Vertumnus, 2020
From Geddes Levenson -
For the first two weeks of the quarantine, I was adrift in an emotional fog. We just moved from NYC this February, and I poured my love and energy into supporting friends stuck in tiny apartments. I wasn’t sure how to make art from this space of confusion and reorienting. I had to let my thoughts catch up with me before I could make new work.
My husband, who previously worked on personalized cancer vaccines, shifted to virology, and began developing a Covid vaccine trial. He has a desk on one side of a room where he hosts a parade of zoom calls. When I finally got my bearings, I taped plastic sheets over the walls and floor on the other side of the room to form a makeshift studio. We are the background of each other’s work day. As I paint, I learn about spike proteins and peptides, about the body of research amassing quickly around Covid. I witness an international community working together to build a story and discover nuance in its many details. The familiarity of this communal layered building of knowledge and understanding fills me with warmth for the art community I work alongside.
I think most of us are lonely now. Lonely for friends, for institutions, lonely for certainty and structure. I am also lonely for the ever growing body of new artwork that I am used to casually immersing myself in. A few friends from grad-school and I have started a group that meets bi-weekly to talk about what we have or haven’t made. To give each other a little more inspiration to feed off of.
I just finished my first post-quarantine painting, and it’s strange and new and exciting. I don’t know enough about what it means yet, but it’s leading me into a new series of paintings, the thought of which brings joy and excitement into my days. Each one slowly revealing the next. Teaching me to once again relish rather than fear the unknown.