LETTER FROM THE EDITOR : MICHELLE GRABNER : FEBRUARY 2005

Dear Readers,

"The human tongue is like a cracked cauldron on which we beat out tunes to set a bear dancing when we would make the stars weep with our melodies." Gustave Flaubert

Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) was obsessed with the limitations of language, its inability to transcend mediocrity and the cliches of bourgeois culture. And still today our collective imagination is dead to the profundities of life and our emotional experiences? For $29.99 we can buy eulogies on line, poems for special occasions, pre-written toasts for the ones we love. If as Flaubert suggests that language is essential to meaning, yet it is also inadequate what are our options to negotiate our world of emotions? The answer must be a combination of languages: visual, theoretical, written, performative.The love letter as a valentine bedecked with color, filigree, lace.

The love letters I selected below make reflexive reference to the form of the Love Letter and language itself. The right word. Letters will never say everything. Why am I writing this letter? If only I said the right thing. Written with Love. Words cannot explain. Our meager words. I write now knowing you might never receive this.

Yours most sincerely,  Michelle Grabner

Michelle Grabner is an artist and writer living in Oak Park, IL. She also runs The Suburban, an artist project space in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago. She has three children and is an Associate Professor of Art at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.