Dynamic Waiting

TIME + OBSESSION = ORDER/DISORDER, ©Joy Kreves

Time.  If you are a creative type, you know about post-event slumps that claim you for a time.  If you have been a creative type for decades, you probably know that those slumps will pass and you'll soon be back into your passion full force. I was thinking about time back in the 1990s when I made my Spiral Series, including the work above.  Spirals can be seen as a diagram of how time is cyclical. I'm in a post-exhibition slump right now.  It's not artist's block, since I have ideas and projects to pursue, but I'm currently involved in mundane art business requiring an imbalance of computer work, family and home issues, and have not been able to actually create new work for a little while.  One benefit of being the age I am is knowing that this awful feeling of creative discomfort will pass.

Spiral Drawing, ©Joy Kreves, Sold, Private Collection

You may have noticed that there seems to be lots of talk about "Dynamic" this and that.  Recent research has found that sitting is terrible for our health. Alan Heller has launched the ergoErgo chair, "dynamic seating" designed to overcome some of the terrible effects of regular sitting.  I've written about ergoErgo in past posts, and am happily (and dynamically) perched on my own black one as I write this now. Dynamic eating is also something I've embraced.  No more food fuel going into me that is not nutritionally dense!  Dr. Fuhrman's EAT TO LIVE book revolutionized my family's diet. Yesterday brought the realization that I am also practicing dynamic waiting.  This is a good way to get through an artistic slump until one can create in the studio again.  I'm not depressed and lethargic, but rather I am looking at and participating in big, energized art shows.  Last week I discovered art gems at Grounds for Sculpture, MOMA P.S.1, The New York Studio School Gallery, and Art All Night 2012 Trenton.  Time passes while practicing dynamic waiting, but is not wasted.  Maybe it's a bit like meditation.  Yes, your physical body will try to distract you with ailments, but in a sense they really are just distractions against the deeper experience.  Being creative will always be that deeper experience for an artist.

Thirst

My

parched eyes harbor gravel under lids

brittle legs seize up in sudden cramps

arthritic shoulders moan at simple chores

I am

the struggling fly, one leg caught in sticky sap

the tottering peacock displaying in gusty wind

the rosy bloom of snapdragon nipped off by summer rabbit

I have been

the ebullient stream that courses over rocks

the fluid panther leaping on its prey

the mossy, dew-filled mantle of the earth

I've yet to know

the underground rumblings of elephants

the  whooshing northern lights inside my bones

the impressive mud-packed footprints of a bear

How thirsty I am now

and how wounded

as time passes quickly yet so slow

each day lacks the order of my passion

I wait half-patiently

for time to spiral 'round again and

in orderly return, return to me 

What I've been and known before, and lost

   -Joy Kreves 6/'12

Perhaps if you are a creative type you will benefit from looking at activities in terms of their dynamic qualities.  Looking back, I believe I visualized the concept of dynamic time in my spirals, drawings done during the 1980's and '90's.  You can see more works from the Spiral Series in the "Line Drawings" gallery of my website:  joykreves.com and current studio information on my facebook page:  JoyKrevesArtStudio  Here's to your having a truly dynamic summer!

Fish Fall From the Sky and Dandelions Invade the Water

Thanks to the weekend's absolute weather perfection, my Open Studio Event May 19th and 20th went smoothly and a month of intense preparation paid off.  A most curious thing happened just a day or so before the big event, though.
I went to put the empty garbage can back in it's shed after collection day.  As I rolled the empty  container noisily down the driveway towards the shed I saw something lying on the pavers right in front of the shed doors.  Coming closer, I saw that it was an entire dead fish, about a foot long!  Flies weren't swarming on it yet, but no animal had scurried off just in front of my approach, either.  It couldn't have been there for too long.  I thought a wild animal would be reluctant to go far from such a catch even if it had been scared away.

Although it had a gaping wound just under the head nothing had started to eat it.  Now...the nearest creek is two blocks away, the Delaware River just a few but it's not like we live right on the riverbank!  Something would have had to run across a few streets and several yards with this river catch, and our pavers didn't seem much of a destination.

Being squeamish I decided to leave it there for HUSBAND to clean up when he arrived home from work.  A couple of hours later I needed to walk the dog.  At the beginning of the walk I checked on the fish again.  Still there.  Nothing had come back for this great waiting meal.  At the end of the walk I checked yet again.  Still there.  Nothing had even come to taste!  My dog didn't seem to see OR smell it from...8 ft. away.

