Isolation inspiration
While confined to their homes, artists in Arkansas keep creating.
During times of social upheaval and great change, the arts often reflect the turmoil, the fear, the hope and even the joy that arises.
In a series of interviews, we asked visual artists, musicians and writers how the coronavirus pandemic and the stay-at-home orders have affected them and their creativity. Their comments have been edited for length and clarity.
Most are active on social media to keep creativity flowing and to maintain visibility as access to performance venues and galleries has been put on hold.
MEIKEL CHURCH
“I made my collage, Once Upon a Time in America, a week or so ago after coming across the image of the influenza virus in an old Life magazine,” Church says. “It resembled the virus going around now so it got me thinking about how everything runs in cycles and that our situation isn’t unprecedented.”
Church says because he works in isolation, his creativity hasn’t been affected.
Still, he says, “I definitely miss going to work every day at the library.” Church works at the Argenta Branch of the William F. Laman Library in North Little Rock.
“I have created several pieces during this crazy time. I haven’t really changed my process, but I have been exploring new incorporations into my collages — pencil, ink and pastels are some of the mediums I’m experimenting with. My art is melancholic and, at times, based on my own loneliness so I don’t think my art as such has changed during this time.
“But I think I have a better understanding of how much time away from my art helps me create. I’ve never wanted to be a full-time artist and I need that structure of a day job.”
JOSHUA ASANTE
A photographer who also writes and records music, Asante was set for an exhibition at Historic Arkansas Museum this year, but with the museum’s closure, his exhibit was moved to March 2021. Last year, his photograph My
Selves in Constant Dissonance was chosen for the Arkansas Arts Center’s Delta Exhibition.
“Like most artists, I straddle that divide of
living in/longing for solitude while carrying a profound yearning to be connected to the all,” the Little Rock resident says. “Any disruption of that paradox finds its way into the process. This particular circumstance has given me quiet spaces that weren’t there before, which at times is great for sustained intensity and reflection. The quiet has also felt like a paralytic at times, and I’ve felt like making nothing at all.
“There was a stretch of a couple weeks where I couldn’t set up my music gear and there was no way anyone was coming into the studio to be photographed. With my primary creative outlets on pause, I took to making short soundscapes and playing a lot of acoustic guitar. Film has helped, too. Watching [Akira] Kurosawa’s magic late at night has done a lot to ease that listless feeling I’m sure a lot of folk can relate to right now.”
The disruption came as Asante was putting final touches on his album, All the Names of God at Once.
“I was hitting a stride in the mixing phase when the initial orders for distancing were taking shape. We lost a few weeks of what would have most likely been pretty productive. I spent most of that first morning back in the studio struggling to center myself and the work and not on the uncertainty outdoors. Mindfulness and being more self-aware are going to have to be a more intentional part of the process.”
Asante has found more clarity.
“I’ve had more time to sit down inside my head … there’s more peaceful space up there than I thought was there not so very long ago. It’s early on to say what the full impact will be, but I do feel more clarity in my day-to-day. I want more of that so I can share my selves with honesty and accountability, and I hope it translates into my creative life over time.”
THERESA CATES
“Under normal circumstances, I create art at least five days a week,” says Cates, who has worked full time at the Arkansas Division of Workforce Services in Jacksonville for 19 years.
The North Little Rock artist is known for her nostalgic, colorful canvases of black culture.
“My creativity was placed on hold due to the long hours and weekend work,” she says. “I often find myself drawing on scratch paper in between answering phones at work.”
She posts her work on social media.
“My intention is to post positive images to bring a smile or promote safety or even to just cause them to think of good times during this transition in life. The art I created during this time reflects from my relationship with Christ, a Netflix movie or all the masks being worn.”
When the coronavirus hit Arkansas, people packed the grocery stores.
“I was at Hobby Lobby and Michaels loading up [on] supplies,” she says.
One work she completed during this period was inspired by the masks people are being asked to wear. It is titled All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go.
“This experience has caused me to learn to appreciate the gift every time I’m able to create and never take life for granted; to give thanks in all,” Cates says.
VIRMARIE DEPOYSTER
As DePoyster was preparing to exhibit what is arguably the best work of her career — a series of portraits built around the theme of the labels people are given by others — the coronavirus outbreak changed everything.
“In the beginning of the stay-home order, it was a welcome break,” the North Little Rock artist says. “I was under tight deadlines to finish paintings and framing for a solo exhibit that was to open April 7 in Springdale [at the Arts Center of the Ozarks]. I canceled my in-studio classes, which allowed me more time to finish the final details. I finished one last painting, Closeted [of Meikel Church]. Since my exhibition was scheduled to be up for three months, I drove the paintings to Springdale and my husband and I hung the show. Then my creative energy stopped. It was difficult to be in my studio. I was grieving, missing my students and the daily routine I loved.”
With her adult children at home because of the pandemic, DePoyster found comfort in cooking. “My son and I watched YouTube videos to learn about the science behind sourdough bread. We experimented with different flours in different jars to get our wild yeast and bacteria to grow. As with art, making bread has many variables and so much can go wrong.”
