Take Hearts to Heart
She said:
“We try to discourage them from cutting out pink hearts—”
I said:
“No. No. No. Don’t discourage hearts, encourage them. Valentine’s Day is the celebration of pink and red hearts. Embrace the cliché.
“LET THEM CUT HEARTS.”
Hearts are ancient. Hearts are universal. Folk art hearts, woven hearts, hearts-and-hands — Haitian hearts etched in stone at the African burial ground.
Remember trying to draw a heart when you were little and it came out crooked? Then you learned to fold paper and cut one out — symmetry. Perfection. I loved those cheap die-cut valentines we’d buy when I was little to give to everyone in the class, making mailboxes from stapled construction paper to receive them.
And fancy, lacy Victorian valentines! The Metropolitan Museum collects valentines in their print study room.
Forget those diamonds “as seen on TV,” forced romantic dinners, pretentious champagne, boxes of chocolates with uncertain fillings. Cut out a paper heart, mount it on a doily, make a collage, and mail it to someone you like.
Happy Valentine’s Day.
Esther K. Smith, author of How To Make Books, makes limited editions and artist books at Purgatory Pie Press in New York City with typographic-letterpress-tidigitator Dikko Faust. Clément Fabre is a French cartoonist. He works on several comics projects. His main work can be seen at his blog, In Love with Aude Picault.
Remarks 7 total remarks were added before the post was closed.
Immortal
Caroline Christie chased me down in the schoolyard, Valentine's Day, 1976, as my heart thumped in my chest. When she caught me, she pulled me close, rather violently yanking on the hood strings of my puffy nylon jacket, her breath coming at me in clouds of glee. She let go of one string, jammed her hand into her pocket, and withdrew a crookedly-cut crazy pink heart with my name, in her nearly illegible scrawl, in the middle of it. She thrust it at me and, when I finally took it, she planted a cool-lipped kiss (my first) right on my mouth, pulled back to look at me with wild eyes separated by a runny red nose, and then ran away howling with the laughter of victory across the playground, leaving me standing there holding that little pink heart. I wish I still had that pink heart valentine.
paul merrill
Aaah - but nothing beats chocolate, which has little to do with graphic design and much to do with gratification of the soul.
stephanie
What a charming suggestion! I think I will.
Louisa
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it!
Evil Miser
Anybody notice how the guy holding the heart kind of looks like a public flasher? I mean he is wearing a trenchcoat after all.
On second glance...it kind of looks like he mightve just crapped his pants, which would explain the little girl's expression. She is the closest to "ground-zero."
Valentine's day sucks.
But yes the paper heart is a cultural icon, which we should cherish. Don't buy hallmark.
Ezy
You can't spell passion without ass.
Martin
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. Love is the law. Love under will.