I asked friends for their theories on how the fish got there and most guessed some bird of prey had dropped it.  Now I don't know about you, but I don't normally go outside even considering the possibility that I could be hit on the head with a falling fish!  Yet this now appears to be a real possibility.  Next time I see a heron patiently waiting in a pond for an unwary fish to grab I'll wonder how firm its grip is against the whip-lashing of a catch once airborn.

That out-of-place fish has something to do with my recently finished HAND OF NATURE, a mixed media assemblage that hangs on the wall.

HAND OF NATURE, ©Joy Kreves 2012 Mixed media assemblage

You see, I started this piece with the intention of making it with double waterfalls.  It was going to fit neatly into my "Waterfall Series" of ceramic relief paintings. The falls were going to be mounted on the birch panel that now holds green and gold watercolored "water".  I painted that on with Antique Japanese Watercolors following the natural birch grain pattern.  Then I didn't want to cover up that lovely panel, so the construction soon became much larger!  I mounted the painted birch panel on another board that has a hanging brace bolted across the back  Although all those "rocks" are actually hollow ceramic, the piece quickly got much heavier than I'd planned and I had to add more bracing to the back panel.

Because the (unglazed) ceramic water is a lacey, ivory white, (I squeezed the clay through garlic press extruders) I thought the addition of the hand-crocheted lace doilies worked well near it, and so the trail of pale blue yarn trickles down through the ceramic water and pools on the crocheted pond at the bottom of the piece.  The waterfall in the upper right is crocheted yarn over watercolor on ceramic.

Lower Waterfall Detail, HAND OF NATURE, ©Joy Kreves

I rarely throw pieces away if they don't "work" because so often they eventually come into use in other pieces.  The square panel on the lower right with the turtleshell image was like that.  I loved the painting, but it never quite seemed right on it's own.  I tried to make it part of my SOLASTALGIA Installation (on my website, www.joykreves.com,) but it didn't quite work there, either.  When it finally seemed to interact with other elements in HAND OF NATURE I was happy to let it live there.  It's as if the piece found its own address.

The ceramic dandelions were added in a similar way.  I'd made those pieces a long time ago, to be hung on the wall.  They were sitting around my studio in a basket, but never called out to be their own artwork.  I've tried them on several works already, and dubiously placed them on HAND OF NATURE.  They seemed happy there!  This didn't especially please me since it messed up my original conception of the piece being all about the waterfalls.  I don't think of dandelions and waterfalls together in the same view in nature, yet there were those dandelions from an earlier theme of mine trying to invade my new theme.  Every time I took them away from the piece it looked naked.  Invasive species, indeed!  I thought, "Okay, if they have to be here then maybe I can use my dandelion print in the background; the smaller image will add perspective to the work."  That dainty print wanted to be way down at the bottom left corner, though, and not cut up either, making a totally "unrealistic" space.  Well here we are, post Picasso's Cubism or Georg Baselitz's upside-down figure paintings and here I am post airborn fish;  my sense of space and proper place has been changed forever.  What is it the guru says?  Something about embracing the change?

Open Studio Lamentations & Celebrations

Last month I got the idea to have an Open Studio this May 19th & 20th.  I've been working on it nonstop since then.  It's way more work than I remembered, way more than the one other time I did this. It's been interesting and if nothing else it's the best spring cleaning my studio has had since I moved in 19 years ago. 

Joy Kreves Studio, 54 Montague Ave., Ewing, NJ 08628  www.joykreves.com

I'm showing a large variety of work from the past 5 years or so, in the multiple media I work in:  ceramics, painting, linocuts, art jewelry and mixed media.  The studio show comes on the tail of an artist profile Pat Summers wrote about me.  It was an interesting process to work with her on that.  Pat tried to visit my "Digging Dandelions" show a few years ago at The Bridgton House, but did not succeed in finding the Inn that is located immediately next to the  Milford, NJ-Upper Black Eddy, Pa bridge.  This encouraged me to put up some of the dandelion linocut rubbings and paintings left from that show in which I explored these primitive reptiles of the floral world. Dandelions worked their way into my newest artwork finished just in time for this show too,  a large mixed media wall assemblage titled "Hand of Nature".

