Connection #5

Pirates and Spaghetti

Colored Pencil on postcard

3"x 5"

The idea that I wanted to show with this piece was how words brought people (especially myself and my friends and family) together during covid. I am exploring the idea of human connection as a whole, and writing letters and how words connected me in a time when there was so little connection and contact. The letters that I wrote with my friends, especially Murreal were so important tp me, and I found so much joy in not only receiving and reading her letters, but in sharing my own experiences in letters and cards back to her. This connection was something I really looked forward to. 

I used a postcard that Murreal wrote to me in May of 2020, in a time when covid was still pretty bad and so we were all still in pretty severe lockdown. You can't really read the letter still, but she wrote to me about how all the spring things were coming together at her house and keeping me updated on what was going on in her life at the time. I wanted to put a memory of when we were able to be together on there to show how the words brought us from being separate to feeling closer. I used colored pencil to get precise details, and strong colors, but I also still wanted the writing to show through a little bit which I thought happened nicely with the colored pencil. However, it does create some strange patterns like in our faces it looks kind of creepy!

I struggled a lot to figure out what I was going to make, but when the idea of our letters came to my mind it made a lot of sense, because even without it in writing, words are such a strong tool that humans use to communicate. As you can see in the sketches below I had a bunch of different ideas, and brainstromed in words a lot as sometimes writing down ideas can help me come up with something more visual. I originally was thinking of having the words being held literally, but I liked the idea of drawing on a letter. When I first had the idea I wanted to cut the letter in between Murreal and I and then sew it back together to show how the words brought us together, but once I had drawn us I felt like it wasn't necessary and it might distract too much from the main idea and make the whole piece a little bit too busy.