Our forty-second post of the series, Artists in the Time of Coronavirus includes Galya Kerns, Jessica Libor, Roquelaure, Jason Wallin, Sara Kleinert, and Barbara Schulman! Thank you for all who submitted! And if you want to participate, send your statement (250 words max) and 2 photos to support@theartblog.org. More details here. Stay safe and stay positive, and come back in the days to come for more “Artists in the Time of Coronavirus.” We have a wonderful community and are so proud of being able to share everyone’s art.
[Note: We have gotten over 300 submissions, so if you haven’t seen yours yet, don’t worry- it is coming, and we can’t wait to post it!]
Galya Kerns
It’s art from isolation about isolation. We were not ready for COVID19. You can’t be ready for such thing. My mixed media reflects our mix of feelings and confusion.
Jessica Libor
Each portrait revealed is a different woman, and these drawings are inspired by the idea of the selfie as a self portrait. The enchanted portal today is technology, and through technology we can curate the way that we are seen, in the same way that artists in other centuries flattered their subjects or imagined a different surrounding for them. I was particularly inspired to do this series because of the impact on millions of quarantined individuals. With nowhere to go socially, how wdo we as individuals still express our creative personalities through our styling? Does it still matter to get dressed up if no one will see you? How does creating a selfie with your cellphone mimic the process of creating a work of art? Many things are the same: choosing the elements, composition, lighting, colors, and subject matter. In many ways, the selfie and the self-portrait are the same thing: the artist’s version of themselves that they want to reveal to the world. Through blending fantasy and reality, they can be perceived as who they aspire to be. How does creating an idealized fantasy world surrounding you create relief psychologically? Is it escapism, or creativity?
It is my belief that the self-portrait of today is the selfie—a way for any individual with a digital device to record their own existence in whatever way feels good to them. It is a way of asserting their presence in the world and reflects the human’s timeless desire to make a mark on society and the world: it is a way to be seen.
My website: www.jessicalibor.com
Roquelaure
From the waterfalls and green hills of Guadeloupe, West Indies is where I reside. Returning to my native land in 2013, my Afro-Caribbean “identity” was reaffirmed. During my journey as a visual/graphic artist, my journey is sown with beautiful encounters, memorializing the fundamentals of excellence and pride of the leading thinkers of ancestral Africa.
Incorporating an assemblage of colors, materials, drawings, collages and writings, a new “metamorphosis” has embodied me to speak a new language to express and teach others of the Creole lands of the Caribbean. I see myself as a Public Utility, a therapeutic artist that operates from a mutation of Scars, which this confinement has produced which allows me to transmit a new level of consciousness and being.
This process began two weeks before the official confinement took place in Guadeloupe. During this time, I participated in a group exhibition by the same title which is still on view at the Aérodrome de Pointe-à-Pitre Le Raizet (Guadeloupe). During this time, I met a group of creative geniuses (artists) that were participating in an international cultural exchange, organized by Rosie Gordon-Wallace, founder of the Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Exchange (DVCAI). The conversations opened my eyes from an unique point of view of seeing.
As a full-time artist, “confinement” is part of my daily existence, as a choice and not as an obligation. With this unprecedented crisis, we all have been forced to stay home to protect ourselves and fight the coronavirus. What we need to understand, at the end, we have been urged to take the time to live a transitional and transparent way of living in order to operate within this metamorphosis of living – a reset. In what purpose? We are creating and identifying within ourselves a new version of our higher self.
Thouthneferstudio971@gmail.com
https://www.facebook.com/thnstudio/
https://www.instagram.com/thoutnefer_studio/
Jason Wallin
Conspiracy of Bats
We are told that this is the era of man (the Anthropocene). As the fog of ‘civilizational progress’ momentarily lifts however, a forgotten nature emerges through the veil of toxic pollution, birds sing in the absence of noise pollution, and animals territorialize spaces long thought conquered by humans. Perhaps this suggests a new epoch after the Anthropocene, when the world designed by man will be revealed to be but one world – and hardly the best of all possible worlds. As the hyperactive disorder of civilization temporarily wames, we confront the horror of human design and the myriad worlds it has covered over in its quickening march toward oblivion.
Sara Kleinert
Trailing behind my mother as she wipes down the freshly cleared dining room table after family dinner each night. I quickly draw with my index finger along the table top, disrupting the thin layer of water coating its surface. Making swirling patterns and watching the wetness disappear beneath my fingers path. I am often brought back to my first art making memory: wide-eyed, as the drawing evaporates as quickly as it formed. I think methodically of these fleeting, intentional actions. As my art practice evolves, I still feel like this young child. Living in my own mind trying to better understand how to walk the world through touch, an eagerness to be absorbed in quietness, and by dissecting the systems that we live within.
In recent years, the travel, non-space serves as the place of investigation between the blurring of work and non-work, action and rest, and public and private. The Southeastern Transportation Authority (SEPTA) Regional Rail serves as the site-specific position for these explorations in Philadelphia. I hope to return to these spaces, when the world feels more regular.
I hope we can connect,
IG: sara_kleinert_works
https://sarakleinertdesign.wixsite.com/creator
Barbara Schulman
I am a Bethlehem, PA artist. Having retired from teaching FiberArts at Kutztown University a few years ago, I love studio time and enjoy being alone, despite the weirdness of current times. I live with my artist-husband who is also creating passionately. We meet for meals, and are otherwise in our studios. Having no other appointments is a gift, but I do miss my friends and volunteering at Kemerer Museum, where I hang exhibits and stitch for displays. I have a studio at the Banana Factory Art Center, but I have not been working there during the plague.
Much of my textile work is abstract or abstractly about healing, with shaman-like figures, but sometimes they are angry about the world and become destroyers. Flames began to shoot out of their hair, toes, and fingers in November 2016. Currently, I am having a solo exhibit at Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Center in Allentown, PA, which opened briefly, then closed indefinitely, with an end date rescheduled. Maybe it will reappear; my question is, If an artist has a show at a closed gallery, is it really a show?
I have also been making covid masks, initially with happy smiles on them, but now I am trying to be efficient and not creative, which is difficult.
My website: barbaraschulman.com
My current work is on instagram.
