I’ve been selected to share my story about the changes I am going through as a ceramic artist during the pandemic. It’s interesting how much has changed since I submitted my story for this project. Read about it here.
When all this started in the U.S. back in March, I was in Michigan with my mother who was recuperating from hip replacement surgery and my sister who was helping care for her. I was so connected to the grief of the world and remember how strangely connected I felt as the stock market plunged. It was a gauge that measured the collective misery of the world and, although terrible, at least one could feel a kinship with the “enemy” China as they shut down and the cascading effect it had across the globe. It seemed there would be some great togetherness from all this as the entire population of the planet was feeling, to different degrees of course, this overwhelming external wave of cataclysm approaching. All of humanity bonding through shared pain after having been divided for so long.
Alas, it was not meant to be. The markets are soaring. Housing is more expensive and ever more competitive while job security wanes. All the problems we had before this all started appear to have amplified. We have become more individuated than ever before. I won’t go on a hike with you if you’ve been on a hike with your sister who was just visiting from a hotspot and you had drinks together at the Shed and it was so great it all felt so freeing and normal and and you really haven’t been social distancing and have been going between here and Albuquerque to buy your new home and the your unemployment is totally Covid related and you’re a small business that depends on the tourist industry and…What has gone wrong?
Maybe we were mistakenly slowing down the process on the way up, as word of mouth will tell you is necessary around the ceramics studio, while science would tell us it is of vital importance to slow on the way down to survive the change. And we are still, very much, on the way up. What is this change we are going through? Are there clues as to what we will be on the other side of all this? What do you think? I have my ideas. What are yours?
Erik H Gellert 