Visual Love Letters

Artfelt Messages

My obsession with the role of a private art practice continues.

Last week, I wrote about the value that a private sketchbook practice offers, and about Frida Kahlo’s uncensored honesty in her own sketchbook, including the many pages that were basically love letters to Diego Rivera. Extremely private outpourings from her heart.

The idea of ‘art as a love letter’ made me think about this article about paño arte by Alvaro Ibarra. Ibarro writes about a particular genre of private art making I wasn’t aware of—paño arte—careful, elaborate drawings on handkerchiefs that were sent home to loved ones by incarcerated Chicanos. Each piece is basically a private visual love letter.

Here’s an example:

Unrecorded artist, “Deana” (date unknown), ink and colored pencil on cotton, 15 x 15 inches photos courtesy of Reno Leplat-Torti. You can find him on instagram at https://www.instagram.com/renoleplattorti.

You can see a clear connection between this image above and contemporary tattoo art and Ibarra described the work this way: “The handkerchief functions as a second skin; it is a proxy for the absent dermis of the pinto, similarly decorated. Like skin, the paño is pliable, soft to the touch, and a vehicle for communication.”

As a fiber artist, this resonates with me—fiber and fabric are inherently sensual and very connected to the body and domesticity—the home, family, our private realm. The hanky has the additional role as being a particularly personal cloth—I mean, no one shares their hanky. It also makes me think about crying and wiping one’s eyes—a hanky is something to reach for in your sorrow.

Because the work was created in prison, there’s an additional privacy aspect to Pano Arte arising from the felt shame or sorrow on the part of the recipient. “Concealed in drawers or buried in linen closets, the paño was never on display,” Ibarro writes. “After all, it was not a point of pride to reveal the fact that a child, relative, or partner spent time in jail.”

That makes me imagine a mother opening her linen closet as she puts away clean sheets or grabs a fresh towel and glimpses her paño arte for a split second or two as she moves through her day. The tucking away also strikes me as a private expression of grief—an invisible marker of a what might feel like a life lost behind bars. The hiding also mirrors the invisibility of the incarcerated artist. It’s a private anguish for both parties.

But even if they didn’t get proudly displayed on the wall, surely some of these pieces of paño arte were privately carried with the recipient. If my husband were in jail and made and sent me one, it would not be in my closet but rather in my purse or my pocket where I could privately feel it or see it as I fetched my wallet in the grocery store or grabbed my keys heading out the door. Something only I would know was there. A way of carrying him with me throughout my day—a secret companionship. Art as keepsake.

Paño arte must have also provided a private expressive release for the creator. As an artist, I imagine this act of creating gave them a way to assert their humanity to themselves while stuck inside such a deeply dehumanizing environment.

The creator could then safely ship this unacceptable tenderness outside those brutal confines to a loved one who would then ‘see’ them. Ibarro writes: “The exchange is meant to be private, the message is personalized, and the vulnerabilities disclosed are the kind a pinto [convict] necessarily represses in the context of the penitentiary.”

Private Art Goes Public

Familiar with this fraught genre of artwork from his childhood in south Texas, Ibarro seems conflicted the first time he sees paño arte framed, matted and behind glass in a museum. He wonders about the potential voyeurism or even fetishization of the work when seen by outside eyes who might respond to it as cool, exotic or other.

After wrestling with it, he comes to terms with it by making a distinction between the private artform of paño arte and a public version of it, which he calls artepaño:

“The former is a private exchange to which the museum-goer should neverbe privy. The latter is public, a celebration of a unique artistic tradition born of tragedy.”

I like the work having a slightly different name in its public incarnation and I think that is a beautiful resolution of how a private art exchange can become public in a way that is valuable to the culture at large.

The anonymity of the public sharing of artepaño creates, I think, a needed privacy for both creator and receiver while also offering the most ‘unseen’ people in any culture—the incarcerated—a kind of public acknowledgement. Artepano gives the viewer a chance to imagine the incarcerated as full human beings with families and relationships and the ability to create beauty.

This in turn creates a bridge to the viewer’s life—to see the similarities with our own complicated or failed relationships, our own pining, our own grief and our own treasured keepsakes—and connects the specific human experience to the universal. Which is, of course, what art is supposed to do.

The Energetic Power of Giving

To me, there’s an additional layer to this that the author doesn’t mention—paño arte as a lovingly made gift. As someone who has created many gifts with my hands, I know how the recipient is carried with me throughout the entirety of the making process.

Most everything handmade feels different from the machine made. But I think the energetic signature of anything handmade by one person for another emanates from the object in a bigger way, imbuing it with a life and integrity that are palpable. It’s all about intimacy and touch and a loving intention.

I’m so interested in how that kind of intimate energetic signature can be laid more consciously into what my friend Paula calls “Capital ‘A’ Art.” Artwork that is, from the jump, made for the gallery wall.

I feel like private artwork that becomes public—like a famous artist’s sketchbook or artepaño, for instance—offers us a window into how that might be done.

Consider me on the case.

Handheld and Personal

Speaking of loving the intimacy of the small handheld art object, my book arts group met last night to share our creations for our ‘vitrine’ showcase in the Encore Gallery of the Taos Center for the Arts. Our self-imposed mandate is always to create books in response to each current show hanging in the gallery. This time our theme, based on the latest show, was childhood.

I thought it would be fun to create a photo album book of pictures I have of my parents when they were children playing. Something to sit on a coffee table that a visitor might open and play with. My dad on an old tricycle. My mom on rollerskates with a friend.

I have a thing for fans and I decided a photo album fan would qualify as a book. I’m torn about whether to have the last fan blade should serve as a ‘book cover’ when the fan is closed, or if a photo would induce more people to open it.

Here are a few pictures:

“Childhood” Photo Album Fan by Sarah Bush. Baltic Birch Plywood and Paper. Fully Open: 14” x 10” x 3/4”

“Childhood” Photo Album Fan by Sarah Bush Back view.

“Childhood” Photo Album Fan by Sarah Bush. Side View.

If you’d like to make one of these for yourself, let me know. I can think about offering a little online class or just sell you the wood fan blade blanks to do with what you may….the world is your oyster!

YES GIRL, we’re at the end of this post! As always, it means the world to me that you read all the way to the end. Truly.

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