Focus Online: A Different Kind of Now
Suddenly our lives were changed. Perhaps not all at once, but eventually everyone had to respond to the new reality. Most significantly it involved quarantine, lockdown, isolation. Faced with the urgency of keeping ourselves apart from others, we have adapted with new routines and habits, new ways of working, and socializing; and we have had to adjust our inner lives to the feelings of dread, grief, and anxiety that have pushed to the forefront of our psyches. Art is good for this. In creating work we continue. It allows us to look at the many new pressures and difficulties, live with them, and sometimes get a glimpse of a world bigger than this current catastrophe. In reviewing the work for this show I was taken with the many responses individuals have had to this common experience. Some of the approaches that I am seeing include the creation of worlds away from this one, expression of complicated emotional realities, meditations on personal and collective history, and a deep examination of our suddenly smaller day-to-day environments. When things change again, the artwork made during this difficult, disturbing, and profoundly strange period may allow us to remember what we felt, how we lived, and what these days and months were really like. —Douglas Culhane, September 2020
view the biographies of the exhibiting artists here
Fern Apfel
Lila Bacon
Lucille Colin
Maxine Davidowitz
Gina Dominique Hersey
Ginny Howsam Friedman
Mary Katz
Ekaterina Khromin
Carmen Li
Harriet Livathinos
Jerry Michalak
Susan Phillips
Betsey Regan
Amy Silberkleit
Joyce Washor
Crystal Yang
