‘I can’t believe it’s been three months!’
COVID lockdown turns two-week visit into never-ending odyssey
Like Gilligan on his fabled three-hour tour, Kitchener native Kelly Ratchford set out from her adopted home in Ireland for a two-week visit to her fondly remembered hometown.
Three months later, she’s still here. “When I arrived in mid-February, Covid 19 had started kicking off in Europe — particularly in Italy,” notes the personable artist, in home isolation with her parents near Victoria Park.
“But I didn’t anticipate it would impact my travel. Toward the end of March it became apparent I wasn’t going back to Dublin any time soon.”
And so she stayed, and stayed, shopping for her parents, cleaning, setting up Skype calls and helping care for her dad, diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer a year ago.
“I can’t believe it’s been three months!” she notes, having witnessed winter turn to spring with encroaching signs of summer. “Most of the cupboards have been cleaned, so now it’s just trying to figure out what day is it, what to have for dinner and, for me, how to avoid too much CNN … licorice helps!”
She loves her parents, and was happy to help with her dad’s cancer treatments at Grand River Hospital until the COVID hammer fell and visitors were banned. But they’re her parents.
“I think I’m driving them crazy because I’m pretty vigilant about keeping them safe,” notes Ratchford.
“It’s challenging because there are a lot of things they can do, but I’m insisting I do them, just in case ... (amused pause) ... we’re lucky we get along pretty well.”
Cut off from her day to day life — and life partner — an ocean away, living under a stressful pandemic lockdown, the gallerydisplayed artist needed an outlet.
Out came her sketch pad.
“We were now dealing with things like security at hospital doors, toilet paper shortages and wearing masks,” she notes. “Drawing was a way for me to work through some of the bonkers, scary, poignant issues we’re all still dealing with.”
I’m no art critic, so my reaction to what appear to be hastily drawn, childlike sketches was confused: is this real art? Get out — really? What’s the intention behind it?
But something in the simplicity of its execution spoke to me, a sadness and whimsicality that captures the mood of the moment.
“At Home With The Quarantinis.” “Fear of the Elevator Monsters.” “Socially Isolating Hair(s)” — all depict sad little stick figures grappling with social isolation in a humorous, bittersweet fashion.
“The combination of a very serious cancer diagnosis and a pandemic has heightened the sense of risk,” confides Ratchford of the creative muse behind them.
“It’s been an intense experience because my dad is very vulnerable to infection.”
She’s too humble to be shocked by “is this art?” reactions like mine, joking that “Socially Isolated Hair” is “the hair of the future.”
“I have an uncle I adore and he’s always been surprised that my childlike art has any value,” she laughs.
“What? People want to buy this? The phrase ‘but a five-year-old could do that!’ comes to mind.”
She takes that as a compliment, because tapping into that sense of innocence is what makes her work come alive.
“I’ve always been drawn to children’s drawings and street art,” confides the Kitchener-Waterloo Collegiate grad, who studied social work and art in university before opening her own studio in Dublin.
“I like the challenge of using simple lines to convey more complicated, existential experiences like loneliness, heartache, isolation, meaninglessness … the fun stuff.”
She pauses: “I think you can convey a lot with very little.”
The Ratchfords, of course, are well known in these parts.
Her brother, Jeremy Ratchford, a fellow KCI grad, starred for seven seasons on the hit CBS crime series “Cold Case” after a storied career in Hollywood films like “Unforgiven” and a career-launching Crispy
Crunch commercial in 1989.
Her dad, Doug Ratchford, is the graphic designer who created the Region of Waterloo and St. Mary’s General Hospital logos still in use today.
The latter, with its nun-holding-baby outline, captures the same underlying sadness that shines through Ratchford’s own sketches.
“My baby brother Jamie was being cared for at St. Mary’s in the ’60s,” she recalls of the sibling she tragically lost decades ago. “My Dad went to see him and came upon a nun holding a baby. It turned out that baby was Jamie and the nun was a dear family friend.”
Ratchford didn’t know this story until recently but acknowledges it carries “an enormous poignancy.”
“My brother sadly died when he was almost two-years-old, but he’s still there in the beautiful design, which is very bittersweet.”
A half-century later, that quality persists in her own work, an ability to channel uncomfortable emotions in a way that reaches out while digging deep.
“The most difficult thing is to draw like a child,” she insists. “I’m trying to keep that, but my intention is much different.”