Statement of Cheryl Levin
My current Ink Meanderings are made by using simple tools - dip pen or brush and ink on various papers such as rice, washi and vellums. They began right before Covid as a way forward though personal loss and its’ reorientation. Quickly the minimal works I was making morphed into speaking more broadly and abstractly to a wider audience about life’s journeys. My line drawings, made by placing one line at a time next to the last, are a metaphor for walking on life’s path and are wrought with faults. The undulating lines contain stops and starts, deliberate accidents and bleeding of ink into the paper fibers. I use delicate and translucent papers, keeping their often-wrinkled flaws, sometimes making repairs where parts have torn, and maintaining their worn edges. Parts of the page that are not filled in, represent actions left undone or voids in thinking. Some of the shapes I use are traced metal pieces salvaged from my late husband’s sculpture studio. A lot of the works use the whole page and they make new forms. Nonetheless, I want to drive home the point that nothing is perfect, and like my delicate works, life is fragile.