Art in the Time of Pandemic and Quarantine
Welcome to the summer journal.
This issue contains an impressive range of images and words many of you (85+) have shared, reflections of your lives in quarantine during the global pandemic.
Your massive response shows that you are creating visual expressions of what is sometimes unspeakable and often unbearable, seeking answers to what is happening, affirming your sense of self and social responsibility. You are speaking truth, being vulnerable, expressing your fears, loneliness, uncertainties, but also joy and healing.
In these exceptional times of pandemic, unemployment, protests against police brutality, and much more, we are witnessing a chapter of history being written every day. We need to maintain our unique visions despite the uncertainties of the present and future. The role of art right now is to be honest, to ask questions and reexamine assumptions.
Natasha Mayers, Nora Tryon, Kathy Weinberg, Veronique Plesch, and Betsy Sholl
Introduction Summer 2020 – Art in a Time of Pandemic and Quarantine
Introduction – Véronique Plesch The pandemic that has taken so many lives—and continues to do so—has brought about an unprecedented global crisis. The social distancing that became the norm has given way to a new outlook towards artistic creation. On March 20,...
Tom Paiement
In July of last year I started a series of portraits in my studio in Bath. I used a stack of etching papers brought back from the University of Iowa print shop years ago when I was a grad student there in the print department. The paper is 30 inches by 22 inches. 29...
Carol Eisenberg – Dangerous Beauty / Coronavirus Aesthetics
What prompted you to create this series? I made the images while quarantined in my apartment in Jaffa, Israel, where I spend the winter and spring months each year. The Israeli government was quick to respond to the pandemic and imposed a lockdown long before any stay...
Suzanna Lasker – Corona and Me and Art
The frightening news of the COVID-19 virus hit on March 6th. On the seventh, I apologized for missing a family baby shower. The next day began my ongoing quarantine after calling my family, drawing group, and Facebook friends telling them of my decision. I am...
Embracing Negative Space – Samuel Gelber
For much more than a year, uninterrupted by current circumstances, I have devoted my attention to at least one drawing a day, sometimes more, inspired by plants and the spaces they create—now especially negative spaces—through their stems, branches, leaves, and...
Rising to the (Getty) Challenge – Martha Miller
In mid March, MECA closed its doors due to COVID-19. With no in-person teaching schedule to attend to, I decided to treat the quarantine like an artist residency. The Getty Museum Challenge inspired a new body of work which I titled Quarantine Characters. The work...
Finding a Natural Niche: An Emily Brown Retrospective – Carl Little
The painter, who recently moved from Philadelphia to the Hudson River Valley, continues to find sustenance in the landscape. For much of her art-making life, Emily Brown has drawn on the Maine landscape for inspiration. Waldo County and the rugged terrain along the...
Diane Dahlke – On Healing – With Mildred Bachrach, Sharyn Paul Brusie, Jean Noon, Val Porter, and Emily Johansen
People are dealing with a lot of fears, frustrations, anger, and angst. Feelings need to get out there and be expressed. That is part of healing. We need time to process all of what is going on now and reflect on the bombardment of grief: personal, economic, the...
Véronique Plesch – Plague Art? An Art Historian’s Musings on Pandemics
More than ever before, we are aware of the recurring and persistent presence of pandemics in history. Witness the cottage industry of articles on pandemics and in particular on the plague. Just the other day, I got an email from Cambridge University Press with the...
Insight / Incite – Three Arts Educators on Remote Learning – Introduction by Christine Higgins
How does one teach a visual, hands-on studio-based class as a remote learning activity during the time of a global pandemic? What challenges faced the art educators, abruptly removed from their classroom resources? How did the students make use of the visual arts to...
Véronique Plesch – Teaching in a Time of Confinement
On Thursday, 12th of March, Colby College students were told they had to leave campus by Sunday at 5 p.m. The week leading to this momentous decision was filled with anxious uncertainty as we kept hearing about other schools sending their students home and, although...
Tom Fallon – Poetry
For certain subjects the least intrusiveness of poetic flourish is crucial. And so here, in a sparseness that is reminiscent of Robert Frost, or more accurately William Carlos Williams, Tom Fallon gives us the profound isolation of an old man living alone and the cost...
Deborah Cummins – Poetry
These two poems by Deborah Cummins are from her new book, Until They Catch Fire. Although the poems were written before our current lockdown, they address questions of how we face difficult situations and continue to live in gratitude and hope. In “A Prayer” Cummins...
Alan Crichton – Ghost Ships
A Ghost Ship is a mythical vessel with no living captain or crew aboard, like the Flying Dutchman that can never make port and is doomed to sail the oceans forever, emitting a ghostly light. In the current context, there are many artists these days whose exhibits have...
Tony and Pat Owen – All the Best, from the West of Ireland
Today Pat cut my hair. I had no choice, as the barber who usually does the job closed up shop and went back to Poland, leaving me at the mercy of a non professional and a pair of dull scissors. These are the risks we take when there is no other choice. In all...
Pandemic Showcase – Lesia Sochor, Nikki Millonzi, John Knight, Claudette Gamache, André Benoit
Lesia Sochor A horrific and unnerving event for the world, 2020 will be forever etched in memory as the year of the Pandemic. We are seeing red. There is fear, and desperation, and heartache, and kindness, and global compassion. There is a shift in consciousness in...
