Provincetown 44

Letter #12

I spent all day and all night on this one. I just finished it a few minutes ago. It is based on a letter I recently received from Allen about cutting down a mulberry tree in our yard. I thought the letter was so tender and affecting that I just had to work with it. It took me longer to do this one because I usually start out with images, not text. It was harder for me to have the text first. I tried several different arrangements until I came up with this one.

All of the collages I have done at Provincetown are done inside a Stonehenge Book of all cotton acid free pH neutral pages. The book is double wire bound. I have also been doing pen and ink pieces (mostly text) on the back of each page. I consider what I'm doing to be journaling more than anything else.

I don't expect you to be able to read the text in the collage (I took words directly out of the letter he wrote to me), so here's what it says:

Letter 12

I cut down that low hanging mulberry tree, the one that fought so hard to make it through the winter. It fell to the pace of one's last breath. Two baby birds fell out of their nest and three little brown bats hung onto tender limbs smaller than a toothpick. That evening as a pink sky was fading to purple, I checked & the bats were gone and the ants feasted on baby birds. There is a lot of life and death in a single mulberry tree.