And as the world falls apart, there are scraps of silver linings

My photo art has always been circumstantial, not particularly planned.  So, sheltering in my one-bedroom apartment during the ‘lockdown’ time keeping as many of us as possible safe from the virus, there are not too many circumstances.  Being a positive person, I looked on the brighter side.  Never seeming to have had time to get my collage juices flowing – what better time than 30-something hour days to play in – no deadlines, tons of videos to inspire me and all those scraps of paper and cutouts of ‘stuff’ I’d been filing away.  And so it started. 

Emerging

I quickly finished a collage, first in a long time, that I had started several months ago but never quite felt it was ‘done’.  So now I could go on to the NEW.  (I am a linear type person). 

And out it came.  Next one was a specific reaction to the pandemic, I created Corona Flowers, and sort of simultaneously (so much for linear), I built two more:  Panamama based on a photo I took of an indiginous market woman in Panama City a couple of years ago.  I see her as a moving strength of humanity in this photo (at the time I thought she was fairly greedy for how much she wanted to let me shoot!).  Time heals…  and There’s Always Dance which is sort of a fantasy piece that just appealed to me.

All the while though, I had this niggling thought in my waking hours: due to the fear of contamination, there was no more bringing one’s own shopping bags into grocery stores. My under-sinkfull of paper shopping bags provided pristinely by my local Trader Joe’s was more than enough paper for a year of collages.  So far, I’ve made two.  There will be more.

and now, back to my dining table…

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