Echoes of Isolation

On View until April 19th

Opening reception Saturday, March 29th, 1:00 to 5:00 pm

As we mark five years since the lockdowns, this exhibition captures the isolation, resilience, grief, and transformation of that time. Whether created in the moment or as a reflection in hindsight, we present visual and multimedia art that documents, processes, or reimagines those unprecedented days.

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Lisa Candela - Lorrie Coffey Clark - Isabel Cotarelo - Kate Dieterle - M.S. Eberhart - Roberto Ferreira - Marielena Ferrer - Martha Guillorn - Judith Hoyt - Thomas Halbert - Daria Irincheeva - Andrea Kantrowitz & Scott Benjamin - Pam Krimsky - Carolyn Lambert, Tyus Allen, Josie Hayslette, Jules Jackson, Sabrina Mohler & Maris Souza - Rachel Levanger - Camille Modesto - Eve Morgenstern - Kai Navarrete - Yukie Ohta

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Isolation distorts time, memory, and perception. Echoes of Isolation: Art from the Pandemic explores the reverberations of solitude and separation during a global crisis, revealing both its burdens and unexpected moments of creativity.

Through diverse media, artists translate disconnection into visual, auditory, and tactile experiences—some introspective, others restless and raw. These works serve as both artifacts of isolation and catalysts for dialogue, bridging personal and collective narratives.

In this shared space, echoes of the past resonate, inviting reflection on how we navigate distance, intimacy, and resilience in an interconnected world.

Artists’ Statements:

Lisa Candela

This piece is reminiscent of a time of transcendence through moments of despair and loneliness, and a quiet rebirth that emerged from the stillness of the Covid-19 pandemic.

This painting was re-worked and cut down from a larger painting of traced hands over figures. I then covered the painting with another layer of figures. In its final layer the figures were contorted to fit within the confines of the rectangular canvas area. Some images were left exposed, while others were partially covered and obscured, creating new fragmented forms representative of memories lost through time. The flowers and hands in the painting hold deep meaning for me—both as symbols of the pandemic and my personal journey through it.

I encountered the flowers, often referred to as the onion flower, on a hike. I was in awe of their beauty. The purple and green shades of the flowers in the field were so intense to me, as if I was seeing them for the first time, witnessing nature with a heightened awareness of its beauty and fragility. Ironically the flower is like the shape of the Corona Virus which got its name from the crown “corona” shaped spikes.

During this period, I found myself repeatedly tracing layers of my hands over my paintings. In hindsight, it was a way of leaving my mark as a physical imprint of my presence. But also, I was thinking about the reality of our human impact-how we leave our hands on everything, often at a devastating cost. We have blood on our hands from the consequences of our wars, and the damage we inflict on nature. The pandemic only heightened these thoughts, with the virus itself amplified in a lab.

Yet, the hands were also about yearning for touch and human connection that were so deeply missed in a time of isolation. They represented both the absence of connection and the fragile hope of rediscovering intimacy.

There was a beautiful eerie silence in the air during the quarantine lockdowns. There was less pollution, and many animals were roaming onto the highways while the humans were locked up inside. There were fewer social obligations, because we couldn’t go anywhere, so life slowed down. It became a much-needed reset for humanity. It was as if nature was saying to us “you need to pay attention to what matters”.

Lorrie Coffey Clark

The collage titled Remembrance was created in the fall of 2021 which was about 18 months into the pandemic. It was a time when we were still isolated, where social interaction was conducted outdoors. Vaccines were accessible but people were still dying.

This collage is a reflection of those days. I spent a lot of time thinking about the past and what the future might bring. How different life had become from what it used to be. The image represents our earth with reference to the sky. I am exploring opposing forces, life and death, light and darkness and the inter-connectivity of opposites, the overlaps and spaces between what was, what is gone and what lingers. This collage incorporates photographic imagery, old handwriting, fragments of color and prints, drawings, layered paper of varying transparencies that are chosen to suggest timelessness and memory.

Isabel Cotarelo

The Crisálidas Series emerged during months of shelter-in-place, a period that prompted deep introspection and creative exploration. Much like a butterfly breaking free from its cocoon, I found myself uncovering and articulating ideas that had long been gestating in my mind.

In these artworks, I chose to work with plastic—an emblem of our environmental crisis and a primary material in the production and packaging of goods. By recycling this discarded material, I aim to breathe new life into what society often overlooks. Trash embodies the remnants of our existence, yet we frequently disregard it, as if it holds no significance. Through my pieces, I sought to highlight the intrinsic beauty within the things we habitually abandon, transforming them into symbols of rebirth.

During the pandemic, many of us found ourselves in our own quarantine cocoons, yearning for renewal. This sense of isolation was not merely physical; it permeated emotional and psychological realms, erecting barriers that obstructed genuine connection. In this duality of solitude, I discovered a catalyst for growth alongside the anguish that often accompanied it. My work encapsulates the energy and momentum for change that emerged from this period of reflection.

