‘Love Letters’ is a street art mural series based upon actual love letters sent to me by a stalker and harasser. The original letters and poems were recreated as a cut-and-paste lettering wheatpaste mural to evoke the emotion of ransom letters, but with the colorful joy of a kids collage project.
Read on their own, they are sweet, joyful notes on the walls. Read with the context of stalking they take a dark, violent turn meant to engage the viewer in a conversation of consent, harassment, and stalking in our public spaces.
Launched in Denver, Colorado at CRUSH Walls in 2019, the first mural ironically sparked harassment from both the original stalker and the male director of CRUSH WALLS street art festival that I was invited to participate in.
The murals have continued in Cisco, Utah in a one-woman ghost town, Rochester, New York, another in Denver before expanding into two murals in Denver and Boulder that wrote a Love Letter to abused and harassed street artists in Denver and recognising the Black women killed by police brutality during the BLM protests of 2020 in Boulder for their StreetWise street festival. In both cases, I was subjected to abuse and harassment from male streetartists. They are the last murals I’ve installed.
Love Letters is intended to expand a national conversation and create awareness around a crime that is often misunderstood and largely ignored but that creates enormous emotional distress for the victim and can often lead to violence.
My stalker, an artist in Chicago, was eventually charged with a felony. I was denied a protection order two times. It was only due to the amount of evidence that my stalker sent to me that I was able to build a case. Due to my willingness to recognize his role as a single father, I allowed him to plead down to a misdemeanor with two years of probation and required therapy. I was advised by the DA not to attend the hearing, which allowed the stalker to plead his case unimpeded and got one year probation and a misdeamor. He immediately began harassing me when the year was up. When I sought a permanent protection order, I was denied. It was deemed too harsh a penalty for him. The system does not protect victims.
*Stalking and harassment:
1 in 6 women and 1 in 17 men are stalked and harassed in the US. The majority of stalkers are known by their victims. It is very difficult to get support from police and stalking and harassment can continue for years unless direct threats or acts of violence occur. If you need help or want to learn more go to RAINN’s website.
Like domestic violence, stalking is a crime of power and control. Stalking is conservatively defined as "a course of conduct directed at a specific person that involves repeated (two or more occasions) visual or physical proximity, nonconsensual communication, or verbal, written, or implied threats, or a combination thereof, that would cause a reasonable person fear."
Stalking behaviors often include persistent patterns of leaving or sending the victim gifts, following the victim, damaging the victim's property, defaming the victim's character, or harassing the victim via the Internet by posting personal information or spreading rumors about the victim.
Cyberstalking IS stalking. Cyberstalking—the use of technology to stalk victims—shares some characteristics with real-life stalking. It involves the pursuit, harassment, or contact of others in an unsolicited fashion initially via the Internet and e-mail. Social media, chat rooms, and the use of GPS technology have increased the ease of cyberstalking and its overlap with ‘real world’ stalking.
Although cyberstalking does not involve physical contact with a victim, it is still a serious crime. Conduct that falls short of the legal definition of stalking may in fact be a precursor to stalking and must be taken seriously. As part of the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2005, Congress extended the Federal interstate stalking statute to include cyberstalking