Collage of greeting cards
I assembled this piece in response to the spiritual message of Islamic calligraphy as it is so beautifully portrayed by Seyyed Hossein Nasr in Islamic Art and Spirituality. I was moved by the idea that Quranic calligraphy “issues at once from the Islamic revelation and represents the response of the soul of the Islamic peoples to the Divine Message” (18). Coming into our course, I knew that the Qur’an had a special status among Muslims, which was more elevated than that of a sacred text. But Nasr helped me to understand the depth of this relationship; of the Quran as “the ‘Mother of Books’ (Umm al-kitab), the ‘Book’ containing the inexhaustible possibilities of Divine Creativity” (17).
From this reading, I learned a now-favorite saying: ‘Calligraphy is the geometry of the Spirit’. The idea that calligraphy presents the Word of God in the visible world, but remains wedded to the world of the spirit, is what inspired my thinking for this piece (18). I began to think of the Quran as God’s love letter to the world, and of the robust and widespread art of calligraphy, as a love letter back to God. Beyond its decorative qualities, adorning everything from ceramics to the interiors of secular spaces like stores, I became curious about the active qualities of calligraphy. That the art of writing becomes a practice of reminder: of God reminding us of his love, and of the spirit that imbues our visible world, while the calligrapher reminds God of his or her devotion and reminds others of the love of God.
This piece is assembled from greeting cards that I have received from friends and family over the years of graduate school. Each one contains a message of love, and assembled, they are even more beautiful than they are alone. I think of them as a collective gesture toward the geometry of love, and of the interconnections among loved ones as sacred facets of Divine Creativity.