Where Friendship & Art Meet
“Did E’er Such Love and Sorrow Meet” (2022) by Sarah Hodges and Jordan Lienhoop. Photography, mango leaf paper, and white ink.
Last January, my coworker and friend, Sarah Hodges, and I created this artwork together. Sarah wanted to make this piece when two ideas converged in her mind last year: photographing blossoming trees in her neighborhood by the light of street lamps, and the lyric “Did e’re such love and sorrow meet” from Isaac Watts’ hymn “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.”
Sarah inked the lyric onto an 8x10 inch glossy photograph, and then asked me to weave tree bark she had collected with the photograph. The bark proved to be too brittle and curled for weaving, though we tried flattening it by wetting and pressing it. Instead, we used leftover paper scraps from our coworker Zac Goldstein, who had purchased mango leaf paper for an art project he was working on.
Sarah moved to Germany in Fall of 2022. I’m thankful for the opportunity we had to create art together before she moved and for the memories this piece brings to mind!