By Claude Schryer, Elaine Nussbaum, Karen Elias, Signe Jeremiason 

Reader-submitted stories of the COVID-19 pandemic, in no more than 100 words. Read past stories here. Submit your own here.

HOLLOWNESS

I feel hollowed out. This isn’t the kind of solidarity that fills me with meaning, like feminism…. This is survival solidarity. It’s a hollowness of memories robbed from me, of health and life robbed from others. I feel lost without my community. I miss my people. I feel disconnected… isolated. I feel angry and sad when I read the news. I see the death toll and think about what those people might have meant to their loved ones. I read what the administration says and my blood boils. Our people deserve better. Our planet deserves better. Yet I am stuck.

— Signe Jeremiason (Saint Peter, Minnesota)

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BLUE JAY

Plum blossoms fall like snow, and a Steller’s jay, with its charcoal-colored topknot and sapphire tail feathers, collects dead grass to build a nest in the alder tree, where he and his mate will squawk and squawk. I don’t know until I turn on my TV that in New York City, 1,900 people have died in the last 72 hours, doubling the number in the previous 72. Outside hospitals, bodies are loaded into refrigerated morgue trucks by gurney and forklift. The first infant has died, and one million people worldwide have contracted COVID-19, doubling the number in one week.

— Elaine Nussbaum (Scappoose, Oregon)

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COVID-NINETEENING

covid-nineteening
part fear, part hope
unpassing time

connected solitudes
part heart, part mind
uncharting paths

involuntary prescience
part science, part art
unseen cultures

Unpassing time is about how being in a ‘connected solitude’ bubble is liberating, and tackling the COVID crisis is a test run for the climate crisis.
Uncharting paths refers to our need to unlearn, quickly, deeply.
Unseen cultures is about imagining a sustainable world we have not yet seen but already know.

— Claude Schryer (Ottawa, Canada)

* * *

THE PLAY THAT IS OUR LIFE UNDER COVID-19, OR SELF TALK

The narrator of my life insisted on saying, “And from that point on, everything went quickly down hill.”

She was replaced.

The second narrator insisted on saying, “One day and then the next, in dismal succession.”

She was replaced.

These narrators think they know everything! The third narrator is practicing her lines. She is learning to say, “We are staying at home. We are washing our hands. We are playing our part.”

— Karen Elias (Lock Haven, Pennsylvania)

(Top photo: Sheltered, unsheltered.)

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This series is edited by Thomas Peterson. One of the editors of Artists & Climate Change, he is also a theatre director and researcher whose work focuses on the climate crisis.

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Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog

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By Emily Stearney, Jana Blomberg, Madison Kersten, Patrick Meadows

Reader-submitted stories of the COVID-19 pandemic, in no more than 100 words. Read past stories here. Submit your own here.

TO THE FUTURE ME

The world has changed. Will it ever be the same? This is such a different life from the one we knew. But then again, maybe this different won’t be so scary or bad. Just new. Sending love, courage, wisdom, and strength to the students, the parents, the workers, the grandparents, the scared and the weary, the calm and those finding rest. To the older generations who I hope are staying safe and to the younger generations who I have faith will still find a way to pursue everything they want to be. To the future you. To the future me.

— Madison Kersten (Shepherdstown, West Virginia)

* * *

APRIL 7TH

We’ve hardly ever needed a reason to go out to eat. Birthdays and anniversaries, of course, but I’ve always preferred the smaller occasions – going for curry because just the two of us are home (none of my siblings like Indian food), or visiting the deli when his job takes him to my neighborhood. The experience is more than the food; a turmeric-yellow wall with mesmerizing Bollywood scenes on the TVs. Sandwiches passed over the counter, checkered floors and aisles of pastas and sauces.

My dad turned 54 today. Eating from Styrofoam boxes is dull in comparison, but we dare not abandon tradition.

— Emily Stearney (Chicago, Illinois)

* * *

SENIOR YEAR

Final semester lost. Forced to leave campus. No more late nights living with my best friend. No last beautiful spring on campus. Graduation and senior art show are in question. No more passing friends on campus every day. No goodbyes to favorite professors. Had lasts without even knowing it. Senior year over. Classrooms now through a computer screen. Dining room becomes my art studio. Extracurricular activities consist of taking my dog for a walk. Only 2000 steps a day. No schedule or concept of time. My world has been turned upside down. Not how I pictured my last semester of college.

— Jana Blomberg (Plymouth, Minnesota)

* * *

LAMENTING

I’m not afraid to admit that I’m a crier. I get sad and happy at movies, books, and things a lot of people wouldn’t think someone would cry for. But I haven’t cried for this. I refuse. I cry for the friends and home I’ve been sent away from and I shall cry for those who have experienced the same. I will weep for the parents who are having difficulty feeding their children and the kids who won’t get to see their best friends for months. I don’t cry for COVID-19, I cry for humanity.