Pandemic Showcase – Ruth Sylmor, Amy Bellezza, Bob Farrell, Joshua Ferry, Peter Buotte
Ruth Sylmor These images depict my sense of loneliness and confusion during eight weeks of Parisian confinement. Isolation has been a time for introspection. I reflect on the past while aware the future is unknown. The COVID-19. Where is it stalking me? In the...
Pandemic Showcase – Kenny Cole, Linda Cersosimo, Anne Strout, Karen Jones, John Stormer
Kenny Cole We are currently in the midst of a pandemic. I am also currently in the midst of a body of work that I was hoping to show in December 2020. This work began as a variation on previous work that had considered social changes that have been evolving since...
Pandemic Showcase – Nora Tryon, Chris Onuf, Roland Salazar, Thor Smith, Kathleen Galligan
Nora Tryon The pandemic hit while I was attending to a family medical emergency in California. I had been there for months and was not able to head back to Maine until the end of April. My husband and I had been isolating with the California family for six weeks when...
Pandemic Showcase – Norajean Ferris, Susan L. Smith, Lesley MacVane, Jim Kelly, John Ripton
Norajean Ferris In this historic time, the present outbreak of COVID-19 has created mass devastation across the globe. Over the past few months, the spread of the virus has caused industries and educational systems of the world that have been the very fabric of...
Pandemic Showcase – Dana Trattner, Liz Prescott, Pam Smith, Ann Tracy, James McCarthy
Dana Trattner Walking on my local beach in early April in the time of social distancing and sheltering in place, I felt a need to convey my deep feelings of concern. I was collecting seaweed, driftwood, shells, and other treasures one finds on a foggy cold day. While...
Pandemic Showcase – Michael Torlen, Bonnie Spiegel, Liz Brown, William Hessian, Renate Klein, Lois Anne
Michael Torlen Unlike many diseases for which science and technology have created treatments, therapeutics, and cures, COVID-19 remains an outlier. Life in our modern world feels Neo-Medieval—fragile, dangerous, and uncertain. In our pandemic era, reframing the...
Pandemic Showcase – Janice Moore, Kathleen March, Geoff Masland, Berri Kramer, Jennifer Lee Morrow
Janice Moore This piece, started over a decade ago, became a sudden repository during a difficult time; a space for raw feelings that had nowhere else to go. Painting flames felt cathartic when no words sufficed and no truth was available. I realized it was only for...
Pandemic Showcase – Renu O’Connell, Greg Burns, Jean Noon, Isabella Regonini, Tracy Ginn
Renu O'Connell I recently inherited 100 sheets of rice paper from my beloved painting mentor that inspires me to show up six days a week at my studio—a tribute to her. The conversation about life and the unknowable starts with calligraphic marks in fluid paint and...
Pandemic Showcase – Mary Becker Weiss, Katharine Cartwright, David Berrang, Emily Johansen, Winslow Myers, Anita Clearfield
Mary Becker Weiss Katharine Cartwright The New Order is a conceptualized body of work that deals with the transformation of our lives globally as we face the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. We are now conscious of the spaces around us and how...
Pandemic Showcase – Karen Adrienne, Jennifer Steen Booher, Donald Mallow, Bruce Forbes, Wendy Newbold Patterson
Karen Adrienne In my monotypes the power of the environment and natural events are usually partially contained, or seen abutting a folded structure. In this work the folded structure of Before the Breach falls away in The Breach. Swells or roiling earth and water fold...
Pandemic Showcase – Dorie Klein, Bob Richardson, Alice James, Rabee Kiwan, Laura Waller
Dorie Klein More than ten years ago when I began to practice yoga, I wondered if it would take away from my practice of art. Thankfully, rather than take away from it, I discovered that yoga informed my artwork and now supports today’s theme. Because of the COVID-19...
ARRT! – Update Summer 2020
Introducing ARRT!’s Yard Signs That Make a Statement! The U.S. COVID-19 death toll is above...
LumenARRT! Update Summer 2020
LumenARRT! is a project of the Artists Rapid Response Team (ARRT!). We work through the Union of Maine Visual Artists (UMVA), a members’ organization that advocates for artists and furthers the work of progressive non-profits in the state of Maine. Our video...
UMVA Portland Chapter Update Summer 2020
UMVA Portland members have been holding virtual monthly meetings. A dozen or more members have tuned in at times. Of course, one of the principal concerns is the “re-opening” of the Gallery. While the Portland Media Center is engaged in a measured re-opening, the...
John Ripton – Open Letter
Open Letter to Maine Artists and Citizens: Four Hundred Years, 8 Minutes and 46 Seconds As artists and members of the Union of Maine Visual Artists, we vigorously condemn the murder of George Floyd. We extend our sympathies to Mr. Floyd's family and friends and to all...
Invitation and Theme to Submit for Fall 2020: Where are We? You are Here/Now
Where Are We? You Are Here/Now This is a time of sweeping changes on every front. Many pressing issues confront us and our institutions: justice, human rights, economic systems, employment, health and healthcare, climate change, elections, and more. Our schools,...