Creative Collaboration in the time of Covid

Creative collaboration in the time of Covid

8/30/2020

Ok- I'm going to be honest- when I was driving home after that gallery meeting on July 8 I was kicking myself for stumbling into more than I had time for again. What had I gotten myself into!

I had suggested, as we were all trying to figure out how to make our gallery function during lockdown, that we could think about using more of the space instead of less, that we could experiment with site specific temporary installation, seen only from the front and not entered.

I was thinking about the vertical space. I was thinking about space instead of just walls. And I was thinking we needed to shake it up.

I was not thinking of doing it the next month.

It was insane. I had just gotten chicks for the first time ever and they were growing fast in our living room and I was on a frantic mission to build a chicken coop. I was (and am) still working full time as a coach and small business owner, not to mention being a single mom. I have no time!

And the work that I really wanted to show, had been planning to show for my solo exhibit that had to be cancelled due to the pandemic, was labor intensive ceramic wall fountains. They were no where near done.

The fact is that my creative life had stalled during covid, and I felt like I was shriveling up. My studio was a dumping ground and a chaotic mess of tools used to build the coop. All the art projects that I had been working on, that had end points that made sense, had kind of fallen out. I was starved for something that made sense and in some weird way this did.

Today, after removing the front wall, the collaboration blossomed into something really beautiful. It was like the gallery took a huge breath of air and sunlight and opened its heart to us.

And I am profoundly grateful that once again I let myself impulsively stumbled into doing something that I had no time for, no real concept of where it was going to take me and no idea how I would pull it off.

The collaborative process with Rebecca has been deeply exciting and juicy and the content and meanings of the work are still unfolding for me. So I will writing another blog soon.

This Thursday (September 4) the installation will be complete and I truly hope that you will come by and take some time to be with it. It is worth seeing it in the morning light, when sun streams in, and in the evening when the gallery lights will pull you into the space.

Though we are not allowing folks to come deep into the gallery for health reasons (it is a small space with only one door) we are opening the door from 4-6 on Fridays and Saturdays, or by appointment, so that you can come stand in the doorway and take it in.

Please let me know what you think of it! As an artist I need to feel that it is connecting- that my communication is being received! Either send me a private email or reply to this post.

These pictures are process images, just teasers- and some of them were taken by my daughter. There will be more, and I should say that the experience of seeing the exhibit in person is its own thing- not conveyed in the photos.