“Dear Mark Twain” Art Work with Artist’s Statement
“Dear Mark Twain” by Cindy Hunter Morgan
This letter to Mark Twain is part of a collection I began during my fellowship at Quarry Farm in the summer of 2024. The letter is part of an accordion book constructed with envelopes from French Paper Co. in Niles, Michigan. The book features twelve letters I wrote to Twain. The letters combine critical studies, creative writing, and fine arts. I love uniting what, for others, are separate areas of study. The papers I use as stationary feature patterns from various places inside the house on East Hill. I recreated portions of those patterns using Beam paints and Posca paint markers, and I made color copies of my original paintings to print the letters. The pattern on the paper featured in this video replicates the small tiles on the floor around the hearth in the parlor at Quarry Farm.
My project plays with form, genre, and expectations of time and distance. Its structure is (obviously!) very much informed by its content. I like imagining readers eavesdropping on these letters/conversations, which reach across time and history and dispense with traditional notions of chronology. The postage stamp on the envelope is an actual U.S. Postage stamp, issued in 2011. As I selected patterns for each letter, I thought much about the color palette for the project. That, too, was part of the delight.
Cindy Hunter Morgan is the author of Far Company (Wayne State University Press, 2022) and Harborless (Wayne State University Press), which was a 2018 Michigan Notable Book and the winner of the 2017 Moveen Prize in Poetry. She also is the author of two chapbooks, Apple Season (Midwest Writing Center Chapbook Award, 2012) and The Sultan, The Skater, The Bicycle Maker (Ledge Press Chapbook Award, 2011). She teaches creative writing at Michigan State University, where, for several years, she also taught book arts. Her poetry has appeared in a variety of journals, including Tin House Online, Passages North, Salamander, Sugar House Review, and West Branch. For several years, she was a regular contributor for Murder Ballad Monday, a blog devoted to the exploration of the murder ballad tradition in folk and popular music. She is a co-founder of FILMETRY: A Festival of Film and Poetry. She leads various poetry workshops and book arts workshops. Her artist’s books are held in private collections and in Murray & Hong Special Collections at Michigan State University Libraries, the Zhang Legacy Collections Center at Western Michigan University, and the Rolvaag Library Special Collections at St. Olaf College. She is a 2024 Quarry Farm Fellow.
You can find her Quarry Farm testimonial HERE.