• landscapes in light and glass
• archival footprints™
• fossil series
• detritus of war
• installations

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Detritus of War

These pieces, cast glass blocks combining mixed recycled bottle glass with text, represent a change for me.

I have long been fascinated with rock forms and with text as an art form. The Detritus of War series combines the two. The rock forms are meant to show the debris left behind by war. The text is letters from my father to his family while serving in France during World War I. My intent was to have the words visible but not totally readable. They are bits of memory poking through the rubble.

World War I was so long ago. My father fought in it as an idealistic young man. Over 60 years later, among his last words to me were about a good friend who had been blown up beside him. The trauma lived on and on. I wanted to create a remembrance of the fragility, chaos and debris that war leaves behind.

	Detritus of War #1 The first attempt. Too contained, too neat. I wanted more chaos.
	Detritus of War #3 Getting better, but still too controlled.
	Detritus of War #4 The first one that conveyed a sense of the destruction and chaos that war brings. This could be the muddy trenches.
	Detritus of War #6 This one caught, for me, the rubble shown in a photo in my father's files. The text is from a letter he wrote just after the Armistice, mentioning the revolution going on in Germany and commenting that his regiment might have to "cross the Rhine" into Germany to restore order.

All work is © Penelope Comfort Starr. Photo credits: Letters from France, Sand Passages and Glass Wall by Sibila Savage. Stairway Sculpture by Jane Lidz. Dining Table by Sieg/Callister. All others by George Post.