This project started with a question: what to do with the correspondence saved from a relationship that has spanned over fifty years?

 

Kept in a box tied with a ribbon, these letters,written by hand mostly on paper from yellow legal pads, held mystery and meaning, so many feelings and thoughts. Those letters held a story of a longstanding friendship: hopes and promises, disappointments and truth telling, what was and what was not. Over the years despite many twists and turns the relationship has remained, transformed in many ways and truer inmost ways.

 

This body of work represents the transformation of a relationship bound over the years by an abiding love. It is love that allows what is broken to be rebuilt, what was torn to be rewoven into a stronger connection. Perhaps this is what happens in all relationships that last over time-they are reconstituted, repaired, transformed, and more true. This work also speaks to the forgotten art and power of letter writing. Literally, the letters were torn, shredded, ripped apart and became a resource for a lengthy creative process. I wove the pieces and collaged them to create new surfaces on which to draw and paint. Besides collage I used acrylic, graphite, colored pencil, and ink to make these images. I call this series ‘dear kathie, love bill."