Love letters

It is not uncommon for artists to create works that are, pure and simple, love letters. There are many kinds of these love letters--not all of them romantic. Sometimes a work can be the expression of an artist in love with an idea or a persona--with something or someone remote, unattainable...impossible.

Joseph Cornell was the self-taught inventor of shadow-box collage as an art form [as opposed to overgrown Victorian gewgaw--its prior application] and no one has been able to match his vision since.

Cornell was mostly a loner. He spent his entire adult life caring for his widowed mother and his younger brother Robert, who was stricken with cerebral palsy and wheelchair-bound his entire life. The three of them spent most of their lives in a small bungalow in a neighborhood in Flushing, Queens; the address, famously, was 3708 Utopia Parkway--a serendipitous detail that seems to precisely describe the beauty, poignancy, and dream-like quality of his boxes.

The box at right is one named Untitled (Penny Arcade Portrait of Lauren Bacall), an homage to the actress--one of many gifted female performers whom he worshiped obsessively.




The traditional beadwork of the Zulu people of southern Africa includes a form of "love letters," which are neck pouches made by young women to send very specific messages to young men, perhaps encouraging them to come up with the bride wealth necessary for marriage to take place. The meaning is carried through the arrangement of beads--the color combinations, order and pattern arrangements all tell a tale, often a very private one understood only by the maker of the beadwork and the intended recipient. Young men, in turn, often ask their sisters to make beaded love letters in reply to young women.







I have made one object in my life that I know, unquestionably, is a love letter. It is my one and only red painting, titled Dream of a Friend. I made it about 1998, in reference to many personal losses. It is about loneliness, which is something one can feel at any time in any situation, even when you are surrounded by people--as the errors of the past weigh on one's conscience. These aren't really bad feelings--they can be very rich and full of energy, even if they are also a little sad, because they respond to that which is forever gone, including one's own abundance or potential.