Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
ARTISTS in region tell story of pandemic.
FAYETTEVILLE — History is in the making as Northwest Arkansas artists create works influenced by the covid-19 pandemic.
“As we create in the present, we are continuing and questioning traditions from the past that may or may not be relevant to who we are today,” said Simone Cottrell, 34, of Fayetteville. “As humans, we crave stories and narrations that reflect back to us who we are and who we could become.”
Cottrell is a multidisciplinary artist who began working at home March 13 because of the coronavirus.
“I use creative writing, visual art, music and theater to work with communities to create theater,” Cottrell said. “As a theater-maker, I wear multiple hats to assist communities in realizing a production.”
She’s the daughter of a Cambodian refugee and a U.S. Marine Corps veteran that served in Vietnam, she said. Her life experiences have led her to projects that include the Lotus Rising Theatre, which supports narratives of Southeast Asians and Southeast Asian Americans who live in Northwest Arkansas.
“All artists have a responsibility to help tell a story, even if it’s just their own,” said Justin Williams, 44, of Rogers. “Some go further and record moments in time, events, cultural movements. Some go even further and help kick-start even bigger things.”
Williams works out of a home studio and has been laid off as a creative consultant for a branding and design firm, he said. The artist creates in pen and ink, watercolor, charcoal and graphite and describes his work as “messy but precise” with “intricate abstracts.”
Some of his landmark pieces include high contrast black and white illustrations with black and gray watercolor washes. His portfolio includes bright renditions of animals and people.
“I’m hopeful my work will still be a part of the cultural fabric here in Northwest Arkansas when this all gets figured out,” he said.
TELLING THE STORY
Artists began to address contemporary experiences through art in the late 18th century, according to Allan Doyle, a visiting assistant professor at the University of Arkansas’ School of Art.
“Current events — rendered in all their historically precise details — could be subjects for important works
of art,” Doyle said. “Artists became visual historians. They were directly involved in shaping the way people thought about the recent and distant past. This radically altered the relationship between art and life.”
Modern examples of history recorded through art are evident in how artists responded to events such as the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, he said.
“Artists like David Wojnarowicz or collectives like Act Up insisted on making visible the hidden suffering and cost of a public health crisis that was either ignored by the general media or presented as a judgment on its victims,” Doyle said. “One of the most compelling works from this period was the AIDS quilt, which used a traditional form of folk art to respond to a current crisis and memorialize lost partners, friends and family members in a way no individual artist or single work could.”
The AIDS Memorial Quilt is the largest ongoing community folk art project in the world, according to the National AIDS Memorial website. More than 50,000 individual 3-by-6-foot memorial panels commemorate 105,000 people who’ve died of AIDS.
Doyle said he can see the pandemic has already begun to influence what the university’s students are creating based on a recent final critique of a bachelor of fine arts student done through a videoconference. The student would have usually shown some of her prints to reviewers but instead asked attendees to participate in a performance piece she created in response to not being able to present her pieces in person.
“Being forced to rethink what she wanted to say according to what means were available to her meant she had to step outside her comfort zone and area of expertise,” Doyle said. “Regardless of whether that student returns to making prints, how she thinks about what constitutes a work of art, how it reflects present circumstances and how it impacts its audiences will never be the same.”
MODERN HISTORY
Cottrell began expressing herself creatively March 14 with items she has access to while sticking close to home during the pandemic, she said. The “#quARTantine2020” project features photos the artist takes daily of herself inspired by modern and fine works of art.
“I’d been keeping up globally with what was occurring with covid-19 and knew that we were all going to be in this for a while,” she said.
Some of the photos Cottrell has created using her smartphone and items she has in her home include Lady with (Portable) Fan inspired by Lady with a Fan by Austrian symbolist painter Gustav Klimt, and Netflix’ing Woman with Questions after Resting Woman with Carnations by Max Beckmann. Beckmann is a German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer.
“I needed to do art that would be for pure entertainment during this time, but even with the intention of fun, there are some strong themes that are personal for me that are helping me cope through this collective grieving process,” Cottrell said. “There is no human body in my home but mine. How do I use that physical theater training to explore the dimensions and spaces of my own form and rebuild a relationship with my body?”
Cottrell said she is purposefully using artwork featuring white women and using her body as the focus of the pieces she creates.
“I don’t see a lot of artwork in the art canon that focuses on bodies that look like mine — Cambodian, curvy, strong,” she said. “Right now, the focus on Asian bodies and what they carry, real or imaginary, is controversial. If these photos are going out into the world how I want them to, then I hope that other women, femmes and girls who look like me feel empowered to flip the script, too.”
Williams made Carnivorous 19 in response to the pandemic, he said. The 22-inch-by-30-inch painting was created using watercolors and pen and ink and features tiered depictions of a man, with each applying pressure with his hands upon the head of the image below.
“People’s lives are in danger, with entire industries that may not survive this,” he said. “People are scared, people are starting to get frustrated, and I aimed to show just how frustrated they’re getting in this painting. I’m scared it’s going to be a very destructive chain reaction.”
Williams also relied on items he had at home to create Carnivorous 19, he said.
GETTING BY
Erika Nelson, 59, of Bentonville is a disabled artist whose work environment hasn’t changed much because of the pandemic, she said. The artist contracted polio when she was 6 months old and living in the Philippines.
The disease left Nelson with double vision, waning energy and paralyzed her legs and her right arm from the elbow up, she said. She is a figurative painter who works with oils, acrylics, watercolors and charcoal on canvas.
“I pretty much stay home most of the time,” Nelson said of her typical routine of working in her studio.
Nelson’s artworks are usually 16 inches by 20 inches and sell for an average of $1,000, she said. The artist said she’ll be creating smaller, less-polished pieces from 2.5 inches by 3.5 inches to 8 inches by 10 inches for $10 to $75 during the pandemic.
“I want to go back to smaller pieces that I might sell more easily as affordable art online and can slip in a flat-rate envelope,” she said.
Nelson said she hopes the change in practice will allow her to sell more work during a global time of escalating financial hardships.
“I might just get more embedded in painting what I enjoy because relying on what people might buy has become more of a long shot,” she said of her work that leans toward impressionistic and classical styles. “I really pour myself into my creations, so I really need to make my own joy in creating my priority.”
Northwest Arkansas is a hard market to sell in, even during the best of times, Williams said.
“This isn’t going to help,” he said of the pandemic. “I’d be floored if this specific piece (Carnivorous 19) found value down the road, capturing the mood or not. Then again, I’m just happy when I sell a small print online.”
Williams’ works range in price from $20 prints to watercolor pieces for more than $1,000, he said.
Doyle described artists as alchemists who turn leaden experience into creative gold.
“Some of the finest artists I know can barely scratch out a living in the best of times, let alone the present moment, yet their work inspires me every time I see it or think about it,” he said.
“Value has many meanings, but aesthetic value and commercial value rarely coincide. Perhaps the one universal truth about artists is they make art — in good times or bad — and that’s precisely what they will keep doing.”