It is an unfortunate comment on culture today that the wicked and evil steal the show because sin and suffering appear as the most universal experience of the human condition. But the opposite perspective is certainly worth our attention, if not devotion. We spend our lives waiting for that most desired but evanescent of human experiences, moments of love—through family, children, and, most definitively, through our lovers. These moments are deep but fleeting leaving us like dishes taken from the table before we have had a chance to savor the meal. In over one hundred poems provided by the poet, Peter D. Griffin, and fifteen portraits from the artist, John Schlereth, LOVE LAND, explores the deep loves and passion of these men through their poetry and art. They have examined their lives through decades of time, representing the loves they have known with all beauty that art and imagination allow.

In this book Peter Griffin finds love on many hidden perches—from the common events of his family to his now settled professional life. John Schlereth creates penetrating art from his portraits of women, making their images into something radiant, beyond themselves. His art is unimaginably new and fresh. Not only has he created a completely new form of portrait making, with his use of finely crafted cardboard cutouts as his only medium, he has created a new form of art. The two men have managed an unlikely duet using two different art forms through which love and beauty is recreated anew. Consistent with Griffin’s life thesis, this book presents love as the cornerstone of the human condition for all of us.