UMVA Showcase – Spring 2026: Alice Spencer, Audrey Parker, Donald Patten

Alice Spencer – The Gift of COVID

All through my lifetime has shape-shifted, ballooning for routine tasks, shrinking for the things I am passionate about, and evaporating while I’m in my studio where I am completely oblivious to its passage.

I have always been intentional about scheduling studio time, but there has never been enough of it. Until recently, I was unaware of how deeply my habit of working in a patchwork of small increments of time shaped my work. Squeezing studio work into the hours from mid-morning to mid-afternoon, I piled community obligations, doctors’ appointments, exercise, grocery shopping—the quotidian content of life—on either side. These obligations often took large bites out of both ends of my studio schedule.

In 2013 I started a non-profit for public art, an endeavor that over the next years kept my left brain perpetually engaged and eroded my studio time even further.

Then COVID arrived. Although it was a tragic scourge that changed the lives of millions for the worse, it also gave me a gift I treasured: a gift of time.

I remember driving to my studio in March of 2020 without seeing a single car on the road. The studio building was silent, and I was alone and cocooned within it, with no sounds outside my window except the wind. So many complex feelings arose as the quiet days went by: joy at the long hours in my studio, but also guilt that this terrible pestilence had given me the treasure of time.

In these silent, solitary weeks, I learned how deeply I needed this kind of time: time to dive deep, to stay submerged, to move seamlessly from one day to the next without losing my place in the work. Around the core of actual work, it also provided a nourishing pool of time for drawing, reading, napping, looking out the window—essential diversions, I found, for making good work.

This unscripted time played another role. My work evolves by layering printed images over one another. I make decisions slowly, and there is always a pile of work at various stages of completion awaiting next steps. I found that during open time, ideas for additions to unfinished work emerged almost unbidden.

When I was deeply into the work I found that some of my most productive hours extended into the night. Half asleep I generated new ideas for pieces and discovered how to break log jams in work already in process. The exhaustion the next day always felt worth the mental muscling of the night before.

With COVID still raging the following year, I had enough extended time to complete a small body of work. It was work that felt strong, like a door had opened.

Now, with the return to everyday life, I’ve had to put aside the nighttime deliberations, but I try to resist working in short snatches and structure studio days with fewer interruptions.

COVID’s gift is at the root of my new practice.

 

Audrey Parker

A common sight in Maine during the summer months, the day lily can be seen along roadsides and rocky paths. It is a hardy plant, resilient and growing in areas often not suitable for other flowers. They are an invasive species and aggressive in their spreading. But each blossom only lasts a day before withering away, replaced by yet another bloom from early July to late August. Orange lilies symbolize energy and confidence. Ferns are also abundant in Maine, a common sight in the forests that cover most of the state. They provide shade and sustenance. Ferns symbolize renewal and new beginnings.

Most of my paintings include a focal flower and an accompanying plant that represents a pairing. I hope to encourage the act of looking closely at all of the small details, engaging the mind to connect the details and solve the riddle of the meaning behind the piece. I choose to work in watercolor because of the technical challenge involved to create such a complex piece with layers and fine detail.

 

Donald Patten

Almost overnight, COVID-19 changed the way people interacted with each other and with their own bodies. We lived our lives in vulnerability during that historically significant time of disaster. The initial phases of the pandemic are behind us, but the virus remains and continues to be dangerous. The societal trauma this pandemic has caused will be remembered and felt, for the foreseeable future, by those who have lived through it.

In the past, master painters would depict historically significant disasters that happened to them, as a way to cope. Artists of the 19th century depicted hardships and trauma in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, which began the formation of our modern world. As an artist learning the techniques of masters, I have the opportunity to create long-lasting visual information that depicts the trauma of this pandemic.

Therefore, I have created a series of drawings that represent my experiences in modern COVID life by drawing inspiration from past masterpieces that depict the embodied experience of trauma.