Waterfall Detail, HAND OF NATURE, ©Joy Kreves 2012

I also just completed and hung up "Nightingale's Song" which is the 2nd ceramic painting in my series of "Landscapes Bronzed For Posterity". 

Detail, NIGHTINGALE'S SONG, ©Joy Kreves 2012

I've put up my entire recent series of twelve "Earth-Brain Events" which are small lamentations on the dramatic climate change that we and our earth are experiencing.  Four of those were shown recently in a show at The Princeton Brain & Spine Care Institute's ArtTimesTwo Gallery but the rest are making their debut. 

FLOOD LAMENTATION from EARTH-BRAIN EVENTS ©Joy Kreves 2012

During this furious spring cleaning I discovered that I have several rolls of generic white drawing paper I didn't know about, and I re-discovered two old drawings.  Those were done on parts of two giant rolls of paper I'd bought from my college drawing professor.  It was the best paper I ever used, made in France, with one creamy white side smooth and the other with a slight tooth.  I tried to find more of it at some point, but he must have bought it on some closeout because nobody could match it. It was perfect paper; it held up to heavy erasure drawing, hung tightly onto the graphite powder I was using liberally then, and it was heavy with enough body to make a great deckled edge tear.  I haven't drawn much since.  Perhaps that is because I have to mourn the absence of that paper each time I draw now.

In spite of my climate lamentations and paper mourning, I think my studio looks pretty upbeat, though.  My work basically celebrates the earth's bounty.  For example, "Hand of Nature" is an environment that is part of my ceramic waterfall series, and it includes two of them!  Much of the  "MyMuse" art jewelry incorporates ceramic beads I impressed from my spring loves of dogwood flowers and maple seedlings.  

MyMuse Pink Dogwood Necklace ©Joy Kreves 2012

I hope studio visitors will see that I am really having a blast and will join me in celebrating this richness that our earth provides as they browse my creations. 

Viewers interested in attending can see additional information on the EVENTS page page of my website and can contact me through the CONTACT page there:  www.joykreves.com .  Another option is to contact me on my facebook page:  https://www.facebook.com/JoyKrevesArtStudio .  Please click "Like" on that page if you do!

Dancing in Destiny's Footsteps

Sculpture maquette, ©Ivia Sky Yavelow 2012, folded paper on wood.

She is almost 20 years old.  She is a little taller than me and wears her father's complexion outwardly but my complexion internally.  Occasionally I am startled by her evolution.  Very often I see my father in her and too often, myself.  She had the patience and talent to become proficient at speaking  Mandarin and playing  both the violin and piano, but has now gravitated towards a more visual expression.  Exposure to a artist parent's struggles sometimes serves to turn a child off to the career, but my daughter has decided to follow the siren of her heart's song and be a visual artist like me.

Mixed media throat house drawing ©Ivia Sky Yavelow 2012.

She arrived home for spring break from Bard College in a car loaded with artworks.  Our house, already bulging at the seams with our creative by-products, accepted them all, in the same way as I imagine one would greet one's grandchildren arriving for a long summer with all of their gear.  The artworks' presence has enlivened our home environment with a fresh new energy that is also oddly familiar.
At this point in her life her artwork reflects her strong interest in architecture.  I am struck by the genetic threads she carries.  Unconsciously rendering those genetic threads visually, she employed colorful embroidery floss in some of her new sculptures.  The thread's role seems part harp strings, part space delineation, and part genetic bondage.

Variable wall or pedestal mounted sculpture ©Ivia Sky Yavelow 2012, wood & thread.

Art and architecture threads run through Ivia's background.  Her grandfather (my father) has designed and built several houses and there are architects and artists on her father's side of the family, too.  Her great-  grandmother was a farm wife who didn't make art until her late senior years, having moved into a retirement community, but then greatly enjoyed painting.  Her son, Ivia's great uncle, was a minister who painted his own murals in the churches that he served and embarked upon a self-study course in watercolor painting in his retirement.  One of her great-aunts was both seamstress and painter. Other relatives were/are furniture designers.  Although Ivia had equal talent and opportunity for science, the field of her father, she never exhibited the same interest in that subject and chose to attend visual and performing arts camps each summer.  Herein lie the mysteries of parenthood.  Why does this thread get picked up and not the other? 