— Patrick Meadows (Franklin, Tennessee)

(Top photo: Writing in my sketchbook.)

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Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog

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By Susan Hoffman Fishman

The world’s first Earth Day was held fifty years ago on April 22, 1970 while I was a freshman in college. To commemorate the event, Hans-Dieter Froese, a prominent New York contemporary artist and my sculpture professor at the time, gave our class an assignment to design and implement a bio-degradable, site-specific, outdoor installation.

Although common today, the terms “site specific” and “installation” were brand new to the contemporary art world in 1970, as was the notion of “bio-degradable” materials. I didn’t know then that what we had been assigned to do could also be classified as public art and that so many years later I would be immersed in two, large-scale, site-specific, public art installations. If you would have told me that I would be remembering my first primitive attempt in that discipline in 2020, I would not have believed you. Nor could I have imagined that my paintings, public art projects and writing would be focusing almost exclusively on the environment and the climate crisis.

After surveying familiar materials that might be used to complete the class assignment, my classmate, Leslie, and I chose to collaborate on a red Jello installation. (Don’t laugh, we were serious about this.) Jello, we thought, was bio-degradable because it would melt back into a harmless liquid that could be absorbed into the ground when it was exposed to heat. We selected a specific site outside our dorm that had full sun exposure and was visible to a large number of students, and we correctly predicted that a sculpture comprised only of a red, transparent substance that could reflect the light of the sun would create a very dramatic statement. What we didn’t realize was that the red dye used in the Jello contained chemicals that were harmful to the environment. (Packaging labels that include ingredients were still a thing of the future.) We also didn’t realize that to make, refrigerate and transport the product of 150 boxes of Jello would require an enormous amount of time and effort.

Thankfully, April 22, 1970 was a warm, sunny day. As a consequence, when the sculpture was installed in the sun alongside the walkway outside our dorm, the Jello melted as required. I have no photograph of the actual sculpture to document the moment but picture this: multiple 12″ x 18″ slabs of red Jello piled on top of each other at various angles to a height of about three feet, shining brilliantly in the sun. Despite our initial misgivings about the project, we had created a dynamic, jiggling, ephemeral installation that challenged the college community to consider a work of art in a new discipline, comprised of an unusual material and marking the first Earth Day. The generic image below will give you a general idea of what the installation looked like.

I remember some of my fellow students mocking our efforts as they passed by the installation that day. Is this “modern art?” they sneered. “You get credit for this?” Very few students outside of Froese’s class understood that the installation was a visual statement promoting a green environment and conservation of the Earth’s resources. For those who actually stopped to interact with us, though, the installation was successful in stimulating conversations on why we needed to talk about the natural environment and our responsibilities to it.

Earth Day 1970 was the first time that millions of Americans united to respond to contemporary environmental issues, which then consisted of damaging oil spills, choking smog, species extinction and highly polluted rivers. The passage of critical environmental laws came about as a direct result of the positive energy generated in 1970 and included The Clean Air (1970), Clean Water (1972) and Endangered Species (1973) Acts as well as the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (1970). Earth Day 1970 marked the beginning of the environmental movement in this country.

All these years later, as I watch the growing effects of climate disruption occurring across the world, I can’t help but think back to the 1970’s and 1980’s when scientists were already aware of the dangers that would severely impact the health of the planet if we did not cut back on the use of chlorofluorocarbons, fossil fuels and other manmade compounds. As early as 1962, Rachel Carson in her groundbreaking book, Silent Spring, had warned of the damages happening to wildlife, bees, agricultural animals, pets and humans caused by the use of pesticides and other chemicals. We did not heed these early warnings and are now faced with global warming at an unprecedented level, rising tides that threaten shoreline cities and island nations, melting glaciers and other severe consequences of our inaction.

Fast forward to Earth Day 2020.

There is something happening in 2020, however, that reminds me of 1970 and gives me hope for our planet – the level of energy being generated by young people who see their futures at risk. They are led by 16-year old Greta Thunberg, the moral voice for climate action, who on her own, conducted weekly climate strikes in Sweden that have become commonplace all over the world; fifteen-year-old Autumn Peltier, who is fighting for water conservation and indigenous water rights in her native Canada; nineteen-year-old Bruno Rodriguez of Buenos Aires, who organized student walkouts against corporate greed and governmental complacency about climate change; twenty-year-old Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, the youth director of Earth Guardians, who with others, sued the Federal government over water rights and for failing to protect the younger generation’s rights to life, liberty and property; and numerous others.

