Dear Salvatore (a tiny book project)

Here are a few shots from a small watercolor book that I made as an homage to my father and Willa Cather.

The passage is from My Antonia (1918) and I had initially copied it into my journal after reading it for the first time; I found it to be a really beautiful way to deal with one's feelings of peacefulness with nature and also thoughts about death. The passage is edited slightly, I left out a few words so it would fit better in the book layout.

Without going into too much emotional detail, the  copy of My Antonia that I have belonged to my father. I didn't come across the book until years after he passed away, but I knew he was a fan of Cather's writing. As I read My Antonia, I understood why. His own publication, The Ride to Pleasant Grove, contained a passage of Cather's. My Antonia, as well as other stories of hers that I have since read, are simply full of passages that stand alone in their eloquency and absolute truths about human kind.

So, I decided to make this tiny book as an ode to Cather's timeless writings, and as an ode to my father. Some part of me believes that writing words on paper opens up some sort of heavenly portal of communication between those living and not.