Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea series is set in a fantasy world inhabited by wizards who can change into animals and control the weather, among other feats. In the final book, The Other Wind, a new yet vital character named Alder is introduced as “a thin man with a thin pack and an old black cloak, probably a sorcerer or small tradesman, nobody important.” While he lacks any grand powers, he has a more modest magical gift: the ability to mend. He can fix a broken vase, straighten a leaning fence, and repair a snapped harp string. In the end, however, Alder’s final and greatest act is also one of destruction: dismantling a wall that had put the world off balance.
I am no master mender (let alone a sorcerer), but I nonetheless feel an affinity with the character. I live and work in that nebulous borderland between creation, destruction, and repair. With various tools (blade, scissors, hammer, blender), I splice and graft, destroy and rebuild, exploring what happens when I break materials down into colors, textures, or slivers of meaning and transform it all into something new. It may not be magic, but it feels like a kind of mending.
This newsletter is an experiment. One of my goals is to bypass the increasingly mysterious algorithms and limitations of Instagram (and social media in general). At this point, I would prefer to communicate directly with a small number of people than submit things into that data-gobbling digital vortex in order to reach the entire world. While I will send relatively straightforward messages about upcoming events, reflections on past events, etc., I will also write about other things: materials, process, plans, ideas. Sometimes, maybe, I will send real things through the real mail. Always, probably, everything will change.
