Love is for Today, Programs are for Tomorrow
Love is for Today, Programs are For Tomorrow is a series of paintings that employ my extrusion processes on substrates of household towels that envision spaces for the homeless. Stirred by Mother Teresa’s recently published writings in “A Call to Mercy: Hearts to Love, Hands to Serve,” these paintings invite us to contemplate how compassion can exist within our complex contemporary times.
Towels express tangible acts of caring– they touch bodies and scrub floors. Their humility and service know no bounds. In these paintings, their terry cloth textures, prints, and embossments inspire an expanded repertoire of material rhymes. Household repair items such as spackling paste and wood filler are extruded through gridded substrates and sewn into the towels. My four years of work with the extrusion process culminate in a visceral yet delicate display of constructed textures that map the imagined floor plans of interior spaces. Each of these gestures is an invocation that those literally marginalized to our sidewalks and streets will be invited back inside.
Mother Teresa’s actions were practical and immediate. She encouraged programs but knew her role was to simply do now. She said, “Love is for Today, Programs are for Tomorrow.”