Words are sediments, not just sentiments. They shape world-view, spacial composition & socio-sculptural elements of communication, belonging, & inclusion. My work explores an expanded sense of communication through themes of legacy, illegibility, rupture, loss, translation, & intimacy. My palette is subtle & organic, metallic, iridescent, & informed by community voices. Works resist viewing from a single physical vantage-point, sense of self, or linguistic sensibility. They are informed by almost a decade of study & practice in global calligraphies.

Calligraphic forms are love letters in the broadest sense.

In many parts of the world, calligraphy is the highest art. Rooted in sacred traditions & passed hand to hand for generations. “Love letters” & “writing” are both literal & metaphoric to me. They refer to devotional aspects of calligraphy & literature, & refuse to separate form from process & meaning; beauty from beautiful behavior.

I have a deep love for traditional practice— but I don’t consider myself a calligrapher: My service to the art is different. I’m in search of what Anaïs Nin calls counterpoisons.

In the Arabic script I studied, disciplined surrender replaces self-expression. This feels pronounced to me in a country hedged by isolation, nationalism & appropriation—one that takes individual freedom as anthem while simultaneously, as Audre Lorde reminds us, being on the wrong side of every liberation movement.

I want to know how to write a love letter in American Ink without concealing her legacies or my own.

I often incorporate ink made recycled guns to remind me of where I live— if not in script, than in ubiquitous underpainting. American Ink also refers to that beautiful ricochet of voices & languages. Much of what I remake is myself & my English.

If there’s a calligraphy unique to North America, it’s multi-lingual, held up by many hands. Our ligatures—the joins between forms— are a fractured, often illegible confluence of intersecting languages, global ruptures, & profound legacies of international solidarity. Too many remain unanswered, unrequited, & increasingly rendered as if they didn’t exist at all. Love letters first transform the one who writes them.

They require risks in personal significance , disclosure & reckoning. They place honesty over certainty & cultivate the courage necessary to the wait in ambiguous, illegible spaces: There are no finish lines in love. In a burning world, a love letter is an act of resistance.

Writing love letters is dangerous: If they’re sincere, you have to live up to them

—Frederick Franck