No ordinary love

Most people will see Lovetown PA as the twelve days Gene spends on the streets of Philadelphia. The placing of the text on the streets is the core of the project. There is rhythm and routine to these twelve days. A single-minded, meditative pilgrimage through the city. Kathleen Norris has said it is “. . . in routine that the possibilities for transformation are made manifest. And that requires commitment.”

The routine of Lovetown PA began in Queens, Brooklyn, and Manhattan, the summer of 2009. Gene chose to use scrap wood for the letters, so most evenings, for months, he would take to the streets, hitting his “favorite” dumpsters, loading the car and bringing his finds back to the studio. Sometimes our 4-year-old son, Justus, would accompany him. Saturdays were spent cutting the scrap to size. After the 1267 panels were cut, multiple trips to the CNC shop were made. Sanding, boxing, and creating a system for the street portion of the project rounded out the prep before even starting the journey through Philly. Evenings not spent in the studio were spent punching out paper stencils and assembling a collage of the text on our kitchen wall. Gene must have been through this text a thousand times, but after each letter he’d place on the collage our son would ask him to recite the text again with the additional letter or word. If Gene has repeated it a thousand times, Justus has heard it, seen it, felt it, a hundred times. Gene created a rhythm and it will not stop until the text reaches its destination.
Observing this project from the shared space/time we call “our life,” I was struck and astounded by the sheer commitment and discipline this took. This labor took energy that was not always readily available, focus in the midst of distractions, and a faith that all the pieces would come together. Gene “always hoped.”

The project for Gene is not twelve days on the streets of Philly. Those days of course are the substance that most people will get to see. The project is a year and twelve days….the physical “doing” of the entire project from start to finish within the spirit of discipline. There will be the letters; they can hang on a wall. The photos and film will reflect the text’s encounter with the neighborhoods of the city, with the people of those neighborhoods, with Gene’s engagement of all three. What we see of this engagement is the perseverance of a disciplined quest that started over a year ago, grounded in the rhythm of all that makes up Lovetown PA and dislodged from the noise of the world. This is no ordinary love.

-- Jocelyn Schmidt is Director of Brand Manegement for the Penguin Young Readers Group.