Together apART: The Great Outdoors

"During this time of what feels like waiting and wanting, I have found the time to dive deeper into my heritage. Korean folk art seemed mystical and mysterious in my youth. Now, as an adult, I have a different interpretation. Here I find myself exploring a combination of the duality of my being American and Korean."

"At 10AM on several Sundays beginning in May 2020, I would tune into my friend’s weekly online class. I found it very therapeutic, putting pencil to paper."

"When I asked why it [the Adirondack chair] was there, I was told that my son-in-law loved to go there to enjoy some quiet time. It immediately hit me as a metaphor for our isolated Covid experience."

"This photograph of Bride Brook Salt Marsh in Niantic, was taken on my only short trip away from home in 2020."

"My watercolors are usually a record of travel, wonders and experiences far from home, but the pandemic limited my travel to my own backyard. I renamed my home 'The Artist Retreat' and discovered my own gardens anew."

"COVID 19!....Social distancing! Limited Everything! result....... Solo, masked, daily walks in my neighborhood green spaces. I’m compelled to once again photograph nature’s textures and pick up it’s irresistible detritus."

"When the pandemic broke out, I was stranded in Chennai, India, with no way to return home due to travel restrictions and cancelled flights. To relieve my anxiety and frustration, I turned to online videos demonstrating the art of Chinese Brush Painting..."

"Under the Shelter At Home orders, while home provided protection from a formidable, unknown virus, there was also a deep sense of separation and fear. The world outside appeared scary. The familiar neighborhood emerged strange in its emptiness."

"At the same time, fires were raging in parts of the United States, some were near where my sister lived. Bright red fires and billowing smoke. People trying to escape, but to where? Going to a shelter could not be safe."

"This watercolor painting is part of my “Tropicalgia” series done during the Covid lockdown of 2020 in New York and São Paulo, Brazil. The Jaguar was done a few days before my departure to Brazil for Christmas."

"These works will always symbolize resilience to me...There's an object, then a ghost of the object, and then the reassertion of the object."

"I started to remember the rowboats, the water and the feeling of the fresh air. The process of painting was therapeutic for me as I revisited that 'happy place'."

"Walking through this landscape that had once been civilized, then returned to the wild, I could not help but reflect on the ways that my life and the life of our nation have been disrupted...It has been a grim time, like four years of late autumn."

"I was supposed to go to Sicily for a June 2020 plein air painting workshop, but it, like so many other activities during the year of Covid, was cancelled. In lieu of Sicily, we travel around the Hudson Valley for our plein air sessions, including Rockwood Hall Park in Sleepy Hollow, Boscobel Gardens in Garrison, and Dockside Park in Cold Spring."

"I launched on a 100 days project to create art every day for 100 days. I chose to work with water colors and turned to nature for inspiration."

"I’ve layered botanical materials, media and dyes on multiple sheets of glass that are separated by Jenga blocks... This Memento Mori memorializes dead insects and small animals whose populations are in decline."

"I looked to my love of drawing to express what I was feeling; the fragility of life, the passing of time, and the realization that life is terminal. I wanted to find beauty in the last stages of life and I turned to nature to find it."

"I usually teach special art enrichment programs for the school district of lower Westchester County during the school year, but because of the Covid-19 Pandemic, I lost my job and had to stay home since last February 2020."

"The pandemic caused immediate chaos and disruption to almost every aspect of our lives... It was nature's ever changing beauty that gave me my first glimmer of hope last spring."

"...we were able to break up the monotony of each new day with long walks exploring the wooded trails around us. A whole new world appeared underfoot. I began to notice the tiniest of flowers and even some weeds that impersonated them."

"After finishing several pieces, I sent them to friends and family as a way to stay connected or offer a bit of hope."

"During this pandemic we all have had our own experiences and most of us have grown from those experiences."

"To keep my sanity I took almost daily walks at the nearby Rockefeller Preserve where I could submerge myself in nature. As a photographer I naturally fell into recording the changing landscape on my daily walks."

"With my images, I tried to capture scenes, evocative of a world on pause — rowboats sitting idle; foliage remaining sparse; leaves mimicking turtles resting on a fallen log."

"There is a place on my property where I have observed them growing over the past few years and this year, while constantly home and undistracted, I was able to watch and capture each stage of development."

"Always a collector, I searched carefully where the water met the sand; picking up shell fragments and driftwood felt like old times."

"The Covid-19 pandemic shuttered my ceramics studio. My legal practice faltered. My opportunity to dive deep arrived: into illuminated manuscripts, mosaics, collage, watercolor, printmaking, fiber arts, life drawing..."

"I did things that I haven’t done for 30 years, such as feeding the birds, growing vegetables, talking to childhood friends. I was also able to paint and draw every day for the last five months which is a freedom I haven’t had in decades."

"The tree collage, lacking human form, is indicative of the absence of friends and family in my day-to-day life. The image represents my solitude, also my longing for springtime and warmer weather that could more easily facilitate outdoor socializing."

"In many ways, I was also informed by the notions of forced independence, loneliness, a reconnection with nature which have so deeply penetrated our world’s social order due to the pandemic."