The urge to reshape my surroundings and the objects within them has been an irresistible force throughout my life. The organic forms in my creations evoke organisms, cells, synapses, or viruses, tapping into primal emotions and the fears of the unknown. Simultaneously, these forms convey a suspended yet dynamic hope, intent on expansion and transformation.

Kate Dieterle

I was living in Queens when the city shut down in mid-March 2020. This piece was created during that infamous March weekend when lockdown began in New York City. Nearby Elmhurst Hospital, where I had spent every Saturday of the previous year volunteering with a public speaking group, was becoming the epicenter of COVID in New York, and the endless ambulance sirens had just begun. Absolutely everything about my world was abruptly destabilized. Reality changed all at once.

In this disorienting moment, overwhelmed by strange and intense feelings, I took a pen and some watercolors and attempted to illustrate my internal landscape. Even now, five years later, the memory of creating this piece during those initial days of uncertainty remains incredibly vivid, as if it had just happened yesterday. This work stays close to my heart as a testament to that specific moment when everything shifted, and as a reminder of my ability to ride the waves of change and digest the ever-shifting nature of life.

M.S. Eberhart

These are three pieces from a series of portraits of creatives that I painted during the pandemic. I found that the community of creative folks on Instagram kept me creatively afloat and connected. Because in person sitting was not possible, I posted a proposal on Instagram in which I asked anyone who was interested in having their portrait painted to send me 3 or more photos that “feel like you”. I really enjoyed the process of teasing out the person’s essential aspects and likeness from the photos.  I’ve continued this series with the same approach and have a collection of 12+.

Roberto Ferreira

As a species we create inventions and designs to protect us against natural forces such as storms, wildfires or deadly diseases. In a way, we have much to celebrate, but unfortunately, we have also become victimized by our own inventions, a sort of guinea pig to scientific and technological creations. Technology has allowed us to create artificial environments, but It has also, unfortunately, interrupted our evolution.

Inspired by the Pandemic of 2019-20, I started the series The Human Project. A body of work that investigate the idea of permanence, decay and transformation.

The paintings are time-based and experiential. The negative space is displaced and expands as the pigments react to light and heat. The compositions develop a sort of life of their own.

If artificial processes are redefining nature by creating a hyper natural environment, how do we redefine culture and what will be our fate of naturally evolving processes?

Marielena Ferrer

The COVID-19 pandemic gave us a new lexicon, and seemingly overnight everyone started speaking a novel language — or at least repeating one sentence that is almost impossible not to hear nowadays on a video call.

“You’re on mute!” An emblem of the times. Quite an evolution from “You’ve got mail!”

Whether on a college videoconference, a corporate earnings call or a Zoom chat with family members, we’ve all said those three words as someone on the other end inevitably forgot to unmute themselves. We may have even been the recipient of such a prevalent admonition.

“If a call in 2020 goes by without somebody saying, ‘You’re on mute,’ the year would not be complete.”

—Aman Bhutani, CEO, GoDaddy Inc.

So, my prints bear witness to today’s “unprecedented” and “challenging” times — for they are a-changin’ as we evolve to a “new normal”— while revisiting the silk-screen aesthetics of Sister Corita Kent.

Martha Guillorn

I am a visual artist who is primarily focused on mixed media sculptures that deal with the curiosity of touch and the way we feel about our feelings. The use of tactile materials suggests the contradictions and compatibilities of attraction and repulsion, fear and desire, and how often they are found in the same space. These pieces embrace and reflect the contradictions of being alone, being with someone else, and being both at the same time. They are small pieces requiring a closer look, a combination of natural and manufactured materials. Wishes and bones, tiny people, a patchwork ode to a city that was, a city that always changes, a skyline in a seashell. All of the materials used were materials on (gloved) hand that did not require access to facilities.

Judith Hoyt

During the pandemic we found the woods it seemed like a safe place. We stayed in our houses. These images even though I created them in the past year hearken back to that time of isolation and solace in nature. 

Thomas Hulburt

These ties had been a fundamental aspect of the outward-facing Tom-ness of in-person life. When the shutdown shrank my world down to video chats, my new isolation made my social identity obsolete.

So, I wove my ties into a hopeful landscape, horizons beyond my box of safety and bleach.

Daria Irincheeva

The initial series of 6 embroideries were created during the 2020-21 pandemic lockdowns and consist of the highly detail-oriented work of hand embroidery on water colored fabric. Through this practice I’m exploring the possibilities for deceleration and contemplation, in combination with my focus on the processes of perception and memory. I begin with a foundation of watercolor on cotton fabric, upon which using handwoven cotton threads I embroider detailed images based on my videos of reflections on water from various places in the world. I view these as manifestations of visual memories, which just as refractions caused by water and light distort that which they reflect, are examples of how memories are processed and recalled. The actual hand-embroidery technique is a practice passed through the maternal line in my family and is traditionally such globally - a form of skill and memory-transfer communicated verbally and experientially across generations of women. This combination of media results in a new type of painting, where textiles, embroidery and paint conjoin, and traditional techniques are revived in a new context.

