Items

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  2021-02-26

  Koi street art in San Francisco

  This article in the SFGate tells how artist Jeremy Novy has pivoted to commissioned street art work during the pandemic. Novy's commissioned work is done out in the open "based on guidelines from the Department of Public Works and the San Francisco Police Department, which he says assert that his public art is legal, with permission from the property owner."
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  2021-02-22

  Call for submissions: Street Art

  Art unleashes, intensifies, and celebrates precisely the creative and destructive impact of vibratory force on bodies, on collectives, on the earth itself: it protects and enhances life that is and announces life to come. -- Elizabeth Grosz, Chaos, Territory, Art: Deleuze and the Framing of the Earth. This call for submissions seeks to highlight street art in the Journal of the Plague Year (JOTPY), a Crowdsourced digital archive where anyone can add their experiences and responses to the global pandemic for future generations to witness. Oftentimes, street art is temporary in nature and may be removed, obscured, or destroyed. Help JOTPY recognize the diversity of street artists and their expressions of the pandemic experience. Street art often reflects individuality, community sentiment, class differences, politics, emotion, and humor. Your contributions to the archive – such as news articles, blog posts, videos, photos, and social media posts of murals, graffiti, paste-ups, stencils, and stickers – will provide future generations access to a fleeting moment of art in and on public spaces and places during the pandemic. When submitting a street art item to JOTPY, please include a title for your submission, a description and location of the street art, your name (names can be kept private/anonymous), and #pandemicstreetart. Text stories, image(s), video(s), audio, and PDF files are all accepted file types. If the street art speaks to your experience(s) of the pandemic, please share your thoughts! If you would like to contribute, please share your story/pic/video here and reach out to Monica Ruth at meruth1@asu.edu if you have any questions.
• 
  2021-01

  Beautiful Things

  This picture was around the time of winter break. To many people it will just be a picture of the mountains covered in snow. However, to me it is a picture that represents the change in my life since this pandemic. Before the pandemic all I was able to do was focus on my studies and sports with no time for myself, but now, even though times are stressful I am able to breathe a little more.. I guess. Before these mountains were covered in snow I went up there a few days before to check out the view with the Christmas lights, but nothing could have prepared me for what would happen next. Even though these mountains were already beautiful before, after the snowfall they’ve become a masterpiece. These mountains show change, in fact they encourage change within ourselves, for the better of all of us.
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  2020-05-10

  Learning How to Orienteer in Finland

  This picture is a picture of my friend, Linda, orienteering. Now if you're confused about what orienteering is, you are not alone. When I first reached out to her to see if she had picked up any new hobbies while in quarantine, I was also very confused by her response. It turns out, orienteering is the sport of navigation; you are given a compass and a map and are tasked with trying to find your way. I had never heard of orienteering before I asked Linda about it, but it turns out it is not exclusive to Finland and is also a competitive sport in some places in the United States. Linda told me that she picked up orienteering as a way to get outside and enjoy nature while fulfilling her competitive drive. If it weren't for the pandemic, she wouldn't have been inspired to try out this new favorite hobby of hers and now new favorite competition. Covid-19 has introduced not only her, but me as well to the sport of orienteering.
• 
  2020-07-23

  HIST30060: 12 Apostles Great Ocean Road

  HIST30060: This photo is remarkable because of the tranquility it boasts, in contrast to the usual palooza of tourist buses and clicking cameras. Taken a few days before the second hard lockdown in Victoria, this photo is a tribute to how different this year really was. As my friend and are marveled at the rock formations for 30 minutes, we did not see a single other person. The car park built for hundreds was empty, visitors center closed indefinitely and the sound of our footsteps echoing as we passed under the multi-million dollar underground walkway. This year has been a major challenge for everyone, however has granted (or forced) a new perspective on life which perhaps makes every experience more impressive.
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  2020-07

  Finding Beauty in a COVID World: Colorado Landscapes

  These are all images from our drive through Colorado. The first two images are a landscape scene and a photo of a mountain goat from Independence Pass, a mountain pass in Colorado that is only open in the warmer months because it gets very treacherous in the winter. It was still quite scary when we went in July, but the views were breathtaking. The last photo is from the Colorado Monument. We chose to drive up to experience it, as there were a lot of people there without masks and we felt safest in the car. All of these photos were taken from the safety and comfort of our car.
• 
  2020-07

  Finding Beauty in a COVID World: Rainbow in an Open Landscape

  On our roadtrip driving into Kansas from Colorado, we experienced this beautiful rainbow from so many different angles as we were driving through. At first it wasn’t even a complete rainbow; it was only half a rainbow peaking through the mountains. As we drove further through the open landscape, it transformed into a full rainbow extending over this gorgeous view and even a double rainbow.
• 
  2020-04-20

  Streets and Avenues / New York City (XIII)

  After college, and a year of vagabonding through Central and South America, I moved to the city forty-two years ago. I was drawn to New York, like many, by the energy and complexity of the city itself, and more specifically, the rich and endless theater found on its streets. While the array of cultural offerings has been a source of nourishment and pleasure, it is the streetlife that keeps me as excited as my first weeks here. What I love about New York is not what I know about the city, but how much I don't know. You cannot exhaust it as a subject, and from the start, I have made the city my primary interest and subject as a photographer. I always go out with a camera and am often mistaken as a tourist because of it. I take that as a compliment, given few can match the exalted state of excitement and awareness that a tourist experiences on a visit. When the Coronavirus hit and the staggered shutdown of the city went from a talked about possibility to a reality, I found myself inside my apartment looking out at the street below. At first, I made short trips to get necessities, then later added walks through Central Park, and now through the streets of Manhattan. If you think of a photograph as a piece of theater, with a stage set, lighting, cast, and choreography, the new version of the streetlife of New York is an eerie and fascinating show. The set and lighting is much the same, but the cast and choreography have wildly changed. Wandering through Midtown is like walking through an amusement park in the off-season. You experience the present colored by what you know it to be in season.
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  2020-04-06

  Astral Projecting to the Riviera

  This work is an attempt to visualize my desire to escape quarantine. Using an entirely fabricated soundscape and footage from the French Riviera from exactly a year prior, I created an alternative space that is neither entirely real nor entirely fiction.