How you can help with this project:

I am currently seeking a series of venues so this installation can travel and reach as many people as possible. If you are associated with or know of a venue or organization that would be interested in displaying this project, I would love to hear from you!

The installation space will be activated by special events and participatory activities.

Artist-guided in-installation activities:

Artist will be at pop-up continuing work on the project (adding stitches for overall U.S. deaths to each day’s paper towels sheet), greeting and interacting with visitors, and leading visitors in participatory elements of the installation.

Artist will demonstrate and teach visitors how to stitch a knot into the paper towels.

Artist will give a talk about process of conceiving, researching, designing and creating documentary art installations.

During each day of the pandemic, artist took notes on pandemic-related news that occurred that day. Artist can give a tour of the installation and point to each day and read the events for that day. This is interesting and powerful because it reminds people of what was happening at specific points in time and can revamp any revisionist memories that we may have about what we went through during the pandemic. Example: While pointing to the sheet showing the deaths on 4-23-20, artist will read, “On 4-23-20 the President of the United States suggested injecting bleach to treat COVID-19. At that point in time, 49,835 people in the U.S. (1,572 in CA) had died from COVID-19.”

Ceremonially stitching a small piece of a different color thread through a knot on a specific day’s sheet to represent someone a visitor knows who died from COVID-19 on that specific day; artist would do this in the visitor’s presence.

Area of Reflection:

There will be an area in the room where people can sit and reflect. Visitors can write something they learned about themselves during the pandemic on a small strip of paper. If a visitor personally knew someone who died from COVID-19, they are invited to write on a small strip of paper how that person impacted their lives. It can be something as simple as, “When I was a child she taught me the best way to make chocolate chip cookies.” In both of these cases, these strips of paper would be displayed in a to-be-determined fashion.

Memory/memento collection:

Artist will be creating a collection of small non-perishable objects that are either: an object that belonged to someone a visitor knew who died from COVID-19 or that reminds the visitor of that person; or an object that represents something about the visitor’s experience during the pandemic. The installation will include all of these objects and visitors can pick them up and hold them, linking themselves directly to an individual who perished from COVID-19 or to another visitor’s experience of the pandemic.

Presentations/panel discussions

The space can be used for talks/panel discussions featuring experts in the area of public health (the role of public health departments, current state of public health policies, a recap of the Bay Area approach to the pandemic (it won accolades on a nationwide basis)); an expert who can lead the community through a grief management session/talk/workshop addressing the deaths, lingering medical effects from infection, and the impacts (psychological/emotional/financial/social/physical) that the pandemic and lock-down had on all of us; and/or a panel of artists whose practice involves similar topics or techniques