Andrea Kantrowitz & Scott Benjamin

Andrea Kantrowitz (artist/author/educator) and Scott Benjamin (magician/lawyer/comedian/raconteur/bon vivant) are partners in comics and in life! 

This comic series focused not on the tragedy of the pandemic, but on the minutiae of everyday life, as it became more narrowly circumscribed. A friend had mentioned to us that during the quarantine, there were days when she could only lay on the floor and stare at the ceiling.  It was our hope that even after things went back to “normal” - we would still remember to lay on the floor and stare at the ceiling sometimes, because there’s no telling what wonders we’ve overlooked and what we would notice up there, and in each other.

As it turns out, there may not be such a thing as "back to normal", after all.

Pam Krimsky

Although The Red Dress was painted from memory of a model’s pose, I initially had drawn the model from Life. Still, the painting was done from imagination, during the pandemic. I added the male figure to this composition to create both tension and interest in the painting. His shadowy presence seems to hint at why the woman looks distressed and may imply a difficult and secretive event that has already taken place between these two figures.

The subject of Expecting - Unexpected is that of a very young pregnant girl, isolated and feeling very much alone. It is painted from imagination.

The Portrait of an Artist in Mask was painted from a photograph I took during the pandemic. I photographed and painted several masked people during that period.

The pandemic had a short- and long-term effect on my psyche, as I am sure it had on everybody else.  It was a very stressful period.

Carolyn Lambert

Tyus Allen, Josie Hayslette, Jules Jackson, Carolyn Lambert, Sabrina Mohler, and Maris Souza.

In the spring of 2020, at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, I (Carolyn Lambert) was teaching in Chattanooga, TN, and asked a group of my students to collaborate in documenting the experience of the pandemic and its social and economic consequences. We turned the camera on ourselves, observing our personal and professional lives, and developed a collaborative dynamic over the course of two years of shooting and editing—working non-hierarchically—helping each other to be vulnerable and honest, struggling with time management, and keeping in touch over the course of the pandemic.

The result was a 45-minute collaborative documentary reflecting on personal and professional stagnation, job loss, familial closeness, precarity, and resilience.

Rachel Levanger

During the lockdown, I painted visual journal entries of sorts. The paintings presented here are the two I connected with the most and the only paintings I completed in oil that year, both depicting injuries due to climbing accidents during the summer of 2020. Early in the summer, Jamie, a friend of mine, severed his pinky finger when a boulder rolled over it while on the descent of a climb; later that summer, I ripped my pinky toenail out of its place when I stubbed it on a rock while approaching a climb. The paintings offered me a meditation on physicality while I grappled with the invisible but ever-present threat of COVID-19.

Camille Modesto

In Nakakain Na Po Kayo? feeding each other is a way to show care and instill family values. What happens to this act of care with distance and loss? How do we deal with separation? How do I continue to nurture my connections? Finished in 2021, the video features clips from 2019 during a visit to the Philippines, the last time I had a meal together with my mom, grandmother, and grandfather. With borders closed during the pandemic, this video captured a very important moment in my life.

Paano Magluto ng Sinigang na Bangus explores ideas of correcting historical amnesia through interruption and spectacle. Created during the height of the pandemic, the video features a video call recording of my aunt teaching me how to cook a soup dish and in between are archival images and videos from the Marcos dictatorship and the Duterte administration. This is my way of learning inherited history and processing the political affairs of the time.

Eve Morgenstern

A year after the start of the pandemic, in March 2021, when we were still forced to spend so much time in our homes and before vaccinations were available, I decided to start a 100-day project with a group of artists to keep connected and to encourage each other to make new work. The premise was to focus on one project and to produce work each day for 100 days that we documented and shared on our social media accounts. This sharing and daily practice kept us focused on our creative practice during a stressful time, and we forged a new community that really lifted us up. 

Because of the increased time in my home, I was noticing how sunlight entered my house and cast light and shadow on the interior surfaces. As a photographer and filmmaker who had always worked on projects outside of the home, I challenged myself to document the color, shape and form of the sunlight and shadows on my own walls. This became a meditative practice as I searched for light each day. The multitude of images I made over the 100 days became an archive of light in my home. I am still archiving today, 4 years later. 

Kai Navarrete

During the isolation of the epidemic, my sketchbook became a refuge, a place where creativity could roam free beyond the walls that confined me. Each page, whether rushed or intentional, held a moment of expression, a release, a possibility. What began as a way to pass time became an act of liberation, a testament to the power of creation in uncertain times. I share these pages as a reminder that even in solitude, art connects, uplifts, and sets us free.

Yukie Ohta

These are three of seven self portraits I made between March 17, 2020 and March 23, 2020 in Woodstock, NY, during the first days of the COVID-19 pandemic. I arrived thinking I'd be in town for a week (this week eventually stretched to five months). In order to keep my sanity, I made these portraits, one a day, each in a different medium, with whatever supplies I had with me: collage (from New Yorker Magazine), acrylic paint, color pencil, pencil, ink, watercolor, and magic marker. Thank goodness I’m an art supply pack rat. I do not know if I would have made it through that first week without this creative outlet!