Friendship

I was not enamored of the challenge to use text in my work, I particularly dislike spelling out the meaning too specifically, preferring to let viewers draw their own inferences.
However, I changed my mind during our recent trip to Taiwan- the warmth and hospitality shown to Martha and I by Hsin-Chen, her staff and family and our talented, appreciative and fun students made memories to treasure forever.

The beauty and incredible variety of the Chinese writing we saw everywhere was inspiring too, do I resolved to use it in a way to honor our host country and its people.

We spent a good deal of time on foot exploring-
the lush vegetation made the environment very different from my home in the desert.   I spent a fun day alone, making rubbings of the exotic leaves I found in my wanderings.

Then I asked Miss Lee, our translator, to write out "friendship through art" for me in Chinese.

I digitally extracted the text, and combined it on top of a photo of a wall of the old building above-

the text is repeated a dozen times, in varying sizes to become a graffiti like background element.

After the fabric came back from the printer, I spread out the colorful leaf rubbings from Tainan. and began to cut out additional branches for them...

you can see parts of the text peeping through the vibrant, healing leaves growing over the crumbling wall.  

Friendship, 40x33"dedicated to all the wonderful people who made TAQS '16 happen!