These young people have started a new movement, supported in part by a global Earth Day Network of millions of participants and thousands of partners. While the major thrust of Earth Day 1970 was environmental awareness, the theme for Earth Day 2020 is climate action. As I write this, the novel coronavirus Covid-19 is spreading rapidly throughout the global population and will no doubt prevent the implementation of plans that have been developed for engaging hundreds of millions of people in Earth Day clean-up projects, education, advocacy and other meaningful activities to combat climate disruption. A difference for me personally between 2020 and 1970 is the existence of an army of artists addressing our climate crisis – thousands of painters, sculptors, installation artists, poets, spoken word artists, dancers, playwrights, photographers, novelists, filmmakers, videographers, etc. – which did not exist in 1970. They are using the power of the arts to engage the hearts and senses in ways that data and facts cannot. I am proud to be among them and to derive support and inspiration from them. On Earth Day 2020, let’s acknowledge those who have worked on behalf of the environment over the last fifty years, including my college sculpture professor who encouraged us to pay attention on that historic day. 

This article is part of Imagining Water, a series on artists of all genres who are making the topic of water and climate disruption a focus of their work and on the growing number of exhibitions, performances, projects and publications that are appearing in museums, galleries and public spaces around the world with water as a theme.

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Susan Hoffman Fishman is a painter, public artist and writer. Her work has been exhibited in numerous museums and galleries throughout the US and she has received numerous grants and commissions. Since 2011, all of her paintings, installations and drawings have focused on water and climate change. She co-created a national, interactive public art project, The Wave, which addresses our mutual need for and interdependence on water and has inspired thousands of adults and children of all ages, abilities and backgrounds to protect this vital resource. Her most recent body of work calls attention to the growing number of rampikes along our shores – dead trees that have been exposed to salt water as a result of rising tides.

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Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog

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By Gina Robinson, Jonar Isip, Ruth Stringer, Tamara Hendrick

Reader-submitted stories of the COVID-19 pandemic, in no more than 100 words. Read past stories here. Submit your own here.

WHAT WE TAKE IN

I made it to another Friday. Outside, there is a man teaching his son the difference between “goose” and “geese.” His lessons echo through the packed houses of our shared driveway and into our rooms. Inside, my landlord’s toddler has a conversation with his grandfather. He speaks – well, yells – his baby jargon while everyone else listens. He has command of the room.

I am quiet, thinking about the people with masks exchanging unknown air for droplets of worry. I wonder what I can do with what I’ve witnessed, and what words should come out with the breaths I have left.

— Jonar Isip (San Ramon, California)

(Top photo: Packed houses.)

* * *

SIX MILES APART

On the spacious Jeffrey Trail, walkers, runners, bikers, and dogs merge in and out trying to stay six-feet apart, when I hear my four-year-old grandson exclaim, “Grammy! You’re not staying six miles away from them!” I hear the fear in his voice and I smile. I correct his miles to feet and show him what six feet look like, and I reassure him that everything is okay. I don’t know what tomorrow holds, if it will be okay, but today it is, on the Jeffrey Trail, with my two grandchildren, and I am grateful.

— Tamara Hendrick (Irvine, California)

* * *

SPRINGTIME: A CALL FOR CHANGE

Spring has sprung. I wake to birdsong, sit in the sunshine on my patch of concrete. I breathe chilled air as the earth breathes a sigh of relief. My phone buzzes with news from afar: France, Canada, Brazil, Australia; family and friends in self-isolation reaching out and checking in, swapping coping strategies, jokes, cabin-fever catastrophes, appeals to loved ones for resilience and strength. Força. Courage. As we draw inwards, we look outwards, see that we are made stronger by what unites, not what divides us. May this be a lesson to us all, and one that we never forget.

— Gina Robinson (Bristol, United Kingdom)

* * *

TIME MOVES DIFFERENTLY HERE

It’s Thursday. Is it Thursday? It is Thursday. I have lived an entire day in an hour.

I stop to make a cup of tea. I fill the mug with hot water, watch the teabag drift aimlessly, imagine being cwtched on all sides, warm and safe as I float dreamlessly onwards.

When I look up, an entire afternoon has flung itself past my window.

Time is contracted and concertinaed and stretched beyond recognition, all at once.

From between the folds; the song of a blackbird emerges, unfurls. On and on it goes, until it fills the infinite void.

— Ruth Stringer (Cardiff, Wales)

______________________________

This series is edited by Thomas Peterson. One of the editors of Artists & Climate Change, he is also a theatre director and researcher whose work focuses on the climate crisis.

———-

Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog

Powered by WPeMatico