“It’s strange how life often requires something foreign to connect us with something that, in the end, was so close all along. Sometimes we need a change of scenery in order to see what is really there inside us—all the parts and pieces of ourselves that have somehow been lost but are in desperate need of finding again.”
Found Art: Discovering Beauty in Foreign Places is a memoir of the year author Leeana Tankersley lived in the Middle East with her Navy SEAL husband during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As her story unfolds, Leeana finds her life and her soul have been changed forever.
With an artist’s eye, Tankersley uses each chapter to piece together moments and memories from her journey to create a work of unexpected beauty: a handwritten note from Kuwait, a braid of fringe from a Persian rug, an original poem, a bit of basting thread, a swatch of black silk from a borrowed abaya, a mesquite leaf, a Navy SEAL trident, a receipt from the Russian-Georgian restaurant on Louisiana Street.
Found art emerges, a literary collage created from salvaged stories of loss, hope, and belief.
Read a sample chapter (pdf)
