Crafting their way through lockdown
An undated photo provided by Scott Wiggers shows Namita Gupta Wiggers in her stitched shirt, a pandemic artifact. She stitched the shirt for a year, adding Band-Aids in gold thread to signify her family members vaccinations. Scott Wiggers via The New York Times.
by Steven Kurutz
(NYT NEWS SERVICE)
.- Necessity is the mother of invention, and at the start of the pandemic, the thing everyone needed was masks. To help keep people safe, an army of home sewers banded together last spring to make face coverings and other personal protective equipment for health care workers, family members and strangers.
Youth Triumphant sculpture in Barre
Two words that got used a lot in 2020 are resilience and pivot. The former is always a good thing; the latter we d be happy to dump in the vocabulary dustbin. Pivoting was what everyone on the planet was forced to do this year when the coronavirus arrived most definitely including the creative sector. The cancellations of performances and exhibitions, the closure of venues, and the loss of income for many artists and arts organizations were severe blows; we may not yet know the full extent of the effects.
In response, creatives got, well, creative. It didn t take long for nearly every kind of artist to reposition themselves online. Many learned recording and livestreaming skills and realized far-reaching opportunities; none of that will disappear when the virus does. Others repaired to the social-distancing-friendly outdoors think drive-in movies and concerts, Vermont Shakespeare Festival s