Socially Distant

From the Artist:
Remain close, but stay distant.
Keep in touch, but don’t touch.
Connect, but without contact.
These are some of the challenges we face in trying to keep isolated and safe while staying
social during a pandemic.

In this kinetic sculpture and light installation, I explore ideas of life, loss and social distancing during the COVID-19 crisis. Three figures, each in masks and gloves, stand six feet apart in the corners of a large square, facing each other, but unconnected. The fourth corner has an empty black square the same size as the figure’s bases, as if another figure once stood there. The figures change colors, sometimes in sync and sometimes alone, so their relationship is constantly changing. Sometimes they are all connected by being the same color. Sometimes they are isolated by being different colors. Certain colors show their fibrous nature, as if an X-ray is revealing a hidden condition; Other colors make the figures more opaque and any symptoms hidden and undetected. Their bases are movable and not anchored to the floor, so there may have been a time when they were connected and standing next to each other, but now things are different. However, as long as their lights shine there is an optimistic hope that the remaining ones may be able to be together again.