An Early Afterlife
An Early Afterlife takes its title, and its text, from a 1995 poem by Linda Pastan.
This book was created to be auctioned off at the fall 2011 "Artrageous Affair" in Rochester, NY, which donates all proceeds to breast cancer research. The poem's content—a meditation on life, love, and death—seemed to fit well with the themes of the event.
My book contains the piece in its entirety twice, once on the pages inside, and once (without the introductory epigraph by Horace, but with the line breaks and formatting as Pastan intended) on the outside covers.
I’ve used the powerful text of the poem as a springboard to explore my own experiences with love and loss. Some of the photographs in the book are from magazines; the rest (including the drawings) are mine. The other text in the book is a love letter written by the great physicist Richard Feynman to his first wife, Arline, nearly two years after she died, and offers a third, profoundly eloquent, viewpoint on the subject.
August 2011
Acrylic, graphite, felt-tipped pen, colored pencil, collage on Arches grey paper. Clothbound cover.
6 1/8" x 5 3/4" x 5/8"
