Or can it? Random photo of a building at Marsha P Johnson State Park. Williamsburg Bridge over the East River in the background.
I guess until our country has a way to combat Covid more effectively (vaccine, citizens who care enough about others to stop spreading the virus), I will continue counting the weeks we’ve endured this bizarre reality by including the Week #__ in my blog headlines. Gives me a truer sense of the passing of time during Covid.
So, two full months have passed since my last blog. We have gardened, made art, rode bikes and went on hikes. Read books, watched TV, drank alcohol and smoked weed. Paid too much attention to politics. But the big event was a trip via our camper van back East to safely visit our daughter Lauren and her partner Mollie. So so lucky to have acquired this Covid-safe means of transportation before sales of RV's got crazy busy during Covid.
You can see the camper van upper left. Turns out rural cemeteries in the Midwest provide ideal camping locations to stay socially distanced during Covid.
Day 1, Ohiopyle to Rockwood, PA on the Great Allegheny Gap trail.
Daughter Lauren graduated from Parsons School of Design with her Masters in Transdisciplinary Design this spring. Her grad gift from us was a 7-day bike tour for her and her partner Mollie, all gear provided. We rode 240 miles of the Great Allegheny Gap and C&O Canal (PA, MD, VA), a perfect, mostly flat introduction to bike touring. You can enjoy our entire trip here! via the journal and map I created with the Polar Steps App which I've really enjoyed. You don’t have to have the app or sign up to “follow” to view the journal.
Miso, our cheagle (beagle/chihuahua mix) grandpuppy, age 6 months. Taking charge of Lauren’s new home-office chair.
After the bike tour, we drove the van on to NYC to visit Lauren and Mollie and meet our grandpuppy, Miso. There was no museum or gallery hopping this trip, we stayed in and enjoyed each other’s company.
One day we did venture out into community. We rode our bikes from Bushwick to Marsha P Johnson Park, a less gentrified area of Williamsburg's beach, on the shore of the East River. I noticed a scattering of red fake flower petals, as though there had been a recent wedding ceremony. In line with my interest in re-using and re-imagining found objects and clothing remnants in my current body of work, and due to the fact that red is a re-occurring color in the works' palette, I began rescuing the petals from the sand.
Bent over, focused in my own little artist-thinking world...what would I do with these petals, how did they further my concept of the wastes of fast-fashion, and so on….I became abruptly aware of a nearby human presence. Such a different awareness and emotional instinct than before Covid, when a stranger gets closer than 6', right?!
I looked up to see a young girl about 4 years old reaching out to me with a petal in her hand. Her mother wasn't far away, I looked at her for permission to interact, and accepted the gift. The girl never spoke a word, she was serious, she was intent, she was full of purpose. That moment became the spot of light that has kept my heart happy for weeks on end ever since. It's that familiar adage about kindness from strangers, the innocence of childhood, emblematic of everything right about human beings.
Back home in the studio, I've already begun incorporating those petals into a piece I'm working on for my Solo Exhibition at Kreuser Gallery scheduled for Dec 2021.
I'd love to hear from you, dear Reader. Give me a Covid anecdote that created in you a momentary, unexpected surge of joy!