Drawing ©Ivia Sky Yavelow 2012, graphite on paper.

Modern neuroscience experiments show that much of our "decision-making" is done unconsciously.  We think we are making a decision, but experiments show that the area of the brain responsible for decisions will light up before the subject has a conscious awareness of having made the decision.  This has great implications for personal "responsibility".  Perhaps we can only recognize the decisions our unconscious selves have already made!  Perhaps my daughter has only recognized her inherent artist-being.  She may have only made the decision that her unconscious brain released to her consciousness.  We may all be simply dancing in the footsteps of our destinies. 

Beena's Drawing ©Ivia Sky Yavelow 2012, wire & yarn sculpture.

Can any of us be responsible for our own decisions if those decisions were made unconsciously?  David Eagleman writes about that question in terms of law and justice in his book, INCOGNITO The Secret Lives of the Brain.  Tests on the brain of a homicidal sleepwalker proved that "high level behaviors can happen in the absence of free will.  Like your heartbeat, breathing, blinking, and swallowing, even your mental machinery can run on autopilot."  Eagleman goes on to write that "The crux of the question is whether all of your actions are fundamentally on autopilot or whether there is some little bit that is 'free' to choose, independent of the rules of biology.  The research suggests that NO part of the brain is independent and therefore 'free'".

Sculpture ©Ivia Sky Yavelow 2012, welded steel.

The ramifications for our expectations for family relations and of parenting practices might be profound as well.  If your child does not, in fact, consciously choose the path they follow, then your job is not to steer them but rather to be on the lookout for what their path might be and nourish it.  We parents like to think we have more influence and control than we probably do.  Our job may be no more or less than to be caretakers of our offspring.

Sculpture maquette, ©Ivia Sky Yavelow 2012, folded paper on wood.

Recently I attended a  concert of Music From Copland House collaborating with Music From China to "feature works written for hybrid ensembles made up of Western and Chinese instruments".  One work was a combination of classical Chinese music and the Blues!  My eager ears did not know what to do with the sounds.  Familiar snippets in a completely unfamiliar arrangement totally confused my aural wiring and it was as if I didn't know how to hear it.  I hope some new aural connections were forged from that listening.  It is known now that learning gives rise to anatomical changes in the brain.  This means that lessons and information learned cause physical changes that would impact choices and decisions...perhaps we parents are more powerful than the phrase "caretaker" would suggest.  I did after-all provide Ivia with a constant supply of origami paper and books throughout her childhood.  Origami was a constant fascination for her and those folding skills are clearly part of her  art vocabulary in recent drawings and sculptures.  Would she have "found" her folding paper passion without my support?  Would she have grown into her fate in spite of the quality of our parenting efforts?  Famous jazz musician Louis Armstrong was raised in extreme emotional and physical deprivation, yet he somehow thrived in his "vicious" environment to be a recognized jazz trumpet master.  There are many other examples of people who rose to greatness in spite of very little nourishment or parental care-taking.  Of course we will never know.

Untitled ©Ivia Sky Yavelow 2012, folded paper & conte' crayon drawing.

Ivia's creations are visual hybrids of the familiar and the radically new.   The choice to create them may have been simply written into her biology.  I can't come to any conclusions about this until the science progresses further, but watching the internal threads of generations being expressed in my daughter's life as well as watching her express a pull of threads artistically has been an intriguing part of being the artist mother of Ivia Sky Yavelow, my artist daughter.

March is Coming in Like...a Gorilla!

Each end of February I hear the echo of my mother's voice wondering, "if March will come in like a lion or like a lamb".  In Illinois where I grew up, winters were often tenacious and March tended to come in like a lion often and like a lamb, rarely.  This old picture shows me bundled against the Illinois cold with my siblings as late as May!

My mother's notation on the photo back.

This past New Jersey winter has been as mild as if the whole flock had lambs at the same time, thus spawning wide speculation about a wicked spring coming along to balance things out.  On a rainy February day last week a friend sent me an email that came through my inbox like an invigorating March wind gust, "short notice: The Guerrilla Girls are going to make a presentation at Princeton University this evening.  Want to go?"

