Together apART: A Time of Change

"These collages were created with materials easily available to me during the lockdown period."

"My sketchbook has acted as a visual journal during the pandemic. The paired down repetition of images represents the day to day of life in shutdown."

"My main experience with COVID-19 has been that feeling of isolation within a larger thing."

"Cone orange captures the attention of people and like a traffic cone, it concerns safety and represents the caution that ultimately leads to a slowdown."

"With the last year’s efforts to rectify racial/social inequalities, crafts that only reinforce white narratives are counterproductive to social justice. The Stitch n’ Bitch Kit Project’s mission is to disrupt these visual and symbolic constraints."

"One day I was talking with my nephew who is a Director at the New York Public Theatre and he mentioned that the days keep blending into one another. He added that his friends in the theatre started calling days Blur Days. I loved the description and I turned it into Blursville."

"In isolation one’s habits become accentuated into a repeating Ground-Hog-Day-like-experience, as a day turns into a year. The virus is the judge and jury that defines an indeterminate life or death sentence."

"The pandemic gave me time to consider revisiting failed art pieces tucked away in my flat files. I was able to rework this painting to my satisfaction by roughing it up with folds and sandpaper, then painting colorful dots over it. It later occurred to me that the dots were evocative of the Corona Virus. Suddenly, in my mind, it worked!"

"My hope, no pun intended, is to illustrate how every social, financial, and economic issue is connected through voting."

"It’s a reality when I see a murdered individual who looks like me on television and am haunted for months. I could be next...Enough is enough."

"The outline of words is from the Westchester Examiner’s articles and letters to the editor from January 12th-18th...These are then juxtaposed within the outline with the current issues of riots and the need to condemn violence, racism, and hatred."

"I’m inspired by the activist scholar W.E.B. Du Bois and his visualizing data portraits that beautifully display the hard truths of systemic racism in the United States. I wanted to find a visual way to present data I’ve found through my own research as a graduate student from Yonkers."

"I made this piece during the pandemic because it reminds me of the city streets, the heat, and the ladies who used to sit together on the sidewalk garden to watch the world go by."

"My aunt made the vases, I knit our sweaters, and even those who couldn’t attend hand wrote letters our daughter will have forever. Our daughter read from the Torah and my parents joined in person to celebrate the milestone."

"During the pandemic, my son asked if he could have a small wedding in my backyard in the Spring. I decided to help celebrate this important moment in Jewsih life by painting a Ketubah for the couple."

"When the sun’s yellow rays slide gently down through the atmosphere, the sky, the mountains, and the earth’s water, they warm the butterflies, the trees, the sea creatures, and all are aglow with life...When the red oppressive spikes of COVID-19 slice through the atmosphere, the sky, the mountains, and the earth’s water, they imbed fear in the butterflies, the sea creatures, and all are aglow with alarm."

" Gazing on the finished painting, hanging on the wall across from my work-from-home space, brings happy memories and a certainty that we'll stand on those rocky shores and drink in the Bermuda sunset again one day."

"One thing led to another and here I am completely absorbed with these small moments of stacking recycled materials into the glue...'Quebra-Mola' is a Brazilian Portuguese term for a speed bump; paying homage to my cultural background and celebrating getting over the hump and on the other side of creating art again."

"My artist’s book, Ten Paces, pays homage to the words and wisdom of Wendell Berry, and is a personal celebration of the beauty of the wild places in which I was privileged to hike in 2020."

"The brown of antique photographs comes from iron. I have tried to copy that effect using sepia decals, which also rely on iron, over glass. Iron suggests strength, glass ̶ fragility. The combination of vulnerability and resilience is what makes us, in the best sense, “human.”

"The concept was simple: make a black and white drawing with cheeky, numbered coloring instructions, photocopy it, and snail mail copies to my people for their enjoyment."

"...every time that I felt an irritation in my throat I was convinced that I was soon going to drown in phlegm packed lungs."

"This painting is a document of 2020, our losses, our fears, the courage of some, the venality of others and the abject delusion of others still."

"After reading newspaper headlines every day and watching daily, and nightly, news reports to keep up with crisis after crisis, I am more hopeful than ever that we can start to mend."