In three decades of making artwork, this project is my first to focus on politics. This series is in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, its mismanagement, and the exposure of the deep-seated racism and longstanding inequality in our country, including the demonstrations surrounding Black Lives Matter. The result is A week in Times, a 50-panel chronicle of our existence during the pandemic. After listening to a Hyperallergic podcast about photojournalists’ coverage of BLM demonstrations, I was struck by the idea that their desire for recognition and awards often determines the kinds of pictures photojournalists take. Questioning if these images were slanted somehow, I decided to explore the idea in a series of new works that combine color field painting and newsworthy events.
In this series, the supports I painted on are the size of The New York Times page. I replaced one photo from the front page of the newspaper with a color field. The colors I used in this series were visible in the sky as seen from my home studio at dawn or twilight, looking over the East River and then reproduced in paint. The caption of the deleted photo was written along the bottom of the support.
The beautiful colors are incongruous with the photos' captions, and what began as a way to express my grief and dismay during this time became my emotional anchor. Accordingly, this chronicle of the pandemic offers another way to process what we went through: it leaves room for a personal response to the shared events. I want to distribute this work as an artist's book, which would support my goal of having the work find a permanent home in a public collection.
Keeping it visual:
LINK to an edited artist’s talk I was invited to participate in with curator Mary Birmingham on the occasion of the exhibition (de)Coding at the Visual Arts Center of NJ, February 6- April 25, 2021. ~ 6 minutes
QUICK OVERVIEW of the series, via a photo montage. ~ 48 seconds
The project has a few segments of focus:
VOTE. Chronicling the presidential election from 10.29- 11.8.2020, one painting is documented each day through the election period.
Democracy at Risk. Documenting the time from the calling of the election for Biden/Harris through the inauguration. The palette for this group is variations of fields of graphite gray.
First 100 days. Chronicling the first 100 days of the Biden/Harris administration by using each Sunday’s news.