I've been a fan of the Guerrilla Girls, "the conscience of the art world", since I first heard of them.  Their attention-grabbing posters and billboards that illuminate the art world's inequities through creatively presented statistics and graphics have plastered many cities since 1985. The posters point out things like the shockingly low number of female artists and artists of color whose work is exhibited in major museum and gallery solo shows each year.  This number has barely budged since they first began their educational work 25 years ago!  This group of artist/scholars has done their research and found plenty of examples of stunningly talented artists in those overlooked groups, proving that the Western art world has operated all through it's history as a good old white boy's network, continuing that way even now.

Guerrilla Girl Frida Kahlo

Guerrilla Girl Kathe Kollwitz

These guerrilla artist/scholars have maintained their individual anonymity by wearing gorilla head masks whenever appearing in public.  The masks have powerful expressions, and like their individual wearers, each is different from the other.  "Frida Kahlo Guerrilla Girl" wore one that was fierce and fang-baring.  (Oddly, it's open-mouth sometimes seemed to express laughter,too.  Evidently, reading expressions correctly relies upon hearing the accompanying sounds.)  "Kathe Kollwitz Guerrilla Girl" wore one that expressed an old, wise, much calmer primate.  Wearing the guises, the artists  presentation was part slideshow and part performance art.  One can't help but get drawn into thinking about how they navigate the befores and afters of their events... When and where do they take off the guise?  Isn't it uncomfortable?  Both times I've seen them they were asked about the comfort aspect.  They admitted to being very hot under those masked hoods.  Art commitment often means suffering!  More importantly, they tried to make suggestions for "creating trouble", such as "leave notes enclosed in the pages of books", or "put sticker labels on items telling how they were produced"..."don't compete with each other but rather work collaboratively", or "don't take part in the gallery/museum system; find your own ways to get your work out there." In other words, when things are monumentally stacked against you, go guerrilla!

After all their talking about the art world needing to be inclusive of all kinds of artists, there was still the audience member who asked, "Do you have to be a lesbian to be a Guerrilla Girl?"  All of the heads in the audience turned to behold the person who asked this bizarre thing. Frida and Kathe's stunned expressions somehow showed through the masks at this dimwitted question.  They repeated to this proper-looking Princetonian woman their commitment to inclusiveness.  Another lesson:  you can't force a person to hear what you say if wind has never cleared the jabber out of their head!  

Well, the gust of Frida and Kathe did blow through my creative thinking and although March is still a a week away, it looks like this year March is well on its way to coming in like a gorilla!

Heat, Heart, and Art

Spring Bursts Through ©Ivia Sky Yavelow, 2012 

Today's post is about the combination of the words, "heat", "heart" and "art", or shall I write it as he[a(r)t] ?  That's a real nesting doll of words!   

Heat was on my mind today because the house lost heat last night due to a broken power line connection up at the street and it was COLD waking up this morning.  The ferocious winds have calmed down though, and all is well again in the house thanks to people who make their living in useful trades.  I am extra-appreciative of the warmth inside now and of their work. Heart was also on my mind today because I was going to post this follow-up with images of the completed hearts that my daughter and I painted for the Trenton fundraiser I wrote about in my last post. 

The letter "r" makes "heat" into "heart" and while "heat" contains the word "eat", "heart" contains the word "art".  This takes on additional meaning in the current context of my life, because my daughter is about to commit herself to an art major in college and we have been discussing the merits (and demerits) of paths chosen.  The appeal of being able to eat vs. being able to follow a passion, art.  Do you see?  This covers the nesting word HE[A(R)T].   

Below is my heart, Love That River! ©Joy Kreves, 2012

I'm not finished deeply appreciating people who have down-to-earth useful, put-the-food-on-the-table skills, but we do still have to hand it to artists for taking life beyond purely comfortable existence and into other realms such as the realm of passion or the realm of the sublime, or even the realm of psychic discomfort.  The arts light our hearts so we don't just exist with enough heat, but we are warmed with the exciting fire of acute awareness of these other realms.   

"Hear", also nested in that clump, might be a call to attention.  Economic woes are befalling Americans at an alarming rate and the arts are being cut all over the country, but I'm going to try to hear, to listen for what tidbits arise to increase my understanding of the richly complex relationship between desire and need, between passion and necessity.  It's a lot to sort out!


H[ea(r)t].  What do these nesting words mean to you?

