Love Mending Hope

In the midst of the profound confusion and the ongoing desperation we’ve all faced in the last 18 months of our lives, I couldn’t help but fathom the reflection that, once stripped away from all the artifices we might have come to believe we needed to keep sustaining our personal self-projection or to feed our self-absorbed purposes, we have the opportunity to see the true nature of who we are, the essence of our life trajectory. We can explore what our inner foundation is made of, what our values stand for, what is the measure of illusion and reality that lies within us. We can look at who we are, not at how we may want others to see us. 

No matter how much we may appreciate or despise what we truly are, we now have the ability to start it all over again, to make peace with what we may have thought unredeemable, to heal what we may have accepted was forever broken, to be merciful for whatever or whoever we had determined to be unforgiving. And as the new daylight slowly emerges from our own darkness, it’s incredibly liberating to know that we all have the possibility to transform everything that was there before. Because if there’s one constant empowering dimension that has prevailed through the ages, it is the fact that only love has the power to mend our hope in new emancipating dawns and to create the upcoming wonders tomorrow will bring. There’s no absolute, no fate, only our resilience to be, imperfectly radiant, like an evolving stream that keeps on flowing, at once calm, agitated, troubled, and serene. That’s the magnificent blessing we have after such a long collective nightmare. No matter what was before, we now are. Alive. Able to be. Free from our own limited design and from everybody else’s demise…

Love mending hope.

About the Design

The concept behind "Love Mending Hope" came from Alex, and was illustrated by Joe. About the different elements that are part of the poster, Joe explains: 

I used the fortune-telling theme Alex mentioned when we discussed the Love Mending Hope meaning and came up with this gypsy woman crouched by a tattered vintage machine that raccoons have made a home out of. Three tarot cards suggest possibility, and the new growth of flowers on the girl's back is to represent a regenerative spirit, or cosmic springtime. Strange shapes whirl in the crystal ball, and the hummingbird returns to feed on nectar.

I contacted a friend of mine who knows a lot about tarot, and she offered some cards that if drawn were likely to signify hope, change and transformation. She suggested the wheel of fortune, the six of pentacles and the sun, in that particular order. The cool thing is that the growth and change that the cards suggest are reflected in the natural growth coming out of the girl's back. 

It felt a little bit like a personal reading when she was giving it to me, which was very cool following my numerous conversations with Alex, The Club new theme and what we all went through since March 2020. 

 

About the Artist

Joe Mruk
Red Buffalo Illustration

Joe Mruk has been working with Alex Henry Foster on the SFCC The Club design for 2 years in a row now. Alex explains more about his desire to collaborate with the Pittsburgh-based artist in this blog.

Entirely Made in The Fabrik

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