Daniel Cosentino Arts

Letters

Several years ago I lost a friend to cancer who told me before she passed that she had mailed me a package, though it never arrived. I've often wondered if the package was never sent, if it remains lost in international post, or maybe this was her way to preserve a mystery and remain connected. Since then I've considered latent communications and graphic forms that have the potential to communicate but remain latent. This concept began the ink on canvas works titled Here Is Your Letter found in this gallery of works. Since that concept, I've explored related ideas of letterforms and communication across traditional and experimental graphic media, such as ink, acylic, organic materials like coffee, and developed by hand. These works originate from language and font packs on my computer that are found present in standard software but lack any meaning to me save for the graphic forms of the characters. I often use personal letters or meaningful texts from theology or theory that are ‘translated' in the font when converted from the readable characters to the design characters. Working with the tensions between the graphic forms and their original designed intentions these meaningless/meaningful symbols and lost or maybe, not-yet-found, communications are hidden within and presented as a new aesthetic experience. They provide a form to the missing package and resolution to lost or undiscovered communications.