Over the past year or so my friends and family have experienced an unlikely wave of death. It hasn’t overlooked old or young, affluent or needy. It has taken people without reason or warning. When you lose people close to you you’re forced to reflect on your own mortality. The unsettling reality is that we can be buried and forgotten by most of the people we’ve known by the end of the week. Life is truly fragile.
There is something crude and fragile about a paper lantern. It doesn’t seem right that a flame could be enclosed by thin paper, yet when lit something beautiful is born. Over centuries they’ve been used to represent weddings, prayers, and other various celebrations of new beginnings. To see one float isn’t something you can just take one glance at and look away. It’s an experience, especially if there are many of them together.
We are not unlike these lanterns, frail beings with a divine spark. We are strange creatures made of dirt but somehow house an other worldly flame. Our art is an illustration of this indecent paradox. We try to make the most of what time we’re given by creating a community obsessed with celebrating the value of each person we meet. We define our greatest achievements only as our neighbors successes. The unsettling reality of mortality is dulled with the fact that we defeat death every day by valuing the life of people around us.
We are Paper Lights; artists, dreamers, friends, life enthusiasts and we’re all in it together.
-Dan