Final Flame

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An accordion book with a black, white, and grey palette stands. Across the front, a black line grows wider, crowding the words of the poems towards the edges until the page is completely black. At the very end, the black fades into a white page as last poem appears in white through the black background. The five poems are separated by splits where pieces of tracing paper have been sewn in, pamphlet styled. Upon the tracing paper four letter, growing in size, have been traced in curly black penmanship. These pages are backed with loosely handled hued gray paints. Circling round to the visible back, the letters stenciled in hued gray paint spell out the phrase, ‘YET WE STAND.’

One of the poems in the work is called, “Turn. Turn. Again”:
Turn and turn again.
What simple lies we tell ourselves.
Lies to calm our nerves at night.
What childish dreams to hold with certainty
that we will wake with day’s new light.
Turn and Turn again.
Change we fear and change we flee.
In steady habits or forgot abandon.
Turn. Turn again.
And the unknown lies before us
as time ticks ever onwards.

This artist book is a commentary on hope. It tells a narrative of the slow loss of faith and hope before the sudden brightening at the end. It is a reminder not only to maintain hope even in the darkest of times but that it is about the journey, for it is the journey that both makes us who we are and teaches us the strength that we have to continue.