Pandemic
In March, theaters in Rhode Island were ordered to close. Galleries openings and gigs were called off. Artists were among those suddenly scrambling to find work, and make sense of the crisis unfolding around us all.
The COVID-19 pandemic touched every aspect of our lives, from the way we work and learn, to the way we spend time with loved ones.
It forced us to confront death, loneliness, boredom, and perhaps ourselves.
-John Bender & Sofia Rudin
The Public's Radio
Been Essential
The “Been Essential” digital print was created as part of the “Mi Gente Siempre Responde” Providence Public Banner Project administrated by Latinx artist Shey Rivera. Created in August 2020, the piece was printed on an 8×8 banner and is on display on the Southside Art Center’s west wall.
Tracy Jonsson-Laboy is a multi-media artist and historian living in Providence RI. She is polymath with a particularly passion for music, public art, equity, urban design, architectural history, and the philosophy behind designing for the public good.
This piece represents my mom and other Dominican and BIPOC workers in the health-industry. It is part of a series I am developing that elevates the BIPOC community as relevant and precious to the proper functioning of our society.
Coronavirus
Martha Sherman
THERE WAS A TIME,
MIDWAY THROUGH MOTHERHOOD
WHEN I WOULD YEARN
FOR THE SWEET CESSATION OF BOYISH SHOUTS,
FOR TIME TO SHAPE MY THOUGHTS.
TO WRITE THEM OUT,
SILENCE I CRAVED
THERE WAS THE THREATENING BUMP
OF KIDDIE CARS
TRYING TO RIDE THE STAIRS,
THE ENDLESS BEAT OF “RACE CARS
IN ACTION” ON THE RECORD PLAYER,
THE EXULTANT CRIES WHEN POLE VAULTS
CLEARED THE CLOTHESLINE.
NOW, ISOLATED BY GERM AND AGE
FROM THE CACOPHONY OF YOUTH AND LIFE
I REJOICE IN BIRD SONG
AND THE SOUND OF OARS
CUTTING THE QUIET OF A PLACID RIVER
“Martha Sherman lived to be 101 years old and wrote the poem shortly before she died. She and her husband raised four sons. In her poem she reflected on the fact that there was constant noise and activity in the house when her sons were growing up, and recalled some memorable moments, including one son trying to ride a tricycle down the stairs, the constant playing of an LP that consisted solely of noise from race cars, and a son who had a passion for pole vaulting over the the clothes line in the backyard. There was very little peace in those days!”
– Deming Sherman, Martha’s son
This poem was originally published in the Laurelmead Journal and was posted to RI COVID Archive
"I started painting "Nesting Instinct" right as the pandemic hit in March of 2020. It was so scary to go out - no one knew what was happening or how bad the virus would be."
"I liked the imagery of a nest safe and protected in a cardboard box, but also felt the way the eggs were precariously balanced as though they might tip over the edge really captured what I was feeling."
"Lovable"
Roz Raskin released their first full length album as Nova One, "Lovable," as the pandemic began and Rhode Island locked down.
"I tend to be a social person, but in the six months I was writing that record, I spent a lot of time by myself, in my studio, just really trying to keep my life together."
NOVA ONE is a Providence, RI based musical project who explores youth, femininity, and gender through a moody 60’s pop lens led by Roz Raskin. Their most recent album “lovable” explores the necessity of honoring the slowness of healing. It examines the importance of self-acceptance and the process of seeing and understanding one’s sexuality and gender presentation.
The album was released in April, and was recorded locally in Rhode Island at Big Nice Studio.
Transforming House Poem
Rosalynde Vas Dias
The transforming house is
grief
the transforming house is
frustrated by talking / being
walked out on in the middle
it stamps around its room / sinks to
the ocean floor
you hum in the middle of it
doing anything—stringing popcorn
or pasting tissue down on an old beer
bottle. Trying to redirect.
There there you know owl
pellets kidney stones what
the body has that it cannot use
coughed up or tearing out of you
making your urine bloody what the house
has its like that its worse
Rosalynde Vas Dias is a poet and writer in Providence, RI.
“I wrote the transforming house poems in May of this year. Like many folks, I was spending my working and living hours in my home & started thinking about the home itself as an organism or magical creature.
In some ways, I think I wanted to open up the idea of the home—to make it more mobile & therefore mysterious or threatening or revealing to the person in the poem inside the home— which strikes me as another thing I am curious about—how far up or down a kind of “nesting” (like Matryoshka doll nesting) goes.”
