Is it crazy to say that it feels like much of my work is a love letter of some kind to Life?...to moments, to people, to the parts of our spirit that knows more than we will ever understand? I know that it sounds perhaps a little foolish to say this. But lets face it... Love can make us appear a bit foolish...can make us take risks and have a devil-may-care attitude. Love, after all, cannot be contained. It demands to be shared, will sneak out of every pore even when you try to contain it. It inhabits every part of us, heightens our senses, makes us more impulsive and expressive.
That is what love letters to life do. They provide a pressure valve release to things that cannot be contained and in doing so, share these things with the world or whomever will engage; those who are open to such messages. I want to be clear that I am not speaking of just romantic love here. Though I am fortunate to have a beautiful, romantic relationship now in its 10th year. No, I am talking about things that bring us joy, things that teach us hard lessons, things that make us realize how amazing and miraculous it is that life happens, that our cells and organs all work together to give us this experience of breathing, thinking, feeling, experiencing beauty, pain, loss, longing. Some people go through life taking that for granted. But I try to be grateful each day, to try to understand all that I have and learn from it, share it, make good use of it. That is a love for life in all of its joys and sorrows, difficulties and learning moments...and to that I make work that brings together aspects of my experience, my love of learning, my humanity and my role on this earth as one of many species that live and work together.
When I work in the garden I am in awe of nature and small, wondrous beauties. Love.
When I visit my elderly mother and she smiles, has a moment of clarity and joy with me I feel intense gratitude for all that she has taught me about joy, love, gratitude, all that she is still teaching me everyday.
When I wonder that I have found someone with whom I share my life, its joys, its challenges, its potential, I wonder at how easily love has come to us together and deepened over time. I had thought love difficult before with others in shorter attempts at grown-up relationships---that were perhaps more about loneliness and safety...about learning something that I needed to learn, but not about deeper understanding...not the love that I ultimately needed. Now we are in our 10th year together and we have fun everyday. We make each other better people by our togetherness. We take care of each other and tend to our relationship. We have built a sense of home with each other that is deep and powerful.
My work is about many things...my memories, things that I have read, life, history difficulties and joys, mysteries of life, losses and gains. I have a deep reverence for life and am in a state of wonder at it. I create love letters without realizing it sometimes, it just comes out sometimes even when I think that I am making work about something more serious. But then, what is more serious (and also joyful) than love?