After my friend Richard died with AIDS, I created 2 ribcage pieces to honour his ravaged body. For this theme, I reworked the pieces by typing a letter on cotton bedsheets about AIDS, our friendship & life on this planet since he died. Working this cloth into the darker ragged ribcage, some words are legible, others obscured. A beeswax coating softens my words & preserves the friendship. Text on the smaller ribcage attempts to counteract the erasure that accompanies AIDS & death.

Handmade paper (mulberry & abaca), chokecherry branches, wire, text on cloth, beeswax