“Touch”
Detail of pearlescent fingerprint
1000+ marks to honor the 500K+ lives lost to Covid-19 for #markinglivescovid19
Blue and watercolor, for sorrow and tears. Applied by fingertip because the touch of loved ones was missing for most when they said their last goodbyes.
Detail shot: a single pearlescent fingerprint, because your loss is not just one in a sea of hundreds of thousands of others. It stands out. They were your unique person.
18"x24" Watercolor, liquid acrylics on watercolor paper
The longer story:
The story: Late in 2020, I wrote letters and sent art with two ideas for then President-elect Biden: to honor the 250,000 lives lost to COVID-19 thus far with a National Day of Mourning and to send letters to every single family who had lost a loved one. Death is the great equalizer in the human experience. It has no regard for party affiliation. Grieving these losses together could open a place for healing to begin - for people at a personal level, as well as for us as a country. A few events happened, but I was not satisfied.
Deaths were skyrocketing that December when I saw the hashtag #markinglivescovid19. Artists were invited to make at least 1,000 “marks” on any surface in any medium, to commemorate lives lost to Covid-19, and then post a public photo of the work to the hashtag.
Now this, I could do.
I could offer art into this space of such grief and loss in our country. Perhaps the work might be a gesture of comfort to someone where words fail.
It had to be blue, for sorrow, and watercolor for tears. With each painted fingerprint, an honoring of the person it represented. One by one, till there were more than 1,600 marks. Touching the paper directly was important because the touch of loved ones was missing for most when they said their last goodbyes.
Then it became a show.
193 artists participating
309 artworks submitted
403,460 marks honoring lives lost
741,566 Lives lost in the U.S. to COVID-19 as of October 29, 2021,
Source: CDC website
I am proud to participate in this exhibition, and heartbroken that there even needs to be one.
Conceived by Concord-based visual artist Elizabeth Awalt, “Marking Lives COVID-19” is born from a desire to acknowledge and commemorate lives lost in America to COVID-19. Elizabeth invited the community to join this collective art project. Once “Marking Lives COVID-19 has “marked” the majority of lives lost to COVID-19 in the U.S., it will serve as a memorial to this tragic era, similar to the powerful AIDS Memorial Quilt.
Next steps for “Touch”.
I still wanted to facilitate some kind of personal connection in these times of grief. The original is out at the show, so I made a fine art print of it, cut it up into small cards, and added a pearlescent fingerprint in the center of each. I sent some to those I knew who were grieving - and am sending others on behalf of people in my wider network. The cards were mailed with a short description of the original artwork and a short message on the back to honor the lost loved one. People wrote in to request cards sent on their behalf to those they knew who’d lost someone to COVID-19; others requested cards for themselves.