The Witness Tree

What can be said about 2020? I was at the Society for Photographic Education in Houston in March when the COVID pandemic was starting to spread in the U.S. Two days after I returned home, my school, and it seemed, all of NYC (and the world?) shut down. Like many, I had to adapt to teaching online while trying to cope with the incredible loss of life due to the pandemic. I had to get very creative with my darkroom class – making sunprints, toning existing silver prints with tea and coffee, etc. It was not an ideal situation and I was glad to return for one face-to-face (mask-to-mask?) class in Fall 2020 and for all my courses in Spring 2021.

Many scheduled art opportunities were cancelled or postponed in 2020, including a summer residency at the Rensing Center in Pickens, SC (I was able to go the following summer). But, other opportunities opened up. Asked by my gallerist, Susan Eley if I wanted to have an online exhibit, I jumped at the chance to put together some of my Divergence of Birds work to honor the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day.  And James Isherwood selected my work for another online exhibit – Respite and Renewal.

In October, I gave an outdoor presentation and workshop for a group of middle school students in Connecticut. Later that Fall, I collaborated with poet Betsy Andrews to create a video to accompany a portion of her poem – The Bottom – for an online program: Thinking Food Futures: Eating is Poetic hosted by Residency Unlimited. I also continued photographing my paper cutouts of climate-threatened birds for my Divergence of Birds project, but much of the year was a time for quiet contemplation and not for making art.