Kirjahaku

Pat Duff is a Detroit author, artist and poet.

In this collection by Detroit-based artist Pat Duff, she has curated a selection of her works of erotic art, rendered primarily in pastels and charcoal. "I choose to exclude no part of life and feel that the lowest vulgarity, poverty, and obscenity is the stuff of life which is the most real", says Duff. "It is a common error to suppose that beauty can be brought about in art only through the representation of beautiful things or through the use of obviously pleasing shapes. Objects, actions, or mere shapes, which in ordinary life would be unbearably repellent, can become sources of pleasure in art, not because they have a morbid appeal but because they allow us to come to terms, in art, with the horrors and the pains which would overwhelm us in real life. Without the contrast of ugliness, beauty would be insipid. Ugliness is part of the conflict resolved through art with harmony."

I was a caregiver for my husband who had vascular dementia for 15 years. Seven years ago he went into a nursing facility. I visited every day. I became acutely aware of the disease and its consequences. As an artist, I have executed seven drawings about Alzheimer's with seven accompanying poems that illustrate the seven stages of its progression. Since his death, it is my intention to share this information with those individuals whose loved ones have been recently diagnosed with the disease.