I talk about the heart a lot. I frequently incorporate heart images into my artwork. The logo of the CAMP Rehoboth Community Center is a house and a heart. For five years the HeART of the Community Art Project has encouraged artists to interpret the meaning of heart and its place in our world. The heart is a symbol that exists on every level of our conscious and subconscious from the superficial to the deeply spiritual. It can be playful and romantic, it can be all encompassing, it can be sacrificial, it can be esoteric, and it can be physical. The heart is the center of our bodies—that which keeps us alive—and the center of our souls—also that which keeps us alive. The heart is pure joy and excruciating pain. It is a place where we dream of living and a place from which we hide. Living from the heart is our highest ideal and yet our most impossible goal. It can be the hardest place to know and the easiest place to find. The heart—like much of what makes us human—is a magnificent and terrifying contradiction.

I could go on for pages, of course, and so could the rest of the world. All art, music, poetry, writing, theater, film, and dance is infused with the heart in all its many aspects, be they inspirational or passionate. The heart is "a lonely hunter," and "like a wheel," it is "on fire" and "flaming" and at the same time "icy" and "cold." A red heart loves, a purple heart is brave, a yellow heart is cowardly, a white heart pure, a green heart is jealous, a blue heart is depressed, and a black heart is evil. The heart is at once the most cliched symbol in our visual and literary vocabularies and the most meaningful. Without heart, our art, our souls, our bodies, and our spirits are said to be lifeless. In physical representation it is both pointed and rounded—soft on one side and hard on the other—masculine and feminine. It is the symbol of life and love and all that makes us human.

The one thing that heart has absolutely nothing to do with is who or how we love. Love is love and knows not the differences of age or race or beauty or nationality or gender or faith or sexual orientation. Real love sees no distinction in differences even as it honors it.

Everyday our planet is stressed a little more. Weather patterns are changing. The creatures and the ecosystems that contain them are being fatally wounded. Everyday we see images of a world living in fear—from AIDS and other life threatening diseases, from war, from terrorists, from governments and leaders who cultivate it as a means of control and political gain. All of us carry within ourselves hidden fears and secret places that terrify, wound, and cause us pain. The only real cure for our individual pain and fear comes from love, both for ourselves and for others. The only real cure for the world’s pain and fear is our ability to transform our own hearts and carry them out into the world around us.

This year’s HeART of the community theme is HeART5 The Power of Love. Though our HeART themes are simply loose guides and I cannot speak for all the artists who participated in this years project, I think this body of work is about magnification—it’s about increasing the amount and strength of love in ourselves and in the world around us. It is about creating stronger hearts capable of carrying the added pressures of healing a deeply divided world.

Back in the early 90s our dinner conversation turned to a philosophical discussion of love. A friend, who not long after passed away from AIDS, said something about not being able to love people he didn’t like and I responded that I didn’t believe that love had much to do with "like." I have remembered that conversation and continued to think about it for many years now. Loving those we like and agree with is easy. Finding ways to love those who are different from us, who are difficult, who cause us pain, and who frighten us is another matter all together.

The real power of love comes from its ability to transcend our individual likes and dislikes, our fears (real or imagined), and our instinctive distrust of that which is different, unknown, strange, or, for that matter...queer.