My photo art has always been circumstantial, not particularly planned. So, sheltering in my one-bedroom apartment during the ‘lockdown’ time keeping as many of us as possible safe from the virus, there are not too many circumstances. Being a positive person, I looked on the brighter side. Never seeming to have had time to get my collage juices flowing – what better time than 30-something hour days to play in – no deadlines, tons of videos to inspire me and all those scraps of paper and cutouts of ‘stuff’ I’d been filing away. And so it started.
I quickly finished a collage, first in a long time, that I had started several months ago but never quite felt it was ‘done’. So now I could go on to the NEW. (I am a linear type person).
And out it came. Next one was a specific reaction to the pandemic, I created Corona Flowers, and sort of simultaneously (so much for linear), I built two more: Panamama based on a photo I took of an indiginous market woman in Panama City a couple of years ago. I see her as a moving strength of humanity in this photo (at the time I thought she was fairly greedy for how much she wanted to let me shoot!). Time heals… and There’s Always Dance which is sort of a fantasy piece that just appealed to me.
All the while though, I had this niggling thought in my waking hours: due to the fear of contamination, there was no more bringing one’s own shopping bags into grocery stores. My under-sinkfull of paper shopping bags provided pristinely by my local Trader Joe’s was more than enough paper for a year of collages. So far, I’ve made two. There will be more.
and now, back to my dining table…