Weathering Melancholia
I make art on postcards (each is unique) and send them via the US Mail to people who want to receive them. Creating art helps me fight my spirit-crushing depression that threatens to devour me at times.
This portfolio shows some of the cards I have sent recently.
Sign up for your own postcard by sending your snail-mail postal address to ellen@thewurks.com. Or fill out the form on the Contact Page.
Remembering Our Fallen: Memorial Day Public Art Project
Years
2017 & 2018
Materials
Tyvek, markers, twine, wooden stakes, tape
Size
40m x 60m x 1.2m
Entire Installation
This artwork installation protested the USA's involvement in so many violent conflicts. Here in the States, in daily life we rarely talk about the violence we have initiated and sustained in other countries. The wars just go on and on! Because our military is all volunteer (no draft), the vast majority of the population is not affected. Most of us just keep shopping and thinking about ourselves. Meanwhile all these men and women keep dying. And the numbers of people dying from countries we are “liberating” are much, much higher. Not just military but so many civilians are killed.
This installation keeps people remembering HOW MANY Americans had died. In 2018, over 6,900 U.S. military men and women had been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan alone since the start of the wars. Remembering Our Fallen displayed each soldier’s name handwritten in red ink on a white banner and hung in row after row. It is a data-visualization project giving us one way to see the human cost of these wars.
I hoped the mesmerizing motion of the banners lowered people’s political defenses, allowing my message to slip in, unnoticed and unchallenged by rigid partisan thinking. I hoped the emotional responses the artwork provokes would change how people thought about war and our political leaders.
Volunteer Writing Name Banners
Many dozens of community members, varying in age from 8 to 80+, helped write the nearly seven thousand names of US military fatalities from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. People told me they found it cathartic to write the names of friends and loved ones they had lost.
Volunteer Installing Name Banners
For installation of the work, I used social media and word of mouth to get help from the community. Even with many hands, the installation took a full three days. Volunteers did not need to register. They would just show up whenever they had time and would drive in the wooden stakes, string the twine, and attach the name banners. In 2017, help came from over an 80 km (50-mile) radius thanks to an early TV news report asking people to volunteer.
Each row contained 350 names which had to be individually attached. The banners were made of Tyvek. Using an over-sized paper-cutter, I cut the banners one at a time from a roll of Tyvek., producing banners 5 cm x 56 cm (2 inches x 22 inches). In 2018, I hand-cut over seven thousand banners for the 6,936 names which were hung by date of death, starting at #1 in Row 1 and ending at 6,936 at the end of Row 20.
The artwork was free and open to the public twenty-four hours per day, seven days per week, for two weeks in 2017 and one week in 2018. Amazingly, even though there was no fence or security, no one vandalized the piece either year.
Name Banner with Pin Added by Parent
Families and friends of the fallen soldiers would sometimes leave mementos. This image shows a pin of the soldier on his name banner. Many families and comrades-in-arms thanked me for this piece so their loved ones would not be forgotten. More than one veteran came to see the names of lost friends and were so emotional they could not speak to me. Their spouses/friends would tell me the piece was cathartic for the vets despite the tears it brought on (for them and me!).
T-Shirt Given Out to Volunteers
As a thank you for the people involved in the project I made T-shirts. Using hand-cut stencils and red spray-paint, I marked the back with “Remembering Our Fallen 2018.” For the front, people could choose from T-shirts labelled “Volunteer”, “Donor”, “Art Helper”, or “Art Monkey.” By far the most popular was “Art Monkey.”
For Thee
For Thee is a memorial artwork made from oxygen tanks converted into large bells. They ring powered by the wind and mourn COVID-19 victims. It voices the chaos, loss, and overwhelming grief caused by the pandemic.
