This was my MFA thesis exhibition, created entirely during the first year of the COVID pandemic. During that strange year I likened our universal "journey" to Homer's epic poem, The Odyssey: not a literal quest over great distances as the epic describes, but a physical and existential journey nonetheless. In the poem, the word nostos meant several different things: it meant escaping death, safe landings, returning home from war, and being back home. Escaping death and being home could aptly describe our lives that year. Safe landings and returning home from war might also describe the lives of essential workers who continued to serve throughout the scariest early period of the pandemic.
Like much of the world, I was confined to my home: my corporeal journey was a repetitive and seemingly endless track from the kitchen to the study, to the bedroom, bathroom and back: the textile pieces Odyssey I and Odyssey II map these movements. My only engagement with the outside world consisted of looking out the window or through electronic screens. The series Ponos (work) is a set of portraits of my students and colleagues, shown in grids as we experienced each other in the endless and ubiquitous Zoom meetings of the time. Romantic life, if any, was conducted on the screen. The series Proci (the Suitors) makes reference to Penelope’s suitors in the poem.
From my window in downtown Atlanta I witnessed a cross-section of life unfold: from the drama of Black Lives Matter marches to the quotidian work of building custodians whose gas-powered leaf-blowers continued to tear through the silence. Numerous stand-alone paintings show these views. It was hard to concentrate during this time, and my attention was drawn fleetingly to little details like the omnipresence of helicopters, and the frequent visits by ambulances on the street below: these moments I rendered into small paintings that are collaged onto the textile mapping pieces.