Covid Art

WE'RE IN THIS TOGETHER: IN BOTH THE LIGHT AND DARK

In early March 2020, our community, like the rest of the country, began the pandemic lockdown to try to flatten the curve of the COVID-19 virus. In the early months of lockdown, I wasn't motivated to create art, but my inner child needed to play. There was a suggestion in our neighborhood to display rainbows to symbolize our unity. I made a large tissue-paper rainbow for our front window.

As the pandemic weeks rolled by, I began to think of how much we were all missing, especially the children who were missing their friends at school. I had an idea to create a small, diorama of a rabbit family in lockdown. This little rabbit family would need a weather-proof home. Thanks go to my wonderful woodworker husband, Sigurd, who brought this idea to life by building a small rabbit house out of cedar. I set to work finding furniture and creating other small items to make their lockdown home cozy. The rabbit family worked on puzzles together, cleaned with clorox, kept a supply of masks and toilet paper on hand (paw) and of course, supported Biden for President. Those tiny rabbits reminded anyone who walked by our house, that we were "in this together."

Rabbit Family at Christmas

In 2021, we were in the mood to celebrate, so the rabbit family celebrated Christmas with a tree and presents. I repurposed a tiny Christmas tree that had once been sent along for our daughter's dorm room during her first year of college and added more items from her childhood dollhouse.

Rabbit House Renovation

By 2022, the rabbit family had grown. Once again with the help of Sigurd's woodworking skills, the rabbit house expanded from one to four rooms. The renovation included a dining room, an art studio, a kitchen and living room, and a nursery. The rabbit family bakes cookies in the oven, watches Charlotte's Web on their TV screen and toasts smores in the fireplace.

Beneath the tall and spreading tree,

birds and squirrels drink their tea.

Each one takes a dainty sup,

from a tiny acorn cup.

~ Author Unknown

In the art studio hangs a poem my mother learned as a child and taught to me..

Woodland Village

During lockdown, the rabbit dioramas appeased part of my inner child, but I also wanted a place where neighborhood children might stop to play. That was the idea for a "Woodland Village". The village has three "neighborhoods" connected by bridges and the woodland animals cross over the bridges to play with their friends. Eventually, fairies moved into the village and peacefully coexist with all the wildlife. It's been fun to watch the interactions of neighbors with the woodland animals and fairies. Click on the image to view details.

As the months of COVID-19 lockdown wore on, I felt despair at how as a country, we were failing to slow the spread of the deadly virus. I felt deeper despair about Trump's MAGA followers. The environment had just begun to show an impact of cleaner air and water from the pause in human activity during lockdown, but the Trump administration rolled back environmental protections so pollution would again get worse in the years ahead. It wasn't just fear of the virus that kept me, and many people awake at night.

In summer 2020, I snapped a photo of a life-sized "handmaid" figure displayed in a local garden. This figure was based on Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel, The Handmaid's Tale. That photo became the inspiration for a mixed media collage, entitled, "Monsters at the Doo,r" which reflected three "monsters" in real life: the climate crisis; COVID-19; and Trump's MAGA followers who were creating an "Amerika" of increasing violence, racism, and misogyny that resembled the fictional country of "Gilead" in Atwood's novel. In Fall 2020, Monsters at the Door was part of the Windows Into Art Exhibit in downtown Amherst, Massachusetts.

Symbols of Trump's "Amerika" with its gun violence and bizarre QAnon conspiracy theories are depicted by assault rifles and the red-white-and blue "QAnon" symbol in the garden, as well as a tear gas canister. The door with bullet holes, depicts the racial brutality that led to the Black Lives Matter movement.

"The moment of betrayal is the worst; the moment when you know beyond any doubt

that you've been betrayed; that some other human being has wished you that much evil."

~ Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale