THE BASEBALL LETTERS

A correspondence from quarantine with Mel Levine

Nov. 2020 - Feb 2021 (ongoing)

Between March 2020 and March 2021, I saw my father, who lives on the other side of town, two times, only from the inside of my car and masked. He and his wife, both in their late 70s, maintained a severe quarantine until they were four weeks out of their second vaccine. It took eight months of hitting my head against a wall, feeling profoundly disconnected, angry, and sad before I recognized the opportunity in front of me - an opportunity to find a new way to connect and create with my father, a lawyer, a lifelong baseball player, an activist (not artist).

These letters grew into a playful respite from the many new stresses introduced from the pandemic. They provided an alternate mode for connecting to an otherwise cut-off elder and loved one during a time of great uncertainty and fear. I found myself cycling between daughter and artist, in one role seeking to connect and the other hungry for an uncharted collaboration. I don’t know if they are art, really, but I also don’t know that it matters.