Art Heals: Making It

I am so lucky to have many friends who are artists.  For many of them, despite the hardships, this time of quarantine has given them a period to explore their creativity in new ways.  They are “relooking” (A French word, believe it or not, even if not officially sanctioned by the Académie Française)  their art or their process, experimenting in new directions,  addressing issues of reuse and recycling born out of environmental concern, but nurtured by the present scarcity of available materials (one artist posting that she is painting over older work, reusing the canvas  to express new concepts).  The gift of time can be inventiveness.

But I have come to realize that all my friends are artists, in one way or another.  My friend, artist Mona El-Bayoumi said it best, “Like everyone else I was born an artist, but I seriously continued to express myself since.”  She believes, as do I, that we are all born artists.  We create our world with every childhood act, because everything we do as children, a thing, a thought, a sound is created for the very first time, unique to us.  Then some of us grow up, and circumstances and inclination move us away from our artistic roots, but our artistic souls remain, dormant within us.

Corona has brought with it much pain and heartache but has also awakened that dormant creativity in many of us.

In her 1982 essay Material as Metaphor, fiber artist Anni Albers said “Most of our lives we live closed up in ourselves, with a longing not to be alone, to include others in that life that is invisible and intangible. To make it visible and tangible, we need light and material, any material. And any material can take on the burden of what had been brewing in our consciousness or subconsciousness, in our awareness or in our dreams.”

A longing not to be alone, to include others, defines perfectly our covid-contained lives.   Making takes on new meaning, as people bake bread, sew masks, build backyard amusement parks for their children, compose poetry, sing, keep diaries, and yes, draw and paint and sculpt and quilt and stitch and weld and use light and materials, any materials, to express themselves, to comfort themselves, to release the creativity with which they were born.

We are making it, in both senses of the word, making the bread or the painting or the pillow fort, and making it through these horrific times. Art truly does heal.

I offer a colorful construction seen in Australia.  Make of it what you will.