Ruby: Jeweled Threads
Ruby is a project that is two books and an art proposal for the Stars Of Fate Starflakes and the Anti-Crisis Letters that are going to be shown as Anti-Crisis Plaques to offer hope and expression. The plaques are plastic made from the plastic sheathing pieces cut from the Stars Of Fate Starflakes.
Themes will be integrated into the wall hanging arrangement's, and the poems are in narrative imagery in a form of the Anti-Crisis Letter. The symbol of the project is a star ruby’s reflected light superimposed on a cut ruby.
Themes will be integrated into the wall hanging arrangement's, and the poems are in narrative imagery in a form of the Anti-Crisis Letter. The symbol of the project is a star ruby’s reflected light superimposed on a cut ruby.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Van Ray Parker
Growing up in Western North Carolina in the Smoky Mountain National Park areas loving the mountains and finding loss of a father at a young age was very confusing. Finding drifting thought of heart ache and memories growing up finding confusion to follow with seemingly no way to talk about what was being felt, grew into a way of thinking that was very harmful and seemingly secretive shameful about thoughts.After high school going into the US Army for four years to be stationed in Ft. Bragg N.C. as an Airborne Combat Medic, in the 18th Airborne Corp. in the Area Support Medical Battalion with deployments to Bosnia / Croatia, and Nicaragua then later sent to the 82nd Airborne Division to process incoming soldiers into the 82nd. After ending my term of service in the US Army working in construction in Western North Carolina then going into home health care around the same area, eventually then moving to Wisconsin and working at the Central Wisconsin Center home for the developmentally disabled then later moved back to North Carolina.
I have lost two close friends to suicide at different times in my life and finding conversations with them scroll through my memory of what could have changed or what they have said or what wasn't taken seriously by friends and myself, finding it hard to understand what they were thinking. In trying to understand what could have helped or changed, or bring some understanding of what was in their thoughts and the hope of trying to get others to express feelings or have a symbol to help others with troubling thought is where the Anti-Suicide letter as a symbol came from, and the Stars Of Fate Starflakes was a craft that I would cut for residents that lived at the Central Wisconsin Center when I lived in Wisconsin.