you can join me creating an altar for Dia de los Muertos

** Publicity art from last year....event is actually Saturday November 2nd, 2013

I'm very honored <excited, scared, nervous, thrilled> to be selected as one of the Altaristas for

Dia de los Muertos

, November 2nd at Garfield Park....I'm creating the altar at the corner of Harrison and 25th (!). It's an altar of love notes, of course. We'll write love notes together and create a public display of affection...notes to the living, notes to the dead, sending all very well on their journey.Volunteers for that day/evening are welcome - message me at LoveYou2.org@gmail. com pretty please.

My design is a interactive public display of affection with wood love note signs, several small altars for festival attendees to place mementos, and an altar for actual love note writing.

At funerals, in obituaries, or in newspaper accounts following public deaths there are poetic, often profound tributes to the dead. This is particularly true in a death or loss that is untimely or too soon. I often wonder if these beautiful testimonies were spoken aloud or put in writing while both parties were alive. After

I lost my brother two years ago to suicide

, the ritual of speaking with the dead - giving myself a chance at redemption and an opportunity to send my brother well on his journey via love note writing - has offered healing.  And in my daily practice as a mom, artist, friend, human being I work to find ways to acknowledge via love notes the large and small ways I appreciate those around me.

Please join me

in creating this Dia de los Muertos altar. You can

submit a love note in the comments

section below and I'll write it for you and include it on the public altar. I'm using the templates from the

english

and

spanish

love notes, if you would like to specify one. I'll do my very best to take lots of photos and get them up for you to see.

You are also welcome to bring mementos of loved ones to the event on November 2nd at Garfield Park to

include on one of the mini altars on the fence. 

In the meantime, I have some painting to do!  Only a few short weeks until we dance with the dead.....I wait for this day all year.