Several of the new works have been posted online. The fate of her exhibit is unsettled while the museum is closed, but DePoyster is working on a lesson plan for high school students aligned with the Arkansas Academic Standards to broaden its appeal and also thinking about other exhibition options.
In the plan students “would create a self-portrait as they explore issues of connection, identity and how they have been incorrectly labeled.”
DePoyster says her muse is returning.
“In the next few weeks, I plan to start a series of self-portraits titled ‘Solo’ that depict this secluded time.
“This experience has taught me that in life, we have no control over anything. The quicker we let go of the thought that we have control, the quicker we can find peace.”
KEVIN BROCKMEIER
Acclaimed novelist Kevin Brockmeier’s ninth book, The Ghost Variations, will be released Oct. 6.
“If all goes well, I’ll be able to give my first reading from the collection at the rescheduled Six Bridges Book Festival,” says the Little Rock writer.
Working from home and in solitude is his everyday reality. That hasn’t changed.
“What’s changed is my stance toward working from home and in solitude: the difference between the freedom of creative isolation and the constraints of creative isolation. For me it’s been a slow time for generating new writing and a much better time for editing — better, in other words, for the secondary creative processes than for the primary creative processes. It turns out that fatalism and hypochondria are less productive creative states when the world is actively reinforcing them.”
Brockmeier has finished one project, an essay for a book of appreciations of Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Marilynne Robinson.
“That came fairly swiftly to me, so it could be that I’m bending toward essay-work right now, though I’m still trying to make my way through a short story by brute concentration.”
Errands gained a new perspective when he ran out of printer paper.
“All it took was a trip to Target to replenish, but that’s not the thoughtless errand it was a few months ago.”
ROBERT MOORE (RED HAWK)
Robert Moore, professor of English, Henderson State University, writes poetry under the name Red Hawk. His 10th book of poetry, The Law of the Land, is due Tuesday. Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner Gary Snyder calls the new work “a set of poems of deep etiquette, music, pain and muted ecstasy. Red Hawk’s is a powerful, wise and down-home voice.”
The name Red Hawk came into being at the end of a fourday water fast in 1981 at the Buffalo River. Moore saw a pair of red-tailed hawks soaring toward the sun. From that vision, Moore received the name Red Hawk from Mother Earth, whom he calls Mother’s Grace.
“I write poems because they are given to me by Grace, as this name was. Grace is all that I have to work with, not talent or intelligence. I am a slow writer and my poems are the result of long periods of meditation, contemplation and waiting to receive inspiration.”
While Moore has had more time to write, what has the pandemic changed for him?
“It has become obvious that Great Mother Earth is speaking to the human species in her native tongue, in her own language — in this case using the virus. Her message is abundantly clear: either the human species returns to its bond of love for the Earth, re-aligns its aims, imperatives and lifestyle in harmony with the Earth, or we will continue on our suicide path to extinction.”
BIG PIPH
Big Piph, who calls himself the Hip-Hop Adventurer, is working on new music. A hint of its content may be in the online live version of the soulful “Foolish.”
“Music hasn’t been that easy to create,” Piph says. As with most musicians, he has had a lot of work canceled.
“I just had to remember how creating offers balance for a brotha. Also, had to make sure I had my grocery and utility bills situated. Now, we continue as usual.
“I was going to release a project during this time called Be Foolish. That changed. Now, I’m working on a themed, ambitious song/visual idea. I’ve been experimenting with the components and it’s been a learning curve acquiring new skills.
“I’m mostly back on track with daily time set aside just to create. Since one of the few rules I have in creating is be true to my present moment, there is a slight shift. I like writing from life, but life hasn’t been that inspiring nor worth memorializing with music.”
Piph says “some aspects of the country’s state may play into” his new musical/visual idea, but he has no plans to write songs about the pandemic as such.
“Nope. I’m honestly not too interested in the piece I’d create from that. I believe it should inform my future work though. We’ll see.”
Has this experience changed him?
“It’s just life. Sometimes it catches you more off guard than others. I control what I can control and attempt to find peace with what I can’t.”
ADAM FAUCETT
North Little Rock singersongwriter Adam Faucett says the pandemic has “obviously affected my life in the same way that it has affected everyone else. Bouncing back from surgery, I was just now starting to get my mojo back as far as getting to play live when this hit.
“I feel as though anything I do, even if it’s getting something at the gas station, I try to put a little something in there. Even if it’s just trying to make the clerk laugh. Either with me or at me. It’s just the way you look at stuff. I would be interested and comment on the observations one way or another aboard any sinking ship. As far as the time at home, it’s been very helpful because writing while constantly moving in a minivan is very hard. You pretty much have to rely on your conversations either with your bro or internally … and that’s it.”
The songs he’s been writing aren’t so different from what he usually does, Faucett says.
“As an artist, you want what you want. But sometimes, it’s just not in the air for you to grab. You don’t know how to put what you want into words until the air is vibrant enough to shake out the fruit you’ve had your eye on but was just a little too far to tell exactly what kind it was. So maybe with the tense atmosphere and extra time the things I was searching for, many projects have come to me easier, finally.”
Has this experience changed him?
“I think it’s going to be a long time before we understand how this has shaped us.”