This windowfront exhibition will pull selected work(s) from the poetry compilation I created as a Lane Arts Council grant recipient. This poetry collection, COVIDIAN TIMES: in place sheltered, was the outcome of my need to capture, to document, to attempt sense-making and sanity-keeping during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. These pieces were written while I, like so many others, complied with the government-issued ‘Stay Home’ order. As we emerge from our COVID cocoons, this installation welcomes reflective reconciliations with the recent past, and explores an interplay between literary and visual art.

Whether you find that some of your own first Covidian experiences were so aligned with mine as to be uncanny, or so distant that we may as well have been living on different planets, my hope is that these poems will offer some small companionship inside your own sphere of reflection. I do not need to know you to feel a tearful tenderness towards you, a deep gratitude for the little tether of togetherness that this art forms between us. When I sheltered at home alone, my words reached out in search of you — thank you for reaching back.

Lane Arts Council 2020 Individual Visual Artist Grant Recipient