When I started working with the archive of love letters currently on display at the Gallery at the Guild, I felt no attachment. These letters are 31 years old, after all. I don’t even remember how the relationship ended.

As I began the process of documenting, however, things started to change. While handling them – sorting, dating, tagging, recording the first line of each – they seemed to grow in preciousness. I noticed their patina, runs of various types of stationary and ink, and remembered just how important they had once been.

And I thought about their remarkable journey – via Canada Post from NB to BC, from BC to Prince Edward Island where they were stored in trunks in barns at three separate addresses on the North Shore, their survival of a mammoth cull in the last of these, their journey in the back of my truck to a fourth storage barn on the South Shore and eventual resurfacing in my current home in November, 2012. Perhaps this is accessible to participants. A recurring comment seems to be, ‘you kept them!’

Throughout the show’s run, I will periodically inventory the collection and refile revised works. August, 3rd’s  inventory is below.

03 08 13

letters revised    11
letters read        19 (minimum)
letters shredded     0