Faultlines of the Heart

When presented with the February word: "love" I thought of many ways to go with it - parental, romantic, physical, familial - even love of music, nature and so on.  But what I really wanted to deal with was loss of love - specifically loss of loved ones.  When my Mom passed away last year I had to deal with the sadness of her loss plus the fact that she was the last one. Her passing followed my Dad's (by many years) and my brother and sister's deaths more recently.  I reflected on how we all suffer loss of love - or loved ones - then have to face our publics as though everything was completely right in our world.
Here you have a heart that has been fractured into many pieces along the faultlines that were there all along.  And floating over the pieces of the heart are a tangle of ribbons attempting to hide the tears underneath.

Letting go of love

Hot salty tears flow freely

Bruised battered heart cracks.

All the red "shards" combine to form one complete heart. The pieces have been attached to the background with a lot of heavy quilting. I used heavy cotton plus metallic. The ribbons are hand tacked. Under the ribbons are tear-shaped beads peeking out. I purposefully left the thread tails and frayed edges alone as they are part of the over all feeling that I wanted to generate.