Raggedy Ann's Heart

HE(ART) in progress, watercolor on unfinished wood. Photo ©JoyKreves

Raggedy Ann was thrust into my crib by my older sister, as she exclaimed, "JOY wants that Raggedy Ann doll!"  That doll had just been given to her, and she wanted nothing to do with it.  From my point of view, (perhaps a few years later), Raggedy couldn't help her bright red-colored, cotton yarn hair, her ugly red and white striped tights (I've never been fond of stripes), or her bright red triangle of a nose.  She looked pleasant and peppy, and I did my best to love Raggedy Ann in spite of her clownish appearance.  We had a sort of contract, due to her wearing a heart proclaiming her love for me on her chest.

Classic Raggedy Andy & Raggedy Ann dolls

Do children ever really choose such a doll for themselves or did Ann and her brother doll Andy, become "classics" because grandparents, enamored by the doll's cheery looks and positive message, kept giving them as gifts? I don't know if this is still the case, but at that time each Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy stuffed cloth doll had a red heart shape embroidered right onto their chest, hidden beneath their clothing, along with the words, "I Love You".  (In Raggedy lore this is often described as an actual candy heart.) I don't know if my sister had investigated the doll enough to find the heart, but if she had she might have felt an obligation to return the feeling, like I eventually did.  As the younger sister, I was to be the handy recipient of many hand-me-downs over the following years. Of course this meant I watched her gifts and clothing purchases carefully to see what I might be ending up with. I still hate to see things thrown away and have a hard time weeding out closets.  Somewhere, sometime that doll was discarded though and I don't remember the circumstances of her dismissal.

I think one has to be invested in material things to be an art-maker.  Many artists feel that a material has a sort of "soul" waiting to be released.  I know I've read that the famous woodworker George Nakashima felt that way, as did many renowned stone sculptors.  Many painters start a new work by putting a loose wash on the canvas and then picking out some forms to elaborate on.  There is a nice give and take in this way of working, between the artist's intentions and the material's personality.  That give and take flow is very satisfying.  From the array of possible expressions, there seems to be one most aligned with that canvas, that piece of wood, that stone.

Raggedy Ann's heart was all give.  Give, though, cries out for it's opposite, take.  In an ideal world the flow of give and take would be as equal and symmetrical as the form of that embroidered heart.  The first time I saw a photograph of a real human heart I was very confused!  The purplish, tubey thing did not resemble the graphic heart symbol at all!  I have disliked that boringly symmetrical and grotesquely oversimplified heart symbol ever since.  Encrusted with diamonds,  printed on silk, or cast in porcelain, the heart symbol has held no interest for me.  Which is exactly why I jumped at the chance to make something sale-able out of a wood heart cutout.

Bag full of new art supplies.

My daughter and I were checking out with our pile of art supply goodies at the new Jerry's Artarama on Route 1 in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, last week when the clerk showed us the heart he was painting in bold colors for a fundraiser for Trenton's "Hearts & Stars Annual Silent Auction".  He then invited us to participate by taking wooden hearts to turn into art.  This was a seemingly simple request, but for me it represented a chance to investigate the complexity of my attitudes and perhaps overcome the hurdle that the graphic heart shape has been for me.  "Know thine enemies" whether in the form of person or symbol!  

Actually, the classic heart symbol shape does exist in nature.  Shortly before my mother died I found a large "heart rock" near her house, and then a much smaller one as well.  I did show them to her and we both silently acknowledged their significance.  When I left her for the last time I carried those stones home on the plane and placed the large one in my backyard where I can see it from my kitchen window.  I gave the smaller one to my daughter, who was pretty young at the time.  My heart rock is a symbol of my mother's  presence, seemingly radiating "love" to me from under the tree.

My "mother's" heart rock.

I've discovered that there are lots of people who collect "heart rocks" and it's easy to find examples of those collections on the internet.  Most of the collectors seem thrilled to have found examples of the symbolic shape appearing in nature.  Because of the circumstances surrounding my first heart rock, it was distressing to me when I found another one last week in our back yard.  I laid it near the fence, not hidden but not on display, either.  From Raggedy Ann and Andy's embroidered red hearts to heart-shaped rocks, one agrees to hold meaning in symbols and objects.  I haven't agreed to a meaning for the new rock.  Thus fraught with complicated feelings I begin my journey with the unfinished wood heart.  Love.  Here's to a successful fundraiser!

Unfinished wood heart with fundraiser instructions.