Viral Load
paint + hand sanitizer
"At the beginning of the pandemic, during the first lockdown, I used some bad-smelling hand sanitizer that came from the local distillery as a paint additive. A friend said it looks like a virus. Voila!"
“Inspired by nature and the need to stay creative while “sheltering in place” in the spring, I began a series of daily “still life” works, assembled with three things from my limited surroundings; something from nature, an object from my home and an artwork or textile that I created. This became a daily practice.” - Paula Stebbins Becker
Paula Stebbins Becker is an artist and freelance textile designer based in Tiverton, RI.
This artwork is one of a series posted daily on Instagram @paulastebbinsbecker.
Three Stones
Wishing Puff
COVID Blues
Isolating Together
Eli Nixon is a Rhode Islander living on Wampanoag Land who builds portals and gives guided tours to places that don’t yet exist. They are a settler-descended transqueer clown, cardboard constructionist, and maker of plays, puppets, parades & low-tech public “spectaculah.”
Eli created “Isolating Together” in the first few weeks of the Covid pandemic in Pawtucket. It was screened as part of the Great Small Works (zoom) Toy Theater Festival at the start of April, 2020. They made it without leaving the house.
Isolating Together
Eli Nixon is a Rhode Islander living on Wampanoag Land who builds portals and gives guided tours to places that don’t yet exist. They are a settler-descended transqueer clown, cardboard constructionist, and maker of plays, puppets, parades & low-tech public “spectaculah.”
Eli created “Isolating Together” in the first few weeks of the Covid pandemic in Pawtucket. It was screened as part of the Great Small Works (zoom) Toy Theater Festival at the start of April, 2020. They made it without leaving the house.
"2020 began with an optimistic hope that the nation would find clarity of purpose.
Diana Cole is an artist and writer based in Warren, RI.
“This series of poems, written in the early stages of the pandemic, imagines how various people might be responding to the quarantine.
Sharing this crisis has given us a keen awareness of our common vulnerability and so we share our fears and small braveries across the globe. But our stories are also uniquely individual. This poem suggests the subtle shift in one family’s dynamic that happens because of the lock-down.”
Quarantine for Better
My sister says she is getting along
better in these stranger times
with her husband of forty years.
Forced to live in familiar
proximity — but 24/7 —
has brought them to a kind of truce.
It’s either break all the dishes
the sound barrier,
or find a new routine
like the porch project. She picks
pansies for window boxes,
plans where the table will go
while her husband finds the table online,
searches sites for roll up shades,
scrolls doggedly for the best price.
They trade off each other,
knowing if one of them
catches it, they both will.
In a corner of the porch eaves
two finches nest. One feeds, one keeps watch
on the crows mobbing the elm tree.
For my sister the dirty cup in the sink is not cause
for the raucous outcry it once was.
Better that she work out knots in his back,
that he defer to her film choice —
The Lady Vanishes — in black and white.
Better to stuff the old news into the fireplace.
First Published in Montana Mouthful, Fall 2020
“I completed the charcoal drawing in April, 2020, about a month after the high school had switched to full time distance teaching.
Darrel Sutton is a history teacher at North Kingstown High School.
This piece and several others in this gallery are also featured in the RI COVID-19 Archive.
The piece was based loosely on Robert Frost's "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening" and showed my desire to be away from technology and the long road that it would take to get through the pandemic.”
Conversations With
My Selves
"One of the driving concepts behind the piece was isolation as an artist. In times of isolation, we can project different sides of ourselves onto our environment and actually create a conversation between these selves."
“We composed the piece using ‘mental score paper’ (in the words of Charles Mingus), which meant we were composing the piece without notation.”
This piece was a collaboration between Zan Berry, a Providence based cellist, and composer Pascal Le Boeuf.
“Conversations with My Selves” was created in July as part of the 1:2:1 online festival which brought together a wide range of composers and performers to make solo string works.
The video features the video editing and creative video synthesizer work of Eric Whitmer and Austin Richey, respectively.
Conversations With
My Selves
"One of the driving concepts behind the piece was isolation as an artist. In times of isolation, we can project different sides of ourselves onto our environment and actually create a conversation between these selves."
“We composed the piece using ‘mental score paper’ (in the words of Charles Mingus), which meant we were composing the piece without notation.”
This piece was a collaboration between Zan Berry, a Providence based cellist, and composer Pascal Le Boeuf.
“Conversations with My Selves” was created in July as part of the 1:2:1 online festival which brought together a wide range of composers and performers to make solo string works.
The video features the video editing and creative video synthesizer work of Eric Whitmer and Austin Richey, respectively.
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