Redhill. I’d heard an interview in which Redhill mentioned his fascination with Joseph Cornell, the artist who makes intricate boxes of objects. He said that he drew inspiration from Cornell in his book Martin Sloane, which I have just begun reading and am enjoying very much.

It’s making me think a little more cerebrally about the Leaving and the Left project I’ve undertaken recently. I posted some early sketches and notes about the project previously here, but I never flushed out the idea. I guess the idea won’t be fully flushed out until the project is completed, but I’ll explain a little more about the concept before tracing the process thus far and then sharing what I’m learning as I go.

My progress on the project has been slower than I’d hoped. Part of the reason for that is that I unintentionally made excuses as to why I could not move the project forward, namely that I didn’t want to be cutting up glass in my kitchen and risk having glass shards in my food, or on my floor for me to step on like some sort of modern Bukowski, going weekly to the doctor to have them removed from the bottoms of my feet.

Excuses are always barriers to progress, and I have begun eliminating them and will have a prototype completed by the end of the weekend. I already have one laid out. A quick todo list:

1. Create prototype
2. get wood scraps at Home Resource
3. cut wood for pieces : 20 pieces at 12″x12″ (allow extra pieces in case of screw-ups)
4. paint cut wood, allow to dry
5. get more glass from the frame shop
6. cut glass for each piece. Work on each piece individually, or no more than 2 pieces at one time

Each piece will likely have its own todo, but that’s a good start for now.

As far as the actual idea for the series, let’s backup a minute and I’ll share some insights that the process is teaching me. My own little art education.

Love relationships, and I’m speaking here about relationships comprised of romantic and/or sexual love, break down for a variety of causes for their crumbling. Granted, sometimes they don’t break down at all, which is good, but when they do break down, there can be a variety of reasons for their demise: a wrongdoing to one or another in the relationship, new information that informs the feelings of the relationship’s participants, lack of communication between partners, new honesty in the reasons for entering a relationship in the first place, clarity as to the goal of the relationship and realizing that one or both parties are on different paths, geographical distance that cannot be overcome. I’m simplifying a huge thing here, and am not trying to create an all-encompassing list, but you get the idea.

When a relationship ends, there are associated with its ending a variety of feelings: hurt, anger, resentment, relief, regret (again, not an all-encompassing list). But my thought as I have been thinking about the series is that the love shared between the two individuals does not just disappear. That which has been given cannot be taken back. Amidst the pain and heartache we often forget the good and valuable things that drew us together in the first place.

Where does that love go? How does it manifest itself in our lives moving forward? How can we grow from the love we shared, honor the hurt and pain of parting yet allow the love to become a part of us, enriching us and renewing us? How can we grow from both the love and the heartache? These are some of the questions that the series intends to explore. I cannot pretend that the completed pieces will answer all or any of the questions, but the discussions are important ones to have, and hopefully the viewer will be challenged to have these kinds of discussion with himself and others close to him.

Initially, I had intended to use snippets of old love letters, juxtaposed with after-the-breakup letters to illustrate that love and sadness can exist in the same space, although maybe in different time continuums. Acknowledging and honoring both disparate feelings is important. Attempting to replace love with hate isn’t truly possible or healthy. The concept may not be fully articulated here, and I’m still spinning it in my head, but it’s stuck around long enough that it’s worth exploring.

Some unexpected things are coming up as new themes while I continue working on this series. The big surprise was that I had almost all of the love letters, but none of the breakup letters. No “You hurt me, I hate you” letters. Nothing.

Then I started going through some old email archives. (I save everything. I’m going to be one of those old men with goat trails in his house, I swear). I noticed that I had some love letters sent electronically, but what surprised me was that there were quite a few residual after-the-breakup letters in the emails I was reading. This realization raises a question about technology and the coldness of words displayed as intangible pixels on a screen. Sure, they can be printed, but the former love/lover had not physically touched the printout. Her essence is not present. This creates distance between the leaving and the left. Is this intentional? Does it matter if it is or isn’t?

The process is a fascinating one for me, and I’m learning much about myself in the process.