Sunday, March 21, 2021

A journal of my plague year

 In March of 2020 I was in Florida finishing up a residency and headed home just as things started to blow up and lock down with the pandemic. It was a very strange time to be finishing my MFA - writing a thesis while locked down meant time for many more drafts! Then in the fall my cohort pulled off the impossible and managed an in-person MFA exhibition. Of course our campus at the University of Hartford was closed to anyone not affiliated with the university community but the silver lining was putting together a robust online exhibition which you can see here.

Since graduating I've been home working, writing grants and proposals and getting ready for my next big residency in the Arctic Circle this fall. This residency was postponed for a year but does look to be going forward in October. So in the midst of making work in the studio, curating some exhibitions (more about those in a future post) and waiting - seems like the main thing we've all been doing is waiting - I'm crowdfunding my climate focused trip on a tall ship in the far north.

One thing this wretched year has highlighted has been the challenge of watching enormous amounts of terrible events with little to no power to make them better. I'm one of the lucky ones with no risk of being homeless or hungry and it's still been a horrendously painful year.  Heartbreaking for so many and hard to hold onto gratitude but I'm trying.

monotype snowgeese on the wing