Our thirty-second post of the series, Artists in the Time of Coronavirus includes Sasha Silverstein, Kathleen Greco, Andrea Krupp, Raphaël Faon, Arthur B. Ostroff, and Marc Bluestein! 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 almost 300 submissions, so if you haven’t seen yours yet, don’t worry- it is coming, and we can’t wait to post it!]
Sasha Silverstein
How am i doing with this situation? more ADD than ever. When i force myself to focus and make clear plans of my tasks, i’m able to accomplish some work, but usually it’s a little this, a little that. I have a huge body of work, so it’s not troubling, except that the work gives me such pleasure, i wish i could do it all day. I am doing alot of looking and some posting which keeps my sense of community with artists as we comment about each other’s work.
www.sashasilverstein.com
https://www.instagram.com/silversteinsasha/
Kathleen Greco
While a microscopic virus holds the human race hostage and the popularity of social practice has shifted to social distancing, staying at home has become a self-imposed studio residency. In my studio practice I investigate social, cultural, feminist, and political issues. Artwork created during this coronavirus will be forever marked in the cultural historical timeline of the 2020 pandemic.
In my current work on paper, The New Landscape, I shift the context of flowers associated with mourning rituals and burial conventions, and reclaim them as mark-making mediums to investigate fragility, strength, and loss.
My self-portrait with mask is from a series of photographs I started taking of myself every year investigating women’s body image and aging. My appearance takes on a new meaning during this coronavirus outbreak. Both works explore something becoming apparent on the intangible horizon.
Kathleen Greco
email: dimension@3dimillus.com
website: www.kathleengreco.com
IG @KathleenGreco
Andrea Krupp
Coal, turf, virus
During a winter residency in Iceland, cut short by the virus, I began to draw connections between Pennsylvania anthracite coal and Icelandic turf, which is a key material in Icelandic vernacular architecture and, significantly, a precursor form of coal. Recent artworks put the heavy footprint of Icelandic turf shelters into visual dialogue with the viewer.
Eventually, the Covid-19 pandemic began to filter across the Atlantic ocean and into my snow-bound studio. It crossed emotional, creative and intellectual boundaries, and soon became an uninvited guest, an invisible immensity that infected my imagination.
Home again, and housebound, along with the unwelcome omnipresence of the virus. I am finding it difficult to connect with my creative energy. The virus’ meaning is unclear. It is complicated, placeless. It exists on all scales of space and time; simultaneously, immensely small in its physical form and immensely large and powerful in the rapidity of its global diffusion. The virus is within us and without us, but its sudden flourishing got our attention. It has simply changed everything. I am not sure how to move forward, time flows differently.
Nevertheless, I feel called upon to reflect and transmit about the Covid-19 pandemic. The written record of our experience in the here-and-now will be a poignant note-to-future-self:
Our current lived reality is as ephemeral as a cloud passing over the sun;
The future is written in our ability to imagine new paradigms;
Our imagined future is shaped by present action.
Raphaël Faon
I am a visual artist from France. The pandemic and the quarantine push artists and curators to find new means of expression and exhibition. I share with you Pictorial Protection, an online art piece I made in reaction to the epidemic; this artistic proposal questions the shortage of protective masks and the digital circulation of landscape images. Can an artwork help in this crisis? Can an image save lives?
Here is the link to access the project and a description below :
www.raphaelfaon.com/maskPictorial Protection is an online digital artwork. It was carried out during the quarantine due to the coronavirus pandemic. The interface allows you to generate masks andsave them for printing on home computers. The pattern allows everyone to easilymake a paper mask. Each time the page is loaded, a new mask is generated fromonline stock images. The program runs in three languages (English, French,Spanish). This artistic proposal questions the shortage of protective masks andthe digital circulation of images during quarantine. It’s an invitation tobring landscapes images from digital databases out of the screen. The maskbecomes a paradoxical window on the outside and the pattern shape allows to seethose pictures in a different way.
Raphaël Faon works and lives in Paris.
Raphaël Faon strives to disturb systems of representation. His work reveals the way in which reality is constructed in a world of images and shows how the opacity and complexity of images contradict their apparent transparency. Deconstructing frameworks of vision, he infiltrates the archives of the contemporary world in order to interrogate them and to lend them new meaning by exploring their political ambiguity. In all of his experimental projects, the artist emphasizes transitions and translations from one medium to another, highlighting themes of long-distance communication, the digital imagination, and new technologies, which he examines via photography, installations, and digital techniques.
Best regards from Paris,
Raphaël Faon
www.raphaelfaon.com
Arthur B. Ostroff
I take or find a a photograph I like, and arrange it in as many as 10 images on my computer screen.
I leave the original in the middle (or upper left), and experiment with different effects,
changing the look of the original to create different moods, or permutations. Here are two examples:
Marc Bluestein
Ask Carolanne: America’s Haunted Sweet Heart is a documentary art film style parody that pays homage to the character of Carolanne from the 80s movie franchise “Poltergeist”. What if she was real? What if she never died and remained the little blonde girl from the movies forever? The film maker captures her jaded yet optimistic spirit stemming from her declined career. We watch her attempts to recapture the magic of her 1980s success. Her world is also interactive outside of the documentary for you may call her on her light up phone and be featured on her social media segment Ask Carolanne, where she provides life and ghost advice to anyone. The documentary features her fans, clients, and most importantly, the supernatural icon herself! Carolanne from Poltergeist. She can be reached for comments at 973.969.1001.
Instagram is: Instagram.com/carolannefrom
Here’s a link to her recently released documentary that’s being submitted to film festivals:
