Works of Love | Valerie Constantino

Works of Love

To love is to give what one does not have and
to receive that over which one has no power.
— Simon Critchley

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose with my lost saints.
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning

With these two quotes, I began this series of fifteen handmade papers. Each 8 x 8-inch framed work offers a definition for love; love as a verb or love as an adjective. Words were stitched onto the white papers with white cotton thread, and the lower edges of the papers were stained with an infusion of rose hips and beet powder. Each one was pressed between two acrylic squares, fastened with stainless steel book corners and silver pins.

Works of Love, Love is borderless

handmade paper, white cotton thread, rose hips and beet powder infusion

Works of Love, five from the series of fifteen on an angled shelf

This series evolved in conjunction with my exploratory integrations of tangible yet flexible materials such as paper, textile and thread, with writing and words. The overlay of these creative forms refers to their analogous structures, where writing is a network of linear and poetic elements relative to the reticulated underpinnings of matter.

For these works, I was also interested in referencing

the subtlety of whitework, an embroidery technique of white stitching on white cloth, often used for christening, bridal

and ecclesiastic textiles.

Simultaneously, these projects evolved within an

atmosphere of catastrophic political, social and environmental shifts. And each one notes an attempt to supersede my susceptibility to these conditions, to locate and foster the

best determinations within the human heart and mind.

The fifteen individual Works of Love can be seen here in this sequential display.

For a larger versions, click on the image, then click again for a close-up.