Artist Statement
The work in this series, “Smoke Days,” have all been completed during the Covid-19 pandemic. I had been playing with frames and arched curved forms in my work, and over time, these arches became eyes. They piled up and came to represent our collective looking, our framing of the world around us. The eyes were our collective unease, our collective aloneness, our shared solitary experience. Our eyes watching; watching the news, watching the world go by while tucked in our homes, our wariness of others, our wariness of it all.
Around month 5 of the pandemic in the US, we here in California experienced the start of the worst wildfire season on record. The sun was blotted out from the sky, and we experienced weeks of smoke hovering in our skies. The sky turned black, and so did my color palette. This work explores a time that has been a lot about being in our heads, and the ways we need to find strength and shelter in ourselves.
